Bernardo, thank you so much! I spent my whole life in another cathedral of materialism. The intellectual framework of critical Care Medicine. My thing was respiratory physiology. Last half year I have spent absorbing philosophy. First existentialism, epicureanism, stoicism, And finally, after watching Donald Hoffman, I understood perception. Rather I understood how perception is entirely bogus. That led me to idealism, finally, I found someone smarter than me, Bernardo Bernardo Kastrup.
There are moments when Bernardo was talking about Quantum physics that I was blown away by his eloquence. It was poetical in places. The metaphorical poetry of physics . E=🕉️✌️
This is an absolutely fascinating discussion. These topics remind me of the discussions between the physicist David Bohm and the spiritual teacher/philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti. It is interesting that by the end, the realiity of the psyche, including the objective end, seems to come into view. Anyway, I just recently discovered Dr. Bernardo Kastrup's channel, then found this channel -- both are wonderful contributions, thank you both!
more fantastic material from BK. He's a beacon of reason, idealism is without doubt the most parsimonious ontology - I'm yet to see a superior position or argument, and I'm looking.
@@candaniel yes. I'm not saying I'm absolutely sure it's true, but I am saying I am certain that materialism is basically false. Chomsky recently seemed to deny the existence of materialism as a paradigm - since there is no solid (excuse the pun) theory of matter...which I tend to agree with - but think he was actually skirting the question, sadly. Idealism is more convincing, and also for personal, intuitive reasons, it just "feels right".
There is a strange connection between philosophy of mind and computer engineers. What he said was his first computer had a processor designed by Federico Faggin who now has his own foundation to explore the nature of consciousness.
I think the field of Artificial Intelligence has taught us that the subject is more complex than first envisioned. People never thought a computer could beat a human grandmaster chess champion. Intelligence and awareness seem to be two different things and one does not require the other.
Perhaps in our exploration of consciousness we should start over, or start at the beginning. At multicellularity a rudimentary consciousness was no doubt born, but did not complex societies of microoragnisms do the same a billion years before? If we ascribe quantum information to what we call "consciousness", does not that information require a medium at any given time?
That is a good question and is the source of much controversy. Some will say that consciousness is not necessary for intelligent life. Look up the online novel 'Blindsight' by Peter Watts.
55:00 - 103:00 This would be the suggestion that "reality" is actually more pan-probabilistic than literal, and the "collapse" process samples from the pan-probability to create a single instance probability or "event". This does nothing to alter than pan-probable nature of the event, but it does alter what perspective you "see" it from. But certainly there are deep questions here. What is the "pan-probability" of my marriage selection, or the date and circmstance of my death? Who/what experiences those other aspects?
You seem to be dancing around the many worlds interpretation, where there is no collapse of the wavefunction (each pan-probable possibility exists in a part of the universal wavefunction), however the process of making an observation tells you which of all pan-probable universes you are in.
@@therationalview8744 Well, the MWI postulates explicit unfurling to a hard empirical "universe" for each bare possibility. I don't think that. I'm more in the "superposition" camp. The problem is though (I think this was touched upon in the interview, but I can't quite recall) that superposition is really a mathematical concept. What its "existential" significance is (if indeed it even has one, as I'm sure you know) is much harder to say. But maybe we don't need to know what the "pan-probable" is, only that it is. It may not be liveable (or even experienceable) anyway.
@@therationalview8744 When you say' you' you mean the imaginairy self or the conceptual mind .In fact ,the intellect is something people can't live with or without .People talk about thinking but wat is thinking realy other than a constant flow of thoughts and these thoughts are always about 'What not is ' It's always about what should be or would be .Thousands of people have surched for the meaning of life and they ended up with more questions .There'srealy no one thinking ,try to find the thinker .
@@therationalview8744 Frankly it was just an errant thought. Not in either of y'alls league, though I can track y'all fair to Midland. No big, my man. Just let me say it was a humdinger of a talk... Seriously Mate...bloody BRILLIANT!! SALUTE...from fly-over Territory!!!
No - no one showed a neutron following two paths at the same time. That did not happen. There may be two paths the neutron *might follow* provided you don't watch what it's doing, but if you do watch it will only go one way. And if you didn't watch it, you're NOT ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT IT.
This is just a problem with language not being as precise as math. You are correct that we can't say what the neutron did, however there were two paths. Each path was designed to cause a known amount of spin rotation. Each neutron acted like it had taken on the properties of both paths combined. Feel free to make your own analogy to what happened that better describes the results.
