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View Full Version : Can someone explain Metaphysical Subjectivism please?



Nightshade
10-22-2005, 02:01 PM
well I noticed sub reffered to Metaphysical Subjectivism in a thread and I googled it but am still confused :confused:
So can someone help me ie explain it so I can understand

:D
Thanks

IrishCanadian
10-22-2005, 02:08 PM
I think he meant the vast possibility of different yet likely ideas regaurding the metaphisical. Like more than one creator? or angels AND ghosts . . . am I makeing any sence? Perhaps he/she can enlighten us a little bit more. Haha I just hope i'm on the right track considering I responded to the initial question about metaphysical subjectivism. Shucks

starrwriter
10-27-2005, 02:29 AM
well I noticed sub reffered to Metaphysical Subjectivism in a thread and I googled it but am still confused. So can someone help me ie explain it so I can understand

Irish philosopher George Berkeley developed metaphysical subjectivism in the west while Nagarjuna and other Buddhist philosophers developed a remarkably similar idea in the east (much earlier):

Outer reality is unknowable and may not exist in any concrete way. All we know is what our senses and our minds tell us. In other words, we experience sensory and mental processes, not outer reality -- like a blind man feeling an object to get a mental picture of how it looks.

Metaphysical subjectivism is a variation of solipsism, the philosophical theory that the self is all you know to exist. Both theories are unpopular in America, where a pragmatic view of reality dominates.

byquist
10-29-2005, 10:10 AM
Google "wikipedia," then put in "subjectivism" and scroll down when "subject" comes up.

BSturdy
10-31-2005, 10:31 PM
My love is betwixt a pair of compasses

(John Dull)

ThatIndividual
10-31-2005, 10:49 PM
the theory that perception creates reality, and that there is no underlying, true, reality that exists independent of perception.

This is not to say that there is an objective reality that exists independent of us we are simply unable to know it, (a la Kant, etc.) But that rather, there actually is no objective reality.

As Starrwriter said, George Berkeley is the man to see about this idea. (In Western philosophy that is. I know nothing whatsoever of Eastern besides some very basic ideas associated with Buddhism.)

As far as the Metaphysical Subjectivism goes though, it's a very simple thing to grasp.

ThatIndividual
10-31-2005, 10:51 PM
philosophers who hold this view do in fact allow that reality is 'real' and that physical objects really exist and all that. They do not mean to say that the computer in front of you 'isn't really there at all.' They only mean to assert that the nature of reality in the first place is only real in relation to your consciousness.

Satirical
10-31-2005, 11:01 PM
"Whenever I attempt to frame a simple idea of time, abstracted from the succession of ideas in my mind, which flows uniformly, and is participated by all beings, I am lost and embrangled in inextricable difficulties"
George Berkeley