What's wrong with (old-fashioned) mentalism?

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ie. one word for the theory that there is no physical world - it's just a figment* of our imaginations. It makes a lot more sense to me than the other candidates: a) materialism, in which consciousness is somehow accommodated within the physical world, b) dualism, which begs the question of how the two realms interact.

It just doesn't seem to be a v.popular position these days.

*figment is a great word. I must learn how to use it without 'imagination' someday.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 12:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Was that what Zeno (sp?) was aiming at demonstrating w/the paradoxes?

― Andrew Thames (Andrew Thames), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 12:44 (twenty-two years ago)

What's wrong with solipsism, which has the advantage that even non-ilxers might know what you mean?

― ArfArf, Tuesday, 11 February 2003 12:47 (twenty-two years ago)

i refute it thus:

*throws rock at n's head*

*which splits slightly and sends little arcs of red pulsating in the morning sun*

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 12:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Or, to put it another way, if the world is a result of my imagination, why did I imagine such a suck-ass world?

― fletrejet, Tuesday, 11 February 2003 12:50 (twenty-two years ago)

It's a shared illusion? From some collective force of our mass unconcious? That's a stupid idea, I know.

― Andrew Thames (Andrew Thames), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 13:15 (twenty-two years ago)

''*which splits slightly and sends little arcs of red pulsating in the morning sun*''

and who shall we give the copyright to the quote above to?

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 13:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Waldo Jeffers has reached his limit!

― Andrew Thames (Andrew Thames), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 13:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Hang on, why does mentalism make more sense than materialism?

― RickyT (RickyT), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 13:47 (twenty-two years ago)

Well maybe they are basically the same thing, but what I know is intrinsically mental (cogito ergo sum) whereas 'the physical' is inferred.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 13:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Occam's razor, again.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 13:56 (twenty-two years ago)

The world doesn't care what you know, though. And what else could yr knowledge be? This is a dumbass theory.

― Andrew Thames (Andrew Thames), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 13:59 (twenty-two years ago)

It's not about necessarily about 'me' you dumbass. It's not necessarily solipsism. It's about the entire idea of the objective 'phyisical reality' being false. It makes the cosmos part of an ideal framework, the wider picture of which we may not know. A bit like all of life being a dream, I guess. Makes sense to me.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 14:10 (twenty-two years ago)

That's what everyone thinks, we don't know what's after the universe... if it's a shared "illusion" or whatever, what difference does it make anyway? And "dumbass" wasn't aimed at you, unless you came up w/the "mentalism" theory.

― Andrew Thames (Andrew Thames), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 14:14 (twenty-two years ago)

I may be missing something but can someone explain the theory that

ma·te·ri·al·ism
m-tîr--lzm)
n.
The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.

means the same as:

men·tal·ism
(mntl-zm)
n.

The belief that some mental phenomena cannot be explained by physical laws.

― ArfArf, Tuesday, 11 February 2003 14:17 (twenty-two years ago)

I just picked the word 'mentalism' because of the ILE connection. It's a word that has been applied to various theories. Really, 'idealistic monism' is probably more precise.

What do you mean 'the theory that' the two definitions above mean the same thing? I mean, they don't.. Or am I missing something?

Andrew - it 'matters' even in the world we know, if we try start trying to account for our experience of consciousness within a materialist framework.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 14:36 (twenty-two years ago)

"It carried rather an appearance of figment and invention...than of truth and reality."

Woodward.

― Lara (Lara), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 14:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Your theory certainly dissolves some of the troublesome arguments about the distinctions between appearance and reality. Objects, as they are in themselves, cannot be different from how we perceive them to be if they just are what we perceive. And as we can only perceive ideas in our minds it follows that sensible objects are ideas rather than physical things.

Now where did I leave that impression of a pen?

― Lara (Lara), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 15:00 (twenty-two years ago)

But the pen seen from up close looks different from it at a distance. So are these different ideas of the pen - since there is no reference object for these varying ideas to be based on.

― Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 15:18 (twenty-two years ago)

Not exactly on-topic, but today I came across a special needs student who needs his book loans reported to the special needs librarian. This in itself is not unusual, but after a brief chat with the SNL I found out that the chap had no sense of time, and thus if she didn't check and renew his books for him and remind him to return things he'd forget to. That sounds both frustrating and magnificent - imagine not caring about time.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 15:20 (twenty-two years ago)

ts: sophie vs hilde vs YOU

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 15:36 (twenty-two years ago)

Monists hold that reality is made up of one single substance and in the case of the idealistic monists, this substance is purely mental. The distinction we are discussing bears no relation to the fact that an object looks different from various perspectives - this in no way effects the fundamental premise. What we are talking about is the fact that the pen does not exist in a physical sense and that it exists purely as an idea. The idea of a pen does not have to be fixed, exactly as the appearance of the pen is not fixed depending on the perspective of the viewer.

