Of the Tenets of Platonic Idealism and Adherents

[Dean]

A must see for philosophers and video-makers.



I won't even raise the tenets of my own idealism just yet. I am a naturalist in that I appeal to no soul, God, or transcendental agency in my own philosophy of idealism.

 

[televator]

So the idea is that if I can imagine what it must be like to live outside my body, then it is no longer true that we are emergent from our tangible brains and that it is possible for the "soul" to be separate from the body?

Sounds like an imposition of imagination over empiricism to me. Imagination =/= evidence. I find it ultimately, profoundly, ironic that this man had to use his physical brain to come up with this shlock.

And LOL @ WLC up to his usual tactic or misrepresenting his opponent's position. He certainly does love putting words in people's mouths.

 

[Dean]

[. . .]Sounds like an imposition of imagination over empiricism to me. Imagination =/= evidence. [. . .]

Well ... I must admit, I am rather struggling to see how objects and properties can be separated in my idealism. Nor can I even see how objects can be separated from each other, since all are mutually defining in a relational field and subject to transformations.

 

[televator]

[. . .]Sounds like an imposition of imagination over empiricism to me. Imagination =/= evidence. [. . .]

Well ... I must admit, I am rather struggling to see how objects and properties can be separated in my idealism. Nor can I even see how objects can be separated from each other, since all are mutually defining in a relational field and subject to transformations.

When we're talking about a current state of time, if objects had no defining properties that we could separate from one another we might as well accept that square pegs do fit into round holes. But I can see what you mean when you bring up changes over time. I have yet to see an object that is not subject to change.

Anyway, what are you getting at? Is this present some ethical problems for you in some way?

 

[Dean]

[. . .]When we're talking about a current state of time, if objects had no defining properties that we could separate from one another we might as well accept that square pegs do fit into round holes. But I can see what you mean when you bring up changes over time. I have yet to see an object that is not subject to change.

Anyway, what are you getting at? Is this present some ethical problems for you in some way?

Nope, no ethical problems, however, I would like to also clarify that I claim that objects only "exist" as phenomena (and are meaningless apart from such), that cause is imputed (but causality is lawful) and that perception is properly reality (not divorced from it.) I would also assert that reality is real (no pun intended), events are lawfully contingent, perception relates to real events correlated with the brain depending on the mappings of brain states to the environment and that lawful relationships among perception as events can be comprehended. Unlike the Platonic version of Ontological Idealism, I affirm Reductive idealism, hence entities and qualia manifestly exist, but not in any naive neo-realist sense, nor in an absolutist sense.

My position would best be summed up as the following:

Mentality is a differentiating attribute, and materiality is a reducible characteristic. This I will call "Reductive Mentalism", hence Idealism.

Does this help?

Of course, if you claim that the physical is unilaterally dependent on the mental; that is a form of psychologism psychologicaism. I am saying something very different to that.