The comments and discussion this video has generated has been truly surprising. Sorry not to be able to engage with more of them. But I have read them all and thank you for all the time and effort spent in working through the issues raised. Thanks all and let's keep talking.

@elliot7205

4 ай бұрын

Hi, what are your views of free will from the perspective of idealism? Is there room for it?

@AbsolutePhilosophy

4 ай бұрын

@@elliot7205 Yes, I think so. I'll actually be doing some videos on free will later this year.

@elliot7205

4 ай бұрын

@@AbsolutePhilosophy is it similar to Bernardo view about core subjectivities and what we identify ourselves with?

@Aaron-bd9sj

4 ай бұрын

This was an excellent video. Would love for you to flesh out more of your metaphysical idealist position. Including free will as you brought up. Are you familiar with Giovanni Gentile and his version of idealism called actualism?

15:51 -- Kastrup never adopts scientific realism. He talks about metaphysics, about the intrinsic being of nature. We can taboo these complicated words like “realism” or “antirealism” for simplicity, and just discuss what is being said. Kastrup merely claims that abstractions help us to describe the behavior of nature and to control the future, they are true and experimentally proven/reasonable. But science by itself is a tool which never assumes any ontology: not materialism, nor idealism, nor anything else. You seem to be confusing physics and metaphysics. Of course we can use science and talk about it without adopting a realist attitude, without going into metaphysics. In other words, Kastrup's position can be called “instrumentalism” -- that science and theoretical concepts have use in predicting observations, but we have no ontological commitments to them. Postulating a "literal physical being", which is unknowable even in principle, is a further, arguably unnecessary step. So Kastrup is an instrumentalist from the beginning to the end. The being of consiousness, on the other hand, is immediately known by the virtue of self-luminosity (svaprakasatva). 26:43 -- Consciousness and mind are different. The “empirical physical world” can be called Maya for simplicity, and it's an appearance which is not fundamentally real. Our bodies, our minds, any other object are a part of this appearance. But consciousness is not an object nor a process, so it can never be objectified and found *in* the empirical world (cf. Wittgenstein). Consciousness is just you, the "I", subjectivity or experiencing itself, the first-personal givenness of whatever is subjectively given, the empty principle of manifestation. It is maximally simple and has no characteristics or qualities, it never changes, it cannot be divided into parts and it is always the seer, never the seen. Naturally, it's the same in every human and every sentient being, because postulating different empty awarenesses solely by haecceity is incoherent (cf. Edralis: edralis.wordpress.com/2021/06/18/awareness-6-10/, cf. Daniel Kolak’s Open Individualism) There are even some reasons (that are too complicated for this youtube comment) to argue that consciousness is existence or actuality itself, so it can be identical to the Absolute. (And that's precisely what Kastrup does when he talks about consciousness being an ontological primitive in idealism; Atman = Brahman and so on.) Kastrup would probably say that evolution is literally what this continuous process of dissociation and complexification looks like from our point of view. But Kastrup uses terms that are not super precise for my taste, for example he calls the absolute "mind", instead of consciousness. (And well, given how much suffering we see in the world, this ontology is not much prettier than the default). I think it's obvious that an object cannot be an ontological primitive. Because any object needs space, time and causality to exist, while consciousness is a no-thing that doesn’t need these. So I think it’s not only that “we can’t ever get qualities out of quantities“ (as Kastrup often says) that is the argumentation for idealism, but, even more precisely, that consciousness is not an object among other physical objects! (cf. Sunyata in Buddhism). 29:54 -- I see no sense in saying that “meta-consciousness arises out of phenomenal consciousness”. Nothing arises out of phenomenal consciousness. Phenomenal consciousness simply illumines everything, it's the existence of any thought, emotion or object of awareness. “Meta-consciousness” is just a fancy term for the higher function of the mind, it’s self-reflection or the self-identification with certain configurations of what one experiences. I don’t like using “consciousness“ word here at all. It muddles the already complicated topic. Intellect, personality, beauty, self-reflection, emotions, perceptions - all of these develop in conscious organisms with time and effort, while consciousness just passively illumines everything. The play works itself out. ( cf. Fasching here: link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11097-008-9090-6 ) Here you are actually touching a deeper question of the mechanism of this play. For example, in Advaita Vedanta, there is vivartavāda, loosely speaking the "apparent transformation" of Brahman (consciousness / the absolute) into the world. It's enigmatic how and why it can be seemingly separated from itself in different finite objects (minds). And I’m no Vedanta scholar so I have no answer to this question, but maybe there is, so anyone can feel free to expand my description.

I think what Kastrup meant by saying we would turn into an entropic soup if we would perceive reality as it is... imagine if you would feel every molecule of air touching your skin all the time and you would see the entire magnetic spectrum. You would turn into an entropic soup.

@KevinsDisobedience

4 ай бұрын

Fair critique, but I think you slightly miss his point about internal perceptions matching our internal brain states. Simply put, without our useful evolutionary illusions and spacetime headset, we would BE nature and have no autonomy. My biggest issue with his view-with which I’m sympathetic-is that he devalues the physical world as less than the ground of being, ie, mind, but why place the value on the thing that gives rise to the the ten thousand things. Your dashboard argument is closer to the problem that he and Hoffman run into, which is an issue of epistemology. If the spacetime headset is an illusion (even useful), what faculty or epistemically method assures us that it is an illusion. We can call it reason or science, which is fine, and likely the right answer, but what was reason trained on in the first place that allowed us to see and seek the truth rather than survival merely. It’s a problem I’ve not heard him talk about. Isn’t it all Nature, everywhere interconnected and real? Local realism is false, right? That’s kinda my metaphysical hang up with Idealism, though I think Schopenhauer is basically correct.

@zachmorgan6982

4 ай бұрын

Yes.

@DouglasAbramskiOfficial

4 ай бұрын

​@@KevinsDisobedienceif the internal is the source of the external then, the external would be the "true mirror" in a manner of speaking. If our perception is sourced from the internal awareness of the mind projected outwards, while the external consciousness is projecting inwards, then, where the two minds meet could be the truth of the experience. It would still suggest that it's all mind.

@nicoladisvevia

3 ай бұрын

@@DouglasAbramskiOfficial A very Kantian answer!

@DouglasAbramskiOfficial

3 ай бұрын

@nicoladisvevia ah, thank you for the feedback. Now, I can familiarize myself with Kant.

I've listened to a lot of Kastrup and read many of his books and understand his "entropic soup" metaphor - imperfect as it is - alludes to the overwhelmingly large, possibly infinite, amount of information that our sensors would have to accurately receive, and our brains would have to coherently represent if perception was in fact a transparent window onto reality. He further argues, with evidence from evolutionary game theory that survival depends on selective attention to reality rather than comprehensive apprehension and veridical comprehension of reality. Kastrup is a very sincere and authentic philosopher who acknowledges that words are always imperfect and inaccurate descriptions of reality. From my direct experience, the best way to engage him in meaningful discussions is to invite him to a dialogue rather than a debate.

@Sam-hh3ry

16 күн бұрын

" and understand his "entropic soup" metaphor - imperfect as it is - " It's not really a metaphor and it's not his. He's talking about Karl Friston's free energy principle.

“Into the man’s head the whole world goes, including the head itself.” (James Ward, “Psychological Principles,” pg. 103)

@Dystisis

4 ай бұрын

"Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it." Wittgenstein, TLP

@FilipinaVegana

4 ай бұрын

That seems rather, um.... PESSIMISTIC.

@Corteum

4 ай бұрын

See "headless way" with douglas harding

@stevenyafet

2 ай бұрын

​@@Dystisisthanks for that. I was thinking, I know porn when I see it, but you corrected me. I know solipsism when I see it.

You've misrepresented the his argument about perception. Perception of a thing in itself does not require replication of the perceived object inside the mind of the perceiver, since he's taking about the map not the terrain. Our map does not match the terrain out there. Also the interface theory, doesn't just say we perceive limited information that is useful, but false information that is useful.

@user-ui2mk2no1f

15 күн бұрын

He constructed a strawman

Nice video and nice try, but I think you've missed what Kastrup was actually trying to do here. He is not using the entropy and evolutionary arguments to strawman or otherwise counter other philosophical positions per sé. Though I definitely think Kastrup would do well to tone down his antagonism at times (lest it makes him seem sloppy) here he is actually using these arguments to build up towards the point that we simply could not see the world as it is, even IF we were holding a physicalist or scientific materialist position, which he assumes (rightfully so) a lot of us sort of do, whether we know it or not. He then reasons a conscious ontology (the idealist position in which we ALSO do not see the world as it is) in which a Schopenhauerian dashboard "phenomenology" "represents" an underlying cosmic "will". I think it would be accurate to say that Kastrup simply chose to "start from somewhere" and that you overanalyzed this rather arbitrary decision.

@Sam-hh3ry

16 күн бұрын

You got it. The point is simply that we have strong reasons to think the world we perceive is unlike the world as it is in itself. This is a really obvious point that goes back at least to Kant. After this is established, he gives reasoning for why the world in itself is likely mental on the basis of parsimony, explanatory power, etc.

What a great channel! Thanks for all you're doing! I'm a fan of Bosanquet, Green, and Bradley; trying to study them with Sellars (and Brandom) in mind. I watched Kastrup's series a few weeks ago and am looking forward to your analysis.

@AbsolutePhilosophy

4 ай бұрын

You might like the membership programme then. I'm going through Bradley's A&R, reading it and commenting on it as I go. These videos are available to members, from the lowest tier. I'd appreciate your insights too.

