Idealism as a Hungry Hypothesis

We know that Advaita Vedanta is not Idealist and yet it sometimes is described as such. A reason for this apart from a general lack of knowledge about its history of rejection of Idealism is loose talk of ‘It’s all consciousness’ without a sense of how that fits in with a realist ontology. This creates confusion and allows the committed Western Idealist to suppose that he has found a home in the East. Josiah Royce, Timothy Sprigge and recently Bernardo Kastrup consider Advaita to have an affinity with their own Idealisms.

It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates every thing to itself as proper nourishment, and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or understand.

(Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy)