Analytic Idealism

[Jarhyn]

Some of you may be interested in Kastrup’s debate with Sabine Hossenfelder on superdeterminism, here. Supposedly you can skip the long, tedious, ad-ridden intro, but I found skipping did not work for me.

Oddly, Kastrup rejects superdeterminism but also Everettian quantum mechanics, which I find weird because many worlds seems to nicely complement his own concept of dissociative alters.

Well, I would say my model of dissociative alters is explained with far fewer assumptions of cosmic weirdness: it's the prompting of some subset of your own brain to start playing a character not associated with the actions you take, saying "make me a homunculus" to the large language-processing structures of your own brain, and getting such a thing arising out of the din.

That's eminently understandable, in theory. We've engineered a machine that does exactly that, and people are quite ready to observe that it's "not that huge of a technical achievement" or whatever (it's actually quite a monumental achievement).

Why would we need multiversal madness to explain that?

I don't necessarily reject or accept superdeterminism, though I'm going to live in peace with it since it's an apparently unfalsifiable theory; making any statement that preemptively supposes it is right or wrong seems ill-founded until someone proposes a method of falsification that is widely demonstrable.

Still, it seems to add untold layers of complexity to reality in trying to explain a fairly well observed phenomena in a nutty way, and I commend this guy for at least not trying to foist a belief in such complexity on us.

Personally, I think dissociative alters are just chunks of your own neuron-stuff whipped into playing a role through embedding identity statements into some node kernel, or allowing identity statements to precipitate. Hell, the statements don't even have to be in plain English, they can be in "headless/token less" vector format, with a thousand, or even ten thousand different neural dimensions all jumbled together in the way a "nonverbal" person does it.

Again, Occam's razor would suggest the situation where it's physically explained using existing observed phenomena is more compelling than the equally explanatory but much more complex situation where people are tickling alternative parallel realities.

 

[NoHolyCows]

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.

If all sentient beings are expressions of a single consciousness, what are the ethical implications for how we treat others—including animals or even ecosystems?

NHC

 

[Jarhyn]

I also think analytic idealism provides a metaphysical grounding for Tom Clark’s essay at naturalism.org, Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity, an essay which, on physicalist grounds, would be incoherent. Please note that Clark is a naturalist and an atheist.

I mean, I just addressed death, and subjectivity from physicalist grounds, and have numerous times discussed the soul.

Again, you have to support the idea that there's some necessary primary structure of metaphysics or the mind outside of the combinatorics of the stuff that exists here.

I return again to my position that my primary gripe with this guy isn't necessarily his drug fueled woo about them wanting to believe in Spinoza's God rather than explicitly accepting that things don't need to be "real" or have "location" to be important or metaphysically "true", but rather his drug fueled woo about deleting one's 'homunculus' putting them in any more direct contact with that mind stuff of the whole of the universe.

From all rational observations, that's not what happens. You're really just turning your 'homunculus' into a P-zombie at that point, or the equivalent of it. It's just a pointless suicide.

I don’t know what is necessarily wrong with Spinoza’s god, which was Einstein’s god — nothing personal — or whose “drug-fueled woo” you are referring to. Clark’s? Kastrup’s? Neither was espousing drug-fueled woo.

It's all drug fueled woo once you start imagining that your imagination allows you to touch more than just more of your imagination, absent physical words or motions effected by the motion of muscles, or the emission of physical wave/particle stuff to impart physical force on those communications.

At that point, it's just way simpler to chuck the imagination of a machine and say maybe it can just exist without that extra complexity of a god, that "this is just how reality do".

I don't find something theoretically wrong with the idea of Spinoza's God; I mean, I literally argue that I have a much more simple Spinozan God in my living room right now holding for whatever agent points itself at the information an awareness of the location of my cellphone.

It's more that I find the positive belief in it and in psychic super powers of connecting to the cosmos to be the drug fueled woo part.

As I've said before, even as someone who is a god of a world, it's still not a valid grounds to assume a god of this one, or a computer we can HAX with.

 

[pood]

Some of you may be interested in Kastrup’s debate with Sabine Hossenfelder on superdeterminism, here. Supposedly you can skip the long, tedious, ad-ridden intro, but I found skipping did not work for me.

Oddly, Kastrup rejects superdeterminism but also Everettian quantum mechanics, which I find weird because many worlds seems to nicely complement his own concept of dissociative alters.

