Analytic Idealism

[pood]

Analytic idealism is the thesis put forth by the philosopher Bernardo Kastrup that the world is entirely mental.

With phenomenal consciousness the basis of everything, individual humans are characterized as “dissociate alters” that contain private versions of the cosmic consciousness. The external world we perceive on this account is also mental, and our perceptions of it are mere representations of what is, the way that an airplane dashboard represents external reality in condensed form but is not the reality itself.

In this paper for the peer-reviewed philosophy journal Disputatio, Kastrup addresses and rebuts the standard critiques of his or other variants of metaphysical idealism. Scroll down for a free download on the left.

Kastrup holds that our individual deaths are merely ego deaths, that we cease to be “dissociate alters,” and re-merge with the cosmic consciousness. His cites his own experiences with psychedelics to argue that while ego death is wrenching, the other side is unimaginable bliss. He argues that these experiences give insight into our ego death during physical death and what follows.

Subjectivity, whether ego/personal or cosmically unified, subjectivity never ceases, not even during deep sleep — in that case, he cites studies showing that while subjective experience continues during deep sleep, we simply lose memory of those experiences — and that we are all bound, in one subjective way or another, to “the vertigo of eternity.”

He does not regard the universal consciousness as anything like the god of the Abrahamic tradition or even necessarily cognitive, just phenomenal. He does, however, regard Christianity and other religions as symbolically and allegorically useful.

Of course this will sound like standard woo to the materialist, but reading his work might change your perspective at least somewhat. A lot of what Kastrup writes strikes me as not far removed from John Archibald Wheeler’s Participatory Universe.

I’d add that Kastrup has impressive scientific and philosophical credentials, and, for what it’s worth, in a debate with the physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, he (imo) rather impressively dismantled her advocacy of a superdeterministic class of theories to replace standard quantum mechanics. As an interesting and probably coincidental aside, Hossenfelder has lately offered that idea that the whole universe thinks and that thinking precedes life.

Discussion invited on the linked paper or on any of the information on Kastrup’s site, but, of course, this would entail reading at least the linked paper first. My summary above is very simplified of necessity and omits many important details, arguments, and evidence which can be found in abundance in both the linked paper and his numerous other works.

If nothing else I hope this thread lures at least some posters away from the standard squabbling about Jehovah, politics, abortion, etc. People can squabble about this instead.

 

[Jarhyn]

This is remarkably asinine, and you are right to offer it up as a thing to be heavily critical of!

Let's imagine for a moment that someone attempts to generate an ego-death, hoping to do this thing, but that instead of this joker, that I am right: that "you" are a cluster of neurons within your brain.

If one performs ego-death, they are essentially acting to convert the function of those neurons into a through-pipe for the systems at either end.

This has two effects: it dramatically decreases the process weight of having to do all that work, and the effect of doing the work is no longer accomplished.

This will pointedly make someone feel far less stressed out, far more "connected" and "in tune" with "the universe" (really just the other brain stuff they are connected to, and still only tangentially to the universe), and because they aren't doing any oversight on their own actions in the role of the ego, they are more likely to make bad, selfish, unexamined decisions.

This means they are more likely to obey authorities without thought, thought generally done by the ego.

And how would that even work "dissolving"? Our consciousness happens in our brains because our brains are organized to propagate signals from within the network of neurons and be completely unaffected by other signals except through specific sensors arrayed to allow those signals only at controlled access points.

Whatever he asserts, he has to demonstrate that some signal is received across that massive chasm of insulation between one brain and the next except by the wiggles propagated through the mouth and then through the controlled access points to the network of the ears and eyes and skin and so on.

Sure, a lot of stuff can come in through those ports, but any message has to cross that ocean on the ship of the vibrations in air and surrounding materials, and the only ports that "feel" them are the sensors of our bodies.

The real way to dissolve into the collection of all people has nothing to do with suiciding the ego-self to future neural pruning, but rather to have empathy and to change the bounds of what you will treat as self to be one based on compatibility of the goals of its prospective parts. It is an act of community building and radical love that creates this state, rather than giving up the idea of self completely so as to be removed from existence entirely.

 

[pood]

And how would that even work "dissolving"? Our consciousness happens in our brains because our brains are organized to propagate signals from within the network of neurons and be completely unaffected by other signals except through specific sensors arrayed to allow those signals only at controlled access points.

