Philosophers have been arguing about the nature of reality for over 2000 years. In this time, two main views on reality were formed, materialism and idealism. Materialists believe that reality is physical, while idealists believe that reality is mental. Even though both of these theories are valid and appeal to people, one seems to leave out something critical to the understanding of reality. Materialism leaves out perception. The more compelling theory, in this case, is idealism. Idealism asserts that reality is dependent on the mind; thus, in idealism, aspects of humanity that cannot be defined as physical (such as emotions, feelings, perceptions, and afterlives) are recognized and celebrated.
Idealism is defined as “the belief that reality is essentially composed of minds and their ideas” (Velasquez 151). This is, undoubtedly, true. Whether everything that is “real” is occurring in our minds, like a dream, or if there is a physical world, reality is composed of our own perceptions of the world around us. For example, someone who is in a happy marriage will be an optimistic wedding guest, thinking, “This couple will grow old together.” Meanwhile, a divorcee at the same wedding may be thinking, “They won’t be this happy forever.” Two different people, seeing the same newlyweds, will have different mentalities; thus different realities.
George Berkeley, the founder of modern idealism, believes that all the things we think of as reality are essentially bundles of perceptions. In his Principles of Human Knowledge, Berkely states that “It seems … evident that the various sensations or ideas imprinted on the sense … cannot exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving them.” In other words, reality would be nothing if not for the human minds that identify reality as “reality.” Since we perceive in our minds, everything we perceive is in our minds also, thus eliminating an external world.
Berkeley came up with the concept of “esse est percipi,” or “to be is to be perceived.” What this means is that for something to exist, it must be perceived. For example, we can perceive objects around us. We can use our senses to perceive them. As soon as we turn away from the object, as soon as we can no longer perceive it, it no longer exists. In this mentality, we can ask ourselves how do we know something exists if we cannot sense it? If the mind cannot perceive something, we cannot know it exists.
Though some may argue that objects exist independently from our perception of it, that is not the case. One may wonder how this idealism would explain the destruction of a building. You see the building standing one day, and the next day, it has been destroyed. How was this building destroyed if you did not perceive it when it was destroyed, so it did not exist when it was destroyed? The answer to this is God. In objective idealism, God controls the consistency of our reality, He controls everything that we are not perceiving at the current moment, so when we perceive the objects again, we see their change.
An objection to objective idealism is that many do not believe in God. This is a valid point today, but even though someone does not believe in something does not make it less true. For example, a group of people do not believe that the world is round, but their belief does not make the earth any flatter. Similarly, just because people do not believe that God exists does not mean that He is unreal.
Critics also ask how one can distinguish between God’s perception and your own. For this reason, Berkeley claimed there are two kinds of ideas in our minds; one is objective, which is God-dependant; the other is subjective, which is “me-dependant.” This means that God controls everything that is objective, like mountains and buildings. You, yourself, control how you perceive them. Like in the wedding example, God controls the wedding, while you have the freedom to perceive it however you do.
Idealism is the metaphysical view that many people connect to, even though they may not know. Anyone who believes in ghosts, spirits, God, or even the afterlife, has idealistic views. The Oxford dictionary defines idealism as a system “of thought in which the objects of knowledge are held to be in some way dependent on the activity of mind.” This is true since one can never perceive anything outside of the mind, one’s reality is completely dependent on the activity of the mind and one’s perception of the world. It is likely that idealism’s view on the nature of reality is correct since it acknowledges perceptions, emotions, and sensualities that other views may not accept.