Yeah the problem is that things such as language, time, life, math, experience, consciousness, scientific truth and God does not match. They are totally different constructs, and so to understand one construct by using another doesn't really work. You can't understand what its like to be a Hawk while being a whale. So understanding what is real using methods which can not encompass reality, doesn't work. Therefore the best thing about philosophy is that it gives you a understanding that the what and why can not be answered without several components at once. This is also the weakness of philosophy, as it is never a simple endeavor which at times can seem impossible, and likely is without a God.
These distinctions about the different forms of monism and pluralism, and how they apply to both materialism as well as idealism, are very helpful. I've noticed that in particular the quantity of reality goes unspecified in discussions about the quality of reality. Specifying the quantity illuminates the structure or form of one's metaphysics and it's the quality that fills it in or provides content or substance so to speak.
Interesting way to put it at the end. The quantity issue was a major one in the clash between Bertrand Russell and FH Bradley. Russell described his own view (pluralism) as the 'bucket of shot' view, while Bradley's Monism was described as the 'bowl of jelly' (jello to my US friends) view. So I thought to introduce the quantity question alongside the quality one as it plays a major role in that debate, which I hope to get to at some point. Plus McTaggart's Idealism is pluralist too, so that sets him apart from Bradley's Absolute Idealism. As for Solipsism, I just wanted to make sure I distinguish it from other forms of Idealism to avoid confusion.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy You might want to look at Iain McGilchrist's books and videos to get a sense of the difference between quantitative and qualitative approaches to understanding.
Skepticism is not normally about denial, it is an agnostic position due to lack of data to reach a conclusion. So it is a denial about certainty, with an open mind to you explaining to me how you are certain. If this is a metaphysical position, then what isn't?
Many philosophers abuse the term "metaphysics" and just equate it to "any philosophy at all". The reasoning for this goes back to critics of metaphysics. Lazy metaphysicians would just respond by saying "everything is metaphysics, so you're a metaphysician too, hypocrite!" in order to ignore the point they were actually making. Metaphysics is more complex than this, it is not just philosophy, but _a priori_ philosophy. Philosophy that does not begin with reality, but begins with ideas taken to be axiomatic and undeniable truths, and tries to derive existence from them. To be _a priori_ means it is not conceivable of any sort of unvierse where, if you were born into it, what you observe would lead you to deny the postulate. It would be said to be an undeniable unquestionable truth independent of experience and observation. For example, Descartes' "I think therefore I am" puts the "I" as an undeniable _a priori_ truth. The opposite of this is _a posteriori_ which are things derived from observation. The polar opposite of metaphysics is positivism, which upholds that notion that all things are _a posteriori,_ even the concept you have of yourself as a "self" and an "I," and therefore would reject "I think therefore I am" as legitimate. Positivists tend to be highly skeptical precisely because they see nothing as innately true and only what we _think_ to be true based on what we have seen, and thus all open to question, including the notion that there is a "we" that "sees" anything at all. Metaphysicians try to accuse positivists of being secret metaphysicians because "you're doing philosophy too, so that's metaphysics!" but it isn't, precisely because a consistent positivist would recognize that even their own philosophy is _a posteriori_ and derived from what they have experienced, and not some sort of innate truth.
@@QuantumPolyhedron Very well said. I myself, am thinking of the American Pragmatists. James made the point that all we actually know about anything is what we have observed. This is not exactly empiricism, because just because we have not observed something is not proof that it doesn't exist. This is known in real science where there are hypotheses, and evidence, and never certainty, but stacks of warrants that show some level of Bayesian "more and less likely... probably". The Pragmatists had no need of metaphysics for _applied_ science. There is no need of it at all. Where it is needed is to advance science and, importantly, for things like sociology, political philosophy, ethics, and, such. The problem I see is that these lines are not kept clearly in mind.. they are blurred, and my view is that once someone has blurred them, their mind is literally incapable of doing either any higher science or any philosophy. This perspective is the required basis to proceed with higher understanding: period. Examples of philosophers who I see as keeping clear about this are David Chalmers and Chris Langan. A great example of a person who has this seriously blurred is Kastrup, but I can name many more. Even Dewey, for example,, I don't count as a Pragmatist, due to his blurring.
As a sceptic I would say that claim that reality is unknownable is metaphysic only if you want to attribute being unknownable to reality. But that statement also relate to our known conditions of our knowing - like the fact that we are always in connection to our experience and we can't make any connection to something outside of it. You can make claims about ultimate reality but how you make them valid? I don't see metaphysics as pointless, it just nothing more than exercise. People are sense-making creatures and metaphysics is one form of sense-making. It's a process and not a doctrine - at least in my eyes of a sceptic.
I'm new to absolute idealism, but one explanation for the multiplicity of mind is that the absolute mind is an organism that expands and evolves. Part of this process is to divide itself into conscious individuals that will eventually realize they are united. The end product of this process is the fully development of the absolute mind, such that it gains self consciousness. I don't believe this is inevitable. It like also likely that we will remain divided and destroy ourselves before the mind is awakened.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy it's kind of like an embryo. I took this idea from Hegel's in-itself. The principle of mind is unfolding and expanding itself towards self-awareness (or something to that effect).
@@AbsolutePhilosophy I believe so according to his History of Philosophy. To him Philosophy has taken necessary steps along a path of development towards thought understanding itself.
Great video, Learned a lot in a small time and great explanation. It would be even better if you would link philosophers who fall into each catogory. But overal great information dense video.
Interesting. I think pluralist idealism and absolute idealism can coexist. because there are infinite minds, but from each individual mind’s own perspective it is the one mind.
Out of the options i think Ultimate idealism does the best job at solving the problems some people associated with it. Bernardo kastrup is convincing to me, he seems to have the bases covered. The best challenges to his idealism I've heard focus on how he defines the different positions. They say he is misrepresenting materialsm by saying they can only ever deal with quantities and never qualities because if they do they automatically become panpsychists or idealists (I think I've got that right). They seem to think this is unfair but i don't know how they can get around it.
I'm not sure why Kastrup thinks materialism can only accommodate quantity. Surely that raises the question: 'quantity _of what_ ?' Most materialists are happy to posit properties of matter, could these not be qualities, they certainly don't seem to be quantities anyway? But I agree on your metaphysical position. I'm closest to an absolute idealist I think.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy on "the quality of what" point. I think Bernardo would say: "exactly! Materialists are so lost in abstraction that they've lost touch with the only thing we can be certain of, our conscious experience. Everything else is an abstraction or inference.".
@@hgf44876 Well, if you have a notion of quality that is akin to 'qualia', i.e. that which is experienced, then of course accepting this would lead to idealism or panpsychism etc. But properties are not usually thought of in this way by materialists, and would not be mere quantities either. For example, charge is a property of particles, but not something we 'experience' as a qualia. And so it seems you can have a quantity of charge without falling into idealism/panpsychism etc. If materialists think charge is real, then they believe in something which is not mere quantity. Otherwise there would be no difference between quantities of different properties like mass and charge.
Bernardo usually focuses on the physicalist formulation of materialism. The project of physics is to describe the behavior of the world mathematically. The aim is to reduce everything to a simple equation (or the smallest possible set of equations). He points out, for example, that the physicalist definition of the color red is a particular range of the wavelength of light, but that's not really what red is. Red is the qualitative experience one sees when one sees a red thing. And what light is, to a physicist, is also a mathematical absraction, a relation to other mathematical abstractions. The same goes for charge and spin and any other property of matter. They are all defined mathematically. The physicalist view is that what really exists are the laws of physics, and the laws of physics are quantitative in nature, if not identical to mathematical abstractions then rather similar to them. There is no heaviness in physics, only a mathematical description of forces. A complete physicalist account of nature could never tell you what seeing the color red is like. For that, you must experience it yourself. Experience is qualitative. One only experiences qualities. Experience of an apple, for example, is an experience of roundness, smoothness, redness, weight, coolness, sweetness, crispness, wetness, etc. Matter is defined as non-mental, being that which supposedly gives rise to the mental, the mental supposedly being only a specific sort of configuration of matter. The matter of an apple is thought to be nothing more than the physical laws behind it, and all the qualitative aspects of the apple that I just listed are thought to be the products of the specific arrangements of the material in your body as you interact with it, ultimately nothing but abstract laws of physics, mathematically defined. If there is a non-quantitative aspect to the physical, under materialism, it is also non-qualitative, at least, not qualitative in the way redness, sweetness, and heaviness are qualities. And if there is a non-quantitative aspect to the physical, physicists will never speak of it, and further, we can have no access to it whatsoever, even in principle.
