Ep. 78 - The Case for Idealism | Dr. Bernardo Kastrup
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ต.ค. 2024
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Season 2 is here! The show starts up again with a fantastic interview with Dr. Bernardo Kastrup about idealism.
I've spent a lot of time arguing against physicalism and for a kind of "reluctant dualist" worldview, but I've not explained my position on idealism. So, I brought Dr. Kastrup on the show to give his case that only mental stuff exists.
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Bernardo is the reason I'm an idealist. His arguments can't be beat.
I’m an idealist by experience and intuition. I have a lot of appreciation for Kastrup’s rigorous methodology and his crusade to play on the philosopher’s playing field. Out nerd the nerds.
People who object to idealism, invoking a material world to explain regularities of nature, forget that they can only perceive these regularities as pictures in mind, so mind is enough to explain regularities.
Awesome defence from Bernardo,, A very sharp mind,,, Bernardo is the NEW face of LOGIC and scientific idealism
I'm glad you got around to interviewing Bernardo. This was a good one!
I am so so glad you had Bernardo. He is brilliant and your did a great interviewing him. Looking forward to see him again.
Holy hell, your back! You just made my week!
Great minds. Thank you!!!
Welcome back Steve!! I hope you were able to get well deserved recuperation.
Doesn't the very notion of a physical world in which there is no mind, entail the existence of at least one mind? Isn't this a sort of metaphysical slight of hand? First I imagine the Universe as it appears within my conscious awareness and then imagine that I am not imaging it to be so.
Surly it is easier to imagine a Universe in which there is only the 'appearance of matter', for we do so every night in our dreams. Also, from the perspective of the dream persona, there does exist a world which is independent of its limited consciousness, but neither the dream world nor the dream persona has any true existence apart from the cognizant awareness of the dreamer.
Well done, about as clear and succinct as it gets ... notwithstanding the opening lines of the Tao Te Ching ;)
Bernardo is the fucking man! I implore you to read his books, I'm on my second one now and they will change your anschauung
Matter is reducible to abstractions, abstractions are not reducible to matter. Abstractions are reducible to mind. Modus Ponens. Done.
What do you mean that matter is reducible to abstractions? Isn't that confusing ontology with epistemology. Since it really is that matter is reducible to being *DESCRIBED* by abstractions?
Eclectic Media If you remove one's epistemology from the world, what's left is vacuous. If you take a material object, any object, and remove all mental qualities, including concepts, what's left is inconceivable.
Also, our current model is messed up. We hope to describe all forms of mentality with material interactions. However, the abstract concepts with which we describe matter we hope to derive from complex material interactions. That's like trying to explain how interactions of billiard balls and trajectories give rise to the concept of position and trajectory.
Firstly, one cannot remove mental abstractions from material properties.
What is the difference between the height of an object and the concept of height? What is the difference between speed and the mental concept of speed?
Indeed, I am starting to take the view that the world is both describable by, and reducible to, information.
Our ontology hold that mathematics, for instance, is the result of physical interactions in a neural network. Yet the language we describe matter with is entirely mathematical. In essence, our ontology and epistemology is backwards. We are trying to use mathematical descriptions of the brain to derive the concept of mathematics.
This is hopeless.
Why are you refusing to separate the mind from the object it is aware of? Why are you insisting on saying objects are made up of mental qualities only? Which begs the question on there being physical qualities.
Because removing the observer from the system is an inconceivable notion. Without consciousness, the world becomes vacuous. I argue that physical properties, ie; spin, mass, charge, height or velocity, are no different from the mental concepts of spin, mass, charge, height or velocity.
Take simple Relativity, no, I'm not even talking about General or Special Relativity, but Gallelio's Relativity. Without a frame of reference, one cannot even make simple propositions such as "Object A is to the left of object B" or "Object A is moving at 100 m/s". Consciousness, as I hold it to be, *is* the way the world appears from a given frame of reference.
Perhaps a thought experiment would uncover the fallacy of Naïve Realism: walk into a room and look at a red teapot from its side from a distance of three meters. Note the image in consciousness. Close your eyes, and walk around to the front face at a distance of one foot. Open your eyes. Leave the room.
Naïve Realism is the belief that, in absence of the observer, there is still an image of a red teapot from its right-hand-side "out there"- but with no subject of experience.
Indeed, our visual system takes up 1/3 to 1/2 of our cortex. It seems as though our own nervous system has duped us into thinking that the world "looks like something" in the absence of consciousness.
If you want more, research Mathematical Idealism or Roger Penrose's "The Emperor's new Mind" or Donald Hoffman's theory of conscious agents.
I'm heading out for dinner.
@Language
You're just making a gaggle of assertions backed up by no reason or empirical evidence.
You're back!!!!
