Perennial Idealism: A Mystical Solution to the Mind-Body Problem

Ah sorry -> I don't think Dualism is a conclusion from Occam's Razor, as it makes more sense to have a singular substance rather than two. Having two substances is a needless multiplication when a singular substance - whether that is Mind, Panpsychic Matter, or some Neutral Monist stuff - suffices.

A little earlier I briefly summarized the process of a deep NDE as "...the phenomenon of the separation of the mind/soul as a mobile center of consciousness from the physical body, observing the physical body, doctors and other surroundings from an elevated position in the room, visiting another realm via some means of transportation sometimes experienced as a "tunnel", communicating with advanced beings and also deceased loved ones, and then returning to re-inhabit the physical body/brain." 

To explain this via Idealism, a theory of a single underlying substance, requires the additional complication of a number of subsidiary hypotheses describing how the single substance will under certain specified circumstances diversify and separate into what appears to be two - mind and body. Interactive Dualism directly predicts these observed features of the deep NDE and therefore is the more likely theory based on the Occam's Razor principle.

A little earlier I briefly summarized the process of a deep NDE as "...the phenomenon of the separation of the mind/soul as a mobile center of consciousness from the physical body, observing the physical body, doctors and other surroundings from an elevated position in the room, visiting another realm via some means of transportation sometimes experienced as a "tunnel", communicating with advanced beings and also deceased loved ones, and then returning to re-inhabit the physical body/brain." 

To explain this via Idealism, a theory of a single underlying substance, requires the additional complication of a number of subsidiary hypotheses describing how the single substance will under certain specified circumstances diversify and separate into what appears to be two - mind and body. Interactive Dualism directly predicts these observed features of the deep NDE and therefore is the more likely theory based on the Occam's Razor principle.

But there is a lot more to explain about reality - forces, energy/matter, the observed regularities we codify as Laws of Nature , Psi, quantum level physics, gravity, Parkinsons, psychedelics, cancer, and evolution to name a few.

There's a reason Dualism is taken far less seriously than Monism - it's b/c all the varied brain-mind relations, body-world relations, and general relation of objects in the world have to be accounted for.

Occam's Razor refers to the idea that "entities should not be multiplied without necessity."

Since two substances are not needed, and only create confusion with unnecessary criticism of trying to justify interaction between two distinct substances, it makes more sense to just accept there is a singular substance ground[ing] both a mental realm and a physical realm. One should also consider the strong possibility of different realms - the NDEr and the person communicating to a medium don't seem to be in the same place, and the shamanic journey to the spirit realm also seems to be a different place. Even NDErs don't seem to be in the same place. Do we posit a different substance for each of these places?

In ancient times, before Descartes, there were cultures that believed in a soul/body distinction who posited a singular "stuff" serving as the Ground of Being. It's also why physicists confronted by QM's oddities such as Wolfgang Pauli, Eddington, James Jean, and Bohm sought to find a way to explain reality via a singular substance whether that was Idealism or Dual-Aspect Monism.

In today's time, one of the reasons for the a priori dismissal of all the data from parapsychology is because of the suggestion that the truth of the data requires Dualism to be true. As Monisms that give consciousness a place at the Ground of Being level gain traction the data will have an opportunity to be taken more seriously.

 My view is that the empirical evidence is paramount and the theory that explains this data in the least complicated way is most likely correct. This is of course the Occam's Razor principle. It's not an invariable law, just a principle that from experience points to the most likely explanation. It seems to me Interactive Dualism is the most direct and simple explanation of the data.     

I strongly agree with the focus on a simple - top-level model, which lines -up with the data it predicts.

Interactive Dualism is a rough row to hoe.  As soon as there are two fields, two languages or two sets of methods, with different variables - bridge theories or laws need to be presented.  This goes directly to any claim of "emergence".  Interactive Dualism hasn't had a cogent bridge law in many decades.  If there is a version to point out, please share as I am a fan.

Let me next - say a word of praise and thank you to the SEP (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).  It makes fans of rational exploration (like me) enabling quick research of topics, which used to be locked away in the great libraries!!

For myself, Dualism is not excluded from the set defined by "multiple generative levels of interaction".  Could be 2 levels, could be 3 (C. S. Peirce sure hoped so), could be 8,10 or 11 (the string guys would be happy) . What is required are bridging principles that formally relate the corresponding outcomes on each level.

Universal Consciousness as the Ground of Logic

P.Goff

Shortly after the Second World War, Aldous Huxley published a book defending what he called ›the perennial philosophy,‹ a metaphysical theory he argued had arisen 2,500 years earlier and had subsequently cropped up in many and varied cultures across the globe.1 According to Huxley, the view did not emerge from abstract philosophical speculation but because its truth came to be directly known to various individuals whilst in altered states of consciousness, in many cases the result of intense meditative training.

