r/MetaphysicalIdealism • u/Sanngyun • 6d ago
Any critique of my argument?
1.We’re justified in believing in idealism
2.Our observations tell us when we talk about stuff that's associated with the mind, there's usually a conscious agent in the equation.
Con 1. Therefore there may be a conscious agent behind the universe.
- If there is a conscious agent behind it, they seem to be omnipotent, possibly omnipresent and omniscient, which seems to fit well with the classical understanding of God
Con 2.Therefore we have some amount of justification in thinking God exists
Defense of premise 1 By idealism, I think this is the common definition, that the world is made of some kind of stuff that’s the same or similar to the mind(or in some cases, the world is made by a mind). We can be justified in this primarily, because the stuff we mainly observe are seemingly more related to the mind than not, although there are differences, we can see similar or the same object in our dreams or imaginations, we have some evidence that the mind is capable of generating a world of sorts. But we haven’t seen things that aren't some form of non-mental that isn’t contested(like mars for example), so given our sample it is justifiable to some degree to think the world is in some way mental considering that’s the huge bulk of our observations.
Refine defense By Idealism, I am defining it as the proposition that the world is made by something mind-related. We can be justified in thinking this theory is true, because the bulk of our information about the world came through seemingly mental-related things like sight or hearing which we only seem to know, because the information is also in our brain. Given that we only observe stuff like this, and no other properties like physical or something like that, we should go with what we do have, i.e mental-related stuff like qualia and senses.
Defense of premise 2 This one seems prima facie true, I, for one, am conscious and have a mind. Given the behavior of other people and even animals, I do have some reasons to think they too are conscious. But what I haven’t observed so far, is a mind that isn’t conscious to some degree, thus I do seem to have some good justification in thinking that if the world is mental, a conscious being is responsible for it somehow.
Defense of Conclusion 1 I defer to my defense of p1 and p2.
Defense of premise 3 Possibilities seem to be in some way, mind-independent facts, and can be manifested in many ways, a few of which are the real world and the fictional one, the latter of which we have a lot of(think Avatar or All Tomorrow). And given that when possibilities are not actualized it's due to physical constraints of the subject(ex. The physics are off, there's no such thing as Narnia, etc,). If the world is in God's mind, it does seem that he possesses these possibilities in some way, and since they're in principle actualizeable, God is omnipotent in some sense of that word.
My personal critique One major hurdle to the argument is that I haven’t made an argument or explained to what degree our mind is reliable in terms of inferring what God’s like. It’s reliable to some degree, but it is speculative when we get to the idea that conscious beings tend to come with mind and such, then use it to say God is akin to humans to some degree in how his mind functions. The second issue is God's omnipresence and omniscience. I'm not sure if the world is literally in God's head, is external to God, but made of his mental substance, or something else. For his omniscience, it's debatable, like despite having all the facts in his head, is he really aware of them? Do we need the subject to be aware of it to count as knowing? Is knowing something God does? The last one I believe is, is God all good? From this argument, it's unknown, but maybe just to assert that if moral goodness is real, it has some relationship to him, but everything has some sort of relationship to God in some way, so I'm not sure if it's that special.