Some Theories of Reality 1. This view holds that the universe is self-sufficient, without supernatural cause or control, and that all things and events can be explained as the result of conditions and forces in nature. There may be a single or absolute Mind or a pulurality of minds.
Idealism stressses the mental or spiritual aspects of experience.
Plato's Objections to Materialistic Naturalism 1. It gives no account of the purposiveness and meaningful ordering of things in the world, which requires an overarching intelligence in accordance with an ideal order, as opposed to mechanical necessity. They transcend our ability to grasp them definitively in words, transcending even our own individual ideas. They are rather the objective reality of which our own best ideas are a fallible representation. For Plato, we have access to them only mentally, through the mind's capacity to reason dialectically and intuit intellectually.