Contracts and You

If we are to defend Idealism, we must examine the arguments against it. The first, and most probably the strongest argument against the theory, is the issue of practicality. Many believe that to say that everything exists within and because of the mind is all well and good, but what does it do for my life? What practical value does that belief have? How could it possibly affect anything?

Supporters of Idealism, such as Berkeley, have argued that nothing exist beyond our perception of it. In other words, if I were to set a book on a table in a room, and then leave the room, then the book would cease to exist. Indeed, not only would the book cease to exist, but so would the table and room. If someone were to enter that room, the book would suddenly exist yet again, as would the table, and of course, the room. But they would not exist for me, because I am not perceiving them. They would, however, exist for the person in the room. The essence of the argument is existence hinges on perception.

That argument doesn’t seem very practical. Builders can’t use it, nor can map-makers and scientists. So far, Idealism isn’t holding up very well. But we can look at it from another angle as well. If the theory that existence hinges on perception holds true for matter, then it follows that it must also hold true for ideas and concepts, which are notorious for being a good deal less substantial than matter. This is where Idealism’s everyday practicality comes into play.

The perfect example of something we use every day demonstrably owing its existence to perception, is money. When most people think of money, they think of bits of paper or metal, hard currency, as it is called. It is used to obtain goods, services, power, and security. It is society’s primary medium for exchange, and from the Materialist standpoint, it does not exist. How can money provide for all of these things if it does not exist? The answer is simple: it is not money that provides for these things, but it is the idea of money, the belief in it, the awareness and acceptance of its existence. It can do all this because it is perceived. Money exists because the people who use it believe that it does, and believe in the system that supports it. What we call hard currency, those little bits of metal and paper, are nothing more than physical manifestations of that belief. The matter that is passed around in the form of currency is to give focus to the belief in money, to provide those who are not philosophical with something tangible to perceive and therefore believe in. This explanation can be extended even further to cover things such as stocks, bonds, cheques, and credit. Insurance policies and health care would cease to exist without it. Even mathematics simply would not be if some sort of idea did not exist, and the idea exists only in the mind. Could there even be law and order, morality, or religion without Idealism? The answer is no, for the same reason that there could be no money.

Society would crumble if there were no practical applications of Idealism.

Getting back to the idea of matter existing only when perceived, there is a great cry rising up from the ranks of the Materialists, and it calls out for proof. Prove, they say, that matter does not exist when it is being perceived. Show us.

The response of the Idealist is a very calm, very collected, impossible. The very idea defies the senses, much in the same way that Schrödinger’s Cat does. It is one of the very few things that cannot ever be perceived. Schrödinger was making a point about physics when he came up with the idea for his experiment, but he also came up with a striking example of why Idealists will never be able to prove their point with physical evidence. He described his experiment as follows:

One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber along with the following diabolical device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of an hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The first atomic decay would have poisoned it. The Psi function for the entire system would express this by having in it the living and the dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.
http://www.phobe.com/s_cat/s_cat.html

In order for the Materialist to prove that the cat exists, he would have to open the chamber and perceive it. Perception, to and Idealist, means existence, and the Materialist’s "proof" would be meaningless. The Idealist walks away from the experiment without his beliefs challenged, and the Materialist walks away frustrated because he was incapable of mounting such a challenge.

The Idealist concept of everything existing in the mind doesn’t just apply to cats in boxes and books on tables. The idea can be expanded to include the entire universe. If a cat in a box does not exist when it is not perceived, why then should the earth the Idealist walks on, the city he lives in, or even other people? In fact, a true Idealist does not even have to admit that other minds exist outside of his own. The page you are reading, the clothes you are wearing, the floor that you stand upon, none of these things exists unless the Idealist either believes they do, or wants them to. In essence, the Idealist is God in his world, if he wants to be. And as with the cat, just try and prove him wrong.

This moves us right along to our next subject, which is religion, or more specifically, Christianity. Now, most modern philosophers no longer incorporate any notion of religion into their theories because religion forces one to take many things for granted (the existence of a deity, heaven, hell, sin, etc.), and that is rather a rough stumbling block. One of the problems with this, however, is that a good deal of the philosophers of old, on which the modern theories support themselves, were required to take the notion of a god or gods into account. St. Thomas Aquinas would have been burned at the stake if he had claimed there was no God. Poor Socrates was put to death on the charge of heresy. The threat to their lives was a very real one, and it has coloured the outlook of philosophy for centuries, if not millennia. In other words, religion has meant trouble for philosophy in general.

