Idealists all over the world

Idealists all over the world

Prof. James Tartaglia, PhD

Suspicion of obsolescence is one of the main obstacles to a contemporary renaissance of idealism, but usually rests on little more than a vague suspicion that “nobody believes that anymore”—despite intellectual fashion being no great guide to the ultimate nature of reality. It is nice, then, to have a proper version of the objection to consider, even if it does fail. For the significance of idealism cannot be understood in terms of European history alone; not when idealism is an ancient, worldwide, and so—in all likelihood—essentially human phenomenon. Idealist philosophies have sprung up all over the world.

Here, then, is a form of metaphysical idealism that long predates not only Plato, but also Anaxagoras (whose unforgettable nickname was “Mr. Mind”) and even Parmenides, supposing that Parmenides’ strong monism is best interpreted as a form of idealism (see Dunham, Hamilton Grant and Watson 2011: 13-8). Like Plato’s idealism, the idealism of the Upanishads inspired one of the world’s great philosophical traditions; as P. T. Raju has put it, “Whitehead said that Western Philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato… Similarly, Indian philosophy can be considered to be a series of footnotes to the Upaniṣhads” (1971: 15). One of these footnotes was the Consciousness-Only School of Buddhist philosophy, which spread from India to China and beyond, and which remains probably the best-known form of non-Western idealism.

Another good candidate for a culturally independent emergence of idealism is within African philosophy. Akan philosophy is a traditional African philosophy that has generated considerable interest due to its unique tripartite conception of personhood, a conception that combines soul, spirit and body. According to one of its principal expositors, Kwame Gyekye, it is a philosophy in which “ontological primacy (…) is given to the invisible,” where “invisible” is glossed as “immaterial, unperceivable, spiritual” (1987: 166); whether this means Akan metaphysics is best interpreted as a form of idealism (Tartaglia, forthcoming) or panpsychism (Agada 2017) is a matter for debate.

And a final candidate I shall mention for an independent emergence of metaphysical idealism is the Nahua philosophy of the Aztecs, according to which the ultimate reality is teotl, an all-encompassing spiritual process from which everything else, including the physical world, ultimately derives (Maffie 2014).

Idealists all over the world

Prof. James Tartaglia, PhD

I don't think that how widespread and ancient a philosophy or explanandum of reality is should be considered a measure of its probable validity. Being confirmed by large amounts of empirical evidence is the proper measure. What about General Relativity, originating for the very first time in the early 20th century in only one small part of the world, Germany. Its counterintuitiveness and absence of having been previously thought of obviously are no measure of its validity as a theory or system of thought. 

And Dualism too has a long history, though perhaps not as long as Idealism. It can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle, and also to the early Sankhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy. Plato first formulated his famous Theory of Forms, distinct and immaterial substances of which the objects and other phenomena that we perceive in the world are only shadows. Dualism was formulated in mostly its more modern form by Descartes in the 17th century. And Dualism is arguably confirmed by a much larger body of evidence than Idealism.

And Dualism is arguably confirmed by a much larger body of evidence than Idealism.

Arguably confirmed? Evidence? You need to back up these statements because just saying so is not good enough.

(Dualism) Arguably confirmed? Evidence? You need to back up these statements because just saying so is not good enough.

As I said, it is arguable, and this topic has already been comprehensively hashed out in an earlier thread, "Dualism or Idealist Monism as the best model for survival after-death data", at https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-d...death-data .

To avoid having to reinvent the wheel so to speak, I will quote from this long thread. From my post #4:

"NDEs offer the best example of apparent evidence for dualism. Only a few NDEs contain all the features next mentioned, but many of them have several.

Often an experience of separating and partially detaching from the moribund physical body is recalled. Also, typical near death experiences include a subsequent ability to ‘see’ and recall specific detailed descriptions of the resuscitation, as verified by resuscitation staff, observed from an apparently physical location near the ceiling of the room. Sometimes some sort of thin "etheric umbilical cord" is perceived, connecting an immaterial spiritual vehicle or body and the physical body. Other features of NDEs include a subsequent experience of great movement, of passing through some sort of "tunnel" or other structure into a supernal realm of spiritual light, and being in the presence of and communicating with, spirits of deceased loved ones. This is with the feeling of being in some sort of fundamentally different place. Following these experiences, there usually is a message that "your time is not yet come" and that the experiencer has to go back to the physical body. There is then an experience of somehow moving back through a great distance into the physical body.

