Idealists: What does 'physical' mean to you?

[AkuManiMani]

Can you do what with a purely physical thing like the universe? What is it about the universe that makes it eternal and/or causeless? Scientists have no problem contemplating ways the universe will end (Heat Death, Big Crunch, Big Rip). With God, though, it gets a bit trickier, because you can say that to BE God is to be eternal and God IS the First Cause.

The central problem is that when you're trying to define an ultimate (in this case and ultimate cause) one runs into the problem of infinite regression of some sort. Either you come upon an undefinable or you never stop. What you decided to settle one and what you call it are incidental.

An idealist doesn't have to take that position. They can claim that there is God, our own minds, and the things that are projections of God's mind (which we perceive), and that these are all seperate things. Or you can be a solipsist and eliminate the whole pantheon altogether.

Well my point was that regardless of how one tries to dress up their cosmology or what cast of characters they bring to bear, you still run into the regression problem.

My position is we can only incrementally build our knowledge and that the process is indefinite. The Big Bang and god concepts are just provisional "just enough" solutions, with the major difference being that the Big bang conclusion has a vastly stronger empirical basis.

 

[Malerin]

How do you explain the coin's behaviour from an idealistic perspective? It's not a mind, so it wasn't perceiving itself. You weren't perceiving it or remembering it. If all that exists are minds and mental events then that coin didn't exist while it was lost, yet it's behaviour is exactly like that of a physical object with its own existence.



How do you explain the consistency of physical laws from an idealistic perspective? Physical laws aren't minds either, and there was a time when no mind comprehended those laws. So why are these laws consistent, even for minds which have never interacted with each other?

In both cases you've got a problem. You can solve it by pulling God out of a hat, or pulling an unconscious mind or telepathic network out of a hat that is effectively God-like in its perfect recall and perfect understanding of how the universe behaves, but you can't just handwave it away.

But that's the idealist's answer! If they're a Berkeley-type they invoke God for the regularities we observe in reality (e.g., coins disappear and reappear in the same spot and the same condition). Or they posit a collective mind (or one mind) that is unconsciouslly regulating the whole thing.

I'd like to focus on the question which I think you avoided answering. Do you think that there are minds other than your own?

Yes

If you do, why do you think there are minds other than your own? What counts as evidence for this hypothesis, by the definition of evidence you personally use?

I don't have any evidence. I don't know if I'm inventing all this around me or not. I take it as a matter of faith that solipsism is false, because it would be really depressing if it were true. I'm also a theist, which I take on faith because I know my occasional feelings of spirituality could be explained as wishful thinking, or neurons XYZ firing in a certain way.

 

[arthwollipot]

Great discussion guys. I'm really enjoying reading it, but I don't have the intellectual fortitude to join in.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

But that's the idealist's answer! If they're a Berkeley-type they invoke God for the regularities we observe in reality (e.g., coins disappear and reappear in the same spot and the same condition). Or they posit a collective mind (or one mind) that is unconsciouslly regulating the whole thing.

Same difference, if the collective mind is capable, as it seems to be, of keeping the whole universe straight from the time of the Big Bang.

I don't have any evidence. I don't know if I'm inventing all this around me or not. I take it as a matter of faith that solipsism is false, because it would be really depressing if it were true. I'm also a theist, which I take on faith because I know my occasional feelings of spirituality could be explained as wishful thinking, or neurons XYZ firing in a certain way.

The argument from consequences (also known as wishful thinking) is a canonical fallacy for a reason.

I had hoped you'd have something more philosophically interesting for us. The argument for solipsism is old hat, and you've got no philosophical argument past that point, merely a leap of faith.

 

[Malerin]

Same difference, if the collective mind is capable, as it seems to be, of keeping the whole universe straight from the time of the Big Bang.

Right, but the question of what caused the Big Bang is answered under idealism- God (or a group of minds). Of course this raises the further questions of where God came from.

The argument from consequences (also known as wishful thinking) is a canonical fallacy for a reason.

Of course it's fallacious. Did I not admit to having no evidence to base my belief on, and that it was faith-based? Unless you have some new and interesting proof that other people exist, I bet almost everyone here is in the same boat. That has been my point in what seems like countless threads- we all have faith-based beliefs, atheist and theist alike. Maybe there are some die-hard agnostics lurking around here who really aren't sure other people exist. If so, they don't post much.

