Metaphysics - The Idealism Contradiction

The underlying flaw with idealism is this: Idealists claim that reality is ultimately nothing more than a dream state of mind, yet they will argue that their conviction has meaning.

If a person were to believe idealism, he or she must then ask where "ideas" come from. Using dialectic reasoning we shall follow this trail. If we ask where ideas come from in the first place, Berkeley would argue that they come from perceptions. That’s not enough, so we must then ask where perceptions originate and to that question we must answer sensations. At this point I believe idealism meets its first dilemma. The first horn of this dilemma is to believe that sensations are real expressions of the mind to stimuli from the physical world – to believe this, idealism succumbs to materialism. The second horn is to believe that sensations are simply a construct of the mind itself, but even in this case idealism succumbs to materialism by admitting there is a material – the mind itself (whether or not the mind is “physical” is insignificant in this argument for the idealist argues that there is no real “substance” of any kind). In the end, for the idealist to argue that their arguments have meaning is outrageously bizarre because their arguments are literally refuting themselves the instant their words leave their lips into the physical world which they argue does not exist.