Philosophy Now Forum

All Philosophies are Reducible to Realism vs Idealism
Realism [philosophical or metaphysical] is an ideology driven by an evolutionary default of a sense-of-externalness which insist reality and things exist absolutely independent of the human conditions, i.e. they exist regardless of whether there are humans or not.
Antirealismwhich emerged later opposes and rejects the ideology of realism[p].

Do you agree with the dichotomy below;

Despite the large number of philosophical schools and subtle nuances between many, all philosophies are said to fall into one of two primary categories, which are defined in contrast to each other: idealism and materialism.[a]

The basic proposition of these two categories pertains to the nature of reality—the primary distinction between them is the way they answer two fundamental questions: "what does reality consist of?" and "how does it originate?"

To idealists, spirit or mind or the objects of mind (ideas) are primary, and matter secondary.

To materialists, matter is primary, and mind or spirit or ideas are secondary—the product of matter acting upon matter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism#Overview

Note for Idealism [antirealism];
In philosophy, idealism is the diverse group of metaphysical philosophies which asserts that "reality" is in some way indistinguishable or inseparable from human understanding and/or perception; that it is in some sense mentally constituted, or otherwise closely connected to ideas.

• Types of Idealism
  2 Classical idealism
  • 2.1 Pre-Socratic philosophy
    2.2 Platonism and neoplatonism
  3 Christian philosophy
  4 Chinese philosophy
  5 Idealism in Vedic and Buddhist thought
  • 5.1 Indian philosophy
    5.2 Buddhist philosophy
  6 Subjective idealism
  7 Transcendental idealism
  8 Objective idealism
  • 8.1 Absolute idealism
    8.2 Actual idealism
    8.3 Pluralistic idealism

"Materialism" is Philosophical Materialism aka Philosophical Realism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_realism
There are many perspectives to Philosophical realism but they are all reducible to its main principle as defined above.

The point here is whichever philosophical stance one take, it is reducible to either Realism [Philosophical] or Idealism [antirealism].

Thus to debate effectively one must be able to reduce one's "form" of philosophy to its "substance" else it would be mess to tangle with merely the varied "forms" and not dealing with its roots the substance.

Agree?

My preference in term of idealism is Kant's Transcendental Idealism which is also represented by Empirical Realism.

What about Pragmatism?
Pragmatism rejects mirroring reality therefore is anti-Philosophical Realism.
I believe pragmatism is a form of Idealism-in-general [like pragmatic idealism] in the sense that it is interdependent within the human conditions [i.e. not independent of it].
viewtopic.php?p=633590#p633590

Simon Blackburn - Realism vs. Anti-realism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y_NidtLVGo

Scientific Realism and Anti-Realism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQd44iXyDKM&t=113s

Agree?

No. Utterly false. This belief is due to the total lack of understanding of the Western tradition which is the dominate norm in the analytic philosophy departments of the English speaking countries.

Correct (extremely coarsely and loosely) is:

Form (morphe) and substance (hypostasis, natura, ousia) mean almost the same thing. Namely, the object of the understanding rather than the eyes or the corresponding individual source of motion as is nature in Aristotle and Aquinas et al. Hylomorphism is the split position between atomism and formalism (or the idea, morphe) which is synthisised by Thomas and becomes the dominate idea in the universities until it starts coming under fire in Descartes' time (in the wake of Galileo), withers and is destroyed by Darwin and disappears after Nietzsche and Simmel.

The question here is which is the main source of investigation (aiming to know, or at knowledge/wisdom), the intelligence, as represented chiefly by speech, "-ology", or experience, as it builds into chunks called emperic (that which is learnable chiefly by imitation, as a trade is).

Those are theories about what being is, what the thing we call being is. They total three answers (provided one exclude the answers which hadn't yet reached he highest point of abstraction such as: "Being is water," and so forth).