Thank you for this video! I wanted to share it with my friends so they can more easily understand what I am talking about :) ... but ... I found out that this 'qualitative' and 'quantitative' approach is a bit puzzling. Isn't that the case that in classical philosophical definitions the differences between monism, dualism, pluralism are rooted in the idea of 'substance'. You can have many onthological entities, but if one believes that they are of the same substance that still is a form of monism. Therefore, if idealist believes that there are many independent minds as a fundamental reality, as longs as he believes these minds are of the same mental substance, he is still an idealist monist. Likewise, if materialist believes that there are many particles that make up all reality, as long as he believes these particles are of the same substance, he is a materialist monist (not pluralist, just because there is a big quantity of particles).
'Monism' and 'Pluralism' can refer to different things. Substance Monism and Substance Pluralism are as you describe them. But Monism and Pluralism _simplicter_ are about how many things there are, which is what I was discussing.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Thanks for your explanation, and all this work you do here. I discovered this channel today. Will try to find some time checking other videos :)
My use of the label materialist/materialism would seem to be compatible with what materialists are referencing, but I don't know that it would qualify as a materialism. My definition of material boils down to anything that can have interactivity with all other commentary being descriptive in some sense about relationship and products predicated on such interactive components. The focus of study being that which we can observe to have interactivity. My referencing "that which can have interactivity" isn't a declaration of the nature of what is being referenced, just that such is the reference. Thus, I consider my position to be ontologically neutral, since what is being referenced could be a simulation or some other state currently unknown to be the case. I would definitely be open to discussion, since I think it would be great to have a dissection of my modeling. I actually think we all have unique models that we employ with us actively doing translations to what our understanding of what others understand entails.
Are you saying that reality is what you talk about and theorise about but you make no judgement about what that is (in itself so to speak)? Is that where your ontological neutrality comes in?
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Correct. I am content with assigning labels so as to have sufficient conceptual linkages to navigate and communicate with others with regard to what we denote as reality.
Metaphysical scepticism sounds cool to me - they (or we) might not necessarily be making a claim about fundamental reality, but merely about our ability to detect whatever that might be.
But isn't a claim about our ability to do something also a claim about reality? Don't you have those abilities 'in reality'? There does seem to be space for a view called 'quietism' about it though. This is a view that simply refuses to say anything at all.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Yes its a claim about our (current) abilities - but please could you help me? Can we make a reasonable claim about x? If x is the potentially real thing (but also potentially inexistant, or purely imagined) we are alluding to that is beyond our ability to detect. I'm still looking for a defense of ontological idealism (that I can understand)
@@macdougdoug Well I'm not providing a defence of idealism here, just trying to describe the distinctions and views available. A good defence would be too broad, but I have the first part of my defence on my channel under 'the case for idealism'. More parts to that argument will come later. The point here, though, which is pretty well-established now, is that justifications for avoiding metaphysics completely are impossible to articulate without engaging in metaphysical claims.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Okay thanks - I'm depending on you 😀 - Kastrup's book of published papers is by my bed, it has helped me fall asleep for months, but I still don't get it. (Despite being totally sold on epistemological idealism)
I am an idealist. For my reasons, see some of the other videos I have done, and I will soon be talking to other idealist academics about their reasons too.
With the advent of computers and AI one must consider the theoretical possibility of writing a program that creates a simulated world that is experienced by all that is in it (be they living or inanimate) much the same as the things in this word experience them. Thus a tree exist in that world not because it is experienced by any living thing but merely because it is part of that simulation. And if anyone understands how computers and software works then they can imagine how any such entity that its simulated could only perceive anything outside of their simulated world if the creators of that simulation enable that in that they are in essence virtual objects and may not be able to sense the code that gives them their virtual existence nor the computers that runs that code. So if one accepts that this simulated world is theoretically possible (albeit might require far greater computer capacity than is practical to actual create given the limitations existing computers) then one might be hard pressed to state with any certainty that we might not in fact be living in such a simulation. Now given that to be the case the creators of such a simulation might be humans, ETs, or God (where the later we might call creation vs a simulation but the principles might be the same). But if anyone might argue that no, things like consciousness could never be simulated in any computer simulation seem to by that very fact admit that materialism alone could not fully explain human existence. For any material process should be able to be modeled in a computer (at least in theory). And the creators of that simulation could monitor what transpires in that simulation in a way that is not visible to those in it, they could effect things in it in a manner that seems to the occupants of it as just being random processes, all the more so if the creators of that simulation go out of their way to make such interference look as if it is just random. And interestingly enough that is just what physicists have concluded about our world that at the micro level things are not deterministic but can only be charectized by their probabilities by Schrodinger's equation. But to say that something happens purely by chance is to say that in effect one does not know what causes it to happen, else it would not be random but causal. Thus what quantum physics should say is that things appear to be random at the quantum level but as far as we know that they could in fact not be random at all but merely that we are not privy to the causes behind them just as those virtual beings in a simulation may not be privy to what the creator of the simulation have in mind by their actions that effect that simulation. Not only that but the creators of the simulation (if they ever should so desire) could lift the veil and give some of the beings in that simulation a peek of what is outside form time to time. And I ma not saying that we live in such a computer simulation or creation by God (though I do personally believe the later to be the case) but rather if it were the case how could we even know that to be the case (barring us being given a chance to peek under the curtain) or the creators of the simulation getting sloppy about keeping their exitance unknown. Thus it seems the materialist cannot really say this for sure is not the case. meanwhile they have the problem of where did all that material come from anyway and why there was X amount if it and not Y and such or that it has this property vs some other property.
Thanks for the long comment and detailed explanation. I am sympathetic to the view you endorse, and think the familiarity of simulated environments does help to explain the idea of an environment that appears to be something it isn't, i.e. looks like a world but is really binary code running on a machine. But some of your claims seem a little muddled. Are you suggesting it is conceivable for, say, a programmer to simulate consciousness in a programme (in which case of course it is, that is what video game AI is all about!) or that a programmer could make an entity in that programme *really* conscious (if so, that seems doubtful). And I couldn't quite see the link with materialism in your argument.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy No, I am not saying that one can do that (or not do that) but that a materialist it would seem would argue that you could given the fact that we experience consciousness and thus by implication that it is produced strictly by some actions by those materials which in turn one could argue could be simulated via a computer. Thus that is the connection with materialism in that if that is all their is to consciousness then one should be able to create that in a computer and if so how are they to then say that we ourselves are not just that, some simulated virtual being in some giant computer simulation. Thus when a materialist says it is irrational to image something beyond our senses then by implication it would be equally irrational for such a simulated being to image they might be in a computer simulation when in fact they are. Thus this is what I call the materialist dilemma, that is if we are just the product of atoms or quarks or whatever interacting so then could one model that with a computer and so then might we be ourselves such a model in some giant computer. Or else they have to give some magical attribute to matter that can't be modeled by a computer and that sort of defeats the whole idea of materialism by adding magical properties to it. And sorry I did not make that clearer but I was trying to keep my comment as short as possible.
