An argument for Idealism

Which notable so-called 'idealist' provided that definition?

Berkeley, Mctaggart, Bradley, etc. Note that "mental stuff" encompasses both minds and their perceptions.

-- Updated May 2nd, 2012, 11:02 am to add the following --

Kant is a transcendental idealist according to dictionary. Now, Kant said that he believes he cannot know what is beyond his five senses. So, I feel it may be debatable. He did not reject materialism, but he did not support it either. Rather, he is unsure. And this gives the reader a mystical feeling, however, his words may be contradictory. Sometimes, he said that he believes that observation is important, other times, he said that five senses are unreal and he believed that ideas are real. Because of his writing is vague or contradictory, it leads to many debates between scholars or scientists talk about him. Einstein loved his work but Einstein did not fully agree with Kant.

Transcendental Idealism basically just means that we can't know how the world really is because our minds structure experience in the form of space and time, plus the categories of understanding. Kant did not believe the world was dependent on minds, which is the essential tenet of an Idealist metaphysic (esse est percipi). In fact, he gave an argument to "prove" that there exists something outside of himself. Transcendental Idealism however did lead to real Idealism. This happened when Fitche came along and debunked the mysterious "things-in-themselves" since if causality is just the way the mind structures experience you cannot use the causal argument for perception anymore. That is, there's no justification for believing there is something "out there" causing you to have your perceptions.

Which notable so-called 'idealist' provided that definition?

Berkeley, Mctaggart, Bradley, etc. Note that "mental stuff" encompasses both minds and their perceptions.

I'll be interested if you have the exact point/statement or reference from their books?

I am aware Russell associated "idealism" with "mental stuff" but I don't agree with his definition. In addition, Berkeley never claimed to be an idealist.

Kant is a transcendental idealist according to dictionary.

Kant is a self-declared transcendental idealist. He is also claimed to be a transcendental realist and empirical realist.

A trivial matter to those uninterested, but Kant himself only regarded empirical realism as a companion of TI. The counterpart pair was transcendental realism and empirical idealism.

CPR, NKS trans, page 345... "By transcendental idealism I mean the doctrine that appearances are to be regarded as being, one and all, representations only, not things in themselves, and that time and space are therefore only sensible forms of our intuition, not determinations given as existing by themselves, nor conditions of objects viewed as things in themselves.

"To this idealism there is opposed a transcendental realism which regards time and space as something given in themselves, independently of our sensibility. The transcendental realist thus interprets outer appearances (their reality being taken as granted) as things-in-themselves, which exist independently of us and of our sensibility, and which are therefore outside us -- the phrase 'outside us' being interpreted in conformity with pure concepts of understanding. It is, in fact, this transcendental realist who afterwards plays the part of empirical idealist. After wrongly supposing that objects of the senses, if they are to be external, must have an existence by themselves, and independently of the senses, he finds that, judged from this point of view, all our sensuous representations are inadequate to establish their reality.

"The transcendental idealist, on the other hand, may be an empirical realist or, as he is called, a dualist [poor translation causing one to infer a substance dualism scenario rather than experience split into extrospective (physical) and introspective (mental) modes]; that is, he may admit the existence of matter without going outside his mere self-consciousness, or assuming anything more than the certainty of his representations, that is, the cogito, ergo sum. For he considers this matter and even its inner possibility to be appearance merely; and appearance, if separated from our sensibility, is nothing. Matter is with him, therefore, only a species of representations (intuition), which are called external, not as standing in relation to objects in themselves external, but because they relate perceptions to the space in which all things are external to one another, while yet the space itself is in us."

Kant is a transcendental idealist according to dictionary.

Kant is a self-declared transcendental idealist. He is also claimed [by others] to be a transcendental realist and empirical realist.

A trivial matter to those uninterested, but Kant himself only regarded empirical realism as a companion of TI. The counterpart pair was transcendental realism and empirical idealism.

Note edited above.

Note the following from Kant CPR. NKS.

From the start, we have declared ourselves in favour of this transcendental idealism; and our doctrine thus removes all difficulty in the way of accepting the existence of matter on the unaided testimony of our mere self-consciousness, or of declaring it to be thereby proved in the same manner as the existence of myself as a thinking being is proved. There can be no question that I am conscious of my representations; these representations and I myself, who have the representa- tions, therefore exist. External objects (bodies), however, are mere appearances, and are therefore nothing but a species of my representations, the objects of which are something only through these representations. Apart from them they are A 371 nothing.

TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM AS THE KEY TO THE SOLUTION OF THE COSMOLOGICAL DIALECTIC

We have sufficiently proved in the Transcendental Aesthetic that everything intuited in space or time, and therefore all objects of any experience possible to us, are nothing but ap- pearances, that is, mere representations, which, in the manner | B f J* in which they are represented, as extended beings, or as series of alterations, have no independent existence outside our thoughts. This doctrine I entitle transcendental idealism? 1

[Scott]

Transcendental Idealism however did lead to real Idealism. This happened when Fitche came along and debunked the mysterious "things-in-themselves" since if causality is just the way the mind structures experience you cannot use the causal argument for perception anymore.

It's almost humorous that some of his contemporaries and later German idealists deemed Kant so negligent or half-senile as to be referring to or being dependent upon the category of causality that was confined to the understanding, and thereby to how events transpired in the natural world. Quite inapplicable to things in themselves and the freedom/autonomy he derived from them, as that brand of causality consisted of cause and effect relations grounded in dependency upon time organizations and spatial appearances. From the Critique of Practical Reason:

"The notion of causality as physical necessity, in opposition to the same notion as freedom, concerns only the existence of things so far as it is determinable in time, and, consequently, as phenomena, in opposition to their causality as things in themselves. [...] Now as this [...] applies to all the causality of [phenomenal] things, so far as their existence is determinable in time, it follows that if this were the mode in which we had also to conceive the existence of these things in themselves, freedom must be rejected as a vain and impossible conception."

