0:00 Welcome. 1:01 Why is analytic idealism not a version of solipsism? [correction: question by Awakening Soul] 3:48 Is it important for you to appear on shows with larger audiences, are there any updates on your planned appearances with Lex Fridman or Joe Rogan? 9:45 If the solution to the decomposition problem is via time, so that there is only one subjective perspective at any one given moment, where does memory and the rest of the world's information go when it's not being held in the current subject's mind? 18:54 If past life memories are simply a human being picking up on the dispersed mental contents of previous alters in the field of nature, then why do the mental contents almost always correspond to only one identity instead of any random person who’s ever existed? 29:00 Isn't a hierarchy of dissociation also possible? 31:39 Are you, despite your arguments against anthropomorphizing mind-at-large, not doing exactly that when attributing to it the human condition of Dissociative Identity Disorder? 32:40 [Floki the cat makes an appearance] 38:21 What do you think the best argument against analytic idealism is? 40:57 There is no evidence of transpersonal consciousness that can stand up to the atheistic refutation of it, therefore idealism is unfounded. [correction: misrepresented argument twitter.com/askingondiscord/status/1567920553238958082] 48:15 Do philosophers of blind or instinctive Will also make a similar move when they conclude that they think they discern this will-in-itself in the absence of any cognitive elements? 1:15:32 Can you take the idea of the evolution of consciousness and cognition out of the abstract, and more into the living, concrete domain? 1:25:19 In several subjects the observed mean differences between drug and placebo conditions even go in the wrong direction, can you help show me these result in a scientific paper? 1:29:16 [Bio break] 1:29:32 A paper on the neural correlates of DMT showed increased spectral power and delta, theta and gamma bands, but isn’t spectral power not equivalent to activity because the amplitude of the signal is left out? 1:42:00 How does the structure of a changeless field of consciousness give rise to such phenomena as space, time and physicality? 2:00:22 The answer to the best argument against analytic idealism. 2:10:23 How can mind-at-large be timeless when it is experiencing itself through dissociations? 2:23:46 You said the delineation of our body in not a question of epistemic convenience but an empirical fact. Could not one argue that the body is also a concept founded on epistemic convenience? 2:29:38 What is your response to the physicalist views that appeal to the grounding relation in order to explain the problems associated with physicalism? 2:38:13 What do you think the long term effect could be if people would accept the rationale of analytic idealism, and what do you think the collective effect of analytic idealism would be if it were broadly taught in schools? 2:47:41 Some personal experience and advice for people who are struggling with the psychological ramifications of analytic idealism. 2:51:53 Ending and some constructive criticism from Bernardo of Asking Anything. References 1:24:30 “Philosophy of Freedom” by Rudolf Steiner rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/RSP1964/GA004_index.html 2:26:38 “Silicon” by Federico Faggin siliconthebook.com
Bernardo, plz, plz plz go on Rogan's and Lex Fridman's podcasts. Given the potential change you could bring to the ideas of millions of listeners (and, yes, maybe that potential won't match Nietzsche's influence AFTER his death), nonetheless, in this world of dysfunction and dis-ease and one where social media can have incredible benefits to offset its even more incredible harms, you should set aside what, to me, seem inconsequential objections in the face of untold possible benefits and fly over to Austin!
Come on BK. Fight for what you believe in. I find it hard to believe your diamond is telling you not to do this. It’s a no-brainer. Its not about you! I hope you don’t fight this for years like you fought quitting the corporate world. Just do it… get it over with! Plz.
I wonder why Joe Rogan hasn't invited Donald Hoffman yet -- which I assume he has not since Don's been to everyone's show, great and small, even the very smallest and newest of RUclips channels, whether in person or remotely...if anything, I think Professor Hoffman's a slightly better first intro for Rogan's audience.
I would just like to say, in respect to one of your final questions, Bernardo's analytic idealism has had a profound impact on my life. In conjunction with many other ideas and work by others in several different fields, it is the glue that makes everything make sense. It may sound corny, but I feel better, more peaceful and happier having this view of reality. I think general acceptance in society would change much for the good. Good show. Thank you.
He’s correct about academia. I ended up leaving neuroscience in large part for the very reasons he explained. I was pretty heartbroken about the lack of commitment to Truth (though I understand why it is that way). Very difficult to be in it without having to play the game. I couldn’t figure out how to avoid the lack of integrity so I left to preserve my own. Needless to say these conversations are packed with nutrition for my intellectually starved mind! More more more! Thank you!
Well as Bernardo's said in some other video, with the rare exception of someone like Isaac Newton, most inventors and discoverers were *not* academics at the time of their inventions/discoveries! They only later received offers of academic appointments once their work was recognized...so, it would seem that historically/statistically, the best way to a cushy academic tenure is to first make your mark! (Of course, funding would be an problem even bigger than in academe, then...!)
Regarding the question asked at the @48:00 mark, I would have added a few more examples. 1-NDE's.. With no measurable brain activity, the subjects come back to report a continuity of experience and no break in consciousness. Some would argue they have an even greater experience. 2- Psychedelics. With a %30 or so reduction in brain activity, experience is actually increased and subjects report some of the most vivid experiences in their life. 3- Shared dreams. Two subjects can have the same dream on the same night and wake up the next day and explain exactly what was in that dream to a third party. They will go on to explain how they saw each other and experienced lucid dreaming together. Which would satisfy Leibniz's law in one of the essential orders of logic. This proves Jungs theory of a shared collective unconscious. I could separate Jung's findings into another proof using, for example, his Literacy of the Mithras correlation, but he does a better job than I ever could. Edit. I see he addresses this later on in the interview. However, I greatly appreciate something that Bernardo addresses that I don't think is addressed enough in philosophical discussions. How we even form our measurements and then structure those measurements in a debate format to begin with. Measurements of matter is just a measurement of mind. So while we're playing this philosophical game of measurements which is ultimately a measurement of mind, this can only be one prejudice perspective from an infantile point of view. I agree it is the only way of communicating, but let's see it for what it is.
Wonderful session - looking forward to the next one. To contribute to the question about how Analytic Idealism changes people, here's a lovely cameo. The other week I got distracted into explaining Analytic Idealism to a bright, curious 15 year old girl to whom I was supposed to be teaching chemistry. I spent about 15 minutes talking to her. The next time we met, she told me she had been thinking about it a lot, didn't fully understand it (!), but she said she "felt closer to the world". In fact, she had put into words exactly my own feeling.
Yeah well, I used to go to church and had the same exact feelings -- we're all Children of God, even if we didn't all know it or keep it in mind at all times, and the world was full of friends I haven't met! It's a great bubbly feeling but it won't last -- because Reality is The True God and It doesn't care how you feel about anything! I don't understand why everyone assumes wholesale widespread adoption of Analytic Idealism is gonna lead to a better world...businessmen will still figure out how to extract the most they can from you -- and since it's just "robbing Peter to pay Paul" (taking money from the left pocket and putting it into the right one [since we're all just instantiations of Mind at Large undergoing dissociation]) -- what's the worry if there are some poor people around; it's all just a temporary inconvenience anyway in the ultimate scheme of things!
Bernardo’s dazzling intellect, sincerity and passion is always a gift to witness. Now we need another discussion between him and his friend Rupert Spira on the fallout from mental conflict for both humanity and MAL. The belief that a peaceful mind (and heart!) is available only through ignoring suffering is a persistent fallacy. There is a rarely voiced implication that somehow it is selfish to be happy when people are under attack in the Ukraine, or pigs are being brutally slaughtered. When your heart genuinely “goes out” to other beings in distress, it is an expansion of love, not a contraction of guilt. And that can well be demonstrated by taking appropriate action. I have heard Bernardo talk of his anxiety over the collective anguish built up from the vast numbers of animals that pass though the callous mechanism of the meat industry. Shall we add to that anguish with our own? What effect does that have on MAL?
On observing evidence of dissociation within our own experience: "Something peculiar operates in us. Every impulse that arises in us says 'I'. When our bodies are hungry, we say 'I want to eat' and think that it is 'I' that is hungry. But this 'I' that wants to eat is only a state of the instrument**. If anger arises in our feelings, we say, 'I am angry' with the attitude that this anger is an act of 'I', something freely chosen from within and not merely an automatic/conditioned reaction. 'I' is what we call our will and believe to be the agent of all our acts. In this sense we are deceived when we assume the 'I' is one integrated coherent unity. It is possible to observe within our own experience that almost every vagrant impulse, almost every chance desire, nearly every passing feeling announces itself under the guise of 'I'. As we make these observations within our own experience, we can begin to see these observations lead to the conclusion that man has many 'I's and not one integral will, not one integrated 'I'. If we remember our definition of will as the role of the initiative in the use of our instruments (body, thoughts, feelings and sensations and combinations and clusters of such), we can also say that this means that our functions are not integrated and harmonized. As long as man is in this state where every subordinate part announces itself with the name of 'I', he has to all intents and purposes no coherent will at all. We can say he has the potential for an integrated will. However before this integration, he is mainly nothing but a bundle of conditioned reactions aka semi-autonomous complexes." This quote was adapted from the book "Deeper Man" chapter one under the heading "Will" by John G Bennett. ** Very often this state of the body is not real hunger that is natural to the organism. Mostly this state is being projected unto the organism. This projection is due to the power of a thought associated with a cluster of impressions in memory of past pleasure from eating food. It is this projection of thought based on past memory that makes the organism seem to be hungry in the present moment.This state is only a temporary desire for a momentary pleasure. This momentary pleasure is mainly used to mask and thereby provide some apparent relief from the state of some kind of mental discontent. The phrase "comfort foods" reflects this phenomena which is not natural hunger of the organism, it is a mental projection that seduces the 'I' into announcing 'I am hungry'.
This is great! I would love to see B. K. in more settings of moderated debates like on stage (in front of an audience also being able to ask questions to the panel) with members of various scientific communities who don't share or understand his views. I would like to know if those people are not willing to debate with him or if he does not want to participate in such setups. I think it would be super beneficiary to science to have more open debates with scientist from the materialist world view for all of us to witness.
Having come across Bernardo in the last year I regard him as the Galileo of Consciousness. The disappointing thing is that he seems to have been ' preaching ' his Idealism for about ten years . In the UK the materialists hold total sway . I would love to see him debate with Richard Dawkins or the scientist- celebrity Brian Cox ✌️🕉️
@@Dhorpatan I think Bernardo will debate with anyone just to get his message across . Out of the many people who watch , there may be some that are converted to Idealism .
I think that Bernardo leaves out a lot of important data points when it comes to the reaincarnation question. There is just so much there that needs to be considered in a bayesian fashion: What about the strong sense of "that-was-me"-ness that usually comes with those experiences? Why do places/individuals connected with a previous life cause strong emotional outbursts in the present? What about the dozens of cases that come with bodily stigmata associated with lethal wounds/injuries in a previous life? What about between-life memories? What about the NDE - reincarnation connection? What about past lifes review during NDEs? ...and so on!
@@pandawandas I agree. However, I dont see why there is a strong need for him to defend his no-reincarnation hypothesis. If you look at all the evidence we have, the most parsimonious answer is simple: We reincarnate. It's perfecty coherent with his model and you dont have to jump through all the hoops and hurdles to explain the black swans away.
