Debunking Idealism: Old and New
Posted: Mon Feb 02, 2026 2:55 am
Tam Hunt critiques idealism while offering panpsychism as his solution. He agrees that the world we experience is created by our minds, via the brain and sensory input. However, he emphasizes that this does not mean there is no external reality.
Modern science supports scientific realism: an external, objective world exists independently of our minds, and our subjective experiences are representations of that reality. Evidence from neuroscience shows how the brain constructs the features of our world, but intersubjective agreement — how multiple observers consistently perceive the same world — strongly suggests there is something objectively “out there.”
Idealism struggles to explain this. Classical idealists like Bishop Berkeley proposed that the external world exists in the mind of God, and our agreement about the world arises because we all exist within God’s mind. Hunt points out that this explanation is far less compelling than scientific realism.
Modern science supports scientific realism: an external, objective world exists independently of our minds, and our subjective experiences are representations of that reality. Evidence from neuroscience shows how the brain constructs the features of our world, but intersubjective agreement — how multiple observers consistently perceive the same world — strongly suggests there is something objectively “out there.”
Idealism struggles to explain this. Classical idealists like Bishop Berkeley proposed that the external world exists in the mind of God, and our agreement about the world arises because we all exist within God’s mind. Hunt points out that this explanation is far less compelling than scientific realism.