I blame the British Empiricists.

I bang on like an untethered gate about Idealism and Realism but I take consolation in the fact that I am in good company. Practically all philosophers have spurned Idealism even if like a mutating virus it comes on in waves weakening as they put about their noxious fumes. Even so, some philosophers share Kant’s dismay at the lack of proof for an external world and take pains to work abstruse demonstrations which commit the usual error. They attempt to move from an inner conviction to an outer reality. That can be about God for Descartes and Berkeley. Like the writer to the editor ‘I blame the parents’ or The British Empiricists in the case of the inner turning to found an outer reality. Following them one is balked from the world by the direct acquaintance with our sensations merely and their cause devolves into an inference. Occasional error damns us as though not knowing everything were to condemn to universal ignorance. My philosophic chums of the moment are Etienne Gilson and Thomas Reid, champions of common sense. Can you prove causality? Can you prove the excluded middle? Are there limits to demonstration? For them common sense is not folk epistemology though it may require work to show its depth. Guided by Gilson’s ‘Thomist Realism’ I and Reid’s ‘Intellectual Powers’ I follow that trail. Sankara the advaitin has words on that topic addressing the Buddhist vijnanavadin (subjective idealist).

“So also it has to be admitted that the regularity in the simultaneous appearance of the cognition and its object is owing to the relation of causality between them and not owing to their identity.” (B.S.Bh - commentary on the Vedanta Sutras)

There is much more to say on this but why is it important? In a nutshell: de-incarnation is a very subtle and powerful mind virus.