Idealism

''This article is about the philosophical notion of Idealism. Idealism is also a term in Idealism in international relations theory'' In general parlance, "idealism" or "idealist" is also used to describe a person having high ideal (ethics), sometimes with the connotation that those ideals are unrealisable or at odds with "practical" life. However in philosophy, idealism is used to refer to any metaphysics theory positing the primacy of mind, spirit, or language over matter. It is usually juxtaposed with Realism. ==History== Idealism names a number of philosophical positions with quite different tendencies and implications. ===Plato=== Plato proposed an idealist theory as a solution to the problem of universals. A universal is that which things share in virtue of having some particular property. So for example the wall, the moon and a blank sheet of paper are all white; ''white'' is the universal that all white things share. Plato argued that it is universals, The Forms that are real, not specific individual things. Confusingly, because this idea asserts that these mental entities are ''real'', it is also called ''Platonic realism''; in this sense ''realism'' contrasts with ''nominalism'', the notion that mental abstractions are merely names without an independent existence. Nevertheless, it is a form of idealism because it asserts the primacy of the idea of universals over material things. ===George Berkeley=== George Berkeley, in seeking to find out what we could know with certainty, decided that our knowledge must be based on our perceptions. This led him to conclude that there was indeed no "real" object behind one's perception, that what was "real" was the perception itself. This subjective idealism led to his placing the full weight of theory of justification on our perceptions. This left Berkeley with the problem, common to other forms of idealism, of explaining how it is that each of us apparently has much the same sort of perceptions of an object. He solved this problem by having God intercede, as the immediate cause of all of our perceptions. ===Immanuel Kant=== Immanuel Kant held that the mind forces the world we perceive to take the shape of space-and-time. Kant focused on the idea drawn from British empiricism, and its philosophers such as John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume, that all we can know is the mental impressions, or ''phenomena'', that an outside world which may or may not exist independently creates in our minds; our minds can never perceive that outside world directly. Kant's postscript to this added that the mind is not a "blank slate", but comes equipped with category for organising our sense impressions. This Kantian sort of idealism opens up a world of abstractions to be explored by reason, but in sharp contrast to Plato's, leaves only uncertainties about a knowable world outside our own minds. We cannot approach the ''noumenon'', the "Thing in Itself" (German language: ''Ding an Sich'') outside our own mental world. This sort of idealism goes by the equally counterintuitive name of ''transcendental idealism''. ===Hegel=== Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, another philosopher whose system has been called ''idealism'', thought that history must be rational in something significantly like the way science is. His famous dictum is that "the Real is Rational"; reason is the arbiter that shapes the world as it is, and gives us access to what is real. Hegel's idealism posits that since ideas about reality are products of the mind, there must be a mind at work in the universe that establishes reality and gives it structure. Hegelian idealism goes by the name of ''absolute idealism''. ===British idealism=== British idealism enjoyed ascendancy in English-speaking philosophy in the later part of the 19th century. F. H. Bradley of Merton College, Oxford university, saw reality as a monism whole, which is apprehended through "feeling", a state in which there is no distinction between the perception and the thing perceived. Bradley was the apparent target of G. E. Moore's radical rejection of idealism. J. M. E. McTaggart of Cambridge University, argued that minds alone exist, and that they only relate to each other through love. Space, time and material objects where for McTaggart unreal. He argued, for instance, in ''The Unreality of Time'' that it was not