{"id":1035,"date":"2024-11-05T12:16:26","date_gmt":"2024-11-05T14:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/whoweare.elementor.cloud\/?p=1035"},"modified":"2025-01-10T12:34:27","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T14:34:27","slug":"idealism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whoweare.elementor.cloud\/en\/idealism\/","title":{"rendered":"Idealism"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n

Idealism vs Materialism<\/h3>\n\n

Let\u2019s start again with a couple of quotes that should now sound familiar. The first is from Albert Einstein: \u201cSpace and time are modes by which we think, not conditions in which we live.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

The second comes from Ikhwan al-Sufa, an Arab philosopher who lived nearly 3,000 years before Einstein: \u201cSpace is a form abstracted from matter and exists only in consciousness.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

For the record, I didn\u2019t pluck these quotes from my Grandma\u2019s facebook page – they\u2019re from a Stanford University website<\/a> dedicated to Einstein and Gravity.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

Stanford University will also be helping us define some philosophical concepts – thanks to their excellent Encyclopedia<\/a> of Philosophy – \u00a0– because we\u2019re going to take a quick dive into \u201cIdealism\u201d.<\/p>\n\n

Donald Hoffman is an Idealist.\u00a0 His Interface Theory of Perception (ITP<\/a>) postulates that we interact with reality via the mental interface of our experience, which is being provided by our brain.\u00a0 This is pretty much a description of what\u2019s known as : Epistemological Idealism<\/em>. \u00a0 Defined by the Stanford Encyclopedia as follows:<\/p>\n\n

\u201cEverything that we can know about reality is presented to us by the mind\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

Everything we experience and know is a mental projection based on sense data and memory.\u00a0 Hopefully, after the last few chapters, this should no longer be a hazy concept – but no worries, we\u2019re about to look at our relationship with reality once again from two different perspectives : philosophy and neurology.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

So, are you a materialist or an idealist?\u00a0 Where do you stand, philosophically speaking?<\/p>\n\n

Do you live in the real world of solid things separated by empty space?\u00a0 Are you and the world really as they appear to be?\u00a0 Or are you stuck in some fuzzy wuzzy mental projection?\u00a0 Are you and your world a product of your own imagination?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

Obviously, it feels like the world we experience is real – we behave like materialists (or Realists, a similar worldview).\u00a0 But, spoiler alert!\u00a0 Despite materialism being the dominant consensus model of reality for the past century or so, even materialists must accept \u201cepistemological idealism\u201d and reject \u201cnaive realism\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

The naive notion that we always perceive life \u201cout there\u201d as it really is, doesn\u2019t hold up. Because of visual illusions for example, or because the reality we see is nothing like what physics tells us.\u00a0 Or simply because we don\u2019t all have the same experiences, and though we may all be wrong, we can\u2019t all be right – especially when these experiences are contradictory.<\/p>\n\n

And if we accept the current neurological model of consciousness – we\u2019ll get to that in a bit – then we must accept that experience is mental.<\/p>\n\n

If we accept that our experience of a material world is actually a mental state, does this mean that we can conclude that actual reality is fundamentally something mental? \u00a0 If my experience of reality is happening in my mind does this necessarily mean that the universe is made of mind, spirit, or pure consciousness?<\/p>\n\n

No – that would be a huge (illogical) leap.\u00a0 Like a fish swimming in the sea who concludes that the whole universe must be made of water.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

Nonetheless, I do get the impression some people are making that claim : that reality is fundamentally some sort of immaterial mind stuff.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

These folks are ontological or metaphysical Idealists.\u00a0 They espouse what could be called Hard Idealism, as opposed to its softer cousin : Epistemological Idealism.<\/p>\n\n

Before we explore the reasoning behind their worldview, let me just stick a pin where the main point of confusion arises :\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

When we say : \u201creality is fundamentally a mental construct\u201d everything hinges on what we mean by \u201creality\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

Do we mean \u201cwhat we see when we look at the world\u201d?\u00a0 Or do we mean some fundamental hidden truth about the world that exists independently from us?As we look at the arguments, we need to keep this dichotomy in mind, in order to spot any sudden bait and switch between these two concepts.<\/p>\n\n

Insert God here<\/h3>\n\n

Maybe I\u2019m poisoning the waters before we even dive in, so apologies, but there\u2019s something else I\u2019ve noticed about the people who identify as hardcore Idealists.\u00a0 They\u2019re biased.\u00a0 Which doesn\u2019t mean that Realism wins, because let\u2019s face it : we all are.<\/p>\n\n

We\u2019re all born into a particular culture, and many of us on both sides of the realist vs idealist debate have been bathed in some version of Platonic idealism.\u00a0 This is the idea that matter is somehow less than its essence. \u00a0Matter is somehow corrupted, less pure than its essence, which is some sort of ideal, perfect, timeless immaterial \u201cform\u201d. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n

We feel that our \u201cspirit\u201d or \u201csoul\u201d is who we really are.\u00a0 That our spirit is somehow superior, more essential than our material incarnation.<\/p>\n\n

So when Idealists argue for the primacy of consciousness over matter, they are often defending a religious indoctrination.\u00a0 When they speak of consciousness as the \u201cimmaterial ground of existence\u201d, they\u2019re actually talking about God.<\/p>\n\n

\"\"\n
The ontological primitive<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n

Donald Hoffman\u2019s father was a Christian preacher of the fundamentalist, new Earth creationist flavor.\u00a0 So basically all in, a Bible literalist.\u00a0 Even if Donald struck out on his own, becoming a respected scientist, he was born into a world where God was ever present – at home, in school, in church.\u00a0 So when he insists that consciousness is in some way more fundamental than its contents – contents like spacetime and the objects we perceive for example – with nothing to back up his claim, I get suspicious.\u00a0 I\u2019m thinking : presuppositions!<\/p>\n\n

