this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024
82 points (84.2% liked)
Asklemmy
43978 readers
590 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Are you a metaphysical idealist? That's amazing, I've never actually met one in the wild!
I'm just trying to be careful in my wording and assumptions! I'm not denying "external reality," but I'm definitely questioning materialist metaphysics.
Though maybe that does make me a metaphysical idealist.
I read George Berkeley in college and thought he was completely unique, he straight up denied that there was any such thing as the physical world. Complete opposite of the metaphysical materialist ideas that are predominant today.
How does he explain the consistency of sensory input, which is also confirmed by other minds?
Basically, he considers everyone to be self-aware ideas in the mind of God. The world we perceive is essentially just the contents of God's thoughts.
Okay, yeah that actually sounds reasonable to me. Our thoughts are some aspect of the true nature of reality, so the idea that it's all God's mind is pretty good. What's considered his essential book? Is there a particular book or essay where he elucidates this?
Oh man, it's been a minute since my college philosophy classes! Let me poke around and see if I can find what his major works are again.
Edit: I believe it was in his Principles of Human Knowledge and his Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous. Wikipedia also mentions a work called An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision, but I don't recall having read anything from that one.
Thanks!