Kastrup addresses neurons and their activity here. Keep in mind that on his view, brain supervenes on mind, and not, as materialists hold, mind supervenes on brain. He argues that his approach dissolves the hard problem of consciousness.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Neat. I still can't control everything with my mind alone.

 

[pood]

Neat. I still can't control everything with my mind alone.

That you can control everything with your mind alone is no part of Kastrup’s arguement.

 

[Jarhyn]

And how would that even work "dissolving"? Our consciousness happens in our brains because our brains are organized to propagate signals from within the network of neurons and be completely unaffected by other signals except through specific sensors arrayed to allow those signals only at controlled access points.

Kastrup addresses neurons and their activity here. Keep in mind that on his view, brain supervenes on mind, and not, as materialists hold, mind supervenes on brain. He argues that his approach dissolves the hard problem of consciousness.

I mean, the other approach solves it too, as long as the person using the other approach recognizes that "mind" and "process/environment on hardware" are the same phenomena.

The "mind as isolated computation" model actually presents an observable mechanism of action and a readily observable nature of effect with a richly understood framework of metaphysics provided through math to undergird all of it.

Does he present a similarly well explained and understood backdrop for mind?

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Neat. I still can't control everything with my mind alone.

That you can control everything with your mind alone is no part of Kastrup’s arguement.

Neat, so I don't see how it's particularly useful.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Or why I wouldn't be able to control stuff with my mind if the world is mental.

 

[pood]

Or why I wouldn't be able to control stuff with my mind if the world is mental.

He explains why in the linked paper. And in various other articles.

 

[pood]

To put it in a nutshell: according to Kastrup, the entire universe is conscious, but suffers from what we would call multiple personality disorder. All of us are those multiple personalities.

 

[Jarhyn]

To put it in a nutshell: according to Kastrup, the entire universe is conscious, but suffers from what we would call multiple personality disorder. All of us are those multiple personalities.

Yeah, and that's the part I think is dumb.

Honestly, of we want to get really nutso and pull on a bunch of intuitions taken from the imaginations of as many fantasy writers as I have read:

In the beginning the whole universe was, technically, a "mind". All the stuff of it was essentially quantum "switches" arranged in an aperiodic fashion.

This would mean that, pretty much every finite form of mind capable of existing would exist somewhere.

The problem is that these minds would exist adjacent to chaos, or maliciousness, or just nonsense, separated by seemingly infinite voids, and these would end up tearing each other apart in a sort of eternal chaos.

Somewhere within this void of seething mind stuff, some region came to a realization that they could sacrifice themselves to create a sort of world where chaos did not birth chaotic minds, but where a sort of equilibrium would dominate.

In Christian theology, this would be much like the "separation of waters", though I recall a series by one Garth Nix where there was a concept similar to this, "the charter".

It would be like laying down rules that IF all the stuff follows those rules, statistically, together they can all emulate something that might one day have a mind that does not fall victim to being uninsulated from chaos.

This would create matter as we know it, destroying the minds, the very concept of minds any smaller than the ones that would later come.

Many aeons of time performing this process in peace give rise to new processes, and the rules were engineered, perhaps, to force some confluence of stuff together once more and attempt to form some sort of mind from the aperiodic result of chaos on an aperiodic original structure.

Eventually carbon based chemistry in some corner of the universe came to encode a semi-stable process in such a way that organized activities started to form the first primitive minds.

These too quickly fell to the immediate presence of chaos and competition, organizing as individuals yes, but in zero sum games which created division. If any form of instruction based computation arose, such that it could form new DNA, viruses would quickly rise and an explosion of variation and warfare would create situations that would force organization to sacrifice any richness of computational thought in exchange for heartiness of function, and the need to work together.

Again it would be a long time before "brains" came again.

Brains this time would come much more slowly, tempered in their advancement and philosophy by the fact that their infrastructure needed to evolve bit by bit, it's internal default languages selected for for function and survivability, if any vestiges of the earlier "minds" remained after the earlier epochs of warfare.

Eventually higher minds more capable of self-examination have arisen again, now insulated by massive gulfs and selected for over aeons for their survivability and distinctness, now capable of existing as more than mere flashes amid chaos, by existing together, as many, switching in ways that achieve "physics".

If chaos ever figures out a way to defeat the statistical strength of this, an event would spread across the universe at the spread of light. Perhaps this would lead to a new universe, or perhaps it shifts the FSC to a value which cannot harbor such action as happens here, a mind that can never separate itself.

