Drury University Field House
Idealism defines the ideas and representations of human perception, through visual experiences and internal processing. An idealist believes that the material world, all that can be seen, felt, heard, smelled and tasted is a depiction of an internal perception significant to the individual. It is also believed that an idea does not exist in time and cannot come into existence or cease to exist as temporal objects do and is hence more real than material objects (Platonic definition of ‘idea’). It is from this that a wide scope of knowledge and understanding of mental perception becomes the ultimate goal for an idealist. As the material world is filtered and categorized through the mental processes of the individual, it becomes a real representation of what is perceived. Thus, ‘the’ apple becomes ‘an’ apple, specifically, a representation of the collective idealistic apple becomes a concrete, formulated experience, which gives way to the perception of a singular apple, containing the multitude of general qualities that ‘the universal apple’ encompasses. Experiencing such events and objects slowly widens the breadth of the idealist’s mind, creating a larger and larger temporal knowledge, which in turn, materializes more and more ideas into tangible and realizable entities. The details of this temporal existence are based solely on perception. It is argued that one idea of perceptory existence cannot exist in any other; therefore, existence cannot collectively subsist, proving the absence of a collective material world. Perception at an objectory level is individualistic in essence and temporal ideals can only live inside the mind, feeding on science, math and distinctive perceptions. Thus, a singular, divergent material world exists for each individual person, constantly changing based on new perceptions of experience and stimulation. ls of this temporal existence are based solely on perception.