BTW, my other point is that is dualism is correct then how things on the world beyond the material world could effect things in that material world could appear to those in the material world as seemingly random events. But many materialist subscribe to chaos theory where a butterfly flapping its wings in China can (eventually) effect the weather in the US. As such even a small seemingly random even could have a huge effect and all the more so if it happens in someone's brain that might alter what they think and do. And how would one ever know that such an event was truly random or not given it such a small event that would be lost in the clutter of all the other events that happen in the world. It would be like a gambling casino that every now and then would make a customer win or some other loose where over all it seems everything is random and also that took pains not to do that when the gambling commission was on the premises checking the machines.
Reality is simply what we perceive and experience every moment of every day of our lives - a combination of the physical and the non-physical - e.g. we eat and we emote. Simple. It is real. Beyond this explanation is the seemingly infinite environment of interpretation beyond the simple. Your presentation is one of the latter..... Do we need it? No. What is the point of it, when it derives from an individual consciousness and does not reflect universal reality, or even simple Earthly reality. When science rejects subjectivity and claims that everything must be material, it is worthless. It is unreal. It is unreality.
I've been an absolute idealist since before I even knew what philosophy was, but I can't help but be intrigued by panpsychism. Where would that even fit into these categories though? Dualism? Or a really weird form of pluralistic idealism?
@@AbsolutePhilosophy can you make a video explaining what Hegel means when he says, "Real is rational and rational is real". It would be very kind of you if you do it. Thanks.
While both the material and ideal world exist, the material is the fundamental one and the ideal just a biased reflection from thinking, material, minds.
I sort of believe that experience is everything, but that doesn’t mean there is a substance called consciousness. experience simply is, not made out of anything!
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Thanks so much for responding to this. I know you may find it silly but my belief if you ever wish to quantify it is that the universe exists as a thought form that is eternal and exists by default since it stems from nothing. Nothing in this case is a net nothing that exists because nothing is stopping nothing from existing. And then nothing can be described as a mathematical thoughtform as e^(iπ)+1=0 which also describes a circle. It describes a possible way of movement. It exists by default and the interaction of this thought form in a 0 dimensional space with a limitless amount of these describes everything we know and feel as the universe only exists as a thought of a thought. Like a collective dream.
I'm a bit sad you didn't mention berklian idealism! The idea that we, our experiences and everything we are are the thoughts in the mind of God. It sounds like the most absurdly radically theist position possible, but it is a surprisingly sensible worldview from a purely philosophical perspective - although I'd like to think I've taken some of the specifics a little further than berkley. Experience is self evident and so cannot be denied, and the existence of non-mental things cannot possibly be affirmed, even in principal. Start by choosing to believe in what you can't deny as your foundation, and denying what cannot possibly be confirmed even in principal. This way, you're on a path where it's at least possible for you to have a world view that fundamentally makes sense. If you can conceive of something, that makes it a rational thought, if you cannot actually conceive of the object even in principal, then it is not a rational thought. In other words, philosophy is not done through an abstract mathematical formulas, and you are not writing mindless poetry. Philosophy is based upon that which is real, confirmed through performing a thought experiment. By being able to conceive of the mental object, you prove it is possible. If there is no possible way to conceive of it, then you show its impossible like a square circle.) Following the rule of this reasoning, you find a lot of fun things and get rid of an unbelievable amount of nonsense (for example, infinity doesn't exist, and so everything must be limited. wow does that change what you think is possible!), but it forces you into a few conclusions. Observation can only ever be from one perspective, which means anyone who adopts this method will become a monist idealist saying everything must fundamentally be one thing, according to one perspective. You cannot conceive of something outside of yourself (because then its outside your experience), and it has to be within your experience to conceive of it, which is strange because clearly other people exist without you being able to see them. However, while you cannot imagine an outside person, you have the ability to imagine an internal person existing within your mind - a tulpa, and you can also imagine yourself in another mans shoes (this is also useful). Remember, we say mind is the only thing that exists because this is the only path that can potentially lead to a totally rational worldview, so because only things that can actually exist can cause things, we must say that everything is ultimately be explained by a mind, because minds are the only substances that exist, and so of course the machine of this universe (which is clearly not caused by ourselves) will ultimately be caused by another person. A mind that is the cause of the universe and our existence is God, so its pretty much inescapable that you would believe in God. Apparently youtube didn't want to post the full comment, so part two below. (1/2)
Stringing these facts altogether now: try imagine two separate people (like tulpas) in your head (this is extremely difficult to do) - and I don't mean their bodies, I mean imagine from the perspective of what they would see and experience the world from, because that is more what a person is. The people you are imagining in your head are inside your mind; but from their perspective, you (the one conceiving of them) are not seen in their perspective, and neither are these two perspectives seeing what each other's sees - they are seperate from one another, and external to yourself and one another. Doesn't this seem identical to our human situation? The idea is that well, a person must either be a superior being, or internal to some superior being, and because we're clearly not the ones conceiving of everybody, and other people and a universe we're not the cause of surely exists, we must be the one who is being conceived of by someone else (who is of course God). In other words, our mental experiences and in fact existence itself is all the thoughts of God in motion. In him we live and move and have our being. A funnier way of saying it, is we're God's annoying tulpas harassing him with our shameless existence which we cannot hide. Its neat how it really paints a classical God picture of being literally all powerful and all knowing, because reality is quite literally is just what he thinks it is, so of course he will have power and knowledge of it - its only there because he thinks of it being there! So there is a one sided discrepancy, as we cannot properly directly rationally conceive of the God that is conceiving of us because he isn't actually internal to us from our perspective, but at least we can imagine ourselves in God's shoes which fixes the error, and we can imagine the situation we are in, so we can intuitively infer that it is plausible for his perspective to exist. Compared to any other theory, this is certainly seems to be the least egregious compromise I have ever seen, and comes out the most unscathed. No one else even comes close this, they just outright accept external objects, ignoring the absurdity because they think its necessary. Only berkleys theory works! I have been in so much turmoil with this theory, I was sad about it so I searched idealism and ended up here writing this long comment. It just seems like there definitely has to be two different perspectives that exist for this explanation to work. One is of Gods perspective seeing everything, including conceiving of the tulpa's perspective, and then another perspective, which is just what the tulpa is seeing alone without what God is seeing - isn't that two perspectives and not one? and if there are really two separate perspectives that exist, then does this not make them both external to each other? and if mutually external objects exist, why even be an idealist at that point? Why not believe in external non-mental objects? And if you cannot be an idealist, why bother being a rationalist philosopher at all - you cannot possibly have a truly rational worldview, it now at best needs to be balanced with empiricism as a next best thing cope compromise, which is super duper lame... But now that I thinking about it... I suppose maybe it isn't actually absurd for something to be multiple and internal, maybe the tulpa he is imagining just... IS in a real sense ITSELF the other perspective, its just made from Gods mind and not separate from him. in other words persons are actually separate, but they are not mutually external.... It doesn't need to make direct sense from our perspective, as long as we can make it make sense from Gods, because we can imagine ourselves in his shoes, and that is sufficient - though of course we're not here to believe in inconceivable things. (2/2)
:D i found a simpler way of saying it. if you think of a tulpa, it exists internal to your mind. but you do not shrink down into the tulpa's mind, so you are not internal to it. It goes internal one way, and is external for the other. We experience persons and objects as externalities, because we're the tulpa.
If you want to find the "truth".... Or at least to have every single things take it's rightful place in your mind, or, perhaps, consciousness... Forget the "ism"-s...or "ism" endings of the words.... ........... Then, it's not socialism, but term- "society"..... and all of them like that......not capitalism, but capital...not theism, but theos....and so forth....monos, theos, capital, society, individual, idea, ideality, mater, duality.....whatever.... Then you're dealing with, each in separation, those very things.....and various ism-s...which only mislead....
I recently heard a Muslim give an argument for God as everything is an emergent property all the way down and there must be some underlying substance that cannot be divided. Along with the idea that the only thing we can know for certain is our mind and intuition (that we have a mind and consciousness). So ultimately everything is mind and goes back to a divine being. And idealism cannot be shown to be false. Are idealism and materialism in equal footing in philosophy or is one considered more likely or better argued for? I don't find the argument convincing (maybe for deism but not theism) but I'm trying to understand it better.
Why think everything is an emergent property? I'd need to see that argument more closely to comment. In the analytic circles in which I move, idealism is not popular but I don't hear people defend materialism either really. There is happy talk of abstract objects, possible worlds, sets, and the like.
To be a materialist is like being a fish that doesn’t know that it is in water. Consciousness is the medium in which we and everything we perceive exists.
@@KA-pe6sv Of course they do. Your brain processes information, it also does it about its own state. There you go, awareness. Simple as a feedback loop.
The Panpsychism/Idealism schism is the hard one to make sense of because it is nearly all overlap and semantics. Basically, most forms of panpsychism are idealism by another name, but a small few aren't and hold that the material and mental are an integrated dualism of 2 substances. Even this is consistent with idealism because, again semantics; they argue between the words substance and aspect applied to the material and mental, so while many idealists hold that there is a dual aspect to reality, ie. "physical" and "non-physical", but they won't avow a dual substance, and a small minority of panpsychists are more comfortable with the dual substance semantic. Very messy. The terminology itself is problematic because it uses what has become very specific terminology in psychology like consciousness, mental, mind etc. and applied these same terms across the whole universe. Nicely avoided.
Thanks for the comment. 'Most forms of panpsychism are idealism'. Are they? I don't discuss panpsychism partly because I'm not familiar with the details or variances in it, and partly because it comes out of philosophy of mind whereas I come from a more traditional metaphysics and logico-semantic angle. But the little I do know, suggests to me an attempt to account for consciousness without giving up a materialist ontology. Isn't the idea, not to include a mental substance, but simply a basic mental *property* of matter?
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Bernardo Kastrup, an idealist who has written a great deal critical of panpsychism, makes an interesting distinction. The views that try to hold on to materialist ontologies are referred to as "bottom up." The others are "top down." Then there are the panpsychist views which are really dual aspect monism. You might look at the Indian philosophic tradition in regard to this. Going back over 2000 years, you have panpsychists, the Sankhya, who are thoroughly dualistic. And their notion of "matter" is simply the objective aspect of experience - so it includes all that we know of as matter and mind (though not "matter" in the 19th century sense, since you can't find that anywhere in Indian philosophy except briefly with the Carvakas). The Sankhya duality is not mind and matter, but nature (mind-matter) and pure consciousness. and it says there are an infinite number of separate consciousnesses. Vedanta says there is only one consciousness. It ends up having to give up individuality, because if one consciousness 'awakens" to its true nature, the universe dissolves. Kashmir Savism, Sri Aurobindo's integral non dualism, and others (to some extent, orthodox Christianity) avoid this problem, but that's too much to go into in this short comment.
@@leatui7 The panpsychism I have come across is of the Chalmers kind. Which I take to be 'bottom up'. The reason panpsychism, at least the variant that draws heavily on scientific theory, interests me less is because it seems to want to place consciousness *within* scientific theory, in deference to it. Whereas the Idealists I admire seek to harmonise scientific theory *within* a broader metaphysics of the world, that includes the moral and aesthetic realm too. They do this by approaching the issue in terms of epistemology, logic, and meaning. And not in terms of a pre-existing cosmic theory. This is probably because of the Kantian influence.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Yes, Kastrup is the main idealist right now and if you see his debates with leading panpsychist Phillip Goff, they reach a point where they say that their positions just differ in semantics and laugh. The thing is "constitutive panpsychism" is the garden variety and is as you described and is not even that popular anymore. Both Goff and Chalmers in recent papers detail a myriad of new panpsychism variants that are more theoretically sound and just so happen to be extremely close and overlap, even to the point of complete overlap, with idealism. The distinction just isn't as clear cut as it once was. Quantum physicists like Rovelli. a dual aspect monist, don't see what the fuss is, he thinks reducing the universe to mental OR physical is just abusing the analogies and that the ultimate nature of reality doesn't need to be lumped in one or the other category, both can exist in their models (and obviously do).
@@bradmodd7856 Thanks for the info. I just watched a debate between Kastrup and Goff. I think that what has happened is that the Idealism defended by Kastrup (and Goff if he is an idealist) comes from a different starting point and emphasis to the traditional position. Both claim to 'add nothing to scientific theory' (at least in the debate I saw). Goff accused Kastrup of doing so and Kastrup strongly denied it. As for that kind of Idealism (or in that domain of debate), I can see why the idealism/physicalism question might boil down to semantics. They agree on a substance monism, take both matter and consciousness seriously and make them interdependent (or identical), and then it just depends what way you swing the one substance. But the traditional motivators for Idealism were not primarily attempts to account for consciousness within a scientific framework (although questions about the nature of the soul come close). There were epistemic motivations... 'how can we know anything if reality and appearance are divided?'... and moral/aesthetic motivations... 'how can there be moral truths if reality is merely physical?' In that debate, the stakes of the positions seem more substantial. The reason for the gap in emphasis may perhaps be because many Idealist of the past had a broader conception of experience than that I see debated today. It was often not merely 'sense data' (ala Russell etc.) but also moral intuitions, aesthetic experiences, and the contents of reflection that were thought of as 'experienced'. If these too are 'on the dashboard' (in Kastrupian terms) then they are as real (and unreal) as anything the scientist might point to, but I see little discussion about these things from Kastrup or Goff (although I have only seen video debates, so their books may be different), and if they were taken with equal seriousness then they must surely be adding to scientific theory.
Good to know. I've thought about putting the chapter by chapter discussions and maybe some interviews onto a podcast. I'm still trying to find my feet a bit with this stuff so all feedback like this is welcome.
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Thanks for doing the heavy lifting in terms of explanations - really enjoying this series.
Thanks for the encouragement Alden!
when you read the first couple pages of the problems of philosophy and are now questioning if your table actually exists
Haha (it doesn't 😉).
Yeah the problem is that things such as language, time, life, math, experience, consciousness, scientific truth and God does not match. They are totally different constructs, and so to understand one construct by using another doesn't really work.
You can't understand what its like to be a Hawk while being a whale. So understanding what is real using methods which can not encompass reality, doesn't work.
Therefore the best thing about philosophy is that it gives you a understanding that the what and why can not be answered without several components at once. This is also the weakness of philosophy, as it is never a simple endeavor which at times can seem impossible, and likely is without a God.
These distinctions about the different forms of monism and pluralism, and how they apply to both materialism as well as idealism, are very helpful. I've noticed that in particular the quantity of reality goes unspecified in discussions about the quality of reality. Specifying the quantity illuminates the structure or form of one's metaphysics and it's the quality that fills it in or provides content or substance so to speak.
Interesting way to put it at the end. The quantity issue was a major one in the clash between Bertrand Russell and FH Bradley. Russell described his own view (pluralism) as the 'bucket of shot' view, while Bradley's Monism was described as the 'bowl of jelly' (jello to my US friends) view. So I thought to introduce the quantity question alongside the quality one as it plays a major role in that debate, which I hope to get to at some point. Plus McTaggart's Idealism is pluralist too, so that sets him apart from Bradley's Absolute Idealism. As for Solipsism, I just wanted to make sure I distinguish it from other forms of Idealism to avoid confusion.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy You might want to look at Iain McGilchrist's books and videos to get a sense of the difference between quantitative and qualitative approaches to understanding.
@@leatui7 Thanks for the tip.
Those were really very good, concise, explanations of these different philosophies. Very helpful.
