|
|
Idealism, the opposite of materialism, is the belief that matter is non-existent and everything in the world is mental. This immediately leads to the question of "What am I looking at? My monitor is matter!" Not necessarily so. Think of this:What you are getting right now is a visual image of your monitor, a touch image of the chair you are sitting in, a sound image of the fan in your computer, smell image of the room you are in, and a taste image of what you ate last. If you think about it, images are all just thoughts, right? Okay, and thoughts are ideas. So everything in the world are just ideas. If you really think about this concept, you can't really argue against it since it is all true. As for support for idealism, just read the arguments against materialism to get a general idea of what they are. The same goes for arguments against. What I would like to mention now is the different types of idealism. There essentially three different versions of idealism, and I will go from most extreme to the least. The first is solipcism. This viewpoint holds the idea that everything in the universe is the product of your mind. What this leads to is the idea that when you die, everything else disappears since your mind is no longer there to perceive it. This can also lead to the idea that since everything is just ideas in my head, nothing truly exists but what my mind makes exist. So no one really reads this web page, the counter only goes up because my mind makes that number what it is. It also means that when you leave a room, that room and everything in it no longer exist since my mind is no longer perceiving the room and making it exist. I don't think that all solipcists take it this far; I believe some think that there are other minds in the world to perceive things, but when all the minds are gone, the universe is no more. The next level down from this is absolute idealism. It holds a similar viewpoint of solipcism in that everything is perceived by minds and would not exist if a mind is not perceiving it. But absolute idealists believe the there is a mind supreme, sometimes considered God or any other great being, that is continually perceiving the universe, and that is why everything is hear and stays there when you leave the room. It also allows the world to continue when you die since there still will be a mind to keep everything going. The last viewpoint is subjective idealism. This is the most basic idealism. They believe that everything is a product of minds, but they take it no farther. There may or may not be a great being. They also believe everything stays where it is even when you leave the room since those ideas are still there. |