Vitanda, a cavilling and captious style of argument is of little use against the bulwark of Idealism which in its various forms has been defended by some very big brains. They have held fast to the Holmsian line - "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”. What, they ask, are we immediately aware of? Ok. Well then, and don’t wimp out with talk of the mediate, the representation or indeed seeing through the data to something or other. Kumarila might demur and point out the road blocks or all the mental operations that are not open to the idealist. You can’t draw an inference from the external object that doesn’t exist. You can’t included it in a line of reasoning because it is an unsupported unknown and thus cannot have a place and a value. All this and more he argues at length against the Sunyavada Buddhist and incidentally displays the tendency of expatiation to obscure rather than clarify.
Vitanda does not offer an exposition of the personally held metaphysics and it is this alone that can create a doubt in the opponent's mind. You have to be able to incorporate that strong central observation, account for it and move to a new synthesis. The big flash must be shaded out by a bigger one.
Crazy ideas coming from philosophers are generally preceded by an intuition that they experience as a eureka moment whereby a field of thought becomes crystallised and an intelligible pattern is discerned. This flash is like the M.I.B.s but it destroys not the memory of ever having seen aliens but the fibrillating antennae of the illative sense. Conclusions are missed that ought to be obvious and the reductio ad gibbering folly follows not. No, our philosopher receiving the spark from heaven remains complacent.
more anon.