@@Xtazieyo I’m assuming it’s because he doesn’t want it to be true, as he’s said in other interviews he enjoyed the materialist view a lot before he became an idealist because it brought an end to suffering upon death. Reincarnation seems like the scariest option, because it could mean endless suffering time after time. Just my guess as to why he leans toward the data that suggests it’s not true over the data that suggests it is true.
@@Xtazieyo He addressed all the points you listed. He doesn’t need to defend a no-reincarnation model, he just doesn’t NEED it because it doesn’t have any philosophical explanatory power on its own. Btw his version of idealism says that You are dissociated from the whole; the whole contains ALL past AND future lives and ALL possible conceivable contents EVER. Reincarnation is just a subtraction of that ; remembering and integrating only SOME contents. He also can’t just include every useful fiction from every religious system in his philosophy, besides he already conceded it as a useful fiction ✅ Go back and see the chemical solution metaphor and useful fictions.
@@halimb4836 No he doesn't even remotely consider all the points in the reincarnation literature and I have propably watched every Kastrup interview avaialble. In most interviews, he remains kinda agnostic towards the possibility since the phenomenon itself works perfectly fine with an idealistic framekwork. It has a lot of explanatory power, so I dont know how you can come to such conclusion. In fact, if you take all the evidence into account (like I said, in a baesian fashion), the reality of reincarnation is a far more parsimonious than his current paradigm (in my humble opinion). The useful fiction metaphor is quiet an odd choice in this case. I argue that reincarnation is inherently part of the metapyhsical structure, while the useful fiction is a way to describe a functional adaptability of our dashboard. Bernardo is, by far, my favorite modern philosopher - however, this is my critique and I think its fair.
Guys, I ran an informal civil debate with Jefferey of "Too Late for the Gods," at the Bernardo Kastrup Fan Group on facebook. Where I was advocating for AI Philosophy to the best of my ability. Because he was complaining that Kastrup ignores him, and won't debate him. But it went further, he claimed that Kastrup is afraid to debate him. Which, was proven untrue at around 46:00 of this interview. The exchange stopped when I started presenting evidences for transpersonal Consciousness. And after having argued on behalf of Kastrup's Mind-Body Problem pdf about Consciousness as the ontological primitive. I have to agree that it is a situation where Jefferey is probably not thinking as deeply as Kastrup. Call that Dunning-Krueger, call it whatever. He's smart. It's just that Kastrup is operating on a higher level altogether. The double PhD isn't a fluke, Kastrup is really intelligent.
@@pythIV I've been narrowing down the argument finer and finer. It's gotten interesting. What it boils down to is that he's hung up on the mystery aspect of existence. Ultimate truth is an absolute mystery. Therefore, primary consciousness can't be the absolute truth. But what I've point out is that's not how it works. Existence can be taking place "In Consciousness," and yet the question of ultimate's is still a mystery. a Analytic Idealism is not debunked or refuted by this methodology.
@@mulgavephisinism6733 Jefferey mentioned it to me the other day. Ultimately, I see energy as inherently interconnected with awareness qualities. And side with Analytic Idealism. His arguments for everything is energy, but energy in and of itself is not inherent awareness, I don't find compelling. That's where we're at. Regardless of the issue of proposed refutations. There's a core intuitive issue taking place. And my intuitions are for the Idealist position over any physicalism - mystical or otherwise.
@@mulgavephisinism6733 I get what you're saying. Anyone who is trying to argue for physicalist metaphysics, regardless of how smart they are, will always be missing a major part of the reality puzzle. When you do understand idealist metaphysics, after having been a physicalist and not understood it, it's quite obvious that the previous uninformed opinions were straw man oriented. And a lot of projection comes from that platform of ignorance - concerning the idealists and what they actually do put forward. It became clear to me at some point, that trying to separate awareness out of the existence of anything is a fool's errand. The hard problem helped push me into that insight. Along with knowing about the observer issues. I kept looking at materialists trying to get away from the fundamental Consciousness conclusion via physicalist explanations, but they all tank against the hard problem. Jeffery doesn't offer any convincing arguments to bring someone who has already exhausted every avenue to explain reality without fundamental Consciousness, back into the physicalist fold. I just see it as physicalist apologetics at this point. Fluff to try and shore up the physicalist faith, basically. And it has no appeal to me. It's a backwards move from my perspective as an idealist now. Unwarranted backward move for no good reason.
Hi jack a small suggestion.. it would be a great discussion if you could get in swami sarvapriyananda and Bernardo kastrup together because swami is a non-dual Advaita scholar where as Bernardo is a philosopher and a physicist. Analytical idealism very closely resembles non-dual advaitam so we can get a spiritual perspective of a scientific hypothesis. thank you.
Big Bernardo fan! I would love hearing you from Texas Bernardo; however, I understand keenly you’re thoughts on the value of a more “understated” existence. Much Good Life to you, your girlfriend and your cat!
Does anyone know if Bernardo has an opinion on Plato’s theory of forms? Why are there 2 different kinds of mental experiences: mental images producing what we see, and mental images what we don’t see? If they are all mental states, why is it that one operates so vastly different than the other? I understand that say, a unicorn created in my mind, is a reference from a horse and some other horned creature. How we order these references in our minds is much more flexible compared to how we observe the world around us. Is there not a distinction here?
re 1:01, yes, but while it seems clear that information can temporarily pass away under the threshold of explicit awareness, it is not clear, at least not to me at this point, why this should automatically mean that a **separate centre of consciousness or apparent autonomous experience** can somehow form and know itself as itself, separate from other fields of information. That seems to me the real issue here. An argument can still be made, imo, that those other centres **are** in effect illusory so long as your centre is the one that is active. In other words "cosmic mind' is deceiving itself that multiple versions of itself exist, when in fact there is only one at any one "time". There is something about being completely, ontologically, unable to enter the life of "another" that suggests that something is indeed up with this.
I think Bernardo's wonderful comments about MaL being not about change or static imply that the inanimate universe is a partial image of a great dissociated alter rather than the fundamental Mind.
38:21 "the best argument against Idealism". The best *general* argument against Idealism (not saying that I don't support Idealism, but playing Devil's Advocate), is, imo, not especially the one Bernardo draws attention to, though that is interesting, but the fact that what we call "mental" does not seem to have much efficacy in nature when considered beside what we call "physical". It doesn't seem sufficient to simply redefine what we mean by "mental" because it doesn't completely dissipate the problem. So, for example, whatever influence someone's beliefs, hopes, determination may have on the progress of Alzheimer's Disease, and I'm not saying there isn't any, it does not seem nearly as much influence as what is going on in the brain in what we usually call a physical way. If we simply redescribe what is going on in the brain as a certain kind of "mental activity" at the cellular level, it seems problematic that it has few (if any) of the diagnosable characteristics we usually call "mental" and more problematic still that what we do call mental (our subjective mind) has such poor reach of influence over what we call physical. In other words, naively, it really does seem as if the "physical" rules the causal roost. This is hard to square easily with the claim that mentality is the underlying deepest power. Again, I'm not saying that I believe physicalism, or that I am against Idealism, but I think it is a problem that needs to be thoroughly examined, and provided with a (convincing) solution that I have not yet heard, even from Bernardo.
@@pandawandas Hello. Let me say I'm not against Bernardo. I'm more for him than critical. There are just some issues, imo. You say "Do you think you experience physicality outside of experience." That question is tautologically formed, so of course the answer to it has to be "no." Here is a better question: "does the metabolism of my liver cells exist 'mentally', and if it does, what characterises it as 'mental' and what 'mind' is it in? It certainly is not my conscious mind, so the question is non-trivial. An even better question: what characterises convection currents on the far side of Jupiter, outside of our direct observation and instrumentation, as "mental" and again what "mind" are they supposedly the mentation of? One can speculate about a "cosmic mind" but much the same questions apply to that... what are the characteristics specific to a cosmic mind that we can recognise them, and how do we know that convection currents of Jupiter are mentations of it? Even more importantly still, or at least just as important, if I do not experience and I am not conscious under surgery (which I am not) obviously *something* must precede consciousness and experience, and hence be more fundamental than it.
@@greensleeves7165 " You say "Do you think you experience physicality outside of experience." That question is tautologically formed, so of course the answer to it has to be "no." Great. So we agree that physicality is exhaustively experiential. "what characterises it as 'mental' " it corresponds to a certain experiential state. What you call your liver is the outer appearance of a non-metacognitive phenomenal experience you're having. ": what characterises convection currents on the far side of Jupiter, outside of our direct observation and instrumentation, as "mental" and again what "mind" are they supposedly the mentation of? " Ultimately, the entire universe is simply constituted of dissociated aspects of your *own mind.* That's the answer. It's all happening in you. "Even more importantly still, or at least just as important, if I do not experience and I am not conscious under surgery (which I am not)" This is begging the question, though. You not being conscious during surgery is entirely underdetermined by the well-understood phenomena of memory loss and subjective time dilation, both of which we know to exist, while we don't know that anything outside of consciousness exists. Indeed, it has been shown that during GA, you *are* conscious. You simply don't remember/don't re-represent these periods of consciousness afterwards. See "Isolated Forearm Test: Relevant, Unexplained" Furthermore, deep sleep, a state we associate with unconsciousness -- has now been empirically demonstrated to rather correspond to a state of very poor memory retention and unresponsiveness. See "Does Consciousness Disappear During Dreamless Sleep?" (Windt, et al, 2016)
Thanks for this amazing talk! considering the "adding up" of minds, when our dissociative boundary ends, or we die, the contents of our mind fuses with mind at large, so wouldn't that be proof that minds can "add-up"? Wonderful discussion, thanks again! 🌿
I believe the spirit of the question at 29:00 could be better described as "Is recursive dissociation possible?" or am I mistaken? For example, when we dream, our dream alter is dissociated from our 'real' alter. Couldn't it then be the case that we are dissociated alters within a bigger alter and so on? I am not certain if Bernardo has ever addressed this in an interview or article. If so, I would appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction 🙂. Thank you for the awesome interview series.
A Nice round 3 - BK is superior in argumentation - so whish that there where more questions that could match the high level logic, coherence and knowledge of BK☺️
40:13 I was waiting for the answer against the best criticism.. I want to know!! Where can I find it? He only said what the best criticism was.. But not what the answer to it was.. That's unfair!!! That was actually my only criticism while trying to wrap my head around Bernardo's ideas, meaning "what about cells taken out of one's body and cultured in a petri dish"? Any link? Now, if I was like one of those religious people who try to defend their own faith without knowing it in all details, I think I would try to use the following argument: Metabolism is the external appearence of a mental dissociation within the broader consciousness. A metabolizing organism is like a piece of the world that becomes a world on its own. It experiences not the world, but its own state modifications in the interaction with the world. A metaconscious center of awareness, on its turn, experiences its own state modifications in the interaction with the metabolizing organism. Metaconsciousness is thus a dissociation inside the dissociation that appears as a metabolising organism. And that's why I don't have any idea about how my metabolism functions. But then the question remains: does what a group of cells in a petri dish is the appearence of, have a single center of experience, of does each cell experience the world on its own? Wher does the center lies?
