Kastrup: Idea of the World

[Laird]

Have you presented your criticism to Bernardo directly?

As you know, I've now shared my criticism (and Titus Rivas's) on Bernardo's forum, here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/...onxb5_c8K0

Here's what I posted:

Dear Bernardo and group,

I write in to share a couple of related arguments against idealism as Bernardo conceives of and presents it. These arguments conclude that this form of idealism is false because it entails an impossibility: the impossibility that a single experient experiences multiple streams of phenomenal consciousness, or experiences from multiple conflicting perspectives, simultaneously.

The first, and more direct, argument to this effect is made by Titus Rivas on his page Is noetic monism tenable?

Titus argues that a single self can by definition, and analytically, only be associated with a single stream of phenomenal experience, and because noetic monism, to which Bernardo's idealism conforms, entails that a single self undergoes multiple streams of phenomenal experience simultaneously, noetic monism is false.

The second, and more liberal, argument to this effect is my own, which I refer to as The argument against idealism from conflicting perspectives.

My argument is more liberal because it allows - unlike Titus's argument - that a single Self might coherently "dissociate" into multiple "pseudo" selves, each of which might coherently experience from a unique perspective, but it goes on to demonstrate that even allowing this, on the (implied) premises of Bernardo's idealism, one "pseudo" self - the universal mind - itself then experiences from multiple conflicting perspectives simultaneously, which is impossible, and thus this form of idealism is anyway falsified.

I arrived at my argument via a process which can be viewed by clicking "Contents" at the middle of that page, top and bottom. The page immediately prior, An analysis of Bernardo Kastrup's semantic model of idealism, provides some further critical analysis as well as the genesis out of which my argument emerged.

On that page, I propose that Bernardo uses "experience" in two different senses, one subjective ("the redness of red") and one objective (the "excitations", "vibrations", "mirrors", and "protrusions" of "the medium of mind"). I further propose that Bernardo ought to accept that the latter - the objective sense of "experience" - can reasonably be referred to as "mental energy".

For completeness, I had written an initial review of Why Materialism Is Baloney back in February last year, as well as a follow-up a couple of months ago.

Titus and I have discussed these arguments in personal communication, and he is aware that I am going to be sharing them to this forum, but as he is very busy, he may not have time to get involved in any discussions that might eventuate.

I welcome your thoughts and response.

With fruitful respect,
Laird

Just saw this, thought "ha!" 

https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2019/10/...reams.html

Just saw this, thought "ha!" 

https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2019/10/...reams.html

Upon reading [the referenced passage] this something struck me - if DID is the right arrow to the nature of reality, this suggests the great suffering (namely abuse, correlated with DID) of others has opened the door to this deep understanding.

See also Elizabeth Krohn talking about how disassociating in childhood to mentally survive sexual abuse enabled her to navigate her NDE.

There's something unsettling about seeming Revelation/Enlightenment born from such sordid evil? But then the Platonic tradition was at least partially built on the backs of slaves, and of course Indian philosophy on the backs of the lower castes...

Life's Peaks: Philosophy and Hiking

Premiering later today, at 8:00pm CET (which is 2:00pm ET and 11:00am PT, except for daylight-saving shifts, so do check). It lasts for a little more than 1.5 hour and is the most image-intensive video I've ever published. I will be live answering comments during the premiere!

https://youtu.be/C4DJhdUMVJE

Will we ever Understand Consciousness? : Why compromises like panpsychism aren't the way forward

BK

Don’t get me wrong: the panpsychist is going in the right direction when they consider consciousness irreducible, and such openness is a valuable commodity in our overwhelmingly materialist culture. My hope is that, freed from the missteps discussed above, the panpsychist finds intellectual space to contemplate a more promising alternative—one that entails leaving every vestige of materialism behind, instead of striking a half-way, Frankenstein-monster-like compromise. The idea is that, in lieu of preserving physical properties alongside experiential states as fundamental aspects of nature, the way to go is to reduce the physical to the experiential.