I had hoped you'd have something more philosophically interesting for us. The argument for solipsism is old hat, and you've got no philosophical argument past that point, merely a leap of faith.

There is no argument for solipsism because there is no evidence for solipsism. How do you prove other people don't exist? You can't. There is only the argument for the possibility of solipsism, which is, in effect, to say that we ultimately know very little about reality and should, therefore, be agnostic about it.

I had hoped you would see the distinction between possibility and actuality.

 

[Malerin]

Yes, but we can all acknowledge the reality of the universe, so why layer something extra and unnecessary atop it, such as God?

As for the "what caused the big bang?" question being meaningless, I beg to differ. Just today I had an old student come back for a visit - he is currently working on his PhD in theoretical physics with Leonard Susskind at Stanford. The subject of his PhD thesis is to be to work out the theoretical details of eternal inflation, which is a theory of "what caused the big bang". We had a nice chat about it, in fact - fascinating stuff.

Oh yeah, and nowhere in his thesis will he be mentioning God, just in case you were curious.

I said some cosmologists. I know Hawking holds this view.

"What existed before the Big Bang?

...

"Elaborating on an analogy that Hawking briefly mentioned, Singh goes on: "What's north of London? Edinburgh. What's north of Edinburgh? The north pole. What's north of the north pole? You can't even ask the question, because the very concept of northness is born at the north pole."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1591913,00.html

 

[Dancing David]

Okay, so what isn't matter?

Ask someone who thinks there is something like that.

 

[Dancing David]

Well, what ever one wants to call the source of "where it call came from" one can assume one can assume that its eternal and/or ex nihilo.

If you wanna take the whole Idealist position of "well its all in the mind and the mind is the mind of God" then there is no distinction between god and the universe and you're just stating pantheism in another way. Either way, you're pretty much back to where you started.

Yes, ontology is closed and speculative at this point.

An ideal universe and a material universe behave exactly the same. There is no difference.

Objects in the idealist universe behave as though they are material.

 

[Dancing David]

The missing coin is consistent with idealism and materialism. It's not evidence for either of them.



Again, that can happen under idealism as well as it can under materialism.

So they are equivalent?

It's not daft at all. If the evidence (and I assume you're referring to what we perceive with our senses) is consistent with both idealism and materialism, then how can it be evidence for one or the other? Suppose I tap on my desk. I hear sounds and feel a hard surface (sensory evidence (or sense-data)). But why should I suppose those sensations can only occur with a material object? I'm certain you've had dreams that seemed very real to you and you weren't aware you were dreaming. Your senses seemed to work in these dreams, right? It's equally possible that the sensations I'm getting when I tap on a desk are the result of a very vivid dream.

In which case it still doesn't matter, all equivalent.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Well, if they only exist as a conscious thought, then that's exactly what 'maintained' them.

But you didn't think about them while on holiday. They weren't in your thoughts. Neither was 99% of the rest of the familiar world, yet there it is upon your return, in all its familiar glory.

All these sollipsists and idealists have to explain what it is that maintains the external world when they aren't paying attention.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

This isn't really a problem for idealism. Berkeley invoked God as the ultimate perceiver, or you can just as easily say it is an unconscious process we're all engaged in (but not aware of) that maintains reality.

You could say that, but you have no evidence. Therefore it might not be your unconscious thoughts. It might be that the stuff exists independently of you. It might be that the stuff is "physical."

~~ Paul

 

[paximperium]

You could say that, but you have no evidence. Therefore it might not be your unconscious thoughts. It might be that the stuff exists independently of you. It might be that the stuff is "physical."

~~ Paul

In other words, Malerin and everyone and everything is nothing more than a figment of "god's" imagination.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Right, but the question of what caused the Big Bang is answered under idealism- God (or a group of minds). Of course this raises the further questions of where God came from.

God? Can you show us a definition of idealism that mentions god?

I think idealism simply holds that the mental is a fundamental ontological existent that is not a product of the brain.

