Editing Subjective idealism (section)

==Criticism==
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[[Bertrand Russell]]'s popular 1912 book ''[[The Problems of Philosophy]]'' highlights Berkeley's tautological premise for advancing idealism;

:"If we say that the things known must be in the mind, we are either unduly limiting the mind's power of knowing, or we are uttering a mere tautology. We are uttering a mere tautology if we mean by 'in the mind' the same as by 'before the mind', i.e. if we mean merely being apprehended by the mind. But if we mean this, we shall have to admit that what, in this sense, is in the mind, may nevertheless be not mental. Thus when we realize the nature of knowledge, Berkeley's argument is seen to be wrong in substance as well as in form, and his grounds for supposing that 'ideas'-i.e. the objects apprehended-must be mental, are found to have no validity whatever. Hence his grounds in favour of the idealism may be dismissed."

The [[Australians|Australian]] philosopher [[David Stove]] harshly criticized philosophical idealism, arguing that it rests on what he called "the worst argument<!--boldface per WP:R#PLA--> in the world".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/worst.html|title=Stove's discovery of the worst argument in the world}}</ref> Stove claims that Berkeley tried to derive a non-tautological conclusion from tautological reasoning. He argued that in Berkeley's case the [[fallacy]] is not obvious and this is because one premise is ambiguous between one meaning which is [[Tautology (logic)|tautological]] and another which, Stove argues, is [[Logical equivalence|logically equivalent]] to the conclusion.

[[Alan Musgrave]]<ref>Alan Musgrave, in an article titled ''Realism and Antirealism'' in R. Klee (ed), ''Scientific Inquiry: Readings in the Philosophy of Science'', Oxford, 1998, 344-352 - later re-titled to ''Conceptual Idealism and Stove's Gem'' in A. Musgrave, Essays on Realism and Rationalism, Rodopi, 1999 also in [[Maria Luisa Dalla Chiara|M.L. Dalla Chiara]] et al. (eds), ''Language, Quantum, Music'', Kluwer, 1999, 25-35 - [[Alan Musgrave]]</ref> argues that conceptual idealists compound their mistakes with [[Use–mention distinction|use/mention]] confusions;

:Santa Claus the person does not exist.
:"Santa Claus" the name/concept/fairy tale does exist because adults tell children this every Christmas season (the distinction is highlighted by using quotation-marks when referring only to the name and not the object)

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" ([[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.

[[John Searle]], criticizing some versions of idealism, summarizes two important arguments for subjective idealism. The first is based on our perception of reality:

:(1) ''All we have access to in perception are the contents of our own experience'' and

:(2) ''The only epistemic basis for claims about the external world are our perceptual experiences''

therefore;

:(3) ''The only reality we can meaningfully speak of is that of perceptual experience''<ref>[[John Searle]], ''The Construction of Social Reality'' p. 172</ref>

Whilst agreeing with (2) Searle argues that (1) is false and points out that (3) does not follow from (1) and (2). The second argument runs as follows;

:''Premise: Any cognitive state occurs as part of a set of cognitive states and within a cognitive system''

:''Conclusion 1: It is impossible to get outside all cognitive states and systems to survey the relationships between them and the reality they cognize''

:''Conclusion 2: There is no cognition of any reality that exists independently of cognition''<ref>[[John Searle]], ''The Construction of Social Reality'' p. 174</ref>

Searle contends that ''Conclusion 2'' does not follow from the premises.