"Consciousness is the ultimate reality of all things" (Paul Twitchell).
"The substance of the world is mental" (Arthur S. Eddington).
"Reality is ideality. Strictly speaking and in pure truth there exists only the ideant, the thinker, the conscious I - myself -, me ipsum" (José Ortega y Gasset).
Realism vs. Idealism
An eternal and primary philosophical problem is the issue of reality. What is reality? What is its nature? What does it mean for something to be real? Is the real only the physical, or is the mental also real? Is there a single reality or several realities? Is the real what is perceived? Is the real what is consciousness? Are there realities that are beyond our sensible experience? Are there different levels of reality? If so, what is the most fundamental level of reality? Is the real the same as being or the existent? Is the real the truth? Do fictional characters (such as Don Quixote, Sherlock Holmes, etc.) exist or do they have a certain degree of reality? Are possible or imaginary worlds real? For philosophers like Russell and Quine, it is not possible to distinguish between reality, being and existence.
One possible answer to this question is that the real must exist or have its being in space and time. But this is only an assignment of properties, in the same way that we can assert that some objects are green. This leads to the issue of universals. Universals are general or abstract qualities, properties, classes or categories that can be applied to individuals or particulars. For example: categories such as man, animal, dog, etc.; objects such as table, chair, etc.; properties such as red, beautiful, solid, etc.; abstract concepts such as number, group, sequence, etc. Particulars are the opposite of universals, such as Plato or Aristotle.
The so-called "problem of universals" is an ancient metaphysical problem about whether or not universals actually exist, whether they are independent of man (i.e., whether they exist a priori), and (if they do) the level of reality at which they exist.
Philosophical debate centers mainly between two opposing views: realism and idealism, although the two terms have no clearly defined boundary. Many idealist positions can be considered realist, and vice versa.
Realism.
It is the doctrine which holds that common objects perceived by the senses have an existence independent of the perceiving subject. Objects are composed of matter, occupy space, have properties (size, color, texture, etc.), and are correctly perceived. We perceive things as they are and objects retain their properties whether or not they are observed. Realism is not directly or explicitly linked to the issue of truth.
Idealism.
It is the doctrine which holds that reality is fundamentally mental. Reality is determined by the mind. Objects do not exist independently of the mind. What we call "physical reality" is simply a construct, manifestation or expression of the mind, of mental reality. Reality is constituted by our perceptions and internal mental representations in the form of categories, conceptual schemes, images, paradigms or languages.
For idealism governs the principle of immanence: the mind cannot transcend or trespass its own representations, it cannot go outside itself, it cannot access something that is not mental.
There are different forms of idealism, according to the role played by the mind. In any case, idealism can be considered a type of realism, which we can call "idealistic realism".
Idealism is the position of, among others, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel and Schopenhauer, as well as recent philosophers such as Hilary Putnam, Nelson Goodman, Richard Rorty, Thomas Kuhn and Jacques Derrida. All of them with different approaches. The first modern idealist was Descartes for basing all evidence on thought (cogito, ergo sum), although he did not deny the existence of the external world.
Types of realism
There are many types of realism, including:
Metaphysical realism, also called ontological or philosophical realism.
There is a world independent of our knowledge, of our conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, theories, representations or descriptions. There is a void, gap or separation between how man conceives the world and how it really is. The categories and structures of the world are independent of human conceptualization, of his consciousness. Man is limited by his conceptual schemes and cannot access true reality.
Metaphysical realism is the predominant doctrine, shared by science and most philosophers. Popper is a metaphysical realist: scientific theories are only conjectures or approximations to a reality that we cannot know.
Indirect or representational realism.
It asserts that mind-independent objects exist, but that we know nothing of them other than sensory data in the form of mental representations. What we experience is not the real world but an internal representation of the world, a virtual reality replica of the world. Representationalism is one of the tenets of cognitive psychology (the psychology that deals with cognition, i.e., the mental processes and mechanisms involved in the acquisition of knowledge).
Direct or naive realism.
