How Idealism Simplifies Metaphysics

How Idealism Simplifies Metaphysics

Scott Roberts

There is conscious activity (thinking, feeling, sensing, hallucinating, dreaming, and so on). Idealism is the claim that there is only conscious activity. Given idealism, one then has to provide a scenario or two that would explain why it seems to us that there is non-conscious activity, like water flowing down a river. One scenario is to say that we could all be sharing a dream. Another is to say we are avatars in a virtual-reality-like simulation, albeit one produced by superior spirit beings, not running on a computer. It should be noted that these scenarios are not additional assumptions, rather just ways to imagine how it could be that water flowing down a river could be understood as being within consciousness. On the other hand, those who assume there is something other than conscious activity are faced with either the intractable problem of how conscious and non-conscious actvity interact (dualism) or the hard problem of consciousness (materialists). So idealism simplifies by not having an intractable problem.

But that's just the start. Other ontologies have a language/reality problem: there is reality, and then there is language about reality, with the issue of how well language can describe reality, indeed, whether it can at all. But with idealism, language is simply more conscious activity. With other ontologies one has to worry about the fact that the map is not the territory. But with idealism, a territory is a highly detailed thought construct, while a map of it is simply the same construct without all the details. Of course, a map may leave out some vital features, and so be a faulty map, but to say "the map is not the territory" is no more informative than saying that a design of a house is not a house.

(That there is no language/reality distinction in idealism also makes idealism immune from post-modern critique. See "Idealism as a Response to "Postmodernism"" for more on this.)

...Of course, none of this "proves" idealism. It's just nice to sit back and watch most of the problems that other ontologies have to deal with evaporate.

What about paranormal phenomena, which this author probably dismisses? There is a great relative simplicity in explaining via dualism much of the paranormal empirical data, including veridical NDE out of body experiences, and past life memories of inhabiting different bodies, coming in to different bodies, etc., all as an immaterial mobile center of consciousness distinct and fundamentally separate from the physical. All these examples and more are greatly more simply explained just assuming two fundamentally different kinds of basic substances - physical and spiritual. 

Idealism has yet to explain and must explain in detail why and how and by whom a very complicated array of perfectly accomplished illusions are being perpetrated by the "powers that be" to completely pull the wool over our eyes so as to totally convince us that our mind "stuff" and consciousness are fundamentally totally different from the material. This situation for idealism is a classic case of the unnecessary multiplication of explanatory mechanisms which constitutes going against the good old principle of parsimony or Ockham's principle.

What about paranormal phenomena, which this author probably dismisses? There is a great relative simplicity in explaining via dualism much of the paranormal empirical data, including veridical NDE out of body experiences, and past life memories of inhabiting different bodies, coming in to different bodies, etc., all as an immaterial mobile center of consciousness distinct and fundamentally separate from the physical. All these examples and more are greatly more simply explained just assuming two fundamentally different kinds of basic substances - physical and spiritual. 

Idealism has yet to explain and must explain in detail why and how and by whom a very complicated array of perfectly accomplished illusions are being perpetrated by the "powers that be" to completely pull the wool over our eyes so as to totally convince us that our mind "stuff" and consciousness are fundamentally totally different from the material. This situation for idealism is a classic case of the unnecessary multiplication of explanatory mechanisms which constitutes going against the good old principle of parsimony or Ockham's principle.

Dualism needs to explain how two fundamentally different kinds of basic substances can even interact at all. For me, this is a rather massive problem that is impossible to solve, except by a more fundamental unifying principle that allows for the interaction, at which point we are back solidly at a Monism of some kind, one which certainly cannot be of the Materialist variety.

To my thinking, influenced by Taoist philosophical principles, Dualism cannot be the basis of Reality. It must be a Monism or Non-Dualism of some kind. A singular substance capable of infinite forms of manifestation. Of what we conceive of as Dualism. Dualism out of Monism and / or Non-Dualism.

My form of Idealism is that of an Awareness is truly fundamental, and comes with it the power to imagine and choose to Be. Or even not-Be, which is still paradoxically, from down-here logic, a form of Being. This Awareness is something so abstracted from anything and everything we comprehend or understand so as to be entirely and completely inscrutable and ineffable. Something so primal that there it is not possible to ever really conceive of, except in very incomplete and fragmented ways.

Dualism needs to explain how two fundamentally different kinds of basic substances can even interact at all. For me, this is a rather massive problem that is impossible to solve, except by a more fundamental unifying principle that allows for the interaction, at which point we are back solidly at a Monism of some kind, one which certainly cannot be of the Materialist variety.