Thank you for this thoughtful critique. I confess to being a devoted fan of Katstrup's philosophy. I can't say how many videos I've watched of debates between his point of view and others and I always end up in his camp. In large, I feel most of your criticisms might be misunderstandings. But, the one at the heart of your critique is compelling. Is universal consciousness phenomenal or meta? What if it's neither? I don't think Katstrup is so dumb as to not see the flaw/question you put forward, or at least your perception of it. I take his use of terms for varying "levels" of consciousness to be entirely about the difficulty of putting all of this into words from the perspective of the type of observers we are. These are concepts that are nearly impossible for us to grasp fully because we are embedded in, and part of, what is and cannot perceive it from the outside. What convinces me of Katstrup's philosophy is that it ties in nicely with Stephen Wolfram's concept of the Ruliad, Michael Levin's work in developmental biology, and eastern philosophical views of reality - particularly Vedanta. Each of those views entails translation from their discipline's unique vocabulary and focus, but it feels to me that they are all saying the same thing. I pay attention when physics, math, biology, and metaphysics are all describing virtually the same thing (and in a way that makes sense to me) and try not to let specific terms and language get in the way of understanding what is being conveyed. I'm sorry Bernardo turned down your invite to debate because I would like to hear his answer to your point. What is his reasoning for the apparent distinction or is this, at core, a distinction without a difference? "

Great. Was waiting for this since the announcement. Thank you.

@FilipinaVegana

4 ай бұрын

Great and lowly are RELATIVE. ;) Incidentally, are you VEGA?

Thanks for speaking up! Bernardo falls short in what I’d call big picture metaphysics. I find it cold comfort, as well as un-parsimonious and downright materialistic, to hope that our combined suffering will help a schizophrenic universe become saner. The favored big freeze scenario for our expanding universe would, if correct, finally render it unable to support life; hence the consensus that the universe is as mortal as you or I, and its existence, along with everything in it, is meaningless per se. Idealism, in order to be consistent, must envision Mind as ultimately beyond time, space and causation-which Bernardo has at times admitted, but usually sets aside.

I suggest he interview Donald Hoffman because Bernardo accurately reiterates Hoffamn's research and arguments from evolutionary perceptual psychology. There is no error in Bernardo's argument from this stand point.

Hello great video! I would like to ask a question, does the objection you made to the fact that if absolute consciousness is phenomenal consciousness and not metaconsciousness not also apply to F H Bradley's idealism? Since Bradley held that the Absolute is immediate experience, is this not the same as phenomenal consciousness? So doesn't Bradley have the same problem as Kastrup of not being able to explain the emergence of the individual subject's metaconsciousness? Thankyou very Much!

@AbsolutePhilosophy

4 ай бұрын

Great question. I do think immediate experience is basically phenomenal experience, but Bradley does not think immediate experience is Reality as it is finite and limited. He think Reality is Absolute experience which includes and integrates relational experience (metaconsciousness) too. So he doesn't have that problem.

@pedrosainhas997

4 ай бұрын

Thank you very much for the clarification!

Bernardo said that in 2024 he'll be doing much less public chats. That said, hope you can set something up. Maybe when he's getting ready to promote his book in the fall something can happen. It will be his most concise summary of his model, so would be fun to hear you two chat. I think he has addressed your first concerns. But god knows where. Donald Hoffman often faces that criticism. Have you heard his responses and do they hold water for you? For some reason, I don't find it hard to imagine how a process of consciousness could evolve in a way that causes it to suddently 'fold in' on itself and become meta within a narrow context.

You are absolutely spot on. That switch from SR to SA undermines his first argument; and then he goes on and undermines his evolutionary premise in his second argument by undermining the reality of the scientific paradigm.

26:58 He acknowledges that universal consciousness bears resemblance to the consciousness of earlier life forms, yet he does not claim that it is more akin to these early forms than to later ones. The absence of metacognition doesn't necessarily equate to greater similarity in every aspect. BK's argument is that universal consciousness constitutes a high-dimensional 'space' encompassing all conceivable experiences, inclusive of time. It is not constrained by space and time like our perception; its higher dimensionality allows it to encompass all characteristics of space and time, along with additional elements.

What is your views on Advaita Vedanta worldview (Non Duality) philosophy.

Great video! You mention at 26:55 that 'human minds are meant to be beyond the dashboard.' Could you elaborate on how that's the case? I'm not able to follow. Thanks!

@AbsolutePhilosophy

4 ай бұрын

I may be misinterpreting Kastrup now I think about it, but since he talks about us being within a dissociative boundary inside universal consciousness I assumed we were in the 'real world' rather than the dashboard. But it could be that he sees us on the 'immediate side' of the dashboard rather than the 'beyond side' of it, which may make a difference to him, idk. But still, he needs to explain how/whether time applies to human minds when it is a feature of the 'paradigm of the dashboard', which ever side of it we are meant to be on.

@ryanashfyre464

4 ай бұрын

@@AbsolutePhilosophy Bernardo just concluded an event w/ the Essentia Foundation discussing Mind & Time and just had a second lively discussion w/ Michael Levin (just uploaded the other day, iirc) in which the issue of time came up. Tbh, Bernardo hasn't settled on any definitive belief on Time. To the best of my understanding (so take it w/ a grain of salt) he leans towards what we regard as the "past" and "future" as ontologically absolute states that never vanish and never go anywhere. They only seem to exist separately and seem to disappear because that's how our own cognitive apparatus is structured to filter and interpret them. So, yes, it seems like Kastrup's present leanings would conclude that our "dashboard" is creating an entropic arrow of time and that whatever Time itself ultimately is at base-level Reality does indeed exist, albeit in a very different way that we're struggling to wrap our heads around. Here's the Kastrup/Levin discussion: (kzread.info/dash/bejne/hI56uNSogbLWccY.html&ab_channel=AdventuresinAwareness). The relevant section starts at about the 12:00 mark. On a separate but still relevant note, I would submit that the notion of the past, present and future existing, in some sense, all at once coincides w/ reported near-death experiencers who consistently report exactly that. They'll say they can't explain how they came to that knowledge but somehow they just know it.

@REDPUMPERNICKEL

4 ай бұрын

@@AbsolutePhilosophy Imagine each individual one of our selfs exists within a sphere and the spheres of all of us are floating in a soup of universal consciousness. The inner surface of each sphere is our personal dashboard, the totality of all that we have evolved to see and feel and touch etc. The outer surface of one's sphere both translates our dashboard manipulations into terms the universal consciousness understands and in the opposite direction, transfers thoughts from universal consciousness into dashboard terms that we have evolved to understand. Of course the spheres and dashboard and universal consciousness are all entirely metaphorical. This is not entirely unexpected in light of the fact that the majority of our important thoughts are couched in language. Right?

@AbsolutePhilosophy

4 ай бұрын

Yes I understand the metaphor. The question is that if time is just a feature of the dashboard whether our minds are in time, especially if Universal consciousness is not. And then you have to somehow fit evolution into the picture and apply it to minds that are not temporal.

@REDPUMPERNICKEL

4 ай бұрын

@@AbsolutePhilosophy I have come to understand that 'time' is a concept only (not an illusion, a concept), a kind of culturally evolved shorthand way to think about the movements of objects relative to each other, i.e. there is no such 'thing' as time. (Carlo Rovelli's videos are helpful to understanding this). Universal consciousness has no meaning for me. Being conscious is a process, not a 'something'. I am conscious of this and I am conscious of that in full realization that I am conscious only of my thoughts. But I have a clear understanding of what a thought is. It is what the discharge timing patterns of neurons represent. Patterns and processes and representations are all abstract entities but entirely dependent for their abstract existence on the existence of a physical substrate. To assert everything is thought is like defending faith as a path to truth when it is self evidently not. Oh oh, my thoughts have started wandering so, still interested in your thoughts, I'll stop.

Excellent analysis and my first intro to this channel. A few years ago, before Bernardo became famous, I had the chance to ask him some questions in his forum. One of my questions was about the relationship between between dissociated minds and what is there beyond their dashboards. Bernardo says that what we perceive is how thoughts in mind at large appear to us, and what are outer thoughts to us are inner thoughts to mind at large. I wanted to know if he thought our inner experiences were also on a screen of experience, and if so, what is our relationship to some "reality" behind this inner screen? And if. as dissociated alters of the one mind, we are fundamentally similar to it, would not its inner experiences also be on its own inner screen of experience? And finally, if everything is mental, then there would seem to be some kinds of mental "objects" somewhere behind all of our screens of inner experience, operating there in a subconscious world of causes and effects, as much unknown to mind at large as for its dissociated offspring. This all seems very complicated to me and not as parsimonious as Bernardo thinks it is.

Really glad you did a video on him. While I also disagree with him on several matters, I share a lot of his issues with materialism/reductionism, and I'm glad he's helping bring it back to public awareness. Aside from your points in this video, why do you think he has been mostly dismissed in academia? I know idealism in general has something of a cultural bias against it, but do you think there's anything unique to analytic idealism that puts it at a greater disadvantage?

@olbluelips

4 ай бұрын

Materialism vs idealism may matter to us but it’s a niche interest. Scientists don’t need to be metaphysically accurate to produce useful theories, while philosophers have debated this for millennia, so I don’t know if Kastrup’s work has been rejected as much as it’s stayed within its niche

Alfred Korzybski elegantly stated that no model whether map or dashboard should be taken for the reality itself.

brilliant analysis - thank you!

