Looking for concise criticism of analytic idealism for an upcoming AMA with Bernardo

[Not my account]

If there is one critical question you could ask Bernardo, or one critique you could offer him, what would it be?

I’m hosting AMAs on my Discord server and there is a good chance another round of questions with Bernardo is coming up in which we like to focus on criticism of analytic idealism (or Bernardo). You’ll be able to listen in during the event and ask Bernardo your question yourself. I’ll follow up with more information if people are interested in joining the event.

For anyone interested, the 3rd round of the AMA with Bernardo Kastrup is happening June 30th, 8pm CET (11am PT) at The Analytic Idealism Discord Server.

[Federica]

This critical question is about the argumentation used by Bernardo to infer the idea of a dissociative boundary coincident with the body of living beings. His starting point is: 'Notice that the boundaries of our body are not arbitrary. Our ability to perceive ends at the surface of the body: our skin, retinas, eardrums, (...) (The Idea of the World, p.118)

Here one could notice that this statement implicitly excludes all sorts of so-called parapsychological evidence, such as out-of-body experiences, NDEs and so on, nowadays collected within mainstream scientific research, where it appears that perception does extend outside the surface of the body.
Now, having heard Bernardo saying repeatedly that parapsychological evidence makes total sense and is easy to accommodate once the ontology of analytical idealism is adopted (even though - as he said - he is not particularly eager to bring this evidence into the model, because more than enough proof of its superiority can be found in other types of evidence within science of mind, foundations of physics, etc.) it seems questionable that one of the very phenomena that is acknowledged to naturally fall into place within the framework of idealism is implicitly ruled out at the foundational step of the model's upbuild.

Moreover (same book, same page) Bernardo writes: 'Clearly, thus, the delineation of our body in not a question of epistemic convenience: it is an empirical fact', in contrast with the concept of an inanimate car, for example, where the car is actually an abstraction, and an epistemic and practical convenience, that we make end at a certain point, excluding for example the road, the fuel, the air, etc.
Well, could not one argue that the body is also a concept founded on epistemic convenience? After all the body, like the car, also needs air and fuel to function, and skin falls off continuously which moves the boundary of perception. So 'skin' as an unmovable boundary seems to be a concept, justified by epistemic convenience too? And a similar critique could be made about thought, when one accepts parapsychological evidence.

Would not all this suggest that the body too is 'akin to a figure traced on tree bark', to use one of Bernardo's metaphors?

[AshvinP]

The brief question I posed on the server:

Q/Criticism: A key point where modern thinking went astray into materialism was when the thinking subject was abstracted out from the design and observations of experiments - it was felt the results were divined directly from outer perceptions and the observer's thinking agency had no role. Schopenhauer claimed he could observe the noumenal Will directly from inner perceptions, i.e. his own thinking agency was abstracted out from the process of concluding this ontology. How is this any different than the aforementioned materialist?

Great framing of the question, Frederica! I hope this one is asked.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Please note: this topic is being moved to the 'Topic-specific' section.

For anyone interested, the 3rd round of the AMA with Bernardo Kastrup is happening June 30th, 8pm CET (11am PT) at The Analytic Idealism Discord Server.

[Federica]

If there is one critical question you could ask Bernardo, or one critique you could offer him, what would it be?

I’m hosting AMAs on my Discord server and there is a good chance another round of questions with Bernardo is coming up in which we like to focus on criticism of analytic idealism (or Bernardo). You’ll be able to listen in during the event and ask Bernardo your question yourself. I’ll follow up with more information if people are interested in joining the event.

This critical question is about Bernardo’s choice to introduce the idea of dissociation as a way to explain the de-combination of universal consciousness into each of our personal psyches.

First, I would notice how Bernardo proceeds to reject a common objection to idealism, namely the natural order objection, which questions how the stable and orderly natural laws that we observe in nature can represent something as notoriously unstable and disorderly as thoughts and emotions at the level of a supposed universal consciousness.
Bernardo rejects this objection like so (The Idea of the World, page 138): “The misconception here, of course, is that of anthropomorphisation: to attribute to universal consciousness as a whole cognitive characteristics known only in small dissociated segments of it, such as human beings.”

