Abstract

I propose to formulate and expound a version of idealism. The position at issue does not maintain the causal thesis that matter is somehow the product of mind. Nor, a fortiori, is it spiritualism—the theory that only minds exist and that all else is the product of their functioning. Rather, this doctrine, which I shall call conceptual idealism, holds not merely the trivial thesis that mind is at work in our conceiving of reality, but the more significant and daring doctrine that mind underlies the conception of reality. Beginning with the traditional rationalist thesis that the mind makes a substantive and constitutive contribution to the shaping of our conception of reality, conceptual idealism goes beyond this to hold that the mind makes this formative contribution in terms that to some extent involve a reference to itself: that key elements in our picture of natural reality are painted with mentalistic coloration.