I have a problem with Kastrup's view of an afterlife. He jumps straight out of dissociation into universal consciousness. Why not still a different level of dissociation which would allow for continued individuality?

@Achrononmaster

3 ай бұрын

Indeed. Kastrup is an ideologue? (irreconcilably jungian. Jung is his "god". Never a good thing for a thinker.) Seems like the best explanation, no?

@CJ-cd5cd

3 ай бұрын

This is a good point. I agree with most of what Kastrup has to say, but it seems reasonable to think there could be different dimensions of dissociation

@lau-guerreiro

3 ай бұрын

He argues for 2 levels. You argue for 3 levels. But if you can have more than one level, then N levels are possible. The question is: how many of the possible N levels have been actualized? 2,3,4,5?

@animesh7296

3 ай бұрын

That the view of Samkhya Philosophy by Sage Kapila, which Siddharth Gautama (Buddha) learnt from his first teacher. Samkhya proposed of individual consciousness after Moksha.

@Simon-xi8tb

Ай бұрын

@@lau-guerreiro yes

Fantastic analysis and critique! Subscribing now

9:25 this is the crucial point. And what is so shocking is how easily we can see this error. I paused the video for a few seconds after you summarized Kastrup's argument and came to the same conclusion. He is simply confusing our perceptions with our brain's cognitive ability to maintain that screen of perceptions. They are two completely different things. It would be like saying a computer program that records brownian motion of water molecules, must itself be undergoing brownian motion of its circuitry, gradually growing more disordered to the point where nothing makes sense. Its false on a very elementary level. I don't think I am a genius here but I really expect better from a trained philosopher and I'm glad you pointed it out in such clear terms.

@olbluelips

4 ай бұрын

I don’t think he’s saying that at all. Not trying to be argumentative, can you elaborate? I understand your critique but not exactly where Kastrup makes the error

I can't speak directly for Dr. Kastrup, but here's how I understood his arguments: 1. I think in his view evolutionary theory is primarily a mathematical theory, that doesn't necessarily need time and space the way we normally conceive of it. I also believe I somewhere heard him talk about the possibility that there exists something like "proto-time" in which consciousness can evolve. In any case, there seems to be a process happening in universal consciousness that, from our view, looks like evolution. 2. Meta-consciousness comes about when phenomenal consciousness folds in on itself to create something like a loop (not spatially of course) for the purpose of self-reflection. The underlying substance is still only phenomenal consciousness, only with a more complicated structure (a loop). For this to happen nature needs something that, from our view, looks like evolution. 3. I think the idea behind not giving meta-consciousness to universal consciousness is the question of what would then be the whole point of creation? Especially with all the suffering it entails. If universal consciousness already had meta-consciousness to begin with, then our existence would be completely pointless. From our perspective at least, we seem to be the only creatures capable of meta-consciousness. So it makes sense to assume, that meta-consciousness arose from an evolutionary process of which we are the endpoint. 4. The motivation behind this process is self-knowledge. Since universal consciousness is only phenomenal conscious, it can't reflect on itself. It therefor must create humans, which have meta-consciousness, in order to gain self-knowledge. This process is not premeditated, but follows a "blind will" like in Schopenhauer. That's why universal consciousness doesn't care about all the collateral damage (suffering) it entails.

Listening to you I have the impression that you haven't really understood Bernardo. Much of your critique relates - as far as I can tell - to problems we inevitably face when we try to explain these topics in a language, that is 'by definition' (trying to define) dualistic. So one question for instance is how literal you take the image of the 'screen of perfection'. Here I think you haven't represented Bernardos point adequately. So with all respect: nice try, but not convincing (to me). If you're interested in answering the question how 'meta consciousness' could evolve from 'phenomenal consciousness', I'd recommend studying Ken Wilbers Integral Approach and engage in some spiritual practice to 'see' for yourself where language no longer works. That (plus the work of Iain McGilchrist) brings it perfectly together.

@remembertobe-effortlessly

4 ай бұрын

This is interesting. I read all of Wilber’s works up to 2006 and never found them compelling; to much basic misunderstanding of Sri Aurobindo and many others as well as basic mistakes about what developmental stages in psychology are actually about; very familiar with McGilchrist and agree he does excellent work, but i think much of it (particularly Part 3 of “The Matter of Things” is quite in conflict with Bernardo’s ideas. The mai problem is taking universal consciousness to be EITHER meta conscious in teh human sense or phenomenally conscious. Bernardo claims his major inspiration (or at least, started claiming it in the past year) is the Upanishads, but neither his writing, nor that of Wilber or McGilchrist is more than minimally related to that of the Upanishads, which take Chit (or hinted at in later Upanishads and openly embraced by the Tantras, “Chit Shakti”) as an infinite intelligence, infinitely beyond that of either phenomenal or human metacognition.

@StefanSchoch

4 ай бұрын

@@remembertobe-effortlesslyYes, this is interesting indeed. For me personally the main question is, whether a theory or approach _makes sense_ and relates in a meaningful way to my own insights I gather from enganging in deep spiritual practice and then see if both (ineffable insight and verbal interpretation based on the theories) integrate well with each other. That said, for me it's less a question of a theory 'being right' than being 'useful' as a framework and guidance on the (neccesary) path of practice and seeing for oneself what the 'real truth' is (which cannot be articulated in words). As Wilber puts it 'all is true - but partial'. So true. And partial. 😉

This video must of taken a lot of effort - and it's a joy to watch, thanks for making it

@AbsolutePhilosophy

2 ай бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it!

You are right. There is a clip where Kastrup says UC is 'UNLIKELY to be metacognitive'. This is a mistake that only creates a new problem (even if not as hard a problem as materialism). BK shouldn't make assumptions about UC from observations of what he calls the dashboard (which entails space-time including Darwinian evolution). Also, the human mind is a part of UC, so it stands to reason that, if it's a localised, restricted perspective, it shouldn't be capable of much more than UC itself. Also, my experience contradicts what he said. When I experienced naked awareness divorced from conceptual reality, the awareness couldn't help but be aware of itself because it is in its nature to do so. This is metacognition! I think BK got it backwards. It is UC that is capable of all possible states of mind including metacognition. The human mind, on the other hand, can occasionally tap into them because it is mostly restricted to this space-time construct. I think that is BK's main mistake in his analytical idealism. Evolution doesn't explain metacognition if we say that only human minds can have cognition. His view almost mirrors materialism when it says we went from Homo sapiens to becoming Homo sapiens sapiens (man that knows he knows) without even explaining consciousness.

@AbsolutePhilosophy

4 ай бұрын

Agreed. He repeats the idea that UC is not metaconscious in other places too. It's clearly his considered view.

@sxsmith44

28 күн бұрын

Yes analytic idealism says that consciousness is not metacognitive, it is instinctive. It’s rather obvious to me that nature/God is not metacognitive because if it is, it is amoral!

Thanks for the discussion. I hadn't known your channel and I've only seen half an interview with Kastrup. I think your video citations helped me get his argument. Now as for your first counter-case, I think a good part of Kastrup's argument can be saved: To critique e.g. realism, then (as per the method of deconstruction), we may adopt the realist framework (e.g. evolution applying to everything, or talking about what happens when we follow what happens with entropy) to show the problems with it. I.e. it's not really necessary to restrict ourselves to the dashboard as long as we're not making positive claims but only show contradictions with others. As for the second half, does Kastrup postulate that the "actual outside beyond the dashboard" is indeed timeless? I don't know, it wasn't part of your video citations. Because what I'd get at here is that apriori we could have evolution both on the dashboard and beyond it. Making postulates about the world beyond the dashboard makes the theory unappealing, but at least we shouldn't say it's necessarily faulty reasoning to speak of evolution there.

@mrnibelheim

4 ай бұрын

Yes, this is the reason why I, too, am happy to allow Kastrup the use evolution theory: as a helpful tool for deconstruction. But then he seems to want to construct another view, and that could be a trap, in my view. Nagarjuna saw this trap; hence his insistence that emptiness (i.e. when all deconstruction is done) is also empty of independent existence. Then, no conceptual view can prevail, which is not nihilistic, but helps me to accept conventional reality with more lightness.

even though I disagree with some points in this video I have to say that generally it's a good critique

@AbsolutePhilosophy

4 ай бұрын

Thanks!

That was very interesting and thought provoking.

Very pleased to discover this channel! I agree some of Kastrup's arguments for idealism are indeed flawed, as you rightly pointed out. I am keen to hear better arguments for idealism from you. Can you give me some links to your work, please? This is the first video I watched on this channel.

