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Idealism is an approach to Philosophical Enquiry . As a basis for Cosmology , or an approach to understanding the existence, idealism is often contrasted with '' Materialism '', both belonging to the class of Monist as opposed to Dualist or Pluralist Ontologies . (Note that this contrast between idealism and materialism is approximately as to whether the substance of the world is at base mental or physical - it has nothing to do with thinking things should be idealized, or being greedy.) The approach to idealism by western philosophers has been different from that of eastern thinkers. In much western thought (though not in such major western thinkers as Plato and Hegel)''the ideal'' relates to direct knowledge of subjective mental ideas, or images. It is then usually juxtaposed with '' Realism '' in which the real is said to have absolute existence prior to and independent of our knowledge. Epistemological idealists might insist that the only things which can be directly ''known for certain'' are ideas. In eastern thought, as reflected in Hindu Idealism , the concept of ''idealism'' takes on the meaning of Consciousness , essentially the living consciousness of an all-pervading '' God '', as the basis of all phenomena. A variant of Oriental idealism is Buddhist Idealism . HISTORY Idealism names a number of philosophical positions with quite different tendencies and implications. Idealism in the East Several Hindu Traditions and Schools Of Buddhism can be accurately characterized as idealist. Some of the Buddhist schools are called " Consciousness-only " schools as they focus on consciousness without a God or soul. . Idealism in the West Antiphon In his chief work ''Truth'', is a Thought or a Measure , not a Substance ." This presents time as an ideational, internal, mental operation, rather than a real, external object. Plato See Also: Platonic idealism Plato proposed an idealist theory as a solution to the Problem Of Universals . A universal is that which all things share in virtue of having some particular property. So for example the wall, the moon and a blank sheet of paper are all white; ''white'' is the universal that all white things share. Plato argued that it is universals, The Forms , or Platonic Ideals that are real, not specific individual things. Confusingly, because this idea asserts that these mental entities are ''real'', it is also called '' Platonic Realism ''; in this sense ''realism'' contrasts with '' Nominalism '', the notion that mental abstractions are merely names without an independent existence. Nevertheless, it is a form of idealism because it asserts the primacy of the idea of universals over material things. Plotinus no other place than the soul or Mind ' (neque est alter hujus universi locus quam anima), indeed the ideality of time is expressed in the words: 'We should not accept time outside the soul or mind' (oportet autem nequaquam extra animam tempus accipere)." (''Parerga and Paralipomena'', Volume I, "Fragments for the History of Philosophy," § 7) Rene Descartes Problematic Idealism is affiliated with Rationalism-the school of thought spearheaded by Descartes. Descartes slogan Cogito Ergo Sum brought about this idealist mind/body dualism. Malebranche Malebranche a student of the Cartesian School of Rationalism disagreed that if the only things that we know for certain are the ideas within our mind, then the existence of the external world would be dubious and known only indirectly. He declared instead that the real external world is actually God. All activity only appears to occur in the external world. In actuality, it is the activity of God. For Malebranche, we directly know internally the ideas in our mind. Externally, we directly know God's operations. This kind of idealism led to the pantheism of Spinoza . George Berkeley Bishop Berkeley , in seeking to find out what we could know with certainty, decided that our knowledge must be based on our Perceptions . This led him to conclude that there was indeed no "real" knowable object behind one's perception, that what was "real" was the perception itself. This is characterised by Berkeley's slogan: "Esse est aut percipi aut percipere" or '''"To be is to be perceived or to perceive"''', meaning that something only exists, in the particular way that it is seen to exist, when it is being perceived (seen, felt etc.) by an observing subject. This Subjective Idealism or Dogmatic Idealism led to his placing the full weight of Justification on our perceptions. This left Berkeley with the problem, common to other forms of idealism, of explaining how it is that each of us apparently has much the same sort of perceptions of an object. He solved this problem by having God intercede, as the immediate cause of all of our perceptions. Schopenhauer wrote: "Berkeley was, therefore, the first to treat the subjective starting-point really seriously and to demonstrate irrefutably its absolute necessity. He is the father of idealism...." (''Parerga and Paralipomena'', Vol. I, "Fragments for the History of Philosophy," § 12) Arthur Collier Arthur Collier published the same assertions