Then what is the medium that holds everything together and functions in a coherent manner if not information(language) (before perception, endogenous state)
Welcome back!
Well look who it is! Welcome back.
FINALLY!!!
Brilliant.
There isn't anything the physical can explain that the mental can't explain. Start with the ontological class that is most certain (consciousness), and there is no need for anything else. And remember, idealism isn't identical to phenomenalism or any type of anti-realism about the external world. Those are just types of idealism, the types that most people associate idealism with unfortunately.
Hi Steve, I am working on a new form of mathematics that will hopefully, once and for all, solidify our foundations of knowledge. It is incredible to me that so many brilliant minds have been deceived by subtle tricks in mathematics. Really, I want to let you know that the way your mind works with regards to mathematics is a lot like mine and I think it is *extremely* rare. It is extremely important not to get side tracked by "philosophical nonsense" of which there is so much out there. I recall a wonderful quote I read about a decade ago, "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." (Nietzsche). I just want to forewarn you that the "philosophical" discussions you are having are a bit like "talking with the devil" in the sense that many people are not after truth, even though they claim to be.
You can tell by the end the interviewer doesn't really understand why it is a better theory than materialism.
Steve. This is in response to your Seeking truth, rejecting faith video you posted in 2015. I posted there and here to make sure you read my reply. I am quite confused. I hear you saying that for every reason that was given in response to your question you replied with another question. Thus, creating the classic childhood merry-go-round Q & A that most every child gives their parents at some point, mostly: Why is the sky blue? In these cases the parents may give some answer they heard in school to which the child will respond "why?" They'll give another reply they may have read some place to which the child will again reply "why?" This cycle will continue until the parent, quite exasperatedly, will reply "that's just the way it is!" And the child will go away quite unsatisfied but not because the sky is not really blue and the parents are simply delusional, no! The sky is blue whether or not they gave their child the right answer or not.It's the same in your case with asking question after question. Just because your parents or pastor or whoever couldn't give a response that satisfied you for why G-D does/did what He did doesn't mean He didn't do it. It just means either 1: they didn't KNOW the reason, or 2: you just didn't really understand what they were telling you. And instead of them showing their exasperation for your lack of comprehension by saying "that's just the way it is!" They instead calmly replied "you have to have faith". Also, just so you'll know the word faith comes from the Hebrew word אמונה (Emunah) and it means to live in support of The will of G-D. It means having trust and believing in His intent amd care for you even if you don't understand the process. You see when you care for someone, you don't question every little thing they do because that's just annoying. I noticed a wedding band on your finger which I assume means you're married. How would you feel if your wife questioned virtually every decision you made? I think it would eventually cause problems in your marriage, don't you? The same is with G-D. I think theirs a serious problem in any relationship if one party is constantly questioning the others actions. You have to believe that the individual you chose to be with has your best interests at heart. If you choose not to be with them anymore than that's a different matter but for as long as you're choosing them its only fair to believe in their motives. I could go in more but this is already long enough. Sorry about that.
It’s been a while.
*A strong argument against idealism:* It seems to me that idealism treats the inner-voice (consciousness/mind) as being fundamentally different to the inputs from the senses. But perhaps the inner-voice is just an internal channel of communication that has been elevated to the same status as the inputs from the senses. They have all been tagged as trustworthy/real/true-input. Similarly, data created as a result of our internal processing (our thoughts) might be flagged as 'internal/imagined' data.
Having an internal communication channel at the same status as the input from our senses might explain why we believe that this inner-voice is just as real as the data from our senses. This is what gives us a sense of 'self' or consciousness.
One day I think it will be possible to create a sentient robot. It would be a mistake for the robot to assume its 'internal voice' is more valid than its other inputs. It would also be a mistake for the robot to assume that its internal voice can exist without any matter, and it would be a mistake for the robot to assume that inner voice (or 'mind' or 'consciousness') is the only thing that can exist.
If the human brain is a data processing device and if evolution has created our human inner-voice, then Idealism is just the result of a series of bad assumptions (just as the robot's assumptions would be mistakes).
+Karma Peny What do you mean by fundamentally different? Thoughts and emotions are two different kinds of experiences, but they're both still experiences. The same is true of your sensory experiences. Your inner-voice may be a different kind of experience than your senses but that difference doesn't necessitate any kind of ontological distinction between the two. They're just different experiences that happen in mind. I think that artificial biology may have the potential to achieve consciousness, but I see no reason to believe that computers will ever be conscious regardless of how intelligent they appear to be. There's no reason to believe that a single binary switch results in something like qualia. Why should adding more binary switches and complication change that? The only bad assumption that I see here is that consciousness is like a computer.
+Patrick Williams
What you adamantly refuse to accept is the possibility that you are nothing more than a biological machine, and that your consciousness (or feeling of 'self') is just an illusion that has evolved. Furthermore, I suggest that the reason you cannot contemplate this possibility is because this illusion is so good.
