Kastrup: Idea of the World

What lurks behind spacetime?

B. Kastrup

...Yet, it is empirically obvious that nature does have structure: its very regularities of behavior betray just that. Under certain circumstances nature does one thing and, under others, something else; repeatedly and reliably. Such distinguishable and consistent behaviors can only occur with some form of underlying, immanent structure.

So how are we to reconcile the empirical fact that nature has structure with the understanding that spacetime is not fundamental? How are we to think of the irreducible foundations of nature as both lacking extension and having structure? I submit that this is the least recognized and discussed dilemma of modern science.

To solve it, we must start with an admission: objects and events do indeed inherently require spaciotemporal extension to be differentiated; Schopenhauer was right about the principium individuationis. But we know of one other type of natural entity whose intrinsic structure does not require extension...

What lurks behind spacetime?

B. Kastrup

Well it's a new year so, to say it at least once a year, thanx Sci.  Your selection of articles posted here is stimulating and we all owe you for your focused efforts.

That said, this short essay by BK is just outstanding.  I don't agree with Idealism, but his argument is right out of the best of modern philosophy.  The closing is just a killer: 

 Indeed, dispositions and aptitudes are palpably real—in the sense of being known through direct acquaintance—yet transcend extension. What is the size of my aptitude for math? What is the length of my disposition to philosophize, or even of my next thought? Whatever theory of mind you subscribe to, the pre-theorical fact remains: you can’t take a tape measure to my next thought; mentation is not indisputably extended.

As such, within the bounds of coherent and explicit reasoning, a structured universe without irreducible extension is per force a mental universe—not in the sense of residing in our individual minds, but of consisting of a field of natural, spontaneous mental activity, whose intrinsic ‘dispositions’ and ‘aptitudes’ are known to us as the ‘laws of nature.' 

Taken literally, Kastrup is right about measuring a thought with a tape-measurement (SI units).  I am still selling the point that information science can address a thought by objectively tracking its effects in changing real-world probabilities.  Tell someone about your thought and the flow of information is likewise tracked as communication.  The term mental universe, fits with the more concrete idea of an informational environment.

Well it's a new year so, to say it at least once a year, thanx Sci.  Your selection of articles posted here is stimulating and we all owe you for your focused efforts.

Here here. Many thanks, Sci. Your contributions add such value to the site.

Here here. Many thanks, Sci. Your contributions add such value to the site.

Just feel like it would be disingenuous of me to NOT extend the thank you posts at least by one.  Sci, you have been a boon to me personally in sharing what you find.  A thousand thanks!

Of course everyone is welcome, tho without a forum to share anything "Sci" wouldn't exist, so I'd like to thank the creators/admins/mods of this space. :-)

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Was thinking about the "collapse" of space-time as fundamental, which would then mean that spatio-temporal extension is secondary to...something.

Given the major separation between mental and physical in Cartesian Dualism is the supposedly distinct nature of the two substances, I wonder even if we had "mind" and "extension-less physical" as distinct "stuff" could we really deny their possibility for interaction?

I have no idea whether this is relevant to this thread but I'll post it anyway.

As a child and into my teens I would think myself to sleep pondering things that worried - even scared - me. I believe it was trying to imagine death that was the start of it. Death worried and scared me then as it does now. One of the things that came up in my thoughts was to try to imagine, if we have a soul that is eternal, what eternity would be like to experience. That thought scared me as much as the alternative of death and total/instant oblivion.

Anyhow, at some point I reasoned that infinity and eternity are two words for the same thing. Moreover, the idea of something being "infinitely big" or "infinitely small" was meaningless - they too are both the same. The reasoning went: inifinity cannot be measured so size (or duration) have no meaning. I then took a step further and thought: if there is such a thing as infinity then everything we know is within it and is also imaginary because nothing really has actual measurements ... the measurements are invented (imagined).

These were (and probably still are) half-baked thoughts which arrived as revelations but without the necessary intellect to make sense of them. That's where Kastrup and the clever philosophers can take thoughts like that and formalise them into something coherent. Speaking of clever people, I do remember eventually reading about Einstein and relativity and had a eureka moment with regard to my thoughts on size in relation to infinity.

“Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

― Albert Einstein

I have no idea whether this is relevant to this thread but I'll post it anyway.

Quite relevant I'd say: 

Reality is nothing and everything at once

BK

...I argue that past and future exist solely in the present, and that the present moment is infinitely small, a singularity. Therefore, there is a fundamental sense in which everything exists in nothing, for the present moment, being infinitely small, is a kind of nothing.

This may seem to contradict my key criticism of Carlo Rovelli's contention that the universe is relational "all the way down": I maintain that such a contention is an obvious instance of the fallacy called 'infinite regress'; you can't have relationships all the way down, without something that relates, for the same reason that you can't have movement all the way down, without something that moves. For details on my criticism, see this essay. For Rovelli's acknowledgment that he is indeed arguing for "turtles all the way down," see this clip.

To justify his stance, Rovelli appeals to Buddhist mystic Nagarjuna's notion that reality is ultimately nothing. By acknowledging, in the clip above, that reality is made of nothing I may seem to be agreeing with this and, therefore, to be contradicting my own criticism of Rovelli. The need to clarify this apparent contradiction is what motivated me to write this brief essay...

This ...

... you can't have relationships all the way down, without something that relates ...

... is exactly the conclusion my young mind was reaching way back then. It is what Einstein confirmed for me when I read about relativity. Things in our reality only have reality when related to something else. An atom in infinity is not small nor big: scale is meaningless in infinity.

Bernardo Kastrup and Tom Campbell discuss simulation theory , analytic idealism , consciousness , the mind body problem , meditation , information , quantum physics , the universe , evolution and more. Links to the authors books are below the timestamp. Timestamp :

1:13 ( Tom ) Introduction

19:12 ( Tom ) Do we live in a literal computer simulation ?

20:56 ( Bernardo ) Introduction

27:25 ( Tom ) On similarities between Tom and Bernardo's work.

31:44 ( Bernardo ) Similarities between Tom and Bernardo's work.

35:47 Does consciousness predate evolution ? How does consciousness evolve ?

37:36 ( Tom ) Differences between Bernardo and Tom.

42:00 ( Tom ) How does your model account for higher level mental functions ?

42:44 ( Tom ) How does the virtual reality evolve avatars ? Why does consciousness evolve ?

48:30 Are we all one mind ?

49:45 ( Bernardo ) If we are all one mind , why can't we read each others thoughts ?

51:20 ( Tom ) Response to above.

58:07 ( Tom )How can we access the larger consciousness system ?

1:02:55 ( Bernardo ) Response to above.

1:10:27 ( Bernardo ) Can we merge with one another through psychedelics ?

1:11:18 ( Bernardo ) "The nature of mind is to deceive itself. "

1:13:14 ( Tom ) On skepticism

1:14:15 How to gain clarity of mind.

1:17:38 ( Bernardo ) Free will.

1:24:25 ( Tom ) Free will.

1:31:38 ( Tom ) The virtual reality is a top down system.

1:32:37 ( Bernardo ) Response to above.

1:33:22 ( Bernardo ) On the nature of time.

1:36:19 ( Tom ) On the nature of time.

1:38:19 ( Bernardo ) Response to above.

1:42:18 ( Bernardo ) Will idealism become mainstream metaphysics and science ?

1:49:03 ( Tom ) Will Idealism become mainstream metaphysics and science ?

Is our world made of matter, or consciousness?

In conversation: Rupert Spira and Bernardo Kastrup both believe that consciousness is fundamental. That is, instead of our world ultimately being composed of some tiny bits of physical matter (or physical energy) that in turn make more complex bits of matter (all the way up to our brains that generate our consciousness, that is aware of all that matter), it arises completely from a single trans-personal field of consciousness. You, me and everything we experience is simply that, an experience of universal phenomenal consciousness.

Rupert Spira is a spiritual practitioner in the vedantic and tantric traditions.
Bernardo Katstrup has PhDs in both computer science and philosophy. He is author of many books on the topic of analytical idealism (all of which I recommend).