The theory is rationalistic in that it denies a posteriori- in favour of a priori knowledge. So our knowledge of reality is based on reason alone.

― Lara (Lara), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 15:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Nick I was referring to your own remark. In response to Andrew's

"Hang on, why does mentalism make more sense than materialism?"

You said:

"maybe they are basically the same thing".

I wanted to understand how you arrived at that view, since I've always understood they mean more or less the opposite. I quoted the dictionary definition of the words to illustrate my problem.

― ArfArf, Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:24 (twenty-two years ago)

I meant that obv. at first sight they are opposites, but if everything is one substance, then maybe it doesn't ultimately matter (ha!) whether we call it physical or mental. 'Mental' is maybe a misnomer as it implies coming from someone's mind (though you could call it the mind of God). 'Ideal' is better but confusing because of the other sense of the word 'mental'. 'Abstract', maybe.

Consider the way that mathematicians sometimes like to say that really, the whole world is maths. Well, that could be a form of what I am talking about. Yet mathmaticians get on OK with physicists, and they're all about the physical. So that's why I say perhaps the two forms of monism are fundamentally the same, and it is only dualism that is the competing philosophy.

If you adopt mentalism (to still call it that for the sake of consistency) then the only weird thing to account for is the .... 'stuff-iness' of the universe. It's tangibility. But that's really all in our perception. This problem becomes the inverse of the consciousness problem for materialists, where they end up boxing it under labels like 'qualia', which seems more ridiculous to me. As I say, it may be the same, but the mentalist way around (with it's 'stuff-iness' problem) seems more natural and intuitively neater to me.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:39 (twenty-two years ago)

And along comes Kant with transcendentalism that denies any strict knowledge of ultimate relaity in any case.

― Lara (Lara), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:45 (twenty-two years ago)

That's just cant.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:47 (twenty-two years ago)

relaity = reality

― Lara (Lara), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:47 (twenty-two years ago)

I guessed as much.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:48 (twenty-two years ago)

A study of language has helped some philosophers to formulate their ideas in this regard. Notably, Quine attempted to determine whether the structure of language commits the philosopher to asserting the existence of any reality whatsoever and, if so, what kind of reality.

Kant describes reality (related to a posteriori/empirical knowledge) as embedded in language.

― Lara (Lara), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:54 (twenty-two years ago)

(kant's idea of "ultimate reality" btw is a species of reality which it is no help or use to anyone to "know")

(he kind of got muddled himself when it came to belief in god since he'd basically disproved need for same in terms of science but felt he needed it in ref morality)

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 16:58 (twenty-two years ago)

That's just cant.

I hadn't noticed this. I can't decide whether you are criticising my use of philosophical jargon or saying that Kant is tedious. Or both.

― Lara (Lara), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 17:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Most of his philosophy was agnostic though. Kant was very clever at being non-committal and sceptical without always professing a true belief in anything.

― Lara (Lara), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 17:02 (twenty-two years ago)

It was just a joke with the added overtone of 'yes yes, but let's ignore that for the moment'

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 17:03 (twenty-two years ago)

NB This is not a criticism. Philosophy is as much about questions as it is about answers. Maybe more even more so.

― Lara (Lara), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 17:04 (twenty-two years ago)

This thread is pure bullshit.

― chris sallis, Tuesday, 11 February 2003 21:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Despicable pretentious bullshit with the sole exception of this and the previous post.

― chris sallis, Tuesday, 11 February 2003 21:47 (twenty-two years ago)

Inexplicably, the monad has gonads. This is an apparent flaw in the universe.

― Aimless, Tuesday, 11 February 2003 21:49 (twenty-two years ago)

Just to make things crystal sparking clear - this thread contains the worst sort of cod-philosophising I've seen on ILX in quite a while. It is unambiguously woolly, meaningless, fatuous, asinine, mealy-mouthed, mincing, detestable, pseudo-intellectual crap.

― chris sallis, Tuesday, 11 February 2003 21:58 (twenty-two years ago)

hee hee i love it when sallis gets a bug up his ass

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 22:04 (twenty-two years ago)

"pseudo-intellectual" hee hee

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 22:04 (twenty-two years ago)

)-:

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 22:20 (twenty-two years ago)

I was aiming for ambiguously wooly!