Thanks!
Excellent clarification of these schools of philosophy. Good to know I am in the school of Absolute Idealism, a small mind in a Big Mind. Thank you!
Me too!
Thank you very much for the fully detailed video. You answered several questions I had about Idealism.
I love this video. Keep up the good contends. I will definitely recommend this channel.
Absolute idealist 🙌 good work
Skepticism is not normally about denial, it is an agnostic position due to lack of data to reach a conclusion. So it is a denial about certainty, with an open mind to you explaining to me how you are certain. If this is a metaphysical position, then what isn't?
Many philosophers abuse the term "metaphysics" and just equate it to "any philosophy at all". The reasoning for this goes back to critics of metaphysics. Lazy metaphysicians would just respond by saying "everything is metaphysics, so you're a metaphysician too, hypocrite!" in order to ignore the point they were actually making. Metaphysics is more complex than this, it is not just philosophy, but _a priori_ philosophy. Philosophy that does not begin with reality, but begins with ideas taken to be axiomatic and undeniable truths, and tries to derive existence from them.
To be _a priori_ means it is not conceivable of any sort of unvierse where, if you were born into it, what you observe would lead you to deny the postulate. It would be said to be an undeniable unquestionable truth independent of experience and observation. For example, Descartes' "I think therefore I am" puts the "I" as an undeniable _a priori_ truth. The opposite of this is _a posteriori_ which are things derived from observation. The polar opposite of metaphysics is positivism, which upholds that notion that all things are _a posteriori,_ even the concept you have of yourself as a "self" and an "I," and therefore would reject "I think therefore I am" as legitimate.
Positivists tend to be highly skeptical precisely because they see nothing as innately true and only what we _think_ to be true based on what we have seen, and thus all open to question, including the notion that there is a "we" that "sees" anything at all. Metaphysicians try to accuse positivists of being secret metaphysicians because "you're doing philosophy too, so that's metaphysics!" but it isn't, precisely because a consistent positivist would recognize that even their own philosophy is _a posteriori_ and derived from what they have experienced, and not some sort of innate truth.
@@QuantumPolyhedron Very well said. I myself, am thinking of the American Pragmatists. James made the point that all we actually know about anything is what we have observed. This is not exactly empiricism, because just because we have not observed something is not proof that it doesn't exist. This is known in real science where there are hypotheses, and evidence, and never certainty, but stacks of warrants that show some level of Bayesian "more and less likely... probably". The Pragmatists had no need of metaphysics for _applied_ science. There is no need of it at all. Where it is needed is to advance science and, importantly, for things like sociology, political philosophy, ethics, and, such. The problem I see is that these lines are not kept clearly in mind.. they are blurred, and my view is that once someone has blurred them, their mind is literally incapable of doing either any higher science or any philosophy. This perspective is the required basis to proceed with higher understanding: period. Examples of philosophers who I see as keeping clear about this are David Chalmers and Chris Langan. A great example of a person who has this seriously blurred is Kastrup, but I can name many more. Even Dewey, for example,, I don't count as a Pragmatist, due to his blurring.
As a sceptic I would say that claim that reality is unknownable is metaphysic only if you want to attribute being unknownable to reality. But that statement also relate to our known conditions of our knowing - like the fact that we are always in connection to our experience and we can't make any connection to something outside of it. You can make claims about ultimate reality but how you make them valid? I don't see metaphysics as pointless, it just nothing more than exercise. People are sense-making creatures and metaphysics is one form of sense-making. It's a process and not a doctrine - at least in my eyes of a sceptic.
I'm new to absolute idealism, but one explanation for the multiplicity of mind is that the absolute mind is an organism that expands and evolves. Part of this process is to divide itself into conscious individuals that will eventually realize they are united. The end product of this process is the fully development of the absolute mind, such that it gains self consciousness. I don't believe this is inevitable. It like also likely that we will remain divided and destroy ourselves before the mind is awakened.
Thanks for the comment. Not heard this one before. But how does the absolute mind divide itself if it is not yet awakened?
@@AbsolutePhilosophy it's kind of like an embryo. I took this idea from Hegel's in-itself. The principle of mind is unfolding and expanding itself towards self-awareness (or something to that effect).
Hmmm. Okay. So does Hegel see this absolute mind as within time?
@@AbsolutePhilosophy I believe so according to his History of Philosophy. To him Philosophy has taken necessary steps along a path of development towards thought understanding itself.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy I am open to mind existing outside of time. As there may be more than 4 dimensions to existence
This is fabulous!
Thanks Maarten. Maybe we could do an interview together one day and chat about Idealism :)
can the ultimate reality be something which is neither mental nor material? Has any philosopher talked about it?
Yes and yes. I think neutral monism takes that view.
Great video, Learned a lot in a small time and great explanation. It would be even better if you would link philosophers who fall into each catogory. But overal great information dense video.
Thanks for the compliment and that's a good suggestion too. Next time!
Interesting. I think pluralist idealism and absolute idealism can coexist. because there are infinite minds, but from each individual mind’s own perspective it is the one mind.
I’ve heard this view referred to as absolute solipsism, and the closest example from the history of philosophy I know of is Leibniz’s monadology,
Idealism versus naïf materialism and an entire panoply of metaphysical oppositions.
Out of the options i think Ultimate idealism does the best job at solving the problems some people associated with it.
Bernardo kastrup is convincing to me, he seems to have the bases covered.
The best challenges to his idealism I've heard focus on how he defines the different positions. They say he is misrepresenting materialsm by saying they can only ever deal with quantities and never qualities because if they do they automatically become panpsychists or idealists (I think I've got that right). They seem to think this is unfair but i don't know how they can get around it.
I'm not sure why Kastrup thinks materialism can only accommodate quantity. Surely that raises the question: 'quantity _of what_ ?' Most materialists are happy to posit properties of matter, could these not be qualities, they certainly don't seem to be quantities anyway?
But I agree on your metaphysical position. I'm closest to an absolute idealist I think.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy on "the quality of what" point. I think Bernardo would say: "exactly! Materialists are so lost in abstraction that they've lost touch with the only thing we can be certain of, our conscious experience. Everything else is an abstraction or inference.".
@@hgf44876 Well, if you have a notion of quality that is akin to 'qualia', i.e. that which is experienced, then of course accepting this would lead to idealism or panpsychism etc. But properties are not usually thought of in this way by materialists, and would not be mere quantities either. For example, charge is a property of particles, but not something we 'experience' as a qualia. And so it seems you can have a quantity of charge without falling into idealism/panpsychism etc. If materialists think charge is real, then they believe in something which is not mere quantity. Otherwise there would be no difference between quantities of different properties like mass and charge.
Bernardo usually focuses on the physicalist formulation of materialism. The project of physics is to describe the behavior of the world mathematically. The aim is to reduce everything to a simple equation (or the smallest possible set of equations). He points out, for example, that the physicalist definition of the color red is a particular range of the wavelength of light, but that's not really what red is. Red is the qualitative experience one sees when one sees a red thing. And what light is, to a physicist, is also a mathematical absraction, a relation to other mathematical abstractions. The same goes for charge and spin and any other property of matter. They are all defined mathematically.
The physicalist view is that what really exists are the laws of physics, and the laws of physics are quantitative in nature, if not identical to mathematical abstractions then rather similar to them. There is no heaviness in physics, only a mathematical description of forces. A complete physicalist account of nature could never tell you what seeing the color red is like. For that, you must experience it yourself.
Experience is qualitative. One only experiences qualities. Experience of an apple, for example, is an experience of roundness, smoothness, redness, weight, coolness, sweetness, crispness, wetness, etc. Matter is defined as non-mental, being that which supposedly gives rise to the mental, the mental supposedly being only a specific sort of configuration of matter. The matter of an apple is thought to be nothing more than the physical laws behind it, and all the qualitative aspects of the apple that I just listed are thought to be the products of the specific arrangements of the material in your body as you interact with it, ultimately nothing but abstract laws of physics, mathematically defined.