It is an extreme form of realism. Things perceived by the senses are what they appear to be. Reality is what is perceived. Perceiving is an epistemically direct and passive act on the part of the subject, unmediated by any analysis or mental activity, conscious or unconscious.
Critical realism.
Admits the existence of an independent physical world, but also recognizes that the mind or consciousness plays a role in the cognitive apprehension of the physical world.
Scientific realism.
It subjects everything to rational analysis. Reality contains just those properties that permit scientific description. The goal of science is the description and explanation of everything, including the observable and unobservable aspects of the world. The subject has an active role in the process of knowledge, contrary to direct or naive realism.
Locke was a scientific realist, for he held that the world contains only the primary properties that characterize a material scientific description, and that the other properties are subjective, observer-dependent, and do not belong to the world.
Pre-philosophical or pre-scientific realism.
It is the reality of the common man uninitiated in philosophy or in positive sciences.
Epistemological realism.
Reality is the knowledge we have of the world. That knowledge is based primarily on scientific theories that describe the structure of reality.
External realism.
There is an external reality independent of us and our internal mental representations.
Hume was an advocate of external realism. He said that the mind postulates the objects of the external world to explain the coherence and regularity of our experiences. However, the concepts we are to regard as basic cannot be obtained from the material provided to us by the senses. In this sense, he declares himself a skeptic.
Searle also defends external realism. He justifies it by a single argument: the existence of human language, which makes the intelligibility of reality possible. "A public language presupposes a public world." External realism is not a theory, thesis, hypothesis or belief, but the precondition to be able to make hypotheses. External realism is not epistemic. Reality is radically non-epistemic. External realism is not a theory of truth. Nor is it identical with the correspondence theory of truth. "Strictly speaking, realism is consistent with any theory of truth because it is a theory of ontology and not of the meaning of 'truth'" [Searle, 1997].
Internal realism.
The world is not ontologically independent. It depends on the human mind. It is a position that is influenced by Kant (our knowledge of the world depends on the categories of thought).
Marxist or materialist realism.
It is the doctrine of dialectical materialism. Material reality and knowledge are of a dynamic type, and one must always reason dialectically.
Modal realism.
All possible worlds are as real as our physical world. This is the position of David Kellogg Lewis.
Multiple realism.
According to Nelson Goodman, there is not one world, but many worlds, as many as there are human minds. It is not possible to demonstrate scientifically that one of these visions or descriptions is the true one. But this does not imply relativism, for not all descriptions of the world are equally correct, and the correct ones are not subjectively determined.
Platonic realism.
Ideal, eternal, immutable, archetypal forms exist on a level of reality higher than the world of the senses. Material objects are manifestations of these forms, which have a lower level of reality and are real insofar as they participate in the forms. In this sense, Plato is the greatest of the idealists and, at the same time, a realist of ideal forms.
Natural or Aristotelian realism.
For Aristotle, the things we perceive constitute reality, for they contain "substance," which is the most fundamental entity. This Aristotelian concept of substance has dominated all of philosophy. Monists claim that there is only one substance, dualists claim that there are two substances (usually mind and body), and pluralists claim that there are several substances. Within the monists are the materialists (all things are material) and the idealists (all substances are mental). Among the dualists are those who believe that the two substances are independent and those who think that they interact with each other. Descartes was an "interactionist" dualist.
Progressive realism.
It is a type of scientific realism. It is associated with the advancement of science, which brings us progressively closer to a better knowledge of reality.
Semantic realism.
It is a realism associated with language. Propositions about entities are true if the truth conditions of these propositions are objective in character and independent of our cognitive faculties.
Virtual realism.
It is the reality of cyberspace, a reality that does not have the limitations of our ordinary world, which is subject to physical laws. In virtual reality there are no limitations: we can invent any laws we wish.
Mathematical realism.
It is the Platonic realism of mathematical entities, ideal forms residing in a higher world. According to the conception of cosmologist Max Tegmark [2007], the only reality is mathematical; the universe is an abstract mathematical structure.
Imaginal realism.
Reality resides in the imagination, in everything we can imagine. "Every object we can think of is a genuine object" (Alexius Meinong).
