These days, metaphysical idealism is an immediate turn-off for most secular, scientifically minded people, who start to think of gods and spirits, maybe even Ouija boards. I think that’s a shame, because it’s a prejudice that results from some straightforward misunderstandings—misunderstandings which have greatly benefited the fortunes of idealism’s ancient metaphysical rival, materialism. To understand the potential social benefits of idealism you need to be able to take the view seriously, so let’s start by clearing away some of those misunderstandings.
Firstly, idealism has no commitment to gods or spirits, only to the existential primacy of conscious experience—or, at least, that’s the kind of idealism I’m talking about, there are others. The 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was no less ardent in his commitment to atheism than to idealism. I’m not denying that if you’re a believer then you’re better off with idealism than materialism—a physical God is a weird idea—but my point is simply that the two don’t necessarily need to go together. I think the idealist interpretation of reality is the best we’ve got, and I have no religious beliefs and do not believe in anything supernatural; never have, and unless something very unexpected happens, never will.
Secondly, materialism is not science, it’s not even close—materialism provides a metaphysical interpretation of what science tells us about the world, just as idealism does. Materialism originated in the 5th century B.C. in Greece and India, back in the days when you were allowed to define your own “atoms,” the materialist’s building blocks of reality. Materialism and idealism are competing metaphysical interpretations of our reality, as are dualism, panpsychism, and all the other more esoteric options. Maybe you’re suspicious of metaphysical theorizing in general (in which case I think that on closer examination you’d find your suspicions were ungrounded)—but in that case, you should be just as suspicious of materialism as of idealism.
Thirdly, idealism is not saying that solid things, like rocks and pebbles, are wispy and immaterial things, akin to clouds or puffs of smoke. For a start, that comparison doesn’t even make sense, since clouds and puffs of smoke exist in space, and according to idealists, experience doesn’t. And if idealism really were saying that rocks and pebbles are clouds of immaterial stuff, then it would be making a scientific hypothesis, one which would need to be empirically tested. Idealism simply isn’t in that kind of business.
Okay then, so what is idealism saying about rocks and pebbles? It’s saying we are part of a universe of pure conscious experience, and that believing in the physical existence of rocks and pebbles allows humans to get their bearings in that ocean of sentience. Rocks and pebbles are a way of making sense of experience, they are posits within an explanatory model—the experience exists, it’s independently there, and we understand it by thinking of it as experiences of things like rocks and pebbles. Rocks and pebbles don’t independently exist, but the nature of experience is such that they seem to—that’s why the explanatory model works, that’s why we came up with a specifically physical model.
The materialists instead say that the rocks and pebbles independently exist, but then they have a problem with what to say about experience, a problem they’ll never solve, in my view—instead they’ll endlessly oscillate between the two nonsensical options of saying it doesn’t exist or that it mysteriously arises from the brain. But that’s another matter—if you want to know what convinces me of idealism you can look at my book, Philosophy in a Technological World: GODS AND TITANS (the warring gods and titans of the story I tell in that book are idealism and materialism, by the way). What I want to concentrate on here are some possible benefits of a societal turn to idealism.
The main benefit I’m going to talk about, one which might have all kinds of knock-on effects, is that idealism tells us we live in a reality consisting of all we ever really cared about: experience. What do I mean by saying that experience is all we care about? And why would believing that have societal benefits? To start with the first question, consider the following. Three things that people might very seriously care about are: owning a new Italian sportscar, becoming a famous YouTuber, and not getting seriously ill. But suppose you knew that the moment you first climbed into your shiny new Lamborghini Huracá (yellow), you would fall into the most terrible depression ever, one that would last for as long as you owned the car—you wouldn’t want it then, because all you ever really wanted was the experiences associated with owning it, elation, pride, excitement, that kind of thing, none of which is available when you are seriously depressed.
The same applies to becoming a famous YouTuber—if it made you feel awful then you’d regret it immediately. And in the case of getting seriously ill, it’s even more obvious—you don’t want the pain, you don’t want the fear, and you certainly don’t want your experiences to be brought to an end by death. Experience, I maintain, is all we really care about: love, contentment, excitement, interest, satisfaction, tingles, all that kind of business. And there is nothing remotely selfish about that either, since we can care about each other’s feelings, love would be impossible otherwise.
Our attraction to experience makes perfect sense, according to idealism, because we’re experiential beings. But even if that’s true, why does it matter? Why would being more in touch with the metaphysically ultimate nature of reality benefit us practically? Well, the way I see it is that if the idealist view is indeed correct, but you don’t believe it, perhaps because you’re a materialist, then you’ll end up with a strange mismatch between what you say you believe and what you act as if you believe. You’ll be someone who spends their life in pursuit of experiences even though experience has little or no place in their conception of reality.