If there is a non-quantitative aspect to the physical, under materialism, it is also non-qualitative, at least, not qualitative in the way redness, sweetness, and heaviness are qualities. And if there is a non-quantitative aspect to the physical, physicists will never speak of it, and further, we can have no access to it whatsoever, even in principle.
@@adamstephens9043 yes. That's how I think of physicalism too.
Wonderful video! Thank you!
Thank you for this video! I wanted to share it with my friends so they can more easily understand what I am talking about :) ... but ... I found out that this 'qualitative' and 'quantitative' approach is a bit puzzling. Isn't that the case that in classical philosophical definitions the differences between monism, dualism, pluralism are rooted in the idea of 'substance'. You can have many onthological entities, but if one believes that they are of the same substance that still is a form of monism. Therefore, if idealist believes that there are many independent minds as a fundamental reality, as longs as he believes these minds are of the same mental substance, he is still an idealist monist. Likewise, if materialist believes that there are many particles that make up all reality, as long as he believes these particles are of the same substance, he is a materialist monist (not pluralist, just because there is a big quantity of particles).
'Monism' and 'Pluralism' can refer to different things. Substance Monism and Substance Pluralism are as you describe them. But Monism and Pluralism _simplicter_ are about how many things there are, which is what I was discussing.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Thanks for your explanation, and all this work you do here. I discovered this channel today. Will try to find some time checking other videos :)
My use of the label materialist/materialism would seem to be compatible with what materialists are referencing, but I don't know that it would qualify as a materialism.
My definition of material boils down to anything that can have interactivity with all other commentary being descriptive in some sense about relationship and products predicated on such interactive components. The focus of study being that which we can observe to have interactivity.
My referencing "that which can have interactivity" isn't a declaration of the nature of what is being referenced, just that such is the reference. Thus, I consider my position to be ontologically neutral, since what is being referenced could be a simulation or some other state currently unknown to be the case.
I would definitely be open to discussion, since I think it would be great to have a dissection of my modeling. I actually think we all have unique models that we employ with us actively doing translations to what our understanding of what others understand entails.
Are you saying that reality is what you talk about and theorise about but you make no judgement about what that is (in itself so to speak)? Is that where your ontological neutrality comes in?
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Correct. I am content with assigning labels so as to have sufficient conceptual linkages to navigate and communicate with others with regard to what we denote as reality.
Metaphysical scepticism sounds cool to me - they (or we) might not necessarily be making a claim about fundamental reality, but merely about our ability to detect whatever that might be.
But isn't a claim about our ability to do something also a claim about reality? Don't you have those abilities 'in reality'? There does seem to be space for a view called 'quietism' about it though. This is a view that simply refuses to say anything at all.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Yes its a claim about our (current) abilities - but please could you help me? Can we make a reasonable claim about x? If x is the potentially real thing (but also potentially inexistant, or purely imagined) we are alluding to that is beyond our ability to detect. I'm still looking for a defense of ontological idealism (that I can understand)
@@macdougdoug Well I'm not providing a defence of idealism here, just trying to describe the distinctions and views available. A good defence would be too broad, but I have the first part of my defence on my channel under 'the case for idealism'. More parts to that argument will come later.
The point here, though, which is pretty well-established now, is that justifications for avoiding metaphysics completely are impossible to articulate without engaging in metaphysical claims.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Okay thanks - I'm depending on you 😀 - Kastrup's book of published papers is by my bed, it has helped me fall asleep for months, but I still don't get it. (Despite being totally sold on epistemological idealism)
As Mr. Absolute Philosophy, which view do you contend? And by what means did you arrive at that conclusion?
I am an idealist. For my reasons, see some of the other videos I have done, and I will soon be talking to other idealist academics about their reasons too.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Thanks. Me too.
What about dual aspect monism?
Where can i find the history of idealism video?
I haven't done it yet, sorry. It's on my to-do list!
With the advent of computers and AI one must consider the theoretical possibility of writing a program that creates a simulated world that is experienced by all that is in it (be they living or inanimate) much the same as the things in this word experience them.
Thus a tree exist in that world not because it is experienced by any living thing but merely because it is part of that simulation.
And if anyone understands how computers and software works then they can imagine how any such entity that its simulated could only perceive anything outside of their simulated world if the creators of that simulation enable that in that they are in essence virtual objects and may not be able to sense the code that gives them their virtual existence nor the computers that runs that code.
So if one accepts that this simulated world is theoretically possible (albeit might require far greater computer capacity than is practical to actual create given the limitations existing computers) then one might be hard pressed to state with any certainty that we might not in fact be living in such a simulation.
Now given that to be the case the creators of such a simulation might be humans, ETs, or God (where the later we might call creation vs a simulation but the principles might be the same).
But if anyone might argue that no, things like consciousness could never be simulated in any computer simulation seem to by that very fact admit that materialism alone could not fully explain human existence. For any material process should be able to be modeled in a computer (at least in theory).
And the creators of that simulation could monitor what transpires in that simulation in a way that is not visible to those in it, they could effect things in it in a manner that seems to the occupants of it as just being random processes, all the more so if the creators of that simulation go out of their way to make such interference look as if it is just random.
And interestingly enough that is just what physicists have concluded about our world that at the micro level things are not deterministic but can only be charectized by their probabilities by Schrodinger's equation.
But to say that something happens purely by chance is to say that in effect one does not know what causes it to happen, else it would not be random but causal. Thus what quantum physics should say is that things appear to be random at the quantum level but as far as we know that they could in fact not be random at all but merely that we are not privy to the causes behind them just as those virtual beings in a simulation may not be privy to what the creator of the simulation have in mind by their actions that effect that simulation.
Not only that but the creators of the simulation (if they ever should so desire) could lift the veil and give some of the beings in that simulation a peek of what is outside form time to time.
And I ma not saying that we live in such a computer simulation or creation by God (though I do personally believe the later to be the case) but rather if it were the case how could we even know that to be the case (barring us being given a chance to peek under the curtain) or the creators of the simulation getting sloppy about keeping their exitance unknown.
Thus it seems the materialist cannot really say this for sure is not the case. meanwhile they have the problem of where did all that material come from anyway and why there was X amount if it and not Y and such or that it has this property vs some other property.
Thanks for the long comment and detailed explanation. I am sympathetic to the view you endorse, and think the familiarity of simulated environments does help to explain the idea of an environment that appears to be something it isn't, i.e. looks like a world but is really binary code running on a machine.
But some of your claims seem a little muddled. Are you suggesting it is conceivable for, say, a programmer to simulate consciousness in a programme (in which case of course it is, that is what video game AI is all about!) or that a programmer could make an entity in that programme *really* conscious (if so, that seems doubtful). And I couldn't quite see the link with materialism in your argument.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy No, I am not saying that one can do that (or not do that) but that a materialist it would seem would argue that you could given the fact that we experience consciousness and thus by implication that it is produced strictly by some actions by those materials which in turn one could argue could be simulated via a computer.
Thus that is the connection with materialism in that if that is all their is to consciousness then one should be able to create that in a computer and if so how are they to then say that we ourselves are not just that, some simulated virtual being in some giant computer simulation.
Thus when a materialist says it is irrational to image something beyond our senses then by implication it would be equally irrational for such a simulated being to image they might be in a computer simulation when in fact they are.
Thus this is what I call the materialist dilemma, that is if we are just the product of atoms or quarks or whatever interacting so then could one model that with a computer and so then might we be ourselves such a model in some giant computer.
Or else they have to give some magical attribute to matter that can't be modeled by a computer and that sort of defeats the whole idea of materialism by adding magical properties to it.