@@therationalview8744 No no - I think you're basically right. We must consider the possibility of both paths in order to predict the one measured outcome correctly. So both paths matter. You're probably right about it being mostly a language thing. I think most people, when they hear a statement like this ("the neutron followed both paths at the same time") just can't resist thinking of that as the neutron "as a classical particle" (a hard little ball) following both paths. And that's just not right. On the other hand, the neutron "as a wave" certainly did follow both paths - the wave function used both pathways to work its effect on the final result. On the other hand, there's no way for us to look at something in the environment that confirms the neutron was on path A, and look at something else in the environment that confirms it was on path B - both of those things can't exist. If we can find evidence that it followed path A, that's a which way measurement and we won't find any evidence of path B (and that other "final" result will be different too). So I guess I just think that if we're guaranteed that there are no environment effects for "both ways" then it's just mistaken to say it that way. But like I said, I think you're right about language. The key thing people need to grasp is that we need to know that it did NOT "behave like a particle" as it traveled from the source to the destination. It behaved like a wave. I feel like when things like this are said, a lot of the time that distinction just gets lost in the language. Here's another way we might attack it. An ASPECT of the neutron travels both paths. But "the neutron" (which implies a whole to most people) does not. The thing that uses path A isn't "the neutron," and neither is the thing that uses path B. Neither one of those things is "the whole neturon." Each one is some... I don't know, "essence?" of the neutron. However we say these things that needs to be clear. Yeah, I think that's what's nagging at me. Common phrasing gives people the impression that "the neutron" (as if it's the whole thing) followed both paths. But when we say "the neutron followed path A" and "the neutron followed path B," the phrase "the neutron" there does not mean the same thing it means when we say "the neutron arrived at the screen." What followed either individual path is not the same thing that arrives at the screen. Together, with both paths, they're the same thing, but individually they're not. Sorry for rambling - I'm kind of working this out as I go along.
I agree with you 100%. What I like about the experiment is that it rules out the simplistic model of the DeBroglie guide wave interpretation that I had in my head whereby the particle is a billiard ball, and just the guide wave goes through both slits. On talking with experts I've found that the more refined guide wave theory says that, yes, the particle's coordinates follow definite trajectories, but the other aspects like charge and spin are spread out into the wavefunction, and this is perfectly fine. To my mind, however, this detracts from the elegance of what I thought the theory said.
I'm not convinced that a "pure subjectivity" is a meaningful concept. The existence of the world suggests that context and reflection are necessary in order even for primitive "consciousness" to know itself. The situation that could really fill out this philosophy, and which it seems to be missing at the moment, is a coherent account of how embodied experience supposedly modifies this primitive subjective field. Because without that, I don't really see much of an advantage over hard boiled materialism. Like hard boiled matter, this primitive field of subjectivity also seems not to care about suffering, not to care about our meanings and lives, not to be able to distinguish good from bad, etc etc. Without those things, I am struggling, to be honest, to see an improvement over materialism.
Great points. There is a thesis by a doctor that was looking for people with the highest wellbeing that did study quite a lot of people in 'non-dual' perception which reported 160/160 on their subjective well being scale. They also reported nearly 160/160 on average on their mystical scale, meaning they were seemingly functionally in a near constant mystical state - but very happy. One of them was a scientist and he has a lot of interesting videos online. I know Jud Brewer's lab has studied people in these states quite extensively too.
I think we are just starting to comprehend consciousness. We don't even have a good definition for it. I'm most excited about neurobiology and Artificial Intelligence where we are making great strides. We are already starting to have difficulty distinguishing what differentiates human intelligence from AI. I'm not sure, in the end, if there will be a difference.
@@therationalview8744 Sure we have a good definition of consciousness: that which it is to be and know oneself as something. Moreover, I think that definition is already complete. "intelligence" is a different matter altogether. One can argue for the "intelligence" or even the "sentience" of artificial systems. But consciousness and subjective experientiality are another matter altogether.
If there is an objective, purely mental non-physical world out there prior to measurement (which, per Bernard, becomes physical upon measurement), then where is it, given that universal mind is timeless and spaceless? The quantum scientific experiments he talks about are dependent upon physical apparatus that, per Bernard, has no stand-alone objective existence. So how can results from them prove that physical existence only manifests upon, and not prior to, measurement? Moreover, if the physical doesn’t exist prior being measured, how can you measure something that doesn’t exist, and then, magically, have it physically manifest? Just because the universe is in, and of (or derives from), universal consciousness, or mind, does not mean it can't be physical. Matter is nothing but congealed energy, and consciousness is energy (though Bernard doesn't seem to grok this). Hence, the physical is real (even before being measured), and this in no way contradicts universal mind as the all subsuming primitive.