All this is in accordance with a dualistic model in which the human person's spirit is an immaterial center of consciousness separate and fundamentally different from the physical body, in that it can detach from it, go elsewhere in the physical world, and/or elsewhere into some sort of separate spiritual realm, and return to the physical body. With dualism there obviously must still be some means of interaction between material and spiritual in order to allow embodiment, as there must be even with idealism, even though with the latter case it would be some sort of much more complicated mechanism to manage illusions. The enumerated features of NDEs would be expected if as posited by dualism the nature of consciousness is that of being an existentially separate "thing" that in physical life inhabits and interpenetrates the physical body, in particular the brain.

In order to explain these features of NDEs via idealist monism it would be necessary to explain why this entire spectrum of experiences, all of apparent existence as a separate immaterial mobile center of consciousness, is generated somehow as a vivid and "realer than real" artificial construct of illusions, while the spirit is in reality in some sense of one substance as the physical body. Why is the system designed this way to produce such a palpably real seeming set of illusions, and who or what designed it that way? Certainly the explanation must be considerably more complicated than the dualism explanation, where what's going on is pretty much what it seems to be."

From my post #7:

"To me the most frustrating part is the casual dismissal without elaboration of dualism by so many idealist academic philosophers (apparently including Kastrup), generally without at all addressing the large data base of empirical evidence from veridical features of many NDEs, and the I think obvious fact that this data strongly points to some form of dualism as the most likely theory of mind. By implication these "experts" casually dismiss all the NDE empirical evidence as uselessly anecdotal (just like their reductive materialist colleagues), and ignore as if it doesn't exist and/or is invalid, the obvious principle that data trumps theory. And also, they inherently dismiss the Ockham's Razor principle of parsimony, where the explanation of this data by an Interactional Dualist model is clearly (to me at least) much simpler than the apparently much more contrived and convoluted Idealist Monist explanatory model. Making Dualism the more likely theory of mind. Not to them.

I would like to apply some of these experts' noses to the grindstone and insist on an account from them that shows that somehow an Idealist model is considerably less complicated than a Dualist one. Perhaps ultimately more subsidiary hypotheses are needed for Dualism, but how about enumerating what these are? One would of course be the mechanism producing the known interaction between Spirit and the physical (allowing embodiment). And obviously one primary substance is simpler than two, but how about some elaboration of these observations into an argument? This argument would have to somehow show that the immensely complicated illusion show mechanism required by Idealism that I alluded to is less contrived and is simpler than the subsidiary hypotheses required by Dualism."

From my post #91:

"It seems to me, Idealist Monism has the massive problem that its detailed structure has to be so excessively complicated and cleverly contrived to create the necessary illusions so as try to account for the massive amount of empirical paranormal data accumulated with veridical NDEs, reincarnation cases, many mediumistic communications, and as I have recently found out, the epilepsy brain surgery findings from the over 1000 neurosurgical operations of Wilder Penfield, and the free will and "free won't" experiments of Benjamin Libet. Much or most of this empirical evidence and more can be fairly easily and simply explained by interactive Dualism, where these phenomena and others are pretty much what they look like, which is that the soul or spirit is basically an immaterial mobile center of consciousness ultimately independent of and separate from the physical brain, that in physical life "inhabits" the physical brain and body .