And sorry I did not make that clearer but I was trying to keep my comment as short as possible.
BTW, my other point is that is dualism is correct then how things on the world beyond the material world could effect things in that material world could appear to those in the material world as seemingly random events.
But many materialist subscribe to chaos theory where a butterfly flapping its wings in China can (eventually) effect the weather in the US. As such even a small seemingly random even could have a huge effect and all the more so if it happens in someone's brain that might alter what they think and do.
And how would one ever know that such an event was truly random or not given it such a small event that would be lost in the clutter of all the other events that happen in the world.
It would be like a gambling casino that every now and then would make a customer win or some other loose where over all it seems everything is random and also that took pains not to do that when the gambling commission was on the premises checking the machines.
Reality is simply what we perceive and experience every moment of every day of our lives - a combination of the physical and the non-physical - e.g. we eat and we emote. Simple. It is real. Beyond this explanation is the seemingly infinite environment of interpretation beyond the simple. Your presentation is one of the latter..... Do we need it? No. What is the point of it, when it derives from an individual consciousness and does not reflect universal reality, or even simple Earthly reality. When science rejects subjectivity and claims that everything must be material, it is worthless. It is unreal. It is unreality.
You are an amazing professor. Thanks a lot🤝
Helpful 💙♥️
I've been an absolute idealist since before I even knew what philosophy was, but I can't help but be intrigued by panpsychism. Where would that even fit into these categories though? Dualism? Or a really weird form of pluralistic idealism?
Have a look at the comment thread below that starts with Brad Modd's comment for some info about how panpsychism fits in the categories here.
Who are some philosophers that were dualist? I know Plato was but who else?
The classic one is Rene Descartes.
Nice content 👍
Thanks!
@@AbsolutePhilosophy can you make a video explaining what Hegel means when he says, "Real is rational and rational is real". It would be very kind of you if you do it. Thanks.
While both the material and ideal world exist, the material is the fundamental one and the ideal just a biased reflection from thinking, material, minds.
That lamp does not exist.
How did you fit all the in under 10min?
Magic!
Can u add subtitle into those videos for some foreign viewer like me please?
I thought that is automatic now. I'll look into it.
I think the ultimate nature of reality is infinity/ nothing . just an infinite recursion with no base layer!
I sort of believe that experience is everything, but that doesn’t mean there is a substance called consciousness. experience simply is, not made out of anything!
But like I believe that there is one grand mind that has splintered itself into shards so it can explore itself. Why did you gloss over that one?
That is probably pluralist idealism, I suppose.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Thanks so much for responding to this. I know you may find it silly but my belief if you ever wish to quantify it is that the universe exists as a thought form that is eternal and exists by default since it stems from nothing. Nothing in this case is a net nothing that exists because nothing is stopping nothing from existing. And then nothing can be described as a mathematical thoughtform as e^(iπ)+1=0 which also describes a circle. It describes a possible way of movement. It exists by default and the interaction of this thought form in a 0 dimensional space with a limitless amount of these describes everything we know and feel as the universe only exists as a thought of a thought. Like a collective dream.
I'm a bit sad you didn't mention berklian idealism! The idea that we, our experiences and everything we are are the thoughts in the mind of God. It sounds like the most absurdly radically theist position possible, but it is a surprisingly sensible worldview from a purely philosophical perspective - although I'd like to think I've taken some of the specifics a little further than berkley.
Experience is self evident and so cannot be denied, and the existence of non-mental things cannot possibly be affirmed, even in principal. Start by choosing to believe in what you can't deny as your foundation, and denying what cannot possibly be confirmed even in principal. This way, you're on a path where it's at least possible for you to have a world view that fundamentally makes sense. If you can conceive of something, that makes it a rational thought, if you cannot actually conceive of the object even in principal, then it is not a rational thought. In other words, philosophy is not done through an abstract mathematical formulas, and you are not writing mindless poetry. Philosophy is based upon that which is real, confirmed through performing a thought experiment. By being able to conceive of the mental object, you prove it is possible. If there is no possible way to conceive of it, then you show its impossible like a square circle.)
Following the rule of this reasoning, you find a lot of fun things and get rid of an unbelievable amount of nonsense (for example, infinity doesn't exist, and so everything must be limited. wow does that change what you think is possible!), but it forces you into a few conclusions. Observation can only ever be from one perspective, which means anyone who adopts this method will become a monist idealist saying everything must fundamentally be one thing, according to one perspective. You cannot conceive of something outside of yourself (because then its outside your experience), and it has to be within your experience to conceive of it, which is strange because clearly other people exist without you being able to see them. However, while you cannot imagine an outside person, you have the ability to imagine an internal person existing within your mind - a tulpa, and you can also imagine yourself in another mans shoes (this is also useful). Remember, we say mind is the only thing that exists because this is the only path that can potentially lead to a totally rational worldview, so because only things that can actually exist can cause things, we must say that everything is ultimately be explained by a mind, because minds are the only substances that exist, and so of course the machine of this universe (which is clearly not caused by ourselves) will ultimately be caused by another person. A mind that is the cause of the universe and our existence is God, so its pretty much inescapable that you would believe in God. Apparently youtube didn't want to post the full comment, so part two below. (1/2)
Stringing these facts altogether now: try imagine two separate people (like tulpas) in your head (this is extremely difficult to do) - and I don't mean their bodies, I mean imagine from the perspective of what they would see and experience the world from, because that is more what a person is. The people you are imagining in your head are inside your mind; but from their perspective, you (the one conceiving of them) are not seen in their perspective, and neither are these two perspectives seeing what each other's sees - they are seperate from one another, and external to yourself and one another. Doesn't this seem identical to our human situation? The idea is that well, a person must either be a superior being, or internal to some superior being, and because we're clearly not the ones conceiving of everybody, and other people and a universe we're not the cause of surely exists, we must be the one who is being conceived of by someone else (who is of course God). In other words, our mental experiences and in fact existence itself is all the thoughts of God in motion. In him we live and move and have our being. A funnier way of saying it, is we're God's annoying tulpas harassing him with our shameless existence which we cannot hide. Its neat how it really paints a classical God picture of being literally all powerful and all knowing, because reality is quite literally is just what he thinks it is, so of course he will have power and knowledge of it - its only there because he thinks of it being there!
So there is a one sided discrepancy, as we cannot properly directly rationally conceive of the God that is conceiving of us because he isn't actually internal to us from our perspective, but at least we can imagine ourselves in God's shoes which fixes the error, and we can imagine the situation we are in, so we can intuitively infer that it is plausible for his perspective to exist. Compared to any other theory, this is certainly seems to be the least egregious compromise I have ever seen, and comes out the most unscathed. No one else even comes close this, they just outright accept external objects, ignoring the absurdity because they think its necessary. Only berkleys theory works!
I have been in so much turmoil with this theory, I was sad about it so I searched idealism and ended up here writing this long comment. It just seems like there definitely has to be two different perspectives that exist for this explanation to work. One is of Gods perspective seeing everything, including conceiving of the tulpa's perspective, and then another perspective, which is just what the tulpa is seeing alone without what God is seeing - isn't that two perspectives and not one? and if there are really two separate perspectives that exist, then does this not make them both external to each other? and if mutually external objects exist, why even be an idealist at that point? Why not believe in external non-mental objects? And if you cannot be an idealist, why bother being a rationalist philosopher at all - you cannot possibly have a truly rational worldview, it now at best needs to be balanced with empiricism as a next best thing cope compromise, which is super duper lame... But now that I thinking about it... I suppose maybe it isn't actually absurd for something to be multiple and internal, maybe the tulpa he is imagining just... IS in a real sense ITSELF the other perspective, its just made from Gods mind and not separate from him. in other words persons are actually separate, but they are not mutually external.... It doesn't need to make direct sense from our perspective, as long as we can make it make sense from Gods, because we can imagine ourselves in his shoes, and that is sufficient - though of course we're not here to believe in inconceivable things. (2/2)
This was just an overview video. But thanks for explaining Berkeley and your views.
