Mod+ 248. BERNARDO KASTRUP SAYS MATERIALISM IS BALONEY

Guys, I will come back another day to continue. Many other things going on! (which is a good thing, I guess) I hope I managed to compensate a bit for my silence in the first days of this thread. I was in no way snubbing what was going on here; life was just too crazy. I shall be back! :)
 
I agree with this, I just don't know to what degree, lol. What I mean is that, although I don't think consciousness is limited to the brain and that we are capable of having non-brain-based experiences right now while in the body, I suspect that while we are incarnated in our bodies, every experience is probably a mixture of brain-based and non-brain-based, to greater or lesser degrees, depending on the experience in question.
It's complicated. I think it works like this. Think of your cells as Russian dolls. The outer layer is the physical layer, than the astral layer, other layers of spirit. But you brain is made of neurons which are all cells that are tied together.
 
Guys, I will come back another day to continue. Many other things going on! (which is a good thing, I guess) I hope I managed to compensate a bit for my silence in the first days of this thread. I was in no way snubbing what was going on here; life was just too crazy. I shall be back! :)
Thank you for visiting us. :)
 
Yes, but that should be something for philosophers, not scientists, IMO.

I definitely agree when it comes to the science of today. But, I'm not so sure about the science of tomorrow. For example, we always used the word empirical to mean "via experiment". But, the word actually means to verify/derive via (1) experiment OR (2) experience. In this way I see modern physics solely focusing on, (1) experiment, so perhaps it shouldn't have anything to do with it. But, I could potentially see something like Yoga as a "science" (as many Yogi's claim), in that it is claimed to be composed of consistent, repeatable, verifiable (mental) phenomenon, which makes it almost solely wrapped up in, (2) experience. This was ultimately also the idea behind Steiner's "Science of the Spirit" - that there are spiritual experiences that are actual experiences of reality that can be discovered/verified via a scientific-like process by anybody willing to put in the effort.

So, I see the science of the future potentially (or, more like, hopefully!) containing bits of (1) experiment AND (2) experience. I think it will have to trend in this direction if it ever wants to gain a greater understanding of parapsychology and the subjective, in general.

Also, one could view those UFO guys from your video, traveling via the medium of mind to our story-line, or our Universe, as "scientists", in that if they can directly experience our reality enough times in a consistent, repeatable, verifiable manner over many "journeys of the mind", they can start drawing some definite "objective" conclusions about us ... we're a bunch of spiritually-impaired morons destroying our planet, as reported by the abductees under John Mack, lol.

If everything is IN mind, even the multiverse (if it even exists) should ultimately be "explorable" (I love making up words) in a scientific-like manner via empirical observation, but using the "experience" sense of that word.

EDIT: Thnking about this again reminded me of the scene in "The Right Stuff" when Gordo was in the Australian Outback (IIRC) and mentions to a local aboriginee something about his his friend (Glenn?) in outer space, maybe he mentions the moon too. The aboriginee says , "oh yeah, cool, the old man over there ... he's been there too" ;-)


Here I disagree. Panpsychism inverts the line of thinking: it makes all matter the ground of consciousness, instead of consciousness the ground of all matter. It grants validity to the delusion of realism. I rather see dualism as a valid, metaphorical step towards idealism.

You're probably right in some cases here. I guess with things like this it's never black and white. I can definitely see this leading to greater delusion in some, even though for somebody like me it would personally make me more receptive to something like Idealism.

Also, I kind of view Dualism as a limiting case of Idealism, similar to how Newtonian physics is a limiting case of Relativity. But, panpsychism really kind of contradicts Idealism.
 
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Glad you're seriously considering what Ethan said, Bernardo; I have a lot of time and respect for him. He can probably meet you on equal footing in his comprehension of hard science (both well beyond my own) and has a fine mind, IMO. I'm not saying anything about the rights and wrongs of arguments, only that I tend to play close attention when he says something.