You see, every scientific and philosophical explanation entails reducing a phenomenon to some other aspect of nature, different from the phenomenon itself. For instance, we reduce or explain a living organism in terms of organs, organs in terms of tissues, tissues in terms of cells, molecules, atoms and subatomic particles. But because we can’t keep on explaining one thing in terms of another forever, at some point we hit rock-bottom. Whatever is then left is considered to be our ‘reduction base’: a set of fundamental or irreducible aspects of nature that cannot themselves be explained, but in terms of which everything else can. Under materialism, the elementary subatomic particles of the standard model—with their intrinsic physical properties—constitute the reduction base.

To circumvent materialism’s failure to explain experience, the panpsychist simply adds experience—with all its countless qualities—to the reduction base. Arguably, this is a copout. Inflated reduction bases don’t really explain anything; they just provide subterfuge for avoiding explanations. A good rule of thumb is that the best theories are those that have the smallest base, and then still manage to explain everything else in terms of it. On this account, panpsychism just isn’t a good theory.

Good alternatives to materialism are those that replace elementary particles with experiential states in their reduction base, as opposed to simply adding elements to it. We call this class of alternatives ‘idealism.’

Guessing we'll see some responses from panpsychists, I'll likely wait to see what comes up - if anything - and post the responses as a reply to this.

Kastrup pointed out that a fan made a video inspired by one of his papers:

The Mysterious Disappearance of Consciousness

The argument structure here is the following:

1. Material things, in themselves, have no qualitative properties (like color, flavor, etc.), only our perceptions of them do;
   
2. The brain is a material thing;
   
3. From (1) and (2), the brain has no qualitative properties;
   
4. Experience is reducible to the brain;
   
5. From (3) and (4), experience cannot entail qualitative properties.
   

Ergo, phenomenal consciousness cannot exist; it must, instead, be an illusion—or so his argument goes.

Notice, however, that step (4) blatantly begs the question: it presupposes materialism, which is precisely the metaphysical point in contention. Ironically, what Frankish actually accomplishes is to highlight an implication of materialism that reduces it to absurdity.

A Materialism of Qualities?

Kastrup

Indeed, according to materialism [i]all[/i] qualities, including those of perception, are somehow—materialists don't know how—generated by the brain inside our skull. The external world allegedly has no qualities at all—no color, no smell, no flavor—but is instead constituted by purely abstract [i]quantities[/i], such as mass, charge, spin, momentum, geometric relationships, frequencies, amplitudes, etc.

Triggered by my post, a long-time reader of mine, who also writes about philosophy, wondered if we could conceive of an alternative form of materialism precisely along the lines above. That is, can we devise a coherent 'qualitative materialism' according to which the qualities of perception are really out there in the external world—whether they constitute that world or are merely objective properties of it—while only non-perceptual experiences, such as thoughts and emotions, are generated by the brain? The answer is no, but if such a smart and well-informed reader felt tempted to entertain the thought, I think it is worthwhile to elaborate more here.

For starters, notice that the qualities of perception—color, smell, flavor, etc.—also appear in dreams, imagination, visions, hallucinations, etc. Many dreams and hallucinations are qualitatively indistinguishable from actual perceptions, something I have verified multiple times—to my own satisfaction—during lucid dreams and psychedelic trances. So if colors and other perceptual qualities are really out there in the external world, then somehow our inner mental imagery can [i]also [/i]incorporate the exact same qualities [i]independently of the external world[/i].

This is problematic for qualitative materialism, for it entails postulating [i]two[/i] [i]fundamentally different[/i] grounds for the [i]same[/i] qualities...

A Materialism of Qualities?

Kastrup

 “So if colors and other perceptual qualities are really out there in the external world...”

Hmmm.

Courtesy of the Daily Grail - here's another new article by Kastrup, entitled "Consciousness Cannot Have Evolved," on the Institute of Arts and Ideas website:
https://iai.tv/articles/consciousness-ca...-auid-1302