/ig/ Idealism General

File: Substance Dualism is false.png (533KB, 1280x800px) Image search: [Google]

533KB, 1280x800px

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)

File: Hard problem_of_consciousness.png (111KB, 800x719px) Image search: [Google]

111KB, 800x719px

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 awareness 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.

Anyone else a panpsychist here?

File: Immaterial Monism.png (494KB, 1280x685px) Image search: [Google]

494KB, 1280x685px

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 a 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.
>https://youtu.be/oBsI_ay8K70?t=8m14s

File: The Introspective Argument.png (695KB, 1276x705px) Image search: [Google]

695KB, 1276x705px

Through mere introspection this conclusion can be obtained and has been known throughout the centuries.

>>19314729
Panpsychism is very close to Idealism in many ways. I just don't see a reason to keep the material around and to not just go full blown Idealism.

Why do you believe panpsychism?

>>19314758
I actually subscribe to idealistic panpsychism, which denies material properties. However, unlike most idealists, I would grant that things like electrons exist, but that these are enminded.

>>19314770
Idealists affirm electrons. Check out the article I cited in the OP:

Eliminating the Physical
https://philpapers.org/rec/ELLETP-2

>If we reject physicalism, for the reasons given in my 2011 book ‘Panpsychism,’ we can arrive at a variant of idealism that accepts the concrete existence of all entities discoverable by science, but argues that these are nothing over and above centres of experience that can perceive one another and act on their percepts. In this metaphysical system, all physical properties and laws reduce without remainder to mental dittos – length is used in this paper as an example. Adopting this position resolves many difficulties in the philosophy of mind, including the problems of: the explanatory gap, mental causation, perception, qualia and zombies.

Sounds like you would have much in common with the author.

>>19314785
>Eliminating the PhysicaI
Interesting that you cite this article. My version of panpsychism pretty much aligns with Peter Ells's book which you mentioned, "Panpsychism: The Philosophy of a Sensuous Cosmos."

>>19314804
Knew you guys would have much in common with the direction you were going.

>>19314720
In response:

The conception of substance dualism here does not reflect some concepts, namely Dvaitism. The main difference being the distinction between mind (emotions, identity) and atman/knower/observer/soul. This conception agrees that those parts of "mind" that can be affected by matter are material, while those parts that are not material can not be affected by matter.

The main argument against substance dualism dissolves without the need for - lets call it "pure mind" - to interact with matter.

I am interested inyour response to this strict Dvaitist idea, though if I am reading this correctly GV's synthesis philosophy has a bit more in common with Idealism then what I describe above.

What is the Idealist thought on separate observers? Are we nodes in a qualium field?

Bump

You'd think /x/ would be more into this.