If you could contemplate this, then it would follow that these core principles of idealism are invalid assumptions:
- Consciousness is the origin and prerequisite of material phenomena
- Consciousness exists before and is the pre-condition of material existence
- Consciousness creates and determines the material and not vice versa
- Mind is something that has its own existence
- Idealism makes no assumptions
But you cannot see this because you refuse to contemplate that you might be made out of non-conscious material. Presumably you also refuse to believe that primitive nervous systems developed through evolution until eventually a primitive form of self awareness emerged. Either you refuse to believe that life is constructed from non-conscious atoms, or you refuse to believe that non-conscious life can evolve a consciousness.
All I am saying is that if you would look at things from a different perspective then you would appreciate that idealism _might_ be making a whole bunch of invalid assumptions. But as you refuse to even consider this viewpoint, you will never be able to appreciate it.
+Karma Peny I adamantly refuse to accept Dennettesque reductionism because it makes no sense. The activities of a machine do not explain conscious experience. What you are doing is pretending that the hard problem of consciousness does not exist, and that's not a valid answer to the hard problem.
_"Idealism makes no assumptions"_
Nobody argues that idealism doesn't make _any_ assumptions at all. The existence of consciousness is something that we know through our own experience, but the idea that everything around us reduces to consciousness _is_ an assumption. What idealists argue is that idealism makes the least amount of assumptions. The other assumptions that you listed are _not invalid._
_"But you cannot see this because you refuse to contemplate that you might be made out of non-conscious material."_
You are _assuming_ that my disagreeing with your position is because I have not contemplated your position. I have contemplated your position and found it to be nonsense. What you are suggesting is like saying 1 equals 0. You have not explained conscious experience.
_"Presumably you also refuse to believe that primitive nervous systems developed through evolution until eventually a primitive form of self awareness emerged."_
I would urge you to study what idealism actually implies before you make statements like these. I believe that life forms and their nervous systems came about as a result of evolution. I just hold that evolution took place within fundamental mind.
Patrck Williams said:
*I adamantly refuse to accept Dennettesque reductionism because it makes no sense."*
My point is made. You are outright refusing to even contemplate the possibility that a machine can experience consciousness.
*"The existence of consciousness is something that we know through our own experience, but the idea that everything around us reduces to consciousness is an assumption."*
You will not accept that 'the existence of consciousness' is an assumption. I suggest that our experience of consciousness is an illusion. An illusion simply means that what appears to be happening is not actually what is happening. You reject arguments similar to Daniel Denentt's because they don't make sense to you. I am suggesting that your logic is skewed by this illusion because the illusion is so convincing. You simply cannot accept that your very sense of experiencing stuff might be an illusion.
*"I believe that life forms and their nervous systems came about as a result of evolution. I just hold that evolution took place within fundamental mind."*
I presumed that you refuse to believe that self-awareness (or consciousness) developed out of non-conscious material through the process of evolution. Here you admit that nervous systems evolved but you reject that your concept of 'mind' resulted from this process. Instead you claim that evolution takes place within mind.
So my presumption about your position was entirely correct.
This will be my last post in this discussion as it is clearly going nowhere.
+Karma Peny Your point is not made. I have contemplated what you are saying and find it to be nonsense. There is no reason to believe that a simple system with one single binary switch should result in anything like subjective experience. Adding more binary switches and complication to the system does not change that. Your problem is that you have proposed no reason for why a computer that is made of non-conscious bits of matter should ever give rise to inner subjective experience. You are _ignoring_ the hard problem and that is why your brand of reductionism fails. It can't explain the basic fact of our existence.... consciousness.
_"You will not accept that 'the existence of consciousness' is an assumption."_
That's because consciousness is not an assumption.
_"I suggest that our experience of consciousness is an illusion."_
Illusions presuppose consciousness. Illusions take place within conscious experience. Without consciousness already present, there can be no illusions. What I am experiencing may fall under the category of illusion, but the fact that I am having conscious experience is a direct fact. I don't just _think_ that I'm having conscious experience, I _know_ that I'm having conscious experience.
_"I presumed that you refuse to believe that self-awareness (or consciousness) developed out of non-conscious material through the process of evolution"_
I don't believe that consciousness emerged from non-conscious material. I believe that mind is fundamental and that the evolution of living creatures took place within mind.
_"Here you admit that nervous systems evolved but you reject that your concept of 'mind' resulted from this process."_
That's because I have no reason to assume that mind emerged from non-conscious material. The existence of non-conscious material is an additional unnecessary assumption.
_"Instead you claim that evolution takes place within mind."_
As opposed to you, who believes that evolution took place within an abstract physical universe? I'd rather default to fundamental mind, because it is more parsimonious.