:D
i found a simpler way of saying it. if you think of a tulpa, it exists internal to your mind. but you do not shrink down into the tulpa's mind, so you are not internal to it. It goes internal one way, and is external for the other. We experience persons and objects as externalities, because we're the tulpa.
How are you a "Dr" if your only a student still
I believe "PhD student" means a PhD candidate
When I shot the video I was still studying my PhD, hence the video title. When I updated my thumbnails I had graduated, so included my new title.
If you want to find the "truth".... Or at least to have every single things take it's rightful place in your mind, or, perhaps, consciousness...
Forget the "ism"-s...or "ism" endings of the words....
...........
Then, it's not socialism, but term- "society"..... and all of them like that......not capitalism, but capital...not theism, but theos....and so forth....monos, theos, capital, society, individual, idea, ideality, mater, duality.....whatever....
Then you're dealing with, each in separation, those very things.....and various ism-s...which only mislead....
I recently heard a Muslim give an argument for God as everything is an emergent property all the way down and there must be some underlying substance that cannot be divided. Along with the idea that the only thing we can know for certain is our mind and intuition (that we have a mind and consciousness). So ultimately everything is mind and goes back to a divine being. And idealism cannot be shown to be false. Are idealism and materialism in equal footing in philosophy or is one considered more likely or better argued for? I don't find the argument convincing (maybe for deism but not theism) but I'm trying to understand it better.
Why think everything is an emergent property? I'd need to see that argument more closely to comment.
In the analytic circles in which I move, idealism is not popular but I don't hear people defend materialism either really. There is happy talk of abstract objects, possible worlds, sets, and the like.
im a monist materialist
To be a materialist is like being a fish that doesn’t know that it is in water. Consciousness is the medium in which we and everything we perceive exists.
As a materialist, "consciousness" is an illusion of the functioning brain.
@@cocolasticot9027 then consciousness of your brain’s existence is an illusion, so your brain and everything that exists is an illusion?
why would you ever think there's more to your thinking than the neurons in your brain?
@@halguy5745 neurons don’t explain consciousness/awareness.
@@KA-pe6sv Of course they do. Your brain processes information, it also does it about its own state. There you go, awareness. Simple as a feedback loop.
The Panpsychism/Idealism schism is the hard one to make sense of because it is nearly all overlap and semantics. Basically, most forms of panpsychism are idealism by another name, but a small few aren't and hold that the material and mental are an integrated dualism of 2 substances. Even this is consistent with idealism because, again semantics; they argue between the words substance and aspect applied to the material and mental, so while many idealists hold that there is a dual aspect to reality, ie. "physical" and "non-physical", but they won't avow a dual substance, and a small minority of panpsychists are more comfortable with the dual substance semantic. Very messy. The terminology itself is problematic because it uses what has become very specific terminology in psychology like consciousness, mental, mind etc. and applied these same terms across the whole universe. Nicely avoided.
Thanks for the comment. 'Most forms of panpsychism are idealism'. Are they? I don't discuss panpsychism partly because I'm not familiar with the details or variances in it, and partly because it comes out of philosophy of mind whereas I come from a more traditional metaphysics and logico-semantic angle. But the little I do know, suggests to me an attempt to account for consciousness without giving up a materialist ontology. Isn't the idea, not to include a mental substance, but simply a basic mental *property* of matter?
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Bernardo Kastrup, an idealist who has written a great deal critical of panpsychism, makes an interesting distinction. The views that try to hold on to materialist ontologies are referred to as "bottom up." The others are "top down."
Then there are the panpsychist views which are really dual aspect monism. You might look at the Indian philosophic tradition in regard to this. Going back over 2000 years, you have panpsychists, the Sankhya, who are thoroughly dualistic. And their notion of "matter" is simply the objective aspect of experience - so it includes all that we know of as matter and mind (though not "matter" in the 19th century sense, since you can't find that anywhere in Indian philosophy except briefly with the Carvakas).
The Sankhya duality is not mind and matter, but nature (mind-matter) and pure consciousness. and it says there are an infinite number of separate consciousnesses.
Vedanta says there is only one consciousness. It ends up having to give up individuality, because if one consciousness 'awakens" to its true nature, the universe dissolves.
Kashmir Savism, Sri Aurobindo's integral non dualism, and others (to some extent, orthodox Christianity) avoid this problem, but that's too much to go into in this short comment.
@@leatui7 The panpsychism I have come across is of the Chalmers kind. Which I take to be 'bottom up'. The reason panpsychism, at least the variant that draws heavily on scientific theory, interests me less is because it seems to want to place consciousness *within* scientific theory, in deference to it. Whereas the Idealists I admire seek to harmonise scientific theory *within* a broader metaphysics of the world, that includes the moral and aesthetic realm too. They do this by approaching the issue in terms of epistemology, logic, and meaning. And not in terms of a pre-existing cosmic theory. This is probably because of the Kantian influence.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Yes, Kastrup is the main idealist right now and if you see his debates with leading panpsychist Phillip Goff, they reach a point where they say that their positions just differ in semantics and laugh. The thing is "constitutive panpsychism" is the garden variety and is as you described and is not even that popular anymore. Both Goff and Chalmers in recent papers detail a myriad of new panpsychism variants that are more theoretically sound and just so happen to be extremely close and overlap, even to the point of complete overlap, with idealism. The distinction just isn't as clear cut as it once was. Quantum physicists like Rovelli. a dual aspect monist, don't see what the fuss is, he thinks reducing the universe to mental OR physical is just abusing the analogies and that the ultimate nature of reality doesn't need to be lumped in one or the other category, both can exist in their models (and obviously do).
@@bradmodd7856 Thanks for the info. I just watched a debate between Kastrup and Goff. I think that what has happened is that the Idealism defended by Kastrup (and Goff if he is an idealist) comes from a different starting point and emphasis to the traditional position. Both claim to 'add nothing to scientific theory' (at least in the debate I saw). Goff accused Kastrup of doing so and Kastrup strongly denied it.
As for that kind of Idealism (or in that domain of debate), I can see why the idealism/physicalism question might boil down to semantics. They agree on a substance monism, take both matter and consciousness seriously and make them interdependent (or identical), and then it just depends what way you swing the one substance. But the traditional motivators for Idealism were not primarily attempts to account for consciousness within a scientific framework (although questions about the nature of the soul come close). There were epistemic motivations... 'how can we know anything if reality and appearance are divided?'... and moral/aesthetic motivations... 'how can there be moral truths if reality is merely physical?' In that debate, the stakes of the positions seem more substantial. The reason for the gap in emphasis may perhaps be because many Idealist of the past had a broader conception of experience than that I see debated today. It was often not merely 'sense data' (ala Russell etc.) but also moral intuitions, aesthetic experiences, and the contents of reflection that were thought of as 'experienced'. If these too are 'on the dashboard' (in Kastrupian terms) then they are as real (and unreal) as anything the scientist might point to, but I see little discussion about these things from Kastrup or Goff (although I have only seen video debates, so their books may be different), and if they were taken with equal seriousness then they must surely be adding to scientific theory.
I'd subscribe to a podcast btw
Good to know. I've thought about putting the chapter by chapter discussions and maybe some interviews onto a podcast. I'm still trying to find my feet a bit with this stuff so all feedback like this is welcome.
A lot of this goes against religion.
Yeah, that's the point of something like Materialism
I know everything! For example, i know that you reading this don't believe me.
I still do t understa d idealism.
So..do solipsists hold convention's...
(Ow... You made the joke in your vid, nice)
On strike
I guess i am an absolute mono idealist. The all is mind
This is boring and insufficient. What do you mean you can’t explain materialism?