@@AskingAnything Thanks! I see indeed that Bernardo has not yet made his mind up in relation to that point. The issue is, indeed, one of boundaries. I would say that even putting the boundary at the level of the nervous system is problematic (you can still cut away part of the nervous system, or, in principle, transplant some part of it). May I ask you to ask him - in case another episode is to come - what he thinks of the ancient idea of the different kind of souls, meaning the idea that for example a human being is a life-form (analogous to verschijningsvorm) composed of a rational soul (whose object of love and desire is wisdom) nested in an animal soul (which desires pleasure and wants to avoid pain), nested in a vegetative soul (whose desire is to grow), nested in a mineral soul (whose desire is to persist in existence)? Also, what does he think of the language of the biologists, when they say that DNA is "read" in the cells in order to construct the organism? My impression is that they use metaphorical language without realising that they are using a metaphor. It seems like saying that a musical partition is read.. and that's why we hear the correspondent music.. Without being able to say how we get from the partition to the heard music! I hope you can transmit those question, that would be great!!
While it is true that traumatic information informs the reincarnation cases (whether biologically traumatic, as in wounds, or psychologically traumatic as in violent or dramatic death) it is also true that there is a geographically local variable of some kind acting. No small number of these "reincarnations" are right nearby...just across the street or in the next village along. Not in every case of course, but often enough to be of note. There is also some kind of "incompleteness syndrome" acting. It is not just violent deaths, but younger lives at time of death - lives cut short. It seems as if this kind of thing creates a more "ragged edge" in the fields of consciousness, or a more "reactive complex" (in Bernardo's terms). I do agree that this interpretation is more likely than literal reincarnation. However, I also think that some larger scale complex or mythic system in the general unconscious is gaming the whole subject, just as it does with near death experiences. It's not just a "happening" - our beliefs are being steered....not necessarily towards truth, but towards what this general unconscious deems it useful for us to believe. There are just too many reincarnation cases from reincarnation-believing cultures. It can't simply be a matter of reporting. On the other hand, I also think there is a deeper sense in which reincarnation may be the truer interpretation. If an individual is considered a certain system of potentials sported for expression by "mind at large" - if that potential is thwarted in its expression - especially if deeply or violently thwarted - it does not seem unreasonable to me that mind at large may seek to fulfil that potential again, using a renewed complex for the purpose. But in some cases, for the potential to be sufficiently similar, the complex (individual) would also have to be sufficiently similar that we are effectively talking about another instantiation of what amounts to the same "person", and if it is sufficiently close it may attract "memories" by a Sheldrake-like similarity effect. This could also make sense of the violent deaths and incomplete lives, both of which are potentiality-blocking scenarios. But it also has the advantage of making sense of the "geographically local" variable as well, because as a system still seeking to express it is likely to be drawn to circumstances (time, place, even people) familiar to the already existing complex. If (as indeed Bernardo himself has floated on occasion) nature is trying to achieve something through each of us, it does not seem unreasonable to me that it will try again if it does not succeed the first time. So in this limited sense at least, there may be some truth to the idea of reincarnation. The "childhood memories" phenomenon on the other hand doesn't really seem like this to me - it seems almost like a kind of possession by parasitic information clusters - especially the way in which they dissipate as the child ages and acquires an informational "centre of gravity".
I understand mind to be a process. I consider all process to be a product of material (that which can have interactivity). How does one get to the point wherein mind is all there is?
@Melle Licious Mind is not the starting point. Why? We don't start out aware of our mind; we start out aware of stuff which we later learn to distinguish as something other than ourselves. The observation of reality and the associated experiences is what allows the understanding of one's self as being distinct. Further, the observation of the cognitive ability and inability of others whether such is a product of genetic issues, chemical effects, and/or structural issues of the brain denotes the mind as being a product of the brain given the demostrable cause/effect linkages.
@@MyContext yes, you are aware of stuff that is distinct from you. But what is it that is aware? Your consciousness is epistemically fundamental. It is the primary datum of existence, therefore we know it exists, because we can't know anything else at all unless it exists first. "Material" is a label we give to the stuff we are aware of, but that it is of a different ontological category than consciousness is not a given. Matter is, technically speaking, just a way to explain our observations. Which is the question metaphysics asks...what *is* matter, ontologically speaking? If we can explain our observations of a distinct, consensus reality that has physicality through consciousness, then there is no reason to give matter, an explanatory model, its own ontic status. Occam's Razor would say not to. Rather, matter would just be how a phase of consciousness appears to our perceptions. Functionally, it would not change or conflict with any of science and what we know of how nature behaves. Btw, I'm open mindedly skeptical of all metaphysical theories. Just trying to answer your question, not trying to convince you BK is correct. Though I am curious how BK's theory could intersect with complexity science and information theories, which could help make his work less theoretical.
@@thedarkmikebass8530 [Btw, I'm open mindedly skeptical of all metaphysical theories. Just trying to answer your question, not trying to convince you BK is correct. Though I am curious how BK's theory could intersect with complexity science and information theories, which could help make his work less theoretical.] It seems that my core issue is that I don't find a there there for his idea. It strikes me as a "just so" claim with no basis to be claimed as being the case. If it were the case that reality as we experience it were a simulation, then this simulation is what we are denoting as reality and thus all of our references denoted as reality are actually about the simulation even as we label such reality. I find the case of our being a simulation to being identical to the case of our being "consciousness". How does one make the claim of our being consciousness or a simulation or being in a simulation and/or various other philosophically possible states outside of what we know while having no referential basis by which to do so? Understand that my issue isn't the claim per se, but rather how does one arrive at such a conclusion? The lack of a how results in the claim being purely assertion with no there there for consideration at least in my epistemic modeling. Your statement [But what is it that is aware? Your consciousness is epistemically fundamental. It is the primary datum of existence, therefore we know it exists, because we can't know anything else at all unless it exists first.] seems to be an attempt at addressing my issue. I understand that consciousness is a product of our of brain which BK seems to affirm via it seems accepting evolution thus in such an understanding we would not exist in the absence of what we denote as material. So, while I will grant that we couldn't make claims in the absence of an epistemology such is not foundational with regard to our understanding of what we denote as reality which it seems that he would affirm as well. Thus, the how of his concluding that consciousness is all that there is - alludes me.
@@MyContext bro read his book The Idea of the world ... its the best book from BK on thus subject ...its 10 academic peer reviewed papers...arguing YT comment section wont get u anywhere
@@mrcollector4311 I tend to buy books for entertainment or information advancing an understanding of reality. The former simply needs a subject area that is sufficiently inviting. The later requires a something that would seem substantive. Idealism seems to be purely a construct of imagination, which precludes there being a there there for consideration. It is on this basis that I am currently done with idealism due to finding no support for such being a state of affairs.
Bernardo is right. A new dissociation can pickup content from multiple memory trails in the universal mind. There are ample examples of a person being an incarnation of more than 1 personalities in Indian scriptures. Karna in Mahabharata was supposed to be an incarnation of 2 separate beings in one body. There are several other examples in the Purana texts. Laymen wouldn't get the mechanics of this, but someone like Bernardo would surely understand these metaphors and stories.
"There are ample examples of a person being an incarnation of more than 1 personalities in Indian scriptures." I am well aware, but the fact that the majority of the people in the literature seem to pick up only the mental contents of one individual and no animals or aliens or any other individual appears to be an unfathomably unlikely cosmic coincidence, considering these mental contents are just dispersed in the field of nature and are not contained within any boundary. It's like fishing in an ocean with 422,000 different kinds of fish and consistently only picking up salmon
@@pandawandas Animals included. Follow the story of Jada Bharatha. And the point you miss is this - even if a person picks up animal memories, who will verify the story for the animal? We have seemingly human coincidences because humans are the ones telling the stories. It's as absurd as saying, since we have only human lore & literature on Earth, animals probably didn't exist alongside. That said, there's a separate explanation that deals with how & why some manifestation picks up only some particular impression & not others. Like a flat head screwdriver can only open a compatible screw, similarly some bodies pickup only those impressions that the new being resonates with. There's a lot available on this topic for those who are sincerely interested.
@@TheYellowshuttle " Animals included. " Right, but that's not what I said. I didn't say that animals were never included, I did say that it was a tiny minority of the published cases. "even if a person picks up animal memories, who will verify the story for the animal? We have seemingly human coincidences because humans are the ones telling the stories." A lot of the cases are NOT verified.
Is the “fine-tuning” of physics for life (estimated probability 1 in 10^229, physicist Lee Smolin) evidence of a meta-cognitively designed world rather than the world just being the appearance of the instinctive state of MAL?
Thanks. I’ve just re-listened to that. He doesn’t directly address whether fine-tuning is evidence for meta-cognition nor how analytic idealism explains fine tuning.
@@beherenowspace1863 He does. He appeals to Markus Mueller's constructivism, it's right at the end of the AMA. It's the last question that I bug him about.
If our sensory perceptions are the encoding of MAL's internal state across our dissociative boundary as a result of evolution, why do we have qualitatively indistinguishable sensory perceptions in dreams? The dream world isn't a shared reality which suggests the perceptions aren't arising across a dissociative boundary with MAL, and our avatar body has not evolved?
Here is a Kastrup argument against qualitative materialism that seems relevant - I’ve added in the text in brackets: …notice that the qualities of perception-color, smell, flavor, etc.-also appear in dreams, imagination, visions, hallucinations, etc. Many dreams and hallucinations are qualitatively indistinguishable from actual perceptions, something I have verified multiple times-to my own satisfaction-during lucid dreams and psychedelic trances. So if colors and other perceptual qualities are really out there in the external world {are the result of our evolved senses and the dissociative boundary with mind-at-large}, then somehow our inner mental imagery can also incorporate the exact same qualities independently of the external world {of our evolved senses and the dissociative boundary with mind-at-large}. This is problematic for qualitative materialism {analytic idealism}, for it entails postulating two fundamentally different grounds for the same qualities… www.bernardokastrup.com/2020/01/a-materialism-of-qualities.html
Can we simply be little minds ( souls) that come from the creator ( Greater mind) ( spirit) that are like cells in a greater Being. Parapsychological studies, near death experiences, and miracles workers in the Catholic Church all point to this realist. (Individual souls) having a human experience
I'm glad to see the distinction come online clearly .. for me Idealism is a kind of Kosmic Solipsism and it's fair and accurate to call it as much with the caveat Bernardo names.
2:06:45 At this point I started wondering about the purpose of life...did it start out with a nervous system? Or did it start out as a bag of mush that eventually developed a nervous system. So I looked it up. First life on earth was bacteria obviously. And it turns out (though bacteria does not have the same type of nervous system as other animals) bacteria can sense things and "feel." AND bacteria communicate with each other similar to the way neurons do. Hmm.
There's a recent peer reviewed paper where scientists established that even the most simple 1 cell organisms are 'conscious', which aligns with your point
@@martin-hall-northern-soul Yes, all free-living metabolising unicellular creatures are conscious according to Idealism. But how would you explain their "agreement to co-operate" in a multi-celled being with multiple discrete organs?
@@beniscatus4917 I'm a believer Ben. As such, biology as it were is simply what dissociative mental processes appear as, from a certain viewpoint or 2nd person perspective. Thus, cooperation or symbiotic relationships between cells is inherent to the processes in universal mind (that those cells are icons of). Apologies for the 'cookie cutter' reply but I've swallowed the doctrine whole 😅
Excellent interview but I do believe that Bernardo has to keep up with the psychedelic literature if he is to keep discussing it. Increase in specific bands with DMT has been replicated as far as I'm concerned. This is not necessarily contradicting the studies Bernardo mentioned as they were done with different psychedelics.