Types of idealism
There are many types of idealism. The most prominent are:
Subjective or radical idealism.
Upheld by Berkeley, it asserts that the world does not exist outside our minds, that all that exists are perceptions. Objects are only mental constructs or collections of ideas. There is no world independent of the mind. When an object is not perceived, it ceases to exist. "To be is to be perceived." Sensible things exist only in the mind of God (deistic idealism).
Berkeley's radical idealism is often considered or referred to as "anti-realism."
Transcendental idealism.
For Kant, consciousness or mind imposes its categories on perceiving reality. We do not know the thing itself (the noun), only the appearances (the phenomenon). The empirical world is something constructed by the mind.
Absolute idealism.
It is Hegel's position, Reality is a manifestation of the geist (Absolute or Spirit), which manifests itself as mind and matter, and which develops progressively through history. Knowledge is totality. Only the whole, the totality, makes sense. Truth is the whole.
Hegel attempts to overcome the Kantian division between the sensible (phenomenal) world and ultimate reality (noumenon, the thing-in-itself). There is an absolute identity between the external and the internal world. Kant's categories are not ontological, because they are transcendental (prior to experience) and refer only to human experience. Instead, in Hegel, the categories are ontological, they refer to the world in its totality: to the phenomena (the superficial) and to the noúmenos (the deep, the essence of things), there being absolute identity between the categories of subject (knower) and object (the known), between external and internal world, between ontology and epistemology.
Conceptual idealism.
The only things that exist are the concepts with which we contemplate reality. Universals reside in the human mind. In conceptual relativism, all representations of reality are based on an arbitrarily selected set of concepts.
Ontological idealism.
Holds that all entities are composed of mind or spirit.
Epistemological idealism.
Holds that it is impossible to know anything independently of the mind. Epistemological idealism is that of Kant and also that of Berkeley.
Phenomenological idealism.
Hüsserl, in his work "Ideas" (1913) focuses on the ideal and essential structures of the state of consciousness, trying to exclude any hypothesis about the existence of external objects. For this purpose, he introduced the method of "phenomenological reduction" (or "eidetic reduction"), based on the reflection that external phenomena produce at the internal level, in our consciousness. Transcendental phenomenology is the study of the essential structures of consciousness, the basic internal, uninterpreted experience. It is not a science of facts or natural realities, but a "science of essences" or "eidetic science", which aims to attain essential knowledge. All the experiences of the real world are transcended and reduced to their essence. But this does not imply the disappearance of the real world, but that things are mere phenomena, so they pass into the background.
In this transcendental reduction, the only thing that remains is the "I." For Husserl this is a Copernican revolution: from objectivism to transcendental subjectivism. The world of things is relative. The self is absolute, irreducible and apodictic (necessarily valid), the only firm basis for constructing a universal science.
Gnoseological idealism.
The only thing that exists are the structures of knowledge, which is a level deeper than all particular knowledge. It does not presuppose any thesis about the structure of reality.
Metaphysical idealism.
There is a reality beyond the physical world of sensible experience and the human mind. This transcendental reality is the fundamental one and is the cause of the changing world of sensible experience. Plato's world of ideas falls into this category. Leibniz's monadology is also a metaphysical idealism: reality consists of active and independent substances, the monads, the ultimate constituents of reality, the "metaphysical atoms" for, like physical atoms, monads are simple and indivisible substances.
Other positions
Physicalism.
It is a type of materialistic monism. It holds that psychic processes are reducible to physical processes or can be explained in terms of physical processes. Physics is the model to be applied to all sciences.
Solipsism.
Radical form of subjectivism according to which only the self exists (or can be known).
Skepticism.
It is not possible to know reality because we cannot trust our senses or because there are no solid reasons that justify the existence of reality or because there is a possibility of illusions, hallucinations or other errors of perception. Illusory examples are: a rainbow, which can never be reached; a set of horizontal lines that do not seem so (see figure); an oar seems broken in the water; distant things seem smaller, etc. Opposite skepticism is common sense realism.
Postmodernism.
Postmodern philosophy asserts that "the only absolute truth is that there are no absolute truths," a principle that is contradictory. And that knowledge of reality with our limited minds is impossible.