Ask most people about their conception of reality and their thoughts quickly turn to outer space or infinitesimally small particles—experience completely drops out of the picture. But then, after they stop thinking about “reality” and return to their everyday lives, experience once again becomes their main focus.
I don’t think letting our officially sanctioned conception of reality become so completely out of kilter with our lives is a good idea. To be fair, it may be unavoidable, because materialism might be true even though science cannot explain experience at present—but I don’t think this is the case. But either way, the societal effect of this mismatch is that general, philosophical reflection on the nature of the reality you’ve found yourself born into has been seriously disincentivised. Reality has become something for experts to concern themselves with, something interesting to hear about on science podcasts, perhaps, but remote from your everyday concerns with experience. So, people become less inclined to actively, creatively and critically reflect on their existential situation, that is, they become less philosophical.
Now, suppose that while people were becoming less philosophical, their technological capabilities were rapidly developing, and that this development wasn’t directed by a philosophical vision of a desirable human future, but rather by the ingenuity of scientists and technologists making whatever new, previously unmakeable things they could. Is that not essentially the situation we find ourselves in? I think it is, and yet look where our technology is heading, however unintentionally—to experience! Our technological development, driven by the market, is chasing after experience, just as we chase after it in our everyday lives.
We have very rapidly gone from the passive experience of television to the active control over non-natural experience provided by video games; and now virtual reality is developing fast, when they get that right how are we ever going to stay outside of it for long? As these “experience machines” have become better and better, they have taken up more and more of our lives; as far as our younger generations are concerned they seem to be completely taking over. And now we are trying to make autonomous experience machines too, artificial intelligences, because whether through the fog of materialism or just lack of reflection, they seem like created minds—and to be able to create minds suggests godlike control over experience.
These directions of technological travel—natural to us, an idealist would say, but not reflective of any wisdom—have not been decided through philosophical reflection on how we want human life to develop. That is not how it happens at all. What happens is that scientists and technologists compete to make breakthroughs, then the breakthroughs get commercialized and people buy into the new tech—society then benefits from the upsides while trying to deal with the downsides, until the next big tech development comes along.
But think what might happen if idealism starts to catch on. For more and more people, what they care most about is what they consider to be most real. A population like that, of the kind that has not yet existed, would be a lot more philosophical. Imagine yourself believing that idealism is true—if this were a genuine new belief for you, then the world you thought you were familiar with would suddenly seem very odd indeed, you’d think about it a lot! After all, you’ve just realised you’re swimming in that ocean of sentience I spoke of earlier. While you’re trying to get to grips with the enormity of it all, your thoughts will likely spin off in all kinds of new philosophical directions.
As our population becomes increasingly philosophical, thanks to idealism, people could be expected to take much more interest in technological development and how it is being used to shape the human future. They might start taking a view on how technological development ought to be happening, views which might feed into democratic politics. Then, the next thing you know, the human race is coordinating their technological development, which has become firmly focused on refining and improving our experiences, so that there’s more love, beauty, ecstasy, and cleverness around, but less hate, ugliness, boredom and stupidness.
Since we now think we’re experiential beings, identities such as gender and race seem less important, at the ultimate level we know we’re all alike and we find cooperation easier. When we first make contact with extraterrestrials, they remark that humans are a remarkably philosophical species. They’re impressed by the kind of experiences we have and emulate us. Our good influence starts to spread around the galaxy.
This piece originally appeared on the Essentia website.
Check out Dr. Tartaglia’s new book 👇
For a philosopher, a remarkably clear, accessible essay.
Now, let's do some playful exploration of this.
How to communicate the limits of "materialism"?
I joined Bernardo Kastrup's online forum in 2013, about 3 years before he published his first breakthrough public essay. Do you know it was not until 2019, that he fully realized how confused people were about the meaning of the word "matter" in philosophy (even philosophers and physicists were completely confused about it). Let's look at the physicist's definition first, then the everyday person's idea of it, and then step into philosophy
(1) According to physics: Matter is anything that takes up space and can be weighed. In other words, matter has volume and mass.
(2) the everyday meaning; It's what we touch and see and feel in our body and all around us
(3) ?????
Wait a minute, don't philosophers have a definition? Well, just about 100 years ago, after physicists clearly demonstrated that matter was not the ontological fundamental they thought it was (What the heck does that mean? The fundamental "thing" in the universe, from which all else is "made" or from which all is emerged - in other words, the God of the modern secular philosopher).
