Contemporary idealist philosophers

[Ninshub]

I thought I'd just create a general thread to lump in potential "finds" in terms of this topic. Howard Robinson is potentially one of them.

In the free will vs. determinism thread, I knocked this new youtube podcast channel a bit, "mind body solution", because the host comes out and says he's an atheist. But he does have Donald Hoffman as an interviewee, and also this person, Helen Yetter-Chappell. She says she's not fully committed to idealism yet, but has been working on an idealist position. (She mentions Howard Robinson.) Anyway, another voice to add to dialogue. I haven't listened through the whole of it yet to see if she brings up paranormal phenomena - I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't, as usually a lot of these academic philosophers immersed the the "tradition" don't go there, because it's not part of it!

The podcast host does mention Kastrup early on.

Anyhow, potentially of interest.

Helen Yetter-Chappell: Quasi-Berkeleyan Realist Idealism Without God & the View From Everywhere




Breakdown of the conversation topics:


0:00 - Introduction
0:57 - Consciousness & the Mind-Body Problem
7:20 - Physicalism & Dualism
10:12 - Idealism
14:54 - Panpsychism
18:49 - Berkeleyian Idealism
25:01 - Types of Idealism
30:11 - Idealism without God
37:10 - Implications of Idealism on morality & death
43:15 - Idealism vs Solipsism
49:33 - Tapestry of sensory experiences
54:46 - Naïve Idealism
1:00:39 - Epiphenomenalist Dualism & the paradox of phenomenal judgement
1:06:23 - Challenges facing Idealism
1:09:44 - Defending Idealism
1:18:24 - Idealism misconceptions
1:23:40 - Helen's Philosopher Mt Rushmore
1:26:46 - Conclusion

I'm trying to understand if/how she's an epiphenomalist, the idea that our conscious experiences happen but have no causal role.

It's hard to take such a view seriously, especially from an Idealist. Perhaps I'm missing something?

[Ninshub]

I'm trying to understand if/how she's an epiphenomalist, the idea that our conscious experiences happen but have no causal role.

It's hard to take such a view seriously, especially from an Idealist. Perhaps I'm missing something?

Probably not. I didn't quite catch what you did about conscious experiences having no causal role, but I listened to the whole thing and I came away feeling it was pretty vague on how a lot of things work out in her model. It does probably speak to her admitted motivation to just playing with the idea that consciousness must be fundamental and building it up from there to a model that might be "possible" but not aiming in any way to be necessary or convincing.