Idealism

This article is about the philosophical notion of Idealism. Idealism is also a term in international relations theory and in Christian eschatology.

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.

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Moore proceeds by examining the Berkeleian 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".

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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.

Related Topics:
Australia - David Stove

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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:

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:1. All we have access to in perception are the contents of our own experiences

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:2. The only epistemic basis we can have for claims about the external world are our perceptual experiences

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therefore,

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:3. the only reality we can meaningfully speak of is the reality of perceptual experiences (The Construction of Social Reality p. 172)

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Whilst agreeing with (2), Searle argues that (1) is false, and points out that (3) does not follow from (1) and (2).

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The second argument for idealism runs as follows:

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:Premise: Any cognitive state occurs as part of a set of cognitive states and within a cognitive system

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: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

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:Conclusion 2: No cognition is ever of a reality that exists independently of cognition (The Construction of Social Reality p. 174)

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Searle goes on to point out that conclusion 2 simply does not follow from its precedents.

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