Reincarnation and Analytic Idealism

[V. Christodoulides]

Can a specific formulation of reincarnation be compatible with Analytic Idealism? If so, could it enrich the explanatory power of the theory?

“...Although committed to Idealism in general, Essentia Foundation considers Analytic Idealism in particular just one of perhaps a number of viable Idealist formulations...”
(https://www.essentiafoundation.org/anal ... sm-course/)

(First of all, I want to preface this blog submission in the form of an essay by acknowledging the significance of Analytic Idealism. Bernardo has performed an immaculate and substantial job of setting a rigorous and unambiguous framework for Idealism. This was the task of utmost importance that Idealism desperately needed in our day and age. It is debatable whether it could otherwise stand any chance of surviving the harsh environment of analytic philosophy and modern science. Any theory that falls under the general umbrella of Idealism should at least take a peek and consider borrowing some concepts for its benefit. In my own humble opinion, Analytic Idealism’s basic tenets should ground all further theorizing inside the vast realm of Idealism, if the foundations are to be solid and foolproof. Therefore, my main concern with this essay is to do exactly that; preserve at all times Analytic Idealism’s fundamental principles as the underlying ground on which further speculation can be built upon in a plausible manner.

But you may ask, “How could the concept of reincarnation ever be compatible with Analytic Idealism? Does it not contradict the inherent monistic element of the theory by resorting to substance dualism? And if it could hypothetically be accommodated within Analytic Idealism, would it add anything of value to the table?” Hopefully, by the end of this essay, I will have satisfactorily answered these reasonable questions you may have. In any case, I will still aspire to have provided you with at least some interesting food for thought to ruminate on. All that is required of you along this rather long journey is 1) Enough focused attention to get through a somewhat demanding essay such as this, and 2) That you maintain an open, curious mind ready to entertain new ideas. I also do not expect you to subscribe to anything I posit here without first passing it through the filter of your discernment. If anything, I welcome all criticisms. With enough already said, and much more to come, let’s begin without further ado.)

*Highlighted numbers are referring to footnotes located at the end of the essay

In this essay, I will try to put forward as rigorously as possible a model of teleological reincarnation/relocalisation that is enabled via a process of hierarchical dissociation. I will argue that it does not depart from Analytic Idealism by implementing any form of substance dualism. The only point of departure, you might say, boils down to how the mind/body relationship of individual minds is conceptualized. Furthermore, I will try to make arguments for this model’s probable ability to better explain some aspects of reality. To close this essay off, I will provide some concluding statements in an effort to converge together my wide-ranging, complicated, and interrelated thought processes.

Under Analytic Idealism, the body is conceptualized as the direct representation of the individual mind. As such, everything it (the whole-body image) depicts has to be solely about the individual mind in a one-to-one relationship. What I am proposing is that there is a different way to account for what we empirically know regarding the mind/body relationship. While always operating through the lens of Analytic Idealism’s fundamentals, all that is needed is to postulate one more level of dissociation and representation relevant to individual minds. The gist of the argument is that a biological body may not be the direct representation of an individual mind. It could be the direct representation of a part of nature’s mind that an already dissociated individual mind uses as a filter/localisation tool, thus further dissociating. In our case, as individual minds linked to human bodies, the consequent experience is the especially dissociated state of being we call human life.

I believe the formal term used for this mind/brain relationship is “the filter theory of consciousness.” A real-life analogy is the utilisation of a VR headset as a filter/localisation tool that allows a user to enter and interact within a VR environment. VR headsets, VR users, and VR environments correspond in filter theory to brains/nervous systems, individual minds, and planetary environments, respectively. In both cases, the tighter the linkage between a user and a tool is, the more immersive and dissociated the localised subjective experience will be. This theory seems to imply substance dualism, but it does not have to. It is quite simple to see why. In the same way that the VR headset filtering process (which exists in real-life) does not prove substance dualism, neither would filter theory if true.

An argument against the notion of consciousness being able to filter consciousness is that of a hypothetical coffee filter which is made of coffee and thus unable to filter coffee. The argument falls apart though, because of the very fact that there are any effective filters inside a monistic reality. Even coffee and its cloth filter are made of consciousness. Coffee and its cloth filter are both mental processes in the mind of nature that merely look like what we humans call coffee and a cloth filter, only when we observe them across our dissociative boundary. Therefore, the perceived coffee filtering taking place, or any similar filtering process for that matter, is actually the image of one mental process inside the unified mind of nature interacting with (filtering) another. Does the fact that coffee filters work prove dualism?

Since it is fairly obvious that a part of consciousness can indeed filter another part of consciousness, filter theory may very well be such an instance. The filter/localisation tool that an individual mind links to is nothing but a mental process of nature that, in the case of animal organisms, looks like a body with a brain/nervous system. Likewise, going back to our analogy, a VR headset is the image of yet another similar process in the mind of nature. Although the differences between an artificially created VR headset and a naturally evolved biological body are certainly huge (both in sophistication and ontological significance), the point of analogy still holds.1

With dualism out of the way, let’s move on to filter theory’s ability — when adapted according to basic Analytic Idealism — to work just as beautifully as Bernardo’s direct representation theory does in explaining empirical observations. For body-to-mind observations, we have on the one hand, effects on the body being able to influence the individual mind’s local experience of ‘physical’ reality. On the other hand, effects on the body are thought to be what direct effects on the individual mind look like.2

As for the opposite relationship (i.e., mind-to-body observations), individual mental volition directs, or directly looks like (depending on the theory) the voluntary function of the brain/nervous system. The significant difference here is that under Bernardo’s theory, our involuntary bodily processes as well, must all be instances of individual mental volition. Whether you explicitly know it or not, you are circulating your blood, beating your heart, producing, and secreting your hormones, synthesizing your proteins, etc. Under filter theory however, all those involuntary processes are taken care of by the body itself. In other words, by a part of the mind of nature that we, as individual minds, do not identify with.3 Processes of a broader planetary context, such as the evolution of the species, the passing of genes (inheritance), and gene pool systems, are also taken care of by parts of the mind of nature that are other than the individual minds.

The equivalent in our VR headset analogy is the automatic (‘involuntary’) software and hardware processes necessary for the VR experience to run smoothly. A user could decide to voluntarily mess with them, of course, most probably with undesired outcomes, unless they know what they are doing. When a VR headset has a hardware problem, we turn to VR tech specialists for repairing it. When our biological body has a hardware problem, the experts we turn to are called medical professionals, with surgeons being the most straightforward example. As for software issues now, we must be cautious with the biological counterpart of this analogy. When the software of VR technology has an issue, VR companies turn to VR scientists and engineers. When DNA supposedly needs fixing, we as humanity turn to genetic engineering. Even if nature has made true ontological errors in the genetic makeup of organisms, it is questionable whether we, naïve humans, qualify as knowledgeable and responsible enough to interfere with nature’s highly complex and elusive workings. That is a whole nother story/issue, relating to ethics.

To drive this overall idea home, a useful metaphor could be to generally think of a biological body as an organic bio-computer, or bio-transducer that the mind of nature amazingly evolved. In essence, biological organisms are what specific mental processes inside a planet’s ecosystem look like. Their purpose is to serve as bidirectional user interfaces and thus allow for the immersive localisation of individual minds into a planet’s socially interactive environment. The ontological reason behind the provision of these kinds of experiences to individual minds — made possible through the development of these localisation instruments — is the facilitation of their teleological evolution. During this gradual evolutionary odyssey, each individual mind goes through numerous incarnations/localisations that may not necessarily be restricted to only one planetary system.4

Furthermore, these instruments function as useful filtering devices, in that they cut off an individual mind’s access to irrelevant information that is not conducive to the evolutionary process in general. In humans specifically, the utilisation of almost complete inferential isolation from Mind At Large ensures that a localisation/incarnation is dissociated/veiled enough so as to safeguard the survival of the animal we inhabit.5 Our individual mind by itself, not restrained by any filters (‘headset off’), is still somewhat dissociated, but it is considerably freer! Near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, so-called astral travel/projection experiences, and certain trance, psychedelic states all point towards this unbound individual mind which has more degrees of freedom, hence broader access to information such as previous lifetimes, a heightened sense of interconnectedness with the universe, and an understanding closer to the unity of all things.6

Were a body to be by itself, without an individual mind linked to it, it would still be a process (a dissociated one also7) in the mind of nature. Even the human body, by itself, is an instinctual animal that only when an evolved, meta-conscious individual mind links to it does it appear to behave meta-consciously. It is the individual minds and not the biological bodies that have evolved meta-consciousness over aeons of time and multiple incarnations. Your meta-conscious individual mind for example, had to go through each ascending level of consciousness (starting from the purely instinctual level) to reach its current advanced level. It didn’t just evolve higher mental functions in no time.

The biological bodies, being a vital part of this overall process, are evolving their capabilities in a way that reflects the evolution of the individual minds so that their needs for further, evolutionary-appropriate experience are met. For instance, the human body has evolved to adequately accommodate an individual mind that has reached the stage of meta-consciousness. The evolution of the human brain in particular, with its meta-cognitive potential, was a critical development/feature for the appropriate individual minds to start using. Apart from this ‘software’ upgrade (i.e., meta-cognitive capacity), human bodies are pretty much the same as those of their primate ancestors (except for being less hairy I guess).

So far so good, you may say. But wait a second, “What is the direct representation of the individual mind, then? It too should look like something, right?” I would say that yes, indeed there should be a direct representation, but it should most probably not be of the rough, heavy, chemically dense type like our biological bodies. I think it should be subtler, lighter, and more fluid/responsive in order to be depicting accurately and immediately the richness and subtleness of all the multi-diverse inner states of consciousness we can have. One simple example to help you intuit what I mean is movement. Is the limited movement of our ‘physical’ body the direct representation of our mental movement in thought? Or do we just control, with our thought, what limited movement our ‘physical’ bodies are capable of? Aren’t we more agile when it comes to our innate mental movement capabilities?

We already know there is a kind of ‘matter’ (i.e., light) that is more fluid and responsive (higher frequency) than solid ‘matter’ (which by the way might just be ‘frozen’ light or more technically light slowed down to a lower frequency of vibration). So why wouldn’t a representation of, or akin to, light — which may even be invisible to our bio-computer’s visual apparatus — be the first level of our individual mind’s representation?8

I understand that someone could paint from all this a crude, new-age picture consisting of invisible so-called subtle bodies (emotional, electrical, ethereal, and light bodies to name a few) floating around and whatnot.9 All I am saying though, is that Bernardo’s dissociation model can be safely expanded in its scope. It can set the guiding example for the development of a rational reincarnation/relocalisation model. If we are to develop such a model (in which the basics of Bernardo’s model are 100% retained), then the idea that individual minds might be directly represented as light bodies may not be so far-fetched after all. Makes you wonder if all those reports describing beings made of light (aka angels) are referring to encounters with unconstrained individual minds. If any such beings exist, they are most probably in a disincarnate state between incarnations.10

Regardless of what our manifested representations might or might not be, there is a most important (and I am sure mutually agreed upon) point to be mentioned. It is the fact that our core, most inner pure subjectivity is not represented in any manifested form at all. It is a singularity when it comes to ‘physical’, or any other description. Nonetheless, it is an intrinsic and inseparable part of us, individual minds, no matter how obscured it might appear to be. Our so-called spirit could be said to be this unchanging, timeless, and ever-present part of ourselves. It is this shared quality that binds us all together as one and the same at heart.

So (coming back to debatable territory) each of us, split-off personalities in the mind of nature, could be generally called individual spirit/mind/body complexes. The spirit and body aspects are also essentially mental, but there is a clear distinction between each of the three components assigned to a dissociated complex inside the mind of nature. The spirit part is eternally permanent, and the body part is impermanent. As for the mind part, there is an aspect of the individual mind that persists throughout the whole of its universal cycle. There are also aspects of the individual mind that are a product of only each particular incarnation and are very shallow. As transient as the corresponding incarnational body itself. During the incarnation, the totality of the individual mind is pinpointed into a tiny fraction of the overall stream. The rest, which is the majority, is filtered out.


Now, let’s specifically11 address the third question raised in the second paragraph of my preface. What could this proposed model offer in terms of better-explaining reality? Below is a list of six summarized arguments:

a) The data from the extensive research done by Dr Ian Stevenson is quite compelling. The two links provided serve as useful introductions to his work.
• (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/be ... st-cynics/)
• (https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-stu ... /REI35.pdf)

b) The experiments of Dr Wilder Penfield showcase a clear distinction between body and individual mind.(https://mindmatters.ai/2020/02/why-pion ... the-brain/)12

c) A process of reincarnation/relocalisation and the evolution of individual minds through such a process can explain why some individuals seem to be born with certain innate skills, preferences, and mental dispositions. As per Plato: “The choice of souls was in most cases based on their own experience of a previous life... Knowledge easily acquired is that which the enduring self had in an earlier life, so that it flows back easily.”13

d) People with congenital or later acquired body disabilities/deformities. Their unfortunately deformed body may not necessarily be how their individual mind directly looks like. It may just be how their body (mental part of nature) looks like because of processes independent of the individual mind. In this video, for example, I don’t think that his body is the direct representation of his mind. (Beside the point of this essay, I believe anyone can learn something positive by watching the video)

e) How can the body be preserved after an individual mind’s death if it is its direct representation? Shouldn’t it vanish along with the vanishment of the thing it is a representation of? And if we accept that it can take some time before disappearing, why do some parts decompose faster than others? What is so special about the skeleton and teeth as mere images that makes them echo for longer? (For reference here is Bernardo’s take on the issue)

f) Individual minds whose bodies are alive, but in a coma, may not necessarily be themselves (as individual minds) in a coma. If the perceived coma state is thought to be an image of the individual mind, then we must infer that the individual mind is in a state of ‘mental’ coma. But how could an individual mind directly appear as unconscious (cognitively inactive/unresponsive) while simultaneously carrying out all the bodily processes necessary for survival? Filter theory would say that all those involuntary processes are taken care of by the body itself. As for the perceived ‘unconsciousness’, an interface malfunction can explain why the individual mind cannot interact inside the localised environment. It is not unconscious. It is simply disconnected from its body.


All in all, reincarnation is not an easy concept to get rid of. From a purely rational perspective, it seems able to be accommodated within virtually all metaphysical theories (including materialism14). In an intuitive sense, it has been having enough going for it, for it to be dismissed out of hand. Intuitions for the existence of reincarnation spanning across various geographically isolated human cultures must at least be pointing to some kind of archetypal truth behind them. Although the beliefs, myths, and stories through which these intuitions are being communicated since time immemorial vary, the reincarnational theme has been common among them.15

Don’t get me wrong though, I am fully aware that Bernardo’s model is admittedly more parsimonious and, in my opinion, beautiful in its simplicity. The model proposed in this essay builds upon Bernardo’s simpler one and thus could be said to be more refutable by comparison. But maybe, just maybe, a more complex description is better able to grasp what Mind at Large is doing. I mean, it is all that there is, ever has been, and ever will be! Simplicity and parsimony might not always apply to its eternal exploration of its own infinite self. And even if this model is not able to substitute any part of the theory at present, at least it can serve as a viable, useful alternative lying in the corner in case reincarnation were to gain undeniable evidence in the future.

I want to additionally admit that I may have thrown a lot of different and perhaps unnecessarily redundant terms at you. Some of them may also not be the most accurate. I am no expert both in philosophical and technical jargon. Nevertheless, I believe that I have sufficiently managed to get the overall idea of this essay across. In the meantime, I hope to have always stayed faithful to the quintessence of Analytic Idealism. If I have drifted off at any point, please call it out to me.

Finally, as an analytical mind at heart, I feel the irresistible urge to express my gratitude to Bernardo for everything he has done and continues to do. His work is much appreciated by all of us intellectually driven seekers of truth. If it weren’t for him, I would never be able to write this essay. Not even begin to consider the possibility of writing it. Although you may never read this (understandably so), thank you sir!









Ordered list of footnotes:

1. The strongest difference in my opinion is that a VR headset, in and of itself, is certainly not a dissociated process
in the mind of nature whereas an alive biological body, even without an individual mind linked to it, is still a
dissociated process. Only natural filters/localisation tools that have evolved according to the rhythms of nature are
meant to facilitate the teleological evolution of individual minds.

2. In any case, there seems to be communication between the individual mind and the body happening via feedback
loop processes. Under Bernardo’s model, only the individual mind has any causal power. The body is just its image.
On that account, the observed mutual communication must be conceptualized as somehow taking place entirely
within the boundaries of the individual mind. In other words, it is only internal communication between different
parts (conscious or subconscious) of the same individual mind. Filter theory would just straightforwardly say that
there is indeed a bidirectional/reciprocal causal relationship that we observe between individual mind and body. The
body, as an independent mental process in and of itself, can affect the individual mind (and vice versa, of course).

3. We do seem to identify with our bodies at times, but I do not think that there is anyone who would see their heart
pumping their blood for example and immediately identify a part of their inner individual mentality with it. Having
said that, I also do not exclude the possibility that the heart might be intimately connected with our individual mind
(its emotional and intuitive aspect in particular). There are people who report pleasant sensations in their chest area
associated with inner feelings of love and unity. Some call it an opening of the so-called heart chakra.

4. If the natural development of these biological localisation instruments — which function as the catalytic means for
growth — is to be thought of as a ubiquitous archetype built into the collective unconscious (the very fabric of
reality itself), then they should be universally abundant, or at least present in a statistically significant quantity of
planets.

5. If our ancestors out in the savannas and jungles were to be able to easily bypass the filter and have explicit access
to all kinds of universal information, they would have a severe disadvantage against other organisms that are entirely
focused on their immediate environment. Zoning out and being busy reassociating with what is happening across the
earth or across the galaxy would defeat the whole purpose of a localised incarnation in the first place. The filtering
may not be run entirely by yourself for good reasons. If it were only up to you, it would most probably not be so
hard to overcome it. That is why a hierarchical process of dissociation, such as the one I hypothesize, may be
necessary.

6. However, it too is an illusion of personal selfhood, which will in the end be reintegrated/reassociated/reabsorbed
back with the broadest, all-encompassing context. That is, the transpersonal, undifferentiated/unexcited field of pure
subjectivity. To ultimately reach its telos though, the split-off individual mind must fulfil its long evolutionary
journey. Only once it has achieved the necessary balance, only once it has come to the point of absolute undistorted
truth, will it attain identity with the One.

7. Both a biological body and an individual mind, in and of themselves, are dissociated processes, albeit not as
dissociated as the process of the individual mind coupled with a body is.

8. The second level is the planetary-bound body that an individual mind links to. During the linkage, the body is an
image of the coupling process between it and the corresponding individual mind. As such, it could be thought of as
an indirect representation of a given individual mind when they are linked together.

9. Here is an interesting article just to get an idea of how many different so-called subtle bodies there are being
thrown around.

10. The in-between state need not always be meta-conscious like the one implied by so-called angels. I consider it
logical to assume that the reincarnation process is automatic for at least the first half of the universal cycle, and then
maybe meta-conscious. Certain near-death experiences include meta-conscious experiences such as reviewing the
current (almost previous) incarnation and sometimes planning for the next one. But until a sufficiently high level of
meta-consciousness is achieved at a later stage along the evolutionary track, the steps (incarnations & in-betweens)
are traversed automatically as in a non-lucid and non-metacognitive dream state wherein one is effortlessly going
with the flow of the surrounding environment. Carried along by the instinctive and spontaneous currents of nature.

11. Throughout this essay, there are points brought up that are intended to be in favour of the overall model proposed.
Sometimes forthrightly and sometimes more subtly.

12. Our VR analogy comes in handy here; messing with the headset and/or the controller of a VR user can affect both
the movements of their avatar body and their perceptions related to the virtual world. On the contrary, higher mental
functions (such as will, logic, and reason) cannot be directly affected. Needless to say, I disagree with Penfield’s
dualistic conclusions.

13. “But why don’t we have explicit access to past-life memories and knowledge whenever we want?” Because we
are, for the most part, dissociated from them due to the filtering mechanism of the brain. You don’t even have to go
to past lives to see how this works. In the same way that although you most probably don’t remember at all what you
were doing on a particular day 10 years ago, you definitely existed, not remembering before the birth of your current
body doesn’t mean you didn’t exist as an individual mind.

14. This fascinating essay written by Bernardo hints at this. For a new 3-dimensional incarnation to take place, the
hypothetical 10-dimensional hyper body just has to grow anew its 3-dimensional part when it dies.

15. Whatever we may make of all this, we should first ask ourselves why we are so inclined as a culture to
immediately dismiss out of hand such ideas as nothing else but irrational, primitive intuitions. Could it be that we
have been subtly indoctrinated to do so?

[Federica]

(...)

Hello V.,

Sorry if I don't yet comment on the details of your essay, but I am struck by this statement in the introduction:

"In my own humble opinion, Analytic Idealism’s basic tenets should ground all further theorizing inside the vast realm of Idealism".

Could you please elaborate on it?


PS: If I remember accurately, Bernardo has never really opposed the possibility of reincarnation. Although I would not be able to easily find out the relevant video, I remember Bernardo saying that it could be that whirlpools do not completely dissolve at death. They could take new form and reemerge in different times and places. Do you have information about these statements, and - if you do - do I remember them exactly?

[V. Christodoulides]

(...)

Hello V.,

Sorry if I don't yet comment on the details of your essay, but I am struck by this statement in the introduction:

"In my own humble opinion, Analytic Idealism’s basic tenets should ground all further theorizing inside the vast realm of Idealism".

Could you please elaborate on it?


PS: If I remember accurately, Bernardo has never really opposed the possibility of reincarnation. Although I would not be able to easily find out the relevant video, I remember Bernardo saying that it could be that whirlpools do not completely dissolve at death. They could take new form and reemerge in different times and places. Do you have information about these statements, and - if you do - do I remember them exactly?

Hello Federica,

It's alright, don't worry.

Sure. What I'm getting at with this statement is that basic concepts like 'dissociation', 'dissociative boundary', 'representation', 'spatially unbound field of pure subjectivity', etc., (as used and precisely defined by Bernardo) should serve as irreducible first principles so to speak. The thing is, there are a lot of Idealistic theories out there that may, at best, somewhat use some of these concepts, but they do rather vaguely. For the most part, they postulate way too much stuff without any proper grounding. When you ask them how did they reach such conclusions they give no explicit explanations. I am not against intuitive speculation and hypothesizing, even if unsubstantiated, as long as the proponents acknowledge and admit that they are not operating from the perspective of reason and evidence. Otherwise, we end up with dogmatic religion.

You are right, he never opposed the possibility as far as I know. It's undoubtedly absent from his model though. He does consider it able to be logically coherent but by no means embraces it. You remember correctly. Here is a link to the video I think you are referring to (starting from the relevant section) Postmortem Survival and Analytical Idealism with Bernardo Kastrup

PS: Bernardo's answer to Jeffrey's question is what generally motivated me to write this essay.

[Federica]

(...)

Hello V.,

Sorry if I don't yet comment on the details of your essay, but I am struck by this statement in the introduction:

"In my own humble opinion, Analytic Idealism’s basic tenets should ground all further theorizing inside the vast realm of Idealism".

Could you please elaborate on it?


PS: If I remember accurately, Bernardo has never really opposed the possibility of reincarnation. Although I would not be able to easily find out the relevant video, I remember Bernardo saying that it could be that whirlpools do not completely dissolve at death. They could take new form and reemerge in different times and places. Do you have information about these statements, and - if you do - do I remember them exactly?

Hello Federica,

It's alright, don't worry.

Sure. What I'm getting at with this statement is that basic concepts like 'dissociation', 'dissociative boundary', 'representation', 'spatially unbound field of pure subjectivity', etc., (as used and precisely defined by Bernardo) should serve as irreducible first principles so to speak. The thing is, there are a lot of Idealistic theories out there that may, at best, somewhat use some of these concepts, but they do rather vaguely. For the most part, they postulate way too much stuff without any proper grounding. When you ask them how did they reach such conclusions they give no explicit explanations. I am not against intuitive speculation and hypothesizing, even if unsubstantiated, as long as the proponents acknowledge and admit that they are not operating from the perspective of reason and evidence. Otherwise, we end up with dogmatic religion.

You are right, he never opposed the possibility as far as I know. It's undoubtedly absent from his model though. He does consider it able to be logically coherent but by no means embraces it. You remember correctly. Here is a link to the video I think you are referring to (starting from the relevant section) Postmortem Survival and Analytical Idealism with Bernardo Kastrup

PS: Bernardo's answer to Jeffrey's question is what generally motivated me to write this essay.

Hi V,

Thanks for your reply! I have a slightly challenging comment here, I hope it's fine since you said that you welcome constructive criticism, please take it as such.
I think that your prescriptive statement sounds as if a contemporary of, say, Copernicus had stated at that time: “The Copernicus model is so brilliant, I think that from now on, his perfectly round planetary orbits around the sun should ground all further theorizing of planetary orbits in astronomy.” In that prescription, the person would have expressed an implicit belief that the evolution of astronomical understanding had reached with Copernicus its final stage, its once-and-for-all accomplished form, to be ever so slightly refined by any successors.

Of course, we know today that such a person would have been objectively wrong, in astronomical terms, but maybe also morally wrong, one can wonder? One can wonder if it's ok to advocate for our preferred theory to become an irreducible paradigm for the future.

Therefore I see a double issue in this type of proposition. We know that human consciousness is always evolving, and with it, our human understanding of reality. So there seems to be an arbitrary faith in Barnardo’s understanding of reality as a kind of apex of human philosophical potential in your purpose? And this is one issue. Also, the “should”, the prescriptive character of your statement, sounds like an alarm bell to me, precisely in terms of that same risk that you are calling out, the risk of dogmatism. That's the second issue I have with the statement, because, after all, there are various ways to proceed from reason and evidence, and we want to stay safe from making Bernardo’s idealism, or any other theory, into a dogma. Do you agree?

[V. Christodoulides]

Hello V.,

Sorry if I don't yet comment on the details of your essay, but I am struck by this statement in the introduction:

"In my own humble opinion, Analytic Idealism’s basic tenets should ground all further theorizing inside the vast realm of Idealism".

Could you please elaborate on it?


PS: If I remember accurately, Bernardo has never really opposed the possibility of reincarnation. Although I would not be able to easily find out the relevant video, I remember Bernardo saying that it could be that whirlpools do not completely dissolve at death. They could take new form and reemerge in different times and places. Do you have information about these statements, and - if you do - do I remember them exactly?

Hello Federica,

It's alright, don't worry.

Sure. What I'm getting at with this statement is that basic concepts like 'dissociation', 'dissociative boundary', 'representation', 'spatially unbound field of pure subjectivity', etc., (as used and precisely defined by Bernardo) should serve as irreducible first principles so to speak. The thing is, there are a lot of Idealistic theories out there that may, at best, somewhat use some of these concepts, but they do rather vaguely. For the most part, they postulate way too much stuff without any proper grounding. When you ask them how did they reach such conclusions they give no explicit explanations. I am not against intuitive speculation and hypothesizing, even if unsubstantiated, as long as the proponents acknowledge and admit that they are not operating from the perspective of reason and evidence. Otherwise, we end up with dogmatic religion.

You are right, he never opposed the possibility as far as I know. It's undoubtedly absent from his model though. He does consider it able to be logically coherent but by no means embraces it. You remember correctly. Here is a link to the video I think you are referring to (starting from the relevant section) Postmortem Survival and Analytical Idealism with Bernardo Kastrup

PS: Bernardo's answer to Jeffrey's question is what generally motivated me to write this essay.

Hi V,

Thanks for your reply! I have a slightly challenging comment here, I hope it's fine since you said that you welcome constructive criticism, please take it as such.
I think that your prescriptive statement sounds as if a contemporary of, say, Copernicus had stated at that time: “The Copernicus model is so brilliant, I think that from now on, his perfectly round planetary orbits around the sun should ground all further theorizing of planetary orbits in astronomy.” In that prescription, the person would have expressed an implicit belief that the evolution of astronomical understanding had reached with Copernicus its final stage, its once-and-for-all accomplished form, to be ever so slightly refined by any successors.

Of course, we know today that such a person would have been objectively wrong, in astronomical terms, but maybe also morally wrong, one can wonder? One can wonder if it's ok to advocate for our preferred theory to become an irreducible paradigm for the future.

Therefore I see a double issue in this type of proposition. We know that human consciousness is always evolving, and with it, our human understanding of reality. So there seems to be an arbitrary faith in Barnardo’s understanding of reality as a kind of apex of human philosophical potential in your purpose? And this is one issue. Also, the “should”, the prescriptive character of your statement, sounds like an alarm bell to me, precisely in terms of that same risk that you are calling out, the risk of dogmatism. That's the second issue I have with the statement, because, after all, there are various ways to proceed from reason and evidence, and we want to stay safe from making Bernardo’s idealism, or any other theory, into a dogma. Do you agree?

Hi Federica, You are welcome! Please feel free to express your thoughts and criticisms without any reservations. I am very glad that we are openly discussing here.

I sympathize and agree with the possible danger you are getting at. I may have gone to the extreme end with my characterization of 'irreducible first principles'. However, let me use your Copernicus analogy to try to explain what I mean. What I would say using your analogy is not that the whole Copernicus model of perfectly round planetary orbits around the sun is unquestionably 100% accurate and true but that the basic concept of planetary orbits around the sun is unquestionably true. Whether the planets go around the sun in perfect circles or not is beyond the validity of the fact that they do indeed orbit the sun somehow. Moreover, through your own analogy, you have pointed to the existence of absolute conclusions. More specifically, your sentence, ''Of course, we know today that such a person would have been objectively wrong, in astronomical terms, but maybe also morally wrong, one can wonder?'' implies this. How do you know that such a person would have been absolutely wrong? Isn't this dogmatic? The answer is of course no. This is not dogmatic. They would certainly be absolutely wrong. You see, some things are, as far as we can humanely tell, unquestionably objective.

So, in the same way I don't see how anyone could ever raise plausible arguments against the existence of planetary orbits, I also don't see how anyone could do the same to the basic concepts of Analytic Idealism. As far as we humans can ever tell, we cannot get behind the concepts of 'thing in itself, 'representation', 'dissociation', 'dissociative boundary' and 'pure subjectivity'. I am not saying that we cannot refine them and expand upon them. Bernardo has done exactly that with the works of Kant, Schopenhauer, etc., and I am sure the future generations will do the same with his work. The basic ideas though, will always hold, at least during the human level of knowledge.

[Federica]

Hi Federica, You are welcome! Please feel free to express your thoughts and criticisms without any reservations. I am very glad that we are openly discussing here.

I sympathize and agree with the possible danger you are getting at. I may have gone to the extreme end with my characterization of 'irreducible first principles'. However, let me use your Copernicus analogy to try to explain what I mean. What I would say using your analogy is not that the whole Copernicus model of perfectly round planetary orbits around the sun is unquestionably 100% accurate and true but that the basic concept of planetary orbits around the sun is unquestionably true. Whether the planets go around the sun in perfect circles or not is beyond the validity of the fact that they do indeed orbit the sun somehow. Moreover, through your own analogy, you have pointed to the existence of absolute conclusions. More specifically, your sentence, ''Of course, we know today that such a person would have been objectively wrong, in astronomical terms, but maybe also morally wrong, one can wonder?'' implies this. How do you know that such a person would have been absolutely wrong? Isn't this dogmatic? The answer is of course no. This is not dogmatic. They would certainly be absolutely wrong. You see, some things are, as far as we can humanely tell, unquestionably objective.

So, in the same way I don't see how anyone could ever raise plausible arguments against the existence of planetary orbits, I also don't see how anyone could do the same to the basic concepts of Analytic Idealism. As far as we humans can ever tell, we cannot get behind the concepts of 'thing in itself, 'representation', 'dissociation', 'dissociative boundary' and 'pure subjectivity'. I am not saying that we cannot refine them and expand upon them. Bernardo has done exactly that with the works of Kant, Schopenhauer, etc., and I am sure the future generations will do the same with his work. The basic ideas though, will always hold, at least during the human level of knowledge.

Hi V,
That's getting interesting, and I appreciate that you remain open to discussion

With reference to the blue text - While I confirm that I aknowledge the existence of absolute conclusions (probably not in the same exact way you intend it, but let’s not get into that just yet) I see a fallacy in your reasoning. My sentence that you have quoted is indeed not dogmatic. But the reason is that it looks towards the past. We can consider the evolutionary trajectory of our human attempts to understand the universe, and we can observe how, after Copernicus, new, more encompassing approaches have expanded Copernicus’ interpretation of astronomical observations to a larger sphere, and that circular orbits were not compatible with the new theory. So without being dogmatic, we can say that, as far as alternative theories are concerned, as far as we limit our consideration to the perceptual reality of the universe, new perceptions and new observations have allowed later astronomers to adjust and expand on Copernicus' theory.

However, your statement is of a very different nature. It's both an inference, and a prescription, i.e. it wants to infer something about the future (that it won’t be possible to evolve from the basic concepts of BK’s analytic idealism).
Not only that, but possibly - if it was for you - you would like to enforce the framework of BK's philosophy ("all theorizing should..."). Notice, in my statement there is neither an inference, nor a prescription.

In other words, in your view, you put a cap on human evolution of thinking, and postulate that whatever improvements might happen, they will and should happen within a known framework - the one that we know today in 2023 as analytic idealism. Moreover, we can notice that history has never unfolded in a similar way, because not only theories have always been evolving, but more importantly, our very understanding of what a theory is, what a concept is, what knowledge and philosophy are, has evolved radically through time. Simply put, the form of our consciousness has. This is super-ordinated in comparison to the specific concepts of any philosophical model, developed within an epoch-specific way of understanding what a concept is. So when you disregard that, when you suppose that in the future we will handle concepts and ontological hypotheses exactly as today, and put a pledge on the future form of our consciousness, on how we will grasp ideas; when you posit that the mode of knowledge will remain static, you are being dogmatic. You are creating something similar to an ideology, out of a transient philosophical model.

I would also maintain my second heads-up, that not only you believe that the evolution of thinking has now come to an apex (although you allow for a certain evolution of thought-pieces, within that static framework) but you also would like to prescribe such view, or belief, to other thinkers, by recommending that everyone in the future should move within that given framework only.

Let me end by saying that, despite my remarks, I still sympathize with what you are doing, and the steps you are taking in order to work on your understanding of reality. I also supported analytic idealism and its approach, a while ago. There is indeed something new in BK’s philosophical personality, his way to counter materialism, and popularize an idealistic conception of the world. But I think that the framework itself - not the concepts it contains - within which he operates (a repurposed framework, by the way, as you suggest) has already been overcome, and will continue to evolve in the future.



PS:

You see, some things are, as far as we can humanely tell, unquestionably objective.

I agree with that - if we replace ‘objective’ with ‘absolute’ - but so aren’t any sorts of ontological hypotheses, as sleek, streamlined and as parsimonious as they might be. (And BK's certainly are all that).

[V. Christodoulides]

Hi Federica, You are welcome! Please feel free to express your thoughts and criticisms without any reservations. I am very glad that we are openly discussing here.

I sympathize and agree with the possible danger you are getting at. I may have gone to the extreme end with my characterization of 'irreducible first principles'. However, let me use your Copernicus analogy to try to explain what I mean. What I would say using your analogy is not that the whole Copernicus model of perfectly round planetary orbits around the sun is unquestionably 100% accurate and true but that the basic concept of planetary orbits around the sun is unquestionably true. Whether the planets go around the sun in perfect circles or not is beyond the validity of the fact that they do indeed orbit the sun somehow. Moreover, through your own analogy, you have pointed to the existence of absolute conclusions. More specifically, your sentence, ''Of course, we know today that such a person would have been objectively wrong, in astronomical terms, but maybe also morally wrong, one can wonder?'' implies this. How do you know that such a person would have been absolutely wrong? Isn't this dogmatic? The answer is of course no. This is not dogmatic. They would certainly be absolutely wrong. You see, some things are, as far as we can humanely tell, unquestionably objective.

So, in the same way I don't see how anyone could ever raise plausible arguments against the existence of planetary orbits, I also don't see how anyone could do the same to the basic concepts of Analytic Idealism. As far as we humans can ever tell, we cannot get behind the concepts of 'thing in itself, 'representation', 'dissociation', 'dissociative boundary' and 'pure subjectivity'. I am not saying that we cannot refine them and expand upon them. Bernardo has done exactly that with the works of Kant, Schopenhauer, etc., and I am sure the future generations will do the same with his work. The basic ideas though, will always hold, at least during the human level of knowledge.

Hi V,
That's getting interesting, and I appreciate that you remain open to discussion

With reference to the blue text - While I confirm that I aknowledge the existence of absolute conclusions (probably not in the same exact way you intend it, but let’s not get into that just yet) I see a fallacy in your reasoning. My sentence that you have quoted is indeed not dogmatic. But the reason is that it looks towards the past. We can consider the evolutionary trajectory of our human attempts to understand the universe, and we can observe how, after Copernicus, new, more encompassing approaches have expanded Copernicus’ interpretation of astronomical observations to a larger sphere, and that circular orbits were not compatible with the new theory. So without being dogmatic, we can say that, as far as alternative theories are concerned, as far as we limit our consideration to the perceptual reality of the universe, new perceptions and new observations have allowed later astronomers to adjust and expand on Copernicus' theory.

However, your statement is of a very different nature. It's both an inference, and a prescription, i.e. it wants to infer something about the future (that it won’t be possible to evolve from the basic concepts of BK’s analytic idealism).
Not only that, but possibly - if it was for you - you would like to enforce the framework of BK's philosophy ("all theorizing should..."). Notice, in my statement there is neither an inference, nor a prescription.

In other words, in your view, you put a cap on human evolution of thinking, and postulate that whatever improvements might happen, they will and should happen within a known framework - the one that we know today in 2023 as analytic idealism. Moreover, we can notice that history has never unfolded in a similar way, because not only theories have always been evolving, but more importantly, our very understanding of what a theory is, what a concept is, what knowledge and philosophy are, has evolved radically through time. Simply put, the form of our consciousness has. This is super-ordinated in comparison to the specific concepts of any philosophical model, developed within an epoch-specific way of understanding what a concept is. So when you disregard that, when you suppose that in the future we will handle concepts and ontological hypotheses exactly as today, and put a pledge on the future form of our consciousness, on how we will grasp ideas; when you posit that the mode of knowledge will remain static, you are being dogmatic. You are creating something similar to an ideology, out of a transient philosophical model.

I would also maintain my second heads-up, that not only you believe that the evolution of thinking has now come to an apex (although you allow for a certain evolution of thought-pieces, within that static framework) but you also would like to prescribe such view, or belief, to other thinkers, by recommending that everyone in the future should move within that given framework only.

Let me end by saying that, despite my remarks, I still sympathize with what you are doing, and the steps you are taking in order to work on your understanding of reality. I also supported analytic idealism and its approach, a while ago. There is indeed something new in BK’s philosophical personality, his way to counter materialism, and popularize an idealistic conception of the world. But I think that the framework itself - not the concepts it contains - within which he operates (a repurposed framework, by the way, as you suggest) has already been overcome, and will continue to evolve in the future.

PS:

You see, some things are, as far as we can humanely tell, unquestionably objective.

I agree with that - if we replace ‘objective’ with ‘absolute’ - but so aren’t any sorts of ontological hypotheses, as sleek, streamlined and as parsimonious as they might be. (And BK's certainly are all that).

