A World for Us aims to refute physical realism and establish in its
place a form of idealism. Physical realism, in the sense in which John
Foster understands it, takes the physical world to be something whose
existence is both logically independent of the human mind and
metaphysically fundamental. Foster identifies a number of problems for
this realist view, but his main objection is that it does not accord
the world the requisite empirical immanence. The form of idealism that
he tries to establish in its place rejects the realist view in both
its aspects. It takes the world to be something whose existence is
ultimately constituted by facts about human sensory experience, or by
some richer complex of non-physical facts in which such experiential
facts centrally feature. Foster calls this phenomenalistic idealism.
He tries to establish a specific version of such phenomenalistic
idealism, in which the experiential facts that centrally feature in
the constitutive creation of the world are ones that concern the
organization of human sensory experience. The basic idea of this
version is that, in the context of certain other constitutively
relevant factors, this sensory organization creates the physical world
by disposing things to appear systematically world-wise at the human
empirical viewpoint. Chief among these other relevant factors is the
role of God as the one who is responsible for the sensory organization
and ordains the system of appearance it yields. It is this that gives
the idealistically created world its objectivity and allows it to
qualify as a real world.
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The Case for Phenomenalistic Idealism
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780191538063
Publisert
2020
Utgiver
Vendor
OUP Oxford
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter