Mindindependence

Mind-independence is the thesis that the world exists and has determinate features regardless of whether any mind is aware of it, believes in it, or theorizes about it. It is a central notion in realism and a foil to idealism or constructivism, which hold that some aspects of reality depend on mental states, perception, or social practices.

Historically, mind-independence has been defended by classical realists and empiricists who maintained that objects retain properties whether or not anyone perceives them. In contrast, George Berkeley argued against mind-independence, claiming that existence is tied to perception. In contemporary philosophy, positions such as naive realism, direct realism, and scientific realism affirm a mind-independent world, while indirect realism and various constructivist or phenomenalist accounts insist that perceptual content involves some role for mind or theory.

In science, mind-independence underwrites the assumption of an objective, observer-independent world: measurements, experiments, and causal relations are taken to track states of affairs that would obtain regardless of who observes them. Yet debates persist about the extent to which even ordinary objects have mind-independent properties, and about the status of abstract objects like numbers or mathematical structures, which some treat as mind-independent (Platonism) and others as mind-dependent or conventional.

Challenges to mind-independence include skepticism about the external world and the theory-ladenness of observation, as well as arguments that perception is influenced by cognitive states. Proponents of realism respond with robust realism, coherence theories, or pragmatic considerations that science aims for stable, predictive accounts of the world rather than a perfect mirror of an unattainable mind-independent scenery.

See also realism, idealism, skepticism, epistemology, philosophy of science.