Objective idealism
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Objective idealism is an idealistic metaphysics that postulates that there is in an important sense only one perceiver, and that this perceiver is one with that which is perceived. One important advocate of such a metaphysics, Josiah Royce, wrote that he was indifferent "whether anybody calls all this Theism or Pantheism." It is distinct from the subjective idealism of George Berkeley, and it abandons the thing-in-itself of Kant's dualism.
Charles Peirce
The American philosopher Charles Peirce (1839-1914) stated his own version of objective idealism in the following manner:
The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws (CP 6.25).1
The literal meaning of the word "effete" is "no longer fruitful", hence it has the connotations of decadent, degenerate, exhausted, outmoded, weak, or worn out. In the light of Peirce's overall philosophy, we may single out "degenerate" as a likely synonym, and take it to mean "reduced in generative power". Thus, matter is the flat, insipid, dyadic reduct of the triadic mind.
Reference
- Charles Peirce, "The Architecture of Theories", The Monist, vol. 1, pp. 161-176 (1891), reprinted in Collected Papers, CP 6.7-34 (1935).Template:Philo-stub