Idealism is the theory of Kant, and doesn't exist in the ancient world in any form (nothing remotely resembling it exists in antiquity, since the ancients assume the human being is an animal). Idealism corresponds in a decayed way to the talk about "consciousness" in the modern discussion with the addition of the phrase "conditions for any possible experience" which refer back to the second Kantiansm of the end of the 19th century which informed the British reformers such as Whitehead and Russel (and become the odd extremest school in the drunken Weimar Goethe University.)

Idealism is a theory about what experience and causality are. It then splits into a theory of "realism" (Marx) and a theory of the absolute idea (Hegel), Kant was originally a so-called "Kritical" half-way house of the extremes. In addition the school of Schopenhauer opens the existentialist nihilism and the school following Schleiermacher gave impetus to the historical consciousness which dominates the current university in connection to ethnology or anthropology (as post-Boas theory of the cultural differences).

Then there are the theories which begin from phenomenology. They posit the claim that non-dogmatic (non-Analytical) and non-superstitious (superstition corresponds to Realism) investigation is possible. Their highest point is the Historicist philosophy of Being of Martin Heidegger.

You are using a whole lot of words to say nothing different to Hume.

Read/Interpret "That which is real" as "that which is".
Read/Interpret "That which is ideal" as "that which ought be".

TheVisionofEr wrote: ↑Mon Mar 02, 2020 9:27 pm

Agree?

No. Utterly false. This belief is due to the total lack of understanding of the Western tradition which is the dominate norm in the analytic philosophy departments of the English speaking countries.

Correct (extremely coarsely and loosely) is:

Form (morphe) and substance (hypostasis, natura, ousia) mean almost the same thing. Namely, the object of the understanding rather than the eyes or the corresponding individual source of motion as is nature in Aristotle and Aquinas et al. Hylomorphism is the split position between atomism and formalism (or the idea, morphe) which is synthisised by Thomas and becomes the dominate idea in the universities until it starts coming under fire in Descartes' time (in the wake of Galileo), withers and is destroyed by Darwin and disappears after Nietzsche and Simmel.

The question here is which is the main source of investigation (aiming to know, or at knowledge/wisdom), the intelligence, as represented chiefly by speech, "-ology", or experience, as it builds into chunks called emperic (that which is learnable chiefly by imitation, as a trade is).

Those are theories about what being is, what the thing we call being is. They total three answers (provided one exclude the answers which hadn't yet reached he highest point of abstraction such as: "Being is water," and so forth).

Idealism is the theory of Kant, and doesn't exist in the ancient world in any form (nothing remotely resembling it exists in antiquity, since the ancients assume the human being is an animal). Idealism corresponds in a decayed way to the talk about "consciousness" in the modern discussion with the addition of the phrase "conditions for any possible experience" which refer back to the second Kantiansm of the end of the 19th century which informed the British reformers such as Whitehead and Russel (and become the odd extremest school in the drunken Weimar Goethe University.)

Idealism is a theory about what experience and causality are. It then splits into a theory of "realism" (Marx) and a theory of the absolute idea (Hegel), Kant was originally a so-called "Kritical" half-way house of the extremes. In addition the school of Schopenhauer opens the existentialist nihilism and the school following Schleiermacher gave impetus to the historical consciousness which dominates the current university in connection to ethnology or anthropology (as post-Boas theory of the cultural differences).

Then there are the theories which begin from phenomenology. They posit the claim that non-dogmatic (non-Analytical) and non-superstitious (superstition corresponds to Realism) investigation is possible. Their highest point is the Historicist philosophy of Being of Martin Heidegger.

Don't get your point;

Note idealism is defined as [in the OP] ;

• In philosophy, idealism is the diverse group of metaphysical philosophies which asserts that "reality" is in some way indistinguishable or inseparable from human understanding and/or perception; that it is in some sense mentally constituted, or otherwise closely connected to ideas.

Do you agree with the above definition?
If not, you have to bring your own definition or counter the above definition as false.

If you agree, then when you mentioned Aristotle and Aquinas et al, you have to justify why their theories do not belong to idealism or realism?
For example Aristotle's substance theory is definitely realism and not idealism.

