Kabbalistic panpsychism

[AshvinP]

My question about this article is, why go with panpsychist ontology instead of idealist? Is there anything in Kabbalah teachings that would necessitate the reality of a 'material' world?

Kabbalistic panpsychism
Reading | Philosophy

Prof. Hyman M. Schipper, MD, PhD, FRCPC | 2021-01-08

In this powerful essay, Prof. Schipper unveils the uncanny similarities and correspondences between the ancient Kabbalah and cutting-edge theories of reality such as idealist cosmopsychism.

From a scientific and philosophical point of view, there is arguably no phenomenon as fiendishly intractable as the origin and nature of consciousness. Consciousness and associated notions of qualia, top-down causation, free will, etc., have been largely neglected by the (reductionist) scientific community for many decades as illusions or epiphenomena, ‘side effects’ of brain physiology and neurochemistry with no impact on the material world. Spurred on in large measure by recent interpretations of quantum physics, such as the purported role of the ‘observer’ in the unfolding of reality, consciousness is now at the forefront of philosophical and neuroscientific inquiry.

For reasons of religion, demographics, language and politics, until the period known as the Haskalah (Jewish Emancipation; ca. 1770-1880) the popular world and Jewish literatures were largely self-contained and non-intersecting. The last hundred years have witnessed a burgeoning of knowledge conflating aspects of mainstream science and philosophy with the Jewish mystical tradition or Kabbalah. For example, I and others have demonstrated robust conceptual parallels between specific Kabbalistic constructs and both Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle1 and the physics of David Bohm.2 In those papers, we argued that contemporary science and ancient mysticism display unprecedented degrees of confluence because both paradigms—one grounded in empirical research, the other revelation-based—may provide legitimate and complementary insights into the nature of reality.

Notwithstanding the radically different lexicons naturally invoked by the various disciplines, there have come to light concordant perspectives on consciousness between the Kabbalah and modern formulations of quantum/Bohmian mechanics, idealism and process philosophy. Moreover, the writings of leading Kabbalistic and Chassidic authorities, buttressed by Scripture, the Talmud and other mainstream Jewish sources, support an ontology of consciousness that is panpsychist in nature and informed by the tenets of panentheism (belief in a Deity that both transcends and is immanent within the physical universe)...

[Starbuck]

Starting to think panpsychism will just have to be a necessary and drawn out interim phase before people can even entertain idealism in large numbers.

Kaballah's creation myth talks about broken vessels of light, which seems a pretty clear synonym for dissociated or fractured unitary consciousness.

[Soul_of_Shu]

This take on the influence of Platonism on Kabbalistic ideas is exceedingly long (I barely got one hour into it), and goes into such historical detail as to have an overdose effect, but it may help address your question ...

[Shaibei]

(Sorry for my English).
I saw the professor's lecture and from what i understand he meant idealism.
There is a comparative study between Kabbalah and Western idealism written by Dr. Sanford Drob called Kabbalistic metaphors.
In my eyes the simple evidence of Kabbalah's idealistic nature is the mental character of the Sefirot. The first Sefira (keter) is the will and the second is wisdom, i.e. the supreme thought.
The lower sefirot like loving-kindess, curage-strength etc, are aspects of these upper sefirot.
The suffering of the world in kabbalisic eyes is the result of the concelment of god's will, and it is humanity's task to restore this broken world

[AshvinP]

This take on the influence of Platonism on Kabbalistic ideas is exceedingly long (I barely got one hour into it), and goes into such historical detail as to have an overdose effect, but it may help address your question ...

Thanks. But Platonism is more idealist than panpsychist. I'm really trying to figure out what this obsession with panpsychist ontology is for people who are clearly fed up with materialism and are also familiar with idealism.

[Eugene I]

I'm really trying to figure out what this obsession with panpsychist ontology is for people who are clearly fed up with materialism and are also familiar with idealism.