Neutralism.
There is only one reality (monism). The physical and the psychic, the objective and the subjective, are aspects, perspectives or manifestations of the same reality. An example of neutralist philosophy is that of Spinoza. Mathematics can be considered neutral, in the sense that, thanks to its abstraction, it manifests itself on the physical and psychic levels.
Reism.
Doctrine according to which only material objects exist, so that only statements about these objects can be formulated. It makes no sense to speak of abstract entities.
Quietism.
This is the position that claims that the philosophical problem between realism and idealism is meaningless, that a meaningful metaphysical debate between the two positions is impossible, so it is better to do nothing about it. This philosophy is often associated with Wittgenstein, who claimed that philosophical problems are pseudo-problems arising from the imprecision of language. And that philosophical problems are not to be solved, but "dissolved".
Social constructivism.
Reality is constructed through social interactions in the context of a culture.
The problem of universals
The so-called "problem of universals" occupies the whole of medieval philosophy. Basically two positions were confronted:
Realism.
Universals have real existence. There are two variants:
Radical. Universals are perfect and immutable ideas that exist in a higher realm, distinct and separate from the physical world. That realm is the origin and cause of the physical world. It is the historical position of Plato. For Platonic realism, there are universals, which are ideal forms that exist independently of particulars. Plato was the first to consider universals real.
Moderate. The universal is in physical reality itself, not separate from things, but in them. This is the position of Aristotle and St. Thomas. For Aristotelian realism universals are not real entities; their existence depends on the particulars that exemplify them. Universals exist in the intellect by means of abstraction, but they acquire real entity in each particular.
Nominalism.
Universals have no real existence. They are just names or terms without substance that are used to describe classes, categories of objects or abstractions. They are creations of the mind to refer to a set of individual entities that share some common property. Universals have no objective existence, only particular entities have existence. To admit the existence of universals is to limit the thought and power of God. The main representative of this position is William of Occam (XIV century).
Locke was a nominalist. According to him, properties are not real entities in themselves, but only the result of the classification of objects. Humans should be content with "nominal essences," what we know about objects, our ideas. Real knowledge of the world is not possible. He distinguishes between real essence (the being of things) and nominal essence (our knowledge, based on categories). There is no possibility of knowing reality itself. Natural philosophy is not science, because it is not possible to demonstrate and explain reality.
Physics and the nature of reality
Currently, the confrontation between realism and idealism is developing in the philosophy of science, especially in quantum physics, for two reasons:
Because, at the deep level, the three pillars of classical physics matter, space and time are diluted and quantum entities have a behavior that approaches the mental a level of abstract reality and with a greater degree of freedom than the macroscopic physical level and consciousness, where there are infinite possibilities or infinite superimposed states. The profound is associated with the possible, with the indeterminate. In Newtonian physics, objects are determined. In quantum physics, objects (quantum entities) are possibilities.
Because subject and object are connected and cannot be separated: the observer and the observed are two aspects of the same phenomenon. The consciousness of the observer influences the observed phenomenon. The consciousness "chooses" among the infinite quantum possibilities, and then a mutual synchronous "collapse" occurs between the consciousness and the quantum phenomenon, making the possibilities manifest to create the moment-to-moment experience. That connection between the internal and the external is precisely the foundation of consciousness. In consciousness there is only one reality, there is no dualism.
For the physicist Bernard d'Espagnat, what we call "reality" is only a state of mind, and that the world we perceive is merely a shadow of ultimate reality. In the article "The Quantum Theory and Reality" [1979] he states "The doctrine that the world is made of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness is in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment."
Physicist Amit Goswami [2010] claims that consciousness creates the material world. This is the paradigm of top-down causality. He calls his position "monistic idealism". "In monistic idealism, consciousness is like the light in Plato's cave."
Also in macroscopic or cosmic physics, there are connections between the physical and the mental. Sir James Jeans stated that "The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we begin to suspect that we should honor it as creator and ruler of the realm of matter."
