dmb quoted from Stanford:
"Anti-realists deny the world is mind-independent. Believing the
epistemological and semantic problems to be insoluble, they conclude realism
must be false."
Dan said to dmb:
Right, and so realism and idealism are seen as mutually exclusive, whereas the
MOQ unites them both... they are both correct in their own limited ways. Good
stuff, Dave... thanks! The engine sounds great.
JC said to Dan:
Idealism is realism's fierce opponent. It's not simply a matter of "mutually
exclusive" it's a matter of mutually hostile. And how the MoQ unites them... I
have no idea except that so far the interpreters of the MOQ have no real
conception of what idealism actually is. The glib answer that idealism
equates to "it's all in your head" is facile and far, far short of the actual
stance of actual idealists. In order to engage real philosophers, you have to
do some real philosophology people.
dmb says:
Hmmm. How did idealism get mixed in to the issue? It's true that idealism and
materialism are opposed to each other (and materialists are usually realists),
but the MOQ is neither of those things.
The rivalry presented in the Stanford quote is between realism and
anti-realism, not realism and idealism. The MOQ will appear to have some things
in common with idealism because they are both rejecting materialism - but the
MOQ also rejects idealism and so the MOQ will appear to have things in common
with materialism as well. That's not as confusing as it sounds; it just means
that the MOQ is neither idealism nor materialism (which is now known as
physicalism).
To simplify the story a bit, the rivalry between idealism and materialism is an
endless dispute about whether reality is fundamentally mental or fundamentally
physical - and there are many flavors of each. It's fairly easy to see that
this dispute takes place within SOM. The MOQ, by contrast, takes the Jamesian
view that reality is the immediate flux of life, is Pure Experience.
"Pure experience cannot be called either physical or psychical: it logically
precedes this distinction." (LILA, 365)
And even if idealism were relevant, there are lots of different kinds of
idealism and so we'd have to be much more specific. The kind that says "it's
all in your head" is probably best described as solipsism - or maybe subjective
idealism if you're feeling generous. Bishop Berkeley was the kind of idealist
that would say, "to be is to be perceived". Things exists only so long as they
are being perceived by a mind. Because he was a theologian, it wasn't very hard
to climb out of the absurd implications. Since we cannot tolerate realities
that blink in and out of existence depending on whether anyone is watching or
not, he brought God in to perceive all things at all times and thereby maintain
all being. (Possibly the least plausible theory I ever heard.) Kant is a
special case because he was trying to mix his idealism with empiricism but he
was also just sort of rationalizing his prior commitments to Christianity.
Hegel and the British idealist had a very grandiose and clean sort of Absolute
idealism.
Stanford's article on Royce opens with this sentence: "Josiah Royce was the
leading American proponent of absolute
idealism, the metaphysical view (also maintained by G. W. F. Hegel and
F. H. Bradley) that all aspects of reality, including those we
experience as disconnected or contradictory, are ultimately unified in
the thought of a single all-encompassing consciousness." I guess it's easy to
see that this "single all-encompassing consciousness" is the Absolute, is the
God of idealism. And these guys are all pretty religious too. (James called
them "prigs".) Royce's major works show this inclination too. They include The
Religious Aspect
of Philosophy (1885) and The
Problem of Christianity (1913).
Stanford mentions his rivalry with James right at the top of the article.
Because of James's influence, Royce traded in the "single all-encompassing
consciousness" for "an infinite community of minds". He trades one big mind for
countless little ones - but it's still a kind of idealism. The MOQ, by
contrast, is empirical all the way down.
"Royce's friendly but longstanding
dispute with William James, known as “The Battle of the Absolute,”
deeply influenced both philosophers' thought. In his later works, Royce
reconceived his metaphysics as an “absolute pragmatism” grounded in
semiotics. This view dispenses with the Absolute Mind of previous
idealism and instead characterizes reality as a universe of ideas or
signs which occur in a process of being interpreted by an infinite
community of minds."
The MOQ, by contrast, is empirical all the way down. The anti-realist criticism
of metaphysical realism cuts against the metaphysical claims of idealism for
the same reason - they both entail claims about what fundamental reality is
beyond appearances. But the radical empiricism and the philosophical mysticism
or the MOQ both say that we ought not talk about such things. That's why the
anti-realist's critique is so handy in explaining the MOQ. As the Stanford
quote at the top of this page tells us, anti-realists deny the world is
mind-independent. Or rather, the anti-realist says that "mind-independence"
makes no sense because the
epistemological problems that cannot be solved. They conclude
realism must be false because there is no way to gain access to any reality
except reality as it appears to us. There is no way to crawl outside of your
mind or sense organs so as to have a view of "reality" as it is in itself.
But the MOQ does not have this problem because the primary reality is
experience, is an empirical reality and so the appearance-reality distinction
is dissolved. Appearance is the only reality we can have. Mind and matter,
subjects and objects, are just names we give to the different parts of
experience, conceptual tools with which we habitually interpret experience.
Those ideas work, they agree with experience, help us handle experience. But
it's the experience that's real, the conceptual tools are secondary things that
we add. Talking about ultimate realities beyond, behind, or transcending
experience can only ever be pure speculation, most of which will never make one
bit of difference to anything and none of which can ever be verified or
falsified. And so it's meaningless to engage in such "metaphysical" disputes.
It's as productive as counting angles on pinheads.
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