Another great post. And of course, I agree that idealism is in a way better position to bridge the qualitative-quantitative gap that everyone is wringing their hands over.
You bring up Platonism in your footnote, and I think that's an interesting case of "idealism" since it's not Berkeley's version, which is what most people think of (I love Berkeley, but he's definitely an acquired taste). I would call Platonism idealism, though with caveats. Overall it's too sophisticated for our normal philosophy of mind categories (which we might want to think about ditching) since it's really a kind of epistemic dualism nestled within a cosmological idealism. I think it's much more nuanced than anything going on today, but good luck getting those informed by the analytic tradition to read Plato.
Kant...meh...not sure I would call him an idealist. I know many do, but I think that might be a confusing label. To put it another way, academic physicalists pretend to be Kantian, but then they smuggle their own scientific realist views in through the backdoor by assuming that things in themselves cause phenomena, thereby confusing anyone who hasn't read Kant. (I don't know why academics think they have a right to get sloppy when it comes to their popular books, when that's precisely where they need to be careful since their audience is less informed.)
You make a great point here about the vagueness of "idealism", and that's one reason that I try to give myself some wiggle room by talking about "idealism-adjacent" positions. Plato and Platonism is especially interesting because it shifts so much over time. I am currently reading Mystical Monotheism by John Peter Kenney, and he is in part giving a sort of genealogy of Platonism (and Pythagoreanism) and shows that though both Plato and Pythagoras begin with a kind of dualist position, Middle Platonism and Neopythagoreanism and then especially Neoplatonism eventually reduce that to a more truly monist position. So whether Platonism counts as "idealism" probably depends on which dialogues of Plato we are talking about, or whether we are talking about what Plato (probably) thought or what later Platonists thought. It gets complicated!
Sounds like an interesting book. Yeah, even within Plato's dialogues there's a lot of variation. I suppose it depends on what he wanted to emphasize, and of course, he wrote in a such a way that it's difficult to put him into a box.
It's funny, idealism gets so little attention that there's hardly any discussion about its nuances. Although that does seem to be changing, at least from what I'm seeing. I hope so!
Another great post. And of course, I agree that idealism is in a way better position to bridge the qualitative-quantitative gap that everyone is wringing their hands over.
You bring up Platonism in your footnote, and I think that's an interesting case of "idealism" since it's not Berkeley's version, which is what most people think of (I love Berkeley, but he's definitely an acquired taste). I would call Platonism idealism, though with caveats. Overall it's too sophisticated for our normal philosophy of mind categories (which we might want to think about ditching) since it's really a kind of epistemic dualism nestled within a cosmological idealism. I think it's much more nuanced than anything going on today, but good luck getting those informed by the analytic tradition to read Plato.
Kant...meh...not sure I would call him an idealist. I know many do, but I think that might be a confusing label. To put it another way, academic physicalists pretend to be Kantian, but then they smuggle their own scientific realist views in through the backdoor by assuming that things in themselves cause phenomena, thereby confusing anyone who hasn't read Kant. (I don't know why academics think they have a right to get sloppy when it comes to their popular books, when that's precisely where they need to be careful since their audience is less informed.)
You make a great point here about the vagueness of "idealism", and that's one reason that I try to give myself some wiggle room by talking about "idealism-adjacent" positions. Plato and Platonism is especially interesting because it shifts so much over time. I am currently reading Mystical Monotheism by John Peter Kenney, and he is in part giving a sort of genealogy of Platonism (and Pythagoreanism) and shows that though both Plato and Pythagoras begin with a kind of dualist position, Middle Platonism and Neopythagoreanism and then especially Neoplatonism eventually reduce that to a more truly monist position. So whether Platonism counts as "idealism" probably depends on which dialogues of Plato we are talking about, or whether we are talking about what Plato (probably) thought or what later Platonists thought. It gets complicated!
Sounds like an interesting book. Yeah, even within Plato's dialogues there's a lot of variation. I suppose it depends on what he wanted to emphasize, and of course, he wrote in a such a way that it's difficult to put him into a box.
It's funny, idealism gets so little attention that there's hardly any discussion about its nuances. Although that does seem to be changing, at least from what I'm seeing. I hope so!