I think panpsychism is the ontology of choice for people like Goff who are smart and honest enough to admit that pure materialistic ontology is a failure, but do not want to give up on the reality of matter possibly for psychological reasons. It's easy to see that most people love matter - they love their or their partners bodies, they love their possessions, they enjoy bodily and material pleasures beyond all, they are "materialists" by the way of living and by their values. Their system of life values, goals and meanings is based on materialism and they have so much "invested" in it that it is unthinkable for them to even imagine that matter does not exists because it would undermine their whole value system and make their life meaningless. For them it's like "how would I live, what would I do if there would be no matter?". So I think the way beyond materialism starts not from philosophy, but from stepping out and growing beyond the limited system of materialistic life values.

[mikekatz]

I'm really trying to figure out what this obsession with panpsychist ontology is for people who are clearly fed up with materialism and are also familiar with idealism.

I think panpsychism is the ontology of choice for people like Goff who are smart and honest enough to admit that pure materialistic ontology is a failure, but do not want to give up on the reality of matter possibly for psychological reasons. It's easy to see that most people love matter - they love their or their partners bodies, they love their possessions, they enjoy bodily and material pleasures beyond all, they are "materialists" by the way of living and by their values. Their system of life values, goals and meanings is based on materialism and they have so much "invested" in it that it is unthinkable for them to even imagine that matter does not exists because it would undermine their whole value system and make their life meaningless. For them it's like "how would I live, what would I do if there would be no matter?". So I think the way beyond materialism starts not from philosophy, but from stepping out and growing beyond the limited system of materialistic life values.

[AshvinP]

I'm really trying to figure out what this obsession with panpsychist ontology is for people who are clearly fed up with materialism and are also familiar with idealism.

I think panpsychism is the ontology of choice for people like Goff who are smart and honest enough to admit that pure materialistic ontology is a failure, but do not want to give up on the reality of matter possibly for psychological reasons. It's easy to see that most people love matter - they love their or their partners bodies, they love their possessions, they enjoy bodily and material pleasures beyond all, they are "materialists" by the way of living and by their values. Their system of life values, goals and meanings is based on materialism and they have so much "invested" in it that it is unthinkable for them to even imagine that matter does not exists because it would undermine their whole value system and make their life meaningless. For them it's like "how would I live, what would I do if there would be no matter?". So I think the way beyond materialism starts not from philosophy, but from stepping out and growing beyond the limited system of materialistic life values.

Well I disagree those values are in essence connected to materialism, and can be quite life affirming when oriented properly. But, more to the point. I don't think a Kabbalist is someone who loves their material possessions in the sense you seem to mean it. I intuit there is something else going on... but I am not really sure what. I do appreciate your answer though.

[Shaibei]

In my opinion the question that underlies the discussion here is not the terminology used by the professor, nor even his interpretation, but what is true. There are Kabbalists who have understood these symbols verbaly and there are others -and this is the prevailing interpretation,-who have interpreted them metaphorically. According to this interpretation our thought is the divine thought in a limited mode, and if so matter doesn't realy exist. There are similarities with Plato, and there are Kabbalists who used Plato in their interpretations, but in the bottom line Kabbalah is not Plato

[Soul_of_Shu]

Thanks. But Platonism is more idealist than panpsychist. I'm really trying to figure out what this obsession with panpsychist ontology is for people who are clearly fed up with materialism and are also familiar with idealism.

Like Starbuck and others, I suppose that 'panpsychism' ~ construed as referring to material substances being mind-endowed ~ initially seems the safer stepping stone into idealism for those minds that were educated, and still work within the predominant scientific paradigm. Given that professor Schipper is an MD and clinical neurologist, who still has to make concessions to his peers, many of whom no doubt are skeptical of such ideas, to say the least, if not outright dismissive, one can see how he might be cautious in the proposing/promoting of outright idealism. Also, from his bio: "Prof. Schipper has long been interested in the interface between contemporary science and the Jewish mystical tradition (Kabbalah). His work in this area was initially published in Yeshiva University’s Torah u-Madda Journal (2012-13)". So it may well be that this article is a later iteration of an earlier one, and his ideas have since evolved to be more idealism based. It does seem a bit of a 'bait and switch' title, 'Kabbalistic Panpsychism', which then immediately references 'idealist cosmopsychism ' in the subject intro, so maybe just a question of semantics, since in the most general sense the root derivation of the term just means 'all > pysche', and so needn't involve any material substance at all.