Everything

Grant, Iain Hamilton

Abstract

© The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Hegeler Institute. All rights reserved. To picture reality either as not involving its being pictured or as reducible to its being pictured yields inconsistent pictures, since in neither case can anything be pictured. The picture of reality as picture-involving yields the only consistent picture of reality. Yet its cost is completeness, and the reason for this is reality. The claim that picturing reality is involved in reality is idealism, but it is not an idealism that compromises reality's ontological autonomy. Using Bosanquet's reality theorem to the effect that "Everything is real, so long as you do not take it for more than it is," I argue that idealism per se is falsely held to vitiate reality's autonomy. It does so only when the ideal is awarded an inflated status as fundament or source of reality. Bosanquet's theorem makes it clear that inflation of this sort is not exclusively the hallmark of realisms or idealisms. Since by contrast the idealist is additionally realist concerning the ideal, fundamentalist and/or spontaneist ontologies become importantly exclusivist, yielding pictures that cannot picture picturing without inflation of either picturing capacities or unpictured reality. Therefore the picture of reality as picture-involving is alone able to account for picturing. If there is picturing then, I claim, real realism is inflationary.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Apr 1, 2015
• Journal: Monist
• Print ISSN: 0026-9662
• Electronic ISSN: 2153-3601
• Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 98
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 156-167
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/onv003
• Keywords: ontology, realism, idealism, Bosanquet, Bernard
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/842178
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/monist/onv003