Talk:Idealism

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Please see comments at Talk:Materialism for comments regarding the contradiction between this article on idealism and the article on materialism. McDivitt Oct 03 2006

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To the distinguished authors of these comment pages. I would like to know: where can information on the so-called 'crisis of idealism' be found? I mean the one in the early 20th century. Karl Reinhardt alludes to something comparable in his famous essay 'die Sinneskrise bei Euripides', and there are useful thoughts in anne simon's (a little more recent) article 'proust ou la crise de l'idealisme'. as a little aspiring philologist i find it hard to gain decent access to those central issues, as they seem to me. so many obscure texts could be so much better understood, if only... tachelbel214@hotmail.com, if you please. Thank you and apologies for the intrusion. F.S.

To describe this page as grossly inadequate would be an understatement. --Daniel C. Boyer

Would you deign to explain why it is inadequate so that the inadequacy can be made adequate?

205.188.117.10 00:02, 16 September 2005 (UTC)Braithwaite Prendergast

The second sentence is incomplete. Minor, but it suggests sloppiness.

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Change Platonism from "see also" list to mention in body? --Daniel C. Boyer

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I take issue with the following statement from the article:

Religion is, strictly speaking, idealist in nature, as would be any belief in the supernatural.

Belief in religion or the supernatural does not necessarily entail belief that the material world is somehow less real or less important. Within the history of Christianity, that view was put forth by some or all gnostics and was specifically rejected by mainstream Christianity. Orthodox Christianity specifically affirms the reality and goodness of the material world, especially in the Feast of the Nativity when Christ took on human flesh and a human nature, and the Feast of Theophany, when Christ blessed the physical water at his baptism. Orthodox Christianity affirms that Christ rose bodily from the dead, that Christ's human flesh remains part of him and therefore part of the Holy Trinity, and that we can all look forward to physical resurrection as well.

In short, if the current definition of idealism is correct, then the statement about religion needs to be narrowed so that it only covers those religions about which it is true. Wesley

Corrected this to some extent. I would appreciate it if you would do any further work you think is required. --Daniel C. Boyer

Thank you Daniel, you summarized my comments very well in the article. I made a small adjustment to steer further away from docetism, but it seems reasonably accurate now in that respect.

Wesley

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Sorry, but this sentence still strikes me as funny:

All religion and belief in the supernatural is not, strictly speaking, materialist in nature

And I suspect that the problem is introducing religion at all in the argument. Maybe trying to characterize religion in terms of idealism versus materialism is like mixing metaphors. Maybe religion and philosophy are for the most part trying to answer different questions through different means?

I always thought Greek philosophy (whence we derive this opposition between idealism and materialism) started as an alternative to mythology and what we today call religion. I realize that much of theology is based on attempts to bring philosophy into religion -- thus there are neoplatonists like Philo and aristotleians like Maimonides; one could thus talk of idealist and materialist influences on theology. But even theology is not quite the same thing as religion. If I am wrong, I would expect there to be considerable scholarhip in the history of philosophy and the history of religion that addresses these issues. Since this is to be an encyclopedia article, I suggest cutting these broad general claims and using the space to inform the public of these debates among scholars. Whoever put in the stuff on religion -- couldn't you instead review the extant literature on the intersection between theology and philosophy and the influence of materialists and idealists on theology? Slrubenstein

Idealism clearly had a strong influence on at least two heresies I can think of: gnosticism and docetism. Many of the Church Fathers in the East were well educated, and were probably influenced more by Plato than by Aristotle. I honestly don't know how accurate it would be to call them neoplatonists though, especially since I'm not sufficiently familiar with platonism to know how much of it they accepted.

Now, I don't know how much of this needs to be in the article, or if any of it does. But replacing the generalities with more detailed specifics would almost certainly lead to a better article. Wesley

yes, this detail is very interest -- and it shows that at the very least Christianity has had a complex relationship with "idealism." I am glad you bring it up -- nevertheless, I think it is too tangential for this particular article.