Idealism is the theory of Kant, and doesn't exist in the ancient world in any form (nothing remotely resembling it exists in antiquity, since the ancients assume the human being is an animal).

Why not, Protagoras and Heraclitus in the BCE days in Greek were idealists, i.e. philosophical anti-realist.

Btw, Kant is a Transcendental Idealist but at the same time a Empirical Realist which are both classified within Philosophical Anti-Realism.

The OP stated;

• ALL philosophies are said to fall into one of two primary categories, which are defined in contrast to each other: idealism and materialism.

The above is true but you have to research wide and think deep philosophically to understand the above claim.

If one can verified and justified ALL philosophies are reducible to two main issues, that would be easier to master philosophy, don't you think so.
It is the same with Science and other knowledge, where the full range of knowledge is reduce to its root elements.

In philosophy, idealism is the diverse group of metaphysical philosophies which asserts that "reality" is in some way indistinguishable or inseparable from human understanding and/or perception; that it is in some sense mentally constituted, or otherwise closely connected to ideas.

What you mean to say is that in the defective view of the contemporary text-book analytic philosophy departments of the Anglo-American universities...

Plato and Aristotle speak without technical terms in most cases. Idea or eidos in koine or daily Greek means the “outward look.” I translate, the kind of thing. Plato has several theories about kinds of things. Not about “ideas.” No Greek ever imagined that the world was due to human perception because they regarded humans as animals in a world. The closest thing to your meaning is that they considered that one could make a mistake and take one’s dream for an experience of daily life and thereby showed that daily life was a standard that the dream could be distinguished from. It’s not clear to me what the status of a dream was for the Greeks. But, I am fairly confident they did not regard dreams as features of noos or mind (Heraclitus speaks darkly of "kindling a fire in the night"). Or, more clearly, they did not do what Kant was the first to do, understand the mind as an active force. Mind is passive, receptive of reality, in all Western thought prior to Kant.

For example Aristotle's substance theory is definitely realism and not idealism.

Absolutely false. Substance is a translation of the Greek ousia, of BEING, which surely exists independently of humans so far as all Greeks were concerned. As does the whole region of mind in contradistinction to the region of phusis or external nature. Now, that it requires someone to be there to understand some matter or to see some thing is obvious. It’s still there whether seen or understood, or not seen or not understood on the view of all the Greeks inclusive. they don't even consider the question that you falsely assume to be coextensive with human understanding. The question is wholly alien to the Greeks.

“The above is true but you have to research wide and think deep philosophically to understand the above claim.”

My friend, you don’t grasp the utter irony of someone rehearsing the dogmas of the analytic philosophy department of the Anglo-American countries, a tiny and foolish school of thought, telling a serious student of philosophy this.

Why not, Protagoras and Heraclitus in the BCE days in Greek were idealists, i.e. philosophical anti-realist.

No they weren't. Not on your definition. Protagoras is talking about “opinions.” The chief subject matter of Plato is the possibility of ascent from the doxa or “opinions” to the truth (the issue of the Cave analogy). His question is whether a science of the Good is possible. Protagoras says: Each man has his own Good (which is to say, by the modern standard, objectively). If anything, the view of Protagoras is closer to modern atheism.

------

One should keep in mind that Idealism is often said as a political statement. Precisely to say that the view of Aristotle and Plato about the Good is too high, and should be brought down lower. It has nothing to do with the question of the status of matter or a theory of the objects. You know, the view of someone like Benjamin Netanyahu is avowedly Realist by contrast.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Wed Jun 10, 2020 3:40 pm Realism/antirealism is a nonsensical sideboob issue with
-one camp arguing that reality is real-real-reality and
-the other that it is not-real-but-feels-reality.

Both are descriptions of a world which will behave in exactly the way the world does behave, making them irrelevant to all matters and doubly so to this one where they wouldn't matter even if they predicted different worlds.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Wed Jun 10, 2020 2:16 pm The distinction between realism and antirealism is just a matter of how to conceptualise the underlying fabric of all things. the important point is that nothing about the world as we live in it would be different either way. That means how we think about facts, how we describe the concept, none of that would change either. And that makes it a pointless diversion which you engage in when you have outwitted yourself. It is a scoping error, there is nothing riding on realism/antirealism, if you think it changes anything to do with any moral argument you have misunderstood something very fundamental.