Whoever you are are, That's an interesting question. Before measurement, quantum States exist as they exist in the real world. There are an abstraction. Upon on observation, they collapse into a single value. The real world does exist. That is abstract and nonverbal. Your problem is trying to think through it with language. You're asking if it doesn't exist before measurement. It exists as an abstraction. All possible States exist before measurement according to their statistical distribution. We don't have language for that! The more crucial issue is entanglement. Entanglement is geometrically (spastically) 5:43 impossible. What I mean is if we have locality in one place and locality in another place, they must be separated by defined laws in this universe. Yet there is particles with no interacting Force, this has to be that these particles exist in a non-spatial universe before measurement. States are entangled. The Nobel prize in 2022 was won proving this. Non-Locality. It's beyond my comment to explain it. I want to make a caveat, my interpretation of analytic idealism leads me to believe that before measurement entangle particles that exist in a non-spatial universe. This fits in because SpaceTime is created inside human consciousness. Before we create the world, it exists outside of known four-dimensional boundaries. My supposition is that spacetime is a user interface. SpaceTime contains four dimensions. Before that ontologically the substrate is a universe more abstract than four four dimensions.
@@MichaelJones-ek3vx I have written a book - "Nonduality and Mind-Only through the Prism of Reality" that refutes much of what Kastrup and you say. It will e published later this year.
Bernardo is a precious gem for western culture!Thanks for having him.
You're welcome!
So is it philosopher Edward Feser :)
Bernardo, thank you so much! I spent my whole life in another cathedral of materialism. The intellectual framework of critical Care Medicine. My thing was respiratory physiology. Last half year I have spent absorbing philosophy. First existentialism, epicureanism, stoicism, And finally, after watching Donald Hoffman, I understood perception. Rather I understood how perception is entirely bogus. That led me to idealism, finally, I found someone smarter than me, Bernardo Bernardo Kastrup.
There are moments when Bernardo was talking about Quantum physics that I was blown away by his eloquence. It was poetical in places. The metaphorical poetry of physics . E=🕉️✌️
He is a very good speaker. It was a fun interview. Would be better after a few beers I think... ;-)
Great content ! .... some of the best Q's I've ever heard asked to BK
Thank you!
I'm grateful for having access to such a wonderful content! This interview was definitely very enlightening. Thank you for posting!
Happy to do it. I love talking to interesting guests.
This is an absolutely fascinating discussion. These topics remind me of the discussions between the physicist David Bohm and the spiritual teacher/philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti. It is interesting that by the end, the realiity of the psyche, including the objective end, seems to come into view. Anyway, I just recently discovered Dr. Bernardo Kastrup's channel, then found this channel -- both are wonderful contributions, thank you both!
Thank you for the kind words! I am enjoying learning with you all.
more fantastic material from BK. He's a beacon of reason, idealism is without doubt the most parsimonious ontology - I'm yet to see a superior position or argument, and I'm looking.
Hylemorphism (philosoper Edward Feser) :)
Do you still ascribe to that opinion?
@@candaniel yes. I'm not saying I'm absolutely sure it's true, but I am saying I am certain that materialism is basically false. Chomsky recently seemed to deny the existence of materialism as a paradigm - since there is no solid (excuse the pun) theory of matter...which I tend to agree with - but think he was actually skirting the question, sadly. Idealism is more convincing, and also for personal, intuitive reasons, it just "feels right".
Always a pleasure listining to Bernardo...I'm still recovering from a conversation with him I had 1 year ago !!
I enjoyed our conversation too. He has a unique and interesting hypothesis.
Nice ⚽ metaphors Mr Kastrup 👍🏼
Is the dashboard a video game or a real world? If we crashed the plane would we figure it out?
In BK, the universe has found the mirror in which it can look upon itself.
There is a strange connection between philosophy of mind and computer engineers. What he said was his first computer had a processor designed by Federico Faggin who now has his own foundation to explore the nature of consciousness.
I think the field of Artificial Intelligence has taught us that the subject is more complex than first envisioned. People never thought a computer could beat a human grandmaster chess champion. Intelligence and awareness seem to be two different things and one does not require the other.
Excellent!
Thanks!
Does BK have a recommended book reading list for scientific and physics books?
Perhaps in our exploration of consciousness we should start over, or start at the beginning. At multicellularity a rudimentary consciousness was no doubt born, but did not complex societies of microoragnisms do the same a billion years before? If we ascribe quantum information to what we call "consciousness", does not that information require a medium at any given time?