I think it would be best to excise all or almost all reference to religion in this article, but to have a link to theology, and have a section in that article discussing the relationship between religion and philosophy in general, and debates over idealism and materialism within religion in particular. Slrubenstein

Contents 1 International Relations 2 Disambiguation 3 ==Variations== 4 Primacy 5 Philosophy 6 Questionable edits 6.1 Descartes 7 Leibniz 8 Transcendental Idealism 9 "Idealism in religious thought" 10 Idealism vs Phenomenalism 11 Remove: Jonathan Edwards 12 What about idealism vs. pragmatism? 13 Mentalistic Monism 14 TOC 15 I like the page 16 Opening is worthless 17 Alternative Phrasing

[edit] International Relations

This article leaves much to be desired. No reference is made to the term's use in the field of international relations. In this sense,"Idealism" is used interchangeably with the more common term "liberalism" -- one of the two main schools of theory in this field. Maybe a new section and a link is in order? I don't know how, or I'd do it myself. --TheBlindProphet 12:33, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

If you just type in the raw text, BP, we'll fix it up nice and format it as a section with links and such. --Gary D 20:33, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Disambiguation

The article on philosophical idealism needs expansion. This should involve removal of the unrelated meanings. So this page should commence with a disambiguation paragraph, with links to the religious and IR uses of idealism. Comments? Banno 22:13, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC)

No? done. Banno 01:46, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] ==Variations==

The following is somewhat repetitious; moved to talk, usable bits to be re-inserted:

Idealism comes in various shapes and sizes. There are, in essence, three basic forms of idealism: transcendental idealism (Kant), subjective idealism (Berkeley), and absolute idealism (Hegel). Briefly, the distinctions can be summarised this way: transcendental idealism holds that there is a fundamental distinction between matter and ideas, with ideas holding supremacy. In this view, matter is the world of appearances and mind is the world of truth. Subjective idealism is often confused with a form of relativism because it argues that which is most real is that which is most immediate to experience, and the internal ideas which we use as a lens to see the world are the primary reality. In this view, objects of sense are indistinguishable from our ideas about them. Absolute idealism is fundamentally holistic, arguing that only ideas exist - matter is just another idea. It is distinguished from Berkeley's subjectivity because it includes an element in which there is in effect only one Perceiver of all that exists, and fundamentally speaking, all things in the universe are one with it. This standpoint is comparable to Advaita Hinduism, Zen, American Transcendentalism, and certain strains of western heterodox thinking such as the theology of Meister Eckhart and transpersonal psychology. 'Spirit' or 'Mind' can also be substituted for the word 'idea' in the view of many philosophers.

Banno 01:46, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

Idea had some specific meanings for various philosophers, including Descartes.

On the other hand, about the above topic, the notion that there are three basic kinds of idealism has been heavily debated. David Stove, I believe, denies it, and claims that objective idealism is really just subjective idealism.

On the other hand, I figure I can find at least two different definitions of the 'subjective' part of 'subjective idealism'. 1. That the natural world is a projection of our minds 2. that the mind that grounds reality is a subject, not a proto-subject (as it is in Hegel.)

In both cases, Hegel fails to be a subjective idealist.

Idealism as any view that grounds thought in something animate or mental has hundreds of varieties. In fact the history of philosophy is mostly a history of idealism, because most dualists are idealists, and there have been very few materialists who rejected both teleology and normativity in descriptions of the natural world.

[edit] Primacy

Before changing the first sentence of the article, I would like to ask other Wikipedians about their opinion. To say that idealism refers to the "primacy of mind, spirit, or language over matter" does not, to me, convey any information. "Primacy" means that something is more important than something else. What knowledge is communicated by saying that idealism is thought to be more important than realism? My emphasis would be that the concept of epistemological idealism relates to subjective ideas or mental representations in a mind. This is in contrast to realism, which refers to objects that are supposed to exist external to any observing mind. 152.163.100.203 13:07, 16 September 2005 (UTC)Toby Shandy