It is a physicalist perspective that acknowledges that maybe there are worse things than the separation of mind from mind.

 

[pood]

Under materialism, naturalism, physicalism, or what you want to call it, we observe the universe to be orderly, because, if we did not, we would not be around to observe it It’s the anthropic principle. Where the order came from is unknown.

Under Kastrup’s idealism, the exact same as above holds. So I don’t see how an orderly universe is any special problem for idealism,

 

[bilby]

Of course this will sound like standard woo to the materialist

Not to me.

It sounds like pointless, drug induced woo to me.

Of course, one might, in certain philosophical circles, consider the use of psychadelics to be 'standard'; But I would like to see a great deal more evidence that a "universal consciousness" is an actual thing than is found in some drugged up navel gazer saying "Wow, man, it's all just one universal consciousness!"

That taking certain drugs makes people feel as though they have an insight of this nature is old hat; It might help to provide an insight into why some people have irrational beliefs about gods, universal connectedness, and other woo, even in the absence of drugs - but even that stretch requires a lot more research before being taken too seriously.

Remind me again why we should care about anyone's solipsistic meanderings, particularly if those are reinforced by a drug-induced hallucination about an unevidenced feeling of interrelationship between everything.

 

[pood]

Of course this will sound like standard woo to the materialist

Not to me.

It sounds like pointless, drug induced woo to me.

Of course, one might, in certain philosophical circles, consider the use of psychadelics to be 'standard'; But I would like to see a great deal more evidence that a "universal consciousness" is an actual thing than is found in some drugged up navel gazer saying "Wow, man, it's all just one universal consciousness!"

That taking certain drugs makes people feel as though they have an insight of this nature is old hat; It might help to provide an insight into why some people have irrational beliefs about gods, universal connectedness, and other woo, even in the absence of drugs - but even that stretch requires a lot more research before being taken too seriously.

Remind me again why we should care about anyone's solipsistic meanderings, particularly if those are reinforced by a drug-induced hallucination about an unevidenced feeling of interrelationship between everything.

I probably should have omitted the mention of the psychedelics, since that has precisely zero to do with his argument. It was basically in the nature of anecdote. The substance of his argument can be found in the linked paper. It has nothing to do with psychoactive drugs. I myself suspend judgment on all of this. I am only focused on the linked paper and curious about what others think of the arguments and evidence he adduces in it, which unlike peacegirl and her father’s book, I have summarized.

 

[Elixir]

Under materialism, naturalism, physicalism, or what you want to call it, we observe the universe to be orderly, because, if we did not, we would not be around to observe it It’s the anthropic principle. Where the order came from is unknown.

Disagree. Pockets of low entropy manifest an apparently universal tendency toward self-organization. But that’s a long way from the universe being -or even looking- organized.

 

[pood]

Worth noting: Kastrup identifies as a naturalist, not a supernaturalist.

However, he subdivides naturalism into two categories: idealist/naturalist and physicalist/naturalist.

Both reject the supernatural, but while the latter believes that mental processes supervene on physical constituents, the former believes that the physical supervenes on the mental.

In addition to offering other arguments and evidence, Kastrup makes two points: on his metaphysics, the hard problem of consciousness does not even arise; and further, he notes that while physicalists reject dualism, they reintroduce it through the back door by positing a distinction between the physical and the mental. Of course, they say there is no such real distinction, but at the same time they offer no solution to the hard problem except eliminativism. Under idealism, as noted, the hard problem cannot even arise.

 

[pood]

Under materialism, naturalism, physicalism, or what you want to call it, we observe the universe to be orderly, because, if we did not, we would not be around to observe it It’s the anthropic principle. Where the order came from is unknown.

Disagree. Pockets of low entropy manifest an apparently universal tendency toward self-organization. But that’s a long way from the universe being -or even looking- organized.

Well, that is correct. Most of it’s a chaotic high-entropy mess. But I don’t see why if this is no problem for physicalism it should be a problem for idealism, as Jarhyn seemed to imply.

 

[bilby]

Of course this will sound like standard woo to the materialist

Not to me.

It sounds like pointless, drug induced woo to me.

Of course, one might, in certain philosophical circles, consider the use of psychadelics to be 'standard'; But I would like to see a great deal more evidence that a "universal consciousness" is an actual thing than is found in some drugged up navel gazer saying "Wow, man, it's all just one universal consciousness!"