Yes, I've noticed that too, a long time ago... ;)

Stop it ... you guys are making me blush, hehe
 
Guys, I will come back another day to continue. Many other things going on! (which is a good thing, I guess) I hope I managed to compensate a bit for my silence in the first days of this thread. I was in no way snubbing what was going on here; life was just too crazy. I shall be back! :)

Thanks for participating Bernardo, we always appeciate/enjoy when you do! I just noticed I'm at work right now ... maybe I should actually go do some, hehe.
 
But, I could potentially see something like Yoga as a "science" (as many Yogi's claim), in that it is claimed to be composed of consistent, repeatable, verifiable (mental) phenomenon, which makes it almost solely wrapped up in, (2) experience. This was ultimately also the idea behind Steiner's "Science of the Spirit" - that there are spiritual experiences that are actual experiences of reality that can be discovered/verified via a scientific-like process by anybody willing to put in the effort.

So, I see the science of the future potentially (or, more like, hopefully!) containing bits of (1) experiment AND (2) experience. I think it will have to trend in this direction if it ever wants to gain a greater understanding of parapsychology and the subjective, in general.

Yup. It's not only Yogis, either, but people from other spiritual traditions:

It is interesting to note the difference between science as we know it today, and as it was seen by one of its pioneers. Roger Bacon, considered to be the wonder of the middle ages and one of humanity's greatest thinkers, was the pioneer of the method of knowledge gained through experience. This Franciscan monk learned from the Sufis of the illuminist school that there is a difference between the collection of information and the knowing of things through actual experiment. In his Opus Maius, in which he quotes Sufi authority, he says:

There are two modes of knowledge, through argument and experience. Argument brings conclusions and compels us to concede them, but it does not cause certainty nor remove doubts in order that the mind may remain at rest in truth, unless this is provided by experience.

This Sufi doctrine is known in the West as the scientific method of inductive proceeding, and subsequent Western science is largely based upon it. Modern science, however, instead of accepting the idea that experience was necessary in all branches of human thought, took the word in its sense of "experiment," in which the experimenter remained as far as possible outside the experience.

From the Sufi point of view, therefore, Bacon, when he wrote these words in 1268, both launched modern science and also transmitted only a portion of the wisdom upon which it could have been based.

"Scientific" thinking has worked continuously and heroically with this partial tradition ever since. In spite of its roots in the work of the Sufis, the impairment of the tradition has prevented the scientific researcher from approaching knowledge by means of itself - by "experience," not merely "experiment."

(from Idries Shah's The Sufis)
 
Interesting stuff Michael, I wasn't aware of Roger Bacon. Definitely does seem to be another consistent/universal theme and yet another piece of wisdom we once had, but seem to have lost in more modern times

I especially liked this part.

There are two modes of knowledge, through argument and experience. Argument brings conclusions and compels us to concede them, but it does not cause certainty nor remove doubts in order that the mind may remain at rest in truth, unless this is provided by experience.
 
I don't disagree with it. I even acknowledge it in the book.



Here I disagree. I think dualism is a useful metaphor for the majority of the people, especially those with valid religious inclinations (they do intuit more of the truth than fundamentalist materialists). But I absolutely do not think that dualism will ever make more sense than idealism for extremely rational, truly skeptic, scientifically-inclined people. Parsimony and rigor plays too great a role in their (our) way of thinking.

Well, I think such people are not thinking clearly (hey - they are skeptics :) )! Such people would not go up to someone working on a QM calculation and say, "You do realise that is nonsense because QM isn't consistent with GR?"

Science contains loads of approximate/provisional theories - it wouldn't work otherwise. For example, some calculations only explicitly consider the outer electrons in an atom - the inner ones are approximated as a charged cloud! Nobody is fooled into thinking that is the real situation, but it seems to deliver meaningful results. Likewise, chemists still use the concept of the inter-atomic bond. I think the prejudice against dualism is really just prejudice against non-materialism, and it simply uses the fact that dualism can't be the ultimate theory as an excuse.

Let me put this in a more positive way - shouldn't you work on some of the rungs of the ladder that ends in Idealism?