possible to produce a coherent account of a sequence of events in time, and that therefore time is an illusion. ==Critique of Idealism== ===G. E. Moore=== The most influential criticism of Idealism is Moore's ''The Refutation of Idealism''. This was the first application of Moore's analytic philosophical method, which greatly influenced Analytic philosophy. Moore proceeds by examining the Berklian aphorism ''esse is percipi'': "to be is to be perceived". He examines in detail each of the three terms in the aphorism, finding that it must mean that the object and the subject are ''necessarily'' connected. So, he argues, for the idealist, "yellow" and "the sensation of yellow" are necessarily identical - to be yellow is necessarily to be experienced as yellow. But, in a move similar to the open question argument, it also seems clear that there is a difference between "yellow" and "the sensation of yellow". For Moore, the idealist is in error because "that ''esse'' is held to be ''percipi'', solely because what is experienced is held to be identical with the experience of it". === David Stove === The Australian philosopher David Stove argued in typically acerbic style that idealism rested on what he called "the worst argument in the world". He named one version of this argument, deriving from Berkeley, "the Gem". Berkeley claimed that "(the mind) is deluded to think it can and does conceive of bodies existing unthought of, or without the mind, though at the same time they are apprehended by, or exist in, itself". Stove argued that this claim proceeds from the tautology that nothing can be thought of without its being thought of, to the conclusion that nothing can exist without its being thought of. Presented in this way, the argument is not even a syllogism - hardly an argument at all. ===John Searle=== In ''The Construction of Social Reality'' John Searle offers an attack on some versions of idealism. Searle conveniently summarises two important arguments for idealism. the first is based on our perception of reality: :''1. All we have access to in perception are the contents of our own experiences'' :''2. The only epistemic basis we can have for claims about the external world are our perceptual experiences'' therefor, :''3. the only reality we can meaningfully speak of is the reality of perceptual experiences (''The Construction of Social Reality'' p. 172)'' Whilst agreeing with (2), Searle argues that (1) is false, and points out that (3) doe snot follow from (1) and (2). The second argument for idealism runs as follows: :''Premise: Any cognitive state occurs as part of a set of cognitive states and withing a cognitive system'' :''Conclusion 1: It is impossible to get outside of all cognitive states and systems to survey the relationships between them and the reality they are used to cognize'' :''Conclusion 2: No cognition is ever of a reality that exists independently of cognition (''The Construction of Social Reality'' p. 174)'' Searle goes on to point out that conclusion 2 simply does not follow from its precedents. ==Idealism in religious thought== Not all religion and belief in the supernatural is, strictly speaking, anti-materialist in nature. While many types of religious belief are indeed specifically idealist, for example, Hinduism beliefs about the nature of the Brahman, Zen Buddhism stands in the middle way of dialectics between idealism and materialism, and mainstream Christianity doctrine affirms the importance of the materiality of Christ's human body and the necessity of self-restraint when dealing with the material world. Several modern religious movements and texts, for example the organisations within the New Thought Movement and the book, ''A Course in Miracles'', may be said to have a particularly idealist orientation. The theology of Church of Christ, Scientist is explicitly idealist. More accurately Idealism is based on the root word Ideal meaning a perfect form of and is most accurately described as a belief in perfect forms of virtue, truth, and the absolute. Idea-ism would be a more appropriate term for the definitions listed above. There is a clear distinction between an idea and an ideal. i.e. Websters Dictionary says "conforming exactly to an ideal, law, or standard: perfect. ==See Also== McTaggart, John ''The Unreality of Time'', available at wikisource:The Unreality of Time Philosophy of mind Metaphysics