You can try the same trick with one of the other irrelavent issues if you like. You can try and say that there has to moral fact because there is free will, or that there cannot be moral fact because there is no free will, just as you can claim that antirealism 'proves' either case. I'm going to show disdain for such things simply because those debates only relate to themselves, they have no bearing any other issue because the world would always be no different either way.

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Mon Mar 02, 2020 11:01 am ...

I wonder whether people who are lost in the realism vs anti-realism issue, even understand that human consciousness is representational? That there is a model of the world in our head, and we experience that model.

Reality is NOT independent of the human mind; reality is NOT material.
Reality is NOT indistinguishable from human understanding and/or perception; reality is NOT mentally constituted.

Atla wrote: ↑Thu Jun 11, 2020 11:10 am I wonder whether people who are lost in the realism vs anti-realism issue, even understand that human consciousness is representational? That there is a model of the world in our head, and we experience that model.

Reality is NOT independent of the human mind; reality is NOT material.
Reality is NOT indistinguishable from human understanding and/or perception; reality is NOT mentally constituted.

I wonder whether people understand what the purpose/utility of mentally constructed representational models is.

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Thu Jun 11, 2020 8:00 am

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Wed Jun 10, 2020 3:40 pm Realism/antirealism is a nonsensical sideboob issue with
-one camp arguing that reality is real-real-reality and
-the other that it is not-real-but-feels-reality.

Both are descriptions of a world which will behave in exactly the way the world does behave, making them irrelevant to all matters and doubly so to this one where they wouldn't matter even if they predicted different worlds.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Wed Jun 10, 2020 2:16 pm The distinction between realism and antirealism is just a matter of how to conceptualise the underlying fabric of all things. the important point is that nothing about the world as we live in it would be different either way. That means how we think about facts, how we describe the concept, none of that would change either. And that makes it a pointless diversion which you engage in when you have outwitted yourself. It is a scoping error, there is nothing riding on realism/antirealism, if you think it changes anything to do with any moral argument you have misunderstood something very fundamental.

You can try the same trick with one of the other irrelavent issues if you like. You can try and say that there has to moral fact because there is free will, or that there cannot be moral fact because there is no free will, just as you can claim that antirealism 'proves' either case. I'm going to show disdain for such things simply because those debates only relate to themselves, they have no bearing any other issue because the world would always be no different either way.

Don't drag me into this stupid fucking thread.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Thu Jun 11, 2020 4:26 pm

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Thu Jun 11, 2020 8:00 am

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Wed Jun 10, 2020 3:40 pm Realism/antirealism is a nonsensical sideboob issue with
-one camp arguing that reality is real-real-reality and
-the other that it is not-real-but-feels-reality.

Both are descriptions of a world which will behave in exactly the way the world does behave, making them irrelevant to all matters and doubly so to this one where they wouldn't matter even if they predicted different worlds.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Wed Jun 10, 2020 2:16 pm The distinction between realism and antirealism is just a matter of how to conceptualise the underlying fabric of all things. the important point is that nothing about the world as we live in it would be different either way. That means how we think about facts, how we describe the concept, none of that would change either. And that makes it a pointless diversion which you engage in when you have outwitted yourself. It is a scoping error, there is nothing riding on realism/antirealism, if you think it changes anything to do with any moral argument you have misunderstood something very fundamental.

You can try the same trick with one of the other irrelavent issues if you like. You can try and say that there has to moral fact because there is free will, or that there cannot be moral fact because there is no free will, just as you can claim that antirealism 'proves' either case. I'm going to show disdain for such things simply because those debates only relate to themselves, they have no bearing any other issue because the world would always be no different either way.

Don't drag me into this stupid fucking thread.

Just say you don't have any rational counter to the above.