David
 
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No. Under idealism one acknowledges that other people have streams of subjective experience analogous to our own. The moment you grant that -- which I do, for reasons described in the book -- you take upon yourself the enormous burden of explaining a ton of things WITHOUT the luxury of using the materialist postulate of a world outside mind:

-- Why am I not aware of YOUR thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, if we are both parts of the same mind?
-- Why am I not aware of the part of mind that is generating the images of a world outside my sense of identity?
-- Why does the brain activity I can measure in OTHER people correlate with their reports of subjective experience?
-- Why do I share the same reality with you, which we are BOTH experiencing together?
-- etc etc etc.

The argument against idealism is not that it is not falsifiable (a la Popper), but that it supposedly doesn't have enough explanatory power to answer questions like the ones above. That is precisely what my book is about.

It is fine to argue against idealism, but the discussion would be more interesting if the argument went along the right lines.

Except I wasn't arguing against Idealism, as noted in that same post:

However the same extends to physicalism, which is something you see skeptics arguing for when they are against the ropes - that there must be mathematically encased variations of energy/matter/space-time we just haven't found yet

The key is what data - from either QM or parapsychology - suggests Idealism as tenable over Materialism, since most people reject Dualism out of hand.

Heh, I know you're feeling feisty but watch it with the friendly fire! ;-P
 
Yes. It can't even be said to 'exist' in an ordinary sense, since existence is itself a behavior of the absolute.

Right. The absolute can't be said to exist. Existing is a concept. No concepts can exist within the absolute. I'm guessing when you say "existence is itself a behavior of the absolute" it must be a typo or just some unclarity. Existence becomes apparent in the relative.

Language forces these kinds of apparent contradictions. Language forces duality: subject/object, past/future/ verb/noun, etc. But as far as I can stretch language, I think it is fair to say that the absolute has intentionality, in the sense that intentionality, as a manifestation of the absolute, reveals something about the intrinsic nature of the absolute.

You can stretch language to a point, but you are breaking it. It is not fair to say that the absolute has intentionality. Then you can say it is fair to say the absolute has good and evil and birthday parties. You are referring to the relative, to the manifest. The absolute has no thing. Absolutely no thing.

You have already agreed that the absolute is undifferentiated. I know we are only using language, but you are having it both ways with your language. We already understand that a paradox is introduced because the absolute is manifest in the relative. But that doesn't mean we can attribute something like intentionality to the absolute and just say, "Well that is the limitation of language."

Here I disagree, and my argument is what is in the video.
I have watched the video again. I am not denying that meaning happens in the relative. Of course it does. But everything appears in the relative! Truth occurs. Ignorance occurs. Divinity occurs. Evil occurs.

Your view steps back toward anthropomorphizing the absolute. Your absolute somehow prefers meaning over ignorance, even though both are manifest in the relative.

The absolute cannot have a preference. It cannot have an intention. It is undifferentiated. We have already agreed on that.

Of course. So are you. Anyone who talks about it is coloring it with his or her ideas. We cannot abstract ourselves from ourselves.

Right. I say that all the time. But you present as a philosopher. You say that this area is going to be a major thrust of your new work and I think that is good. I wish you well. You will need to come up with an argument that is better than meaning are truth are manifest in the relative to support your assertion that meaning and truth exist as some kind of absolute. I'm no logician, but that whole argument seems circular.
 
Glad you're seriously considering what Ethan said, Bernardo; I have a lot of time and respect for him. He can probably meet you on equal footing in his comprehension of hard science (both well beyond my own) and has a fine mind, IMO. I'm not saying anything about the rights and wrongs of arguments, only that I tend to play close attention when he says something.

Yes, I've noticed that too, a long time ago... ;)

Add me to the Ethan fan-club! (It's good to find someone else interested in Steiner's works...)

On the subject of what Idealism buys people, I'm not sure it's supposed to do more than give us the basic foundations in which meaning & spirituality are possible?
 
Also, I kind of view Dualism as a limiting case of Idealism, similar to how Newtonian physics is a limiting case of Relativity.
Agreed!
But, panpsychism really kind of contradicts Idealism.

