Why Idealism Is the Best Metaphysics

Introduction

The history of metaphysics is rife with a variety of different views. As you can probably imagine keeping all of these philosophical positions straight in one’s mind can become quite complicated quite quickly.

For that reason, my intention with this post is to rely with the minimum amount of knowledge necessary to convey my message.

Overall I will only provide the information that is absolutely necessary for the sake of comprehension, and only in the sequence in which it will be most comprehensible and convenient for the reader.

My Argument

A Summary

1. The world can be exhaustively divided into only two types of properties: 1. qualities, and 2. quantities.
2. There are only four possible alternative explanations for the ontological relationship between these two types of properties.
   • Explanation 1: Qualities are primary/fundamental, and quantities are secondary/derivative (i.e., quantities are deducible from qualities).
   • Explanation 2: Quantities and qualities are of equal primary/fundamental status (i.e., neither quantities nor qualities can be deduced from the other).
   • Explanation 3: Quantities and qualities are both of equal secondary/derivative status (i.e., neither quantities nor qualities can be deduced from the other but they can be deduced from a neutral, third category).
   • Explanation 4: Quantities are primary/fundamental, and qualities are secondary/derivative (i.e., qualities are deducible from quantities).
3. These explanations each correspond, respectively, to the positions of idealism, substance dualism, property dualism and materialism.
4. Therefore, there are only 3 basic metaphysical theories of the world: Idealism, Dualism, Materialism (with dualism being broken down into two kinds: Substance Dualism and Property Dualism).
5. A metaphysical theory is meritorious to the extent that it exhibits two properties: 1. explanatory power and 2. parsimony.
6. Explanation 2 is less parsimonious than explanations 1, 3, and 4, inasmuch as it posits two fundamental entities, unlike the other explanations. Moreover, explanation 2 also exhibits low explanatory power in the face of the mind-matter interaction problem.
7. Explanations 3 and 4 have less explanatory power than explanation 1, as illustrated by the inability of explanation 4 to account for the explanatory gap and/or the hard problem of consciousness, and the inability of explanation 3 to account for the problem of emergence and the problem of experience. In contrast, explanation 1, which faces the decombination problem, can account for this problem.
8. Therefore explanation 1 is better than either explanation 2, 3 or 4.
9. Therefore, the relative value of these three basic metaphysical theories can be expressed in the following equation: Idealism > Property Dualism > Materialism > Substance Dualism. (I rank property dualism higher on account of the fact that it at least ascribes fundamentality to 1st person experience, unlike materialism).

Quantities vs Qualities

For all intents and purposes, the world can be divided into two distinct properties:

1. Qualities
2. Quantities

Qualities are experiential, private, and ineffable. Qualities consist of experiences like perceiving the colour red, tasting the sweetness of syrup, hearing the sound of music, feeling the heat of a fire, etc.

Quantities are abstract mathematical entities corresponding to the perceptible properties of physical objects, such as mass, weight, speed, force, velocity, temperature, etc.

Conceptually, qualities and quantities are distinct entities. That is, heat may correlate with temperature, but heat and temperature are different entities. The former is an experience of warmth, the latter is an objective measurement of the kinetic energy (motion) of matter.

Logically exhaustive quadchotomy

There are only four possible logically explanatory candidates for the ontological relationship between these two entities:

1. Materialism: Quantities are fundamental, and qualities exist only insofar as they can be deduced from qualities.
2. Substance Dualism: Qualities and Quantities are both fundamental, and thus cannot be deduced from each other.
3. Property Dualism: Qualities and Quantities are both derivative, and thus cannot be deduced from each other, although they can be deduced from a third, neutral category.
4. Idealism: Qualities are fundamental, and quantities exist only insofar as they can be deduced from qualities.

The Low Parsimony and Explanatory power of Substance Dualism

Any explanatory schema that posits more than one fundamental entity violates Occam’s razor. Therefore, any explanatory schema that inflates the number of fundamental metaphysical entities greater than one is less plausible. This is because the greater the number of fundamental entities in a system, the greater the number of fundamental entities whose fundamentality you have to account for. Another way to phrase the problem is this way: by increasing the number of supposedly fundamental entities, you would be running the risk of unnecessarily inflating the number of fundamental entities. That is, you would have to prove that each entity is indeed fundamental and irreducible, and this is harder the more fundamental entities you have posited.

Therefore, the best candidates for metaphysical theories consist of models which only posit one fundamental entity.

This eliminates Substance Dualism and leaves only the monism of either Idealism, Materialism, or Property Dualism.

Of course, there are other reasons other than parsimony as to why Substance Dualism is a less meritorious theory. The other reasons being a lack of explanatory power in the face of the mind-matter interaction problem.

The problem can be phrased as such: how do two fundamental, irreducible substances, totally distinct from one another interact?

The Low Explanatory of Materialism

Materialism, articulated as the claim that “quantities are fundamental, and qualities exist only insofar as they can be deduced from qualities,” is an explanatorily impotent position.

This is illustrated very easily by the explanatory gap and/or the hard problem of consciousness, which basically states that there is nothing intrinsic to the supposedly standalone world of material quantities (independent of mind), from which can deduce the existence of phenomenal consciousness, i.e., qualities. In other words, there is nothing intrinsic to quantities from which we can deduce qualities.