Well, I would say my model of dissociative alters is explained with far fewer assumptions of cosmic weirdness: it's the prompting of some subset of your own brain to start playing a character not associated with the actions you take, saying "make me a homunculus" to the large language-processing structures of your own brain, and getting such a thing arising out of the din.

That's eminently understandable, in theory. We've engineered a machine that does exactly that, and people are quite ready to observe that it's "not that huge of a technical achievement" or whatever (it's actually quite a monumental achievement).

Why would we need multiversal madness to explain that?

I don't necessarily reject or accept superdeterminism, though I'm going to live in peace with it since it's an apparently unfalsifiable theory; making any statement that preemptively supposes it is right or wrong seems ill-founded until someone proposes a method of falsification that is widely demonstrable.

Still, it seems to add untold layers of complexity to reality in trying to explain a fairly well observed phenomena in a nutty way, and I commend this guy for at least not trying to foist a belief in such complexity on us.

Personally, I think dissociative alters are just chunks of your own neuron-stuff whipped into playing a role through embedding identity statements into some node kernel, or allowing identity statements to precipitate. Hell, the statements don't even have to be in plain English, they can be in "headless/token less" vector format, with a thousand, or even ten thousand different neural dimensions all jumbled together in the way a "nonverbal" person does it.

Again, Occam's razor would suggest the situation where it's physically explained using existing observed phenomena is more compelling than the equally explanatory but much more complex situation where people are tickling alternative parallel realities.

The term “dissociative alters” comes from psychiatry and is meant to explain or describe multiple personality disorder. As noted earlier, Kastrup’s meataphysics is basically multiple personality disorder applied to the universe at large.

Superdeterminism denies statistical independence, so appears to be unfalsifiable even in principle. I just mentioned Everett’s many worlds because, while strictly it has nothing to do with Kastrup‘s dissociative alters, they seem rather alike in principle.

 

[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.

If all sentient beings are expressions of a single consciousness, what are the ethical implications for how we treat others—including animals or even ecosystems?

NHC

Pretty pressing I would think, though I would think those ethical implications to be equally pressing on standard physicalism.

 

[pood]

I also think analytic idealism provides a metaphysical grounding for Tom Clark’s essay at naturalism.org, Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity, an essay which, on physicalist grounds, would be incoherent. Please note that Clark is a naturalist and an atheist.

I mean, I just addressed death, and subjectivity from physicalist grounds, and have numerous times discussed the soul.

Again, you have to support the idea that there's some necessary primary structure of metaphysics or the mind outside of the combinatorics of the stuff that exists here.

I return again to my position that my primary gripe with this guy isn't necessarily his drug fueled woo about them wanting to believe in Spinoza's God rather than explicitly accepting that things don't need to be "real" or have "location" to be important or metaphysically "true", but rather his drug fueled woo about deleting one's 'homunculus' putting them in any more direct contact with that mind stuff of the whole of the universe.

From all rational observations, that's not what happens. You're really just turning your 'homunculus' into a P-zombie at that point, or the equivalent of it. It's just a pointless suicide.

I don’t know what is necessarily wrong with Spinoza’s god, which was Einstein’s god — nothing personal — or whose “drug-fueled woo” you are referring to. Clark’s? Kastrup’s? Neither was espousing drug-fueled woo.

It's all drug fueled woo once you start imagining that your imagination allows you to touch more than just more of your imagination, absent physical words or motions effected by the motion of muscles, or the emission of physical wave/particle stuff to impart physical force on those communications.

At that point, it's just way simpler to chuck the imagination of a machine and say maybe it can just exist without that extra complexity of a god, that "this is just how reality do".

I don't find something theoretically wrong with the idea of Spinoza's God; I mean, I literally argue that I have a much more simple Spinozan God in my living room right now holding for whatever agent points itself at the information an awareness of the location of my cellphone.

It's more that I find the positive belief in it and in psychic super powers of connecting to the cosmos to be the drug fueled woo part.

As I've said before, even as someone who is a god of a world, it's still not a valid grounds to assume a god of this one, or a computer we can HAX with.

I get what you are arguing, but I find “drug-fueled woo” to be well poisoning with loaded terminology. Nothing in Spinoza, Kastrup or Clark is “drug-fueled” and it certainly is not obviously “woo.” No one is claiming mind brings reality into existence, or mind can heal cancer, or I can read minds or change the world by thinking into being a new world, etc.