that were made by Berkeley . However, there seemed to have been no influence between the two contemporary writers. Collier claimed that the represented image of an external object is the only knowable reality. Matter, as a cause of the representative image, is unthinkable and therefore nothing to us. An external world, as absolute matter, unrelated to an observer, does not exist for human perceivers. As an appearance in a mind, the universe cannot exist as it appears if there is no perceiving mind. Collier was influenced by John Norris 's ( 1701 ) ''An Essay Towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World''. The idealist statements by Collier were generally dismissed by readers who were not able to reflect on the distinction between a mental idea or image and the object that it represents. Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Edwards , an American theologian, went to Yale University in 1716 at the age of thirteen. After reading Locke 's doctrine of ideas, he kept a notebook entitled "Mind." In it, he wrote, at the age of fourteen, that the only things that are real are minds. He contended that Matter exists only as an Idea in a mind. Due to his theological manner of thinking, he asserted that space is God, due to its infinity. After adolescence, he never elaborated on these early idealistic notes. Immanuel Kant ''.) Fichte Johann Fichte denied Kant's noumenon, and made the claim that consciousness made its own foundation, that the mental ego of the self relied on no external, and that an external of any kind would be the same as admitting a real material. He was the first to make the attempt at a presuppositionless theory of knowledge, wherein nothing outside of thinking would be assumed to exist outside the initial analysis of concept. So that conception could be solely grounded in itself, and assume nothing without deduction from there first, what he called a Wissenschaftslehre . (This stand is very similar to Giovanni Gentile 's Actual Idealism , except that Gentile's theory goes further by denying a ground for even an ego or self made from thinking.) Hegel Hegel , another philosopher whose system has been called ''idealism'', argued in his ''Science of Logic'' (1812-1814) that finite qualities are not fully "real," because they depend on other finite qualities to determine them. Qualitative ''infinity'', on the other hand, would be more self-determining, and hence would have a better claim to be called fully real. Similarly, finite natural things are less "real"--because they're less self-determining--than spiritual things like morally responsible people, ethical communities, and God. So any doctrine, such as materialism, that asserts that finite qualities or merely natural objects are fully real, is mistaken. Hegel called his philosophy '' Absolute Idealism '', in contrast to the " Subjective Idealism " of Berkeley and the " Transcendental Idealism " of Kant and Fichte, which were not based (like Hegel's idealism) on a critique of the finite. The "idealists" listed above whose philosophy Hegel's philosophy most closely resembles are Plato and Plotinus. None of these three thinkers associates their idealism with the epistemological thesis that what we know is "ideas" in our minds. Schopenhauer In the first volume of his ''Parerga and Paralipomena'', Schopenhauer wrote his "Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real ". He defined the ideal as being mental pictures that constitute subjective Knowledge . The ideal, for him, is what can be attributed to our own minds. The images in our head are what comprise the ideal. Schopenhauer emphasized that we are restricted to our own Consciousness . The World that appears there is only a Representation or mental picture of objects. We directly and immediately know only representations. All objects that are external to the mind are known indirectly through the mediation of our Mind . Schopenhauer's history is an account of the Concept of the "ideal" in its meaning as "ideas in a subject's mind." In this sense, "ideal" means "ideational" or "existing in the mind as an image." He does not refer to the other meaning of "ideal" as being qualities of the highest perfection and excellence. British idealism British Idealism enjoyed ascendancy in English-speaking philosophy in the later part of the 19th century. F. H. Bradley of Merton College , Oxford , saw reality as a Monistic whole, which is apprehended through "feeling", a state in which there is no distinction between the perception and the thing perceived. Bradley was the apparent target of G. E. Moore 's radical rejection of idealism. J. M. E. McTaggart of Cambridge University , argued that minds alone exist, and that they only relate to each other through love. Space , Time and material objects are for McTaggart unreal. He argued, for instance, in '' The Unreality Of Time '' that it was not possible to produce a coherent account of a sequence of events in time, and that therefore time is an illusion. American philosopher Josiah Royce described himself as an Objective Idealist . Karl Pearson In '' The Grammar Of Science '', Preface to the 2nd Edition, 1900 , Karl Pearson wrote, "There are many signs that a sound idealism is surely replacing, as a basis for natural philosophy, the crude Materialism of the older physicists." This book influenced Einstein 's regard for the importance of the observer in scientific measurements. In § 5 of that book, Pearson asserted that "...science is in reality a classification and analysis of the contents of the Mind ...." Also, "...the field of science is much more Consciousness than an external world." Critique of Idealism Immanuel Kant Kant in the 2nd edition (1787) of his Critique of Pure Reason wrote a section called Refutation of Idealism to distinguish his transcendental idealism versus Berkeley's Dogmatic Idealism. In addition to this refutation in both the 1780 & 1787 editions the section "Paralogisms of Pure Reason" is an implict critque of Descartes Problematic Idealism viz. the Cogito. He says that just from "the spontaneity of thought" (cf Descartes Cogito) it is not possible to infer the 'I' as an object; he never explicitly said words to the effect "Descartes was wrong like Russell or Nietszche after him." Nietzsche makes this precise point 100 years later in his Book ''Beyond Good and Evil.'' Frederick Nietszche Frederick Nietszche was the first to mount a logically serious criticism of Idealism. In his book ''Beyond Good and Evil'', Part 1 On the Prejudice of Philosophers Section 11, he ridicules Kant for admiring himself because he had undertaken and (thought he) succeeded in tackling "the most difficult thing that could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics." when he merely created a tautology. Quoting Nietszsche's prose with the tautology in boldface type: "But let us reflect; it is high time to do so. "How are synthetic judgements a priori possible?" Kant asked himself-and what really is his answer? "By virtue of a faculty"-but unfortunatley not in five words,...The honeymoon of German philosophy arrived. All the young theologians of the Tubingen seminary went into the bushes all looking for "faculties."..."By virtue of a faculty"-he had said, or at least meant. '''But is that-an answer? An explanation? Or is it not rather merely a repitition of the question?''' How does opium induce sleep? "By virtue of a faculty," namely the virtus dormitiva, replies the doctor in Moliere," In addition to the Idealism of Kant, Nietzsche in the same book critiques the idealism of Schoupenhauer and Descartes (Cogito Ergo Sum, I think therefore I am). Quoting Nietszche: There are still harmless self-observers who believe that there are "immediate certainties"; for example, "I think," or as the superstition of Schopenhauer put it, "I will"; as thouh knowledge here got hold of its objects purely and nakedly as "the ting in it-self," without any falsification on the part of either the subject or the object. But that "immediate certainty," as well as "sbsolute knowledge" and the "thing in itself," involved a contradictio in adjecto, (contradiction between the noun and the adjective) I shall repeat a hundred times; we really ought to fee ourselves from the seduction of words! G. E. Moore The first criticism of Idealism that falls within the analytic philosophical framework is by one of its co-founders Moore . This 1903 seminal article, ''The Refutation of Idealism''. This one of the first demonstrations of Moore's commitment to analysis as the proper philosophical method. Moore proceeds by examining the Berkeleian aphorism ''esse est percipi'': "to be is to be perceived". He examines in detail each of the three terms in the aphorism, finding that it must mean that the object and the subject are ''necessarily'' connected. So, he argues, for the idealist, "yellow" and "the sensation of yellow" are necessarily identical - to be yellow is necessarily to be experienced as yellow. But, in a move similar to the Open Question Argument , it also seems clear that there is a difference between "yellow" and "the sensation of yellow". For Moore, the idealist is in error because "that ''esse'' is held to be ''percipi'', solely because what is experienced is held to be identical with the experience of it". Though this refutation of idealism was the first strong statement by analytic philosophy against its idealist predecessors this argument did not show that the GEM (in post Stove vernacular) is logically invalid. Arguments advanced by Nietzsche (prior to Moore), Rusell (just after Moore) & 80 years later Stove really put the nail in the coffin for the arguments supporting idealism. Bertrand Russell Despite his hugely popular book ''The Problems of Philosophy'' which chapter 4 (Idealism) highlighting Berkeley's tautological premise for advancing idealism, few ever mention Russell. David Stove 's pedantic and holistic elucidation against idealism hold strong in analytic philosophy departments today. In Russell's prose (1912:42-43) "If we say that the things known must be in the mind, we are either un-duly limiting the mind's power of knowing, or we are uttering a mere tautology. We are uttering a mere tautology if we mean by 'in the mind' the same as by 'before the mind', i.e. if we mean merely being apprehended by the