Dr.Oppy says he's not a physicalist? What does he mean when he says he doesn't believe reality is divided in levels, but more attracted to the view that reality is in various scales affecting each other? Isn't that just another way of saying that he's an emergentist who also adheres to some kind of irreducibility principle? Does he prefer to see the world not as a scaffolding (a vertical picture) but as a sort of soup (horizontal picture) that just allows a weird mixture where anything goes and nothing is more fundamental than the other? If it's the latter position, it seems like he's looking for some kind of a neo-vitalist escape hatch to free himself of any implicit theistic commitments. This clearly leads to obscurantism that you see mostly in continental philosophy (Deleuze being a good example)
Kastrup addresses the 'inputs to the mind' that Oppy is asking about...all the time. Kastrup points out that just as nearly all physicalists have some way of talking about the 'self-excitation' of the ontological primitive, so does analytical idealism. Obviously, because idealism starts with a subject, then those inputs will be either its fileds of experience OR the experience of dissociated alters.
True this. Kastrup often calls the ontological primitive "a filed of subjectivity" to imply that a filed can have endogenous states and excitations, just as the particles are specific patterns of excitation of the quantum fields. The excitations of the field of subjectivity are what the field does naturally, and we call them experiences (the "inputs"). Perceptions are a different story that has to do with dissociation, and this is also addressed by analytical idealism. It would be the identical situation if Kastrup would have claimed that physicalism has a fundamental issue because the quantum field has excitations, but we don't have anything more fundamental than the quantum field itself to explain the cause of those excitations. There is a place in both science and philosophy where we assume that nature does what it does becuase it is what it is, otherwise we remain trapped in an infinite regress of causality that will lead us nowhere.
The problem Oppy addresses is that positing the field of subjectivity doesn't explain any 'particular' input. It's saying that there is 'some' thing having inputs, and that thing happens to behave in such a way so as to make way for (ostensibly) 'other' things having inputs. But it can't explain more than that, those inputs just are what they are. To start explaining anything, one needs a distinction between "inputter" (world) and "inputtee" (subject), and once one has done that there is no reason to hold that the "inputter" is in any way conscious.
@@timtopsnav and btw this is precisely identical to the mainstream phisicalist view: particular patterns of excitations of a pre-given field. Those excitations are what we commonly refer to as particles, and particles make "the world". But there is nothing to the particles but the quantum field. Under idealism, it's the same. There is only the field of subjectivity, whose excitations are experiences/qualia/qualities. In both cases the field's excitations are endogenous, spontaneous, and do not require an additional "external world" to be actualized.
Dr.Oppy says he's not a physicalist? What does he mean when he says he doesn't believe reality is divided in levels, but more attracted to the view that reality is in various scales affecting each other? Isn't that just another way of saying that he's an emergentist who also adheres to some kind of irreducibility principle? Does he prefer to see the world not as a scaffolding (a vertical picture) but as a sort of soup (horizontal picture) that just allows a weird mixture where anything goes and nothing is more fundamental than the other? If it's the latter position, it seems like he's looking for some kind of a neo-vitalist escape hatch to free himself of any implicit theistic commitments. This clearly leads to obscurantism that you see mostly in continental philosophy (Deleuze being a good example)
Kastrup addresses the 'inputs to the mind' that Oppy is asking about...all the time. Kastrup points out that just as nearly all physicalists have some way of talking about the 'self-excitation' of the ontological primitive, so does analytical idealism. Obviously, because idealism starts with a subject, then those inputs will be either its fileds of experience OR the experience of dissociated alters.
True this. Kastrup often calls the ontological primitive "a filed of subjectivity" to imply that a filed can have endogenous states and excitations, just as the particles are specific patterns of excitation of the quantum fields. The excitations of the field of subjectivity are what the field does naturally, and we call them experiences (the "inputs"). Perceptions are a different story that has to do with dissociation, and this is also addressed by analytical idealism.
It would be the identical situation if Kastrup would have claimed that physicalism has a fundamental issue because the quantum field has excitations, but we don't have anything more fundamental than the quantum field itself to explain the cause of those excitations. There is a place in both science and philosophy where we assume that nature does what it does becuase it is what it is, otherwise we remain trapped in an infinite regress of causality that will lead us nowhere.
Idealism is retarded
The problem Oppy addresses is that positing the field of subjectivity doesn't explain any 'particular' input. It's saying that there is 'some' thing having inputs, and that thing happens to behave in such a way so as to make way for (ostensibly) 'other' things having inputs. But it can't explain more than that, those inputs just are what they are. To start explaining anything, one needs a distinction between "inputter" (world) and "inputtee" (subject), and once one has done that there is no reason to hold that the "inputter" is in any way conscious.
@@timtopsnav not if the subject can self-excite (endogenous mental states)
@@timtopsnav and btw this is precisely identical to the mainstream phisicalist view: particular patterns of excitations of a pre-given field. Those excitations are what we commonly refer to as particles, and particles make "the world". But there is nothing to the particles but the quantum field.
Under idealism, it's the same. There is only the field of subjectivity, whose excitations are experiences/qualia/qualities.
In both cases the field's excitations are endogenous, spontaneous, and do not require an additional "external world" to be actualized.
Did Oppy listen to Kastrup? He clearly doesn’t follow Bernardo’s view at all!
They did have this conversation: ruclips.net/user/live8WK-auo8Miw?si=_FCtya-rCq0VpeaN