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 22:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Chris has gone all Nietzsche. Wank yourself into another frenzy, fella you're really turning me on!

― Lara (Lara), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 22:53 (twenty-two years ago)

I think physics is working hard to reconcile these two things, by integrating mind/thought into the physical universe. I am not convinced it is anywhere near success in this, though some writers would have it otherwise. If you want some speculation that's probably outdated by now anyway, I remember a quite good book called Mind And The New Physics by something like Frederik Allen Woolf.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:24 (twenty-two years ago)

I've read some of that stuff Martin but I just get this overwhelming intuitive sense that they are barking up the wrong tree, trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, whatever.

That's why I'm sticking with being a MENTALIST (it also facilitates the conception of deeper levels to existence, which I have to say is quite appealing to me, as I can't really cope with religion otherwise, and shrugged-shouldered agnosticism is a bit of a dead end otherwise)

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:31 (twenty-two years ago)

i'm scared sallis will be back to call me a pseudo-intellectual for reading more books than him, but kant really did sort this problem out in a neato way, n.

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:35 (twenty-two years ago)

*whispers*

Mark S is right.

*runs back into hiding at speed*

― Lara (Lara), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Which problem? The mind-body one?

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:39 (twenty-two years ago)

the one the thread claims to be dedicated to you nitwit

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:40 (twenty-two years ago)

*My* problem is that I'm close to thinking there is no problem. I wanted serious objections pointed out in this thread and I didn't buy your rock one.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:41 (twenty-two years ago)

I am not coming back until someone else gives Chris Sallis an earful for being such a pompous arse.

― Lara (Lara), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:43 (twenty-two years ago)

that's not mine, it's samuel butler's

(in fact it's samuel butler's way of saying "*My* problem is that I'm close to thinking there is no problem", come to think of it)

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah Kant got halfway there then he swam back.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Problem with idealist and materialistic monism being equiv is both have different conceptions of the *driving force* of motion by the way.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:45 (twenty-two years ago)

OK, I'll read your sodding Kant.*

Tell me more, Sterling.

* which book?

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:46 (twenty-two years ago)

also no one larfed at my sophie's world joke

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Critique of Pure Reason.
Critique of Practical Reason.
Critique of Judgement.

― Lara (Lara), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:48 (twenty-two years ago)

critique of pure reason (the early funny one)

the later ones are abt art and morality and stuff, we don't want you filling yr head with all that

also he wrote an essay about volcanoes on the moons of saturn!!

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:49 (twenty-two years ago)

Critique of Green Gables
Critique of the BK Lounge
Critique of the Valkyries
Critique of Mandragora
Critique of the Lost
Critique of Arc

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:50 (twenty-two years ago)

SW joke: I didn't spot it (I do now) (but I still don't get it) (though I did read that once)

Kant: surely just one of these is best for the matter in hand (or head)?

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:51 (twenty-two years ago)

The last two still are relevant Mark. I think the boy's ready.

― Lara (Lara), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:51 (twenty-two years ago)

http://home.earthlink.net/~bwcarver/pictures/carexists.gif

― Amateurist (amateurist), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:51 (twenty-two years ago)

I hate you all.

― Lara (Lara), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:52 (twenty-two years ago)

:`-(

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:53 (twenty-two years ago)

ok but only if he reads all three at exactly the same time

(then he'll understand my sophie's world joke)

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Hmm ok then. Bedtime for me. Night night. xx

― Lara (Lara), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:57 (twenty-two years ago)

idealism has no generative force, no reason why things happen -- it can account for a static but not dynamic world, at least not usefully.

alt it can account for a world moving towards a static world, but it cannot account for a world with continuous motion.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 23:58 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't see that really (that's just a variant of my 'stuffi-ness' problem). I come back to the dream analogy.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Say, hypothetically, that mark s did throw a rock at N. If there existed no reality beyond our subjective sensory impressions, for what conceivable reason would mark’s mental impression of throwing the rock be immediately followed by N’s mental impression of being smacked on the head by it? I can’t imagine how this relationship of impressions could be explained without resorting to a metaphysics far more fanciful and unsupported than the idea of an external reality (of some kind).

Also, if one comes to the conculsion that we’re not in a position to know that there’s anything ‘out there’ then surely the consistent response would be scepticism about external reality rather than the idealist’s denial of its existence.

