Idealism

context: In philosophy, idealism is the group of philosophies which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing. In a sociological sense, idealism emphasizes how human ideas—especially beliefs and values—shape society. As an ontological doctrine, idealism goes further, asserting that all entities are composed of mind or spirit. Idealism thus rejects physicalist and dualist theories that fail to ascribe priority to the mind.
qas: answers: reality
question: What do idealist philosophies say is constructed in our minds?

answers: mind-independent
question: What types of things are idealist philosophies skeptical about?

answers: dualist
question: Along with physicalist theories, what theories is idealism in conflict with?

answers: beliefs and values
question: In sociology, what sorts of ideas does idealism focus on?

context: The earliest extant arguments that the world of experience is grounded in the mental derive from India and Greece. The Hindu idealists in India and the Greek Neoplatonists gave panentheistic arguments for an all-pervading consciousness as the ground or true nature of reality. In contrast, the Yogācāra school, which arose within Mahayana Buddhism in India in the 4th century CE, based its "mind-only" idealism to a greater extent on phenomenological analyses of personal experience. This turn toward the subjective anticipated empiricists such as George Berkeley, who revived idealism in 18th-century Europe by employing skeptical arguments against materialism.
qas: answers: Hindu
question: What Indian thinkers were early idealists?

answers: Neoplatonists
question: What Greek philosophers had idealistic views?

answers: Mahayana
question: With what sect of Buddhism was the Yogācāra school affiliated?

answers: 4th
question: In what century did the Yogācāra school arise?

answers: 18th
question: What century did George Berkeley live in?

context: Beginning with Immanuel Kant, German idealists such as G. W. F. Hegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, and Arthur Schopenhauer dominated 19th-century philosophy. This tradition, which emphasized the mental or "ideal" character of all phenomena, gave birth to idealistic and subjectivist schools ranging from British idealism to phenomenalism to existentialism. The historical influence of this branch of idealism remains central even to the schools that rejected its metaphysical assumptions, such as Marxism, pragmatism and positivism.
qas: answers: German
question: What was the ethnicity of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling?

answers: 19th
question: In what century did Hegel write?

answers: phenomenalism
question: Along with British idealism and existentialism, what philosophy was influenced by the German idealistic tradition?

answers: Marxism
question: Along with positivism and pragmatism, what philosophy rejected idealism's metaphysical views but what nevertheless influenced by it?

context: Idealism is a term with several related meanings. It comes via idea from the Greek idein (ἰδεῖν), meaning "to see". The term entered the English language by 1743. In ordinary use, as when speaking of Woodrow Wilson's political idealism, it generally suggests the priority of ideals, principles, values, and goals over concrete realities. Idealists are understood to represent the world as it might or should be, unlike pragmatists, who focus on the world as it presently is. In the arts, similarly, idealism affirms imagination and attempts to realize a mental conception of beauty, a standard of perfection, juxtaposed to aesthetic naturalism and realism.
qas: answers: to see
question: What does ἰδεῖν mean in English?

answers: 1743
question: By what year was "idealism" a word in English?

answers: pragmatists
question: Whose worldview contrasts with that of idealists in the ordinary sense of the word?

answers: Greek
question: What language is ἰδεῖν?

context: Any philosophy that assigns crucial importance to the ideal or spiritual realm in its account of human existence may be termed "idealist". Metaphysical idealism is an ontological doctrine that holds that reality itself is incorporeal or experiential at its core. Beyond this, idealists disagree on which aspects of the mental are more basic. Platonic idealism affirms that abstractions are more basic to reality than the things we perceive, while subjective idealists and phenomenalists tend to privilege sensory experience over abstract reasoning. Epistemological idealism is the view that reality can only be known through ideas, that only psychological experience can be apprehended by the mind.
qas: answers: idealist
question: What is the term used for philosophies that consider the spiritual to be of paramount importance?

answers: Metaphysical
question: What branch of idealism believes that reality is fundamentally nonphysical?

answers: Platonic
question: What branch of idealism sees abstracts as more real than perceived objects?

answers: subjective
question: Along with phenomenalists, what idealists believe the senses are more important than reason?

answers: Epistemological
question: What branch of idealism believes that we can only know the real world via ideas?