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Fri Jun 12, 2020 4:38 am

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Thu Jun 11, 2020 4:26 pm Don't drag me into this stupid fucking thread.

Just say you don't have any rational counter to the above.

I explained my position on the subject quite adequately in the other topics where I explicitly told you this topic is not important.

And I also don't need a lecture in effective debate from somebody who never manages to make their premises support their conclusion. This thread being a case in point....

Your claim proceedes from:
"all philosophies are said to fall into one of two primary categories"
And then progresses through:
"whichever philosophical stance one take, it is reducible to either Realism [Philosophical] or Idealism"
To a conclusion...
"Thus to debate effectively one must be able to reduce one's "form" of philosophy to its "substance" else it would be mess to tangle with merely the varied "forms" and not dealing with its roots the substance."

You have a distinctly faulty premise in this case, merely being descriptively assigned to one of two categories doesn't make something reducible to that category. Cats fall into two categories: those that purr, and those that growl. Simba the Lion cannot be reduce to his growl, and my cat Mister GreasyButtsex does not reduce to his purr.

And you have an arguably faulty one as well, the grouping into idealist and materialist schools is only really relevant when materialism and idealism are relevant. But they don't matter all that much to me, and many others don't care either, you get the same world where action precedes reaction and so on either way, so it's not really something that everyone has to obsess over.

But the worst thing here, is that your conclusion is unsupported by its premises yet again. If your premises had been good enough to demonstrate that a reduction to two schools were possible, that alone wouldn't justify any assumption that it was required, or that it was useful. Some wishy washy nonsense about roots won't do that for you.


I can't be taking lectures in what philosophy is all about from somebody whose work is as shoddy as yours.

Atla wrote:
I wonder whether people who are lost in the realism vs anti-realism issue even understand that human consciousness is representational ?
That there is a model of the world in our head and we experience that model

There is an external mind independent reality that exists outside our head
There is an internal mind dependent model of reality that exists inside our head
The model in our head is also a part of the reality that exists outside our head when viewed from a Gods eye perspective

So from an objective perspective [ the only true perspective ] we are also a part of reality
Reality is therefore not just something OUT THERE but also something IN HERE [ taps head ]

From my perspective everyones internal mind is a part of the reality OUT THERE
But from their perspective my internal mind is also a part of the reality OUT THERE

This is why reality must be treated as a single albeit ever changing entity in order to avoid confusing the internal with the external
Also as human beings we like to compartmentalise and put things into boxes but reality is just one continuous stream of existence

However in the grand scheme of things we know so little about reality
Trying to fully understand it is simply beyond us but we do what we can

Like all species we will eventually become extinct and so that will be the exact point at which our knowledge will stop
Currently the Standard Model Of Particle Physics can only account for a mere four per cent of the observable Universe
And so we cannot explain ninety six per cent of what we can actually observe and a hundred per cent of what we cannot observe
We just do what we can - the Universe will eventually outlive us by many orders of magnitude - while we will be less than atoms

Atla wrote:
Reality is NOT independent of the human mind reality is NOT material
Reality is NOT indistinguishable from human understanding and / or perception reality is NOT mentally constituted

Reality is BOTH inside and outside the human mind depending on perspective / reality is material [ if it was immaterial then it would not exist ]
Reality is BOTH indistinguishable and distinguishable from human understanding although ultimately everything is connected to everything else
Perception reality IS mentally constituted because perception IS mental [ how can it not be ]

Skepdick wrote:
I wonder whether people understand what the purpose / utility of mentally constructed representational models is

The purpose of such models is to map as accurately as possible inside our head the mind independent reality that is outside of them
It will never be perfect although from a Gods eye perspective there is actually no distinction between the external and the internal

Atla wrote:
I wonder whether people who are lost in the realism vs anti-realism issue even understand that human consciousness is representational ?

Or more importantly that reality can only be truly understood from a Gods eye perspective
For to truly understand something it has to be studied from the outside rather than the inside
And so any study of reality will always be compromised but such limitation has to be accepted