I wonder if it really does? You start with panpsychism where every bit of matter is attached to a bit of mind, and you just let the matter get subsumed by the mind! One problem I have though is that if one electron (say) has a different thought from another, they would not be identical - which would screw up QM! I wonder if the mind would have to reside in the matter field, that according to QFT creates the particles!

If we are only thinking of dualism and panpsychism as stepping stones to Idealism, perhaps they might both have a place?

David
 
Yup. It's not only Yogis, either, but people from other spiritual traditions:

...

"Scientific" thinking has worked continuously and heroically with this partial tradition ever since. In spite of its roots in the work of the Sufis, the impairment of the tradition has prevented the scientific researcher from approaching knowledge by means of itself - by "experience," not merely "experiment."

(from Idries Shah's The Sufis)

According to Morhroff, even the West once had this understanding of knowledge coming from both mysticism and reason.

It's interesting that there are so many flash points in history that show materialism is less an end point following from increasing knowledge as it is a product of certain junctures in history where one track is taken over another, one personality pushes a paradigm, or when certain restrictions are made regarding the arenas in which scientific inquiry shall proceed..
 
Hi Kai,

I include panexperientialism in my use of the word 'panpsychism,' to keep it simple. Even if the quality, intensity, or degree of subjective experience attributed to matter is extremely limited, I still think it is a gratuitous projection or abstraction. It is only necessary if one needs to make materialism work at any cost, for it provides an arbitrary solution to the hard problem. I will discuss this more extensively in a future video. But the point I make in the book is this: we have much stronger reasons to believe that matter exists in consciousness, than that consciousness exists in matter. After all, we start from consciousness; we are consciousness; consciousness the only carrier of reality we can ever know.

Cheers, Bernardo.

Hello Bernardo. Neutral monism really doesn't have anything to do with materialism. They are two different philosophical standpoints and posit different essential "substances" (in the philosophical sense). Matter as such doesn't feature in neutral monism at all. The physical world does, as in what we experience as "corporeality" but that's a critical distinction. There is no genuinely satisfactory evidence, to my researches anyway, of "extracorporeal mind." So when you say "we start from consciousness" the only consciousness we can really be talking about is this corporeally expressed consciousness that is our constant experience. Thus, while I certainly agree that consciousness is not in matter, neither do I think it makes much sense to say that "matter is in consciousness" because there is no free floating consciousness in that sense. Rather, both terms taken as having *independent* existence are unwarranted assumption and "world-stuff" is really something else that is not accurately described in either Materialism or Idealism. Imo, of course.
 
Alex's questions at the end of the interview:

1. What lies beyond materialism?

2. Do we need a new philosophical paradigm to move us forward?

3. While the idea that everything is consciousness is parsimonious, could it in its own way be as incomplete and unsatisfying as the materialistic paradigm that says we are biological robots?

It seems to me that Bernado's ideas essentially follow the philosophical thinking of Emmanuel Kant from the 18th century but are probably (I haven't read the book so if I am wrong I apologise to Bernado in advance) not as complete as Kant's voluminous and hard to comprehend work. Kant postulated two realities, a posteriori perceived reality in which the conscious mind contributed the structure of our perceived reality (the space and time of our perception of the universe). This perceived reality them complies with cause and effect and encompasses the materialistic world view. In addition he postulated an a priori reality containing the 'actual' reality anchoring the common basis between the perceived realities of different individuals.
For me this provides a more solid basis than Bernado's 'shared dream'.
In addition the a priori reality provided Kant with the opportunity to accept the possibility of unprovable postulates such as the existence of God, an everlasting soul and free will. These are things that are impossible to rationally fit into the deterministic materialistic perceived reality.
Personally I subscribe to the more recent idea put forward by some nuclear physicists that the universe is really composed not of matter but of information. This gets around the difficulties of the quantum misbehavior of atomic particles and, in my view, opens the door to the a priori world view.
Think about it. The most sophisticated machines that we humans have produced are computers and in computer software lots of weird things are possible. For example, the 'perceived reality' of a Windows or Apple PC is that the data in the computer, the materialistic world view, is a hierarchical file system. Of course this is simply an illusion. data is not actually stored in a hierarchical file system at all. It is stored on the physical cylinders of rotating disk drives in 'blocks' of data. The 'perceived reality' is an illusion dreamed up by the torturous minds of Microsoft and Apple software engineers. However the data itself is real, it is the structure that is an illusion and this is the shared reality of computer users.
I think this is an example of what Kant and Edwardo are getting at. If, as quantum physicists seem to claim, the universe is really data, then the analogy may hold. The a priori reality may be a celestial realm (God's mind) populated by angels and demons (instead of Microsoft and Apple software engineers) while we struggle along trying to find the data we have lost in our respective perceived reality file systems..
Great show Alex, thanks,
Robin
 