context: Subjective idealists like George Berkeley are anti-realists in terms of a mind-independent world, whereas transcendental idealists like Immanuel Kant are strong skeptics of such a world, affirming epistemological and not metaphysical idealism. Thus Kant defines idealism as "the assertion that we can never be certain whether all of our putative outer experience is not mere imagining". He claimed that, according to idealism, "the reality of external objects does not admit of strict proof. On the contrary, however, the reality of the object of our internal sense (of myself and state) is clear immediately through consciousness."  However, not all idealists restrict the real or the knowable to our immediate subjective experience. Objective idealists make claims about a transempirical world, but simply deny that this world is essentially divorced from or ontologically prior to the mental. Thus Plato and Gottfried Leibniz affirm an objective and knowable reality transcending our subjective awareness—a rejection of epistemological idealism—but propose that this reality is grounded in ideal entities, a form of metaphysical idealism. Nor do all metaphysical idealists agree on the nature of the ideal; for Plato, the fundamental entities were non-mental abstract forms, while for Leibniz they were proto-mental and concrete monads.
qas: answers: George Berkeley
question: Who is a notable subjective idealist?

answers: Immanuel Kant
question: What famous philosopher was a transcendental idealist?

answers: realists
question: Who are subjective idealists opposed to?

answers: Gottfried Leibniz
question: Along with Plato, what notable philosopher rejected epistemological idealism?

answers: Leibniz
question: Who believed the essence of reality to be composed of monads?

context: Christian theologians have held idealist views, often based on Neoplatonism, despite the influence of Aristotelian scholasticism from the 12th century onward. Later western theistic idealism such as that of Hermann Lotze offers a theory of the "world ground" in which all things find their unity: it has been widely accepted by Protestant theologians. Several modern religious movements, for example the organizations within the New Thought Movement and the Unity Church, may be said to have a particularly idealist orientation. The theology of Christian Science includes a form of idealism: it teaches that all that truly exists is God and God's ideas; that the world as it appears to the senses is a distortion of the underlying spiritual reality, a distortion that may be corrected (both conceptually and in terms of human experience) through a reorientation (spiritualization) of thought.
qas: answers: Neoplatonism
question: In what philosophy was Christian idealism often rooted?

answers: Aristotelian scholasticism
question: What philosophy influential in the medieval church was opposed to Christian idealism?

answers: 12th
question: In what century did Christian thought begin to be influenced by the scholasticism of Aristotle?

answers: New Thought
question: Along with the Unity Church, what contemporary religious movement may be regarded as idealist?

answers: Hermann Lotze
question: What notable idealist was responsible for a "world ground" theory?

context: Plato's theory of forms or "ideas" describes ideal forms (for example the platonic solids in geometry or abstracts like Goodness and Justice), as universals existing independently of any particular instance. Arne Grøn calls this doctrine "the classic example of a metaphysical idealism as a transcendent idealism", while Simone Klein calls Plato "the earliest representative of metaphysical objective idealism". Nevertheless, Plato holds that matter is real, though transitory and imperfect, and is perceived by our body and its senses and given existence by the eternal ideas that are perceived directly by our rational soul. Plato was therefore a metaphysical and epistemological dualist, an outlook that modern idealism has striven to avoid: Plato's thought cannot therefore be counted as idealist in the modern sense, although quantum physics' assertion that man's consciousness is an immutable and primary requisite for not merely perceiving but shaping matter, and thus his reality, would give more credence to Plato's dualist position.[citation needed]
qas: answers: Simone Klein
question: Who regarded Plato as the oldest exponent of metaphysical objective idealism?

answers: metaphysical and epistemological
question: What sort of dualist is Plato regarded as?

answers: ideas
question: What was another term for forms in Plato's theory of forms?

answers: quantum
question: What branch of physics might support a worldview similar to Platonic dualism?

context: With the neoplatonist Plotinus, wrote Nathaniel Alfred Boll; "there even appears, probably for the first time in Western philosophy, idealism that had long been current in the East even at that time, for it taught... that the soul has made the world by stepping from eternity into time...". Similarly, in regard to passages from the Enneads, "The only space or place of the world is the soul" and "Time must not be assumed to exist outside the soul", Ludwig Noiré wrote: "For the first time in Western philosophy we find idealism proper in Plotinus, However, Plotinus does not address whether we know external objects, unlike Schopenhauer and other modern philosophers.
qas: answers: neoplatonist
question: What sort of philosopher was Plotinus?