That is a good question and is the source of much controversy. Some will say that consciousness is not necessary for intelligent life. Look up the online novel 'Blindsight' by Peter Watts.
55:00 - 103:00 This would be the suggestion that "reality" is actually more pan-probabilistic than literal, and the "collapse" process samples from the pan-probability to create a single instance probability or "event". This does nothing to alter than pan-probable nature of the event, but it does alter what perspective you "see" it from. But certainly there are deep questions here. What is the "pan-probability" of my marriage selection, or the date and circmstance of my death? Who/what experiences those other aspects?
You seem to be dancing around the many worlds interpretation, where there is no collapse of the wavefunction (each pan-probable possibility exists in a part of the universal wavefunction), however the process of making an observation tells you which of all pan-probable universes you are in.
@@therationalview8744 Well, the MWI postulates explicit unfurling to a hard empirical "universe" for each bare possibility. I don't think that. I'm more in the "superposition" camp. The problem is though (I think this was touched upon in the interview, but I can't quite recall) that superposition is really a mathematical concept. What its "existential" significance is (if indeed it even has one, as I'm sure you know) is much harder to say. But maybe we don't need to know what the "pan-probable" is, only that it is. It may not be liveable (or even experienceable) anyway.
What was the sci-fi that Bernardo stated he liked? Captions said Sonny Laflamme, but that's not it.
NM. He said Stanisław Lem. Loved Solaris.
Looking for the meaning of life is the prove that you think life is meaningless .
No. It is proof that you think life is imbued with the meaning you give it.
@@therationalview8744 When you say' you' you mean the imaginairy self or the conceptual mind .In fact ,the intellect is something people can't live with or without .People talk about thinking but wat is thinking realy other than a constant flow of thoughts and these thoughts are always about 'What not is ' It's always about what should be or would be .Thousands of people have surched for the meaning of life and they ended up with more questions .There'srealy no one thinking ,try to find the thinker .
@@hermansohier7643 perhaps just do what feels good at any particular moment
Is measurement then essentially dissociative?
Sorry, but I'm not an expert on Dr. Kastrup's theory--could you expand a bit?
@@therationalview8744 Frankly it was just an errant thought. Not in either of y'alls league, though I can track y'all fair to Midland. No big, my man. Just let me say it was a humdinger of a talk... Seriously Mate...bloody BRILLIANT!!
SALUTE...from fly-over Territory!!!
Thanks so much for the kind words! Much appreciated.
No - no one showed a neutron following two paths at the same time. That did not happen. There may be two paths the neutron *might follow* provided you don't watch what it's doing, but if you do watch it will only go one way. And if you didn't watch it, you're NOT ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT IT.
This is just a problem with language not being as precise as math. You are correct that we can't say what the neutron did, however there were two paths. Each path was designed to cause a known amount of spin rotation. Each neutron acted like it had taken on the properties of both paths combined. Feel free to make your own analogy to what happened that better describes the results.
@@therationalview8744 No no - I think you're basically right. We must consider the possibility of both paths in order to predict the one measured outcome correctly. So both paths matter. You're probably right about it being mostly a language thing. I think most people, when they hear a statement like this ("the neutron followed both paths at the same time") just can't resist thinking of that as the neutron "as a classical particle" (a hard little ball) following both paths. And that's just not right. On the other hand, the neutron "as a wave" certainly did follow both paths - the wave function used both pathways to work its effect on the final result. On the other hand, there's no way for us to look at something in the environment that confirms the neutron was on path A, and look at something else in the environment that confirms it was on path B - both of those things can't exist. If we can find evidence that it followed path A, that's a which way measurement and we won't find any evidence of path B (and that other "final" result will be different too). So I guess I just think that if we're guaranteed that there are no environment effects for "both ways" then it's just mistaken to say it that way.
But like I said, I think you're right about language. The key thing people need to grasp is that we need to know that it did NOT "behave like a particle" as it traveled from the source to the destination. It behaved like a wave. I feel like when things like this are said, a lot of the time that distinction just gets lost in the language.
Here's another way we might attack it. An ASPECT of the neutron travels both paths. But "the neutron" (which implies a whole to most people) does not. The thing that uses path A isn't "the neutron," and neither is the thing that uses path B. Neither one of those things is "the whole neturon." Each one is some... I don't know, "essence?" of the neutron. However we say these things that needs to be clear.