So anthropomorphization is, as it seems, not a philosophically appropriate way to go.

Now, when one decides to explain the formation of our personal psyche “through a process of dissociation in universal consciousness analogous to how the psyche of a person suffering from DID differentiates itself into multiple centers of experience called alters” (The Idea of the World, page 172) is not one doing quite exactly that same thing - anthropomorphizing universal consciousness by attributing to it the mental health condition DID, which is, indeed, known only in beings such as us humans?

[Soul_of_Shu]

...

Eugene ... the reason why I moved this topic to this section, is to keep it focused on fulfilling the request in the original post for questions to be put to BK in the upcoming AMA session. So I would ask that any discussion you, or others, wish to have with Federica regarding her suggested question be carried on in the thread which was split off from this one ... viewtopic.php?t=834

I'll move your latest comment there.

[Eugene I.]

...

Eugene ... the reason why I moved this topic to this section, is to keep it focused on fulfilling the request in the original post for questions to be put to BK in the upcoming AMA session. So I would ask that any discussion you, or others, wish to have with Federica regarding her suggested question be carried on in the thread which was split off from this one ... viewtopic.php?t=834

I'll move your latest comment there.

Oh, sorry, sure, I was not aware of that, didn't have time to read through all the posts.

[Not my account]

This critical question is about the argumentation used by Bernardo to infer the idea of a dissociative boundary coincident with the body of living beings. His starting point is: 'Notice that the boundaries of our body are not arbitrary. Our ability to perceive ends at the surface of the body: our skin, retinas, eardrums, (...) (The Idea of the World, p.118)

Here one could notice that this statement implicitly excludes all sorts of so-called parapsychological evidence, such as out-of-body experiences, NDEs and so on, nowadays collected within mainstream scientific research, where it appears that perception does extend outside the surface of the body.
Now, having heard Bernardo saying repeatedly that parapsychological evidence makes total sense and is easy to accommodate once the ontology of analytical idealism is adopted (even though - as he said - he is not particularly eager to bring this evidence into the model, because more than enough proof of its superiority can be found in other types of evidence within science of mind, foundations of physics, etc.) it seems questionable that one of the very phenomena that is acknowledged to naturally fall into place within the framework of idealism is implicitly ruled out at the foundational step of the model's upbuild.

Moreover (same book, same page) Bernardo writes: 'Clearly, thus, the delineation of our body in not a question of epistemic convenience: it is an empirical fact', in contrast with the concept of an inanimate car, for example, where the car is actually an abstraction, and an epistemic and practical convenience, that we make end at a certain point, excluding for example the road, the fuel, the air, etc.
Well, could not one argue that the body is also a concept founded on epistemic convenience? After all the body, like the car, also needs air and fuel to function, and skin falls off continuously which moves the boundary of perception. So 'skin' as an unmovable boundary seems to be a concept, justified by epistemic convenience too? And a similar critique could be made about thought, when one accepts parapsychological evidence.

Would not all this suggest that the body too is 'akin to a figure traced on tree bark', to use one of Bernardo's metaphors?

Asked and answered here.

[Not my account]

First, I would notice how Bernardo proceeds to reject a common objection to idealism, namely the natural order objection, which questions how the stable and orderly natural laws that we observe in nature can represent something as notoriously unstable and disorderly as thoughts and emotions at the level of a supposed universal consciousness.
Bernardo rejects this objection like so (The Idea of the World, page 138): “The misconception here, of course, is that of anthropomorphisation: to attribute to universal consciousness as a whole cognitive characteristics known only in small dissociated segments of it, such as human beings.”

So anthropomorphization is, as it seems, not a philosophically appropriate way to go.

Now, when one decides to explain the formation of our personal psyche “through a process of dissociation in universal consciousness analogous to how the psyche of a person suffering from DID differentiates itself into multiple centers of experience called alters” (The Idea of the World, page 172) is not one doing quite exactly that same thing - anthropomorphizing universal consciousness by attributing to it the mental health condition DID, which is, indeed, known only in beings such as us humans?

Asked and answered here.

[Federica]

Thank you for asking both of my questions!