answers: Plotinus
question: According to Noiré, who was the first true Western idealist?

answers: whether we know external objects
question: What issue did Schopenhauer discuss that Plotinus did not?

answers: Time
question: What did the Enneads believe might not have existence outside of the soul?

context: Subjective Idealism (immaterialism or phenomenalism) describes a relationship between experience and the world in which objects are no more than collections or "bundles" of sense data in the perceiver. Proponents include Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, an Anglo-Irish philosopher who advanced a theory he called immaterialism, later referred to as "subjective idealism", contending that individuals can only know sensations and ideas of objects directly, not abstractions such as "matter", and that ideas also depend upon being perceived for their very existence - esse est percipi; "to be is to be perceived".
qas: answers: immaterialism
question: Along with phenomenalism, what is another term for subjective idealism?

answers: Cloyne
question: Of what see was Berkeley bishop?

answers: Anglo-Irish
question: What was Berkeley's ethnicity?

answers: to be is to be perceived
question: What does esse est percipi mean?

answers: abstractions
question: What did Berkeley consider things like matter to be?

context: Arthur Collier published similar assertions though there seems to have been no influence between the two contemporary writers. The only knowable reality is the represented image of an external object. Matter as a cause of that image, is unthinkable and therefore nothing to us. An external world as absolute matter unrelated to an observer does not exist as far as we are concerned. The universe cannot exist as it appears if there is no perceiving mind. Collier was influenced by An Essay Towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World by "Cambridge Platonist" John Norris (1701).
qas: answers: John Norris
question: Who was known as the "Cambridge Platonist"?

answers: Arthur Collier
question: Who was notably influenced by John Norris?

answers: 1701
question: When was An Essay Towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World written?

answers: represented image of an external object
question: What sort of reality did Collier believe was knowable?

context: and proliferation of hyphenated entities such as "thing-in-itself" (Immanuel Kant), "things-as-interacted-by-us" (Arthur Fine), "table-of-commonsense" and "table-of-physics" (Sir Arthur Eddington) which are "warning signs" for conceptual idealism according to Musgrave because they allegedly do not exist but only highlight the numerous ways in which people come to know the world. This argument does not take into account the issues pertaining to hermeneutics, especially at the backdrop of analytic philosophy. Musgrave criticized Richard Rorty and Postmodernist philosophy in general for confusion of use and mention.
qas: answers: Immanuel Kant
question: Who coined the term "thing-in-itself"?

answers: Sir Arthur Eddington
question: Who invented the idea of a "table-of-commonsense"?

answers: Arthur Fine
question: Who came up with the idea of "things-as-interacted-by-us"?

answers: Musgrave
question: Who spoke of the "warning signs" of idealism?

answers: Postmodernist
question: What sort of philosopher was Richard Rorty?

context: A. A. Luce and John Foster are other subjectivists. Luce, in Sense without Matter (1954), attempts to bring Berkeley up to date by modernizing his vocabulary and putting the issues he faced in modern terms, and treats the Biblical account of matter and the psychology of perception and nature. Foster's The Case for Idealism argues that the physical world is the logical creation of natural, non-logical constraints on human sense-experience. Foster's latest defense of his views is in his book A World for Us: The Case for Phenomenalistic Idealism.
qas: answers: subjectivists
question: What sort of thinkers were Foster and Luce?

answers: Sense without Matter
question: What book was written by A.A. Luce?

answers: 1954
question: What year saw the publication of Sense without Matter?

answers: Foster
question: Who wrote A World for Us: The Case for Phenomenalistic Idealism?

answers: Berkeley
question: Whose work is Sense without Matter regarded as updating?

context: The 2nd edition (1787) contained a Refutation of Idealism to distinguish his transcendental idealism from Descartes's Sceptical Idealism and Berkeley's anti-realist strain of Subjective Idealism. The section Paralogisms of Pure Reason is an implicit critique of Descartes' idealism. Kant says that it is not possible to infer the 'I' as an object (Descartes' cogito ergo sum) purely from "the spontaneity of thought". Kant focused on ideas drawn from British philosophers such as Locke, Berkeley and Hume but distinguished his transcendental or critical idealism from previous varieties;
qas: answers: Subjective Idealism
question: What school of thought did Berkeley belong to?