2:38:44 I don't understand why Bernardo (and Donald Hoffman, for that matter) believes that if everyone were taught Analytic Idealism/Conscious Realism -- that if it were taught and accepted as fact or at least as being very, very plausible -- that somehow people would "automagically" be transformed positively and the world with it...I basically accept that it's true and while I was looking forward to the complete oblivion predicted by physicalism and am actually not happy at all at the prospect of simply continuing on as a part of Mind at Large after death, I think I actually even less inclined to worry about other people's suffering now -- since it's all just a sort of temporary illusion anyway! I mean, it's a bit like Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day," where if you know the whole thing is just some crazy game that you're stuck in, why not go for broke and have a fun little mass-shooting rampage! After all, this is all just Cosmic Mental Masturbation anyway, a huge circle jerk of cosmic proportions -- blowing you away would simply be blowing myself away so I'm not harming anyone else, after all; it'd be a victimless crime! -- so if anything this is all just a headset, a dashboard, a virtual reality game, and we'll all wake up as one so who cares how this dream courses along anyway! Someone should ask Bernardo that...ask him how Analytic Idealism would improve Zaphod Beeblebrox!!
In that regard, why isn't his Essentia Foundation doing kiddie books?? Though maybe it would seem politically volatile -- especially in Christian Fundamentalist America -- but hell, the Gay Lobby has successfully turned mainstream culture around, such that even political conservatives (and here it's both European and American) have to dutifully pledge allegiance to "marriage equality" and such...maybe take a page from them, Bernardo, if you want to reach the younger generation and change the future!
Beautiful English guys 👍. You might travel from Land's End to John O'Groats and not hear such eloquence - and just to make things more impressive the subject matter is somewhat complex to say the least 🕉️.
2:43:15 I wonder...I know for myself that when I was in unbelievably superb shape (people thought I was on steroids and I had no idea drugs existed for that), I was like a "fascist" over-achiever type, not quite a shark or wolf but in that neighborhood.... Now that I'm auch much more mellow fellow, I no longer have my eighteen-inch arms (Schwarzenegger had 22 and that was with drugs) or my eight-pack (got a big ol' keg now)...I've often attributed all this simply to the aging process -- but have always had the suspicion that a fire has subsided in me, that it wasn't just age but that I'd simply gone soft psychologically, becoming a liberal/progressive politically to a huge degree and with it the "live and let live" ethos that's correlated with the melting of my physique. And yeah, get sick more now, too (though luckily CoViD wasn't that bad)...so I've always wondered if it was something purely psychological going on with me with regards to my disappearing physique, which hardly needed maintenance once -- simply biological youth?? Or this"mind makes the body" idea Bernardo talks about???
No one can make a reasonable or meaningful claim about the ontology of the stimuli responsible for our Cataleptic Impressions. The External Limitations and Empirical Regularities registered by our Impressions are the qualities we can Objectively verify . On the other hand we can distinguish the Impressions formed by a mental state - thought (thinking running through a brick wall) from an actual empirical act (Physical Impression) of running through a wall. This is what's available to us . Going beyond those basic impressions and making claims about the nature of their is Pseudo philosophy. I thought we were done with magical explanations and pretending to know things we can not know in Philosophy..... Then again Bernardo will comeback saying that " i don't know", Its just more Parsimonious reasonable. Really? Assuming things beyond our Cataleptic Impressions is reasonable behavior? And removing entities and their qualities that you objectively register in your Impressions is not "parsimonious"....its cheating and dishonest....
Dear Bernardo, can you finally clean up your Essentia Foundation of all polutions like the words Darvinism, Neo-Darvinism and anything connecting to that dishonest man. He was not a pure compilator, he even devastated great work, honest work of Jean Baptiste de Lamarck by eliminating any connection of idealism to the Creation. I think it would be great to delete such names from your so great work.
Final comment....I always laugh with Pseudo philosophers when they try to compare their Unfalsifiable position with an other unfalsifiable worldview (i.e. Physicalism). Why are they avoiding Methodological Naturalism....an epistemic acknowledgment, not a metaphysical worldview.
I wouldn't take Bernardo's thoughts on brain oscillations too seriously: He interprets scientific findings such that they are consistent with his hypothesis on consciousness. For example, the leading hypothesis on alpha oscillations is that they inhibit the cortex and, indeed, they decrease in amplitude when the cortex processes (visual) information. So in this example, decreased alpha amplitude is associated with increased "experience" (and not the other way around). Alpha oscillations also increase in amplitude when you're drowsy, during propofol anesthesia, and is some types of coma. As a second example, the Fourier phases of spontaneous brain oscillations are random, which essentially says that the total spectral power equals the variance of the signal. It is therefore irrelevant which oscillations are constructive or destructive (unless you believe in a hypothesis and want to cherry-pick evidence for it).
"For example, the leading hypothesis on alpha oscillations is that they inhibit the cortex and, indeed, they decrease in amplitude when the cortex processes (visual) information. " Right, but under the psychedelic state, not only do inhibitory processes decrease -- but there is a decrease across all frequency bands a lot of the time. "which essentially says that the total spectral power equals the variance of the signal. It is therefore irrelevant which oscillations are constructive or destructive" Sorry, I don't understand how that follows. The variance of the signal isn't what we're looking for here.
@@pandawandas My point is that there is simply no direct relation between oscillatory power and the intensity or level of experience. This is already clear from looking at anesthesia, sleep, coma, etc. And picking out one state of mind (the psychedelic state) in which the two go hand in hand and using that to corroborate his hypothesis is just misleading and disingenuous. And even if there was a direct relation, it would prove nothing, because the relation between brain oscillations and the underlying spiking dynamics of individual neurons is not well understood and it is therefore premature to claim that oscillatory power is a good measure for the "level of brain activity". And even if is was a good measure, then it is still completely unclear why this would imply the non-physiological nature of experience. The other argument that Bernardo made about destructive/constructive interference (I even forgot what it was) doesn't make sense at all. Here again, Bernardo picks out what he needs, and even distorts it, to corroborate his hypothesis. This is not scientific, and there are indeed good reasons that this stuff is not published in mainstream scientific journals. Why don't you read some stuff from Christoph Koch on the neuroscience of consciousness or the book of George Buzsaki on brain oscillations?
@@NOCOMPLYE These studies are super-interesting and they tell us a lot about the brain and cognition, but they don't tell us what Bernardo wants them to tell us.
@@NOCOMPLYE First of all, try to not become defensive as this will cloud your thinking. At 1:41:09 Bernardo's says: "If experience is generated by brain activity, by metabolism, then the richness, complexity, and intensity of experience have to be grounded in an increased metabolism". So he (mis)uses these studies to argue that experiences are not generated by the brain (i.e. for philosophical idealism). I'm puzzled that you missed this, because it is the core of his philosophy.
Wait a minute -- so after taking care to properly describe the nature of "the best argument against," how it's a truly worth argument and why it can't be easily dismissed like other physicalist objections, Bernardo doesn't acturally say what that argument is...and Jack doesn't press him on it as a very natural follow-up????
2:50:52 Ugh...can't stand it why no one anywhere on RUclips ever challenges the notion that Analytic Idealism will "make" people more empathetic/understanding/kinder/etc. If anything, WTF is the point of anything; it's just The One being its natural dissociative self! We're just poor avatars of that One, that blind primordial Will, and will return to it soon enough so who cares??? On this score, I find Analytic Idealism/Conscious Realism a lot less satisfying than the nihilism of physicalism...Analytic Idealism feels a bit like insult on top of injury -- all this suffering and hey kids it was just a dream hahaha!! Such a horrible TV trope and now it's being rebooted as the season finale of "This Is Your Life!" Emotionally the Mind at Large of Analytic Idealism feels like such a huge letdown, like a real metaphysical "jump the shark" moment in intellectual history...so this Cosmic Mind is actually more mindless than someone with Down's Syndrome??? Seriously; it's just so unsatisfying that Cosmic Consciousness is so stupid. How the heck are folks not asking Bernardo about this???????? Seems like the most incredible thing of all the amazing insights of Analytic Idealism...that what we really are is fundamentally idiotic!!!
Hello Bernardo. Any time spent with Joe Rogan is not a "Big thing" as you phrased it. Rogan currently backs DeSantis for continuing governorship in florida - and other unconscionable sentiments. I say skip that one, who once supported alex jones, and listen to him whine a bit and then forget it. He is no philosopher. I personally wouldn't want to have Rogan in my portfolio when I die - recognized or not.
Hi Bernardo, the sufferings of the dutch farmers under the World Economic Forum tyrannical policies doesn't affects you? Are the dutch farmers outside the reachings of your enhanced empathy? Cuz sometimes you sounds as a CRINGE to the elitist globalist narrative, you know...So, is your empathy all for the Ukraine representation of the dashboard but dissociated from the dutch farmers side of the dashboard? Could the very dashboard be dissociated and enhanced empathy be conditioned by the mainstream politically correct narrative?
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
0:00 Welcome.
1:01 Why is analytic idealism not a version of solipsism? [correction: question by Awakening Soul]
3:48 Is it important for you to appear on shows with larger audiences, are there any updates on your planned appearances with Lex Fridman or Joe Rogan?
9:45 If the solution to the decomposition problem is via time, so that there is only one subjective perspective at any one given moment, where does memory and the rest of the world's information go when it's not being held in the current subject's mind?
18:54 If past life memories are simply a human being picking up on the dispersed mental contents of previous alters in the field of nature, then why do the mental contents almost always correspond to only one identity instead of any random person who’s ever existed?
29:00 Isn't a hierarchy of dissociation also possible?
31:39 Are you, despite your arguments against anthropomorphizing mind-at-large, not doing exactly that when attributing to it the human condition of Dissociative Identity Disorder?
32:40 [Floki the cat makes an appearance]
38:21 What do you think the best argument against analytic idealism is?
40:57 There is no evidence of transpersonal consciousness that can stand up to the atheistic refutation of it, therefore idealism is unfounded. [correction: misrepresented argument twitter.com/askingondiscord/status/1567920553238958082]
48:15 Do philosophers of blind or instinctive Will also make a similar move when they conclude that they think they discern this will-in-itself in the absence of any cognitive elements?
1:15:32 Can you take the idea of the evolution of consciousness and cognition out of the abstract, and more into the living, concrete domain?
1:25:19 In several subjects the observed mean differences between drug and placebo conditions even go in the wrong direction, can you help show me these result in a scientific paper?
1:29:16 [Bio break]
1:29:32 A paper on the neural correlates of DMT showed increased spectral power and delta, theta and gamma bands, but isn’t spectral power not equivalent to activity because the amplitude of the signal is left out?
1:42:00 How does the structure of a changeless field of consciousness give rise to such phenomena as space, time and physicality?
2:00:22 The answer to the best argument against analytic idealism.
2:10:23 How can mind-at-large be timeless when it is experiencing itself through dissociations?
2:23:46 You said the delineation of our body in not a question of epistemic convenience but an empirical fact. Could not one argue that the body is also a concept founded on epistemic convenience?
2:29:38 What is your response to the physicalist views that appeal to the grounding relation in order to explain the problems associated with physicalism?
2:38:13 What do you think the long term effect could be if people would accept the rationale of analytic idealism, and what do you think the collective effect of analytic idealism would be if it were broadly taught in schools?
