You ask, ” But what would it mean for something to be “mental” if it is “outside the mind”, i.e. outside of every mind or act of mind?””

Well, I didn’t mean the bit after ‘i.e.’, I guess what I meant was ‘outside my mind or act of mind’. This could be cashed out in terms of ideas in the mind of God (or maybe other finite minds) or as Kant does (as mere phenomena); my suggestion is that this is all that the Idealist needs to account for the data that Moore brings up. Esse est percepi doesn’t have to mean that the act of judging is identical to the object of the judgement. All that it means is that the object of the judgement is mind-dependent.

Re the general strategy; I don’t see how Moore gets away with claiming that ordinary language is on his side. Berkeley is insistent that his view does no violence to common sense nor to the common usage of words. In fact, he claims to have the common sense view. I mean after all, it is Moore and company who claim to be empiricists and then go on to say that there is something that can never be seen, tasted, or touched, has no properties, and can’t effect anything in any way…I don’t know about you, but when I hear the common English speaker insist that there ARE material objects they usually just mean that the tables and chairs they see, feel and touch are real and continue to exist when they leave the room…none of this is denied by the Idealist. Who but philosophers would think that they were talking about that other stuff?

Hi Richard,

I tried to post this to your discussion of “refutations of idealism”, but I seem not to have been successful. I don’t know what I did wrong, if anything. Anyhow, thought you might find this worthwhile.

Concerning Moore :

You ask: “What argument has been given that the things outside the mind are not themselves mental?” But what would it mean for something to be “mental” if it is “outside the mind”, i.e. outside of every mind or act of mind? In “The Nature of Judgment” (to which you allude), this is what Moore purports to show. He claims that, in every mental act, there is a distinction between the act itself (thinking, feeling, believing, etc.) and its object, O. This shows that O is not identical to the act of perceiving O. But if O is not identical to the act of perceiving O, then it is hard to see how O’s existence can be identical to the act’s existence, which is what is implied by the Idealist slogan “esse is percipi”–which is Moore’s target in this piece.

And in his later work, like “A Defense of Common Sense” and “Proof of an External World”, he argues (roughly) that meaningfulness depends upon the ordinary meanings of terms, and the ordinary meanings of terms like “hand” and even “philosopher” make them out to be, or to involve, material objects. So, if one agrees that “this is a hand” (as Moore waves his hand through your perceptual field), then one should also agree that “this is a material object”; but if one agrees that there is a material object, then idealism is false.

More generally, his strategy is this: insofar as any utterance, including any denial of commonsense, is meaningful, it must depend upon the ordinary meanings of terms; but the commonsense view of the world is “encoded” into those very meanings, so that it cannot be denied without abandoning meaningfulness. So, idealism cannot be meaningfully articulated and thus should not be believed (although it may nonetheless be true).

See here for details:

http://www.iep.utm.edu/m/moore.htm

Best,

Aaron

Hey, sorry, I seem to have overlooked this comment!!

You say “Hm. Okay, let me see if I’m following the dialectic correctly here. Berkeley, as you’re presenting him, says two key things. First, there are no mind-independent material objects. That is, the traditional (e.g., atomistic) conception of a corporeal object is false or inconsistent or some such.”

Well, I wouldn’t put it that way. What Berkeley, as I understand him, is really after is the claim that scientists and philosophers make that there is some stuff which we never see, which we could not possibly see, called ‘matter’ that ’stand behind’ the appearences we have. The atomistic or corpuscular theory of matter is only at odds with this claim if it is offered as a theory of the kind of stuff just mentioned.

“Instead, he would say that these objects are known as mind-independent. Once we step outside the phenomenal world, we lose knowledge, after all. “

I am not sure about this. There are passages where Kant says that all it could mean to say that there are men on the moon is that ‘in the possible advance of experience’ we would see them (i.e. if we went there we would experience them). This suggests that we do experience the objects as mind-dependent. But I might be wrong about this.

I think that the main point still stands, though, Kant hasn’t refuted idealism in the sense that I mean (the sense above). he interprets as an attack on ‘matter’ as a category of experience and so thinks that it is ridiculous. Of course we apply the category ‘material object’ to some of the things which we experience! But Berekely’s point was that there is no need to go beyond that and insist that there is something ‘behind’ or ‘underneath’ the experiences…The real idealist, in this sense, would deny Kant the noumena (yes, yes, even though we shouldn’t apply the category to them).

Second, we can know the mind-dependent material objects as mind-dependent material objects. That is, not only can we know material objects, but we can know that their existence depends upon our minds.

As I read Kant, he would accept the first, with reservations, and reject the second. He would agree that material objects are only material objects if there is some mind that conceives of them as material objects. However, he would reject the claim that we know these objects as mind-dependent material objects. Instead, he would say that these objects are known as mind-independent. Once we step outside the phenomenal world, we lose knowledge, after all.

If I’ve got that right, then I think the disagreement is clear. Berkeley wants to say that we can know material objects are mind-dependent, while Kant will not accept this. So, even though Kant’s view is probably consistent with Berkeley’s ontology (i.e., noumena could be the ideal objects Berkeley describes), his epistemology is going to lead him to reject the ontology, insofar as the ontology presumes such objects can be known.

(This is getting hardcore… I may have to reread the first Critique….)

If space is ideal, but space constitutes (at least in part) what makes an object material — which I believe is Kant’s point — then it seems that any spatial object, by definition, is a material object. I think that will cause trouble for idealism, at least of some kinds.

As to your second point, why isn’t Kant’s claim that space is itself ideal the answer?

The categories themselves are given at A80/B106. I don’t think they, ultimately, will conflict with a thoroughgoing idealism. More problematic are the two orders of presentation which start the process of creating experiences: namely space and time. I’m not sure how Berkeley can sensibly maintain that an idea exists in space (in particular), and yet is not therefore material.

I’m not convinced Kant is a dualist, as such. I think his point is that objects as we experience them (phenomena) are experienced as material. However, if we consider where the phenomena come from, we’ll realize (as he argues) that they must actually be ideas. Whatever is really out there (noumena) is completely unknowable. I think he’s trying to concede something to Hume, in a way: namely that we really can’t help thinking of our sensory impressions as being of external physical objects, and yet all we really have within our epistemic grasp are ideas.

I don’t believe anyone ever got loosy-goosy with Kant

You raise some interesting points. I think you are right that Kant is talking about phenomena…but then it is strange that the world as experienced by me is something permanent…what could that possibly mean? Berkeley has a way of interpreting that claim in a way that is consitent with his immaterialism. He claims that God is always percieving ans so ordinary objects will continue to exist even when I am not percieving them. This is all that Kant’s argument gets. It is no objection that objects in space have to be extended, as in this respect Kant and Berkeley agree…

Do you really think that Kant is a dualist? What would he say is immaterial?