I still prefer that opening. To me, "idealism" in the broadest sense is indeed simply that: any doctrine that teaches that thought, spirit, or language has priority or superiority over a material world that may be only illusion, and at minimum cannot be known except as mediated through thought, spirit, or language. Smerdis of Tlön 17:15, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Philosophy

In philosophy, idealism is any epistemological theory that proposes a difference between what is inside and outside of the mind. The ideal, in these systems, is the realm of mental ideas, words, or images. The several varieties of idealism affirm the actual existence of such a realm; and often give this realm absolute, or at least perceptual or logical, priority over any reality outside the mind. It is usually juxtaposed with realism in which the real is said to exist prior to and independently of our knowledge.

Not a bad try; but there is not a clear juxtaposition between the two definitions. That is, it appears to be entirely possible for a realist to hold that there is "a difference between what is inside and outside of the mind", yet also hold that "the real exists prior to and independently of our knowledge". Put another way, the definition confuses idealism and dualism. Banno 21:07, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Questionable edits

There are three or four distinct sorts of idealism. The oldest and most venerable is the Theory of forms. The claim that Protagoras, at the lease, needs a supporting reference - who claims he was an idealist? Certainly he did not do s himself.

You are confusing Plato's ontological Platonic Ideals with the epistemological theory of idealism. The latter holds that idealism is subjective to man and that realism is an objective inference.

Lestrade 00:42, 24 September 2005 (UTC)Lestrade

I don't think so. The idea that the Forms alone are real is commonly called Platonic Idealism. As a variation on the Idealist theme, it deserves a place here. You are correct that there is a difference between epistemological idealism and ontological idealism, that perhaps needs to be made more explicit; a difficult task, but one that should be possible within the basically historical structure in the article. Banno 06:49, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

It is true that Protagoras never called himself an idealist. However, if "idealism" is understood to mean "direct knowledge only of ideas in the mind" then he was an idealist. He related all knowledge of external objects to the human mind's ability to know. This, however, is not a neutral point of view. It is my interpretation. Therefore, you are right to remove it.

Lestrade 01:55, 24 September 2005 (UTC)Lestrade

Cool. Banno

[edit] Descartes

Descartes is the supreme Dualist. The summary of his view given here is somewhat skewed. Unless it can be supported with some references, it should be deleted. Banno 23:04, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

How is it skewed? It is an exact statement of Descartes' assertion that the only thing that we know for certain is the idea or mental picture in our mind. that is epistemological idealism.

Lestrade 00:42, 24 September 2005 (UTC)Lestrade

From Descartes' Principles of Philosophy, Part I, § 7: "While we thus reject all of which we can entertain the smallest doubt, and even imagine that it is false, we easily indeed suppose that there is neither God, nor sky, nor bodies, and that we ourselves even have neither hands nor feet, nor, finally, a body; but we cannot in the same way suppose that we are not while we doubt of the truth of these things; for there is a repugnance in conceiving that what thinks does not exist at the very time when it thinks. Accordingly, the knowledge, I THINK, THEREFORE I AM, is the first and most certain that occurs to one who philosophizes orderly."

From this you can understand that Descartes claimed that the only things that we know for certain are the ideas in our thinking, doubting, conscious mind. Even our own body is an external object that can be doubted. This is idealism.

I can see that the several various definitions of idealism are becoming mixed together and are resulting in confusion.

Lestrade 01:55, 24 September 2005 (UTC)Lestrade

I must say before we proceed that I think it problematic to ascribe Idealism to anyone before Kant, who in my understanding introduced the term in the late Eighteenth century. The exceptions would be anyone who describes themselves as an idealist, or those to whom the epithet is commonlyapplied, as with Plato. A third possibility would occur if some third party was to call someone an idealist, in which case a citation should be given; so for instance "Jimmie Bloggs called Descartes an idealist in his work On Dualism". I don't think that Descartes falls into any of these three, but I may be wrong.

