/ig/ Idealism General
This is a thread for the discussion of Idealism, Consciousness and Being.
QUICK RUNDOWN
>Dr. Godehard Bruentrup: What Is Idealism?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDR5i6z4L8c
>In philosophy, idealism is the group of philosophies which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial.
ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES
>Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/idealism/
>Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/idealism/v-1
ACADEMIC ARTICLES
>Eliminating the Physical
https://philpapers.org/rec/ELLETP-2
>A New Epistemic Argument for Idealism
https://philpapers.org/rec/SMIANE-2
>How To Avoid Solipsism While Remaining An Idealist
https://philpapers.org/rec/HENHTA
BOOKS
>George Berkeley-Principles of Human Knowledge
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4723/4723-h/4723-h.htm
>George Berkeley-Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4724/4724-h/4724-h.htm
>John Foster-A World For Us: The Case for Phenomenalistic Idealism
http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=0DB12BBA4A197862E272211B7A059880
YOUTUBE
>The Introspective Argument:
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l1lQMCOguw
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4DyfIsj8FU
>Dr. David Chalmers explains why materialism is false
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdbs-HUAxC8
>Why substance dualism is roundly rejected in contemporary philosophy of mind
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVbG90kr1B0
>>3079036
what are the benefits of this ideology? before I permanently fuck up my mind
>>3079053
>implying truth is not intrinsically valuable
It's not about ideology its about truth. Follow the argument and you arrive at Idealism.
Substance Dualism is laughed at nowadays.
The idea of a ghost in the machine absurd giving the interactions of mind and brain. Destroy a part of the brain and you destroy conscious mechanisms. If the mind were like a ghost piloting the machine then the ghost should remain intact whether the machine is damaged.
However, people take this to imply materialism/physicalism: that we are nothing more than our physical makeup and our mind is either housed in our brains (almost like dualism) or is identical to our brains and/or its functions. This is a non-sequitur. This only implies that substance dualism is false.
More to come on materialism/physicalism (from here on known as physicalism)
Physicalism suggests that all of reality is composed of matter or the physical, which is supposed to be non-mental and exists independently of consciousness (objective). However, consciousness exists (subjective). We know consciousness exists more certainly than anything at all. Even if you're skeptical about whether you're in the matrix or if this is a dream, you're still aware that you're aware in each scenario. No matter what you're still conscious, this you definitely know for sure if there is anything that can be said to be known for sure. However, this is impossible if all of reality is supposed to be physical, which is non-mental. If all is non-mental how can there be the mental? This is where reductionism fails on its face given the hard problem of consciousness.
From here the only way out for the physicalist is to a) deny consciousness, which is simply contradictory given we are most certain about the our aware of our awareness more than anything in our perceptions or ideas or b) embrace non-reductive physicalism.
However, this cannot work as noted by Jaegwon Kim in the Exclusion Problem. You will either end up lapsing right back into a substance dualism or you will fail to account for mental causation and you're right back to the mind-body problem of substance dualism all over again.
Reductive and non-reductive physicalism fail.
Idealism works as a perfect alternative to Substance Dualism and Physicalism. Idealism embraces the reality of consciousness without trying to reduce it, thus avoiding the hard problem of consciousness altogether, and embraces an non-physicalist monism which faces no exclusion problem whatsoever so there's no issue of mental causation. No mind-body problem, and no skeptical problems if all of reality is consciousness. This works as a perfect ontology and epistemology and could provide fertile ground for a meta-ethics given morality seems tied to conscious agents most of all rather than non-conscious agents.
Through mere introspection this conclusion can be obtained and has been known throughout the centuries.
>>3079053
How do you know that the mind exists?
>>3079074
>Destroy a part of the brain and you destroy conscious mechanisms.
Not necessarily. Think of it like a cellphone or a computer. Just because the hardware designed to take in the signal is damaged doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the signal. When the body is maimed all that is harmed is the body and its ability to accept that consciousness or perceive reality because their senses don't work. Even a brain dead person has consciousness, they just can't use their mind or body. Consciousness can exist with thought but thought cannot exist without consciousness.
>>3079105
what if I consider consciousness to be physical
>>3082852
You have to show that it's capable to be observed (in first person).
>>3082869
what if I don't think that all physical things can be observed in first person?