What was the content of this view? In standard analytic philosophy of mind, we distinguish between the subject of a given experience and the phenomenal qualities which characterise what it’s like to have that experience. In an experience of pain, for example, there is the thing which feels the pain (e.g. me) and there is the qualitative character of how the pain feels; the former is the subject of the experience, the latter is its phenomenal quality. In the altered states of consciousness discussed by Huxley, however, this division apparently collapses resulting in a state of pure or ›universal‹ consciousness: consciousness unencumbered by phenomenal qualities. More dramatically, people who achieve these states of consciousness claim that it becomes apparent to them, from the perspective of the altered state of consciousness, that universal consciousness is the backdrop to all individual conscious experiences, and hence that in a significant sense universal consciousness is the ultimate nature of each and every conscious mind. This realization allegedly undermines ordinary understanding of the distinctions between different people and leads to a conviction that in some deep sense »we are all one«.

This is not a view that has been explored a great deal in the context of analytic philosophy, which tends to proceed by building coldblooded rational arguments for a given position, rather than by intuiting its truth via altered states of consciousness. However, Miri Albahari has recently presented just such a coldblooded defence of the perennial philosophy, arguing that it offers a better solution to the problem of consciousness than rival theories.2 I am fascinated, but ultimately unconvinced, by her argument. I would like here to consider another coldblooded argument for the perennial philosophy, or something like it, rooted in its potential to account in a satisfying way for the metaphysics and epistemology of logical truth.

Beyond Physicalism, released by Esalen, has a variety of Idealist possibilities that seek to reconcile parapsychogical data with the rest of the sciences. [NDEs, mediumship, reincarnation, etc.]

Interactive Dualism would leave open the question of how the two substances interact. It would also leave open the question of how we got everything in consciousness and everything we perceive as the physical world.

So even [if] we had the souls of the dead just hanging out with the living, people would still wonder how the entirety of Reality fits together. This is why people like the Neo-Platonists and Vedic sages who at the least claimed to have experienced all sorts of parapsychological phenomenon continued to ponder how to reconcile the realm of souls and the realm of the body.

This isn't to say Perennial Idealism is correct. Like most metaphysics it is better than the Something from Nothing nonsense of the Physicalist Faith, but then it runs into problems of its own. Here, namely, how does Pure Awareness, a consciousness without perspective, create all the subjects who have their own private experiences? The idea is that this Awareness is actually a Void of Infinite Potential that gets actualized, but while this works for nonconscious stuff this seems less explanatory for the emergence of experiencing subjects.

One possibility is that all Subjects have no need to arise because they were always Here, that each perspective existing now has always existed. This would suggest souls are not just immortal but arguably Eternal.

I never really followed up on your allusion to the book Beyond Physicalism. I have not yet read it. The actual topic and question we were discussing and debating was Idealism vs. Dualism and how the paranormal evidence figures in this. I pointed out that the paranormal evidence in these areas at least seems to be somewhat more in accordance with some form of Dualism. 

Could you illuminate me with at least an outline of how (if they do so in the book) they reconcile the paranormal NDE and reincarnation evidence with Idealism in philosophy of mind? Specifically for instance, the veridical OBE feature of some NDEs. 

Even if not from the book, is there some specific way in which Idealism would handle the clear experience of separation from the body, moving to another spatial location, observing the emergency room (for example) and then returning to the body?

I never really followed up on your allusion to the book Beyond Physicalism. I have not yet read it. The actual topic and question we were discussing and debating was Idealism vs. Dualism and how the paranormal evidence figures in this. I pointed out that the paranormal evidence in these areas at least seems to be somewhat more in accordance with some form of Dualism. 

Could you illuminate me with at least an outline of how (if they do so in the book) they reconcile the paranormal NDE and reincarnation evidence with Idealism in philosophy of mind? Specifically for instance, the veridical OBE feature of some NDEs. 

Even if not from the book, is there some specific way in which Idealism would handle the clear experience of separation from the body, moving to another spatial location, observing the emergency room (for example) and then returning to the body?

For the most part the book suggests there is a singular substance that constitutes the Ground of Being, the "stuff" that underlies and is the source for all that makes up Reality including bodies and souls.

One Idealist idea, put forth by Paul Marshall, is that we are in a greater Panentheistic Consciousness as multiple PoVs. Our bodies are merely avatars for different PoVs (think of how your body is within your consciousness, even as it seems like the center of your experience.) We transition from body to body as we move through lives.
He wrote a book on this, Shape of the Soul.

Another idea that I personally favor greatly, more Dual-Aspect Monist than Idealist but in the same vein, is a marriage between the ideas of Whitehead and Sri-Aurbindo. The One, the Unity of Thought & Force (thus the source of all freedom), "descends" into diverse gradations of experience from atomic particles all the way to gods (who are not the Godhead). There are three types of layers, though really there is a continuity stretching across them:

The Physical World: Gradations that are "drowsy", exercising limited freedom to act in predictable manner for the most. The level of conscious atoms.