Now to your argument from the quote above. I think that, as for Protagoras, you are interpreting Descartes, and so that the claim that he is an Idealist is not neutral. Remember that the argument of his that you cite is a part of an overall approach to philosophy, and that very soon thereafter he derives ontological realism, and hence the duality of mind and body. The line of scepticism lasts only far enough to reach the reality of the Sceptic, whereupon the entire edifice of reality is, as it were, reconstructed on a firm foundation. So I don't think it fair to claim, as you do, that Descartes thought "the only things that we know for certain are the ideas in our thinking, doubting, conscious mind"; for he derives the existence of the external world with (for him) certainty, from those very ideas. This is the task he set himself in Meditations. Banno

In response to The line of scepticism lasts only far enough to reach the reality of the Sceptic, whereupon the entire edifice of reality is, as it were, reconstructed on a firm foundation, please note the following. Descartes stated that the only things that he knew for certain were the ideas in his mind. Everything else, such as "the entire edifice of reality," was only inferred and thus known indirectly.

Lestrade 16:36, 24 September 2005 (UTC)Lestrade

"the entire edifice of reality (is) inferred and thus known indirectly". One might say the same thing about Hume. Do we include him as an idealist? The working definition of idealism being used here is surly far too broad. Banno 22:13, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, on the argument you give, Spinoza and the other victims of continental rationalism would also be Idealists. That seems to me to be too broad a categorisation, and to involve a sort of idealist imperialism, or perhaps revisionism.

The broad categorization of Idealism might include Spinoza on the basis of three citations:

(1.)...the ideas, which we have of external bodies, indicate rather the constitution of our own body rather than the nature of external bodies.(Ethics, II, Prop. XVI, Cor. II.)

(2.)The human mind does not perceive any external body as actually existing, except through the ideas of the modifications of its own body,(ibid., II, Prop. XXVI.)

(3.)The images of things are modifications of the human body, whereof the ideas represent external bodies as present to us; in other words, whereof the ideas involve the nature of our body, and, at the same time, the nature of external bodies as present. (ibid., III, Prop. XXVII, Proof.)

Would it be idealist imperialism or revisionism to include Spinoza as an idealist?

Lestrade 16:38, 24 September 2005 (UTC)Lestrade

Yes, indeed, I think it would be. If idealism is the belief that perceptions are mediated by our bodies, then who is not an idealist, and what purpose does the notion hold? Banno 22:13, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

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So, I would be pleased for you to re-insert Descartes, but on the condition that you provide some further citations for your particular interpretation. Banno 07:33, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

In the philosophical journal Mind, Vol. 4, Number 14, Professor Henry Sidgwick wrote the following about the philosopher Thomas Reid:"...he could not fail to find the source of the Idealism of Berkeley and the pulverizing scepticism of Hume in Locke’s assumption that the immediate object of the mind in external perception is its own ideas: and that finding this view equally in Malebranche, he could not fail to trace it to Descartes." (http://fair-use.org/mind/1895/04/) As you can see by this quotation, Professor Sidgwick defines Idealism as the notion that the only things that the mind knows directly are its own ideas. (By the way, he does not define Idealism as knowledge of the existence of perfect, excellent objects.) Also, he claims that Idealism can be traced back to Descartes, who claimed that the only thing that we know for certain is that our minds contain ideas.

Lestrade 13:07, 28 September 2005 (UTC)Lestrade

Actually, the quote seems to say that the immediate object of the mind in external perception is its own ideas leads to both idealism and scepticism, rather than defining idealism in the terms you suggest. But more to the point, how would you use this in the article? Banno 21:28, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Berkeley's Idealism was based on the judgment that all that the mind can know directly, immediately, and for certain is its own ideas or images, derived from sensations. This is exactly what Descartes stated. Hume agreed, and concluded that nothing can be known for certain about any world of objects that are external to the mind, or even of the composition of the mind itself, as well as of any "soul" or "spirit.". This is his scepticism about any statements to that effect.