Should this, therefore be the case for Idealists? No, in fact Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Taoism should all be able to readily incorporate the concept of Idealism into their belief structure, simply because it is already present there, in another form (more so with Christianity and Judaism, although simply for the sake of keeping this essay from turning into a small book I shall deal only with Christianity). Christianity calls it "God".

Now, the church has in the past condemned a number of radical theorists as being heretics (in the worst of times), or simply agnostics. Idealists, one would think, would fall under the heading of agnostics in this sense, since they hold the belief, at some level, that they themselves may indeed be the god of the world they inhabit, and that the continued existence of anything and everything hinges on their continued existence. The Christian church hates that idea. They should love it.

Bishop Berkeley, one of the most famous supporters of Idealism, addressed the issue in a straightforward way, one in which, if thought about, not only embraces Christian mythology, but actually serves to support it, if one were to look at it from the standpoint of a Christian (it does in fact support almost every major religious system, but as mentioned earlier, I will only delve into Christianity, which is the belief system I am most acquainted with). Bertrand Russell discusses Berkeley’s idea in his book The Problems Of Philosophy. He writes,

He fully admits that the tree must continue to exist, even when we shut our eyes or when no human being is near it. But this continued existence, he says, is due to the fact that God continues to perceive it; the ‘real’ tree, which corresponds to what we called the physical object, consists of ideas in the mind of God, ideas more or less like those we have when we see the tree, but differing in the fact that they are permanent in God’s mind so long as the tree continues to exist. All our perceptions, according to him, consist in a partial participation in God’s perceptions, and it is because of this participation that different people see more or less the same tree. Thus apart from minds and their ideas there is nothing in the world, nor is it possible that anything else should ever be known, since whatever is known is necessarily an idea.

The only real area where Idealists truly run into problems with the church, is the discussion of which minds truly exist. Idealists aren’t sure, and they readily admit to this. Philosopher are the first to tell you that they don’t have all the answers. If they did, they would be out of a job. The Christian church, claims that they know for absolute certain which mind does exist, thank you very much. The mind of God exists, we exist because of what this vast and apparently benevolent being decided it wanted to see somewhere around day five of what the church recognizes as the history of existence.

Idealism, rather than being crushed by the somewhat inflexible attacks and arguments from organized Christianity, has not only found a way to seamlessly integrate that organization into it’s theory (in other words, Idealists can be Christians and still be able to reconcile it with their Idealism), but in a way in which it can also support that organization (the church) if it so chooses. Idealists can once again walk away unscathed, cat in hand.

Of course, the seepage of Idealism into popular culture doesn’t so much lend the theory any particular support, but it doesn’t really hurt it, either. By bringing the concept to the masses (which may or may not exist, depending on who you ask), it allows for a much more open discourse into the matter. The general populace may not consist of professional philosophers, but that doesn’t mean that one or two of them might not come up with a good idea. While it is true that the vast majority of them may lean toward realism, that does not mean that there is not growing support for Idealist concepts.

The computer industry is a perfect example of Idealism at work. The computer I am right now sitting at is not actually displaying the essay that I am writing. In fact, it receives no such input from me at all. What the computer receives is a collection of ones (1's) and zeros (0's), which we have taught it to perceive as letters and numbers, and which we have taught it to display what we perceive as being letters and numbers. In other words, all I have in front of me is a digital representation of the idea of my essay, and not the essay itself.

Of course, there are all sorts of problems with the concept of ideas as well. What are they, exactly? The Materialist would tell you that they are mental impressions generated by the interpretation, by the synaptic bundles in the brain, of information gathered by the five senses. The Idealist would tell you that they are concepts that exist within the mind, they are the parameters by which we define our world and therefore those things in it and even ourselves. There is, in fact, no clear definition of what an idea actually is, in philosophical terms. Philosophers have argued over it for centuries, and will probably continue to do so for centuries to come.

The fact that Idealism stands up, in any way, against arguments as strong as those listed above, indicates that it should indeed still be taken seriously as a philosophy. Even Bertrand Russell could not dismiss it, and as a Materialist, that is the kind of thing that he was best at. Idealism stands up to the issue of practicality, by showing how it supports our entire society, and how we are ever so dependant on it. It defies "proof" that it’s ideas are false with aid from the field of quantum physics, an area which relies less on conjecture than one might think, and is generally accepted as a science. I’m sure the cat is relieved. Idealism, in relation the theory of mind even stands up against the millennia old attacks of religion, an area traditionally rife with strife and intensely inflexible. Idealism must be taken seriously, as it holds up against all attacks, whether credible in the eyes of philosophers or not. In other words, "there is no spoon".