mind. But if we mean this, we shall have to admit that what, in this sense, is in the mind, may neverthless be not mental. Thus when we realize the nature of knowledge, Berkely's argument is seen to be wrong in substance as well as in form, and his grounds for supposing that 'idea'-i.e. the objects apprehended-must be mental, are found to have no valdity whatever. hence his grounds in favour of the idealism may be dismissed." David Stove The Australia n philosopher David Stove argued in typically acerbic style that idealism rested on what he called "the worst argument in the world". He named one version of this argument, deriving from Berkeley, "the GEM". Berkeley claimed that "(the mind) is deluded to think it can and does conceive of bodies existing unthought of, or without the mind, though at the same time they are apprehended by, or exist in, itself". Stove argued that this claim proceeds from the tautology that nothing can be thought of without its being thought of, to the conclusion that nothing can exist without its being thought of. The following is Stove's homely version of Berkeley's GEM (1991:139): 1) you cannot have trees-without-the-mind in mind, without having them in mind. 2) Therefore, you cannot have trees-without-the-mind in mind. 1) is a tautology (self-referential statement); therefore the premise of this argument is trivially true. 2) is not a trivially true conclusion. The logic flowing from 1) to 2) is invalid as tautological premises can bring only tautological conclusions Refer to Stove's 1991 book ''The Plato Cult & Other Philosophical Follies'' chapter 6 ''Idealism: A Victorian Horror Story'' for numerous elicidations and numerous GEM's quoted from the history of philosophy and GEM's reconstructed in syllogistic form. For readers familiar with Nietzsche, Russell and Stove's criticism of Idealism it can be seen that Stove's GEM merely repackages Rusell's precise points and borrowing Nietzsche's polemics against idealism. John Searle In ''The Construction of Social Reality'' John Searle offers an attack on some versions of idealism. Searle conveniently summarises two important arguments for idealism. The first is based on our perception of reality: 1. All we have access to in perception are the contents of our own experiences 2. The only epistemic basis we can have for claims about the external world are our perceptual experiences therefore, 3. the only reality we can meaningfully speak of is the reality of perceptual experiences ( Whilst agreeing with (2), Searle argues that (1) is false, and points out that (3) does not follow from (1) and (2). The second argument for idealism runs as follows: Premise: Any cognitive state occurs as part of a set of cognitive states and within a cognitive system Conclusion 1: It is impossible to get outside of all cognitive states and systems to survey the relationships between them and the reality they are used to cognize Conclusion 2: No cognition is ever of a reality that exists independently of cognition ( Searle goes on to point out that conclusion 2 simply does not follow from its precedents. Idealism in religious thought Not all Religion and belief in the Supernatural is, strictly speaking, anti-materialist in nature. While many types of religious belief are indeed specifically idealist, for example, Hindu beliefs about the nature of the Brahman , Zen Buddhism stands in the middle way of Dialectics between idealism and materialism, and mainstream Christian doctrine affirms the importance of the materiality of Christ 's human body and the necessity of self-restraint when dealing with the material world. Several modern religious movements and texts, for example the organisations within the New Thought Movement (especially the Unity Church ) and the book, '' A Course In Miracles '', may be said to have a particularly idealist orientation. The Theology of Christian Science is explicitly idealist: it teaches that all that exists is God and God's ideas; that the world as it appears to the senses is a distortion of the underlying spiritual reality; and that the distorted appearance can be healed through prayer. More accurately, Idealism is based on the root word "Ideal," meaning a perfect form of, and is most accurately described as a belief in perfect forms of virtue, truth, and the absolute. Idea-ism may be a more appropriate term for the definitions listed above. There is a clear distinction between an idea and an ideal (i.e. Websters Dictionary says "conforming exactly to an ideal, law, or standard: perfect."). idealism in comparison to pragmatism OTHER USES In general parlance, "idealism" or "idealist" is also used to describe a person having high Ideals , sometimes with the connotation that those ideals are unrealisable or at odds with "practical" life. The word "ideal" is commonly used as an adjective to designate qualities of perfection, desirability, and excellence. This is foreign to the epistemological use of the word "idealism" which pertains to internal Mental Representations . These internal ideas represent objects that are assumed to exist outside of the mind. SEE ALSO
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