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I wanted to talk a bit about a topic that Bernardo keeps having to return to time and again: which is the fact that materialists keep saying that with idealism “everything is inside your head” and with materialism the physical world is a separate thing... Whereas Bernardo keeps explaining that the “truth” is actually the opposite.

I think the problem here is partially language but I think it goes a bit deeper than that.

Forget for a minute about ontologies and theories of reality... Let's just look for example at the surface experience of watching Obama give a speech.(no politics here I promise)

We have the actual speech, which is taking place in the Rose Garden, which, if I was there in the Rose Garden, I would be able to experience “directly”/first hand. Then we have a TV representation of the speech which if I were not in the Rose Garden, I could experience indirectly/remotely. The experiences are roughly equivalent.

Clearly when watching the speech on the TV we are not imagining that the speech is taking place within the TV itself. We understand that we are experiencing the speech remotely, and we can trust that our experience is on the whole, a true representation. Of course all of the information that we would have had access to from the Rose Garden location isn't available to us (such as smells and temperature), but lets not concern ourselves with that for now. We understand that the experience is “real”(perhaps I should say “true”?) BUT is not direct.

When Bernardo talks of the materialist view, he talks about the fact that the actual scene is re-constructed in one's brain (in their “head”), and that the actual scene that is played out in the supposed "physical dimension" is not able to be experienced. And therefore the reality that materialists are really experiencing must entirely reside “inside their head”. Because of this fact, Bernardo explains: materialism depends on “inventing” a whole physical reality universe that is different from the one that they believe actually exists (one of equations and fields but lacking colors and shapes).

So to clarify- I think materialists really simultaneously have concepts of 3 versions of reality:

1- The actual “physical” one which is indecipherable to human senses due to the raw nature of its expression.

2- The model in one's mind which is the one we would all recognize as the “real world” we experience every day and which is the one Bernardo claims is “in your head” (brain).

3- A conceptual one which is separate from us and looks and feels like the brain-model, but which exists outside of ourselves. They would admit that this one is fictional, but it is the model that they use to live and work and play every day....

So when Bernardo talks about the materialist's world-view, he is referring to the brain/mind-constructed world of shapes and colors listed as #2 above. I think a materialist would certainly agree that THIS version of the world, takes place in the brain (in one's head).

However, when materialists hear Bernardo's description of what they believe, they push back because they describe the world existing outside of and independent of themselves. When the say this, they are referring to world #1 listed above, which they would describe as clearly existing outside of their head and which they admit would be indecipherable without an information transport/interface such as brain..

Further- they would say, the fact that their experience of the world is via a transmission of reality which is provided by their brain is not important. They say they are experiencing an external reality through a window which is managed/hosted by the brain which is equivalent to when we watched Obama's speech on TV. We weren't there in the Rose Garden, but rather relied on a window, a view to the “real” experience provided by TV. Do we believe that the speech took place in the TV? Of course not. It is an experience that really took place outside of the TV, and the things that were said and done in the Rose Garden were conveyed via the TV. The TV's contribution to the experience is simply as an information transport, not as a medium for the experience. This is what the materialist holds true, and they reject Bernardo's false construction of the premise that materialist think the actual experience took place in their brain or that the speech took place in the TV.