2:47:41 Some personal experience and advice for people who are struggling with the psychological ramifications of analytic idealism.
2:51:53 Ending and some constructive criticism from Bernardo of Asking Anything.
References
1:24:30 “Philosophy of Freedom” by Rudolf Steiner rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/RSP1964/GA004_index.html
2:26:38 “Silicon” by Federico Faggin siliconthebook.com
I have a bunch of questions I think Bernardo would love answering. (I’ve seen all his RUclips videos.) Can we speak? :)
Bernardo, plz, plz plz go on Rogan's and Lex Fridman's podcasts. Given the potential change you could bring to the ideas of millions of listeners (and, yes, maybe that potential won't match Nietzsche's influence AFTER his death), nonetheless, in this world of dysfunction and dis-ease and one where social media can have incredible benefits to offset its even more incredible harms, you should set aside what, to me, seem inconsequential objections in the face of untold possible benefits and fly over to Austin!
Come on BK. Fight for what you believe in. I find it hard to believe your diamond is telling you not to do this.
It’s a no-brainer.
Its not about you! I hope you don’t fight this for years like you fought quitting the corporate world.
Just do it… get it over with! Plz.
I wouldn’t do it if I were him for the same reason he doesn’t want to.
I wonder why Joe Rogan hasn't invited Donald Hoffman yet -- which I assume he has not since Don's been to everyone's show, great and small, even the very smallest and newest of RUclips channels, whether in person or remotely...if anything, I think Professor Hoffman's a slightly better first intro for Rogan's audience.
Please keep blessing us with your perspective regarding reality. Humanity needs it. To hell with politics. Tell us the truth, Bernardo.
I would just like to say, in respect to one of your final questions, Bernardo's analytic idealism has had a profound impact on my life. In conjunction with many other ideas and work by others in several different fields, it is the glue that makes everything make sense. It may sound corny, but I feel better, more peaceful and happier having this view of reality. I think general acceptance in society would change much for the good. Good show. Thank you.
Agreed!
Bless you for these amazing discussions!!!!
He’s correct about academia. I ended up leaving neuroscience in large part for the very reasons he explained. I was pretty heartbroken about the lack of commitment to Truth (though I understand why it is that way). Very difficult to be in it without having to play the game. I couldn’t figure out how to avoid the lack of integrity so I left to preserve my own. Needless to say these conversations are packed with nutrition for my intellectually starved mind! More more more! Thank you!
Well as Bernardo's said in some other video, with the rare exception of someone like Isaac Newton, most inventors and discoverers were *not* academics at the time of their inventions/discoveries! They only later received offers of academic appointments once their work was recognized...so, it would seem that historically/statistically, the best way to a cushy academic tenure is to first make your mark!
(Of course, funding would be an problem even bigger than in academe, then...!)
“Nobody gains from the dysfunction of unchecked empathy.” 🤩🤯
Regarding the question asked at the @48:00 mark, I would have added a few more examples.
1-NDE's.. With no measurable brain activity, the subjects come back to report a continuity of experience and no break in consciousness. Some would argue they have an even greater experience.
2- Psychedelics. With a %30 or so reduction in brain activity, experience is actually increased and subjects report some of the most vivid experiences in their life.
3- Shared dreams. Two subjects can have the same dream on the same night and wake up the next day and explain exactly what was in that dream to a third party. They will go on to explain how they saw each other and experienced lucid dreaming together. Which would satisfy Leibniz's law in one of the essential orders of logic. This proves Jungs theory of a shared collective unconscious. I could separate Jung's findings into another proof using, for example, his Literacy of the Mithras correlation, but he does a better job than I ever could.
Edit. I see he addresses this later on in the interview. However, I greatly appreciate something that Bernardo addresses that I don't think is addressed enough in philosophical discussions. How we even form our measurements and then structure those measurements in a debate format to begin with. Measurements of matter is just a measurement of mind. So while we're playing this philosophical game of measurements which is ultimately a measurement of mind, this can only be one prejudice perspective from an infantile point of view. I agree it is the only way of communicating, but let's see it for what it is.
Wonderful session - looking forward to the next one.
To contribute to the question about how Analytic Idealism changes people, here's a lovely cameo. The other week I got distracted into explaining Analytic Idealism to a bright, curious 15 year old girl to whom I was supposed to be teaching chemistry. I spent about 15 minutes talking to her. The next time we met, she told me she had been thinking about it a lot, didn't fully understand it (!), but she said she "felt closer to the world". In fact, she had put into words exactly my own feeling.
Yeah well, I used to go to church and had the same exact feelings -- we're all Children of God, even if we didn't all know it or keep it in mind at all times, and the world was full of friends I haven't met!
It's a great bubbly feeling but it won't last -- because Reality is The True God and It doesn't care how you feel about anything!
I don't understand why everyone assumes wholesale widespread adoption of Analytic Idealism is gonna lead to a better world...businessmen will still figure out how to extract the most they can from you -- and since it's just "robbing Peter to pay Paul" (taking money from the left pocket and putting it into the right one [since we're all just instantiations of Mind at Large undergoing dissociation]) -- what's the worry if there are some poor people around; it's all just a temporary inconvenience anyway in the ultimate scheme of things!
Bernardo’s dazzling intellect, sincerity and passion is always a gift to witness. Now we need another discussion between him and his friend Rupert Spira on the fallout from mental conflict for both humanity and MAL. The belief that a peaceful mind (and heart!) is available only through ignoring suffering is a persistent fallacy. There is a rarely voiced implication that somehow it is selfish to be happy when people are under attack in the Ukraine, or pigs are being brutally slaughtered. When your heart genuinely “goes out” to other beings in distress, it is an expansion of love, not a contraction of guilt. And that can well be demonstrated by taking appropriate action. I have heard Bernardo talk of his anxiety over the collective anguish built up from the vast numbers of animals that pass though the callous mechanism of the meat industry. Shall we add to that anguish with our own? What effect does that have on MAL?
On observing evidence of dissociation within our own experience: "Something peculiar operates in us. Every impulse that arises in us says 'I'. When our bodies are hungry, we say 'I want to eat' and think that it is 'I' that is hungry. But this 'I' that wants to eat is only a state of the instrument**. If anger arises in our feelings, we say, 'I am angry' with the attitude that this anger is an act of 'I', something freely chosen from within and not merely an automatic/conditioned reaction. 'I' is what we call our will and believe to be the agent of all our acts. In this sense we are deceived when we assume the 'I' is one integrated coherent unity. It is possible to observe within our own experience that almost every vagrant impulse, almost every chance desire, nearly every passing feeling announces itself under the guise of 'I'. As we make these observations within our own experience, we can begin to see these observations lead to the conclusion that man has many 'I's and not one integral will, not one integrated 'I'. If we remember our definition of will as the role of the initiative in the use of our instruments (body, thoughts, feelings and sensations and combinations and clusters of such), we can also say that this means that our functions are not integrated and harmonized. As long as man is in this state where every subordinate part announces itself with the name of 'I', he has to all intents and purposes no coherent will at all. We can say he has the potential for an integrated will. However before this integration, he is mainly nothing but a bundle of conditioned reactions aka semi-autonomous complexes." This quote was adapted from the book "Deeper Man" chapter one under the heading "Will" by John G Bennett. ** Very often this state of the body is not real hunger that is natural to the organism. Mostly this state is being projected unto the organism. This projection is due to the power of a thought associated with a cluster of impressions in memory of past pleasure from eating food. It is this projection of thought based on past memory that makes the organism seem to be hungry in the present moment.This state is only a temporary desire for a momentary pleasure. This momentary pleasure is mainly used to mask and thereby provide some apparent relief from the state of some kind of mental discontent. The phrase "comfort foods" reflects this phenomena which is not natural hunger of the organism, it is a mental projection that seduces the 'I' into announcing 'I am hungry'.
This is great! I would love to see B. K. in more settings of moderated debates like on stage (in front of an audience also being able to ask questions to the panel) with members of various scientific communities who don't share or understand his views. I would like to know if those people are not willing to debate with him or if he does not want to participate in such setups. I think it would be super beneficiary to science to have more open debates with scientist from the materialist world view for all of us to witness.
Stay tuned.
@@AskingAnything - I imagine a long debate between B. K. and Richard Dawkins - what a feast that would be! :-)
@Dean Mitchell Sharmer?? Do you have a link?
Bernardo is my hero. love and respect.
Having come across Bernardo in the last year I regard him as the Galileo of Consciousness. The disappointing thing is that he seems to have been ' preaching ' his Idealism for about ten years . In the UK the materialists hold total sway . I would love to see him debate with Richard Dawkins or the scientist- celebrity Brian Cox ✌️🕉️
He did an interview with Michael Shermer, which actually was civil and went quite well. You can find it on RUclips.
@@LucasGage Thank you . I would like to see Bernardo in discussion with Alex on Cosmic Skeptic .
@@michaeldillon3113
How does it make sense for him to debate a biologist who has showed no interest or knowledge in stuff like this?
@@Dhorpatan I think Bernardo will debate with anyone just to get his message across . Out of the many people who watch , there may be some that are converted to Idealism .
P
Thank you for posting!
I think that Bernardo leaves out a lot of important data points when it comes to the reaincarnation question. There is just so much there that needs to be considered in a bayesian fashion: What about the strong sense of "that-was-me"-ness that usually comes with those experiences? Why do places/individuals connected with a previous life cause strong emotional outbursts in the present? What about the dozens of cases that come with bodily stigmata associated with lethal wounds/injuries in a previous life? What about between-life memories? What about the NDE - reincarnation connection? What about past lifes review during NDEs? ...and so on!
A lot of these points can be plausibly accounted for under Bernardo's model. Others, not so much. Especially the NDE part.
@@pandawandas I agree. However, I dont see why there is a strong need for him to defend his no-reincarnation hypothesis. If you look at all the evidence we have, the most parsimonious answer is simple: We reincarnate. It's perfecty coherent with his model and you dont have to jump through all the hoops and hurdles to explain the black swans away.
@@Xtazieyo I’m assuming it’s because he doesn’t want it to be true, as he’s said in other interviews he enjoyed the materialist view a lot before he became an idealist because it brought an end to suffering upon death. Reincarnation seems like the scariest option, because it could mean endless suffering time after time. Just my guess as to why he leans toward the data that suggests it’s not true over the data that suggests it is true.
@@Xtazieyo He addressed all the points you listed.
He doesn’t need to defend a no-reincarnation model, he just doesn’t NEED it because it doesn’t have any philosophical explanatory power on its own.
Btw his version of idealism says that You are dissociated from the whole; the whole contains ALL past AND future lives and ALL possible conceivable contents EVER. Reincarnation is just a subtraction of that ; remembering and integrating only SOME contents.
He also can’t just include every useful fiction from every religious system in his philosophy, besides he already conceded it as a useful fiction ✅
Go back and see the chemical solution metaphor and useful fictions.
@@halimb4836 No he doesn't even remotely consider all the points in the reincarnation literature and I have propably watched every Kastrup interview avaialble. In most interviews, he remains kinda agnostic towards the possibility since the phenomenon itself works perfectly fine with an idealistic framekwork. It has a lot of explanatory power, so I dont know how you can come to such conclusion. In fact, if you take all the evidence into account (like I said, in a baesian fashion), the reality of reincarnation is a far more parsimonious than his current paradigm (in my humble opinion). The useful fiction metaphor is quiet an odd choice in this case. I argue that reincarnation is inherently part of the metapyhsical structure, while the useful fiction is a way to describe a functional adaptability of our dashboard. Bernardo is, by far, my favorite modern philosopher - however, this is my critique and I think its fair.
