In The Construction of Social Reality, John Searle offers an attack on some versions of idealism. Searle conveniently summarises two important arguments for (subjective) idealism. The first is based on our perception of reality:

1. All we have access to in perception are the contents of our own experiences
   
2. The only epistemic basis we can have for claims about the external world are our perceptual experiences
   therefore,
   
3. the only reality we can meaningfully speak of is the reality of perceptual experiences (The Construction of Social Reality p. 172)

Whilst agreeing with (2), Searle argues that (1) is false, and points out that (3) does not follow from (1) and (2).

The second argument for (subjective) idealism runs as follows:

Premise: Any cognitive state occurs as part of a set of cognitive states and within a cognitive system
Conclusion 1: It is impossible to get outside of all cognitive states and systems to survey the relationships between them and the reality they are used to cognize
Conclusion 2: No cognition is ever of a reality that exists independently of cognition (The Construction of Social Reality p. 174)

Searle goes on to point out that conclusion 2 simply does not follow from its precedents.