Idealism is true

Dylan offers an argument in favor of the proposition that idealism is true. This argument concludes that mind-independent entities are conceptually meaningless and therefore have no important role in our picture of reality. However, I will counter this by arguing that conscious experience depends on the existence of physical entities for it to be meaningful. I will address Dylan’s statements after proving this.Imagine that you are taking a walk around an urban city. As you walk, you will hear the loudness of the cars speeding past you. Being a large city, you may also hear the wailing, high-pitched frequency of an emergency vehicle. It is undeniable that your conscious experience includes the experience of hearing these sounds. What causes us to hear loudness and pitch the way that we do? What factors mold the structures of our conscious experience? According to physics, our subjective experience of loudness relates to a physical quantity called the intensity level, which depends on the intensity of the sound and the intensity of some reference level. Furthermore, our experience of pitch depends on the frequency (cycles per second) of the sound wave. A higher frequency will lead us to hear a higher pitch, and a lower frequency will lead us to hear a lower pitch. According to this picture, our conscious experience of the world around us depends on physical quantities, entities, and relationships, Therefore, the mere existence of conscious experience implies the existence of physical entities as well.The picture that I just described relates aspects of our conscious experience to physical quantities. Now we can mention a different picture, one in which all of reality is mentally constructed and the physical does not actually exist. Unfortunately for the idealist, this picture must be incorrect. To produce a sound that is experienced as being twice as loud requires a sound wave with ten times the intensity. If idealism is true, one would expect a direct relationship between these two quantities. Namely, there is a mental concept “sounding loud” that remains constant until ten times the intensity has been reached. Everything that is true of one’s conscious experience remains the same, yet something else, the intensity of the sound wave, is changing. The mental aspect of our experience has not changed, as nobody ever walks down a street and notices that the sound they are hearing has increased in intensity by 2.5 (for example). Since there is a change, and this change has been ruled out as being a change in the mental aspect of the scenario, there must be a change to something non-mental. Therefore, the non-mental must exist.Notice that this debate is about ontology. We're asking whether or not reality itself is mentally constructed. Dylan's argument, however, does not seem to be a matter of ontology. Rather, it seems to be an argument relating to discourse. Discourse, in this context, refers to the fact that when we debate such topics as realism and idealism, we do so within a conceptual, linguistic, historical, social, and temporal paradigm that determines the way we think about the issue. Dylan's argument attempts to prove that if the non-mental exists, it cannot be conceived. It also attempts to prove that if the non-mental exists, it cannot be expressed. Given these terms, it is very clearly an argument based on the conceptual and linguistic foundations of the paradigm that our thinking is taking place in. It amounts to the argument that the discourse we are participating in gives no conceptual or linguistic coherency to the existence of mind-independent entities and the non-mental. Ergo, it is not an argument relating to ontology, and therefore has no implications on the true nature of reality.Our conscious experience is founded upon the existence of mind-independent entities that cannot possibly be mentally constructed. This in and of itself supports the conclusion of realism. However, we have also seen that there is no logically sound argument for the ontology of idealism presented in this debate. Therefore, a Con vote is the most justified.Thank you for reading.ReferencesPhysics: Principles with Applications