Kant...asked if an object can be known to have certain properties prior to the experience of that object. He concluded that all objects about which the mind can think must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can think only in terms of causality - which he concluded that it does - then we can know prior to experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect. However, it follows from this that it is possible that there are objects of such nature which the mind cannot think, and so the principle of causality, for instance, cannot be applied outside of experience: hence we cannot know, for example, whether the world always existed or if it had a cause. And so the grand questions of speculative metaphysics cannot be answered by the human mind, but the sciences are firmly grounded in laws of the mind.
Kant believed himself to be creating a compromise between the empiricists and the rationalists. The empiricists believed that knowledge is acquired through experience alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to Cartesian doubt and that reason alone provides us with knowledge. Kant argues, however, that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason.

Let's consider Kant again. I will copy in some text from Wikipedia here which I think will serve as a bit of a waystation in this debate (I have added bolds)

I think this is a middle way between crude materialism, on one side, and solipsism, on the other. And this is what interests me about Kant. I admit, I am not very learned in him, but I think I get this important principle of his, and I think it germane to the debate.

Well, someone just wrote that idealism cannot be refuted. And my point is that:

1. If the Moon existed before people, then Idealism is false.
2. The Moon existed before people.

Therefore, 3, Idealism is false.

If that argument is sound (which it is) then Idealism is refuted. I don't know which original argument you mean.

Does everyone agree this argument is sound? If not, which premise is false, or why isn't the argument valid?

I will probably regret sticking my nose in here but:
earlier it was suggested mind is a property of reality and is not confined to human consciousness.
The form of idealism that says human minds create all of reality is false or at least it begins to sound like a mental form of special creationism. Man created the universe with his mind is false.

I don't know what you would regret. Sounds about right to me. But it isn't the form of idealism (as if it were some special form of idealism), it is idealism.

Idealism is the philosophical theory that maintains that the ultimate nature of reality is based on the mind or ideas. <--Wiki

Well, according to Jeeprs, if it is obviously false, then that could not be what all those philosophers meant by Idealism. On the principle that if a proposition is false, it could not have been what was meant.

To seperate the moon from the cosmos is to make a Cartesian distinction without the duality. This is crass materialism which no one really believes in. The moon cannot logically be seperated from its cause in time. Only from a human perspective does the seperate object exist. The moon is for us only.

Otherwise it is a false objectification of an object.

The moon can be no more than what we understand as the moon. The moon in isolation from everything else is an impossibility. because human beings are not in possession of certainty. This is philosophy 101.

Only if the moon somehow knew itself as the moon could we then say that it existed before people.

To seperate the moon from the cosmos is to make a Cartesian distinction without the duality. This is crass materialism which no one really believes in. The moon cannot logically be seperated from its cause in time. Only from a human perspective does the seperate object exist. The moon is for us only.

Only if the moon somehow knew itself as the moon could we then say that it existed before people. Otherwise it is an unfounded objectification of an object.

The moon can be no more than what we understand as the moon. The moon in isolation from everything else is an impossibility. because human beings are not in possession of certainty. This is philosophy 101.

--

I know this seems strange. Would it help to consider the following perspective: when we are considering the idea of something existing (be it the moon or anything else), I don't think it is meaningful to see 'the idea' as 'something existing in someone's mind'. It is natural to do this so I am not saying, that in thinking this, one is committing some gross logical fallacy. This is a very ingrained characteristic of the modern worldview. We see ourselves, SUBJECT, in an environment OBJECT and see the mind as reproducing pictures of the object within the subject. This is fundamental to the Cartesian picture of the world which in turn is basic to the modern outlook.

But there is something of great importance being missed by this picture. Which is that both the idea of the subject and the idea of the object, exist within mind. This whole mental picture of the nature of reality is in itself a conceptual construction. But the medium in which it exists is not disclosed by thinking about this construction.

So - you have an image of the mind as existing in the brain. But the image and everyt other mental operation is being generated by mind a step before, or a layer down, from any of this.

Of course this is hard to understand and picture. Because you need to get out of, or above, your mental space, to picture it. Otherwise everything you try and picture will be the output of the mind, not the actual source of the mental pictures.

---------- Post added 03-01-2010 at 01:46 PM ----------

Reference - check this abstract out, particularly Chapter 5

Book Chapter Summaries:

This most certainly isn't philosophy 101. Why on earth do you think that? You think that all philosophers are idealists? No one really believes the moon exists without our perception? I literally laughed aloud. Of course people believe it, and I think it's a good majority. I would hope most rational people do!

Where are on earth are you getting this stuff? Is this some sort of mysticism?

I never knew the moon had the capacity to know. This conversation is just getting stranger and stranger.

As I said, the moon is literally for us only.

Has anyone claimed the Moon? Who? The Russians?

Are you a Materialist?

If that means I don't believe there are minds, no.

How do you account for minds?

Where does certain knowledge lie? Can you give examples?

Are you asking, what can we be absolutely certain about? Well, nothing, since we are fallible. But what has that to do with anything?

Our not being absolutely certain that the moon existed before humans, does not mean that we don't know the moon existed before humans. And we have good reason to believe it did exist before humans. We have to be rational here.

Does everyone agree this argument is sound? If not, which premise is false, or why isn't the argument valid?

Evolution? What else?

But what has that to do with it?