Guys, I ran an informal civil debate with Jefferey of "Too Late for the Gods," at the Bernardo Kastrup Fan Group on facebook. Where I was advocating for AI Philosophy to the best of my ability. Because he was complaining that Kastrup ignores him, and won't debate him. But it went further, he claimed that Kastrup is afraid to debate him. Which, was proven untrue at around 46:00 of this interview. The exchange stopped when I started presenting evidences for transpersonal Consciousness. And after having argued on behalf of Kastrup's Mind-Body Problem pdf about Consciousness as the ontological primitive. I have to agree that it is a situation where Jefferey is probably not thinking as deeply as Kastrup. Call that Dunning-Krueger, call it whatever. He's smart. It's just that Kastrup is operating on a higher level altogether. The double PhD isn't a fluke, Kastrup is really intelligent.
Jefferey is obsessed with Kastrup.this alone makes Bernardo's decision not to talk to him a good one.
@@pythIV I've been narrowing down the argument finer and finer. It's gotten interesting. What it boils down to is that he's hung up on the mystery aspect of existence. Ultimate truth is an absolute mystery. Therefore, primary consciousness can't be the absolute truth. But what I've point out is that's not how it works. Existence can be taking place "In Consciousness," and yet the question of ultimate's is still a mystery. a
Analytic Idealism is not debunked or refuted by this methodology.
@@mulgavephisinism6733 Jefferey mentioned it to me the other day. Ultimately, I see energy as inherently interconnected with awareness qualities. And side with Analytic Idealism. His arguments for everything is energy, but energy in and of itself is not inherent awareness, I don't find compelling. That's where we're at. Regardless of the issue of proposed refutations. There's a core intuitive issue taking place. And my intuitions are for the Idealist position over any physicalism - mystical or otherwise.
@@mulgavephisinism6733 I get what you're saying. Anyone who is trying to argue for physicalist metaphysics, regardless of how smart they are, will always be missing a major part of the reality puzzle.
When you do understand idealist metaphysics, after having been a physicalist and not understood it, it's quite obvious that the previous uninformed opinions were straw man oriented.
And a lot of projection comes from that platform of ignorance - concerning the idealists and what they actually do put forward.
It became clear to me at some point, that trying to separate awareness out of the existence of anything is a fool's errand. The hard problem helped push me into that insight. Along with knowing about the observer issues. I kept looking at materialists trying to get away from the fundamental Consciousness conclusion via physicalist explanations, but they all tank against the hard problem.
Jeffery doesn't offer any convincing arguments to bring someone who has already exhausted every avenue to explain reality without fundamental Consciousness, back into the physicalist fold. I just see it as physicalist apologetics at this point. Fluff to try and shore up the physicalist faith, basically. And it has no appeal to me. It's a backwards move from my perspective as an idealist now. Unwarranted backward move for no good reason.
Hi jack a small suggestion.. it would be a great discussion if you could get in swami sarvapriyananda and Bernardo kastrup together because swami is a non-dual Advaita scholar where as Bernardo is a philosopher and a physicist. Analytical idealism very closely resembles non-dual advaitam so we can get a spiritual perspective of a scientific hypothesis. thank you.
Big Bernardo fan! I would love hearing you from Texas Bernardo; however, I understand keenly you’re thoughts on the value of a more “understated” existence. Much Good Life to you, your girlfriend and your cat!
👀 Saturday just got upgraded!
What a wise man! Thank you for make this interview available to us!
Does anyone know if Bernardo has an opinion on Plato’s theory of forms?
Why are there 2 different kinds of mental experiences: mental images producing what we see, and mental images what we don’t see? If they are all mental states, why is it that one operates so vastly different than the other?
I understand that say, a unicorn created in my mind, is a reference from a horse and some other horned creature. How we order these references in our minds is much more flexible compared to how we observe the world around us. Is there not a distinction here?
re 1:01, yes, but while it seems clear that information can temporarily pass away under the threshold of explicit awareness, it is not clear, at least not to me at this point, why this should automatically mean that a **separate centre of consciousness or apparent autonomous experience** can somehow form and know itself as itself, separate from other fields of information. That seems to me the real issue here. An argument can still be made, imo, that those other centres **are** in effect illusory so long as your centre is the one that is active. In other words "cosmic mind' is deceiving itself that multiple versions of itself exist, when in fact there is only one at any one "time". There is something about being completely, ontologically, unable to enter the life of "another" that suggests that something is indeed up with this.
I think Bernardo's wonderful comments about MaL being not about change or static imply that the inanimate universe is a partial image of a great dissociated alter rather than the fundamental Mind.
38:21 "the best argument against Idealism".
The best *general* argument against Idealism (not saying that I don't support Idealism, but playing Devil's Advocate), is, imo, not especially the one Bernardo draws attention to, though that is interesting, but the fact that what we call "mental" does not seem to have much efficacy in nature when considered beside what we call "physical". It doesn't seem sufficient to simply redefine what we mean by "mental" because it doesn't completely dissipate the problem. So, for example, whatever influence someone's beliefs, hopes, determination may have on the progress of Alzheimer's Disease, and I'm not saying there isn't any, it does not seem nearly as much influence as what is going on in the brain in what we usually call a physical way. If we simply redescribe what is going on in the brain as a certain kind of "mental activity" at the cellular level, it seems problematic that it has few (if any) of the diagnosable characteristics we usually call "mental" and more problematic still that what we do call mental (our subjective mind) has such poor reach of influence over what we call physical. In other words, naively, it really does seem as if the "physical" rules the causal roost. This is hard to square easily with the claim that mentality is the underlying deepest power. Again, I'm not saying that I believe physicalism, or that I am against Idealism, but I think it is a problem that needs to be thoroughly examined, and provided with a (convincing) solution that I have not yet heard, even from Bernardo.
What we call physical is literally a mental experience. There’s no problem there.
@@pandawandas I don't quite agree with Bernardo on that.
@@greensleeves7165 do you think you experience physicality outside of experience?
@@pandawandas Hello. Let me say I'm not against Bernardo. I'm more for him than critical. There are just some issues, imo.
You say "Do you think you experience physicality outside of experience." That question is tautologically formed, so of course the answer to it has to be "no." Here is a better question: "does the metabolism of my liver cells exist 'mentally', and if it does, what characterises it as 'mental' and what 'mind' is it in? It certainly is not my conscious mind, so the question is non-trivial. An even better question: what characterises convection currents on the far side of Jupiter, outside of our direct observation and instrumentation, as "mental" and again what "mind" are they supposedly the mentation of? One can speculate about a "cosmic mind" but much the same questions apply to that... what are the characteristics specific to a cosmic mind that we can recognise them, and how do we know that convection currents of Jupiter are mentations of it? Even more importantly still, or at least just as important, if I do not experience and I am not conscious under surgery (which I am not) obviously *something* must precede consciousness and experience, and hence be more fundamental than it.
@@greensleeves7165 "
You say "Do you think you experience physicality outside of experience." That question is tautologically formed, so of course the answer to it has to be "no."
Great. So we agree that physicality is exhaustively experiential.
"what characterises it as 'mental' "
it corresponds to a certain experiential state. What you call your liver is the outer appearance of a non-metacognitive phenomenal experience you're having.
": what characterises convection currents on the far side of Jupiter, outside of our direct observation and instrumentation, as "mental" and again what "mind" are they supposedly the mentation of? "
Ultimately, the entire universe is simply constituted of dissociated aspects of your *own mind.*
That's the answer. It's all happening in you.
"Even more importantly still, or at least just as important, if I do not experience and I am not conscious under surgery (which I am not)"
This is begging the question, though. You not being conscious during surgery is entirely underdetermined by the well-understood phenomena of memory loss and subjective time dilation, both of which we know to exist, while we don't know that anything outside of consciousness exists.
Indeed, it has been shown that during GA, you *are* conscious. You simply don't remember/don't re-represent these periods of consciousness afterwards. See "Isolated Forearm Test: Relevant, Unexplained"
Furthermore, deep sleep, a state we associate with unconsciousness -- has now been empirically demonstrated to rather correspond to a state of very poor memory retention and unresponsiveness. See "Does Consciousness Disappear During Dreamless Sleep?" (Windt, et al, 2016)
Thanks for this amazing talk! considering the "adding up" of minds, when our dissociative boundary ends, or we die, the contents of our mind fuses with mind at large, so wouldn't that be proof that minds can "add-up"? Wonderful discussion, thanks again! 🌿
I believe the spirit of the question at 29:00 could be better described as "Is recursive dissociation possible?" or am I mistaken? For example, when we dream, our dream alter is dissociated from our 'real' alter. Couldn't it then be the case that we are dissociated alters within a bigger alter and so on? I am not certain if Bernardo has ever addressed this in an interview or article. If so, I would appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction 🙂. Thank you for the awesome interview series.
oh never mind, he kind of answers this question later at 1:18:00 :-D
What is the thoughtful answer to the thoughtful question regarding transplanting neurons?
The first question about solipsism was not mine. (I know that solipsism only applies to a personal mind, not the transpersonal mind.)
I checked the forum again and I noticed you were summarizing Awakening Soul instead of asking the question yourself. My bad.
@@AskingAnything Thank you kindly, sir.
Excellent thank you
Why not a holarchy of perspectives rather than hierarchy?
How about AMA with Joshua Bach.? That'll be epic
I believe he covers this in round 2. There was an early interaction but they couldn’t get on the same page. …to put it lightly.
A Nice round 3 - BK is superior in argumentation - so whish that there where more questions that could match the high level logic, coherence and knowledge of BK☺️
40:13 I was waiting for the answer against the best criticism.. I want to know!! Where can I find it?
He only said what the best criticism was.. But not what the answer to it was.. That's unfair!!!
That was actually my only criticism while trying to wrap my head around Bernardo's ideas, meaning "what about cells taken out of one's body and cultured in a petri dish"?
Any link?
Now, if I was like one of those religious people who try to defend their own faith without knowing it in all details, I think I would try to use the following argument:
Metabolism is the external appearence of a mental dissociation within the broader consciousness.
A metabolizing organism is like a piece of the world that becomes a world on its own.
It experiences not the world, but its own state modifications in the interaction with the world.
A metaconscious center of awareness, on its turn, experiences its own state modifications in the interaction with the metabolizing organism.
Metaconsciousness is thus a dissociation inside the dissociation that appears as a metabolising organism. And that's why I don't have any idea about how my metabolism functions.
But then the question remains: does what a group of cells in a petri dish is the appearence of, have a single center of experience, of does each cell experience the world on its own?
Wher does the center lies?
Keep watching, he comes back to it later on (2:00:22)
@@AskingAnything Thanks! I see indeed that Bernardo has not yet made his mind up in relation to that point.
The issue is, indeed, one of boundaries. I would say that even putting the boundary at the level of the nervous system is problematic (you can still cut away part of the nervous system, or, in principle, transplant some part of it).