This is all well above my pay grade but I still really like to think about these things. Having said that I'm still trying to wrap my head around the first section about Kastrups entropy argument. It reminds me of the idea that "the simulation is not the thing being simulated." For instance we can simulate something like different properties of food on a computer, like in a video game where the characters can eat and respond to it in similar ways that we do in the real world. But no matter how complex and accurate that simulation of food ever becomes it won't (presumably) ever turn into actual food that we can eat. Food is a substance that relies on interactions beyond the atomic level whereas computers rely on a structure that begins and ends with bits or tiny electrical gates as 0 and 1s. No matter how complex those bits of electricity in or out of gates are arranged on a computer chip we obviously won't be able to eat it. Another example and the one that actually reminded me of what Kastrup said is the idea of simulating a very complex thing like our climate as a whole on a computer to then make precise predictions about the weather far into the future. Very precise as in what days will it rain in a specific location in the year 2040 for example. But this is more than likely impossible with a computer simulation because that "simulation" is already running as the thing itself and its running at the fastest possible speed, which is itself the climate as it is. A computer replica of the earths climate that takes into account all of the essential physical interaction it needs to in order to make precise weather predictions far into the future would have to be far bigger than the earth itself and run at a much slower speed, as the lowest level it can go is a few nanometer sized bit gates running at a set clock speed. Whereas material reality presumably goes to levels far below the atom in size and interactions cap at the speed of light. Whatever the climate is doing right now can in that sense be seen as "the most efficient simulation of itself." All of this to say that it seems we couldn't therefore accurately represent or simulate the world around as long as whatever the thing we are simulating has more necessary information than what is possible to contain within a brain or whatever system or thing produces the representational output. That output has to be compressed in some way. I think you're right in that most people don't believe that we have actual bits of the world outside ourselves inside our heads, like if we perceive a bomb exploding there isn't an actual bomb exploding inside our brain. But on the other hand many people do believe that we can for instance actually produce consciousness by simulating it on a computer. Isn't this akin to people believing we can produce actual food, or fire, or storms on a computer or is akin to believing that when we perceive an apple there is ultimately an actual apple inside our heads. Because if that isn't the case saying that it is a direct perception instead of a replica or simulation or model just doesn't mean anything. Or at least anything that I can make sense of. What does direct perception even mean? If we intuitively believe we are "directly perceiving an apple" what are we claiming? Not that its your view of course but just the view in general.

@REDPUMPERNICKEL

4 ай бұрын

The film, "The Matrix" explores this idea. Have you seen it?

Excellent lecture.

Hi Nathan! Thanks so much for this fascinating video and critique of Bernardo Kastrup's idealism! I've been trying to understand his ideas (and learning philosophy in general) and have so many questions and no place to find answers. Medical science uses the dashboard to make all these amazing medications and surgeries that seem to function, so how does work on the dashboard affect "reality" i.e. mind, so well? Also, his critique of panpsychisme is the problem of the adding up of micro-consciousness of particles, but then he admits that when one dies, our conscious states are somehow added to mind at large Then there is the problem of evolution of mind, that you mentioned, that seems to be mirrored in the "dashboard" of the brain structure and DNA itself. How does mind relate to DNA and influence it's changes and evolution? Also, MAL doesn't seem to be made of the same "stuff" as my mind. Just a small point to say that cats and dogs, who have phenomenological minds, do seem to dream so probably are able to have "dream alters"! In any case, thanks so much for your thoughts and this debate! 🌿

@skaleru772

4 ай бұрын

Hi, I've been following BK's work for quite some time and I think I can help you with some of your questions. 1) The "dashboard" is just the interface between us and MAL. We can have effects on MAL and vice versa, not directly, but through the dashboard. In the end, there is just mental stuff affecting mental stuff, which is easier to explain than scenarios where non-mental stuff affects mental stuff, and so on. This is Bernardo's point here. 2) There is no problem here, instead of Combination, Bernardo's arguments rely on Dissociation. When the dissociation ends, the contents are "combined" with MAL by definition. The remaining challenge is to explain Dissociation in the first place, which, in his opinion, is an easier problem to have compared to the Combination Problem in Panpsychism or the Hard Problem of Consciousness in Physicalism. 3) Here, it gets tricky, and that is true for every theory that states time is emerging. However, this does not mean that any concept like evolution, where time is essential (in fact, all communication would be impossible when thinking 'outside' time), cannot be used to explain your argument. Time still tells something essential and true about reality, and whatever "that" is, though as a projection, is what we experience as time. 4) I mean, this is the whole point about Idealism. What other "stuff" does it seem like? 😉

@kgrandchamp

4 ай бұрын

Hey skaleru thanks for your replies! I do have problems formulating my questions as I am not sure of what Bernardo means thru my own ignorance of philosophy and bad thinking! haha! What I mean is that MAL does not seem to be like my mind and seems alien and very different! We are supposed to be like it as we are dissociated from it but it seems very different. My dream alters don't seem different from "me" in my dreams, they feel the same - when I wake up - whereas I don't feel like my subjectivity is the same as MAL's! There are so many questions and details one could go into on most of his ideas! Thanks for taking the time to answer, though! :)@@skaleru772

@ArlindoPhilosophicalArtist

4 ай бұрын

@@kgrandchamp You can feel like a different person in your dreams because sometimes you don't remember waking life or you can even experience false memory syndrome. I would also add that, from my own experience, I have taken psychedelics and I have felt like my mind was altered to the point where I wasn't even human anymore, and yet, in terms of consciousness, it was still me. But the most profound experience was when I was using mindfulness meditation in an attempt to induce a wake-initiated lucid dream. What I stumbled upon, however, wasn't what I expected. All qualia had disappeared save for the experience of awareness itself. To this day I feel like no words can do it justice. All thoughts and memories were gone, my earthly identity was gone, and I was in a state far divorced from conceptual reality. It was a blissful stillness, nothing weighed on me, like I was a luminous witness or a radiant emptiness. It was pure consciousness and it was clear. There was nothing to be aware of but itself (so definitely metacognitive) and something about it was both revelatory and unfathomable because there were no words to describe it and nothing to refer to it. I wasn't human, I wasn't anything but unperturbed consciousness. Even the concepts of time and space were gone. I could stay there forever! Then, as soon as the thoughts came, the stillness and bliss were gone. The first subsequent thoughts were along the lines of, 'What is this?', 'Where am I?', 'Who am I?' and they paved a way for a narrative that would attempt to formulate answers and describe what was experienced. I became human again as though I needed to do so in order to attempt to map out that state. I needed to become something else in order to do it. The narrative of that pristine cognition is what you get from me which somehow doesn't do it justice. But an insight remained. I know I didn't really become something else. At my core, I am precisely that formless, empty consciousness which transcends all conceptual reality. It's empty and yet capable of being filled with entire worlds. There was a radiant quality to it, like it had a creative principle. I speak about it as though it's separate from me but it is, in fact, the real me. I am just disassociated from such a pure state now because I identify as being this human being living this life. I don't know about MAL, perhaps we can only truly experience it once we have shuffled off our mortal coil, but what I experienced could definitely qualify as primordial consciousness or the ground of being. I hope this helps.

@kgrandchamp

4 ай бұрын

Wow Arlindo! What a beautiful, well written answer! Thanks so much! I have to reread your text to absorb it when I get back from my Sunday walk! haha! Your awareness and perceptions are way beyond my experience so I feel pretty humbled and thankful for your sharing your experiences with me! Have a great day! 🌿 @@ArlindoPhilosophicalArtist

@ArlindoPhilosophicalArtist

4 ай бұрын

@@kgrandchamp You too. I'm only sorry that I can't quite capture it with words. I wasn't even looking for it. I stumbled upon it during meditation lying down. I've never experienced anything like it again and I'll never forget it. But, who knows, maybe one of these days when I do mind awake body asleep/rested exercise akin to mindfulness meditation.

The irony here is Bernardo bemoans the lack of proper philosophy in the debate and here a proper philosopher picks some telling faults in Bernardo's system. In defence of Bernardo he cant go out and declare a divinity. Many of Schopenhauers fans, like Pauli, wanted because they saw the play of a divinity in the system. Maybe Schopenhauer was also cagey about sauing Will is meta-conscious?

Great video!!! Have you checked out Bergson? Matter and Memory makes a great case for a kind of direct perception that can account for illusion and error. Also I just finished reading Fichte where the ‘thing in itself’ or ‘beyond the dashboard’ is quite compellingly revealed as pure dogmatic speculation. Like you, the problems around the dashboard and the nature of the absolute are one of my major issues with Kastrup. Thank you for making this video, it is a much needed counterpart to Kastrups dogmatism, which can sometimes be hard to recognize through his otherwise beautiful and eloquent thoughts.

@CJ-cd5cd

4 ай бұрын

I am a part of the world as it is in itself; therefore better understanding of my self gives me some access to it. That’s the Schopenhauer stance to the noumena, anyway.

I'm watching this as a physicist (I did my research into string theory) interested in the foundations of quantum mechanics (and how it impacted our world view), and noticed how Kastrup uses quantum mechanics to defend his idealism. I haven't finished the video so maybe I'll come back with some actual comments about the content, but just replyed to let you know you misspelled his name in the video title: it's Bernardo (with an extra r) ;) I only recently discovered your channel, and as a physicist and philosopher-wannabe writing about physics and philosophy I like it a lot. If you ever want to use quantum mechanics in some sort in your video's and need some view from a physicist, I'd be happy to exchange thoughts!

@AbsolutePhilosophy

4 ай бұрын

Thank you! I'll change the spelling, and I just might take you up on it! I intend to read through Tim Maudlin's books to get a better grip, but I haven't done so yet.

@haushofer100

4 ай бұрын

@@AbsolutePhilosophy Maudlin is indeed really good, both his books on spacetime and quantum mechanics. Another great book is Norsen's "Foundations of quantum mechanics", and a bit more on the popular side Adam Becker's "What is real?"

@REDPUMPERNICKEL

4 ай бұрын

Does one become a philosopher by thinking philosophical thoughts? I think so but like me, not necessarily a good one. Since it is my self who is conscious it seems to me that what a self is has a bearing on the topic and especially on the meaning of the word 'conscious'. It seems to me to be quite obvious that my self is a thought. Being a thought would certainly account for my self's ability to have commerce with the myriad of other thoughts which represent the universe and everything within it. Now if a thought is simply a process of neurological activity that in coded form, represents my self and everything else then the physical is merely the substrate without which process cannot exist (making the physical absolutely necessary but details beyond chemistry not necessarily relevant).