Yeah, I think that's what's nagging at me. Common phrasing gives people the impression that "the neutron" (as if it's the whole thing) followed both paths. But when we say "the neutron followed path A" and "the neutron followed path B," the phrase "the neutron" there does not mean the same thing it means when we say "the neutron arrived at the screen." What followed either individual path is not the same thing that arrives at the screen. Together, with both paths, they're the same thing, but individually they're not.
Sorry for rambling - I'm kind of working this out as I go along.
I agree with you 100%. What I like about the experiment is that it rules out the simplistic model of the DeBroglie guide wave interpretation that I had in my head whereby the particle is a billiard ball, and just the guide wave goes through both slits.
On talking with experts I've found that the more refined guide wave theory says that, yes, the particle's coordinates follow definite trajectories, but the other aspects like charge and spin are spread out into the wavefunction, and this is perfectly fine. To my mind, however, this detracts from the elegance of what I thought the theory said.
I'm not convinced that a "pure subjectivity" is a meaningful concept. The existence of the world suggests that context and reflection are necessary in order even for primitive "consciousness" to know itself.
The situation that could really fill out this philosophy, and which it seems to be missing at the moment, is a coherent account of how embodied experience supposedly modifies this primitive subjective field. Because without that, I don't really see much of an advantage over hard boiled materialism. Like hard boiled matter, this primitive field of subjectivity also seems not to care about suffering, not to care about our meanings and lives, not to be able to distinguish good from bad, etc etc. Without those things, I am struggling, to be honest, to see an improvement over materialism.
Great points. There is a thesis by a doctor that was looking for people with the highest wellbeing that did study quite a lot of people in 'non-dual' perception which reported 160/160 on their subjective well being scale. They also reported nearly 160/160 on average on their mystical scale, meaning they were seemingly functionally in a near constant mystical state - but very happy. One of them was a scientist and he has a lot of interesting videos online. I know Jud Brewer's lab has studied people in these states quite extensively too.
I think we are just starting to comprehend consciousness. We don't even have a good definition for it. I'm most excited about neurobiology and Artificial Intelligence where we are making great strides. We are already starting to have difficulty distinguishing what differentiates human intelligence from AI. I'm not sure, in the end, if there will be a difference.
@@therationalview8744 Sure we have a good definition of consciousness: that which it is to be and know oneself as something. Moreover, I think that definition is already complete. "intelligence" is a different matter altogether. One can argue for the "intelligence" or even the "sentience" of artificial systems. But consciousness and subjective experientiality are another matter altogether.
If there is an objective, purely mental non-physical world out there prior to measurement (which, per Bernard, becomes physical upon measurement), then where is it, given that universal mind is timeless and spaceless? The quantum scientific experiments he talks about are dependent upon physical apparatus that, per Bernard, has no stand-alone objective existence. So how can results from them prove that physical existence only manifests upon, and not prior to, measurement? Moreover, if the physical doesn’t exist prior being measured, how can you measure something that doesn’t exist, and then, magically, have it physically manifest?
Just because the universe is in, and of (or derives from), universal consciousness, or mind, does not mean it can't be physical. Matter is nothing but congealed energy, and consciousness is energy (though Bernard doesn't seem to grok this). Hence, the physical is real (even before being measured), and this in no way contradicts universal mind as the all subsuming primitive.
I get the feeling that Kastrup thinks mind is not made from matter and energy, but constitutes a deeper reality.
Whoever you are are, That's an interesting question. Before measurement, quantum States exist as they exist in the real world. There are an abstraction. Upon on observation, they collapse into a single value. The real world does exist. That is abstract and nonverbal. Your problem is trying to think through it with language. You're asking if it doesn't exist before measurement. It exists as an abstraction. All possible States exist before measurement according to their statistical distribution. We don't have language for that! The more crucial issue is entanglement. Entanglement is geometrically (spastically) 5:43 impossible. What I mean is if we have locality in one place and locality in another place, they must be separated by defined laws in this universe. Yet there is particles with no interacting Force, this has to be that these particles exist in a non-spatial universe before measurement. States are entangled. The Nobel prize in 2022 was won proving this. Non-Locality. It's beyond my comment to explain it. I want to make a caveat, my interpretation of analytic idealism leads me to believe that before measurement entangle particles that exist in a non-spatial universe. This fits in because SpaceTime is created inside human consciousness. Before we create the world, it exists outside of known four-dimensional boundaries. My supposition is that spacetime is a user interface. SpaceTime contains four dimensions. Before that ontologically the substrate is a universe more abstract than four four dimensions.
Time itself is a human construction.
@@MichaelJones-ek3vx I have written a book - "Nonduality and Mind-Only through the Prism of Reality" that refutes much of what Kastrup and you say. It will e published later this year.