Modal idealism represents the philosophical position known as idealism, interpreted through the system of thought called modal logic. Modal logic is formal reasoning that rationally identifies the necessity, contingency, possibility, or impossibility of entities. In this context, idealism is most effectively understood in contrast to the opposing philosophical position known as realism. From a modal perspective, the defining premise of idealism asserts that all manifest certainties emerge from conceivable possibilities; where realism contends that all manifestable possibilities emerge from preexisting certainties. While either principle can seem plausible in any contingent sense, only one can be true in the absolute sense.

This existential dichotomy is analogous to the dilemma embodied in the ontological question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Idealism’s answer is that a breeding age, female animal that was genetically, not quite a chicken, laid an egg from which the first true chicken emerged; while realism insists a breeding age, female animal that was entirely a chicken, laid the first chicken egg. Idealism asserts that the capacity to lay eggs emerged before the chicken, identifying it as a necessary condition of every breeding age, female chicken’s nature. Conversely, realism’s solution implies that chickens predated their egg-laying capacity—and so their progenitors must have been viviparous—meaning that from this perspective, oviparity is not necessarily an identifying attribute of breeding age, female chickens. Consequently, realism’s position on the chicken or egg dilemma ignores scientific taxonomy—which categorizes birds as egg-laying animals—and the modern theories of evolution, while idealism’s position embraces both.

The modal challenge for realism is to explain the nature and necessity of its foundational existential certainties without resorting to begging the question—where its defining premises presume the truth of this explanation. Realism does so whenever it asserts that what these original existential certainties complementarily identify as objectively impossible cannot include any of the conceivable entities from whose existence we could have emerged. Accordingly, the nature of each of realism’s possibilities is ultimately contingent upon the distinguishing attributes of its foundational existential certainties. Such realism embodies a reductively deterministic perspective in which neither true randomness nor self-determination is possible.

In modal idealism, an Observer merely observes entities it is not, while a Conceiver conceptualizes them. Accordingly, the modal challenge for idealism is to explain the nature and necessity of the Conceiver of its foundational possibilities in a manner that does not contradict the objective theories of empirical science. Modal idealism responds to this challenge by embodying a consciousness-centered, philosophical integration of the pillars of contemporary science—the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics—within its core principles; in which both randomness and self-determination are possible. In this context, the Conceiver represents the union of each possible conscious being’s aspect that it objectively identifies as unmanifestable. Your justifiable skepticism about these claims will be addressed over the course of A Concise Theory of Truly Everything.

There is an occasionally palpable antagonism between the ontological viewpoints of empirical science and orthodox theism. In this context, it is ironic that realism’s characterization of its foundation as an existential certainty, places these typically divergent schools of thought on the same side of this modal debate. Scientific realism ultimately posits that every possibility in our universe emerged from the existential certainty embodied as the fundamental laws of physical science; while orthodox theistic realism asserts that every possibility in creation emerged from the existential certainty embodied as God.

Modal idealism and its occasional ontological antagonist, mystical spirituality, are equally ironically united on the other side of this modal argument. Both frameworks assert a foundation embodying limitless possibilities from which all manifest certainties emerged. In modal idealism, this foundation represents all conceivable possibilities combined such that their asymmetries all cancel each other out to embody the perfect symmetry, which is identifiable as the primal nothingness. In mystical spirituality, it is Brahman, Ein Sof, sunyata, the Godhead, Tawhid, and the many other names of the sacred nothingness from which creation emerged.

The modal interpretations of idealism and realism posit that the primal source of everything represents respectively, either all conceivable possibilities from which emerged every contingent manifest certainty, or every existential certainty from which emerged all contingent possibilities. While both modal perspectives are valid, the absence of existential certainties from the foundation of modal idealism identifies it as the less dogmatic school of existential thought.