3.2 The Nature of Reality: Idealism

• Reality consists of more than matter.   Matter does not seem to account for everything.

• Some philosophers, called idealists, believe if you go beyond matter, you will only end up with a mental world; a non-material world of minds and ideas.

• Idealists emphasize mental and spiritual is the creative force (or active agent) of all things.

• Idealism: belief reality is composed of minds and their ideas rather than matter.

• Idealism was the dominant philosophy of the 19th and 20th centuries.

  

George Berkeley

• Founder of modern Idealism.

• He reacted against Hobbes’ views on materialism. Berkeley claimed the conscious mind and its ideas and perceptions are the only reality.

• He denied this world is external, independent of the mind.  Only the mind, spirit and its ideas ultimately matter.

• He claimed all things are mind dependent which can be viewed as dependent on my mind (subjective idealism) or another mind such as God (objective idealism)

  His Argument:

• We learn of the world through experiences; through senses so ultimately everything we perceive is nothing more than a bundle of perceptions (light, colour, smell, smooth, hard, trees, animals)

• i.e. something red, juicy, hard, smooth, wet, sweet, sour is an apple.  Many sensations but one object.

• Any knowledge we have of objects consists of knowing of the perceptions and sensations we have in our mind.  Therefore since perceptions and sensations exist in our mind, every external object must exist in the mind only.

• Since perceptions and sensations exist in a mind, a mind must therefore exist.  Therefore reality exists of minds and its contents.

“The structures of the galaxies, planets, and continents, of mice and elephants, and if you and me, as well as the houses, fields, and streams with which we interact, are nothing but the structures of various thoughts in the divine mind.  The divine mind does not contemplate any universe that exists outside.  It's thinking about our universe is what our universe is.” John Leslie

Eastern Idealism

• Indian philosopher Vasubandhu (4th century CE) had similar views to Berkeley.
• He argued we do not directly perceive things in the world around us.  We only perceive sensations in our mind when we see colours, hear sounds, smell odours, we infer from these sensations that there must be an external object that causes sensations in us.

Question: If all perceptions are in our mind, why do things happen in specific positions in space and specific points in time?  Why do events occur in the spatial and temporal world outside of us? Why do objects physically affect us?

• Vasubandhu answered the questions with the answer of dreams.  We can see things which are not real but that physically affect us.  We know a dream is not real when we awake, but regarding the real world, we need to meditate to awaken the mind from slumber.  Living an ethical life also helps us see reality.

Objections

• Commit to anthropomorphism; objects in the universe as being made up of ideas within a human-like mind. \n

Subjective idealism

• Recall, whatever I perceive is one of my perceptions, or a bundle of perceptions.  How to distinguish between my perception of a thing and the thing I perceive? \n

Objective idealism

• Materialism can account for the stability of things.  Why involve the mind of God?

%%Dualism: material and non-material cannot interact because displace energy in the world, which should remain constant.%%