Since I\u2019m sharing my suspicions rather than simply laying out the arguments – I might as well come clean : I can\u2019t stand Bernardo Kastrup! \u00a0 Or at least I can\u2019t bear listening to him or reading his stuff anymore.<\/p>\n\n

Bernardo appeared on my radar as the prominent defender of modern idealism, and so I listened to him.\u00a0 I read his book<\/a> of published papers : \u201cThe Idea of the World\u201d – and slogged through it multiple times, mostly failing miserably to understand what he was on about.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

Failure is painful, and so now I\u2019ve become somewhat resistant to Mr. Kastrup.\u00a0 I\u2019m suspicious of his cleverness, suspicious of his mysterious statements that remain mysterious however many times I try to engage with them.\u00a0 This of course may be entirely my fault – my difficulty comprehending complex math doesn\u2019t mean that trigonometry is a load of nonsense.<\/p>\n\n

Anyway, you have been warned.\u00a0 In spite of all that, I’m still going to present what little I have managed to grok from Kastrup\u2019s book.<\/p>\n\n

The Idea of the World<\/h3>\n\n

Bernardo begins helpfully by framing the materialist vs Idealist debate in two simple questions :\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

Are mind and matter polar opposites?\u00a0 Or does one arise from the other?<\/p>\n\n

If we\u2019ve never really explored this subject, these might seem like silly questions to ask.\u00a0 Are mind and matter opposites?\u00a0 We might say \u201cof course they are! – that’s what we mean when we say those words\u201d.\u00a0 Thoughts and ideas are not at all like hard solid objects.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

But apparently thinking about this kind of stuff confuses the issue somewhat.\u00a0 It tips our familiar conclusions upside down – it challenges our normal experience.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

\"\"\n
The thinker<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n

Both sides in this debate actually agree that mind and matter are very much intertwined.\u00a0 Both assert that one arises from the other – that\u2019s not where the disagreement lies. \u00a0 Materialists might insist that we have demonstrated extensively that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. \u00a0 By fiddling with brains we can directly affect mental states.\u00a0 Idealists will reply : \u201cit’s all in your mind dude – even your experiences and ideas about brains\u201d.<\/p>\n\n

Bernardo says : \u201cwe do not – and fundamentally cannot- know matter as confidently as we know mind\u201d.\u00a0 By which he means that our experience of a material world is an inference based on our interpretation of sense data and memory. \u00a0 The \u201cscreen of perception\u201d he calls it.\u00a0 Which sounds a lot like Hoffman\u2019s mental Interface of perception.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cWe cannot know matter as confidently as we know mind, because our knowledge of the world begins not with matter but with perception\u201d.\u00a0 This is basically epistemological idealism.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

The experiences we have of the world feel so real to us, that we confuse that experience for truth.\u00a0 When I stub my toe, the pain I feel is a hard solid fact.\u00a0 When I look at the sky, the blue I\u2019m seeing seems to be happening \u201cout there\u201d.\u00a0 We can make accurate predictions about the world out there, we can navigate that world effectively.\u00a0 All of which creates the impression that we are directly perceiving reality.\u00a0 We forget that what we are directly perceiving is a mental experience.<\/p>\n\n

In much the same way that we don\u2019t usually realize we are dreaming when we\u2019re dreaming – dreams feel real.<\/p>\n\n

\"\"\n
sweet dreams?<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n

Materialism is basically the failure to understand that the material world is a cognitive construct.\u00a0 We interpret sense data, we are not directly perceiving reality as it is.\u00a0 Matter is an inference, thus mental – mind is the only certainty.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

That last bit : \u201cmind is the only certainty\u201d is very much in line with Descartes’s : \u201ccogito ergo sum\u201d. \u00a0 Descartes\u2019 statement being the finality of \u201cradical doubt\u201d – his conclusion being that the only thing of which we can be certain is the mental experience.<\/p>\n\n

Anyway, the idealist concludes that what we call the \u201cphysical world\u201d is more accurately defined as the \u201ccontents of consciousness\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

Obviously all that we can experience <\/em>of reality is necessarily a mental state.\u00a0 But if an idealist is correct in asserting that we cannot be certain that the world is physical, on what basis can we assert that the totality of existence is exclusively mental?<\/p>\n\n

Bernardo does seem to assert that. \u00a0 He believes in a \u201cuniversal mind\u201d as the ground of all being.\u00a0 In his words : Universal mind is the \u201contological primitive\u201d (because he\u2019s a philosophy guy) – which just means : that from which everything else arises, the source of the whole shebang.<\/p>\n\n

He posits that reality is basically the expression of this universal mind, and that our subjective experience, our personal minds are like little pockets of consciousness.\u00a0 He believes that the one universal mind has somehow dissociated itself, and that this dissociation or segregation is responsible for all the seemingly separate identities that exist in the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

Unfortunately, as I have already said, I don\u2019t see why – I don\u2019t see the logical steps or reasons that lead to his conclusion.<\/p>\n\n

To back up his idea that our subjective experience is a dissociated bubble of the universal mind, he points to the mental health condition known as \u201cDissociative identity disorder\u201d (DID). \u00a0 Which is just sad and troubling, and in no way an argument for his hypothesis – other than to say \u201chey! these things happen, it’s not impossible\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

As for his main reasons why we should believe that fundamental reality is necessarily mental, you\u2019re going to have to ask him.\u00a0 As I said : I don\u2019t get it – and I give up.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

But let\u2019s just end with some of the arguments that I did manage to grasp :\u00a0<\/p>\n\n