answers: Sceptical
question: What sort of idealist was Descartes?

answers: Paralogisms of Pure Reason
question: In what section was Descartes criticized?

answers: 2nd
question: In what edition was there a Refutation of Idealism?

answers: 1787
question: When was the second edition published?

context: In the first volume of his Parerga and Paralipomena, Schopenhauer wrote his "Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real". He defined the ideal as being mental pictures that constitute subjective knowledge. The ideal, for him, is what can be attributed to our own minds. The images in our head are what comprise the ideal. Schopenhauer emphasized that we are restricted to our own consciousness. The world that appears is only a representation or mental picture of objects. We directly and immediately know only representations. All objects that are external to the mind are known indirectly through the mediation of our mind. He offered a history of the concept of the "ideal" as "ideational" or "existing in the mind as an image".
qas: answers: Schopenhauer
question: Who wrote Parerga and Paralipomena?

answers: subjective
question: What type of knowledge did Schopenhauer believe the ideal to be?

answers: our own minds
question: According to Schopenhauer, to what can the ideal be attributed?

answers: our own consciousness
question: What did Schopenhauer believe we were restricted to?

answers: representations
question: What did Schopenhauer believe were the only things we could know?

context: Friedrich Nietzsche argued that Kant commits an agnostic tautology and does not offer a satisfactory answer as to the source of a philosophical right to such-or-other metaphysical claims; he ridicules his pride in tackling "the most difficult thing that could ever be undertaken on behalf of metaphysics." The famous "thing-in-itself" was called a product of philosophical habit, which seeks to introduce a grammatical subject: because wherever there is cognition, there must be a thing that is cognized and allegedly it must be added to ontology as a being (whereas, to Nietzsche, only the world as ever changing appearances can be assumed). Yet he attacks the idealism of Schopenhauer and Descartes with an argument similar to Kant's critique of the latter (see above).
qas: answers: Friedrich Nietzsche
question: Who censured Kant for his agnostic tautology?

answers: Descartes
question: Along with Schopenhauer, whose idealism did Nietzsche attack?

answers: Descartes
question: Nietzsche's attack on Schopenhauer used an argument similar to Kant's attack on who?

context: Absolute idealism is G. W. F. Hegel's account of how existence is comprehensible as an all-inclusive whole. Hegel called his philosophy "absolute" idealism in contrast to the "subjective idealism" of Berkeley and the "transcendental idealism" of Kant and Fichte, which were not based on a critique of the finite and a dialectical philosophy of history as Hegel's idealism was. The exercise of reason and intellect enables the philosopher to know ultimate historical reality, the phenomenological constitution of self-determination, the dialectical development of self-awareness and personality in the realm of History.
qas: answers: transcendental
question: According to Hegel, what sort of idealist was Fichte?

answers: Berkeley
question: Who did Hegel see as a subjective idealist?

answers: Absolute
question: What sort of idealist did Hegel define himself as?

answers: exercise of reason and intellect
question: How did Hegel believe historical reality to be knowable to a philosopher?

context: In his Science of Logic (1812–1814) Hegel argues that finite qualities are not fully "real" because they depend on other finite qualities to determine them. Qualitative infinity, on the other hand, would be more self-determining and hence more fully real. Similarly finite natural things are less "real"—because they are less self-determining—than spiritual things like morally responsible people, ethical communities and God. So any doctrine, such as materialism, that asserts that finite qualities or natural objects are fully real is mistaken.
qas: answers: 1812–1814
question: When was Science of Logic written?

answers: Hegel
question: Who was the author of Science of Logic?

answers: less self-determining
question: Why did Hegel believe natural things are less real than spiritual things?

answers: ethical communities
question: Along with God and morally responsible people, what is an example of a spiritual thing to Hegel?

answers: materialism
question: What is an example of a school of thought Hegel believed to be wrong?

