Consider the opening sentence of Schopenhauer's famous book: "Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung/The world is my representation". How can subjective idealism seem at once so utterly certain and so dubious? The answer is quite simple and lies in the definite article "Die/the" in Schopenhauer's dictum. The world in the sense of the world in which each one of us is acquainted with through first-hand experience - my world that I take immediately as the world - this cannot be in reality any more than a modification of the subject, of consciousness, a self-projection, self-occultation of consciousness inside itself. Even from neuro-reductionist physicalist assumptions there is no way of avoiding this conclusion without dogmatism (the ruse of invoking the objectivity or public nature of logic or language) or non-physicalist explanations and we can turn Benaceraff's overrated objection against Platonism against the physicalist who wishes to refute subjective idealism: basic neuro-physiology and gestalt psychology show that a direct causal connection between nerve impulses and the "causality" of the phenomenal subjectively constituted world - is sheer nonsense. There are physical impacts on receptors which do not produce effects on consciousness and there are effects on consciousness which are not the direct result of impacts on receptors.
The world in the sense of that world with which I am acquainted with through first-person experience, is entirely phenomenal and exists in consciousness only, despite its objectifying externalizing intentions and pretenses. However from this it does not follow in the least that a world, any world, is my representation. It does not follow that outside my world there is not another world. Nor can we rule out that there could be some sort of cognizable connection between our world and such a world, the world which is not our world. In Kantian terms there does not follow that there is no thing-in-itself and it does not follow that we cannot know anything about this thing-in-itself (we already know that we know that it does not necessary not exist). Despite Kant's own arguments, we may hold that such a world-in-itself is perhaps a grey, timeless, purely mathematically structured world but in which other world-creating consciousness subsist. We can even discern such a conception in Hume's Treatise. None of our causal scientific theories or explanation depend on the phenomenal intuition or concept of time, only on a vicarious geometric abstraction, a flattened timeless time.
Consider the stereographic projection of a sphere into a plane. The sphere is the subject, the tangent bundle of the sphere is the modifications of consciousness, the plane is the postulated world outside consciousness.
But is this not logical dogmatism where we endow logic, a product (or condition?) of consciousness, with the right to judge that which is beyond consciousness? If logic corresponds to the ability to understand, carry out and check rules and to meta-interpret rule-systems, where resource constraints can be taken into account, then perhaps continuous processes - as infinitary rule systems - transcend logic. But logic functions through necessary principles of meta-logical agreement - thus it is reasonable to endow logic with transcendental epistemic scope. If a derivation in one formal system has to be considered sufficient for the cognition of a non-finitary property of non-derivability in another formal system, then surely the belief in the extensive epistemic range of formal systems - of logic - is reasonable.
If the above considerations do not seem convincing, we can point out that the validity and transcendental scope of logic (the highest a priori condition) is an essential assumption in Hume (as we discussed in detail before), Kant, Schopenhauer and Husserl. We can always ask Kant: what gives reason the right to judge itself and its own limits? Does not transcendental logic have to follow the rules of general logic as well (even if it includes important differences)? And another important approach involves the formal verification principle: challenge the meaning-as-use ordinary language philosophers and neoscholastic dogmatists to set up their theory of knowledge and mind in a formal system and then proceed to critique those systems using their own rules. The weak conclusion remains the same: either physicalism is false or (qualified) subjective idealism is true. The stronger conclusion is that if consciousness is essentially non-physical and non-local (or even trans-temporal) then this fact tends to strengthen rather than weaken the case for qualified subjective idealism. And if the dogmatists invoke a direct intuitive "given" or direct intuitive acquaintance with allegedly real exterior things then they have no right to discard the direct intuitions of consciousness being the fundamental reality that can be experienced during spiritual development and altered states of consciousness.
If we are certain that there are universal moral laws known a priori then it would seem to follow that we should treat phenomena which appear to us as being sentient beings as if they really were sentient beings (treat them according to the moral law), regardless of the non-reality of their first-person phenomenal presentations. This is because we do not have nor could ever have certain knowledge that they do not exist (either entirely or in part) and secondarily because regardless of the situation the practice of moral deeds can only strengthen character and morality itself. If a child is nice to its toys it will probably be nice to people and animals as well. The similarity of this argument to Pascal's wager is noted.
But subjective idealism is a misleading term because it suggest than an individual ego-subject, finite personality or self-in-the-world is at the same time some kind of substrate of the world. But in reality cosmo-ontology and egology are illusions to be dissolved together. This is the task of transcendental dissolving and liberating insight, true philosophical phenomenism/positivism/empiricism and skeptical dialectics.
Also considerations on temporality, finitism, mereology, the mysterious nature of concepts and meaning - and in general intrinsic intentionality, synthesis, constitution and constructivity - applied to both the self and experience - are quite sufficient to establish the above liberating insight with regard to the egological and cosmo-ontological illusion.
How do we interpret quantification from a finitist perspective? How can we develop intentionalist finitism? What does alleged arithmetic knowledge mean from a finitist perspective? Was Hilbert really defeated? Was Leibniz actually a finitist? Can finitism offer new perspectives on the theory of knowledge? Can we solve the problem of the stubborn non-finitism of category theory? Do we need a new interpretation of Carnap and Russell?
Can statements about numbers involve an infinite number of relations to actual numbers? What is the significance of Ockham here? Can psychologism be revindicated?
The new synthetic a priori principle: finite derivations must ratify and represent an indefinite but bounded set of truths. This is applied also to specification and verification of programs.
And yet, what are logical, semantic, phenomenal, physical atoms? What could they be? Can paraconsistent and infinitary logic be justified in the framework of our "Analyticity, Computability and the A Priori"?
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