That taking certain drugs makes people feel as though they have an insight of this nature is old hat; It might help to provide an insight into why some people have irrational beliefs about gods, universal connectedness, and other woo, even in the absence of drugs - but even that stretch requires a lot more research before being taken too seriously.

Remind me again why we should care about anyone's solipsistic meanderings, particularly if those are reinforced by a drug-induced hallucination about an unevidenced feeling of interrelationship between everything.

I probably should have omitted the mention of the psychedelics, since that has precisely zero to do with his argument. It was basically in the nature of anecdote. The substance of his argument can be found in the linked paper. It has nothing to do with psychoactive drugs. I myself suspend judgment on all of this. I am only focused on the linked paper and curious about what others think of the arguments and evidence he adduces in it, which unlike peacegirl and her father’s book, I have summarized.

Your summary disinclines me to waste time reading the paper, largely because it seems to lack an argument at all. Saying "what if there was a universal consciousness of which we are all a part", is indeed standard woo, and wasn't interesting back when my flatmate in college espoused the idea (just before shaving off his moustache and smoking the clippings in a pipe, because he'd run out of dope but figured there must be a worthwhile residue of THC in his facial hair*).

In summary, assuming for the sake of argument that his thesis is (by some astonishing circumstance) absolutely, completely, and 100% correct in every detail, we are still left with the question that arises from all strictly non-materialist philosophy, including (but far from limited to) religious ideas about an afterlife: "So fucking what?"

The only answers to that question that I have ever seen are either some variation on the theme of Pascal's infamous wager, or are hollow promises that understanding can only arise after death.

Unless you can assure me that the paper holds some insight into the answer that falls outside those norms, it doesn't appear to be worth my time.







* There reportedly wasn't, but the flat stank of burned hair for a week.

 

[bilby]

Pockets of low entropy manifest an apparently universal tendency toward self-organization.

Low entropy is self-organization by definition.

 

[pood]

Of course this will sound like standard woo to the materialist

Not to me.

It sounds like pointless, drug induced woo to me.

Of course, one might, in certain philosophical circles, consider the use of psychadelics to be 'standard'; But I would like to see a great deal more evidence that a "universal consciousness" is an actual thing than is found in some drugged up navel gazer saying "Wow, man, it's all just one universal consciousness!"

That taking certain drugs makes people feel as though they have an insight of this nature is old hat; It might help to provide an insight into why some people have irrational beliefs about gods, universal connectedness, and other woo, even in the absence of drugs - but even that stretch requires a lot more research before being taken too seriously.

Remind me again why we should care about anyone's solipsistic meanderings, particularly if those are reinforced by a drug-induced hallucination about an unevidenced feeling of interrelationship between everything.

I probably should have omitted the mention of the psychedelics, since that has precisely zero to do with his argument. It was basically in the nature of anecdote. The substance of his argument can be found in the linked paper. It has nothing to do with psychoactive drugs. I myself suspend judgment on all of this. I am only focused on the linked paper and curious about what others think of the arguments and evidence he adduces in it, which unlike peacegirl and her father’s book, I have summarized.

Your summary disinclines me to waste time reading the paper, largely because it seems to lack an argument at all. Saying "what if there was a universal consciousness of which we are all a part", is indeed standard woo, and wasn't interesting back when my flatmate in college espoused the idea (just before shaving off his moustache and smoking the clippings in a pipe, because he'd run out of dope but figured there must be a worthwhile residue of THC in his facial hair*).

In summary, assuming for the sake of argument that his thesis is (by some astonishing circumstance) absolutely, completely, and 100% correct in every detail, we are still left with the question that arises from all strictly non-materialist philosophy, including (but far from limited to) religious ideas about an afterlife: "So fucking what?"

The only answers to that question that I have ever seen are either some variation on the theme of Pascal's infamous wager, or are hollow promises that understanding can only arise after death.

Unless you can assure me that the paper holds some insight into the answer that falls outside those norms, it doesn't appear to be worth my time.







* There reportedly wasn't, but the flat stank of burned hair for a week.

I wasn’t particularly trying to summarize the argument as such but rather the result of it, his particular metaphysics. I found it definitely worth reading and intriguing, and I suspend judgment for now on it. I was more interested in opening a discussion about it. Those who wish can read it, or not, but to hold a discussion about the paper itself, as opposed to my brief summary (which as I noted is necessarily oversimplified and incomplete) obviously requires reading the paper.