The Weekend University
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.
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Bernardo Kastrup is the executive director of Essentia Foundation. His work has been leading the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism, the notion that reality is essentially mental. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and another Ph.D. in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence). As a scientist, Bernardo has worked for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the ‘Casimir Effect’ of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). Formulated in detail in many academic papers and books, his ideas have been featured on Scientific American, the Institute of Art and Ideas, the Blog of the American Philosophical Association and Big Think, among others. Bernardo’s most recent book is Science Ideated: The fall of matter and the contours of the next mainstream scientific worldview. For more information, freely downloadable papers, videos, etc., please visit www.bernardokastrup.com.
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It's weird that Bernardo never found audacity to oppose nato bombings of over 30 countries since the end of second world war, without any provocation, but he does blame Putin for defending his Russian speaking people from nazi atrocities.War in Ukraine started by these same nazi who burned over 50 people in Maidan, and than later by slaughtering over 15000 innocent civilians, from 2014-2022 until Russia decided to get in action …so there is no rules when it comes to measurements of people's ability to be
"intelligent" and at same time childishly emotional and completely biassed based on intentional misinformation..I am wondering if he is gonna call netanyahu hitler,like he does call Putin.😂
faraday (the fields) before maxwell
There are trillions of conscious beings ( including other animal species, besides humans) on this planet.
All these conscious beings live in the same physical world, they have very similar perception of their local environment.
So, it's the exact opposite:
Reality is the Physical World ( including of course all living beings) and consciousness is an emergent property.
At the fundamental level there are the laws of physics.
Reality is all that exists: Spacetime, matter fields, ( weakly or even strongly – who knows?) emergent entities and concepts ( like consciousness/ self awareness, free will, memory…), abstract concepts ( like mathematics, novels, musical compositions etc.).
All these exist, albeit in different levels.
A typical category error is the confusion between different levels of existence:
For example, free will is a vague, macroscopic concept, not something that affects the underlying, fundamental level of the basic laws of nature.
Idealistic / solipsistic philosophy is a circular dead end.
Received pronunciation please
Are we in for your struggle with definitions or something worthwhile and helpful ?
So did the big bang create the dashboard?
Reality is made of consciousness.
Is idealism winning over physicalism?
We need to allow ourselves the opportunity to dismantle institutions of thinking in order to progress, and perhaps quickly. Otherwise, I fear we may risk an ontological shock unlike anything our species has encountered to this point. We can start this transition now.
Oh, man, you have to be kidding. Spoilers: No science involved here at all. Just a bunch of either trivial observations or complete speculation bordering on nonsense. Whatever.
👏
Bernardo. I used mushrooms 2 days ago and was not close yo what u said it was in previous videos. I didnt see colors morr intense. I did not see fractals. All i felt was dementia. And for sure all time i felt ME. So i ddint lose the ego in the experience. Can you tell me why? I ate 5.5 grams.
Extremely interesting insights, but I think there is a fundamental logical inconsistency in the reasoning leading to the main conclusion. Let me explain.
He claims that a reduction in brain activity creates richer conscious experience. Therefore, this is shows that consciousness is not created by the brain. This is an absolutely unwarranted conclusion.
First, this actually might provide evidence to the contrary! Consciousness is created by the brain, and we see massive changes in consciousness relate directly to changes in the brain (lesions, less blood flow, etc). The fact that less brain activity creates richer conscious experiences doesn’t prove that the brain does not create consciousness. It merely proves that a change in brain activity produces a change in conscious experience. Period. It very may well that richer conscious experiences are CAUSED by less activity. This is actually a more warrantee conclusion.
Moreover, the paper he used to show more rich conscious experience is merely a survey, but does not directly actually provide a measurement on how rich the experience was. As of now, that is impossible to measure. The other examples are complexity of a text (also not a measurement of richness of experience) and a hand waved description of teenage choking trend.
Some of Bernanrdo’s points are incredibly compelling, and I find him a fascinating thinker pointing in an exciting direction. His final conclusion may very well be true (fundamental reality is not physical). But the line of reasoning presented here is logically inconsistent.
All our life we thought we knew it all to find out we knew nothing. The truth shall set you free if your smart enough to figure it out!😮
Excellent. Very stimulating.
FINALLY!
Someone with scientific credentials, who has identified the ONENES between CONSCIOUSNESS and materialism – a subject expressed by all true spiritual teachers over thousands of years but never fully understood by the materialistic mindset, even after Einstein gave the simple formula describing the secret of the so-called physical universe made of so-called solid matter…
E / c² = m
As I understand this we dont have brains😱
I don't know if the people in the comments have ever heard of Rudolf Steiner? I don't want to write a book here — but if haven't heard of him u should start reading him and listening to his lectures. Owen Barfield agreed with Steiner. Steiner said humans are made of 4 parts— physical form (plants, animals & humans) , our life force which he called etheric body (plants, animals, humans), consciousness which he called the astral body (animals and humans) and the I (humans). When we sleep the astral and the I leave our bodies (they are our soul/spirit) leave the body – that is why I guess you see less brain activity — but it is how we experience dreams and i guess psychedelic's. Steiner warned about going into the spirit side with out being properly trained there is good stuff and bad stuff on the other side. Taking psychedelics opens a door that maybe shouldn't be opened – they are crazy dangerous.
Is our brain physical or not???
So, since we don't have an equation for consciousness, it must necessarily be the case that only consciousness is fundamental?
Ok right . Lol
So, what did it mean when there is a space rock we don't see…….then slams into earth at a later date?
It's that just a representation?
Someone's been listening to Donald Hoffman
So, the answer to the hard problem
is to say "only consciousness is fundamental, these atoms arent here"???
Whatever…
It's fun to have lots of different people thinking about existence and stuff
but there is no empirical evidence
that proves any of it (metaphysical idealism, materialism, etc…)
So don't take it too seriously and don't fight amongst yourselves because
we will likely never have a definitive answer to "what is all this?"
But it doesn't seem to be too important either…. We have evolved to survive on the African plains, not to understand quantum mechanics or whatever the big existential questions are..
Statements like "materialism is bologna" is intentionally provocative because Bernardo wants attention.
In previous interviews kastrup has claimed that simulating the same brain structure and topology in AI does not imply that the AI is conscious.
If that's the case, why does he take the galactic brain topology to be an indication of consciousness?