Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

sometimes known by the general term

‘absolutism’. Absolutism is a term that can also be used for the belief that there are innate principles of morality and aesthetics.) A distinction can also be made between ‘critical’ as opposed to ‘naïve’ realism. Critical realism is the belief that there is a real external objective world, but that it is filtered through our interpretations of it. So it is necessary to be aware (thus, ‘critical’) of how perceptions may affect the underlying reality that is the subject of our study. (This is sometimes known as a ‘theory-laden’ view — in that our perceptions are filtered through our expectations and beliefs about the world.) Naïve realism is sometimes described as the ‘myth of the given’ (although sometimes naïve realism is taken to be something a bit different). In a similar vein (often as an alternative to Cartesian dualism — of which, more later) ‘externalism’ suggests that interior states of mind are entirely dependent on an external world that has given rise to them. For Descartes, mental states could exist without there necessarily being an external world.

OR:

2. Reality is just an illusion. Only mind exists and the mind imagines the external world. (‘Idealism’. The best known proponent of idealism was George Berkeley.) It may be that my own mind is the only mind that exists. Other minds are themselves figments of my imagination. This later view is known as ‘solipsism’. (In passing, it’s worth noting here that idealism is a classic case of what’s known as ‘polarisation’. In this case, there seems to be no basis for the qualities we witness out there in the world, therefore these qualities must be in

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