Epistemological Idealism

I am often concerned with the distinction between idealism and materialism (or idealism and realism).

Idealism, in the way I understand and appreciate it, means that we take the mind and ideas to be our primary object of study.

Materialism, on the other hand, chooses to analyze the world as a form of matter. We pay less attention to thoughts and ideas and choose to explain things by reference to natural, material process.

Of course the mental world wouldn't exist without the material world. The brain clearly creates mental life, and mental process is thus in someways subservient to material process.

But I still think it is useful to make this distinction between the ideal and the material.

It would be a mistake, I believe, to try to explain everything in the human world with references to the material world.

History and process are not synonymous, no matter how much people like to think so. Collingwood believed that Alexander and Whited were making the mistake of conflating history and process in the early 20th century. And I believe that Manuel DeLanda and other's are making that same mistake today.

You cannot reduce my life to my brain, as much as you try.

Idealism is strongest as an epistemological claim.

That is, idealism is most useful when we ask ourselves, What can I know and how can I know it?

Because at the end of the day all we can have true knowledge of is the mind.

'But we understand all kinds of things about the natural world. Is it not fair to say that we have knowledge of natural laws and processes?' one might ask.

Yes, it is true, we have learned many things about the natural world.

But it is always a mind, subjectively confined, doing its own thing, that is capable of knowing those things about the world.

Thus if we do not know that we know, or how we know, then we cannot claim to have a full knowledge.

In other words, to have true knowledge we must have a knowledge of the mental faculties that allow us to know at all.

The conclusion is unavoidable: The only type of knowledge can be knowledge of mind. For knowledge of the natural world without knowledge of the fact that we are knowing is not true knowledge.

Thus Collingwood is able to argue in his essay 'Human Nature and Human History': "Without some knowledge of himself, his knowledge of other things is imperfect: for to know something without knowing that one knows it is only a half-knowing, and to know that one knows is to know oneself. Self-knowledge is desirable and important to man, not only for its own sake, but as a condition without which no other knowledge can be critically justified and securely based" (The Idea of History, 205, my emphasis). Self-knowledge of mind, therefore, can be the only form of knowledge.

And how does one achieve self-knowledge of mind? Through history, Collingwood claims.

History, thus, for Collingwood, is the only form of true knowledge. Moreover, history is always ideal.

Idealism's true strength is therefore epistemological.

If we want to have a secure foundation for knowledge we must commit above all to knowing ourselves, our own minds.

It is all well and good to pursue knowledge of the material world, but only if we recognize that that knowledge is always built on a foundation of historical knowledge of mind.

This is in not meant to suggest that scientist's or other disciplines should drop what they are doing and become historians, or that historians are the only one's capable of having this kind of historical self-knowledge. This type of knowledge is open to all. It isn't as unusual as I might be making it sound.

I need to find more ordinary words to express all of this in.

I am just beginning Daniel Kahneman's new book, Thinking, Fast and Slow.

He is great with ordinary language.

I'll try to learn from him in both style and content.