Idealism

Summary

Metaphysical idealism posits that the physical aspects of our world depend on mental facts, contrasting with physicalism, which claims mental facts depend on physical ones. Both views are forms of monism, but idealism seeks to uphold consciousness without reducing it to more basic elements like brain states. The chapter argues that idealism is a more appealing philosophical stance than commonly perceived in contemporary discussions about the mind.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Metaphysical idealism is the mirror-image of physicalism about the mental: where physicalists contend that the mental facts of our world supervene on the physical facts (but not vice versa), idealists contend that the physical facts of our world supervene on the mental facts (but not vice versa). Like physicalism, idealism is a kind of monism. According to idealists, the fundamental features of our world (or at least its fundamental contingent features) are all of one kind—the mental kind. Unlike physicalists, however, idealists try to achieve monism without reducing consciousness to something ostensibly more basic, or identifying consciousness with something that we previously didn’t realize was consciousness (like brain states). This chapter attempts to defend idealism as a more attractive position than is often thought in current philosophy of mind.