To my thinking, influenced by Taoist philosophical principles, Dualism cannot be the basis of Reality. It must be a Monism or Non-Dualism of some kind. A singular substance capable of infinite forms of manifestation. Of what we conceive of as Dualism. Dualism out of Monism and / or Non-Dualism.

My form of Idealism is that of an Awareness is truly fundamental, and comes with it the power to imagine and choose to Be. Or even not-Be, which is still paradoxically, from down-here logic, a form of Being. This Awareness is something so abstracted from anything and everything we comprehend or understand so as to be entirely and completely inscrutable and ineffable. Something so primal that there it is not possible to ever really conceive of, except in very incomplete and fragmented ways.

However, the very complicated multiple explanatory hypothesis gap I describe stubbornly still exists. So there may be different levels of realities, where our level is definitely Dualist based on innumerable experiences, with there being an ultimate even more fundamental level of Reality such as you allude to.

Another concept would be that the obvious existing interaction between our minds and the brain and body is due to there being a special case exception to Dualism engineered by the "powers that be" to allow and mechanize the manifestation of immaterial spirits in the physical, the physical being a vastly different realm of limitations and opportunities for experience not existing in the spiritual realm where thoughts are things.

What about paranormal phenomena, which this author probably dismisses?

Why would you think that? Given his writing elsewhere on that site:

Enter idealism. It claims that there is nothing outside of consciousness. This has various implications:

- All things are thoughts. What we call objective is simply the subjective thinking of a mind or minds outside of our subjectivity. I can't walk through a brick wall because the mind that is thinking the electro-magnetic force into existence is stronger than my thought of passing through that force.

- Mathematical systems are thoughts. Hence there can be many mathematical systems -- one is a Euclidean structure, another non-Euclidean.

- Physical reality is a language, its words being sense perceptions which, alas, we don't know how to read. Science studies its syntax, but not its semantics.

- There is an Absolute Origin, and it is that which creates systems of thoughts and languages. There is no reality independent of these thoughts and languages. As local subjects, what we do is play around within these systems, perhaps learning to create our own. (Since reference to any Absolute will raise the hackles of a postmodernist, I should state that as I think of it (or It), it is inseparable from its creations. It is its creations, its creations are it. The trick is to learn to think about this without sounding like a pantheist in one's effort to avoid sounding like a theist. My way of doing so is described in the Tetralemmic Polarity essay -- see menu.)

I would be very surprised if he denied paranormal phenomena...

However, the very complicated multiple explanatory hypothesis gap I describe stubbornly still exists. So there may be different levels of realities, where our level is definitely Dualist based on innumerable experiences, with there being an ultimate even more fundamental level of Reality such as you allude to.

Another concept would be that the obvious existing interaction between our minds and the brain and body is due to there being a special case exception to Dualism engineered by the "powers that be" to allow and mechanize the manifestation of immaterial spirits in the physical, the physical being a vastly different realm of limitations and opportunities for experience not existing in the spiritual realm where thoughts are things.

I actually somewhat agree with this. Whether it's a matter of deliberate tinkering or just the way things are, it seems there is something to the mind/matter division that holds across varied paranormal phenomena...but it seems the paranormal also suggests these are not fully separate realms either.

My go to example is the account where the Native American shaman Rolling Thunder heals a child by putting their sickness into some fresh steaks, with the steaks shriveling and looking spoiled.

Rolling Thunder goes over and sits on the cooler that held the steaks. The evening is clearly over. People start drifting away. I can hear cars starting and, in the glare of
their headlights, I go over to kick out the fire. Rolling Thunder is there before me. He reaches down and I can see the steaks. Both are withered and gray. One of them hardly looks like meat at all.

“You put whatever is wrong into the steak?”

“That’s right. The fire will purify and release it”

He throws the steaks into the hot coals. The fat crackles and catches fire. The two of us stand there in silence. It doesn’t take long, and they are gone. During those
minutes I don’t know what Rolling Thunder is thinking. I am reconsidering how the world works.

On the one hand he seems to utilize the reality that Sickness is a concept, on the other hand it seems this concept needs to be transferred from the boy into the meat.

Neither Idealism nor Dualism seem to perfectly fit what happens.

If you look back over the history of science - particularly physics - it is clear that there are hierarchies of theories of increasing subtlety. Science could only have developed by creating such a succession of theories, and indeed, we pretty much repeat that hierarchy in schools and undergraduate courses:

1)      Galileo's observation of how objects fall in the gravitational field.

