Idealism

The Atomic Theory of Matter

• The atomic theory poses a
challenge to theories of
substances or objects
• Atomic theory: things are
composed of atoms;
properties of things
depend on nature and
motion of atoms
• Things are not as they
appear
 Dignaga (c. 450), Buddhist

• “Though atoms serve as causes of the

consciousness of the sense-organs, they
are not its actual objects like the sense
organs; because the consciousness does
not represent the image of the atoms. The
consciousness does not arise from what is
represented in it. Because they do not exist
in substance just like the double moon.
Thus both the external things are unfit to be
the real objects of consciousness.”
 Actual and Internal Objects
• Aristotle: objects cause perceptions, and
are represented in them
• Causes of perception = objects of
perception
• Dignaga: No—
– causes are the atoms— actual objects
[alambana]
– objects are appearances— internal objects
[artha]
 Causes and Effects
• Causes of perception are the atoms
• We don’t see atoms, but their effects
• What we see doesn’t exist in reality; it is
“like the double moon”
• How can we distinguish the aspects of the
effects (appearances) that do match the
causes?
 Primary Qualities
• Descartes: We perceive clearly and distinctly
only the mathematical properties of objects: size,
shape, motion
• Only they reflect the true natures of things
• Locke: Primary qualities are inseparable from
objects; atoms have them
• Primary qualities are those objects possess
according to the atomic theory of matter
• They produce simple ideas in us that resemble
the primary qualities in the objects
 Secondary Qualities
• Secondary qualities are effects of objects
on our nervous systems
• They produce ideas in us that do NOT
resemble them
• Secondary qualities depend on primary
qualities
• Secondary qualities are response-
dependent: to have one is just to produce
a certain effect in a perceiver
 Real and Nominal Essence
• Aristotle and Aquinas identify:
– The essence of x = the properties necessary
to x
– The quiddity of x = the definition of x in re
– The nature of x = what makes x what it is
• Locke: nominal essence = quiddity: uses
secondary qualities
• Real essence = nature: real internal
constitution
 Idealist Critique
• Dignaga: We know world only through
sense organs
• So, we know objects only insofar as they
become internal objects
• They are objects of consciousness,
constituted by consciousness
• We know objects only as conditioned by
consciousness
 Argument for Idealism
• We have reason to believe that something
exists only if we can know it
• We can know an object only by making it an
object of consciousness
• Any object of consciousness is conditioned
by consciousness
• Anything conditioned by consciousness is
mind-dependent
• So, we have reason to believe that a thing
exists only if it is mind-dependent
George Berkeley (1685-1753)
• Idealism best defense of
common sense against
scepticism
• Descartes’s and Locke’s
ideas of objects make no
sense
• Attack on primary qualities
and on substance
 Against Primary Qualities
• We have no basis for
thinking any of our
ideas corresponds to
some mind-
independent reality
• We cannot judge
resemblance to reality
• Perceptions of width,
height, etc., vary
while objects remain
unchanged
Esse est Percipi
• We have access only to
what is before the mind
• A thing can exist only if it
is perceived
• Do things go out of
existence when we
aren’t looking at them?
No— because God
keeps an eye on them
for us
 Kant’s Copernican Revolution
• Rationalists: universality and
necessity require synthetic a
priori
• Hume: source not in the world
but in us
• Kant: source is within us— but
it is reason, not custom or
habit
Kant’s Categories

• There are innate

concepts— the
categories
• They are logical
forms of judgment
• They apply only to
experience
 Knowledge —> Objects
• “It has hitherto been assumed that our
knowledge must conform to the objects; but all
attempts to ascertain anything about these
objects a priori, by means of concepts, and thus
to extend the range of our knowledge, have
been rendered abortive by this assumption. Let
us then make the experiment whether we may
not be more successful in metaphysics, if we
assume that the objects must conform to our
knowledge.”
 Kant & Copernicus
• “We here propose to do just what Copernicus did in
attempting to explain the celestial movements. When he
found that he could make no progress by assuming that
all the heavenly bodies revolved round the spectator, he
reversed the process, and tried the experiment of
assuming that the spectator revolved, while the stars
remained at rest. We may make the same experiment
with regard to the intuition of objects. If the intuition
must conform to the nature of the objects, I do not
see how we can know anything of them a priori. If,
on the other hand, the object conforms to the nature
of our faculty of intuition, I can then easily conceive
the possibility of such an a priori knowledge.”
 Laws of the Understanding

“Before objects, are given to me, that is, a

priori, I must presuppose in myself laws
of the understanding which are
expressed in concepts a priori. To
these concepts, then, all the objects of
experience must necessarily conform.”
 Limits of Knowledge
• “. . . we only know in things a priori that
which we ourselves place in them.”
• Laws that govern realm of experience are
in us— the laws of the understanding
• So, we can know things only as
experienced by us— not as they are in
themselves
Kant’s Rationalism
• There are innate
ideas: pure concepts
of the understanding
(the categories)
• There are synthetic a
priori truths (laws of
the understanding)
• But they apply only
within realm of
experience
 Phenomena
• Phenomena:
appearances, objects as
we perceive them
– Categories apply to them
– A priori principles apply to
them
– We can know them with
universality and necessity
Noumena
• Noumena: things-in-
themselves,
unconditioned by our
cognitive faculties
– Categories don’t
apply to them
– A priori principles
don’t apply to them
– We can’t know
them at all
 Descartes/Hume/Kant
Descartes Hume Kant
Synthetic
a priori? Yes No Yes

Knowledge
Beyond exp. Yes No No

Knowledge
of world as Yes No No
it is
 Plato’s Philosophy of Mind
• The Good
Participation

This is a
triangle
Form
Recollection

Perception
Object
 Kant’s Philosophy of Mind
•
Construction

This is a
triangle
Concept

Perception
Object
 Kant’s Philosophy of Mind
•
Understanding

This is a
triangle
Concept
Appearance

Sensibility
Thing in itself