― andy, Wednesday, 12 February 2003 10:29 (twenty-two years ago)

I just don't think of those metaphysics as being so hard to imagine, in principle if not detail. Fanciful? Well yeah - I'm trying *not* to be like an inhabitant of Flatland here (though I am not specifically talking about dimensions). Say the whole of the universe can be described by maths, as I mentioned above. Well what makes you so sure that the maths themselves are just a way of describing 'the real thing with rocks and shit' and not a part of the true essence of things?

Mark throwing a rock at my head (please don't, btw) and it hurting can be tracked from his synapses and muscles through parabolas etc to my head and brain just fine in both models. But what yours doesn't account for is why those pain receptors (or whatever) actually cause pain that matters to *me*. The consciousness thing. Mine doesn't either, immediately, but it leaves the door open to all that maths/physics not just operating within a closed system of what we see, but being a part of a wider picture.

Does *anyone* get what I mean? At all?

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 20:02 (twenty-two years ago)

I do understand your point. The mental realm, mind and thought, seem to be different in a very fundamental way from the physical world of matter and energy, and we have no understanding of what connection there is, if the instinctual belief in both realms is remotely correct. Nonetheless, there is a distance between our not at all knowing the connection, our being unable to integrate the realms, and saying that only the mental one exists. More and more mental activity has been directly correlated with physical reactions, and I think that dismissing or severely diminishing the 'evidence' of our senses needs stronger reason than our not having yet grasped the connection.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 21:08 (twenty-two years ago)

OK so you are a dualist. Well that's fine (even if the fashion is for materialism) but the problem has always been, as you say, understanding how on earth two completely different realms can interact (as we tend to believe they do). Descartes' rigourous reasoning gave up at this point and came up with some half-baked theory about the pineal gland. A lady correspondent asked him how this worked and he said 'by the grace of angels'. So maybe they don't interact at all and consciousness is merely epiphenomenal (the 'smoke above the factory'). But that raises the question of what has to go on in the factory for consciousness to be evoked. Are machines conscious and if not why not? What of other animals, foetuses etc? What if you made an atom by atom copy of someone? Would the copy be conscious? If there is nothing magical going on then surely yes? Would it be murder if you instantly vaporised the original or just teleportation?

I appreciate what you are saying about it seeming counter-intuitive, but it seems to be more consistent. I think of a dualism as a useful working model that our brains are best equipped to dealing with life with. But it doesn't work when I think about it more closely. Like the way people still even use Newtonian physics even if quantum theory has shown it to be just a simplified rule of thumb.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 22:04 (twenty-two years ago)

But that isn't an explanation, Nick, it's dodging the apparent need for an explanation. And it's not really dualism on my part, as I'm thinking that there is a unity between the physical and mental, and we just haven't identified it yet.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 22:20 (twenty-two years ago)

Isn't it impossible to know if anything exists outside of our mind?
The very fact that we must use our brains to study such a thing leads one to believe that it's pointless to speculate on what is occuring objectively, outside of human perception. Sure, we can make machines which supercede the boundaries of the human mind, but that is only an illusion since our brain has to not only make such a machine, but interpret its data as well.

― Oops (Oops), Wednesday, 12 February 2003 22:26 (twenty-two years ago)

Nick, you began this thread agreeing with the standard subjective-idealist position that all that’s real is in the mind (‘to be is to be perceived’), but then started making a case for the wholly incompatible kind of idealism which argues that there’s some form of ultimate reality underlying all phenomena.

As far as this second kind of idealism is concerned, I agree with you that it doesn’t require any fanciful grace-of-angels style metaphysics for it to be consistent, but a ‘true essence’ of maths (or whatever) may as well be materialist for all the difference it makes, i.e. it posits an objective (in the sense of non-mental) reality in which abstract numerical interrelationships have merely replaced things-in-themselves as the monistic universal.

Then, when you go on to suggest that this abstract realm might also provide the means by which one person’s conscious state can somehow impact on another’s (I’ve no idea what you mean by synapse-linking parabolas!), it seems you’ve ended up at a form of dualism.

(Re idealism proper - If the fact that perception is entirely dependent on our sensory equipment means that only the resultant perceptions can be considered real, then how is the perception-enabling equipment itself to be described if not as part of an objective reality of some sort?)

― andy, Monday, 17 February 2003 10:00 (twenty-two years ago)

All of the above is easily understood if you simply upgrade to Occam's electric razor with three rotating heads, allowing for the simultaneous existence of mentalism, materialism, and McCarthyism. If your razor bogs down, clean it with mental floss.

― Skottie, Monday, 17 February 2003 16:32 (twenty-two years ago)

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