 

[Jarhyn]

Some of you may be interested in Kastrup’s debate with Sabine Hossenfelder on superdeterminism, here. Supposedly you can skip the long, tedious, ad-ridden intro, but I found skipping did not work for me.

Oddly, Kastrup rejects superdeterminism but also Everettian quantum mechanics, which I find weird because many worlds seems to nicely complement his own concept of dissociative alters.

Well, I would say my model of dissociative alters is explained with far fewer assumptions of cosmic weirdness: it's the prompting of some subset of your own brain to start playing a character not associated with the actions you take, saying "make me a homunculus" to the large language-processing structures of your own brain, and getting such a thing arising out of the din.

That's eminently understandable, in theory. We've engineered a machine that does exactly that, and people are quite ready to observe that it's "not that huge of a technical achievement" or whatever (it's actually quite a monumental achievement).

Why would we need multiversal madness to explain that?

I don't necessarily reject or accept superdeterminism, though I'm going to live in peace with it since it's an apparently unfalsifiable theory; making any statement that preemptively supposes it is right or wrong seems ill-founded until someone proposes a method of falsification that is widely demonstrable.

Still, it seems to add untold layers of complexity to reality in trying to explain a fairly well observed phenomena in a nutty way, and I commend this guy for at least not trying to foist a belief in such complexity on us.

Personally, I think dissociative alters are just chunks of your own neuron-stuff whipped into playing a role through embedding identity statements into some node kernel, or allowing identity statements to precipitate. Hell, the statements don't even have to be in plain English, they can be in "headless/token less" vector format, with a thousand, or even ten thousand different neural dimensions all jumbled together in the way a "nonverbal" person does it.

Again, Occam's razor would suggest the situation where it's physically explained using existing observed phenomena is more compelling than the equally explanatory but much more complex situation where people are tickling alternative parallel realities.

The term “dissociative alters” comes from psychiatry and is meant to explain or describe multiple personality disorder. As noted earlier, Kastrup’s meataphysics is basically multiple personality disorder applied to the universe at large.

Superdeterminism denies statistical independence, so appears to be unfalsifiable even in principle. I just mentioned Everett’s many worlds because, while strictly it has nothing to do with Kastrup‘s dissociative alters, they seem rather alike in principle.

Well, as I said before in my post full of obvious drug fueled woo: if the universe is caused by a sort of dissociative act, from the basis of what was dissociating from what and how, I am rather appreciative of that dissociation for now, and incredulous as to how anyone could purport to model mind of the form of IIT absent a sequential state change on a field.

As to SuperDeterminism, the unfalsifiability in principle is a curious thing, in that statements which assume it's falseness would then be automatically false unless they ALSO presented a pathway to falsifiability for Superdeterminism, and unprovable and unfalsifiable themselves if they assumed it true.

I think as a result, it comes down to really reflect the same question or assumption that there is some kind of Spinozan God.

Ultimately I think the unfalsifiability comes from the fact that it's just an extreme framing of systems in general, at the intersection of concepts of randomness and preeminence: is a pre-shuffled infinite card deck whose order is unpredictable no matter how many finite count of prior discrete observations observations "deterministic"? Because that's super-determinism in a nutshell.

Anything that would assume that the universe couldn't be arranged like that gets tossed, logically, as a result, as an unwarranted assumption, until someone presents logic that makes that not work, which they can't, because it's really a proposition about a "deck" being "pre-shuffled".

 

[pood]

In superdeterminism, the deck is indeed pre-shuffled, but there is no way to demonstrate evidence for this or to falsify it, because falsifiability depends on the very statistical independence that superdeterminism denies.

 

[Jarhyn]

In superdeterminism, the deck is indeed pre-shuffled, but there is no way to demonstrate evidence for this or to falsify it, because falsifiability depends on the very statistical independence that superdeterminism denies.

Well, there need be no denial of statistical independence from the precondition to the laws. That seems an entirely manufactured assumption that needs not be made to support determinism or even Superdeterminism.

The independence, on top of the pre-shuffled-ness, is an additional unprovable statement and under superdeterminism, it would hold its own unfalsifiability, as determining a statistical dependence would require, like a calculating a halting point for a Turing machine, a larger machine than the universe itself is, to prove the dependence that superdeterminism insists on.

