(NOTE: You must read only
those linked materials that are preceded by the capitalized word READ.)
IDEALISM
This is the view that the only reality is the ideal world. This would
be the world of ideas. It is the view that there is no external
reality composed of matter and energy. There are only ideas
existing within minds.
Idealism is the metaphysical
view that associates reality to ideas in the mind rather than to material
objects. It lays emphasis on the mental or spiritual components of
experience, and renounces the notion of material existence. Idealists
regard the mind and spirit as the most essential, permanent aspects of
one’s being. The philosophical views of Berkeley, Christian Science, and
Hinduism embrace idealist thought as they relate it to the existence of a
supreme, divine reality that transcends basic human understanding and
inherent sensory awareness.- Omonia Vinieris (2002)
IDEALISM of
Plato
A well known
exponent of this view was Plato, a philosopher in ancient Greece (428-347
B.C.). Plato believed that the physical world around us is not real; it is
constantly changing and thus you can never say what it really is. There is
a world of ideas which is a world of unchanging and absolute truth. This
is reality for Plato. Does such a world exist independent of human minds?
Plato thought it did, and whenever we grasp an idea, or see something with
our mind's eye, we are using our mind to conceive of something in the
ideal world. There are a number of proofs of this ideal world. The
concepts of geometry, such as the concept of a circle, which is a line
equidistant from a point, is something which does not exist in the
physical world. All physical circles, such as wheels, drawings, etc. are
not perfectly round. Yet our mind has the concept of a perfect circle.
Since this concept could not come from the physical world, it must come
from an ideal world. Another proof is that from moral perfection. We can
conceive of a morally perfect person, even though the people we know
around us are not morally perfect. So where does someone get this idea of
moral perfection? Since it could not have been obtained from the world
around us, it must have come from an ideal world. Platonism has been an
extremely influential philosophy down through the centuries.- Omonia Vinieris (2002)
READ
The idealism of Bishop Berkeley
George Berkeley was an
Anglican bishop from Ireland who challenged the irrationality of the
notion that matter exists autonomously outside the mind as Locke and other
contemporaneous empiricists speculated. Berkeley’s immaterialist ontology
maintained material substance cannot be real beyond the confines of the
mind because inanimate objects do not have the ability to operate as
causal agents. It is nonsensical and foolish to designate the causal
qualities of humans, or spirits, to inert matter. Only life forces, such
as spirits or souls, are able to function causally through perception and
are the only substances that really exist. Knowledge springs from
perceptions, and because material objects are not causal agents, they
unquestionably do not arouse perceptual activity. Berkeley says that only
an infinite being may produce and direct causally the perceptions that
humans (spirits) have of physical matter.
“But whatever power I may have over my own thoughts,
I find the ideas actually perceived by sense have not a like dependence on
my will. When in broad daylight I open my eyes, ‘tis not in my power to
choose whether I see or no, or to determine what particular objects shall
represent themselves to my view; and so likewise to the hearing and other
senses, the ideas imprinted on them are not creatures of my will. There is
therefore some other will or spirit that produces them,” (Principles).
Berkeley
asserted that man’s ideas are emitted from the Divine, and thus all humans
are merely ideas in the mind of God. When he thinks of us, we are begotten
and our existence activated. Yet, God still remains ineffable as he is
beyond our comprehension. It is ultimately God who causes us to sense the
physicality of objects by means of his direct volition. First He will
conceive the idea that we humans sense or perceive an object and then we
actually do as He thought. Hence, the effect of God’s mind on the mind of
humans is required for sensation to occur. Berkeley explicates that all
physical objects are perceived via sensation. Material objects are merely
ideas obtained through perceptual activity and their attributes are sensible
rather than being physical properties. Sensation is therefore impossible
without the presence of ideas or else anything sensed would be unperceived
or unthought. In conclusion, Berkeley asserts that all physical things in
this world are ideas of the Divine and specifies this concept as esse est
percipi, Latin for “to be is to be perceived.”
Omonia Vinieris (2002)
Christian Science
view of
idealism
Christian Scientists
generally believe that God is a disembodied spirit who is omnipotent,
omniscient, and omnipresent. They set all being in His mind. He is and
encompasses all aspects of existence as he is referred to as “God is
All-in-all.” Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science, states
that due to God’s spiritual nature, humanity (the product of His creation)
must also appropriately be spiritual and not material. The concept of
additional spiritual deities is excluded because of His “All-in-all”
totality. The true universe in its entirety, according to divine
metaphysics, or Christian Science, is comprised of ideas that are
completely spiritual and fashioned by divine thought, just as Berkeley
espouses in his immaterialist views. Therefore, Christian Scientists
specify that we as humans are in truth spirits produced by divinity, and
in consequence are all incarnations of God. If we ignorantly deny the
truth of God’s spiritual existence, it is then that we will mistakenly
envision the world in the form of material, as it will be an illusion.