Descartes is important in the study of Idealism and, therefore, should be included in this article. As the philosopher Schopenhauer wrote about Descartes: "...he [Descartes] was the first to bring to our consciousness the problem whereon all philosophizing has since mainly turned, namely that of the ideal and the real. This is the question concerning what in our knowledge is objective and what is subjective, and hence what eventually is to be ascribed by us to things different from us and what is to be attributed to ourselves. ... This is the problem and in consequence thereof the main endeavor of philosophers for the last two hundred years has been clearly to separate by a line of cleavage correctly drawn the ideal, in other words, what belongs to our knowledge solely and as such, from the real, that is to say, what exists independently of our knowledge, and thus to determine the relation of the two to each other." (Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. I, "Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real", p.1)

Lestrade 17:56, 29 September 2005 (UTC)Lestrade

Well done. Descartes should be included as an influence on idealism, not as an idealist. I suggest that if the definition of idealism indeed leads to Hume being counted as one, that there is a problem with that definition. Banno 20:07, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Friedrich Albert Lange, in his Geschichte des Materialismus (History of Materialism) wrote: "...the Cartesian system, if consistently carried out from his fundamental principles, must have led to an Idealism in which the whole external world appears as mere phenomenon and only the ego has any real existence." (Book I, Section 2, Ch. III) This is a citation that clearly associates Descartes with epistemological idealism, but as a precursor. It may be valuable to include such eminent predecessors to the article. Lestrade 19:41, 17 October 2005 (UTC)Lestrade

The problem is, Cartesianism is the most extreme form of substance dualism. The chief exponents of Cartesianism were Descartes and Malebranche, and so it seems confusing to place them with ontological Idealists. Most philosophical Materialists are representationalists in one form or another. Some form of epistemological idealism would be accepted by many representationalists. So, we could end up lumping together many materialists and substance dualists under the word "idealist". Also, Malebranche's occasionalism doesn't make him an idealist, though it could have led others toward an idealist conclusion. Qeem 00:27, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Leibniz

Leibniz claimed that the ideal and the real are two different parallel worlds. The ideas in a mind and the objects that were external to the mind were exactly coordinated through a harmony that had been pre-established by God. There is no physical influence or causation between the two parallel realms because they are separate and distinct. The internal mental images and the external objects are perfectly synchronized but cannot affect each other.

Again, he is a rationalist rather than an idealist, and again he is an influence on idealism rather than an advocate. Banno 19:11, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Transcendental Idealism

In the Kant section, the name Transcendental Idealism is called counter-intuitive. Why? See Wikipedia's Transcendental Idealism (not Transcendental idealism) to understand why it is transcendental and why it is idealism. Lestrade 01:53, 2 October 2005 (UTC)Lestrade

[edit] "Idealism in religious thought"

Someone explain the following quote for me:

More accurately, Idealism is based on the root word "Ideal," meaning a perfect form of, and is most accurately described as a belief in perfect forms of virtue, truth, and the absolute. Idea-ism may be a more appropriate term for the definitions listed above. There is a clear distinction between an idea and an ideal (i.e. Websters Dictionary says "conforming exactly to an ideal, law, or standard: perfect."). idealism in comparison to pragmatism.

I'm not sure what the writer of this paragraph was trying to get at -- the term 'idealism' encompasses the concepts this paragraph is critiquing. At least it always has in my philosophy education, insofar as that goes. Further, is that really the right section for a discussion of what is and isn't actually "idealism"? I also think the last sentence should probably be a full sentence. Lastly, the linguistic analysis is sloppy; "Idealism" is a noun form derived from "ideal", which is an adjective form of "idea". If this is an argument for a distinction between idealism and "idea-ism", it's a pretty poor one. --M.C. ArZeCh 01:45, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

The Unsigned Editor wrote: "Idealism is based on the root word 'Ideal,' meaning a perfect form of." This is incorrect. "Idealism" comes from the Greek "eidos" which means merely "form," without the word "perfect" as modifier. A correct definition would be "existing only in the mind as an image." Plato appropriated this word and popularized it so that it came to mean an original form from which faulty copies were made.Lestrade 13:03, 18 January 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

[edit] Idealism vs Phenomenalism

Can someone explain to me the difference between the two? This question has come up over at Mind-body problem. Should the three main views be: "dualism, materialism, idealism", or should they be "dualism, physicalism, phenomenalism", or something else?