That isn't useful for anything I can imagine thinking about, because you're still left with the question about "where in the structure am I?" When the structure is infinite, aperiodic, and any finite subsection could appear infinite times among it.

It's just way more useful to ask what the nature of all the places as yours has, in general, where no matter what may be dealt from the deck no matter how it was shuffled, what your plays shall be given that current hand.

In this way you yourself participate in the definition of what may happen, as a constraint on reality itself wherever you exist as you are now, and to be it is to be that which is "responsible" for those outcomes.

 

[NoHolyCows]

Pretty pressing I would think, though I would think those ethical implications to be equally pressing on standard physicalism.

That’s a fair point—ethical urgency isn’t exclusive to any one metaphysical view. Physicalism certainly allows for robust moral reasoning grounded in empathy, reciprocity, and evolutionary psychology. But I do wonder whether idealism reframes the foundations of ethical concern in a way that’s not just philosophically distinct, but potentially more compelling.

If all sentient beings are dissociated aspects of a single universal consciousness, then the boundary between self and other is, in a sense, a useful illusion. From that angle, ethical concern isn’t just about well-being or social contract—it’s about how the whole treats itself through its parts. Harming another being, whether a person, an animal, or even a system like an ecosystem, could be seen as a kind of intra-psychic violence within one consciousness. That’s a powerful shift.

Do you think that has real ethical weight, or is it just another poetic lens on what physicalism can already explain through evolved empathy and mutual interests?

NHC

 

[pood]

Pretty pressing I would think, though I would think those ethical implications to be equally pressing on standard physicalism.

That’s a fair point—ethical urgency isn’t exclusive to any one metaphysical view. Physicalism certainly allows for robust moral reasoning grounded in empathy, reciprocity, and evolutionary psychology. But I do wonder whether idealism reframes the foundations of ethical concern in a way that’s not just philosophically distinct, but potentially more compelling.

If all sentient beings are dissociated aspects of a single universal consciousness, then the boundary between self and other is, in a sense, a useful illusion. From that angle, ethical concern isn’t just about well-being or social contract—it’s about how the whole treats itself through its parts. Harming another being, whether a person, an animal, or even a system like an ecosystem, could be seen as a kind of intra-psychic violence within one consciousness. That’s a powerful shift.

Do you think that has real ethical weight, or is it just another poetic lens on what physicalism can already explain through evolved empathy and mutual interests?

NHC

I do think it has real ethical weight, and it’s also interesting how evolution — which is valid under either physicalism or idealism — rather mirrors the idealist concept of dissociate alters. In Kastrup’s analytic idealism, every individual consciousness is broken-off subset of what might be called their last universal common ancestor, the mind-universe itself. In evolution, every living thing is a broken-off subset — a dissociate alter? — of a last universal common ancestor that lived 4.2 billion years ago. Metaphorically, this mirrors Borges’ Garden of Forking Paths, which itself is mirrored by the postulated quantum multiverse. Everything becomes like a giant branching, endlessly exfoliating phylogenetic tree, with everything related to everything else.

 

[pood]

Indeed, in Smolin’s inflationary multiverse, there are endless universes all distantly related that are actually evolving.

 

[NoHolyCows]

Pretty pressing I would think, though I would think those ethical implications to be equally pressing on standard physicalism.

That’s a fair point—ethical urgency isn’t exclusive to any one metaphysical view. Physicalism certainly allows for robust moral reasoning grounded in empathy, reciprocity, and evolutionary psychology. But I do wonder whether idealism reframes the foundations of ethical concern in a way that’s not just philosophically distinct, but potentially more compelling.

If all sentient beings are dissociated aspects of a single universal consciousness, then the boundary between self and other is, in a sense, a useful illusion. From that angle, ethical concern isn’t just about well-being or social contract—it’s about how the whole treats itself through its parts. Harming another being, whether a person, an animal, or even a system like an ecosystem, could be seen as a kind of intra-psychic violence within one consciousness. That’s a powerful shift.

Do you think that has real ethical weight, or is it just another poetic lens on what physicalism can already explain through evolved empathy and mutual interests?