Thank you

Is perfect indirect realism a term you made up? When I write a book, I would like to use this term. It's a nice phrase that could one day enter philosophical dictionaries. It would also be a good title for a book.

His argument on the entropic soup was ment by Bernardo as a critique against materialism. I think you missed his point.

Meta-Consciousness can only exist with Language. Also we experience a very small portion of the total scale of "Reality". We cannot see or experience a planck moment nor the span of a million years. We are very successful within the sphere of objects we can handle, and in building instruments to deal with objects out of that range (Cern, JWST, Microscopes etc.) The word reality is a place holder. For most of us that is enough.

Ok, I've watched the whole thing - I would say this is the best critique of BK's work I've seen in 10 years. your distinction, that he mixes scientific explanations with explanations depending on mind (that is, mixes physicalist and idealist explanations) is one I posed to him many times back 9 and 10 years ago but he always dismissed it as irrelevant. You've brought it back brilliantly. Also, your idea of evolution as a means by which a collective consciousness evolves is common in some forms of Tantra and other schools of Indian philosophy. Notice I said collective, not universal consciousness. Sri Aurobindo speaks of "Group souls" - or the consciousness of a species. So the relatively non individuated cat has experiences that will contribute to the evolution of the species. There is, in his view, a transcendent non evolving Consciousness which expresses itself through involution and then evolution, which makes infinitely more sense to me than BK's view.

@Sam-hh3ry

16 күн бұрын

"but he always dismissed it as irrelevant." It's a weak point and obviously false. Akin to claiming that a desktop can't tell you anything about what's happening in the CPU, or that a dashboard can't tell anything about what's happening to the airplane.

This was really good-you explained the problems I had with these ideas better than I could figure it out. I agree with you, even though I still love, Bernardo.

Knowing about Active Inference myself (I've interviewed Friston about 8 times at this point!), you might have gotten the wrong read a tiny bit on the "naive realism" part - he's not arguing about perceptions, rather representations in the brains "generative model". However, this is often misunderstood i.e. the model is a fiction, the mechanics are actually diffused in a complex way, even outside of the body.

@HUSTLE_MONEY

4 ай бұрын

Can you elaborate please? Just a little deeper than the higher level mentionings.

27:20 The reasoning flaw you've identified is indeed significant, so much so that it's surprising how BK or his immediate colleagues could have overlooked it. Alternatively, could it be possible that you have not fully comprehended the theory he proposes? Ask yourself this: Could you tonight dream of the complete evolutionary path from abiogenesis to who you are now ? If yes, then that's sort of what happened according to BK. A higher consciousness dreamed all of this up. each evolutionary stage in your dream would still feel like a lapse in time, but does time really exist in your dream? No because time can freeze go, go backwards, fast forward or anything in between. Time and evolution are just experiences in your dream made of mind stuff.

Well, since our family had a ghostly encounter, the spirit parallel state of being is our Outlook ( ever since this happened ). Great channel and a very likeable presentation. Tom, Brussels, Belgium.

I was never convinced by Kastrup's assertion that universal consciousness is phenomenal but couldn't put my finger on the reason why. This explanation goes a long way to convincing me that universal consciousness must be meta rather than phenomenal. Following on from that argument, I can't disagree with the suggestion that Kastrup seems reluctant to fully embrace the implications of analytic idealism.

The entropic soup idea in regard to perception comes from Carl Friston's free energy principle.

Pretty sure the use of the term 'analytical' is a shout out to CG Jung's analytical psychology, and universal consciousness is basically synonymous with the collective unconscious and it's archetypes. That's clearly the framework behind his work and also adds context to his point on universal consciousness being only phenomenologically conscious - in an unconscious state. The way I see it we are it's meta conscious expression. Perhaps the representation of universal consciousness in a differentiated state - our isolated subjective ego's experience - is a form that gives rise to meta consciousness? I guess evolution applies to mind with regard to instincts and archetypes, being the means by which unconscious patterns of shared behavior fosters the emergence of culture, for example. It's when we encounter our instincts and their correlated archetypal images in our personal lives that we gain access to energy and motivation - libido - so we're psychologically wired for adaptation and survival and that seems to be the nature of universal consciousness.

Mind-at-large "evolves" in the same way that a physical universe "selects" new, "optimal" states described by the laws of physics. If I hold up a ball and open my hand, the universe "evolves" to a state where that ball hits the ground. Mind-at-large is no different. If you can conceive of metaconsciousness evolving in a physical universe, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to conceive of it evolving in a mental universe.

Assuming you also take a representational view of reality, according to your version of idealism, what is it that’s being represented?

@AbsolutePhilosophy

4 ай бұрын

Good question! I take what Kastrup calls phenomenal consciousness to _be_ reality (although not in whole) and so it is not representational. But metaconsciousness and thought _is_ representational... typically of that which can be phenomenally experienced. So I don't have veil of perception issues.

@CJ-cd5cd

4 ай бұрын

​@@AbsolutePhilosophy I'm not quite sure I understand how your idealism differs from Kastrup's. According to my understanding of analytic idealism, Kastrup takes phenomenal consciousness to be the ontological primitive, and what is being meta-cognized is phenomenal consciousness. Analytic idealism posits that perception itself is a representation of phenomenal consciousness. Are you saying that perception and phenomenal consciousness are one and the same?

@AbsolutePhilosophy

4 ай бұрын

@CJ-cd5cd Nope. Part 7 of the course makes clear Kastrup thinks there is "the world as it is in itself" and then there is the "representation" of that world in phenomenal consciousness and then the "rerepresentation" of it in metaconsciousness. I don't think phenomenal consciousness is representative of anything. And metaconsciousness represents phenomenal consciousness, so there is nothing outside experience like the "world in itself" that Kastrup thinks lurks beyond the dashboard.

@CJ-cd5cd

4 ай бұрын

@@AbsolutePhilosophy Perhaps Kastrup is guilty of not being as precise in his videos, but you should read his books for the nitty gritty. For example in his book on Schopenhauer, Kastrup takes the world as it is in itself to be endogenous, non-perceptual feelings or volitional states, and perceptions to be the representation of such: "Perceptual representations thus already entail a subtle level of self-reflection". Referring to the world as it is itself (which consists of his elucidation of Schopenhauer's concept of the Will), "In its primordial configuration , the will entailed no representations, as there were no individual subjects yet--i.e. no alters of the will. The experiential states of this primordial will did not include perception of a seemingly external world, for there was no such world yet. Instead, they entailed only endogenous FEELINGS (italicized in book). Moreover, the DISPOSITIONS or IMPETUS inherent to these feelings triggered self-stimulation or self-excitation of the will, which in turn led to the latter's unfolding into the known universe" (p. 113).

@beniscatus6321

4 ай бұрын

@@AbsolutePhilosophy Phenomenal consciousness has different meanings in Analytic Idealism depending on context. If we go so far as to ascribe the modern term ‘phenomenal consciousness’ to Mind at Large, we must bear in mind that ‘phenomenal’ in this sense means ‘experiential’; it is not in opposition to Kant’s ‘noumenal’ because of course MAL’s experience is beyond ours - it is noumenal to us as dissociated alters; we can only begin to appreciate its depths by ‘self-transcendence’ and introspection. Our everyday experience of MAL’s phenomenal consciousness comes via the senses, giving rise to perceptual states which fragment Nature: we reduce the icons and symbols of MAL’s ideas and feelings to mere ‘objects’ which are images or representations of the interacting and interconnected contents of the Transpersonal Mind.

Very interesting video.

@AbsolutePhilosophy

3 ай бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it

That’s not 1080p now is it

Having a discussion with Kastrup live would certainly be more illuminating than his other hosts who, whilst well intentioned, are not challenging to the extent that you are. Keep knocking on his door then.

Brilliant

Excellent video.

Congratulations. Great work. I was waiting a looong time for the content of this video. Kastrup is a brilliant and inspiring thinker, but sometimes seems too convinced of his own views (a common trace among brilliant people).

Its funny. I also noticed how Kastrup's entropy and evolution arguments are conceptually flawed. However, its odd to me that he always brings them up first. Because I think the rest of his work is rather brilliant and he doesn't need them to make the points he is making. I also don't like his takes on meta cognition... Thank you for making this video!

It seems to me that, as Kant explained, we never be certain of what exists behind our "dashboards of perception', so I would agree with you that Dr. Kastrup's theory is conjecture...as is yours...as it seems that each are unfalsifiable. Am I missing something here? This is a sincere question.

@AbsolutePhilosophy

4 ай бұрын

No you aren't missing something, and are entirely correct. That's why the neo-Kantians rejected the idea of the 'thing-in-itself' entirely. However, I wasn't advocating Analytic Idealism with a revised kind of universal consciousness (although I can see why you might think so). I was only saying that _Kastrup's commitments_ mean he should, upon consideration, take universal consciousness as being meta-cognitive. My idealism does not have some speculative realm beyond the veil of perception, as I don't have an 'indirect' view of perception.

@santacruzman8483

4 ай бұрын

@@AbsolutePhilosophy Ahh...that make sense. I appreciate the clarification sir.

Have you heard about Gustav Fechner?