Idealism

To describe this page as grossly inadequate would be an understatement. --user:Daniel C. Boyer ---- Change Platonism from "see also" list to mention in body? --user:Daniel C. Boyer ---- I take issue with the following statement from the article: : Religion is, strictly speaking, idealist in nature, as would be any belief in the supernatural. Belief in religion or the supernatural does not necessarily entail belief that the material world is somehow less real or less important. Within the history of Christianity, that view was put forth by some or all gnostics and was specifically rejected by mainstream Christianity. Orthodox Christianity specifically affirms the reality and goodness of the material world, especially in the Feast of the Nativity when Christ took on human flesh and a human nature, and the Feast of Theophany, when Christ blessed the physical water at his baptism. Orthodox Christianity affirms that Christ rose bodily from the dead, that Christ's human flesh remains part of him and therefore part of the Holy Trinity, and that we can all look forward to physical resurrection as well. In short, if the current definition of idealism is correct, then the statement about religion needs to be narrowed so that it only covers those religions about which it is true. User:Wesley :Corrected this to some extent. I would appreciate it if you would do any further work you think is required. --User:Daniel C. Boyer :: Thank you Daniel, you summarized my comments very well in the article. I made a small adjustment to steer further away from docetism, but it seems reasonably accurate now in that respect. User:Wesley ---- Sorry, but this sentence still strikes me as funny: :All religion and belief in the supernatural is not, strictly speaking, materialist in nature And I suspect that the problem is introducing religion at all in the argument. Maybe trying to characterize religion in terms of idealism versus materialism is like mixing metaphors. Maybe religion and philosophy are for the most part trying to answer different questions through different means? I always thought Greek philosophy (whence we derive this opposition between idealism and materialism) started as an alternative to mythology and what we today call religion. I realize that much of theology is based on attempts to bring philosophy ''into'' religion -- thus there are neoplatonists like Philo and aristotleians like Maimonides; one could thus talk of idealist and materialist influences on theology. But even theology is not quite the same thing as religion. If I am wrong, I would expect there to be considerable scholarhip in the history of philosophy and the history of religion that addresses these issues. Since this is to be an encyclopedia article, I suggest cutting these broad general claims and using the space to inform the public of these debates among scholars. Whoever put in the stuff on religion -- couldn't you instead review the extant literature on the intersection between theology and philosophy and the influence of materialists and idealists on theology? User:Slrubenstein : Idealism clearly had a strong influence on at least two heresies I can think of: gnosticism and docetism. Many of the Church Fathers in the East were well educated, and were probably influenced more by Plato than by Aristotle. I honestly don't know how accurate it would be to call them neoplatonists though, especially since I'm not sufficiently familiar with platonism to know how much of it they accepted. : Now, I don't know how much of this needs to be in the article, or if any of it does. But replacing the generalities with more detailed specifics would almost certainly lead to a better article. User:Wesley ::yes, this detail is very interest -- and it shows that at the very least Christianity has had a complex relationship with "idealism." I am glad you bring it up -- nevertheless, I think it is too tangential for this particular article. ::I think it would be best to excise all or almost all reference to religion in this article, but to have a link to theology, and have a section in that article discussing the relationship between religion and philosophy in general, and debates over idealism and materialism within religion in particular. User:Slrubenstein == International Relations == This article leaves much to be desired. No reference is made to the term's use in the field of international relations. In this sense,"Idealism" is used interchangeably with the more common term "liberalism" -- one of the two main schools of theory in this field. Maybe a new section and a link is in order? I don't know how, or I'd do it myself. --User:Caleb Erikson 12:33, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC) :If you just type in the raw text, BP, we'll fix it up nice and format it as a section with links and such. --User:Gary D 20:33, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC) == Disambiguation == The article on philosophical idealism needs expansion. This should involve removal of the unrelated meanings. So this page should commence with a disambiguation paragraph, with links to the religious and IR uses of ''idealism''. Comments? User:Banno 22:13, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC) :No? done. User:Banno 01:46, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC) == ==Variations== == The following is somewhat repetitious; moved to talk, usable bits to be re-inserted:

''Idealism comes in various shapes and sizes. There are, in essence, three basic forms of idealism: transcendental idealism (Kant), subjective idealism (Berkeley), and absolute idealism (Hegel). Briefly, the distinctions can be summarised this way: transcendental idealism holds that there is a fundamental distinction between matter and ideas, with ideas holding supremacy. In this view, matter is the world of appearances and mind is the world of truth. Subjective idealism is often confused with a form of relativism because it argues that which is most real is that which is most immediate to experience, and the internal ideas which we use as a lens to see the world are the primary reality. In this view, objects of sense are indistinguishable from our ideas about them. Absolute idealism is fundamentally holism, arguing that only ideas exist - matter is just another idea. It is distinguished from Berkeley's subjectivity because it includes an element in which there is in effect only one Perceiver of all that exists, and fundamentally speaking, all things in the universe are one with it. This standpoint is comparable to Advaita Hinduism, Zen, American Transcendentalism, and certain strains of western heterodox thinking such as the theology of Meister Eckhart and transpersonal psychology. 'Spirit' or 'Mind' can also be substituted for the word 'idea' in the view of many philosophers.''

User:Banno 01:46, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

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