Editing Idealism (section)

==Criticism==

In the [[Western world]], the popularity of idealism as a metaphysical view declined severely in the 20th century, especially in English language [[analytic philosophy]]. This was partly due to the criticisms of British philosophers like [[G. E. Moore]] and [[Bertrand Russell]] and also due to the critiques of the American "new realists" like [[E. B. Holt|E.B. Holt]], [[Ralph Barton Perry]] and [[Roy Wood Sellars]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sprigge |first1=T. L. S. |title=Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy |year=2016 |isbn=978-0-415-25069-6 |chapter=Idealism |doi=10.4324/9780415249126-N027-1}}</ref><ref>Guyer at al. 2023, p. 150.</ref><ref name="SEP3" />

Moore famously critiqued idealism and defended [[Philosophical realism|realism]] in ''The Refutation of Idealism'' (1903), and ''[[A Defence of Common Sense]]'' (1925). In the ''Refutation,'' Moore argues that arguments for idealism most often rely on the premise that to be is to be perceived (''esse est percipi''), but that if this is true "how can we infer that anything whatever, let alone everything is an inseparable aspect of any experience?".<ref name=":25">Guyer at al. 2023, p. 152</ref> [[Bertrand Russell]]'s popular 1912 book ''[[The Problems of Philosophy]]'' also contained a similar critique.<ref name="SEP3"/> Their main objection is that idealists falsely presuppose that the mind's relation to any object is a necessary condition for the existence of the object. Russell thinks this fallacy fails to make "the distinction between act and object in our apprehending of things" (1912 [1974: 42]).<ref name=":25" /> Guyer et al. write that the success of these arguments might be controversial and that "the charge that they simply conflate knowledge and object hardly seems to do justice to the elaborate arguments of the late nineteenth-century idealists."<ref>Guyer at al. 2023, p. 152.</ref> It also relies on a realist epistemology in which knowledge stands "in an immediate relation to an independent individual object".<ref>Guyer at al. 2023, p. 153.</ref>

Regarding positive arguments, Moore's most famous argument ''for'' the existence of external matter (found in ''Proof of an External World'', 1939) was an epistemological argument from [[common sense]] facts, sometimes known as "[[Here is one hand]]". Idealism was also more recently critiqued in the works of Australian philosopher [[David Stove]],<ref name=Stove/> and by [[Alan Musgrave]],<ref name="Alan Musgrave 1998"/> and [[John Searle]].<ref name="Social Reality' p. 174"/>

Physicist [[Milton A. Rothman]] has written that idealism in incompatible with science and is not considered an empirical system of knowledge unlike [[Philosophical realism|realism]] which is pragmatical and makes testable predictions.<ref name="Rothman">{{cite book |last=Rothman |first=Milton A. |author-link=Milton A. Rothman |date=1992 |title=The Science Gap: Dispelling the Myths and Understanding the Reality of Science |publisher= Prometheus Books |pages=27–32 |isbn=0-87975-710-8}}</ref> Rothman commented that "idealism saying nothing about why ten different observers in different parts of the world measure the speed of light to be the same. If the light beam exists only a construct in my mind, then how does an experimenter in Moscow always get the same result that I do in, say Princeton".<ref name="Rothman"/>

Philosopher and physicist [[Mario Bunge]] has written that idealistic thinking is often found in [[pseudoscience]]s as it postulates immaterial entities that disregard scientific laws.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Bunge, Mario|year=2006|title=The Philosophy behind Pseudoscience|journal=Skeptical Inquirer|url=https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2006/07/22164602/p29.pdf|volume=30|issue=4|pages=29–37}}</ref>