Please correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't the mere existence of phenomenal consciousness be sufficient in and of itself to ground the existence of meta-cognition? If phenomenal consciousness is simply awareness, then wouldn't the emergence of meta-cognition be entirely deducible from the theorerical ability of awareness to direct itself upon itself? In other words, if the nature of reality is ultimately just awareness, then isn't self-awareness (meta-cognition) just awareness folding in on itself? Meta-cognition is not a different type of consciousness; meta-cognition is just different configuration of phenomenal consciousness.

@AbsolutePhilosophy

4 ай бұрын

This is a bigger jump than statements like 'just folding in on itself' suggest. Most theories that make this distinction point to the structural nature of meta-cognition that makes it amenable to thought, in contrast to the unstructured nature of phenomenal consciousness. For example. phenomenal consciousness contains no 'I' (the subject), unlike metaconsciousness. Its a big difference.

@ianbaez1998

4 ай бұрын

​@@AbsolutePhilosophy I don't think I agree with your assessment, but I really appreciate you responding and explaining your rationale. The 'I' [the subject], in my view, already exists **in** phenomenal consciousness. To be more precise, in my view, phenomenal consciousness **is** the subject (i.e., it is the intuitive felt "is-ness"/"am-ness" of my existence). Meta-cognition, in my view, is just *this* phenomenal subject, becoming keenly attentive to itself. I mean, doesn't this transition happen all the time during the transition between dreams and lucidity? In a dream, the subject still exists, the only difference is that it doesn't have a keen attention to itself. In other words, in dreams the core felt-ness of my being is still there, it just doesn't direct its attention to itself to such an extent as to acquire an idea of itself as a distinct 'I.' Of course, with all that said, I am by no means an expert. I'd really appreciate any reading recommendations on this topic if you have any. Again thanks a lot for responding!

@AbsolutePhilosophy

4 ай бұрын

@@ianbaez1998 Well I know Kastrup suggests the idea was first explained properly in 2012 by the person he quotes, but it has been in philosophical literature for a long time. You could start with Ned Block's 1995 paper available here: www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/abs/on-a-confusion-about-a-function-of-consciousness/061422BF0C50C5FF00927F9B6E879413

@ianbaez1998

4 ай бұрын

@@AbsolutePhilosophy thanks!

@Sam-hh3ry

16 күн бұрын

@@AbsolutePhilosophy kastrup literally cites this paper in his dissertation fyi

I have always wondered how a universal consciousness that is phenomenally conscious only can take advantage of the inputs of its dissociated alters that are metaconscious.

What is very difficult to incorporate is the fact that Kastrup derives much of what he says from personal experimentation of altered states of consciousness through the use of psychedelics. Of course the problem here is the difficulty in taking at face value Kastrup’s insight because it defies our common understanding and tends to lead to a paradigm shift

Thanks

@AbsolutePhilosophy

4 ай бұрын

Thank you kindly, Sir!

Paradoxically, if it's correct to understand universal consciousness (UC) as simultaneously 1) the shared context for all individuated/dissociated states of consciousness (alters), and 2) the dissociated consciousness or bounded awareness itself including meta-consciousness, which is the capacity to periodically reflect upon and critically assess the contents of experience or in other words, re-represent the contents of consciousness in which one interprets, describes or otherwise characterizes different states of one's own mind, it doesn't make sense that "universal consciousness must be at least meta-conscious" as the host suggests. Rather, UC must at least have the potential for meta-conscious experience. So, like all paradoxes, this one only exists in the minds of seemingly separate, meta-conscious entities.

I admire Kastrup's work and I think Idealism is closer to reality than materialism. However, my biggest problem with idealism is the relationship between Absolute/Universal Consciousness and individual minds such as my own. Bernardo talks about dissociation, but this is still a tentative explanation. Perhaps we can never really understand such a thing. I'm not afraid of the theistic implications of idealism at all, even though I used to be an atheist and a materialist. As I studied the mind-body problem and probed for solutions, I moved from materialism->panpsychism->idealism. Idealism makes it very likely that there is some kind of intelligence at the bottom of reality. If Idealism is true, it has implications for our daily lives. We are all part of one great whole, and we should treat all human beings and all life with compassion, loving kindness, and respect. I have been dismayed by some idealists (who shall not be named) who do not appear to have realized this.

@TheMoopMonster

4 ай бұрын

The partitioning of God's mind into the individuated, coherent, and holistic selves we apparently experience, is indeed one of the greatest mysteries to contemplate. I think of the universal principle like a macro scale version of your mind-body. Your brain, and it's abstracted information processing, modeling yourself and your environment, is like the overarching will and telos of the universal consiousness. Your autonomic functions, are like the fabric of space-time, and the complex structures of material objects in the world, the baseline necessities for existence. Your willed functions, like your hands and feet, your mouth, your eyes, are the actualized interactions and relationships that occur within that world, like the movements of bodies in space, and the various exchanges of energy occuring in those bodies. There is so much more to unpack here, but the idea of "man made in God's image" rings true for me. Ultimately, in my personal synthesis of experience, it is doing all of this because it loves us. It wants us to love each other and the whole, with no expectations or demands to do so, or act in any way, as we are literally it. It revels in our independent existence, and freedom, and the fact that it has actualized an other, to which it can share its infinite eternal self. It is absolutely unselfish, and has given to us all of the properties that it has. An infinite, eternal existence, within an infinite eternal existence. This existence is inherently good, and meaningful, and it never ends. Everyone is it's favorite person, everyone is safe, we are all together forever, and we will all eventually experience being this thing, the most blissful experience imaginable. From nothing it came, and nothing it will always be, it cannot be erased, and you, cannot be erased.

@MonisticIdealism

4 ай бұрын

I have a video on the relationship between absolute consciousness and individual minds where I give my own answer on this. It's called "Idealism and the Decombination Problem".

In the framework of Analytic Idealism one might say that we, as dissociated alters within the construct of "Mind At Large" (MAL), embody the meta-cognitive facets of MAL on the perceptual dashboard. In a parallel vein, biological evolution serves as a dashboard representation, elucidating the intricate dynamics of MAL's relentless pursuit to comprehend itself. MAL might therefore be understood as fundamentally phenomenal-conscious, but in a process of becoming meta-conscious. To the extent that man's image of God is an intuitive peek behind the dashboard of perception, C.G. Jung espoused a parallel perspective. According to him, the transformative shifts in humanity's conceptualization of God throughout history mirror the evolution of its consciousness, and maybe also the evolution of God's consciousness.

@AbsolutePhilosophy

4 ай бұрын

That sounds like the kind of view I say in this video that Kastrup would need to adopt to maintain his account of mind arising from a dissociative process.

@swerremdjee2769

4 ай бұрын

Very good of you to notice, respect👍 Ive created a theory, the narcisist, psychopath and empathy theory, the catperson and dogperson theory. The catperson or part is the self, the dogperson or part is the self in a group. 20-60-20, in de dogperson/group, 20% being pro the argument and willing to do something about it, 60% being neutral or going allong with which side wins, 20% being against and willing to do something about it. 20-60-20 in the catperson/the self/ personal, 20% pro or going along, 60% is you/how you see yourself and how you are today, 20% is against and not going along. Some people hate cats and or dogs but they cant or dare to out it in the open because of the consequentions it may have for them in their group... Catperson, female, emotional, introvert and live in the moment/the now. Dog person, male, rational, extrovert and lives for tomorrow. The dogperson uses physical violence where the catperson uses psychological violence. I also included some 2 hemisphere data and some historical proof in an email which Ive sent to a few scientists a few years ago. I also came up with KABE=W, knowledge aquired by experiance = wisdom. Let me know what you think about it👍

@george5464

4 ай бұрын

That’s literally Bernado position though? Have you read his books?

@swerremdjee2769

4 ай бұрын

Almost forgot the most important part🙂 The catperson wants their animal to live free, to be selfreliant, in a way the catperson is there for the animal/other The dogperson wants their animal to be free but within the group accepted norm , they will adapt more easily to an inhume norm, the dog/person is more there for the dogperson. 60% being the norm people who like both cats and dogs, 20% dont like cats and 20% dont like dogs. Within each side there are extremes the narcisists and or psychopaths. The police dog trainer, the dog is only there for one purpose, if the value of the dog doesn't conform it will be replaced. The outer fringe of the catperson doesn't allow the cat to go outside, has their nails cut, if the so doesn't allow the cat to a cat and when the cat doesn't conform by their standarts the cat will be replaced.

@besmart3191

4 ай бұрын

Oke its here👍

Great vid! Here are my 2 cents, apologies if I ramble a hit. I don't think Kastrup is actually doing what you say he is doing. His arguments, like the Evolutionary one or the one involving entropy, are arguments using scientific evidence to show that scientific realism is false. It sounds paradoxical but it's not. Science is agnostic (for lack of a better word) of metaphysics. It's just the study of behavior. I don't see any in principle reason why someone couldn't use scientific evidence to show that science is a method within the dashboard and then interpret that evidence in favor of Idealism. I've heard people make the same argument against Donald Hoffman ("you're arguing that everything is a desktop UI because of evolution, but then that means evolution, and the theory, is just part of the desktop... therefore it's false"), and his response is quite simple: every scientific theory is limited to the dashboard... that's the game were playing. It doesn't follow, therefore, that a "dashboard theory" can't point to something outside of the dashboard. For example: it's not hard to imagine that someone locked into some Virtual Reality game could find evidence WITHIN the VR game itself, and within its rule set, for the existence of something outside of the game. If you were playing a game and people were able to enter and exit at will, effectively turning their bodies off and on, then that would be evidence for the existence of Mind outside of the game itself... and in the same breath, someone could say "this physical world (the VR) is illusory". That's all that he is doing: using the best scientific evidence we have to show that the world itself is a dashboard representation of something deeper. So, all he is saying is that the evidence he is presenting isn't the final truth, but it's true at the dashboard level. This isn't direct evidence for Idealism, but it's much easier to interpret these findings under Idealism than Materialism. In addition to Evolution and Entropy, he presents evidence from neuroimaging studies, from foundations of physics, from NDE's, from logic and parsimony, and more. Cheers!