~~ Paul

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

The missing coin is consistent with idealism and materialism. It's not evidence for either of them.



Again, that can happen under idealism as well as it can under materialism.



It's not daft at all. If the evidence (and I assume you're referring to what we perceive with our senses) is consistent with both idealism and materialism, then how can it be evidence for one or the other? Suppose I tap on my desk. I hear sounds and feel a hard surface (sensory evidence (or sense-data)). But why should I suppose those sensations can only occur with a material object? I'm certain you've had dreams that seemed very real to you and you weren't aware you were dreaming. Your senses seemed to work in these dreams, right? It's equally possible that the sensations I'm getting when I tap on a desk are the result of a very vivid dream.

Man I hate to get back into this, but..........

What I think you misunderstand about Kevin's statements above and what David and I and many others have been trying to say to you is this:

the evidence of our senses is not evidence of a particular ultimate reality. None of us, as far as I know, even speaks about ultimate reality having any set characteristics that we can define. The evidence of our senses is evidence of our senses, so when we say that we have evidence of the reality of a coin, that is all that we mean -- that coin follows certain rules.

When it comes to an ultimate reality, there is either monism, dualism, or pluralism. We approach this from a monist perspective. If monism is correct, then we can't say anything about the ultimate substance because words are defined in relation to one another. The only thing we can do is discover the rules by which what we see works.

If dualism is correct, then there is an interaction problem. How does the mind of God create the world? That's easy in a trivial sense, through thought. But the problem then becomes, what is God? If He is Other, then his mind does not work by the rules that we see around us (if it did then he would just be part of the same rule following thought-stuff), so how does he create the world? What is "mind"? We are left with only one answer -- magic, which means we can't understand it. That's perfectly fine with me as an explanation, though non-parsimonious and a little unsatisfactory. It is certainly possible, and most monists would say that we can't tell the difference anyway, so it doesn't matter. A consequence, though, is that "we" are just rule following bits of the mind of God doing its thing, so we are the same as a chair, in a sense -- everything is the mind of God. If everything is the mind of God, then our thoughts when they come to God are just God thinking itself, not "us" realizing God in some cosmic sense.

If you think that "we" have some separate form of free will, then "we" are something different from God and also different from chair, which would seem to imply neither monism nor dualism but pluralism. Why do we want to keep multiplying the "stuff" of the universe?

It would seem to me that even from the perspective of idealist dualism there is only one being with free will and that is the Ultimate Mind. Everything else is some form of his thought, so an illusion. I'm not sure how this helps anyone or differs in any way from a monist perspective. Hence David's frequent reply, "what difference does it make, since it's all the same anyway?"

 

[Malerin]

Man I hate to get back into this, but..........

What I think you misunderstand about Kevin's statements above and what David and I and many others have been trying to say to you is this:

the evidence of our senses is not evidence of a particular ultimate reality. None of us, as far as I know, even speaks about ultimate reality having any set characteristics that we can define. The evidence of our senses is evidence of our senses, so when we say that we have evidence of the reality of a coin, that is all that we mean -- that coin follows certain rules.

When it comes to an ultimate reality, there is either monism, dualism, or pluralism. We approach this from a monist perspective. If monism is correct, then we can't say anything about the ultimate substance because words are defined in relation to one another. The only thing we can do is discover the rules by which what we see works.

If dualism is correct, then there is an interaction problem. How does the mind of God create the world? That's easy in a trivial sense, through thought. But the problem then becomes, what is God? If He is Other, then his mind does not work by the rules that we see around us (if it did then he would just be part of the same rule following thought-stuff), so how does he create the world? What is "mind"? We are left with only one answer -- magic, which means we can't understand it. That's perfectly fine with me as an explanation, though non-parsimonious and a little unsatisfactory. It is certainly possible, and most monists would say that we can't tell the difference anyway, so it doesn't matter. A consequence, though, is that "we" are just rule following bits of the mind of God doing its thing, so we are the same as a chair, in a sense -- everything is the mind of God. If everything is the mind of God, then our thoughts when they come to God are just God thinking itself, not "us" realizing God in some cosmic sense.

