Humean Idealism

Abstract

I outline a version of idealism that borrows from Humean Supervenience. The resulting theory is immune to what is often considered to be the most powerful anti-idealist argument, the gist of which is that the idealist can't supply truthmakers (or an adequate supervenience base) for commonly accepted truths about the physical world. That charge has no purchase on Humean idealism.

Metaphysical idealism revisited

“…He proposes a Humean version of idealism that is immune to the “the Master Argument”, the most powerful anti‐idealist objection. The objection is motivated by a principle of supervenience of truth on being, which states that, in Kodaj's formulation, “For any proposition P , if P is true at world v and false at world w , then v and w differ in terms of what exists.” (2021, p. 3) Idealism is said to conflict with this principle and is unable to explain truths about counterfactual situations, the remote past and lawful correlations. Kodaj's reply to this objection draws on David Lewis's conception of Humean supervenience.…”

“…The best system that fits the mosaic has four structural components: a set of deterministic laws, a set of initial conditions, a set of sense data that together represent how a populated space looks from each viewpoint defined by a vector across different times, and a set of continuous functions (for Humean selves) each of which takes times as input and gives vectors as output, representing each subject's sum total of sense data as a “continuous trajectory”. (2021, p. 10) Kodaj then argues that the supervenience of truth on being can be maintained, insofar as truths about counterfactual situations/remote past/lawful correlations can all be preserved and explained by the Humean idealist supervenience.…”