Celebrating Bernardo's upcoming book 'Idealism in a nutshell' we're releasing these two lectures, originally filmed 22nd June 2020 as part of a four week course.
Lecture 2: The Case for Idealism is available here: https://youtu.be/Mar2X6bvid4
Our next discussion series with Bernardo starts 29th Oct and features as guest the celebrated neuroscientist Christof Koch: https://dandelion.events/e/y54ag
For future iterations of the open Q&A and discussions visit
https://adventuresinawareness.com/
Bernardo Kastrup's work has been leading the modern renaissance of the philosophical position, ‘metaphysical idealism’ that reality is essentially mental, an appearance in ‘mind.’ Bernardo 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 The Idea of the World: A multi-disciplinary argument for the mental nature of reality. For more information, freely downloadable papers, videos, etc., please visit www.bernardokastrup.com.
PROBLEMS OF MATERIALISM
0:00 Introduction
5:00 Materialism means mainstream metaphysical physicalism
8:00 Materialism = mainstream physicalism
8:45 Even militant materialists don’t understand materialism
Understanding what Materialism Claims
14:33 Understanding metaphysical materialism - - that conscious experience is only possible as an emergent property of complex arrangements of matter in the brain.
18:03 According to materialism, the world is only happening inside the skull
18:10 Matter is an explanatory abstraction of mind, happening in the mind
22:40 Scientists discovered it was useful to describe perceptions in terms of quantities, which capture relative differences in perceived qualities, eg, weight.
23:40 Materialism retains measurements and discards that which is measured
27:00 Materialism involves a confusion that creates the hard problem, the ‘explanatory gap’
28:10 It’s reducing the territory to the map, and failing to explain the territory
28:50 There is no contradiction between idealism and descriptions of nature
30:50 The difference between qualities and descriptions: experience vrs numbers/models
That what cannot be captured by numbers, which capture the RELATIVE difference in qualities, which only has meaning if having experienced the qualities
34:36 Idealism doesn’t deny consensus reality
36:45 Seeing through the hard problem of consciousness
39:35 The problem with materialism is not reductionism, it's what they reduce things to
41:30 Metaphysical materialism vs Ethical Materialism
44:25 Ontology, the study of what is, the essence of things
53:00 Defining “epiphenomenon” - something reducible, a product of something else, eg wetness is something that can not exist without water.. For a materialist, experience is an epiphenomenon of matter.
1:06:30 Science tells us how reality behaves, not what it is
Science examines how nature behaves
Philosophy in metaphysics is what nature IS
1:11:22 Materialist don’t understand materialism or evidence of science
The behaviour of nature contradicts ‘physical realism’ - objects existing in a defined way independent of observation, disproved by quantum experiments. Physicality arises only upon observation.
1:15:28 Summary of experiments that refute physical idealism https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/coming-to-grips-with-the-implications-of-quantum-mechanics/
1:16:48 Evaluating materialism based on logic, consistency, parsimony, empiricism and its explanatory power
1:30:40 Constitutive Panpsychism: materialism’s newest incarnation
an attempt to attribute consciousness to the description
1:34:39 Problems with Constitutive Panpsychism
1:37:50 2nd problem of panpsychism - attributing to experiences a structure only perceived on the screen of perception.
1:43:00 3rd problem if panpsychism - there are no separate particles, in the same way, there are no ripples separate from water - it can’t explain the apparent separation
1:51:22 Cosmo-psychism - an unnecessary label for idealism
The universe is in consciousness is different from the universe is conscious
2:02:20 Materialism nor panpsychism are tenable.
2:02:40 Which book to start with