Critique of Pure Reason, page 172 - "...the category of cause, by means of which, when I apply it to my sensibility, I determine everything that happens in accordance with the relation which it prescribes, and I do so in time in general. Thus my apprehension of such an event, and therefore the event itself, considered as a possible perception, is subject to the concept of the relation of effects and causes, and so in all other cases. Categories are concepts which prescribe laws a priori to appearances, and therefore to nature, the sum of all appearances."

Kant dispensed enough material in the Critique of Practical Reason, to potentially inspire multiple ways of accounting for the phenomenal / noumenal dyad. The one below concerning the "supersensible side" of a human being, seems to partially feed the double-aspect interpretation view that challenges the classic dual worlds or dual objects affecting each other stuff.

"On the other hand, it is now obvious that this connection is quite possible in relation to our own subject, inasmuch as I know myself to be on the one side as an intelligible [supersensible] being determined by the moral law (by means of freedom), and on the other side as acting in the [empirical] world of sense. It is the concept of freedom alone that enables us to find the unconditioned and intelligible for the conditioned and sensible without going out of ourselves. For it is our own reason that by means of the supreme and unconditional practical law knows that itself and the being that is conscious of this law (our own person) belong to the pure world of understanding, and moreover defines the manner in which, as such, it can be active. In this way it can be understood why in the whole faculty of reason it is the practical reason only that can help us to pass beyond the world of sense and give us knowledge of a supersensible order and connection, which, however, for this very reason cannot be extended further than is necessary for pure practical purposes."

But most of the above is obviously wallowing about in his practical philosophy, rather than the revision of speculative / theoretical reason in the first critique. The growing necessity for things in themselves in Kant's purposes emerged as he pre-maturely touched upon and later fully ventured into likewise reinventing practical reason, which was a different ball-game. There was no need to take anything but an an agnostic or problematic position about things in themselves in the beginning, in the context of theoretical philosophy which was now restricted by Kant to the phenomenal world:

CPR, NKS trans., page P 293 - "Understanding accordingly limits sensibility, but does not thereby extend its own sphere. In the process of warning the latter that it must not presume to claim applicability to things-in-themselves but only to appearances, it does indeed think for itself an object in itself, but only as transcendental object, which is the cause of appearance and therefore not itself appearance, and which can be thought neither as quantity nor as reality nor as substance etc. (because these concepts always require sensible forms in which they determine an object). We are completely ignorant whether it is to be met with in us or outside us, whether it would be at once removed with the cessation of sensibility, or whether in the absence of sensibility it would still remain.

"If we are pleased to name this object noumenon for the reason that its representation is not sensible, we are free to do so. But since we can apply to it none of the concepts of our understanding, the representation remains for us empty, and is of no service except to mark the limits of our sensible knowledge and to leave open a space which we can fill neither through possible experience nor through pure understanding. The critique of this pure understanding, accordingly, does not permit us to create a new field of objects beyond those which may be presented to it as appearances, and so to stray into intelligible worlds; nay, it does not allow of our entertaining even the concept of them."

Jacob S. Beck seems to have played on that in his approach to "defending the *true* Kantian position against 'dogmatic' misinterpretations. Beck rejected any positive role for the thing-in-itself and argued that the object affecting our senses must be phenomenal. Kant's theory of affection is to be understood not in the transcendent sense, as the working of an unknowable thing-in-itself on an unobservable 'I'-in-itself, but only in the empirical sense: A phenomenal body in phenomenal space affects the 'I' of inner sense."

...2) There is a distinction between mind and brain. ...

"Mind" is a metaphor (Thos. Szasz): a word we made up to express what we think is going on in the brain to make us human. There is no mind; ergo, no dualism.

& In the 21st cent. we're still beholden to Occam's razor? I'm new here, but from what I've read, a philosophy discussion consists of telling the kids not to sit on the old furniture.

...2) There is a distinction between mind and brain. ...

"Mind" is a metaphor (Thos. Szasz): a word we made up to express what we think is going on in the brain to make us human. There is no mind; ergo, no dualism.

& In the 21st cent. we're still beholden to Occam's razor? I'm new here, but from what I've read, a philosophy discussion consists of telling the kids not to sit on the old furniture.

Saying the mind is a metaphor and that no such thing truly asserts is just an assertion, not an argument. If you wish to deny mental states, then you're going to have to give an argument against them.

...2) There is a distinction between mind and brain. ...

"Mind" is a metaphor (Thos. Szasz): a word we made up to express what we think is going on in the brain to make us human. There is no mind; ergo, no dualism.

& In the 21st cent. we're still beholden to Occam's razor? I'm new here, but from what I've read, a philosophy discussion consists of telling the kids not to sit on the old furniture.

If 'mind' is a metaphor, what is the literal meaning of 'mind'? True, Szasz was post-modern and he provided a salutary lesson for us to stop adding on stigma to mental illness. But he did nothing else to allay the pain of mental illness which modern drugs do.

Can you give us an example of good reasoning that goes against the rule of Occam's razor? I cannot.Even although I have confessed that my devotion to Spinoza is ultimately based upon faith, like a religion, my reason is based upon the hypothesis that the natural is all there is and transcendent God is an unnecessary hypothesis.