context: Hegel certainly intends to preserve what he takes to be true of German idealism, in particular Kant's insistence that ethical reason can and does go beyond finite inclinations. For Hegel there must be some identity of thought and being for the "subject" (any human observer)) to be able to know any observed "object" (any external entity, possibly even another human) at all. Under Hegel's concept of "subject-object identity," subject and object both have Spirit (Hegel's ersatz, redefined, nonsupernatural "God") as their conceptual (not metaphysical) inner reality—and in that sense are identical. But until Spirit's "self-realization" occurs and Spirit graduates from Spirit to Absolute Spirit status, subject (a human mind) mistakenly thinks every "object" it observes is something "alien," meaning something separate or apart from "subject." In Hegel's words, "The object is revealed to it [to "subject"] by [as] something alien, and it does not recognize itself." Self-realization occurs when Hegel (part of Spirit's nonsupernatural Mind, which is the collective mind of all humans) arrives on the scene and realizes that every "object" is himself, because both subject and object are essentially Spirit. When self-realization occurs and Spirit becomes Absolute Spirit, the "finite" (man, human) becomes the "infinite" ("God," divine), replacing the imaginary or "picture-thinking" supernatural God of theism: man becomes God. Tucker puts it this way: "Hegelianism . . . is a religion of self-worship whose fundamental theme is given in Hegel's image of the man who aspires to be God himself, who demands 'something more, namely infinity.'" The picture Hegel presents is "a picture of a self-glorifying humanity striving compulsively, and at the end successfully, to rise to divinity."
qas: answers: Spirit
question: In Hegel's thought, what inner reality is possessed by both subject and object?

answers: any human observer
question: What is another term for Hegel's "subject"?

answers: Absolute Spirit
question: What does Spirit turn into when a person arrives at self-realization?

answers: any external entity
question: What does Hegel mean by "object"?

answers: self
question: Who did Tucker argue that Hegel's philosophy involved the worship of?

context: Kierkegaard criticised Hegel's idealist philosophy in several of his works, particularly his claim to a comprehensive system that could explain the whole of reality. Where Hegel argues that an ultimate understanding of the logical structure of the world is an understanding of the logical structure of God's mind, Kierkegaard asserting that for God reality can be a system but it cannot be so for any human individual because both reality and humans are incomplete and all philosophical systems imply completeness. A logical system is possible but an existential system is not. "What is rational is actual; and what is actual is rational". Hegel's absolute idealism blurs the distinction between existence and thought: our mortal nature places limits on our understanding of reality;
qas: answers: Kierkegaard
question: Who was a notable critic of Hegel?

answers: human
question: For whom did Kierkegaard argue reality cannot be a system?

answers: humans are incomplete
question: According to Kierkegaard, why can't reality be a system for human beings?

answers: logical
question: Even though Kierkegaard does not believe in the possibility of an existential system of reality, what sort of system can exist?

context: A major concern of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) and of the philosophy of Spirit that he lays out in his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1817–1830) is the interrelation between individual humans, which he conceives in terms of "mutual recognition." However, what Climacus means by the aforementioned statement, is that Hegel, in the Philosophy of Right, believed the best solution was to surrender one's individuality to the customs of the State, identifying right and wrong in view of the prevailing bourgeois morality. Individual human will ought, at the State's highest level of development, to properly coincide with the will of the State. Climacus rejects Hegel's suppression of individuality by pointing out it is impossible to create a valid set of rules or system in any society which can adequately describe existence for any one individual. Submitting one's will to the State denies personal freedom, choice, and responsibility.
qas: answers: Hegel
question: Who wrote Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences?

answers: 1807
question: When was Phenomenology of Spirit published?

answers: individuality
question: What trait did Climacus believe that Hegel suppressed?

answers: State
question: Whose will did Hegel believe should prevail over that of the individual?

answers: bourgeois
question: What conception of right and wrong did Climacus believe Hegel endorsed?

context: In addition, Hegel does believe we can know the structure of God's mind, or ultimate reality. Hegel agrees with Kierkegaard that both reality and humans are incomplete, inasmuch as we are in time, and reality develops through time. But the relation between time and eternity is outside time and this is the "logical structure" that Hegel thinks we can know. Kierkegaard disputes this assertion, because it eliminates the clear distinction between ontology and epistemology. Existence and thought are not identical and one cannot possibly think existence. Thought is always a form of abstraction, and thus not only is pure existence impossible to think, but all forms in existence are unthinkable; thought depends on language, which merely abstracts from experience, thus separating us from lived experience and the living essence of all beings. In addition, because we are finite beings, we cannot possibly know or understand anything that is universal or infinite such as God, so we cannot know God exists, since that which transcends time simultaneously transcends human understanding.
qas: answers: ultimate
question: What sort of reality did Hegel perceive God's mind to be?