Bottom line is- Bernardo is providing a reasonable interpretation of materialism through the lens of his world view, but I think it incorrectly represents the materialist belief in regard to brain-as-information-decoder rather than brain-as-host-of-the-experience.
 
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I wonder if it really does? You start with panpsychism where every bit of matter is attached to a bit of mind, and you just let the matter get subsumed by the mind! One problem I have though is that if one electron (say) has a different thought from another, they would not be identical - which would screw up QM! I wonder if the mind would have to reside in the matter field, that according to QFT creates the particles!

That's part of the problem I have with panpsychism. To me, it really doesn't make sense to say each electron has an individual mind. Electrons are just manifestations of a field, with the field now generally being regarded as the fundamental entity in today's theories. So it's tempting to say mind rests in the field (perhaps electrons are analogous to neurons in the brain!?), but fields are also generally viewed as ultimately non-fundamental, even if we don't know what will eventually replace them. So does mind get pushed back another level when we do find out what's more fundamental than fields? Kind of a double edge sword here. If it keeps getting pushed back it might be easy to eventually argue, maybe mind doesn't actually exist in all matter after all. If it did, we should be able to point and say there's a mind here, and there's a mind there, etc, but it keeps hiding on us instead. So, maybe we go back to thinking it's just an emergent epiphenomenon of only biological brains. Or, since conscious experience is the only thing we can truly be sure does exist, maybe that's where you finally realize the shortcomings of panpsychism and go with Idealism and the acceptance that consciousness is fundamental to matter, rather than matter fundamental to consciousness.

I guess you could also argue under panpsychism that the electrons are a smaller mind within the larger mind of the field, similar to how our conscious mind is often said to be contained within our larger unconscious mind. But where does that end? Seems like another infinite regress as we discover more and more fundamental aspects of physical reality, which also has to hit a brick wall at some point and perhaps that brick wall is the fact that consciousness is really what's fundamental and irreducible. So, maybe it could eventually seem easier to conclude that mind is what's fundamental and matter manifests out of mind giving the appearance of things like panpsychism in the meantime.

Either way, it's starting to seem more and more like dead ends in the purely materialistic approach to understanding consciousness thus far is resulting in a greater acceptance of panpsychism (or perhaps folks are being forced to resort to panpsychism due to what they perceive as a lack of other options), so maybe panpsychism will be an obligatory step on the way to Idealsim (the option being mostly ignored for now).

I'm not even sure I am making sense at this point, lol.

If we are only thinking of dualism and panpsychism as stepping stones to Idealism, perhaps they might both have a place?
David

I think so, like I said above, I think panpsychism would be an easier jumping off point for me into Idealism than Dualism would be, so definitely might have had a place for me. But, hard to say in retrospect.

If we ultimately discover Idealism is correct, but panpsychism really takes hold in the meantime, it might be pretty obvious the natural progression was dualism -> panpsychism -> Idealism, as I kind of mentioned above. We'll see ....
 
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Bottom line is- Bernardo is providing a reasonable interpretation of materialism through the lens of his world view, but I think it incorrectly represents the materialist belief in regard to brain-as-information-decoder rather than brain-as-host-of-the-experience.

You might be right here, but I don't think the majority of people who hold a materialistic worldview are even aware of the fact they have a materialistic worldview, let alone spend the amount of time thinking about it required to realize the distinction between (1) and (2) you mention. It's usually just the default view inculcated by our culture in various ways since birth.
 
default view inculcated by our culture in various ways since birth.

The cultural view of this has some merit, but after some thought I really think the more influential thing is the fact that our biology forces us to confront the world primarily through our senses,, especially our sense of sight.

I don't know if any studies have confirmed this but I would guess that even if totally unacculturated, a person would spontaneously develop a materialistic model of the world. Every time you stubbed your toe, got attacked by a lion, or ate a berry, or cracked open a coconut, you would be solidifying the view that there is an outside world with objects with which you interact.

Given this, how could you NOT settle on a materialism centric world model if left on your own to form a view of existence? It's the first thing that makes apparent sense. It seems almost self-evident at first blush.
 
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