If you think that "we" have some separate form of free will, then "we" are something different from God and also different from chair, which would seem to imply neither monism nor dualism but pluralism. Why do we want to keep multiplying the "stuff" of the universe?

It would seem to me that even from the perspective of idealist dualism there is only one being with free will and that is the Ultimate Mind. Everything else is some form of his thought, so an illusion. I'm not sure how this helps anyone or differs in any way from a monist perspective. Hence David's frequent reply, "what difference does it make, since it's all the same anyway?"

This is good, but I gotta rush out and I'm on vacation for the next three days. Will reply later.

 

[MattusMaximus]

Russell said it best: those who think material is an illusion should get into a car and drive it into a brick wall, in a speed proportional to their degree of belief the wall isn't real.

Or, as I like to say, for some reason I get the sense that all these idealists/solipsists look both ways before crossing the road.

Wouldn't that make them hypocrites?

 

[Frozenwolf150]

I almost hate to reply now, but he can read my response when he gets back.

There's another way to look at the Matrix:

Neo never left the Matrix. He merely moved to a Matrix within a Matrix that the computers devised as an outlet for the rebellious humans who resisted the normal program. Morpheus and all the rest were plugged in the whole time.

It's a similar thought that someone had when they started a thread about a skeptic in heaven- if you get to heaven, can you still be skeptical about where you're really at (maybe you'[re dying in the OR and having a vivid NDE where time has really slowed down).

You say this as if somehow contradicts my argument. Knowing and understanding the physical laws of whichever reality one happens to be living in would be important regardless of whether it's a flawed illusion, a perfect illusion, a layered illusion, or ultimately real. Therefore your prior assertions that we can't conclude anything about reality, because the evidence could fit idealism just as easily, are false. Even assuming we're living in an illusion, the properties of said illusion would still apply to us as if it were real.

For example, in the hammer experiment that you're so reluctant to try, the properties of the hammer would be that it's a lever tool that amplifies kinetic force through a focused point of hard forged steel. Your head, meanwhile, is organic material that is soft and squishy by comparison, since bone tissue won't be able to put up much resistance to the force behind a hammer. Regardless of whether these are simply properties of illusions, it's still pretty obvious that subjecting your illusory cranium to illusory blunt force trauma would be bad for your illlusory health. The knowledge is neither useless nor meaningless.

I would also second what Ichneumonwasp pointed out regarding interaction. You're making the same oversight as creationists. To say that God thought up all of reality is no different from saying that God created the universe, in that it tells us nothing useful about the means he used to do so. We have never observed and do not have any examples of thinking minds that are able to create things or otherwise alter reality, not without any intermediary structures such as muscles, limbs, and motor neurons. You're essentially using a special definition of "mind" or "thought" in the same way that creationists use a special definition of "create."

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Or, as I like to say, for some reason I get the sense that all these idealists/solipsists look both ways before crossing the road.

Wouldn't that make them hypocrites?

It's like the old joke about the solipsist philosopher: Say Prof. Smith, I agree with you 100%!

~~ Paul

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

It's like the old joke about the solipsist philosopher: Say Prof. Smith, I agree with you 100%!

~~ Paul

Or the other that I have heard - supposedly one of Bertrand Russell's protege's wrote him that she had discovered solipsism and couldn't understand why more people didn't sign up for it.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Of course it's fallacious. Did I not admit to having no evidence to base my belief on, and that it was faith-based? Unless you have some new and interesting proof that other people exist, I bet almost everyone here is in the same boat. That has been my point in what seems like countless threads- we all have faith-based beliefs, atheist and theist alike. Maybe there are some die-hard agnostics lurking around here who really aren't sure other people exist. If so, they don't post much.

I think that's a misunderstanding of the position most people around here take. I have personal proof that I have a conscious mind, and that's where proof ends. I have evidence (not proof) that I, my mind and everything else in this universe is made up of stuff that has its own independent existence, and evidence (not proof) that other people have minds like mine.

I had hoped you would see the distinction between possibility and actuality.

Mere possibility is cheap. Anything's possible. It's possible I'm a crab dreaming it's a wallaby dreaming it's a brain in a vat being fooled by a Cartesian demon who is in turn being fooled by God.

Evidence, on the other hand, is worth something.