This is not intended as a debate about idealism’s merits, it’s about trying to better understand its ontology.
If consciousness is fundamental and the material world is an appearance within consciousness, then why does consciousness present itself to us as such a stable, shared external world with so many things in it?
Why do we have tables, chairs, tools and cars that seem to exist independently of our individual minds and allow us to interact with the world in predictable ways? And if everything is ultimately consciousness, why can’t I simply decide to appear somewhere else? Why must I use tools? Why do I need shelter?
Perhaps this belabours the point above, but why does consciousness present us with a world of objects that appear material, that clutter and pollute and constrain us? And if this is ultimately an appearance within consciousness, why is there no easy way out? Why are we so constrained by what, on this account, is ultimately the product of mentation?
I’m not suggesting this disproves idealism. I’m interested in how versions of idealism account for the apparent independence, stability and shared nature of a material world, and why individual consciousness seems to have so little control over it.
Bernardo Kastrup articulates this to some extent in his Analytic Idealism (Mind at Large, etc), but I have not seen him address it in a precise way. Schopenhauer talks about representation, but why does representation take the particular form it does, with all the curious characteristics of a material realm?
It is for only this, but not for any of that. It is theory-specific, for the simple reason no one can ever perceive it.
The material is appearance for this (perception) but not for that (conciousness)
It doesn’t. Consciousness is nothing but the primary, irreducible ground for the human intellect’s method for explaining to itself why it only needs to learn something once.
Plus all the side stuff that either clarifies and confuses the very idea.
For Kant, the issue is about accepting the pursuit of studying nature as a valid empirical pursuit without claiming an idealism that renders physics into an illusion:
But if a human being could renounce all interests, and, indifferent to all consequences, consider the assertions of reason merely according to their grounds, then, supposing that he knows no way of escaping from the dilemma a except by confessing allegiance to one or the other of the conflicting doctrines, such a person would be in a state of ceaseless vacillation. Today it would strike him as convincing that the human will is free; tomorrow, when he considered the indissoluble chain of nature, he would side with the view that freedom is nothing but self-deception, and that everything is mere nature. But now if it came to be a matter of doing or acting, then this play of merely speculative reason would disappear like the phantom images of a dream, and he would choose his principles merely according to practical interest. But because mere honesty requires that a reflective and inquiring being should devote certain times solely to testing its own reason, withdrawing entirely from all partiality and publicly communicating his remarks to others for their judgment,d no one can be reproached for, still less restrained from, letting the propositions and counter-propositions, terrorized by no threats, come forward to defend themselves before a jury drawn from their own estate (namely the estate of fallible human beings).
Descartes was a rationalist – that means he firmly believed in clear and distinct “innate ideas.” His search for “certain foundations” led him to his cogito, and then to redefine the philosophical notion of substance away from the Aristotelian idea employed by his scholastic predecessors, and towards the idea of “that which needs nothing other than itself to exist.” He divided body and mind into two distinct substances.
But having seen Galileo condemned by the Catholic Church for his support of the Copernican heliocentric theory over the Ptolemaic geocentric theory, the opportunity to use his new substance dualism to fix the problem was not lost on him. The Church could retain its authority over the soul (thinking substance) and leave the world (extended substance) for scientific investigation along the lines of Galileo’s mathematicization.
You’d think after four centuries we would have moved on, but still today we are falling into this trap of trying to decide which of these two substances is the more fundamental.
Point of Information: This topic is about what your OP describes, and this is only a comment. But it seems significant enough to me to justify (demand?) a comment:
Isn’t it us who use these things to “clutter and pollute and constrain” our poor world?
Because Tom you are bad person. If you were to follow my detailed programme of mental contemplation amd physical renewal…and er make a modest donation… you would be able escape the confines of ths physical existence
Thank you all. So far nothing leaps out at me by way of answer.
Why did we evolve to make tools and manipulate an apparent physical world when we might have evolved to use consciousness more creatively? Why does a world produced by mentation involve cold, exhaustion and other “physical” constraints? Despite our prodigious ability to do maths and conceive imaginative traditions in literature, why is our consciousness so limited by an apparent physical world? And so on…
Doesn’t matter. Why are there things? That’s the question.
As I said, this is only to explore how it is thought to work, not whether we should accept it.
That’s getting close. But my questions remain. Why have physics if all is mentation? Kant’s transcendental idealism is somewhat different to the model I discussed.
In physicist Carlo Rovelli’s book Helgoland, Rovelli recounts the discovery of quantum mechanics through the work of Werner Heisenberg, recovering from hay fever on the treeless island of Helgoland in 1925. The closing reflection in Chapter 5 (entitled “The Unambiguous Description of an Object Includes the Objects to Which It Manifests Itself”), Rovelli describes how he encountered the writings of the second-century CE Indian philosopher Nagarjuna. He writes: “The central thesis of Nagarjuna’s book is simply that there is nothing that exists in itself, independently from something else. The resonance with quantum mechanics is immediate.” In short, Rovelli’s Relational Quantum Mechanics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) puts paid to Descartes’ revision of the notion of substance as “that which needs nothing other than itself to exist.”
Even if idealism is a true account of reality, it makes no difference to how we live. We still have to behave as though we are physical creatures, limited and vulnerable to countless everyday hazards such as cars, nuclear bombs, and banana peels. As Roger Scruton observed, the metaphysical idealist has no choice but to live like a metaphysical realist. Which perhaps circles back to the question in my OP. Why?
Is the model you have in mind been put forward by a particular thinker? The view of “materialism” from Plato differs from that of Aristotle. Plotinus claimed to explain more than those two.
Those arguing about causality after the reign of the “Scholastics” had different views about nature and how we could (or could not) learn more about it.
I cited Kastrup and Schopenhauer earlier. I’m talking about idealists who argue that there is no material world and no things-in-themselves, only mentation. I suppose Berkeley would also count among them.
That said, I don’t think we need to get too deep into the weeds of any particular thinker to address my question. I’m happy to hear a counterargument, but I think the issue can be discussed at a more general level.
Guess I’m also thinking of Indian philosophy, particularly the Vedānta traditions. Some schools like Advaita Vedānta, hold that consciousness is the fundamental reality and that the world of separate objects is not ultimately independent of it.
“If you think it’s all just inside-stuff, then why does it sure feel like or seem like a shared-outside-stuff world ?”
I think it’s a good question. And – as you probably grasp – I personally distance myself emphatically from this “all is mentation” position. I’d rather say “no mentation” or “what you call mentation is the direct-but-perspectival manifestation of shared stuff.”
And I wonder: if consciousness is all there is, why can’t we use it more effectively? Why are we still constrained by walls, geography, climate, and every other limitation of ordinary existence?
To me the “point” of mind versus matter was basically pragmatic. It costs me almost nothing to imagine a castle. But it’s hard if not impossible to build one. Imagination is relatively private, in contrast to the shared perceptual world. So “mind” is “concealable” and “inexpensive.” While the “physical” is “public” and “expensive.”
I understand arguments putting forth an either/or point of decision as the purpose of said argument but do not see how that criteria applies to generalized differentials which are purely topical.
I’m not sure how that relates to my questions. You seem to be saying that there are limitations to what my questions can probe.
I’m not, as far as I can tell, exploring a tension between idealism and materialism. I’m trying to understand the putative ontology of idealism and why there might be apparent physicality and such stringent constraints within it.
This may well be a more speculative question than I initially proposed, but it seems to me to be a question that any form of idealism ultimately has to confront.