The Vital World: Gradations that more awakened than the Physical, exercising more freedom. The place of animal souls, including cells.

The Mental World: That which is closest to the Source, the minds that utilize Reason and have greater self-reflection.

These layers actually come together in a sandwich in the physical incarnation - atoms are shepherded by cells, cells are shepherded by our subtle bodies.

An admittedly very rough sketch, made a more in-depth thread here.

For the most part the book suggests there is a singular substance that constitutes the Ground of Being, the "stuff" that underlies and is the source for all that makes up Reality including bodies and souls.

One Idealist idea, put forth by Paul Marshall, is that we are in a greater Panentheistic Consciousness as multiple PoVs. Our bodies are merely avatars for different PoVs (think of how your body is within your consciousness, even as it seems like the center of your experience.) We transition from body to body as we move through lives.
He wrote a book on this, Shape of the Soul.

Another idea that I personally favor greatly, more Dual-Aspect Monist than Idealist but in the same vein, is a marriage between the ideas of Whitehead and Sri-Aurbindo. The One, the Unity of Thought & Force (thus the source of all freedom), "descends" into diverse gradations of experience from atomic particles all the way to gods (who are not the Godhead). There are three types of layers, though really there is a continuity stretching across them:

The Physical World: Gradations that are "drowsy", exercising limited freedom to act in predictable manner for the most. The level of conscious atoms.

The Vital World: Gradations that more awakened than the Physical, exercising more freedom. The place of animal souls, including cells.

The Mental World: That which is closest to the Source, the minds that utilize Reason and have greater self-reflection.

These layers actually come together in a sandwich in the physical incarnation - atoms are shepherded by cells, cells are shepherded by our subtle bodies.

An admittedly very rough sketch, made a more in-depth thread here.

How can I interpret the description you have given here, which contains a lot of abstract generalizations, so as to yield the following actual experiential features?

To the NDEer experiencing an OBE while his brain is dysfunctional, the experience can sometimes be of literally leaving his body like shucking off a heavy old coat, floating up to the corner of the ceiling, and observing from there the doctors working on his body. Then, moving back into his body. Sometimes the NDEer remembers at what place on his body he left it, and where he reentered it. In all this he clearly sensed himself as a mobile center of consciousness moving in space and interpenetrating matter.

How can I interpret the description you have given here, which contains a lot of generalizations, so as to yield the following actual experiential features?

To the NDEer experiencing an OBE while his brain is dysfunctional, the experience can sometimes be of literally leaving his body like shucking off a heavy old coat, floating up to the corner of the ceiling, and observing from there the doctors working on his body. Then, moving back into his body. Sometimes the NDEer remembers at what place on his body he left it, and where he reentered it. In all this he clearly sensed himself as a mobile center of consciousness moving in space and interpenetrating matter.

The experiencer shifts out of their association with their physical body and shifts back into their body. They may be a free point of view or they could be a subtle body.

The fact he interpenetrates matter - as in the physical world - while in an OBE, as a localized consciousness, suggests there is a [substance] continuity of some sort between the OBE state and the state of the Physical body. How else could the OBE/NDE experiencer see (among other senses) what is happening in a localized space?

I'd think the OBE is actually more suggestive of a singular substance, but it could be there is some common edge between two usually distinct types of stuff.

The experiencer shifts out of their association with their physical body and shifts back into their body. They may be a free point of view or they could be a subtle body.

The fact he interpenetrates matter - as in the physical world - while in an OBE, as a localized consciousness, suggests there is a [substance] continuity of some sort between the OBE state and the state of the Physical body. How else could the OBE/NDE experiencer see (among other senses) what is happening in a localized space?

I'd think the OBE is actually more suggestive of a singular substance, but it could be there is some common edge between two usually distinct types of stuff.

If both Idealism and Dualism lead to the same sorts of predictions relative to paranormal experiences such as NDEs and their features like veridical OBEs, transportation through a "tunnel", communication with deceased loved ones and friends, return to the physical body, etc., then what tips the balance in favor of Idealism? Especially considering that the commonsense layperson simplest interpretation of these experiences is that they are of an immaterial spirit or spirit body acting as a mobile center of consciousness able to interpenetrate matter and leave or reenter the body at will or automatically in certain circumstances. This sort of interpretation seems to imply some sort of Dualism. 

And what sort of predictions could there be made that would adequately distinguish the two theories of mind based on observations or veridical reported experiences? Such hopefully radically different predictions would make which of the theories of mind is accepted of some practical interest to parapsychology. If there are no radical differences then it doesn't seem an important issue except to academic philosophers of mind.