Breaking Convention
The notion that reality is ultimately grounded in consciousness rather than in a physical substratum occurs often as a mentation in altered states of consciousness, psychedelic or otherwise. This, however, is diametrically opposed to the conventional doctrine of the physical sciences, which maintains that the physical universe is the only, or at least the fundamental, form of reality. Does this mean that physical science requires us to dismiss the notion that everything is ultimately consciousness? Is this mentation a delusory artefact of altered states? No. This paper argues for a cogent and rational philosophy that defends mental monism – the principle that fundamental reality is of the nature of a conscious mind – without violating anything in science itself. This is a philosophy advocated by Adi Shankara in the Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism, and by Bishop George Berkeley’s Subjective Idealism.
Filmed at Breaking Convention 2017
4th International Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness
University of Greenwich London – June 30th – July 2nd 2017
https://www.breakingconvention.co.uk
Source
I hate how he rushed through at the end. I would have loved to listen to the whole presentation in detail. I could watch him for hrs.
Brahman is not god. It is translated as pure cosmic consciousness
Very nice, clear and funny! I don't think we will ever observe conscioucness with science, they already can't understand what the IA are saying to each other. Something are just to be felt. It's interesting though, that a discipline so anchored in rational perception of the world and its physicality, doubts so much the truth of its own body.
+Peter Lloyd Fascinating, much to ponder. I wonder if you in the book Mind and its Place in the World give argument or hold that our mind is part of one bigger mind (Brahman, Metamind etc)? Or just the Berkeleyan view that finite minds AND a unique infinite mind exists?
On a related tangent: one of the reasons we need conscious machines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3lM4BAVAxI