So they said, "Ok, we're not materialists, we're "physicalists."
But there was a huge problem with this. Nobody could decide what "physical" meant as an ontological primitive (you know, the basic "thing" or "stuff")
I was a member of a naturalist Facebook group for 6 months. I asked only one question: "What does 'physical' mean?" People were outraged by this question, yet nobody could answer it. One philosophy professor was among the most outraged, and yet kept dodging it for 4 months.
I think it was actually about the 5th month in, after another slew of outraged, irrational dodges showed up, the professor stepped up and wrote, "you know, Don is right. nobody has any idea how to define "physical" as the primary stuff of the universe.
I just said, Thank you."
So back to Bernardo. He realized that almost everyone was simply mixing up the three definitions I wrote above of "matter' or "physical". If you try to have a discussion about materialism or physicalism, watch this. If you're confused when you read what you think is a strong argument FOR physicalism, ask yourself - what are they talking about.
Before I move on to major problems with the concept of "idealism," one last suggestion. I wrote back to the professor in the naturalism group and said, "you know, there really is a consistent definition of "physicalism" that works for all the arguments back to the 1920s. It's this: "I have absolutely no idea what the fundamental stuff or basis of the universe is. But as a (scientist, philosopher, atheist, or just plain curmudgeon) I can tell you absolutely for sure, without even one scintilla of the possibility of a doubt: The foundation of the universe is NON conscious, NON sentient, NON intelligent, NON rational.... and, well, you can guess where I'm going with this. i don't even have an idea about how to have an idea about what the basis stuff is, but I can tell you with more certainty than the Pope has about whether he's Catholic, THAT is what the basis of the universe is - NON any of that stuff."
Now, idealism.
I have what may seem to be an unrelated question for you:
Do you have the direct experience that you, YOU, are holding the stars together? That you are responsible for the stability of the so called laws of nature? If you so desired, could you dissemble all the "material" stuff in front of you and reassemble it to what you want?
(In case it wasn't obvious, those were rhetorical questions)
Back when I joined Bernardo's forum 11 years ago, there were about a dozen of us who actually had backgrounds both in theology and philosophy, East as well as West. We tried to tell Bernardo that his "Mind At Large," which evidently has only phenomenal consciousness (meaning, the ultimate has the mental capacity somewhere between a slug and a tadpole), has been thoroughly refuted for well over a century in critiques of Schopenhauer.
Ironically, schopenhauer built his philosophy on the most basic, fundamental and thorough misreading of the Upanishads.
So let's look at the Upanishads (whose outline of the nature of things is wholly consistent with that of the Kabbalah, the greatest Christian and Sufi mystics, much if not most of Tantra, and a great deal of Tibetan and Tantric Buddhism)
Matter is the appearance of SCA (Sat Chit Ananda, Existence-Consciousness-Bliss) to the Supreme Consciousness of the universe (which is infinitely beyond both mind and matter)
Prana or Life is the movement of that same Supreme Conscious Energy
Mind is the principle that provides form to matter and life. In itself, it does not have the capacity for understanding
Vijnana - Gnosis, or as translated by Sri Aurobindo, Supramental Consciousness - is the Isvara, God, Infinite Intelligence, the Word through which all comes into being, which manifests in matter as the stability of laws of nature, in animals as instinct, in humans as understanding, imagination, intuition, inspiration and all forms of genius in general
SCA is the highest the mind can comprehend of this Supreme Reality, which is both infinitely multitudinous and One, and beyond BOTH the One and the Many, both Being and non-Being, and ultimately, as is indicated by the Kabbalistic term G_d, incapable of being understood at all by the human mind.
This is so so so so far beyond "pure conscious experience" as expressed by Kastrup or Schopenhauer.
If you would like to see what is perhaps the most masterful philosophic exposition of this, in India, or perhaps, in all of history, read Sri Aurobindo's "The Life Divine'
On the other hand, you don't need to read any books.
Here's how to realize this directly:
1. Step back entirely from the activity of the body, emotions and mind. You do this unconsciously every night of your life when you go to sleep, so this is not necessarily some terribly advanced contemplative process. You simply need to do it consciously. Your thoughts will come to an utter standstill, and you will be as if you were fully awake in Stage 3 sleep, when the mind is utterly asleep.
2. Open to that Supreme Intelligence, that Supreme Existence Consciousness, Bliss, which is BOTH personal AND impersonal, and ask that you may be shown the nature of things.
As the kids say, "Easy peasy"!