Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Roc CURIOUSBEAST_EATER]

Metaphysical idealism says that every that exists is a idea (the computer screen your looking at) or a mind (you).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism
The reason why I want arguments is because every argument seems to be "materialism cannot explain X, therefore idealism is true."
This for obvious reasons ignore the other metaphysical theories such as substance dualism.

[Sergarr]

Ultimately it doesn't really matter if everything is a matter or an idea - at a high enough level of complexity, the models based on each can get very similiar.

It's simply a difference between where to start from when analyzing the world - from the bottom (matter) or from the top (idea). Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

[SirQuiamus]

I personally think that metaphysical idealism is just a straw man for discrediting speculative schools of philosophy. Given that the mind is a prerequisite for conceiving of entities and existence, why on earth would anyone argue that, objectively, "all entities are composed of mind or spirit?" Entities-as-such are what they are, and reality is composed of sense data, and nothing more. There's no doubt that sense data are mental phenomena just like all other "ideas," but ontological idealism simply does not follow from epistemological idealism.