2021-11-17, 07:37 PM
Idealism may not be what you think
Editors
Editors
Quote:It increasingly strikes us that the reason why many scientists and scholars reject idealism—the notion that reality is essentially mental—is based on simple misunderstandings of what idealism states or implies. In this brief editorial, we would like to discuss and correct some of these misunderstandings.
Quote:Idealists also do not reject the self-evident fact that nature behaves according to certain patterns and regularities that we’ve come to call the ‘laws of nature,’ which are what they are regardless of whether we like them or not. Rejecting this obvious fact wouldn’t be profound, but just silly. Indeed, idealists are, by and large, naturalists: they do not postulate a puppeteer moving the pieces of the physical world according to some deliberate plan; instead, for them nature unfolds spontaneously, doing what it does because it is what it is. To frame this in psychological language, the so-called ‘laws of nature’ are, for the idealist, akin to the mental archetypes—the ‘instincts’—of a mind-at-large. ‘Laws of nature’ and ‘natural archetypes’ are just two ways of saying the same thing, in that ‘archetypes’ refer to the inherent templates of expression of a mind.
Quote:In summary, thoughtful idealists are—by and large—naturalists, reductionists, strictly scientific in their approach to accounting for what is going on. They adhere to the principle of Occam’s Razor more consistently than physicalists. As such, idealism is not solipsism or New Age spirituality. It is important that critics of idealism understand this, so their criticisms can form part of a productive debate, as opposed to being straightforwardly dismissible straw-men. Easier as it may be to simply assume that all those educated idealists are just incredibly stupid people, unable to discern even the most obvious contradictions of their position, doing so is naive and maybe even facetious. Understanding the rather carefully articulated idealist perspective can help one open new horizons for their understanding of nature, without sacrificing reason or evidence; much on the contrary.