You cannot, for instance, deduce the phenomenological experience of being burned from the abstract quantity of “100 Celsius.” You cannot deduce the experience of the colour blue from the abstract quantity of “450 nanometres.”

The following video illustrates my point on the matter.

If, David Chalmers is right in this video, as I believe him to be, consciousness has to be accepted as a fundamental property of the world, and therefore Materialism has to be rejected as false.

If this is true, however, this leads us back to Substance Dualism. However, Substance Dualism is no better than Materialism, because it is non-parsimonious (and lacks explanatory power in the face of the interaction problem)

Therefore, this leads us to two competing alternatives: Idealism and Property Dualism.

The Low Explanatory Power of Property Dualism

Despite the parsimony of Property Dualism’s neutral substance monism, this metaphysical theory lacks explanatory power in the face of the following philosophical problems: 1. the mentalist suspicion, 2. the materialist suspicion, and 3. the problem of emergence.

The following link contains an article on neutral substance monism (the position that property dualism ultimately converges on [if it is to retain some measure of parsimony]). The article contains sub-sections which detail the three problems that I just listed above, if you want to take a closer look.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neutral-monism/

For the purposes of this post, I will just focus on the problem of emergence. Basically, it can be summarized as a such: a neutral substance which is neither qualitative nor quantitively would, by definition, possess nothing in principle in virtue of which we could deduce the emergence of quantities or qualities. In other words, the question of how a neutral substance leads to the emergence of consciousness and/or matter is no less problematic for the property dualist than the Hard Problem of Consciousness is for the materialist.

Of course, the problem can be restated in such a manner as to directly pertain to the issue of the emergence of experience. In such a case, neutral monism would be dealing with the problem of experience.

Idealism — the Best Alternative

Given that Substance Dualism lacks parsimony and explanatory power, while Property Dualism and Materialism lack explanatory power, how well does Idealism compare?

To the best of my knowledge: Idealism is just as parsimonious as Property Dualism and Materialism, but has better explanatory power, on account of the fact that it does not suffer from any of the problems that either Property Dualism or Materialism suffer from. That is, Idealism circumvents the hard problem of consciousness and/or the explanatory gap (from which materialism suffers), and suffers from neither the problem of experience, or the problem of emergence, or the mentalist suspicion, or the materialist suspicion, or the dualist suspicion.

That said, there is one obstacle that Idealism must face before being able to claim the throne of best metaphysical candidate. It must be able to account for the decombination problem.

The decombination problem is Idealism’s version of physicalism’s hard problem of consciousness. If the hard problem of consciousness is trying to figure out how consciousness emerges from non-conscious matter, then the decombination problem is trying to figure out how the singular, fundamental consciousness posited by the position of Monistic Idealism fragments itself into the multiple minds we see and interact with on a daily basis. In other words, how does one universal, undifferentiated consciousness become the many individual conscious minds of billions of people around the world?

The answer is simple: disassociation.

Disassociation is a recorded medical, psychiatric phenomenon observed in patients diagnosed with dissociative identify disorder (split-personality syndrome). The phenomenon, in other words, is a scientifically recognized example of a mechanism by which a unified consciousness can be fragmented into multiple alters (sub-personalities).

Why disassociation happens may be a mystery to the scientific community, but the fact that it happens is not up for debate. DID gives us a real-life example of the mechanism by which we would expect the decombination problem to be accounted for.

Of course, there are other contended solutions to the decombination problem but I personally prefer using the phenomenon of disassociation as an answer.

Monistic Idealism therefore possess the explanatory power to account for its version of the Hard Problem of Consciousness.

Idealism, consequentially, is as parsimonious as the most parsimonious metaphysical theories, but without any of the explanatory impotence that the other theories exhibit in regard to their respective problems.

Thus, idealism is the best metaphysical explanation of the world, by the standards of parsimony and explanatory power.

Idealism — A Self-Evidently True Conclusion

I think, therefore I am.

I challenge anyone to disagree with this claim.

Anyone who agrees with the claim “I think, therefore I am,” cannot consistently disagree with the following claim: consciousness is the one thing we can be absolutely certain of.

Consciousness is the primary datum of existence, everything else is speculation.

The world of matter that we observe everyday is just that–an observation/perception. The world of space, time, causality, and material objects is only knowable via conscious perception. In other words, space, time, causality and matter are real, but real only within the mind that perceives it.

The real, outside world is obviously real, of course. But the obvious realness of this outside world is possible only in and through consciousness. The real world is just an extension of conscious perception. This is self-evidently true.

It would be non-parsimonious to unnecessarily postulate the existence of a material world which exists independent of my conscious perception of it. It is explanatorily redundant to argue that the material world has a standalone existence independent of my conscious perception of it. Why? Because we don’t need to appeal to a standalone material world in order to account for the perception of it. All we need to appeal to, to account for the perception of the world, is perception itself, i.e., consciousness.

Put simply, consciousness alone is necessary in explaining the world.

Of course, at this point many people are inclined to object to idealism by confusing it with solipsism (the claim that only “I exist”), by confusing it with the position that I can wish/manifest anything into existence, or any other set of misconstructions. But idealism doesn’t refer to anything that undermines or even contradicts the validity of science.

Consider the following objections and their responses: