Bernardo's Shared World Problem

[Jim Cross]

"An Ontological Solution to the Mind-Body Problem" by Bernardo Kastrup.

Bernardo writes:

Fact 1: There are tight correlations between a person’s reported private experiences and the
observed brain activity of the person.

We know this from the study of the neural correlates of consciousness (e.g., [5]).

Fact 2: We all seem to inhabit the same universe.

After all, what other people report about their perceptions of the universe is normally consistent
with our own perceptions of it.

Fact 3: Reality normally unfolds according to patterns and regularities—that is, the laws of
nature—independent of personal volition.
Fact 4: Macroscopic physical entities can be broken down into microscopic constituent parts, such
as subatomic particles.

What makes these four particular facts significant is this: despite the formidable unresolved
problems of both physicalism [6–10] and bottom-up panpsychism [11–13], these two ontologies are
prima facie more easily reconcilable with the four facts than idealism

https://philpapers.org/archive/KASAOS.pdf

It is also Chapter 5 of The Idea of the World.

Facts 2 and 3 are problems for Bernardo's idealism. In Fact 2, he acknowledges the existence of a shared reality. In Fact 3, he acknowledges it works independently from personal volition.

We can look at three examples to show that the shared reality cannot be solely mental.

1- I walk with my friend to the backyard and think I see a snake. My friend says it is just a garden hose. I look more closely and realize it is a garden hose.

My perception of the hose was at variance from the shared reality of the hose. My perception was incorrect. My initial perception was different from the shared perception. The snake existed as an incorrect perception. The hose exists as a shared perception.

2- As noted in Fact 3, reality unfolds according to patterns and regularities, yet we can routinely imagine things that cannot take place in shared reality. Shared reality has a consistency that private consciousness does not require.

I can imagine throwing a ball into the air and having it fly into outer space. In shared reality, the ball would fall back to earth.

Thrown balls consistently return to earth in shared reality. They are not required to do so in consciousness.

3- Shared reality can produce effects that can be perceived by myself and others. My consciousness can produce effects that can only be perceived privately.

I can hit my hand with an imaginary hammer but no one else will see or feel the effects. If I hit it with a shared reality hammer, other people and I can both see the effects.

4- The shared world is different from my consciousness of it. The shared world does not have the characteristics of consciousness.

Idealism cannot be correct. Shared reality differs in quality from purely mental reality.

[Starbuck]

"An Ontological Solution to the Mind-Body Problem" by Bernardo Kastrup.

Bernardo writes:

Fact 1: There are tight correlations between a person’s reported private experiences and the
observed brain activity of the person.

We know this from the study of the neural correlates of consciousness (e.g., [5]).

Fact 2: We all seem to inhabit the same universe.

After all, what other people report about their perceptions of the universe is normally consistent
with our own perceptions of it.

Fact 3: Reality normally unfolds according to patterns and regularities—that is, the laws of
nature—independent of personal volition.
Fact 4: Macroscopic physical entities can be broken down into microscopic constituent parts, such
as subatomic particles.

What makes these four particular facts significant is this: despite the formidable unresolved
problems of both physicalism [6–10] and bottom-up panpsychism [11–13], these two ontologies are
prima facie more easily reconcilable with the four facts than idealism

https://philpapers.org/archive/KASAOS.pdf

It is also Chapter 5 of The Idea of the World.

Facts 2 and 3 are problems for Bernardo's idealism. In Fact 2, he acknowledges the existence of a shared reality. In Fact 3, he acknowledges it works independently from personal volition.

We can look at three examples to show that the shared reality cannot be solely mental.

1- I walk with my friend to the backyard and think I see a snake. My friend says it is just a garden hose. I look more closely and realize it is a garden hose.

My perception of the hose was at variance from the shared reality of the hose. My perception was incorrect. My initial perception was different from the shared perception. The snake existed as an incorrect perception. The hose exists as a shared perception.

2- As noted in Fact 3, reality unfolds according to patterns and regularities, yet we can routinely imagine things that cannot take place in shared reality. Shared reality has a consistency that private consciousness does not require.

I can imagine throwing a ball into the air and having it fly into outer space. In shared reality, the ball would fall back to earth.

Thrown balls consistently return to earth in shared reality. They are not required to do so in consciousness.

3- Shared reality can produce effects that can be perceived by myself and others. My consciousness can produce effects that can only be perceived privately.

I can hit my hand with an imaginary hammer but no one else will see or feel the effects. If I hit it with a shared reality hammer, other people and I can both see the effects.

4- The shared world is different from my consciousness of it. The shared world does not have the characteristics of consciousness.

Idealism cannot be correct. Shared reality differs in quality from purely mental reality.

Hi Jim,

When 2 people agree on something, that consensus is fairly superficial. You are correct to acknowledge the differences between private and public experiences. However science has consistently exposed the importance of relativity - we perceive reality relative to our position and understanding. BK has made an important point that physical reality IS the Markov blanket of each alter, and that is an interference pattern between mind and large and the individual mind. There are therefore multiple (infinite) physical realities. It makes sense that we all interpret the same thing (mind at large) but this is swayed by our individual interpretation - seeing the snake means are experience has been largely influenced by our individual mind. The friend is seeing something closer to whats happening in mind at large, Ultimately they are both happenings in mind at large and the difference depends on the type of truth we prioritise.

[Jim Cross]

Hi Jim,

When 2 people agree on something, that consensus is fairly superficial. You are correct to acknowledge the differences between private and public experiences. However science has consistently exposed the importance of relativity - we perceive reality relative to our position and understanding. BK has made an important point that physical reality IS the Markov blanket of each alter, and that is an interference pattern between mind and large and the individual mind. There are therefore multiple (infinite) physical realities. It makes sense that we all interpret the same thing (mind at large) but this is swayed by our individual interpretation - seeing the snake means are experience has been largely influenced by our individual mind. The friend is seeing something closer to whats happening in mind at large, Ultimately they are both happenings in mind at large and the difference depends on the type of truth we prioritise.

Thanks for a pertinent comment. The issue is there are certain characteristics like consistency, inflexibility, and constancy about shared reality that are not required or usually present in our private consciousness. This argues for the existence of something more than the mental unless we are contorting the meaning of "mental" to include effectively everything.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Whether going with BK's version of idealism, or going with materialism, both share the premise that the phenomenal appearance of objectified percepts are representational of a shared underlying, behaviourally consistent, corresponding realm of the so-called 'thing-in-itself.' Under materialism that is a shared realm of universal, nonlocal vacuum state fluctuations—even as that could in theory be reducible to some other state. Under BK's idealism, that is a shared realm of universal, nonlocal ideations of irreducible Mind. In both cases, the representational phenomenal percepts are prone to misperception when filtered through any given psychological 'screen'—i.e. a subject that has an intense phobia regarding snakes could be prone to mistaking a garden hose for a snake. Or, in both cases, an evolutionary predisposition toward being wary of snakes could account for that mistaken perception. As well, in both cases, a dream of an encounter with a snake, and an encounter with a snake within the consensus construct, clearly have different potential ramifications for the phenomenal, representational percept of this consensus corporeal form. However, while both premises are based upon there being some shared underlying realm, the core difference between these premises is that under materialism there is still no account for how to get from vacuum state fluctuations existing independent of consciousness, to some supposedly brain-generated (that too being reducible to said fluctuations) conscious experience of objectified, representational, phenomenal percepts, however real or dreamlike they may be; while under BK's idealism there's the problem of how to get from a sole Mind to many inter-subjective loci of minds experiencing objectified, phenomenal percepts that are representative of universal ideations of Mind. I suppose, these problems notwithstanding, it comes down to which starting premise one derives the most deeply resonant meaning from, in terms of how each jibes with one's core experience. Then again, it could be neither, as Indeed Ashvin and/or Cleric might now remind us.

[Starbuck]

The issue is there are certain characteristics like consistency, inflexibility, and constancy about shared reality that are not required or usually present in our private consciousness. This argues for the existence of something more than the mental unless we are contorting the meaning of "mental" to include effectively everything.

Yet isn't our private mind characterised by seemingly fixed habits and constraints? I could have a phobia of snakes and have persistent recurring nightmares involving snakes. That is, my stuck neurosis projects out to appearances that seem stuck and intractable. My personal constraints are microcosmically related and linked to the constraints of mind at large.

[Jim Cross]

The issue is there are certain characteristics like consistency, inflexibility, and constancy about shared reality that are not required or usually present in our private consciousness. This argues for the existence of something more than the mental unless we are contorting the meaning of "mental" to include effectively everything.

Yet isn't our private mind characterised by seemingly fixed habits and constraints? I could have a phobia of snakes and have persistent recurring nightmares involving snakes. That is, my stuck neurosis projects out to appearances that seem stuck and intractable. My personal constraints are microcosmically related and linked to the constraints of mind at large.

Bernardo is trying to explain why the mental is the ontological primitive. That requires a mind-at-large to explain the apparent difference in shared reality and private consciousness.

Mind-at-large, however, is what must be explained since there is no obvious experiential or scientific evidence for it. What you are doing is using that which must be explained - mind-at-large - as your explanation when you need to be explaining it. The hypothesis of a mind-at-larger doesn't account for the qualitative differences between individual consciousness and shared reality. On what basis would we assume that shared reality is the same as private consciousness without accounting for the discrepancies.

[Starbuck]

On what basis would we assume that shared reality is the same as private consciousness without accounting for the discrepancies.

The discrepancies are accounted for by his theories of dissociation and metacognition. As Graham Oppy said in their discussion, we must all make a cost/benefit judgment based on the sun of all our experience. I totally get why for some people of certain experience the cost is too high.

[Jim Cross]

On what basis would we assume that shared reality is the same as private consciousness without accounting for the discrepancies.

The discrepancies are accounted for by his theories of dissociation and metacognition. As Graham Oppy said in their discussion, we must all make a cost/benefit judgment based on the sun of all our experience. I totally get why for some people of certain experience the cost is too high.

Thanks again for pertinent comments.

The theories of dissociation (which are only analogies anyway to DID) need to come into play because Bernardo has concluded there is a mind-at-large. But there is no observational or scientific evidence for a mind-at-large. Zero, zip, nada. It is only a hypothesis argued on the basis of parsimony which in itself is in the eye of the beholder.

Parsimony itself likely has no place in this argument because it involves picking the apparently simplest explanation from other more complicated explanations. There is, however, always the possibility that the simplest explanation can be proven wrong as more evidence accumulates. But the mind-at-large cannot be disproven. No amount of evidence can prove or disprove it because it is a self-contained, circular argument. Nothing has been presented that would falsify it.

[Starbuck]

On what basis would we assume that shared reality is the same as private consciousness without accounting for the discrepancies.

The discrepancies are accounted for by his theories of dissociation and metacognition. As Graham Oppy said in their discussion, we must all make a cost/benefit judgment based on the sun of all our experience. I totally get why for some people of certain experience the cost is too high.

Thanks again for pertinent comments.

The theories of dissociation (which are only analogies anyway to DID) need to come into play because Bernardo has concluded there is a mind-at-large. But there is no observational or scientific evidence for a mind-at-large. Zero, zip, nada. It is only a hypothesis argued on the basis of parsimony which in itself is in the eye of the beholder.

Parsimony itself likely has no place in this argument because it involves picking the apparently simplest explanation from other more complicated explanations. There is, however, always the possibility that the simplest explanation can be proven wrong as more evidence accumulates. But the mind-at-large cannot be disproven. No amount of evidence can prove or disprove it because it is a self-contained, circular argument. Nothing has been presented that would falsify it.

Can we really talk of prove/disprove when it comes to validity of any ultimate ontology? They are all circular because they are comprehensive, Which one you plump for is probably best accounted for by character type as much as reasoned debate.

My advice to someone like you is spend a few months living AS IF analytic idealism were true, I'd recomend someone like Rupert Spira's exercises and lectures.

At least at the end of that you can throw your hands up and in good faith say you've explored it to its limits and found it wanting. The alternative is that it will nag away at you, possibly because a remote part of you believes it may be true.

[Jim Cross]

The discrepancies are accounted for by his theories of dissociation and metacognition. As Graham Oppy said in their discussion, we must all make a cost/benefit judgment based on the sun of all our experience. I totally get why for some people of certain experience the cost is too high.

Thanks again for pertinent comments.

The theories of dissociation (which are only analogies anyway to DID) need to come into play because Bernardo has concluded there is a mind-at-large. But there is no observational or scientific evidence for a mind-at-large. Zero, zip, nada. It is only a hypothesis argued on the basis of parsimony which in itself is in the eye of the beholder.

Parsimony itself likely has no place in this argument because it involves picking the apparently simplest explanation from other more complicated explanations. There is, however, always the possibility that the simplest explanation can be proven wrong as more evidence accumulates. But the mind-at-large cannot be disproven. No amount of evidence can prove or disprove it because it is a self-contained, circular argument. Nothing has been presented that would falsify it.

Can we really talk of prove/disprove when it comes to validity of any ultimate ontology? They are all circular because they are comprehensive, Which one you plump for is probably best accounted for by character type as much as reasoned debate.

My advice to someone like you is spend a few months living AS IF analytic idealism were true, I'd recomend someone like Rupert Spira's exercises and lectures.

At least at the end of that you can throw your hands up and in good faith say you've explored it to its limits and found it wanting. The alternative is that it will nag away at you, possibly because a remote part of you believes it may be true.

"Can we really talk of prove/disprove when it comes to validity of any ultimate ontology?"

That's why the argument for parsimony fails. Is there any evidence that might arise in the future which would disapprove it? For parsimony to be an effective argument, it needs to have possibility of being disproven.

What would convince you it is wrong?

I don't think you or other on this forum really realize where I am coming from if you think I haven't explored these ideas thoroughly.