May I ask you to ask him - in case another episode is to come - what he thinks of the ancient idea of the different kind of souls, meaning the idea that for example a human being is a life-form (analogous to verschijningsvorm) composed of a rational soul (whose object of love and desire is wisdom) nested in an animal soul (which desires pleasure and wants to avoid pain), nested in a vegetative soul (whose desire is to grow), nested in a mineral soul (whose desire is to persist in existence)?
Also, what does he think of the language of the biologists, when they say that DNA is "read" in the cells in order to construct the organism?
My impression is that they use metaphorical language without realising that they are using a metaphor.
It seems like saying that a musical partition is read.. and that's why we hear the correspondent music.. Without being able to say how we get from the partition to the heard music!
I hope you can transmit those question, that would be great!!
While it is true that traumatic information informs the reincarnation cases (whether biologically traumatic, as in wounds, or psychologically traumatic as in violent or dramatic death) it is also true that there is a geographically local variable of some kind acting. No small number of these "reincarnations" are right nearby...just across the street or in the next village along. Not in every case of course, but often enough to be of note.
There is also some kind of "incompleteness syndrome" acting. It is not just violent deaths, but younger lives at time of death - lives cut short. It seems as if this kind of thing creates a more "ragged edge" in the fields of consciousness, or a more "reactive complex" (in Bernardo's terms). I do agree that this interpretation is more likely than literal reincarnation.
However, I also think that some larger scale complex or mythic system in the general unconscious is gaming the whole subject, just as it does with near death experiences. It's not just a "happening" - our beliefs are being steered....not necessarily towards truth, but towards what this general unconscious deems it useful for us to believe. There are just too many reincarnation cases from reincarnation-believing cultures. It can't simply be a matter of reporting.
On the other hand, I also think there is a deeper sense in which reincarnation may be the truer interpretation. If an individual is considered a certain system of potentials sported for expression by "mind at large" - if that potential is thwarted in its expression - especially if deeply or violently thwarted - it does not seem unreasonable to me that mind at large may seek to fulfil that potential again, using a renewed complex for the purpose. But in some cases, for the potential to be sufficiently similar, the complex (individual) would also have to be sufficiently similar that we are effectively talking about another instantiation of what amounts to the same "person", and if it is sufficiently close it may attract "memories" by a Sheldrake-like similarity effect. This could also make sense of the violent deaths and incomplete lives, both of which are potentiality-blocking scenarios. But it also has the advantage of making sense of the "geographically local" variable as well, because as a system still seeking to express it is likely to be drawn to circumstances (time, place, even people) familiar to the already existing complex. If (as indeed Bernardo himself has floated on occasion) nature is trying to achieve something through each of us, it does not seem unreasonable to me that it will try again if it does not succeed the first time. So in this limited sense at least, there may be some truth to the idea of reincarnation. The "childhood memories" phenomenon on the other hand doesn't really seem like this to me - it seems almost like a kind of possession by parasitic information clusters - especially the way in which they dissipate as the child ages and acquires an informational "centre of gravity".
If we have a stronger criticism for the next time, who and how do we send it to?
There’s an invite to the Discord server in the description. You can post your criticisms there.
A question i would have is
Is my subjective view of otherness
(People places things)
Or am i in someone else's
View
You might want to ask these kinds of questions over at our Discord - discord.gg/4y9pYY6YrH
I understand mind to be a process. I consider all process to be a product of material (that which can have interactivity). How does one get to the point wherein mind is all there is?
@Melle Licious
Mind is not the starting point. Why?
We don't start out aware of our mind; we start out aware of stuff which we later learn to distinguish as something other than ourselves. The observation of reality and the associated experiences is what allows the understanding of one's self as being distinct.
Further, the observation of the cognitive ability and inability of others whether such is a product of genetic issues, chemical effects, and/or structural issues of the brain denotes the mind as being a product of the brain given the demostrable cause/effect linkages.
@@MyContext yes, you are aware of stuff that is distinct from you. But what is it that is aware? Your consciousness is epistemically fundamental. It is the primary datum of existence, therefore we know it exists, because we can't know anything else at all unless it exists first. "Material" is a label we give to the stuff we are aware of, but that it is of a different ontological category than consciousness is not a given. Matter is, technically speaking, just a way to explain our observations. Which is the question metaphysics asks...what *is* matter, ontologically speaking?
If we can explain our observations of a distinct, consensus reality that has physicality through consciousness, then there is no reason to give matter, an explanatory model, its own ontic status. Occam's Razor would say not to. Rather, matter would just be how a phase of consciousness appears to our perceptions. Functionally, it would not change or conflict with any of science and what we know of how nature behaves.
Btw, I'm open mindedly skeptical of all metaphysical theories. Just trying to answer your question, not trying to convince you BK is correct. Though I am curious how BK's theory could intersect with complexity science and information theories, which could help make his work less theoretical.
@@thedarkmikebass8530
[Btw, I'm open mindedly skeptical of all metaphysical theories. Just trying to answer your question, not trying to convince you BK is correct. Though I am curious how BK's theory could intersect with complexity science and information theories, which could help make his work less theoretical.]
It seems that my core issue is that I don't find a there there for his idea. It strikes me as a "just so" claim with no basis to be claimed as being the case.
If it were the case that reality as we experience it were a simulation, then this simulation is what we are denoting as reality and thus all of our references denoted as reality are actually about the simulation even as we label such reality.
I find the case of our being a simulation to being identical to the case of our being "consciousness".
How does one make the claim of our being consciousness or a simulation or being in a simulation and/or various other philosophically possible states outside of what we know while having no referential basis by which to do so?
Understand that my issue isn't the claim per se, but rather how does one arrive at such a conclusion? The lack of a how results in the claim being purely assertion with no there there for consideration at least in my epistemic modeling.
Your statement [But what is it that is aware? Your consciousness is epistemically fundamental. It is the primary datum of existence, therefore we know it exists, because we can't know anything else at all unless it exists first.] seems to be an attempt at addressing my issue.
I understand that consciousness is a product of our of brain which BK seems to affirm via it seems accepting evolution thus in such an understanding we would not exist in the absence of what we denote as material. So, while I will grant that we couldn't make claims in the absence of an epistemology such is not foundational with regard to our understanding of what we denote as reality which it seems that he would affirm as well.
Thus, the how of his concluding that consciousness is all that there is - alludes me.
@@MyContext bro read his book The Idea of the world ... its the best book from BK on thus subject ...its 10 academic peer reviewed papers...arguing YT comment section wont get u anywhere
@@mrcollector4311 I tend to buy books for entertainment or information advancing an understanding of reality. The former simply needs a subject area that is sufficiently inviting. The later requires a something that would seem substantive.
Idealism seems to be purely a construct of imagination, which precludes there being a there there for consideration. It is on this basis that I am currently done with idealism due to finding no support for such being a state of affairs.
Bernardo is right. A new dissociation can pickup content from multiple memory trails in the universal mind.
There are ample examples of a person being an incarnation of more than 1 personalities in Indian scriptures. Karna in Mahabharata was supposed to be an incarnation of 2 separate beings in one body. There are several other examples in the Purana texts. Laymen wouldn't get the mechanics of this, but someone like Bernardo would surely understand these metaphors and stories.
"There are ample examples of a person being an incarnation of more than 1 personalities in Indian scriptures."
I am well aware, but the fact that the majority of the people in the literature seem to pick up only the mental contents of one individual and no animals or aliens or any other individual appears to be an unfathomably unlikely cosmic coincidence, considering these mental contents are just dispersed in the field of nature and are not contained within any boundary.
It's like fishing in an ocean with 422,000 different kinds of fish and consistently only picking up salmon
@@pandawandas Animals included. Follow the story of Jada Bharatha. And the point you miss is this - even if a person picks up animal memories, who will verify the story for the animal? We have seemingly human coincidences because humans are the ones telling the stories.
It's as absurd as saying, since we have only human lore & literature on Earth, animals probably didn't exist alongside.
That said, there's a separate explanation that deals with how & why some manifestation picks up only some particular impression & not others. Like a flat head screwdriver can only open a compatible screw, similarly some bodies pickup only those impressions that the new being resonates with. There's a lot available on this topic for those who are sincerely interested.
@@TheYellowshuttle " Animals included. "
Right, but that's not what I said. I didn't say that animals were never included, I did say that it was a tiny minority of the published cases.
"even if a person picks up animal memories, who will verify the story for the animal? We have seemingly human coincidences because humans are the ones telling the stories."
A lot of the cases are NOT verified.
A basic question: does the material world which we see on the dashboard have a corresponding world outside the dashboard? Wolter
Is the “fine-tuning” of physics for life (estimated probability 1 in 10^229, physicist Lee Smolin) evidence of a meta-cognitively designed world rather than the world just being the appearance of the instinctive state of MAL?
Bernardo addresses this in the first AMA.
Thanks. I’ve just re-listened to that. He doesn’t directly address whether fine-tuning is evidence for meta-cognition nor how analytic idealism explains fine tuning.
@@beherenowspace1863 He does. He appeals to Markus Mueller's constructivism, it's right at the end of the AMA. It's the last question that I bug him about.
If our sensory perceptions are the encoding of MAL's internal state across our dissociative boundary as a result of evolution, why do we have qualitatively indistinguishable sensory perceptions in dreams? The dream world isn't a shared reality which suggests the perceptions aren't arising across a dissociative boundary with MAL, and our avatar body has not evolved?
Here is a Kastrup argument against qualitative materialism that seems relevant - I’ve added in the text in brackets:
…notice that the qualities of perception-color, smell, flavor, etc.-also appear in dreams, imagination, visions, hallucinations, etc. Many dreams and hallucinations are qualitatively indistinguishable from actual perceptions, something I have verified multiple times-to my own satisfaction-during lucid dreams and psychedelic trances. So if colors and other perceptual qualities are really out there in the external world {are the result of our evolved senses and the dissociative boundary with mind-at-large}, then somehow our inner mental imagery can also incorporate the exact same qualities independently of the external world {of our evolved senses and the dissociative boundary with mind-at-large}.
This is problematic for qualitative materialism {analytic idealism}, for it entails postulating two fundamentally different grounds for the same qualities…
www.bernardokastrup.com/2020/01/a-materialism-of-qualities.html
Here is Bernardo's latest interview if you're interested ruclips.net/video/exbn0Dlu9ts/видео.html
I can listen to hours of Bernado
Can we simply be little minds ( souls) that come from the creator ( Greater mind) ( spirit) that are like cells in a greater Being. Parapsychological studies, near death experiences, and miracles workers in the Catholic Church all point to this realist. (Individual souls) having a human experience
I'm glad to see the distinction come online clearly .. for me Idealism is a kind of Kosmic Solipsism and it's fair and accurate to call it as much with the caveat Bernardo names.
Rogan, Fridman, and a bunch of the Austin transports should “jetpool” over to Amsterdam.
2:06:45 At this point I started wondering about the purpose of life...did it start out with a nervous system? Or did it start out as a bag of mush that eventually developed a nervous system. So I looked it up. First life on earth was bacteria obviously. And it turns out (though bacteria does not have the same type of nervous system as other animals) bacteria can sense things and "feel." AND bacteria communicate with each other similar to the way neurons do. Hmm.
There's a recent peer reviewed paper where scientists established that even the most simple 1 cell organisms are 'conscious', which aligns with your point
@@martin-hall-northern-soul Yes, all free-living metabolising unicellular creatures are conscious according to Idealism. But how would you explain their "agreement to co-operate" in a multi-celled being with multiple discrete organs?