NHC

I do think it has real ethical weight, and it’s also interesting how evolution — which is valid under either physicalism or idealism — rather mirrors the idealist concept of dissociate alters. In Kastrup’s analytic idealism, every individual consciousness is broken-off subset of what might be called their last universal common ancestor, the mind-universe itself. In evolution, every living thing is a broken-off subset — a dissociate alter? — of a last universal common ancestor that lived 4.2 billion years ago. Metaphorically, this mirrors Borges’ Garden of Forking Paths, which itself is mirrored by the postulated quantum multiverse. Everything becomes like a giant branching, endlessly exfoliating phylogenetic tree, with everything related to everything else.

I really like the parallel you’ve drawn between dissociated alters in idealism and evolutionary descent from a last universal common ancestor. It’s fascinating how both models, one metaphysical and one biological, describe individuality as a kind of localized expression of a deeper unity. And when you add Borges’ Garden of Forking Paths or the quantum multiverse into the picture, the metaphor becomes even more expansive—like reality is this endlessly branching web of variation, choice, and emergence, all tied back to a single origin.

What I find especially compelling is how this image challenges the notion of true separation—whether between species, persons, or even timelines. If everything really is a branching expression of a single source, whether biological or mental, then ethical concern for “the other” isn’t just moral—it’s metaphysical. In that sense, compassion could be seen as a kind of ontological recognition.

Curious how you see this playing out practically: does thinking in these terms shift how you view moral responsibility or value in everyday life? Or is it more of a symbolic lens you use to reflect on reality?

NHC

 

[pood]

Pretty pressing I would think, though I would think those ethical implications to be equally pressing on standard physicalism.

That’s a fair point—ethical urgency isn’t exclusive to any one metaphysical view. Physicalism certainly allows for robust moral reasoning grounded in empathy, reciprocity, and evolutionary psychology. But I do wonder whether idealism reframes the foundations of ethical concern in a way that’s not just philosophically distinct, but potentially more compelling.

If all sentient beings are dissociated aspects of a single universal consciousness, then the boundary between self and other is, in a sense, a useful illusion. From that angle, ethical concern isn’t just about well-being or social contract—it’s about how the whole treats itself through its parts. Harming another being, whether a person, an animal, or even a system like an ecosystem, could be seen as a kind of intra-psychic violence within one consciousness. That’s a powerful shift.

Do you think that has real ethical weight, or is it just another poetic lens on what physicalism can already explain through evolved empathy and mutual interests?

NHC

I do think it has real ethical weight, and it’s also interesting how evolution — which is valid under either physicalism or idealism — rather mirrors the idealist concept of dissociate alters. In Kastrup’s analytic idealism, every individual consciousness is broken-off subset of what might be called their last universal common ancestor, the mind-universe itself. In evolution, every living thing is a broken-off subset — a dissociate alter? — of a last universal common ancestor that lived 4.2 billion years ago. Metaphorically, this mirrors Borges’ Garden of Forking Paths, which itself is mirrored by the postulated quantum multiverse. Everything becomes like a giant branching, endlessly exfoliating phylogenetic tree, with everything related to everything else.

I really like the parallel you’ve drawn between dissociated alters in idealism and evolutionary descent from a last universal common ancestor. It’s fascinating how both models, one metaphysical and one biological, describe individuality as a kind of localized expression of a deeper unity. And when you add Borges’ Garden of Forking Paths or the quantum multiverse into the picture, the metaphor becomes even more expansive—like reality is this endlessly branching web of variation, choice, and emergence, all tied back to a single origin.

What I find especially compelling is how this image challenges the notion of true separation—whether between species, persons, or even timelines. If everything really is a branching expression of a single source, whether biological or mental, then ethical concern for “the other” isn’t just moral—it’s metaphysical. In that sense, compassion could be seen as a kind of ontological recognition.

Curious how you see this playing out practically: does thinking in these terms shift how you view moral responsibility or value in everyday life? Or is it more of a symbolic lens you use to reflect on reality?

NHC

I want to get back to this later because it is so interesting.

For now, I just wanted to stress that Kastrup‘s analytic idealism is a new variant on an old theme. Here is one big example:

Schrödinger the total number of minds in the universe is one.

 

[NoHolyCows]

I want to get back to this later because it is so interesting.

For now, I just wanted to stress that Kastrup‘s analytic idealism is a new variant on an old theme. Here is one big example:

Schrödinger the total number of minds in the universe is one.