2)      Newton's laws relating to force and mass.

3)      Newton's law of gravity.

4)      Einstein's special theory.

5)      Einstein's general theory.



etc.

Each of these develops from the previous one. The maths changes and each improves on the previous one in accuracy and scope.

Now we are faced with explaining consciousness, and it is indeed a real stumbling block for science - materialistic or otherwise.

It seems to me that any understanding of consciousness must start with simple concepts, and has been mentioned above, Idealism is far from simple (except in its bald statement), and the explanations that have to be used to re-conceive reality are often really torturous.

Unfortunately the science of consciousness didn't develop alongside science in general, and our thoughts about it are really quite crude.

For that reason, I support a simple Dualist theory - Heaven and Earth. The question isn't "is it right", or even "can it be disproven", it is "does the theory make better sense of reality than the prevailing theory - materialism". Sure Dualism can be shown to be ultimately wrong, but so can the combination of QM and GR!

To be clear, I obviously don't mean the Christian Heaven.

I think this also shows how obsessing about ultimate theories can be a mistake. I suppose String Theory is motivated by the idea of resolving the paradox that GR is incompatible with QM, but it would seem that after decades of work by ultra-bright mathematicians, it is running out of steam - at least partly because there is little hard experimental data. I think the science of consciousness should not make the same mistake.

David

I actually somewhat agree with this. Whether it's a matter of deliberate tinkering or just the way things are, it seems there is something to the mind/matter division that holds across varied paranormal phenomena...but it seems the paranormal also suggests these are not fully separate realms either.

My go to example is the account where the Native American shaman Rolling Thunder heals a child by putting their sickness into some fresh steaks, with the steaks shriveling and looking spoiled.


On the one hand he seems to utilize the reality that Sickness is a concept, on the other hand it seems this concept needs to be transferred from the boy into the meat.

Neither Idealism nor Dualism seem to perfectly fit what happens.

Surely a fascinating occurence. To be outlandishly speculative, it seems to me that a sort of "magical" Dualism fits pretty well, where there also exists an immaterial realm of a sort of magic, which is a part of or a subset of the spiritual realm. In this realm of magic, not only are thoughts things as in the spiritual realm communicated with in mediumistic communications and experienced in NDEs, but so also are the abstractions of physical causal mechanisms, like the causal mechanism that a certain bacterium attacks a certain organ system in human beings and can cause dysfunction and even physical death. In this magical quasi spiritual realm, abstract causal mechanisms such as this have a quasi physical existence as a sort of immaterial etherial substance that can be manipulated and transferred by a human spirit from one entity to another. The old magical law of like causes like is another aspect of this. In this case the shaman transfers himself partially into this magical subset of the spiritual realm, and manipulates the disease entity so as to transfer it from the child's body into the "body" of the steaks.

Surely a fascinating occurence. To be outlandishly speculative, it seems to me that a sort of "magical" Dualism fits pretty well, where there also exists an immaterial realm of a sort of magic, which is a part of or a subset of the spiritual realm. In this realm of magic, not only are thoughts things as in the spiritual realm communicated with in mediumistic communications and experienced in NDEs, but so also are the abstractions of physical causal mechanisms, like the causal mechanism that a certain bacterium attacks a certain organ system in human beings and can cause dysfunction and even physical death. In this magical quasi spiritual realm, abstract causal mechanisms such as this have a quasi physical existence as a sort of immaterial etherial substance that can be manipulated and transferred by a human spirit from one entity to another. The old magical law of like causes like is another aspect of this. In this case the shaman transfers himself partially into this magical subset of the spiritual realm, and manipulates the disease entity so as to transfer it from the child's body into the "body" of the steaks.

The issue here is that Idealism or really any metaphysics save maybe the more ridiculous head-in-sand naturalists/physicalists can drum up an explanation.

Why should we think this realm of magic exists? I do agree that perhaps the best explanation may simply be that disease's causal mechanism is at a higher level than germs and might instead be due to some spirit that has to "eat" something and so is satisfied by getting the steak.

But why would fire cleanse then? Is the fire just burning away the physical meat and some germs inside it? Yet was the boy's disability really germ-based in this way and if so how did it travel across the physical?

I'm not claiming to have an answer, just that it seems our divisions between physical and mental seems to be too severe to naturally/reasonably accommodate paranormal phenomena in their totality. Perhaps even our notions of One vs Many, Subject vs Object, and so on must be revised...