@@beniscatus4917 I'm a believer Ben. As such, biology as it were is simply what dissociative mental processes appear as, from a certain viewpoint or 2nd person perspective. Thus, cooperation or symbiotic relationships between cells is inherent to the processes in universal mind (that those cells are icons of). Apologies for the 'cookie cutter' reply but I've swallowed the doctrine whole 😅
@@beniscatus4917 Would love to hear your thoughts on that. My biology knowledge is first grade, as you can probably tell
@@martin-hall-northern-soul It's a tricky issue, isn't it, but the way you put it makes sense to me. Ideas linking with (and building on) other ideas.
Excellent interview but I do believe that Bernardo has to keep up with the psychedelic literature if he is to keep discussing it. Increase in specific bands with DMT has been replicated as far as I'm concerned. This is not necessarily contradicting the studies Bernardo mentioned as they were done with different psychedelics.
2:38:44 I don't understand why Bernardo (and Donald Hoffman, for that matter) believes that if everyone were taught Analytic Idealism/Conscious Realism -- that if it were taught and accepted as fact or at least as being very, very plausible -- that somehow people would "automagically" be transformed positively and the world with it...I basically accept that it's true and while I was looking forward to the complete oblivion predicted by physicalism and am actually not happy at all at the prospect of simply continuing on as a part of Mind at Large after death, I think I actually even less inclined to worry about other people's suffering now -- since it's all just a sort of temporary illusion anyway!
I mean, it's a bit like Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day," where if you know the whole thing is just some crazy game that you're stuck in, why not go for broke and have a fun little mass-shooting rampage!
After all, this is all just Cosmic Mental Masturbation anyway, a huge circle jerk of cosmic proportions -- blowing you away would simply be blowing myself away so I'm not harming anyone else, after all; it'd be a victimless crime! -- so if anything this is all just a headset, a dashboard, a virtual reality game, and we'll all wake up as one so who cares how this dream courses along anyway!
Someone should ask Bernardo that...ask him how Analytic Idealism would improve Zaphod Beeblebrox!!
In that regard, why isn't his Essentia Foundation doing kiddie books?? Though maybe it would seem politically volatile -- especially in Christian Fundamentalist America -- but hell, the Gay Lobby has successfully turned mainstream culture around, such that even political conservatives (and here it's both European and American) have to dutifully pledge allegiance to "marriage equality" and such...maybe take a page from them, Bernardo, if you want to reach the younger generation and change the future!
Beautiful English guys 👍. You might travel from Land's End to John O'Groats and not hear such eloquence - and just to make things more impressive the subject matter is somewhat complex to say the least 🕉️.
2:00:20
THANK YOU!!!
Go on Rogan and bring Spira with you please!
Bernardo please do JRE 🙏🏽😢
2:43:15 I wonder...I know for myself that when I was in unbelievably superb shape (people thought I was on steroids and I had no idea drugs existed for that), I was like a "fascist" over-achiever type, not quite a shark or wolf but in that neighborhood....
Now that I'm auch much more mellow fellow, I no longer have my eighteen-inch arms (Schwarzenegger had 22 and that was with drugs) or my eight-pack (got a big ol' keg now)...I've often attributed all this simply to the aging process -- but have always had the suspicion that a fire has subsided in me, that it wasn't just age but that I'd simply gone soft psychologically, becoming a liberal/progressive politically to a huge degree and with it the "live and let live" ethos that's correlated with the melting of my physique.
And yeah, get sick more now, too (though luckily CoViD wasn't that bad)...so I've always wondered if it was something purely psychological going on with me with regards to my disappearing physique, which hardly needed maintenance once -- simply biological youth?? Or this"mind makes the body" idea Bernardo talks about???
No one can make a reasonable or meaningful claim about the ontology of the stimuli responsible for our Cataleptic Impressions. The External Limitations and Empirical Regularities registered by our Impressions are the qualities we can Objectively verify . On the other hand we can distinguish the Impressions formed by a mental state - thought (thinking running through a brick wall) from an actual empirical act (Physical Impression) of running through a wall.
This is what's available to us . Going beyond those basic impressions and making claims about the nature of their is Pseudo philosophy.
I thought we were done with magical explanations and pretending to know things we can not know in Philosophy.....
Then again Bernardo will comeback saying that " i don't know", Its just more Parsimonious reasonable. Really? Assuming things beyond our Cataleptic Impressions is reasonable behavior? And removing entities and their qualities that you objectively register in your Impressions is not "parsimonious"....its cheating and dishonest....
Buuut duhh kiiiiiittyyyyyyy..... 😻😻😻
Floki makes a much more elegant appearance in the 1st round though @ 2:23:33
Bernardo, obey the Spirit as it speaks to you concerning travel. You will know when the time arises for you to do so.
Bernardo, feel the force.😄
Decreasing brain activity can result in 🌪️'Conduit Collisions' 🌪️- It's still important to 'TTM' 👹 - Stay safe ⚡🧠 r / neuronaut ❇️
Bernardo, get thy self to Austin!
Beer? what a waste...Man imagine smoking a few joints with Spinoza and Schopenhauer.
Better yet, high dose psychedelics.
Dear Bernardo, can you finally clean up your Essentia Foundation of all polutions like the words Darvinism, Neo-Darvinism and anything connecting to that dishonest man. He was not a pure compilator, he even devastated great work, honest work of Jean Baptiste de Lamarck by eliminating any connection of idealism to the Creation. I think it would be great to delete such names from your so great work.
Can idealism be falsified?
Can physicalism be falsified? Solipsism? At least solving the hard problem could be considered refuting idealism.
Add subtitles, please.
Will do, but expect that to take some time. In the meantime I’d suggest enabling the auto-generated captioning.
@@AskingAnything The way it is now is great. 👏 When I wrote my comment asking for subtitles, there were none. Thank you.
Final comment....I always laugh with Pseudo philosophers when they try to compare their Unfalsifiable position with an other unfalsifiable worldview (i.e. Physicalism).
Why are they avoiding Methodological Naturalism....an epistemic acknowledgment, not a metaphysical worldview.
✈️ Ever experienced VR? 😎
I wouldn't take Bernardo's thoughts on brain oscillations too seriously: He interprets scientific findings such that they are consistent with his hypothesis on consciousness. For example, the leading hypothesis on alpha oscillations is that they inhibit the cortex and, indeed, they decrease in amplitude when the cortex processes (visual) information. So in this example, decreased alpha amplitude is associated with increased "experience" (and not the other way around). Alpha oscillations also increase in amplitude when you're drowsy, during propofol anesthesia, and is some types of coma. As a second example, the Fourier phases of spontaneous brain oscillations are random, which essentially says that the total spectral power equals the variance of the signal. It is therefore irrelevant which oscillations are constructive or destructive (unless you believe in a hypothesis and want to cherry-pick evidence for it).
Could you frame this in the form of a question?
"For example, the leading hypothesis on alpha oscillations is that they inhibit the cortex and, indeed, they decrease in amplitude when the cortex processes (visual) information. "
Right, but under the psychedelic state, not only do inhibitory processes decrease -- but there is a decrease across all frequency bands a lot of the time.
"which essentially says that the total spectral power equals the variance of the signal. It is therefore irrelevant which oscillations are constructive or destructive"
Sorry, I don't understand how that follows. The variance of the signal isn't what we're looking for here.
@@pandawandas My point is that there is simply no direct relation between oscillatory power and the intensity or level of experience. This is already clear from looking at anesthesia, sleep, coma, etc. And picking out one state of mind (the psychedelic state) in which the two go hand in hand and using that to corroborate his hypothesis is just misleading and disingenuous. And even if there was a direct relation, it would prove nothing, because the relation between brain oscillations and the underlying spiking dynamics of individual neurons is not well understood and it is therefore premature to claim that oscillatory power is a good measure for the "level of brain activity". And even if is was a good measure, then it is still completely unclear why this would imply the non-physiological nature of experience.
The other argument that Bernardo made about destructive/constructive interference (I even forgot what it was) doesn't make sense at all. Here again, Bernardo picks out what he needs, and even distorts it, to corroborate his hypothesis. This is not scientific, and there are indeed good reasons that this stuff is not published in mainstream scientific journals.
Why don't you read some stuff from Christoph Koch on the neuroscience of consciousness or the book of George Buzsaki on brain oscillations?
@@NOCOMPLYE These studies are super-interesting and they tell us a lot about the brain and cognition, but they don't tell us what Bernardo wants them to tell us.
@@NOCOMPLYE First of all, try to not become defensive as this will cloud your thinking. At 1:41:09 Bernardo's says: "If experience is generated by brain activity, by metabolism, then the richness, complexity, and intensity of experience have to be grounded in an increased metabolism".
So he (mis)uses these studies to argue that experiences are not generated by the brain (i.e. for philosophical idealism). I'm puzzled that you missed this, because it is the core of his philosophy.
💜
Wait a minute -- so after taking care to properly describe the nature of "the best argument against," how it's a truly worth argument and why it can't be easily dismissed like other physicalist objections, Bernardo doesn't acturally say what that argument is...and Jack doesn't press him on it as a very natural follow-up????
Keep watching :)
2:00:18 LOL Okay Bernardo finally answers it during a lull in the conversation!
❇️ 🪢 ⚡ ❤️ 'Emotional Charge' ❤️ ⚡ 🪢 ❇️
2:50:52 Ugh...can't stand it why no one anywhere on RUclips ever challenges the notion that Analytic Idealism will "make" people more empathetic/understanding/kinder/etc.
If anything, WTF is the point of anything; it's just The One being its natural dissociative self!
We're just poor avatars of that One, that blind primordial Will, and will return to it soon enough so who cares???
On this score, I find Analytic Idealism/Conscious Realism a lot less satisfying than the nihilism of physicalism...Analytic Idealism feels a bit like insult on top of injury -- all this suffering and hey kids it was just a dream hahaha!!
Such a horrible TV trope and now it's being rebooted as the season finale of "This Is Your Life!"
Emotionally the Mind at Large of Analytic Idealism feels like such a huge letdown, like a real metaphysical "jump the shark" moment in intellectual history...so this Cosmic Mind is actually more mindless than someone with Down's Syndrome???
Seriously; it's just so unsatisfying that Cosmic Consciousness is so stupid. How the heck are folks not asking Bernardo about this????????
Seems like the most incredible thing of all the amazing insights of Analytic Idealism...that what we really are is fundamentally idiotic!!!
Hello Bernardo. Any time spent with Joe Rogan is not a "Big thing" as you phrased it. Rogan currently backs DeSantis for continuing governorship in florida - and other unconscionable sentiments. I say skip that one, who once supported alex jones, and listen to him whine a bit and then forget it. He is no philosopher. I personally wouldn't want to have Rogan in my portfolio when I die - recognized or not.
Hi Bernardo, the sufferings of the dutch farmers under the World Economic Forum tyrannical policies doesn't affects you? Are the dutch farmers outside the reachings of your enhanced empathy? Cuz sometimes you sounds as a CRINGE to the elitist globalist narrative, you know...So, is your empathy all for the Ukraine representation of the dashboard but dissociated from the dutch farmers side of the dashboard? Could the very dashboard be dissociated and enhanced empathy be conditioned by the mainstream politically correct narrative?