This was a fantastic share—thank you. You’re absolutely right: Kastrup’s analytic idealism isn’t something conjured in a vacuum. Schrödinger’s “one mind” thesis is perhaps one of the most elegant and radical formulations of this perennial idea—that multiplicity is appearance, not essence.

What struck me most was how Schrödinger, a physicist immersed in the hard sciences, arrived at a view that so deeply challenges materialist intuitions. His insistence that the subject-object divide is artificial, and that consciousness is fundamentally singular, anticipates not just Kastrup, but much of what quantum mechanics continues to unsettle. The way he phrases it—almost with metaphysical restraint—makes it all the more compelling: not a mystical leap, but a reluctant, reasoned conclusion.

Kastrup picks up that thread and gives it structure: dissociation as a model, drawn from psychiatry, to explain how one mind can appear as many without introducing dualism or extra substances. So while the metaphysical core is old—perhaps as old as the Upanishads—his use of dissociation adds a modern explanatory layer Schrödinger only gestured toward.

Here’s what I’m still turning over: Do you think Schrödinger’s view was metaphorical—philosophical poetry from a scientist? Or do you think he was pointing, like Kastrup, to a literal ontological claim about the nature of consciousness?

NHC

 

[GenesisNemesis]

... here's the full Schrodinger quote for context.

“Mind is by its very nature a singulare tantum. I should say: the over-all number of minds is just one. …But I grant that our language is not adequate to express this, and I also grant, should anyone wish to state it, that I am now talking religion, not science.” —Schrödinger, What is Life?: With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches, p. 134–135

 

[lostone]

With all the flaws in this idea here presented, and skillfully attacked by those who think it wooey nonsense, it still is an interesting concept, and a plausible alternative to both physicalism and standard religiousity. I don't buy it, but it is worthy of at least some consideration as a possibility among many.

 

[Jarhyn]

With all the flaws in this idea here presented, and skillfully attacked by those who think it wooey nonsense, it still is an interesting concept, and a plausible alternative to both physicalism and standard religiousity. I don't buy it, but it is worthy of at least some consideration as a possibility among many.

I would say it may even be such that physicalism is idealism and idealism is physicalism, and it may just be some folks are seeing it from the ass end and some from the pokey end and coming to different conclusions, when it's just a perspective on the same thing.

I just think the wooey nonsense comes from the kumbaya melt into the ego death thing.

 

[lostone]

With all the flaws in this idea here presented, and skillfully attacked by those who think it wooey nonsense, it still is an interesting concept, and a plausible alternative to both physicalism and standard religiousity. I don't buy it, but it is worthy of at least some consideration as a possibility among many.

I would say it may even be such that physicalism is idealism and idealism is physicalism, and it may just be some folks are seeing it from the ass end and some from the pokey end and coming to different conclusions, when it's just a perspective on the same thing.

I just think the wooey nonsense comes from the kumbaya melt into the ego death thing.

In either case, I ally myself with the monist camp. People, and religious people in particular, are too hung up on ego death. It may be difficult for our egos to accept, but when we die we're dead, and the that's the end of the story.

 

[pood]

With all the flaws in this idea here presented, and skillfully attacked by those who think it wooey nonsense, it still is an interesting concept, and a plausible alternative to both physicalism and standard religiousity. I don't buy it, but it is worthy of at least some consideration as a possibility among many.

Could you specify the flaws? Also, with due respect to others, I don’t think the idea was “skillfully attacked.” I got more of a sense of pre-emptive dismissal and a kind of knee-jerk invocation of “woo” charges. In fact, even if analytic idealism is wrong, it most definitely is not “woo.” A coherent metaphysics that is not obviously contradicted by evidence is never woo, even if one were to argue that there is little or no evidence in favor of it (and Kastrup argues that there is such evidence). If that were the case, then you can also write off the quantum multiverse and string theory, to take two obvious examples, as “woo.”

I had hoped that others would read the paper and address it, after I summarized the argument. Maybe some did, but I didn’t get much sense from those who reacted negatively that they had in fact read the paper.

As to the ego death thing, is is not woo either. Kastrup did not formulate his idea because of psychedelics — far from it — but he, as welll as many others, reports the subjective experience of ego death in these circumstances and a feeling of “oneness” with nature. These kinds of experience under different circumstances have been reported since antiquity. Analytic idealism points to the possibility that since everything is phenomenal, some kind of subjective experience may survive death even if it is not the “I” experience of the ego.