Thanks for nice analysis. Your discussions was very thought provoking and your arguments sharp. I'm a big fan of Bernardo's work, but as all theories do, his one also has some weak points and it may be useful to examine those carefully to refine his case. To be honest some of your arguments looked like a hair splitting and not very substantial to me (probably more important from your perspective as a philosopher), and I think Bernardo would have been able to easily address most of them (for example about mirroring of perceptions and brain states, also about evolution not providing actual data). Where I complete agree with your point is about meta consciousness of Mind at Large. I think it `s much more logical to assume that the traits that we demonstrate would also be present in Universal intelligence and probably in much higher degrees. Also it's also possible that through this temporary dissociations, certain experiences can be achieved and certain qualities obtained that won't be quite possible without it. Hundreds of speculations can be made why this may happen. For example children naturally create "dissociated alters" to play engage in games with themselves. And again what we may call suffering, can very well be seen as something completely different in a larger context. From the perspective of timeless and boundaryless being. Like a scenes on a cinema screen cannot devastate us when we remember that it's just a movie. We even enjoy tragedy and violence. Now I'm not suggesting that larger consciousness is having fun with suffering of his dissociated states. I'm just saying that we are sometimes projecting our limited motives on a processes that probably my well be beyond our mundane logic.

Great! In my view, you were too kind. For every issue you pointed out, I saw many more. His approach seems to be to make generalizations based on presumption over and over again. That is not, in my mind, any sort of philosophy.

good job. Bernardo should take your invitation. Everyone would profit

It does not follow that because mis-perceptions of the world are possible, therefore, any and all perceptions of it -- correct or incorrect -- are indirect perceptions of it. This like arguing that because it is possible to give an incorrect answer on an exam, therefore, any and all answers -- even the correct one - must be indirect answers.

Just chanced upon your channel and subscribed. Excellent presentation! I hadn't realised Kastrup is rather Kantian (if your representation of his thought is correct) in that he holds science to investigate only the 'dashboard', i.e. phenomenal consciousness, and incapable of reaching further into reality itself. Towards the end you say that purely phenomenal consciousness cannot be in a state of dissociation, only meta-cognitive consciousness can. From my understanding of Kastrup, our form of phenomenal consciousness is already a form of dissociation, and Kastrup's own meta-cognition merely comes to recognise this fact. Whether we agree with his thesis on meta-cognition or not (I, like yourself, don't) why should that at least not be possible? (Although dissociation would be a somewhat misleading word.) But I'll have to learn more about Kastrup's theory and arguments.

For a couple of years I have wondered whether Kastrup uses his occasional scientism-style reasoning for strategic appeasement to intellectual paradigms, or if he is intellectually committed here himself. I don't have an answer yet, and perhaps this is just the riddle Kastrup represents as a philosopher when seen from the outside. But it is good to watch someone discover similar issues!

I think the first entropy argument you discuss Bernardo is using, from external chaos having to be mirrored inside being impossible, is Immanuel Kant's

@Sam-hh3ry

16 күн бұрын

No, it's Karl Friston's free energy principle. Although Kant's phenomena noumena divide is closely related.

I had always been effortlessly attracted to Kastrup's conception, and I find his presentation very engaging. But I must admit that somehow I'd never considered your argument, even though it should be very clear, almost intuitive. Thank you for a very engaging analysis.

So, if we have a 'higher' knowledge of our own thinking, we have a knowledge that is in a sense external to our thoughts. Yes, it is true that we call this 'reflection' and that it is a reflection on our thinking itself, and so we might simply say this is a higher level of thinking that exists dependently upon the lower level of thinking, however, the question that needs to be answered is, how this even possible in the first place ? It is not sufficient to simply say that it is an obvious fact -- few would deny that, I think. How is it possible that an awareness that depends upon thinking and its ideas able to 'take a step back' and reflect upon itself ? Could it be that knowledge or awareness is not as thought-dependent as the epistemologists have led us to believe ? Perhaps it is time for these theorists of knowledge to think outside the epistemological box.

@nicbarth3838

4 ай бұрын

Would it be accurate to say that the mind can reflect on itself or be meta cognitive because you are modeling cognitive states and then looking at it. How you look at it tho is an interesting question. what are your thoughts on how meta cognition is possible, are you thinking that thinking about your thoughts does not require memory kinda like how you could still maintain this function if you had anterograde amnesia and retrograde too, I like to think this is true. Yea maybe thinking about your thoughts relies more on your capacity to remember what is being thought and to then reproduce that and to represent the cognitive processes to get to that thought which would mean that you would need to adapt your view of reality very quickly and adopt a new grip on reality that you could look from in order to inspect the thing has been modeled to represent a prior representation of reality. IDK if this is really meaningfull tho because you are trying to know HOW this happens not WHAT is happening so IDK. The bare minimum two facets of cognition I think are needed are Cognitive flexibility and Attention Modulation

@alwaysgreatusa223

4 ай бұрын

@@nicbarth3838 I am actually thinking more along the line of making a distinction between thought and awareness as distinct brain functions. Reflection, I would say begins with being self-aware of one's own thinking, so it must be different from the thinking itself to some extent.

Been looking for ahwile for someone to ceitique Kastrup's idealism besides edgy teenage materialists thatvassociate tok heavily with ye olde "horsemen atheism". This critique isnt perfect, but it's well articulated. I'd love to see more explorations of his ideas from you in a "friendly bruising" way. Easy sub. Look forward to exploring more of your channel.

Thx...we'll see if the challenge will be accepted. He should though, you nailed the problems of his thinking. But humble and friendly? My ass....Don't blame you, Kastrup doesn't usually appreciate other peoples opinions. If they don't praise him, that is....Would be interesting to know what you think about Joscha Bach's thoughts about consciousness and philosophy. Also what you think Michael Levin's Planaria/Barium and xenobot/anthrobot studies tell about the nature of consciousness and Evolution theory.

Dr Bernardo Kastrup is super talented and on point on many levels… a true breath of fresh air… and all you. Can do is inflate your egos and grab attention … what some people will do for clacks , how pathetic.

Penrose and Hoffmann work in the framework that I myself can navigate and see as being cooperative means or avenue but these types who really seem to just circle back to status qoue doesn't fullfill the 3 data transfer of idealism, subjective and objective i see as neccassary. As far as some critical extreme that provides access to a feild or demention of higher cognitive awareness of human dashboards i think we must appease the possibility

I agree with your criticisms of Kastrup. I am surprised however that most philosophers favour indirect realism. A while back I read The Concept of Mind and it had an argument which I found convincing on this topic. The argument roughly goes that “seeing an image” or “seeming to see something” are conceptually derivative of the ordinary concept of seeing. When you’re shown a photograph of someone the point is to produce an experience that is like seeing them for real. In general the concept of “seeing an image” is parasitic on the ordinary notion of seeing. For these reasons it doesn’t make sense to say that all seeing is really seeing images.

@StatelessLiberty

4 ай бұрын

​@Boulanger948 yes but I think comparing ordinary usage to philosophical usage is important because philosophical problems ultimately arise out of ordinary language (non-philosophical discourses I mean).

@StatelessLiberty

4 ай бұрын

​@Boulanger948 I'm saying the very concept of seeing has the notion of "directly seeing an object" built into it, it never involves seeing "experiences" or something else. Even when I see an image, e.g. a photograph, it is an object which I see "directly." More generally, we learn concepts like seeing from a community of language users. A concept can sometimes be misapplied but it can't always be misapplied without making the concept meaningless. If you tamper too much with the properties of a common sense concept that you lose touch with what you're even talking about.

Nice video

My wish would be to hear you talk to Bernardo directly. I have followed many conversations where Bernardo answers critics but yours is a call for clarifications on certain points, which by the way I dont understand either. Except for part 2.... I was left confused and wanted Bernardo there to clarify. For me its easy to understand why Universal Consviousness would not be reflective...if you really rest in being...there is completeness...everything is filled with being. Try it....just feel...I am...stop at.... am...hold the mind there...in Being. The rest....metacognition and phenomenal cognition is all becoming. With thanks for bringing me back to Parmenides and his eastern counterpart the rishis of India.

24:35 I'm not sure it makes sense to see phenomenal consciousness as a "lower" form than meta consciousness; simpler, yes, but not necessarily lower. In that sense, Kastrup's Universal Consciousness is somewhat reminiscent of Plotinus' _The One,_ or the God of classical theism. In fact, in the latter (not sure about the former) simplicity is an essential aspect of what God is. Following that approach, it's not just that Kastrup's UC _happens to be_ phenomenally conscious (and not meta conscious), it is _necessarily_ so. But for me, what undermines that possible overlap between Kastrup on the one hand and Plotinus, Aquinas, and the like, on the other, is the apparent spontaneous coming-into-being of these ring-fenced additional personalities. That immediately raises the question as to how -- by what mechanism -- did that happen? Kastrup seems to be offering the UC as the unitary, primordial thing. But it can't be. In addition to the UC he also needs some mechanisms governed by some _"Laws of Personality Emergence"_ and if those exist, then the UC just isn't the bottom line he seems to think it is. It's similar to the kind of unitary, primordial no-thing your Lawrence Krauss types postulate. We know that whatever was _not_ there at "the beginning", the various mechanisms allowing for quantum fluctuations and so on certainly were. And in that case, Krauss's nothing just isn't the bottom line he seems to think it is.