All ideas hostile to God’s infiniteness, permanence, and goodness, such as
conceptions of death, hell, and evil, are flawed and wicked hallucinations
and are NOT real. God envelops all that is real, and therefore,
everything he is (eternal, omni beneficent, etc.) is justifiably real.
Everything else is just mortal error.
“Wipe out or
eliminate all that can be called a material universe or a material man, and
the true man, the true expression of God, still remains, and will forever
remain, no more subject to change or annihilation than is God, the infinite
Principle, in whom man lives, and upon whom he depends, and whom he
represents,” (Christian Science: Pure Metaphysics, Dr. Fluno).
- Omonia Vinieris (2002)
Hinduism
There is the
Advaita Vendantin
tradition in Hinduism and in it a
form of Idealism.
The concept
that all experience emanates from the mind of Brahman (God) is incredibly
important in Hindu epistemology, as it is predominant in most religious
works, such as the Upanishads, ancient philosophical texts, and the Bhagavadgita. In accordance with idealist thought, Hindus counter
material existence outside the mind. The mind itself is even held to be
unreal and is epitomized as the nemesis and interruption of the liberation
of the soul as it amalgamates with Brahman (moksha). “Matter exists only
as it is perceived” is the central premise recounted in a legendary myth
of Brahman and one of his multiple manifestations, Vishnu. The Upanishads
further explicate that Brahman as totality of all existence “permeates the
universe.” His very essence transcends all our comprehension, yet we are
partially capable of obtaining merely a nominal understanding unless we
submit to self-enquiry (Atmavichara) and self-realization. These
processes allow one to negate the obstacles of the mind and the concept of
the ego because the Self is really and truly a manifestation of Brahman
that yearns for union with its divine source. Of course, once we
comprehend the Self and unite it with Brahman, we may then come to
comprehend his true being. The Self, however, can willingly choose to
disjoin itself from Brahman. Mortality and suffering are illusions that
obstruct the reality of the Self, instigated by the fabrications of the
Mind that is artificial. King Janaka says,
“The mind is the thief stealing my natural bliss,”
The mind is the
demarcation of the Self and of one’s total consciousness. By means of
self-realization, one may achieve union with the infinite reality of Brahman
and merge with his perpetual intransience. The real is always existent,
unlike the physical body that is finite. It is said that Brahman is the
real source of all physical (tactile, auditory, gustatory, auditory, and
visible) sensation and perception, although he remains transcendent of these
senses. Thus man does not perceive because he opts to, but more accurately
because Brahman promptly instructs him to as He is the ontological origin of
all that is potentially sensed in this universe. This is why the Self must
look to desist the mind of its deceptive conduct and encase itself in the
authenticity of Brahman.
“…all natures are from Me, but I am not in them, they
are in Me,” (Brahman in the Bhagavadgita).
-
Omonia Vinieris (2002)
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FORMS OF IDEALISM
Skeptic Idealism- starts with the thought that there is no proof that
there are material objects outside of thought.
Problematic idealism- is the belief held by Descartes where we can only
hold one empirical truth, which is that I exist.
Dogmatic- starts with the assumption that there are no material objects
outside of thought and the belief that space is an inseparable condition
to all objects and that this space is can't exist in itself. Thus it also
says that all things in this space also can't exist and are merely images.
This is Berkeley's position.
Since all that we think we perceive through our senses that gives us
evidence of a universe beyond our own mind
is
evidence which exists in our mind there is a problem with verifying
anything outside of the realm of thought.
We could all be merely sets of thoughts in the universal set that is
GOD. God thinks of everything and God’s thought are those things. God
thinks of us and of us sitting at our computers and in a room with other
people at the same time that God thinks of those rooms and people and
computers and that is all that we are: thoughts in God’s mind.
For an
overview of
IDEALISM READ Dallas Roark
Chapter 10
Challenges to this Metaphysical Position: Idealism
If we could all be merely sets of thoughts in the universal set that is
GOD and God thinks of everything and God’s thought are those things. God
thinks of us and of us sitting at our computers and in a room with other
people at the same time that God thinks of those rooms and people and
computers and that is all that we are: thoughts in God’s mind.
PROBLEM: What then becomes of Free Will? What then
becomes of a conception of a deity that is all good?