Here we give an argument that we live in a real hallucination. This was said by the Frenchman Hippolyte Taine although perhaps in less rigorous form. Subjective idealism is the belief in which the world is a product of the mind. In Pixilated subjective idealism (PSI), the world is posited a product of the mind, but each individual pixel is independently projected by the mind. This can be generalized using a modified phenomenological procedure to include substance. This says two things at once – that we live in a real hallucination and that all hallucinations are at least partly real. The only thing distinguishing a reality from hallucination is the grade of empirical reality it contains. This philosophy can be seen as part of the structuralism movement a movement originating in the late 1800s, in which a metaphysical system is distinguished by the rational structure that it adheres to. The general understanding is that the structuralists added additional structure on top of that given by the German idealists. And a different metaphysical structure leads to a different ethical structure.
If it can be shown that living in a real hallucination is equally consistent with our reality as materialism, in which there is an external object in which light bounces off the object in pixilated form, then a person should have no reason to choose materialism over PSI. To prove equal consistency, one must demonstrate inner consistency of the system – including how the light bounces off the object, other areas of the philosophy of perception, the mind body problem and time analysis, multiverse versus universe. A similar line of argumentation was given by the French-Jewish philosopher Henri Bergson in his book Matter and Memory. This is more along the lines of a solipsistic version of subjective idealism although can be generalized to include other minds and allows for psychic phenomenon. This creates a type of nonhierarchical metaphysics somewhat along the lines of the Aztecs’ philosophy in which all hallucinations are at least partly real. PSI may very well be the metaphysical equivalent of the atom in which all metaphysical systems can be embedded, thus giving metaphysicians a way of getting along and combating the empirical atom.
How Berkeley, Fichte, and PSI distinguish reality from hallucination
According to Berkeley, ideas of the mind are distinguished from ideas of reality by the force vivacity, and strength of the idea. The latter are held in place by God’s consciousness. If an idea has less empirical reality than the rest of experience, then it is not created by God making the idea unreal. For example, a hallucination of an object with certain properties can be determined to not have the properties that that object is supposed that can be found out thought the structures of experience. Therefore, that object is determined to be an object of the mind and not real. The same argument holds for perceptual illusions. If one sees an oar in the water, for example, and it appears bent, one can discriminate through the higher levels of empirical reality that a straight oar in water appears bent, and all one needs to do is remove the oar from the water to verify that it is straight. Thus Berkeley allows for a sundering of reality and hallucination. That is, there are only two types of ideas i.e. ideas created by God and ideas created by the mind. All of the former are considered real and all of the later are considered unreal.
According to Fichte, the mind imposes the form and structure, also known as the categories onto experience. This would be, for example, the shape of the table in front of the observer. If something appears in your vision that does not correspond to all of the categories such as a hallucination of a kaleidoscopic object, then this object is deemed unreal. The reason is the hallucination does not subscribe to the category of causality, since there is nothing in the world to cause the hallucination. The only thing else to defend against is Hegel’s conceptual idealism. Indeed, British idealists such as Royce would conclude that the world is a conscious construction. How do we distinguish between PSI and Royce? The ordinary language movement would now declare a language ambiguity. In order to decipher this, it is necessary to understand that the ordinary language movement was primarily directed against British idealism, of which I am admitting there were many language ambiguities and sloppy metaphysical arguments. However, in order to know what Royce meant by this, it is best to trace Royce’s argument to Hegel, of whose absolute idealism Royce was copying. And Hegel’s precise metaphysical structure can be shown to differ from PSI.
Now we show how pixilated subjective idealism distinguishes reality from hallucination. Suppose a person has a hallucination and it does not operate according to all of the categories found in real experience. By the very nature of pixilated subjective idealism, the hallucination is given same ontological status as real experience since the hallucination is projected from the mind in the same sense as reality. So, the defining factor of PSI actually “cuts” into any attempt to completely sunder reality from hallucination- which can be verified by regressive analysis on “cuts” through reduction ad absurdum. Thus, we have the picture of things in which every hallucination has some degree of reality. If it operates according to one of the categories it has the lowest grade of reality, if it operates according to two of the categories, it has a higher degree of reality than if it operates under one of the categories, and so on all the way up to the highest degree of reality which operates according to all of the categories. Everything is a projection of the mind in distinct substantial quanta, with the only thing distinguishing reality from hallucination being its degree of empirical reality.
Idealism Studies 