The reality of illusion creates the illusion of reality.. Or, reality is an optical delusion of consciousness .. When you get this, you get the illusion of ego/separation too .. But it's a big leap to claim, as Kastrup does, that everything is mental and there's a universal mind behind it all. I remain a stubborn agnostic but it was good to see someone trying to critique his argument.

Are you planning on interviewing any contemporary idealists such as Howard Robinson? That's the biggest philosophical lacuna on YT, I think

Some interesting points. Here's two others from me: 1) If indeed brains are how metaconsciousnesses look like in Nature's dream, then if I have a dream and my dream avatar is undergoing brain surgery, let's say, it should always have a brain since that's how its avatar consciousness (my image in the dream) looks like in my dream. It should be impossible to have dreams where you open up your head and find nothing inside or something else than a brain. 2) What if we find out that disocciation (I mean the neurologic/psychiatric condition of humans) is actually false? Say, bad experiments, people lied, data was faked, whatever. Say we find out it's wrong and it's not actually true. Would the entire edifice upon which Analytic Idealism was constructed fall? Or would it somehow survive?

checking out

Bernardo is awesome, but I agree with these critiques. I've been making these exact same constructive criticisms against analytic idealism for years.

@FilipinaVegana

4 ай бұрын

What is the antithesis of "ANALYTIC" Idealism? "NON-ANALYTIC"?

@AbsolutePhilosophy

4 ай бұрын

No one has thought about these issue more than you Monistic ;). I'm a few steps behind.

@Mandibil

4 ай бұрын

Did you criticise them in your recent interview of him ?

@MonisticIdealism

4 ай бұрын

@@Mandibil No, I brought these criticisms up in my first interview with him.

@FilipinaVegana

4 ай бұрын

@@MonisticIdealism Idealism: Metaphysical Idealism is the view that the objective, phenomenal world is the product of an IDEATION of the mind, whether that be the individual, discrete mind of a personal subject, or otherwise that of a Universal Conscious Mind (often case, a Supreme Deity), or perhaps more plausibly, in the latter form of Idealism, Impersonal Universal Consciousness Itself (“Nirguna Brahman”, in Sanskrit). The former variety of Idealism (that the external world is merely the product of an individual mind) seems to be a form of solipsism. The latter kind of Idealism is far more plausible, yet it reduces the objective world to nothing but a figment in the “Mind of God”. Thus, BOTH these forms of Idealism can be used to justify all kinds of immoral behaviour, on the premise that life is just a sort of dream in the mind of an individual human, or else in the consciousness of the Universal Mind, and therefore, any action that is deemed by society to be immoral takes place purely in the imagination (and of course, those who favour this philosophy rarely speak of how non-human animals fit into this metaphysical world-view, at least under the former kind of Idealism, subjective Idealism). Idealism (especially Monistic Idealism), is invariably the metaphysical position proffered by neo-advaita teachers outside of India (Bhārata), almost definitely due to the promulgation of the teachings in the West of Indian (so-called) “gurus” such as Mister Venkataraman Iyer (normally referred to by his assumed name, Ramana Maharshi). See the Glossary entry “neo-advaita”. This may explain why such (bogus) teachers use the terms “Consciousness” and/or “Awareness”, instead of the Vedantic Sanskrit word “Brahman”, since with “Brahman” there is ultimately no distinction between matter and spirit (i.e. the object-subject duality). At the risk of sounding facetious, anyone can dress themselves in a white robe and go before a camera or a live audience and repeat the words “Consciousness” and “Awareness” ad-infinitum and it would seem INDISTINGUISHABLE from the so called “satsangs” (a Sanskrit term that refers to a guru preaching to a gathering of spiritual seekers) of those fools who belong to the cult of neo-advaita. Although it may seem that in a couple of places in this treatise, that a form of Monistic Idealism is presented to the reader, the metaphysical view postulated here is, in fact, a form of neutral monism known as “decompositional dual-aspect monism” (“advaita”, in Sanskrit), and is a far more complete perspective than the immaterialism proposed by Idealism, and is the one realized and taught by the most enlightened sages throughout history, especially in the most “SPIRITUAL” piece of land on earth, Bhārata. Cf. “monism”. N.B. The Idealism referred to in the above definition (and in the body of this book) is metaphysical Idealism, not the ethical or political idealism often mentioned in public discourse (e.g. “I believe everyone in society ought to be given a basic income”). Therefore, to distinguish between sociological idealism and philosophical Idealism, the initial letter of the latter term is CAPITALIZED.

¨I'll propose an idealist ontology more parsimonious and empirically rigorous than mainstream physicalism, bottom-up panpsychism, and cosmopsychism. The ontology also offers more explanatory power than these three alternatives, in that it does not fall prey to the hard problem of consciousness, the combination problem, or the decomposition problem, respectively. It can be summarized as follows: there is only universal consciousness. We, as well as all other living organisms, are but dissociated alters of universal consciousness, surrounded by its mental activity. The inanimate world we see around us is the extrinsic appearance of this activity. The living organisms we share the world with are the extrinsic appearances of other dissociated alters.¨ Bernardo Kastrup

How do you know it's an apple? What things make it an apple? What collection of things do you filter to make it an apple?

Another issue with Bernardo's claim that "Our brain would turn into an entropic soup if we perceived all that there is to perceive therefore we don't perceive all that there is to perceive." this argument has a hidden claim within that has not been justified which is that there exists a threshold for all systems (brain in this context) where the amount of input is 100% not manageable. The issue with this is that it is conceivable that for every input that there is an experience, now will this be an incredible amount of sensory recognition? Absolutely but that is way different from it being impossible or inducing the dissolution of the brain Although I do agree with the conclusion that our senses are limited in perceiving all that there is in reality but for other arguments, NOT because our brain would self-destruct if it tried to handle every input. Also worth noting that Bernardo actually has much better arguments for why our perception is limited in his books. Specifically "Why Materialism is Baloney"

I have trouble understanding Kastrup's explanation of how my consciousness dissolves into one with MAL after death.😅

Yeah, the dispersion argument is poor, but there is a technical reason why there cannot be a bijection between the number of external, real modelled states, and the number of internal modelling states: since in that situation, there just isn't enough free-energy to keep the system coherent and distinct from its environment, therefore such a situation ends up with the modeller dissolving into its environment. Now the issue is: is there the capacity for our models to be a _lossless_ compression of the external states, or not? And how much should we care? Like it might be impossible to model all external states vis-a-vis kinetic theory, but we can do alright with statistical parameters. In spite of not having a _predictive_ model of some specific element of matter, we can have a theory, just from a set of general dynamics that we can't test, and a set of statistical dynamics that we can test (I'm trying to avoid phenomenology). So just because there may be objects that we can't model due to the constraints of our biology, I don't think it follows that we can't have a scientific theory about those objects that is true. Like, you'd have to _prove_ that there are objects we're ontologically committed to scientifically that have no phenomenology (in the physics sense of the word).

I haven’t read all the comments below. Hope I’m not nailing retreads on well traveled boots here: Yes, his model would be more parsimonious (if still lacking in some ways) if he were to position MAL as inclusive of all mental manifestations or expressions including what we experience as self reflexive consciousness. As you note, This would instantiate an evolutionary aspect to MAL. I think you suggest that there is no evidence of this? As there is no discrete evidence of MAL to begin with, this fact seems to be not much of a barrier. It is only logical deduction that leaves us with MAL as the root of the model anyway. Such an all inclusive entity couldn’t appear as an object to an individuated consciousness even in principle…. So, no problemo…. I am a baffled and ambivalent human with no solid answers about anything. Even so, from the vantage I do have and seeing with whatever clarity I can, the evolving MAL seems like a neat (in both senses) model. It definitely rhymes with our basic experience of life and our teleological experience of “growing”. Also: Yes, he conflates heirarchal levels of causation. You can’t use an evolutionary rationale as he does…. Still, (as a casual and un-“academically -trained” fan of idealism, I think he has added significantly to this philosophy. His attempt to ground MAL and the entities that exist within the world of MAL as coextensive with sensory, emotional, and cognitive qualia (am I allowed to extend that term to the latter two categories???) is really admirable. I love him for it even if I don’t think we are all the way there…. I feel like he and you and I and a great many others want to know assuredly that we live in such a world/life. One crucial next step seems to me to be the task of understanding how “metabolism” and separate experience can work. Kastrups model only makes any sense if we can understand what’s special about metabolism. And we’d have to do so without resorting to the naive realism of materialist models. I don’t know, but I hope that some understanding related to the Penrose hameroff model of Orch-OR might help here? But can this be applied without propping the whole thing up on such such faulty reasons as have been pointed out here?

@purehorsepuckey

2 ай бұрын

The dissociated alter explanation seems as problematic to me as the hard problem….

Good job mate ... there are many holes in his "arguments", you point to some of them ! Nice to see people who can actually argue rigidly to point them out.

I really admire what Kastrup is doing, which is building up an idealist theory of reality, rather than just arguing for a vague idealism.