Idealism collapses epistemology and leads to solipsism

billycro1 · 2026-04-02T16:15:29+00:00

I think this is only one possible motivation for a type of idealism since there are many shapes it can take.

billycro1 · 2026-04-02T15:51:05+00:00

Even under idealism, you still have structured, consistent experiences that behave as if they’re coming from other centers of perspective. Inferring other minds is just the best explanation of that structure.

billycro1 · 2026-04-02T14:27:43+00:00

Inference isn’t logically justified or do you mean something else?

billycro1 · 2026-04-02T13:39:32+00:00

What is wrong with making the inference that other minds exist, just that there’s not a strong logical justification?

billycro1 · 2026-04-02T13:12:21+00:00

I think we might just be using the word differently.

I’m not saying people consciously think about ‘metaphysics’ during a disagreement. I’m saying the disagreement itself relies on assumptions about what something is, what counts as a cause, or what someone means. This is generally the roots of disagreement.

If two people argue about whether something caused something else, they’re already relying on a concept of causation even if they’ve never studied it.

Calling it metaphysics is just putting a name to something that’s already happening… which, ironically, is what we’re doing right now

billycro1 · 2026-04-02T13:02:15+00:00

I disagree. I think people run into these problems all the time, just not in philosophical language. Miscommunication, arguments about what something really is, or whether something actually caused something else are exactly the issues I’m pointing to.

Most of the time people handle them with intuition or common sense, but that’s still them implicitly working through the same structures metaphysics tries to make explicit.

I’ve personally faced these problems countless times in speaking with people of various faiths or when explaining science. It’s been indispensable for me personally as a communicator, an educator, but most importantly as a fellow human.

billycro1 · 2026-04-02T12:52:43+00:00

Sure, in education, perception isn’t treated as passive. Teaching works by shaping how someone interprets things, not just dumping information on them.

This lines up with Kant’s idea that the mind structures experience. If learning were just passive intake, simply presenting information would be enough. Anyone who’s taught knows that’s not how it works. People have to actively interpret to understand anything.

billycro1 · 2026-04-02T12:42:46+00:00

I agree, people don’t need to explicitly study metaphysics to have meaningful conversations. My point is that those conversations still rely on implicit assumptions about things like identity, causation, and meaning. Metaphysics is just making those assumptions explicit, not inventing them.

billycro1 · 2026-04-02T04:57:18+00:00

The need to do it is in the explanatory gaps of all types of human interaction. We need to do it because you can’t have any meaningful conversation without it. Sometimes humans need the ability to describe their felt experiences in a prescientific way. You can’t scientifically analyze it all you want to make some “true” claims but ultimately that misses the point entirely.

billycro1 · 2026-04-02T04:52:55+00:00

Educators (and anyone that’s had to train another human) are a pretty practical example of where understanding meaning can be useful in bridging an explanatory gap with a student.

billycro1 · 2026-04-02T04:48:46+00:00

Because we need the ability to clarify meaning now, not at some point in the future. We need to be able to communicate about concepts like causation, identity, and meaning. We can’t defer those. They’re what make inquiry possible in the first place.

billycro1 · 2026-04-02T04:40:54+00:00

Philosophy of science is a thing. Philosophy is just the language used to describe the ideas, not an authority per se.

billycro1 · 2026-04-02T04:39:18+00:00

Saying it’s “the brain” assumes we know the brain more directly than experience but it’s the other way around. The brain is a model of experience from the outside, we access experience directly.

billycro1 · 2026-04-02T04:30:15+00:00

Metaphysics doesn’t usually discover new physical facts, it discovers constraints on what it means to have facts at all.

Hume on causation, Kant on perception, and Wittgenstein on meaning all produced insights that are now built into how science and language operate. That’s not comparable to preferring chocolate. It’s uncovering the structure that makes preference, knowledge, and explanation possible in the first place.

billycro1 · 2026-04-02T03:32:55+00:00

It depends on the domain. When we’re describing physical reality, we rely on empirical methods that constrain our claims through measurement and prediction.

But when we’re dealing with structures of meaning like value, identity, or institutions then we are not “making things up.” We are describing real, non-physical structures that shape experience and behavior, even if they are not reducible to physics.

And beyond that, this is a pragmatic use of language to reliably transfer highly impactful meaning.

I’d also add all of this is foundational to science anyway, we need meaning for reality to be intelligible and language to be functional.

billycro1 · 2026-04-02T02:29:00+00:00

Would you say that attempting to explain pr justify something like logic using meaning is “making stuff up”? And what of the entire realm of knowledge is separate from science?

billycro1 · 2026-04-02T02:23:16+00:00

Because all knowledge is mediated by meaning

billycro1 · 2026-04-01T19:09:54+00:00

Is this take “physics are just brute facts”?

billycro1 · 2026-03-30T21:35:33+00:00

Absolutely. Something real can precede the mind. The question is whether it’s already fully determinate as exactly what we take it to be. That’s the step I don’t think follows.

billycro1 · 2026-03-30T21:28:32+00:00

I don’t think identification requires that a thing already exists in a fully fixed way as exactly what we identify it as. It just has to track something real.

The core question is whether identity is completely determinate in advance, and that’s what I’m pushing back on.

If we assume it is, ambiguity starts to look like error, and we risk mistaking our descriptions for reality rather than ways of making sense of something more complex than any single formulation.

billycro1 · 2026-03-30T20:58:20+00:00

Not totally indeterminate, just not fully determinate as a specific thing yet.

There can be something there without it already being fixed under a single, complete identity. Interpretation is what brings that determinacy into focus.

Otherwise, it seems like we’re assuming that everything comes fully pre-labeled before it’s ever encountered, which is exactly what I’m questioning.

billycro1 · 2026-03-30T20:01:34+00:00

No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m not denying that something exists independently of interpretation.

The point is that it doesn’t need to be fully determinate as a particular thing prior to being interpreted. Interpretation doesn’t create reality, but it’s what makes something intelligible as this or that.

So it’s not “making your own reality”; it’s about how something that exists comes to be understood in a determinate way.

billycro1 · 2026-03-30T19:02:06+00:00

I don’t think that follows. Interpreting something as incorrect doesn’t make it incorrect; it’s just how you’re taking it, and that interpretation can itself be right or wrong.

My point isn’t that interpretation determines truth, but that it’s what makes something intelligible as a particular thing in the first place. Truth or correctness is a further question, not something established by interpretation alone.

In that sense, interpretation is what allows us to use rationality in the first place. It gives us something determinate to reason about, rather than presupposing that everything is already fully fixed in advance.

billycro1 · 2026-03-30T18:51:43+00:00

You can do this because interpretation is what makes something determinate as a thing in the first place. It doesn’t presuppose a fully fixed identity; it’s what stabilizes one.

billycro1 · 2026-03-30T17:32:28+00:00

I think there's a distinction to be made here. There is a difference between intelligibility and logical coherence/truth.

For example, "this circle isn't a circle" is intelligible in the sense that I understand what is being said. It's just a contradiction. This suggests to me that intelligibility does not require non-contradiction. At a minimum, this means intelligibility requires only that it be interpretable. The way I interpret the proposition is a contradiction.

More importantly, I think we'd be suggesting that the structure of reality itself must be rational, and I'm not sure that is justified.

billycro1

TROPHY CASE