answers: Kierkegaard
question: Along with Hegel, who also argued for human incompleteness?

answers: abstraction
question: According to Hegel, what form does thought necessarily take?

answers: we are finite beings
question: Why does Hegel believe we cannot know God?

answers: human understanding
question: If something transcends time, what does it, according to Hegel, also transcend?

context: Bradley was the apparent target of G. E. Moore's radical rejection of idealism. Moore claimed that Bradley did not understand the statement that something is real. We know for certain, through common sense and prephilosophical beliefs, that some things are real, whether they are objects of thought or not, according to Moore. The 1903 article The Refutation of Idealism is one of the first demonstrations of Moore's commitment to analysis. He examines each of the three terms in the Berkeleian aphorism esse est percipi, "to be is to be perceived", finding that it must mean that the object and the subject are necessarily connected so that "yellow" and "the sensation of yellow" are identical - "to be yellow" is "to be experienced as yellow". But it also seems there is a difference between "yellow" and "the sensation of yellow" and "that esse is held to be percipi, solely because what is experienced is held to be identical with the experience of it". Though far from a complete refutation, this was the first strong statement by analytic philosophy against its idealist predecessors, or at any rate against the type of idealism represented by Berkeley. This argument did not show that the GEM (in post–Stove vernacular, see below) is logically invalid.
qas: answers: Moore
question: Who wrote The Refutation of Idealism?

answers: Bradley
question: In his rejection of idealism, whose thought did Moore attack?

answers: Berkeley
question: Who originated the saying 'esse est percipi'?

context: Pluralistic idealism such as that of Gottfried Leibniz takes the view that there are many individual minds that together underlie the existence of the observed world and make possible the existence of the physical universe. Unlike absolute idealism, pluralistic idealism does not assume the existence of a single ultimate mental reality or "Absolute". Leibniz' form of idealism, known as Panpsychism, views "monads" as the true atoms of the universe and as entities having perception. The monads are "substantial forms of being",elemental, individual, subject to their own laws, non-interacting, each reflecting the entire universe. Monads are centers of force, which is substance while space, matter and motion are phenomenal and their form and existence is dependent on the simple and immaterial monads. There is a pre-established harmony established by God, the central monad, between the world in the minds of the monads and the external world of objects. Leibniz's cosmology embraced traditional Christian Theism. The English psychologist and philosopher James Ward inspired by Leibniz had also defended a form of pluralistic idealism. According to Ward the universe is composed of "psychic monads" of different levels, interacting for mutual self- betterment.
qas: answers: Gottfried Leibniz
question: Who is a notable exponent of pluralistic idealism?

answers: Panpsychism
question: What is the term for the type of idealism preached by Leibniz?

answers: monads
question: What did Leibniz believe the universe is fundamentally composed of?

answers: James Ward
question: Who was a notable disciple of Leibniz?

answers: self- betterment
question: What does Ward see as the purpose of interaction between monads?

context: Howison's personal idealism  was also called "California Personalism" by others to distinguish it from the "Boston Personalism" which was of Bowne. Howison maintained that both impersonal, monistic idealism and materialism run contrary to the experience of moral freedom. To deny freedom to pursue truth, beauty, and "benignant love" is to undermine every profound human venture, including science, morality, and philosophy. Personalistic idealists Borden Parker Bowne and Edgar S. Brightman and realistic personal theist Saint Thomas Aquinas address a core issue, namely that of dependence upon an infinite personal God.
qas: answers: Bowne
question: Who was an exponent of so-called "Boston Personalism"?

answers: California Personalism
question: What was the term given to the personal idealism of Howison?

answers: Saint Thomas Aquinas
question: Who is a notable realistic personal theist?

answers: dependence upon an infinite personal God
question: What issue do both Aquinas and Brightman discuss?

answers: moral
question: What sort of freedom did Howison believe was incompatible with materialism?