MENTAL, the Union of Realism and Idealism
Realism, in general, is a partial perspective on the world. Idealism is closer to reality, postulating that the mental is fundamental, since the mental is a higher level than the physical. The aim is to unite, connect, harmonize, overcome or transcend both visions. Authors who moved in this direction were:
Plato. He was the first to connect idealism and realism. In fact, Platonism is called idealistic realism or realistic idealism. The higher and fundamental world is the world of ideal forms. The material world is a manifestation of the higher world. His theory was generic, for he did not distinguish among these ideal forms the most fundamental ones.
Kant. He was a mediator or harmonizer in the dispute between realism and idealism by establishing a connection between the internal and the external world, also giving priority to the internal world: we perceive the world through mental categories.
Hegel. He tried to overcome the Kantian division between the sensible (phenomenal) world and the ultimate reality (the noumenon, the thing in itself), by affirming that there is an absolute identity between the subject (the knower) and the object (the known), between the external and the internal world, as manifestations of the Absolute.
Jung. Inspired by Plato, he was the one who finally found the key. Everything, internal world and external world, is a manifestation of the Unus Mundus. The primary archetypes are the intermediaries or the bridge between the Unus Mundus (the unmanifest world) and reality (physical and psychic). Consciousness is based on these primary archetypes. Jung, together with Pauli, tried to find a "neutral" language based on primary archetypes, but only succeeded in identifying number as one of the primary archetypes sought.
At the surface level, problems are solved. At the deep level, problems are dissolved or transcended. With MENTAL, the philosophical realism-idealism problem is transcended by looking at them from a higher perspective, the perspective of consciousness, which is linguistic.
The primary archetypes of MENTAL unify realism and idealism. It is the simplest solution. It is based on the fact that internal (mental) and external (physical) reality are both manifestations of the same primary archetypes. These primary archetypes are abstract, they are "forms without content" (as Jung states) and constitute the essence of reality. MENTAL is the neutral language sought by Jung and Pauli. This archetypal language is structured in such a way that the lexical semantics is equal to the structural semantics, i.e., the archetypes themselves act as combining elements of the archetypes. [see Properties - MENTAL, an Archetypal Language].
Reality resides in the deep, where consciousness, simplicity and truth are found. At that level all pairs of opposites are unified, among them realism and idealism, as well as ontology and epistemology.
There is a deep connection between the realism-idealism debate with the language of consciousness, which clarifies everything, for it is at the root of everything. MENTAL brings the "linguistic turn" to transcend the problem.
MENTAL unites philosophy and psychology, that is, philosophical categories and archetypes. Both are the same thing. MENTAL is both a transcendental idealism, being based on philosophical categories, and a depth psychology, being based on primary archetypes.
MENTAL is a neutral language. But this does not mean equidistance between the physical and the mental, but transcending both aspects. Reality is neither physical nor mental, but abstract. From this point of view, the Aristotelian "substances" can be contemplated as abstract substances.
MENTAL, because of its deep and abstract character, integrates and transcends the different types of realism and idealism.
MENTAL has a universal nominalist character: it is the foundation of all "particular" universals.
With MENTAL, it not only transcends the realism-idealism issue, but represents the source of infinite possible worlds.
Bibliography
Berkeley, George. Tratado sobre los principios del conocimiento humano. Gredos, 2003.
d'Espagnat, Bernard. The Quantum Theory and Reality. Scientific American, 241:5, pp. 158-181, Nov. 1979. Disponible en Internet.
Goswami, Amit. Dios no ha muerto. Lo que la física cuántica nos enseña acerca de nuestro origen y de la vida. Obelisco, 2010.
Goswami, Amit. La física del alma. El libro cuántico de la vida, la muerte, la reencarnación y la inmortalidad. Obelisco, 2011.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Fenomenología del espíritu. Abada Editores, 2010.
Jung, Carl G. Simbología del espíritu. Estudios sobre fenomenología psíquica. Fondo de Cultura Económica de España, 1998.
Jung, Carl G.; Pauli, Wolfgang. The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche. Pantheon Books, 1955.
Kant, Immanuel. Crítica de la razón pura. Tecnos, 2011.
