1. Michael Lacewing enquiries@alevelphilosophy.co.uk
Idealism: objections
Michael Lacewing

2. Unperceived objects
When objects are not being perceived, then they don’t exist!
There was a young man who said, God
must find it exceedingly odd
when He finds that the tree
continues to be
when no one’s about in the Quad.

3. The response Dear Sir, your astonishment’s odd,
I’m always about in the Quad.
And that’s why the tree
continues to be
since observed by, yours faithfully, God.
Ideas we perceive are not just caused by God’s mind, but exist in God’s mind
Though not perceived by God.

4. Illusions How can idealism explain illusions?
Since we perceive ideas, there must be an idea that corresponds to the illusion.
We aren’t misperceiving in an illusion, e.g. a ‘crooked’ pencil
But we make a mistake if we think it would still be crooked out of water
To mark this, we rightly say, ‘The pencil looks crooked’.

5. Hallucinations What about hallucinations?
Hallucinations are dim, irregular, and confused
The idea perceived is part of the order of nature (coherent reality)
The idea is caused by the mind of God.
Objection: these only mark differences of degree, but hallucination is different in kind from perception
Berkeley can agree: the third criteria marks a difference in kind (if there is one)
And these are criteria for how we can tell, not what hallucinations are.

6. Scientific investigation
In science, we manipulate objects to gain new perceptual experiences (e.g. dissection). How does idealism explain what is happening?
The thing we see, e.g. under the microscope, is not the same thing as seen with the naked eye – each idea is distinct
Language functions to pick out bundles of ideas that are typically connected
Science doesn’t investigate the ‘true nature’ of some unified object.

7. Scientific investigation
Physical objects, as ideas, can’t cause anything, e.g. the heart can’t pump blood
Science doesn’t discover causal relations between physical objects.
Science investigates the regularities in our experiences, the connections between them.

8. Objectivity
How can you and I see the same tree when the idea in your mind is numerically distinct from the idea in my mind?
The ideas are exactly resembling – it’s the same tree in that sense.
This isn’t enough: there is only one tree
We both perceive a copy of the idea of the tree in God’s mind.
Objective space and time exist in the mind of God.

9. Solipsism Solipsism: the view that only oneself, one’s mind, exists.
If everything that I perceive is mind-dependent, do I have any reason to think that anything exists apart from my mind?
In fact, does anything exist apart from ideas? Does even my mind exist as a thing?

10. Reply
The mind is that which (actively) perceives, thinks, and wills, while ideas are passive.
I am aware of myself as capable of this activity.
Therefore, I am not my ideas, but a mind.
Being a mind myself, I have a ‘notion’ of what a mind is.
Therefore, it is possible that other minds exist.
My perceptions don’t originate in my mind.
Therefore, they are caused by some other mind.
The complexity, regularity, etc., of my experience indicates that this mind is God.
(I can also infer from experience that other minds exist.)

11. On God
(The existence and role of God is not assumed but reached by argument.)
What I perceive is in my mind, not God’s mind.
God can’t have the sorts of perceptual experiences I have
God doesn’t perceive as I do, and does not undergo sensations, such as pain.
The ordinary objects of my perception change and go out of existence, but God’s mind is said to be unchanging and eternal.
Therefore, what I perceive couldn’t be part of God’s mind.

12. Response What I perceive is a copy of the idea in God’s mind.
The ideas of physical objects exist in God’s mind not as perceptions, but as part of God’s understanding. So while God doesn’t feel pain, he knows what it is for us to feel pain.
The whole of creation exists in God’s mind, eternally.
What I perceive, which changes, is what God wills me to perceive, and ‘things…may properly be said to begin their existence…when God decreed they should become perceptible to intelligent creatures’.