context: J. M. E. McTaggart of Cambridge University, argued that minds alone exist and only relate to each other through love. Space, time and material objects are unreal. In The Unreality of Time he argued that time is an illusion because it is impossible to produce a coherent account of a sequence of events. The Nature of Existence (1927) contained his arguments that space, time, and matter cannot possibly be real. In his Studies in Hegelian Cosmology (Cambridge, 1901, p196) he declared that metaphysics are not relevant to social and political action. McTaggart "thought that Hegel was wrong in supposing that metaphysics could show that the state is more than a means to the good of the individuals who compose it". For McTaggart "philosophy can give us very little, if any, guidance in action... Why should a Hegelian citizen be surprised that his belief as to the organic nature of the Absolute does not help him in deciding how to vote? Would a Hegelian engineer be reasonable in expecting that his belief that all matter is spirit should help him in planning a bridge?
qas: answers: Cambridge
question: With what university is J.M.E. McTaggart affiliated?

answers: 1927
question: In what year was The Nature of Existence published?

answers: minds
question: According to McTaggart, what are the only things that have real existence?

answers: unreal
question: What does McTaggart believe space and time to be?

answers: love
question: How does McTaggart believe minds relate to one another?

context: Thomas Davidson taught a philosophy called "apeirotheism", a "form of pluralistic idealism...coupled with a stern ethical rigorism" which he defined as "a theory of Gods infinite in number." The theory was indebted to Aristotle's pluralism and his concepts of Soul, the rational, living aspect of a living substance which cannot exist apart from the body because it is not a substance but an essence, and nous, rational thought, reflection and understanding. Although a perennial source of controversy, Aristotle arguably views the latter as both eternal and immaterial in nature, as exemplified in his theology of unmoved movers. Identifying Aristotle's God with rational thought, Davidson argued, contrary to Aristotle, that just as the soul cannot exist apart from the body, God cannot exist apart from the world.
qas: answers: apeirotheism
question: What was the name of the philosophy preached by Thomas Davidson?

answers: pluralistic
question: What type of idealism was Thomas Davidson's philosophy?

answers: infinite
question: According to Davidson, how many gods are there?

answers: Aristotle
question: By whose philosophy was Davidson influenced?

answers: rational thought
question: What did Davidson believe the God of Aristotle is synonymous with?

context: Idealist notions took a strong hold among physicists of the early 20th century confronted with the paradoxes of quantum physics and the theory of relativity. In The Grammar of Science, Preface to the 2nd Edition, 1900, Karl Pearson wrote, "There are many signs that a sound idealism is surely replacing, as a basis for natural philosophy, the crude materialism of the older physicists." This book influenced Einstein's regard for the importance of the observer in scientific measurements[citation needed]. In § 5 of that book, Pearson asserted that "...science is in reality a classification and analysis of the contents of the mind...." Also, "...the field of science is much more consciousness than an external world."
qas: answers: physicists
question: Among what twentieth century scientists was idealism popular?

answers: relativity
question: Along with quantum physics generally, what scientific doctrine caused some physicists to embrace idealism?

answers: 1900
question: In what year was the second edition of The Grammar of Science published?

answers: contents of the mind
question: What did Pearson claim that science classifies?

answers: Einstein
question: Who is claimed to have been influenced by The Grammar of Science?

context: "The mind-stuff of the world is, of course, something more general than our individual conscious minds.... The mind-stuff is not spread in space and time; these are part of the cyclic scheme ultimately derived out of it.... It is necessary to keep reminding ourselves that all knowledge of our environment from which the world of physics is constructed, has entered in the form of messages transmitted along the nerves to the seat of consciousness.... Consciousness is not sharply defined, but fades into subconsciousness; and beyond that we must postulate something indefinite but yet continuous with our mental nature.... It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character. But no one can deny that mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience, and all else is remote inference."
qas: answers: messages transmitted along the nerves to the seat of consciousness
question: How do receive information from the physical world?

answers: subconsciousness
question: What type of consciousness is similar but not identical to consciousness itself?

answers: mental
question: What is the nature of the fundamental character of reality?

answers: physicist
question: According to the author, who would have particular trouble in accepting that reality is fundamentally mental?

answers: mind
question: What is the main thing that we experience?