The decombination problem, related arguments, and potential solutions: an analysis

[Laird]

Apologies if I come as pedantic, I just want to make sure I grasp this ->

No need to apologise: my series was an attempt to be precise, so pedantry is welcome. If it needs revising in the light of our discussion, then I'll revise it.

So under some Idealism you'd make the differentiation between something like my thought of a house which is a "private reality" (to borrow from Kastrup) and the energy of the mentally created "consensus reality"?

As it turns out, no: I refer to both as the same type of energy: "mental" energy.

What I do differentiate between is the thought of a house instantiated and active in your mind (and thus with a "tangible" energetic presence, albeit one of "mental" energy) versus the abstract idea of the house, not associated with any mind, and thus with no energetic presence in "tangible" reality.

Admittedly one might say this is actually a point against Idealism, that it cannot adequately differentiate between mere thoughts and imagining versus actuality...not sure I'd agree but it does feel like a challenge to that metaphysics that has to be addressed...

I'm not sure I'd agree either, but the fact that the two are undifferentiated could be seen as a premise in my argument (from conflicting perspectives).

[Laird]

To be kind of pedantic myself, on the second page of the series, I defined two potential properties of generic "energy": mentality, and reflectivity.

In terms of those properties, on Analytic Idealism, the energy of your personal mind in which the thought of the house occurs would have both mentality and reflectivity (because you can reflect on your own consciousness), whereas the energy of "consensus reality" would have the property of mentality but not reflectivity (because, per Bernardo's claim, mind-at-large is not self-aware, and thus cannot reflect on its own consciousness).

So, the two are, after all, differentiated in a way on my schema.

[Laird]

Even more pedantically: on Analytic Idealism, the energy of "consensus reality" might be seen as having the potential for "reflectivity", which is actualised in our personal minds. This might all need to be cleared up or framed better.