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Bernardo Kastrup, this is for if (when) you check back into this thread. Big, big, big caveat: I have not read any of your books, nor looked into your ideas any more than (as a maximum) what has been linked to of them, including video presentations, in this thread, and I further note that in one of those video presentations, you say something to the effect of "You can poke a million holes in what I've just said right now, but if you read me carefully and closely, I will close those". It is
highly likely then that I am poking holes that you have closed elsewhere, so if this is a waste of your time, then please just say so and refer me to your book(s) where you address it all, I am simply a fairly lazy reader.
Caveats aside, here is my (as alluded to in my first post to this thread) critique of your idealism. I had been meditating on it for some time before something that @
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos wrote in another thread twigged with me: that idealism is
in essence simply a variation on physicalism. This is where I had been coming to on my own, and I'll explain why:
I had initially been thinking of your notion of how "whirlpools" in the stream of mind create individual, self-reflective consciousness, and this led me to think: but wait, if there is a whirlpool, then surely there is an environment in which that whirlpool occurs, i.e. a three-dimensional space, and thus, is not three-dimensional space as ontologically intrinsic a requirement for idealism as it is under physicalism? And what, after all, is the difference between the two? It seems to me that the only difference is that under the one, the monistic substance which leads to consciousness is "mind stuff" whereas under the other, it is "physical stuff".
Granted, "mind stuff" has a better chance of getting you to "consciousness" than does "physical stuff", but is there not a very real sense in which the same problems occur? For example,
what is it about the three-dimensional structure of a "mind stuff" brain that leads it to be conscious whereas the three-dimensional structure of a "mind stuff" brick does not? Could we not ask an essentially identical question under physicalism?
What is it about the three-dimensional structure of a "physical stuff" brain that leads it to be conscious whereas the three-dimensional structure of a "physical stuff" brick does not? And is not our only advantage that "It is occurring within a mind?" Granted, that it is occurring within a mind is helpful, but we nevertheless have to go from mere "mind stuff" to "individual, self-reflective consciousness", and it seems to me that the only way to go there is through
three-dimensional structure, which, for the same reasons I find it hard to realise in the case of physicalism, I find it hard to realise for idealism: we have "mind stuff"; we have "three-dimensional structure" - why does this combination lead to consciousness any more than it would if we replaced "mind stuff" with "physical stuff"?
Getting back, though, to my idea that, given that in your view it is required for individual, self-reflective consciousness, a three-dimensional reality is, under idealism, as ontologically "real" as under other paradigms, I was curious to see how idealism compared to my preferred paradigm, dualism. It seems to me that the only difference is this:
Whereas, under idealism, mind
encompasses three-dimensional reality, under (a more traditional) dualism, mind
projects three-dimensional reality. To be honest, I don't see any advantages of idealism in this respect, and I carefully went through all of the supposed advantages that you listed
here:
- In the same way that reality is "in" consciousness under idealism, reality is "projected by" consciousness under dualism, and thus we are as eternal under dualism as we are under idealism.
- In the same way that your physical body is "in" consciousness under idealism, your physical body is "inhabited by" (bi-directionally) consciousness under dualism, and thus one's psychic state is as intrinsically related to one's physical health under the one as under the other.
- If, under dualism, we are "projections" of consciousness, we are at root no less "one and the same" under dualism as under idealism.
- Likewise, if, under dualism, we are "projections" of (the one) consciousness, then our subjective experience is no less important than under idealism, and our feelings and emotions carry as much weight - it is simply that they occur in the context of a "physical" body with which consciousness (the soul) allies itself temporarily.
Furthermore, it appears to me that, as another poster (sorry, mate, I forget your name, if I remember right you're Italian though) indicated, dualism has explanatory advantages that idealism lacks: dualism explains reincarnation and out-of-body/near-death experiences far better than idealism, because it posits that "the soul" separates from "the physical" in such circumstances. What, on the other hand, can idealism say? There is no
strong sense under idealism in which mind is separate from matter. I came into this thread congenially, hoping to conciliate dualism with idealism, and perhaps that's still possible, but at this point I don't see an
easy way for e.g. reincarnation and NDEs/OBEs to function under idealism, and the evidence points to these things being a reality. And by "easy" I of course allude to Occam's razor: idealism seems to me, contrary to your assertions, to
fail parsimony.
OK, gosh, that's all very critical and negative, but I want to emphasise that it's strictly in the spirit of intellectual inquiry: this is simply the way that I currently see things given what I understand right now, and if you can convince me that I'm not seeing truly, then I'm all the more grateful.
[Note a couple of edits, especially in the bullet points, due to sloppiness]