-Alecmconroy 06:31, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

About the three positions, I believe the answer is that, roughly: it depends. Karl Marx treats everything that is not materialism as idealism, and that still is a common way of speaking. If this article is to define idealism as the negative of Materialism, it will need to be narrower than it is, and stick to immaterialist thinking as its topic.

Meanwhile, almost all dualists are actually idealists. Consider:

Versions of idealism that accept non-ideal entities but which identify reality ultimately with mind are often called Realistic Idealism (because they don't deny Realism, the thesis that the world exists independently of our thoughts about it). Plato is a realistic idealist inasmuch as he has a world of perfect forms and downgrades the world of particulars into imitations of those (mental) universals. The mental is ultimately real, but the world of particulars is still independent of our thoughts about it.

Other versions of realistic idealism posit a mind as the origin of the material world, either as a person (personalism or personalistic idealism) or as an impersonal life force (Elan Vital, Will to Power, Will to Live, Nous, Ego, Absolute, etc). Descartes's dualism posits a world of bodies independent of our thoughts about it. These entities also have independence, we might as well suppose, from God's thoughts about them. Thus, a great deal of realism is granted here. But if Descartes holds that ultimately the mind of God is the source of the material world, or that the material world seeks to conform itself to God's mind, or that God's mind is the ultimate reality, the ens realissimum, then Descartes is a personalistic idealist. Not in the sense that he denies materialistm, but in the sense that he posits a self-conscious mind as the ultimate reality, thus denying materialism and naturalism, but not realism.

The thesis that thoughts cause actions, sometimes called psychological idealism, also denies naturalism, but not realism, because it introduces the mental into the fundamental level of physical analysis, while naturalism denies that the mental is fundamental.

Regarding your other topic: phenomenalism is the view that perception or experience or knowledge is of phenomena, or of ideas, or of mental or noetic objects. It is a view about perception or knowledge etc.

This is often confused with epistemological idealism which holds that all objects other than minds are exclusively noetic, meaning that they have no reality other than being perceived or thought by minds. This is an ontological view about what kinds of things there are.

Phenomenalism does not deny realism. Epistemological idealism does.

Hope this helps.

With love,

Dr. B.

[edit] Remove: Jonathan Edwards

I don't see why this sub-section should be included. Unless his notebook became the journal, Mind, then this fellow -- while almost certainly interesting in his own right -- is irrelevant to the topic. JTBurman 10:08, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What about idealism vs. pragmatism?

It seems that the common usage of the word "idealist" is far off the philosophical concept of idealism. I'm far more interested in the former. Whether one has romantic expectations, demanding comfort zones or ambitous goals seems largely independent of whether one thinks ideas or matter to be the source of human experience. Non of the disambiguations seem to apply. What am I looking for?

From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:

 Idealist \I*de"al*ist\, n. [Cf. F. id['e]aliste.]
    1. One who idealizes; one who forms picturesque fancies; one
       given to romantic expectations.
 
    2. One who holds the doctrine of idealism.

Yeah, I'm with you. That's what most people think when they call someone an 'idealist'... and none of the disambiguations DO seem to apply to that.

Why don't we just create a separate page or at least a section on this other form of idealism. I don't know what it should be called, but it should definitely be given proper treatment as one of the philosophical "ism"s. Frankly, idealism in the common sense is actually far more logical to be bound to the name. Idealism in the old philosophical sense should probably have a different name. Medevilenemy 23:18, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Why don't we use the democratic method and put it to a vote? If "most people think" that Idealism is forming picturesque fancies and having romantic expectations, then that should be the only accepted meaning. Then we could also vote on begging the question. Does the majority think that it means "raising the question" or does it think that it means "presupposing what you are trying to prove"? How about the words color, flavor, and spin? Voting would get rid of the ambiguities of the word "Idealism" as well as of all other words and phrases that designate more than one concept.Lestrade 17:33, 14 September 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

