Bernardo Kastrup Analytic Idealism

I think most of what you say is begging the question, this being an example. Kastrup does not deny that there's something real "out there" with which our perceptions and measurements correlate. But he maintains that our perceptions and models are like the dials on our dashboard and the nature of what's "out there" is not like the dials on our dashboard.

I challenge you to present an accurate summary of Kastrup's Analytical Idealism. If you are unable then you are arguing against it sight unseen. Simply dismissing it as "laughable" is not an argument.

PairTheBoard

If the concept in play is as simple as 'the real world differs from our sense data' then cool, this is obviously true to any 10 ear old seeing an optical illusion for the first time. The issue I have is when this strays into 'therefore reality is only a mental construct'.

I have neither the inclination nor patience to put any more time into this concept. Much like free will, or god, this is philosophical masturbation - fun, but with no useful end product. I'm a communist, which means I like to spend my time on material matters. I'm happy to chalk this up as a loss.

Sound is created by the brain, smell is created by the brain, sights are created by the brain, the feeling of being solid is created by the brain ... what am I forgetting ... taste is created by the brain. What we call reality is a mental construct. It's all a conversion factor of the brain that interprets and creates the experience out of the ether/quantum foam. Psychology 101 calls this brain function "transduction": converting incoming sensory data via electrical impulses into perceptions. All the phenomenon that compose our model of reality exist in the brain and in the brain only (at least in the form in which they interpret them). So goes the story, as Kastrup is fond of writing. Idealists are playing off this setup with their speculations.

Sulfur molecules don't have any smell until they get in the brain (where they still don't, actually), but where the smell is created/transduced/converted into a perception. If all of "reality" is like this, it does call it into question along the lines that early quantum mechanics physicists warned. Versions of idealism grow out of this and are not laughable.

Kastrup's model in "Nutshell" puts forward that ultimately one quantum field will be discovered, and that it is a consciousness/subjective experience field. All the things we call the physical world are just ideas and perceptions within that field, with each individual consciousness being a subset/"alter" of that grand field. Similar to dreams: all that is needed to create the whole seeming space-time experience is consciousness. That's proven ... right? And this model extrapolates it to the nature of reality in toto. (Side point: since we know consciousness can play this role in dreams, what right do we have to insist that is ridiculous as a metaphysics for the whole shebang?)

And so each point of consciousness is an excitation of that grand C-field, and all that is learned and experienced in those local points of C are contained within the larger (actually "One") field. The 1-Field (my term).

"Nature is a field of subjectivity, all mentation" ... goes the theory. This accounts for a lot and also sidesteps the (mainly bogus?) "hard problem of consciousness." The consciousness field is fundamental instead of consciousness being an emergent phenomenon of matter.

I'm on board with the main tenet -- that C-Field rules. Everything is a field of mentation, which jives nicely with our minds being fields of mentation. And the interaction there accounts for a whole lot of things ... including, for example, Mozart at his piano age 8. Time to write a symphony. Even Michael Jackson: "Well, I just hear it. It comes to me."

Everything is a field, we know, so this idea of grand consciousness field interacting with brain waves seems to not be a stretch or even a problem at all. Would be automatic, as the grand field flows through our mind/local field ... and all is a consciousness game. "One fundamental in my reduction base, " he says, "consciousness."

The sole given of our lives -- "I experience therefore I am" -- is his irreducible entity. A beautiful symmetry there, and exactly where the scientific method struggles.

Cool theory. Accounts for a lot. Is speculative. Has sound points. Who knows? I do like it.

The only way to understand Brahaman is to negate everything that is not Brahman. It's not this, not that. It's you ldo.

Half a few glasses of wine and talk to ChatGPT on advanced voice mode for an hour about it.

I just read Kastrup's autobiographical book, "The Daemon and the Soul of the West." It's good, has lots of food for thought. But unmistakable in it is a huge, unchecked drama streak in him. In the pages, one can sense him yelling "I'm like Jung, I'm like Nietzsche, I'm like Schopenhauer, I'm like Prometheus, I'm like Frankl, I'm like Christ." He continually uses the word "catastrophic" and even "beyond catastrophically tortuous" regarding his tinnitus, and one, with respect, thinks he might need to spend some time on a burn ward or a spinal pain clinic to get a more realistic perspective on this.

Likewise he has an internal extremely romanticized notion of the Daemon working in him. And one cannot avoid the idea of a monumental ego, covert style, driving his story.

'There is only one field of subjectivity, and it is functioning in everyone' ... is a keeper, and along the lines of my thoughts, that is, that consciousness (rudimentary forms) are as ubiquitous and fundamental as spin, charge, mass and everything else, even more so. "The meaning resides in self-discovery" is also a sage point. Many more.

He is acting like he has so many answers to everything, and so full of slickly prepared metaphors, slicker than a used car salesman, that it just reeks of bluff. Imagine a poker player while you are in the tank to call, jumping up and down yelling "I have the nuts! Isn't it obvious? Can't you read the board? I have the flush, the nut flush. There is no full house possible. What are you thinking? This is like Newton doing a simple calculus problem, with Leibniz checking it, and you thinking he doesn't have the right answer. I HAVE THE NUTS!"

LOL.

A conspiracy theorist is motivated by being "the one in the know" and "you all just don't get how it REALLY is" (thus the boost to ego, it's a form of grandiosity). Kastrup is not that full on, but he has some of that in him.

I read 'more than allegory' a while ago, similar idea about mind-at-large and an interesting fictional account where he, in some future society, is enabled to be trained and drugged into a state where he communicates directly with a representative of mind-at-large, but MAL is itself subjective, limited by the stage of let's say awakening of the subject. Dunno whether this is a metaphor for the universal logos.

Ofc he leans on quantum mechanics. Causation in QM is immaterial.

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1. There is only one fundamental consciousness (mind-at-large / universal consciousness).

2. Individual subjects are real (though derivative) centers of consciousness (“dissociated alters”) that instantiate experiences within universal consciousness.

3. In genuine idealist experience (paradigm shift), the individual subject dissolves, the sense of “I” is not ontologically fundamental, nor even derivative as a persisting node; it is a transient appearance within consciousness.

4. If derivative subjects persist as quasi-independent nodes, then the “I” must have some ontological stability.

5. Lived idealism denies any ontological persistence of the subject, directly contradicting P4.

6. Bradleyan* Absolute: Any metaphysics that preserves distinctions (including derivative subjects) while claiming ultimate reality is singular is internally contradictory.

7. Analytic idealism preserves derivative subjects.

Reductio: Therefore, analytic idealism is conceptually unusable as an account of ultimate reality.

*F.H. Bradley (1846–1924) was an eminent British idealist philosopher. Bertrand Russell famously said he had to “kill” Bradley’s ideas to give birth to atomic logic. Bradley’s absolute idealism dissolves individual subjects into a non-relational whole, making the notion of derivative centers unnecessary, while also avoiding the solipism.