As you mention, the interaction problem remains, but I think it is fairly simply handled by a solution where the interaction mechanism is a purposeful special case in the laws of our reality (a "brute fact" of reality established by the powers-that-be for their own purposes, similar to the laws of physics being "fine-tuned" for the existence of life) that primarily is designed in to enable physical embodiment of souls in human bodies, and where this mechanism is optimized for the requirements of the neuronal brain structure/spirit interface interaction. There is so much data that would very much be expected to exist if this hypothesis were the truth.
Whereas in Idealist Monism, a very complex set of contrived auxiliary hypotheses have to be invoked in order to explain the who, why and how of there being so many human experiential phenomena consisting of the illusion of there being a separate mobile center of consciousness able to leave the body/brain and travel to other locations in the physical world, observe there and be observed and recognized, and also travel some apparently very great "distance" to an existentially separate spiritual realm and to there encounter and interact with spirit entities some of which are deceased loved ones. Plus, in the Wilder Penfield and Benjamin Libet work, the strong illusion of the human Self as a hybrid being, a physical/immaterial combination where the physical component is generated by the brain and basically deterministic and not exhibiting free will, and the immaterial spiritual part (the soul or spirit) is independent of the brain and able to travel elsewhere then return to the body and is free, has true free will.

Why such an elaborate charade? The Ockham's Razor Principle of Parsimony dictating against the unnecessary multiplication of explanatory complications has been found to be extremely useful in guiding science to the most likely hypotheses/theories, based on their simplicity, and choosing Idealist Monism very much seems counter to this principle. Of course, Idealism could still be true, but it would very much be an outlier in that this choice would have to ignore this core principle in scientific enquiry."

From my post #80:

"...for complex subjects and issues I usually use the type of thinking called abductive reasoning, which is the appeal, for the leading theory or hypothesis, to the explanation having the preponderance of evidence in favor of it. This method applies for instance to the topic of ID versus Darwinian evolution, considering the fossil, morphological and genetic evidence.

There is a lot of empirical evidence for interactional dualism. There appear to be at least three main areas of this evidence - veridical NDEs, the practical experiences during epilepsy surgery of Wilder Penfield, and the free will and "free won't" experiments of Benjamin Libet. Also a scattering of other paranormal phenomena (incuding the reincarnation memory evidence) (edited). There are probably quite a few more. So in my opinion a few outliers that conflict won't change the abductive reasoning conclusion. It seems to me that there is considerably less evidence for idealist monism, plus the observation that it seems to require considerably more additional auxiliary hypotheses to explain the evidence mentioned above - i.e. much more complicated."

I don't think that how widespread and ancient a philosophy or explanandum of reality is should be considered a measure of its probable validity. Being confirmed by large amounts of empirical evidence is the proper measure. What about General Relativity, originating for the very first time in the early 20th century in only one small part of the world, Germany. Its counterintuitiveness and absence of having been previously thought of obviously are no measure of its validity as a theory or system of thought. 

And Dualism too has a long history, though perhaps not as long as Idealism. It can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle, and also to the early Sankhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy. Plato first formulated his famous Theory of Forms, distinct and immaterial substances of which the objects and other phenomena that we perceive in the world are only shadows. Dualism was formulated in mostly its more modern form by Descartes in the 17th century. And Dualism is arguably confirmed by a much larger body of evidence than Idealism.

Yeah, I would say depending on how words it there are also Panpsychic / Neutral Monist / Non-dualist philosophies with long histories. Even some of the examples he quotes might fit better in one of those groupings. Arguably the concept of "Subtle Matter" would give Materialist of a special kind a place in varied schools of thought as well. But I think this paper was written in comparison to Reductionist Materialism most of all.

As for evidence, General Relativity is more a scientific theory about relations that are measured. It would be true regardless if Idealism is true. Perhaps in that sense the idea of a spiritual world and a physical world is more a scientific observation, without a metaphysical assertion of Dualism about what makes up reality?

As I said, it is arguable, and this topic has already been comprehensively hashed out in an earlier thread, "Dualism or Idealist Monism as the best model for survival after-death data", at https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-d...death-data .

To avoid having to reinvent the wheel so to speak, I will quote from this long thread. From my post #4:

Sorry, I have been away fro quite a while so have not kept in touch with all that is being discussed here. I'll just add that my own thoughts on this tend towards the idea that physical reality (that which we are aware of right now) is structured in a dualistic way but that the ultimate reality is idealistic: all exists within and because of the creative mind.