Let's be a little sympathetic to the uninitiated. There is a lot in common between what most people would call "Idealism" and what philosophers call "idealism," and what people typically think can actually help them get a grasp on what we're up to. When we call somebody an "idealist" we typically mean that that person believes in a way that things "ought" to be--a fantasy, a better world, utopia, or "romantic expectations." Even coming at this from a scholarly angle we have some stuff to work with--it's hardly an accident that Romanticism (the literary movement, esp. as it flourished in Germany around the same time as these philosophies were) and utopianism (Marx) are bound up with Kant, Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte. But in a simpler sense, we can point to a similarity here: for the idealist--especially Kant, but perhaps more clearly Hegel--something BEYOND the immediate world is the driving force that works IN the immediate world. And it is because we are aware of that transcendent "ideal" that we handle the "real" as we do. Thus many an idealist emphasizes how this "ought"--an "ideal"--works to change the real (through us, through morality, through consciousness, through history, through revolution, etc.). To cash this out, someone whom nonphilosophers would call an idealist does that sort of thing very explicitly: they focus on something beyond the world as it is given and get their meaning there; they aren't satisfied with things as they are.

I would stay away from contrasting idealism with "pragmatism"--it's a whole 'nother philosophical ball of wax. And in the above respects at least, pragmatism is very similar to idealism.

[edit] Mentalistic Monism

Would this not be a better title for this article? --Who123 13:07, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

If someone wanted information on idealism, why would they look up mentalistic monism? What has monism to do with idealism?Lestrade 00:52, 13 September 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

[edit] TOC

Shouldn't the TOC be on the left? --SECurtisTX | talk 16:32, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I like the page

I don't know if my 2 cents belong here, but I have to say that I like the page. Whatever its merits, it's a great portal to all the other wiki info on philosophical idealism. And, thanks to Kant, idealism is today the orthodox view in metaphysics.

That would have been true 100 years ago, but materialism rules today, among those philosophers who still go in for metaphsyics

Even scientific materialists buy into the idea that the experienced world - stones, trees, cats, etc. - is a mental construct.

into the idea that it is a re-construction, a mental model, perhaps. But that is not idealism..1Z 14:00, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

(perhaps that's the statement of the subject's importance that the earlier flag, that said the page was going to be deleted, was calling for.) I agree with the idea of having a disambiguation page, for those interested in other senses of 'Idealism'; and perhaps retitling this one 'Philosophical idealism'. georgedance04@yahoo.ca

??? Is it normal practice here to edit others' comments on the discussion page? Why, when one can simply add one's own comments as a new edit? I'm a bit surprised that this person's got me contradicting myself. georgedance04@yahoo.ca, 26 Feb. 07

[edit] Opening is worthless

The opening sentences are hopeless:

Idealism is a class of positions in ontology and epistemology. (maybe, but why a class of positions?)

Idealism as an epistemological position asserts that everything we experience is of a mental nature. (isn't that metaphysics?)

That is, we can only have direct, immediate knowledge of the contents of our mind. (that is phenomenalism)

We can never directly know or experience an external object itself (again, phenomenalism).

As an ontological position Idealism asserts either that only minds and the objects of mind exist, or that everything is composed of mental realities (e.g., thoughts, feelings, perceptions, ideas, or will). (Sounds like epistemological idealism again)

Actually, epistemological idealism is a position in ontology. It says that all objects except for minds are exclusively noetic. It does not discuss experience, and need not. Not2plato 16:57, 9 February 2007 (UTC) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Not2plato (talk • contribs) 16:56, 9 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Alternative Phrasing

Would it not be more appropriate to rephrase? :

Note that this contrast between idealism and materialism is approximately as to whether the substance of the world is at base mental or physical — it has nothing to do with thinking that things should be idealized, or with coveting goods.)

As:

Note that this contrast between idealism and materialism is approximately as to whether the substance of the world is at base meta-physical or physical — it has nothing to do with thinking that things should be idealized, or with coveting goods.)