I enjoy the logic and persuasive brilliance of Bernardo. But when I listen to the Sam Harris podcast, Sam is the opposite of Bernardo. Sam even has brilliant guests, some silicon valley guys, others genius academics, all saying the opposite to Bernardo. So it's an uphill struggle.
What happens is people like Bernardo eventually vanish and the Sam Harris' of this universe still rule the cultural. The Sams of the world will still be peddling materialism, generation after generation until infinity.
Then another Bernardo pops up and vanishes back into the ocean like he never existed.
Moesy Pittounikos - not after psychedelics become mainstream
Sam did interview Donald Hoffman on his podcast. Also his wife is pretty open to the idea of consciousness being a fundamental reality. Your comment has literally no value and is pure garbage. Someone's slow to draw ontological and metaphysical claims than you are makes them somehow a bad person or an evil person as you are trying to potray. Go live your shitty life and leave intellecual discussion for people who are humble.
Please learn to interview well, you are interjecting your own questions to EACH question. Take a tip from the new “My Next Guest” with David Letterman, or literally anything. I was about to give you Patron money based on this, you’re annoying though
What kind of paradigms do you fallen under? Im a very wealthy established business man and his flow was great. The creation of a powerful ideal starts and ends with the decider. That is why i chose to be rich and productive because im honest with myself about physical phenomena.
Hi Steve - welcome back.
Nobody has experience outside of their own introspective thoughts, and so any presumption about what does or doesn't 'exist' has to be guesswork.
The major problem with a theory that only mental stuff exists is that ultimately everything is futile because nothing can be validated. Everything, including all aspects of your theory could just be a figment of your imagination.
Only by accepting the existence of a physical world can we ever validate any ideas. Yes our senses can be fooled, and so even our perception of physical reality might not be sufficient to validate ideas completely. However, if we accept that other people exist and that we have a shared physical reality then at least we have a framework which, if true, allows us to test-out ideas thereby testing their validity to some extent.
Either we accept futility or we accept the possibility of some degree of validity.
It seems most likely to me that a physical world exists (and is the only thing that exists). The brain provides our sense of 'consciousness', and this is merely the result of evolution. I strongly suspect there is an evolutionary advantage to believe that we are something more than just biological machines (we will value our lives more if we think we are something special). So I suspect that the various mind-related functions (such as perception, thought and imagination) are all just biological tricks that help our species to survive.
I love your channel. I hope you'll take a peek at mine sometime (& my Extreme Finitism website); I think you'll find we agree on so many things.
Curiously, I felt BK made the case that idealism is much less futile than materialism -- all quite relative and subjective of course ;)
Validating the contents of that which underlies the observable universe is futile. Under physicalism there's no way for us to know if the abstract physical universe that supposedly underlies the one of our experience is anything like the one that we experience. When it comes to validating the contents of the observable universe, physicalism does not have any kind of advantage over idealism.
I think that physicalism is tenable, but loses on grounds of parsimony.
There is an inherent problem with the idea that consciousness creates and determines the material (as opposed to it being the other way around). The problem is that 'consciousness' is a very high-level concept that is not easy to understand. If our starting block is so inexplicable then we have no choice other than to abandon any hope of understanding it.
With idealism we start with 'consciousness'. We cannot break this down into simpler constituent parts and so our understanding of what 'consciousness' means is curtailed by our belief that it is our fundamental starting block.
If we want to break difficult concepts down into simpler concepts in order to get a better understanding of them, then idealism fails when compared to materialism.
As you must know, there is an inherent problem with physicalism as well, and its ontological primitive of a quantum field, in that it doesn't explain consciousness -- which was the whole gist of the interview. I still feel that BK makes a case that there is a viable alternative. But it will surely be a challenge to overcome the current default paradigm.
Karma:
Sure, if you take mind to be fundamental then the existence and activities of mind are inexplicable. The problem is there is no way to explain mind without assuming a different set of ontological primitives whose existence is no more explicable.
It's not tenable to reduce consciousness to non-conscious constituent parts. That is why mainstream physicalism has taken the position that consciousness is not reducible to biological activity, but rather, is that which emerges from certain biological activities.
Physicalism is a metaphysics. It can't be validated because it is founded on a set of unfalsifiable assumptions that can never be observed to be true. From our position as observers we have no way of knowing whether the nature of that which underlies the world around us is mental or physical. So, unfortunately, there is no "hope" of understanding mind in the way that you may want to understand mind.
What you are essentially doing is assuming a new category of stuff so that you can explain the activities of mind by linking mind to your assumed stuff. I can understand your desire to break things down into material components, but if the idea that mind is fundamental and drives its own behaviors is tenable, then there's no reason to assume the existence of your 'stuff' beyond arbitrary preference. Occam's Razor sides with the idealist.