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As you can see, it is easy for idealists to argue that our only knowledge of the world comes through sense experience. Berkeley also argued that it is impossible to think of something that cannot be imagined, because to conceive of such a thing would be to imagine it. Therefore, all arguments about the existence of objects can be reduced to perceptions or assumptions based upon perceptions. However,
the main problem for idealist theories of perception is how to account
for the way in which the world seems to make sense. If we look,
once again, at the four things above which most people would agree
with, we could see that idealists are left with certain options: Since few idealists would wish to argue that only I exist (no. 3), we are left with options 1 and 2. Option 1 would entail that our perceptions are all different, but that at least we perceive something similar. However, the problem with this is that if our perceptions differ too much from other people's we will not be able to interact with the world effectively. I call something "red", but actually see what someone else calls green. Unless this was very systematic (i.e. they always saw green when I saw red, and so on), the world would be in chaos. On the other hand, if the disagreement was systematic - aside from the question of whether this was possible - what would be the difference with saying that our perceptions actually corresponded? This leaves us with the final option (no. 2) that our perceptions do correspond to other people's. This is the main problem for idealists: if our perceptions correspond, what to?
As you can see from the above diagram, a world that is full of perceptions is without a foundation. Idealism does away with this foundation when it rejects the possibility of experiencing the properties of physical objects. Points to think about What further problems does the above diagram suggest about idealism? |
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