Hello Federica,

Indeed, and I also appreciate that you put in the effort to provide feedback

My suggestive statements apply only to the field of Idealism. If Analytic Idealism is the best, most cutting-edge form of Idealism we currently have available, then I don't see why wouldn't it set the example for all other Idealistic theories. It is not the final answer but it can currently serve as the framework for progress to be made within Idealism. There is much more work to be done. Also, I am not advocating for strict uniformity across the board. Other theories should not constrict themselves to the boundaries of Analytic Idealism. Quite the opposite. If they happen to find it a useful and beneficial resource, they should expand and build upon it, always developing according to their own unique and diverse ways. It is precisely because I want Idealism to evolve, and not remain stagnated, that I am suggesting this.

Let me illustrate my overall point by using a specific example. There is a perennial problem facing Idealism. It is the question of how can a single mind be divided into many seemingly separate individual minds. What is the mechanism that allows for this to occur? Virtually all Idealistic theories that I've come across do not even try to explain this. They take it for granted. Therefore, if the concepts of Analytic Idealism are the best attempt we have so far in trying to explain this, then the other theories could only benefit by taking a look. If new and better concepts were to come up tomorrow I would say the same for them no matter where they came from. Analytic Idealism is not a priori the best theory. It just happens to have, in my opinion, and for the time being, the best concepts and arguments.

[Federica]

Hello Federica,

Indeed, and I also appreciate that you put in the effort to provide feedback

My suggestive statements apply only to the field of Idealism. If Analytic Idealism is the best, most cutting-edge form of Idealism we currently have available, then I don't see why wouldn't it set the example for all other Idealistic theories. It is not the final answer but it can currently serve as the framework for progress to be made within Idealism. There is much more work to be done. Also, I am not advocating for strict uniformity across the board. Other theories should not constrict themselves to the boundaries of Analytic Idealism. Quite the opposite. If they happen to find it a useful and beneficial resource, they should expand and build upon it, always developing according to their own unique and diverse ways. It is precisely because I want Idealism to evolve, and not remain stagnated, that I am suggesting this.

Let me illustrate my overall point by using a specific example. There is a perennial problem facing Idealism. It is the question of how can a single mind be divided into many seemingly separate individual minds. What is the mechanism that allows for this to occur? Virtually all Idealistic theories that I've come across do not even try to explain this. They take it for granted. Therefore, if the concepts of Analytic Idealism are the best attempt we have so far in trying to explain this, then the other theories could only benefit by taking a look. If new and better concepts were to come up tomorrow I would say the same for them no matter where they came from. Analytic Idealism is not a priori the best theory. It just happens to have, in my opinion, and for the time being, the best concepts and arguments.

Ok V, let’s see how you take this. Again, I put it in a challenging form, but that's only the form


The blue in your reply prompts me to take a short step back, and ask: how does a philosophical interest in idealism arise? Is it a pastime, is it a game, is it brain masturbation, is it a means to shredding our way to an intellectually pleasing self-image, or is it a sincere, fervent, earnest, courageous, self-driven attempt to grasp the meaning of life in the context of the universe, and what we are supposed to do with this life, if we are to meaningfully realize our human potential?
Bernardo often says the latter is the reason for his early philosophical explorations, for his drive towards philosophical studies parallel to a different established profession, the reason that made him quit a thriving corporate life, create Essentia, etcetera.

If your philosophical impulse to analytic idealism is driven - as I suppose - by motives similar to Bernardo’s, and not by any indulging in intellectual selfieing, or any other sort of occupational 9-to-5 activity consisting of turning the crank of reasoning within the sandbox of a certain subject matter of choice, then your statement in support of a sort of Diversity and Inclusion approach to philosophical theories cannot make sense. If you are convinced that analytic idealism is the best philosophical tool at our disposal today, how can you consider idealism “a field”? How can you say that “other theories should not constrict themselves to the boundaries of Analytic Idealism”? You paradoxically put constraints on your fellow idealists, but you allow, and even recommend, that other theorists keep on macerating in their naive mistakes?

Why don’t you advocate first and foremost for other theories to understand the value of idealism, as Bernardo does? He dares to say: my idealism is the best explanation of reality we have. The fact that he is wrong, doesn’t mean his stance is not a minimum, necessary point of departure for any philosopher who wants to distinguish himself from the self-indulging type, and/or the salaried type I’ve described above.

Are you convinced that your philosophy of choice has explanatory power, or are you not? If you are, then take responsibility for that. Don’t say that other theories should not constrain themselves to the boundaries of Analytic Idealism. Alternatively, admit that you are ultimately only playing the game of philosophy. Much better game for self image, and public image, than Trivial Pursuit, if you ask me.

What I am really trying to say is that first, it is necessary to own our philosophical striving, as Bernardo does, but then we should also try to lift the eyes from the panorama of alternative philosophical frameworks and contemplate instead the sense of what we are actually doing when we turn our attention and dedicate our thoughts to philosophical questions.

You have referred to the so-called decomposition problem of idealism, that Bernardo has the merit to address directly. Good. Now let’s zoom out a little from the decomposition problem. I want to show that this problem, in its essence, is actually not specific to idealism at all. Look at panpsychism, for example. It’s interesting, they have the same exact problem but in reverse. Naturally, a problem opposite to decomposition arises - the combination problem of panpsychism - as soon as one try to tackle the issue from the opposite end. And guess what, physicalism, or materialism, has its own famous framework-based problem too - the hard problem of consciousness. In essence, we are talking about the same problem. It’s the problem of doing philosophy with the same highly inadequate tool, that is, our anxiously categorizing, desperately sequentializing, frameworking approach. In other words, the problem arises whenever we attempt to go about doing philosophy using conceptual frameworks, hoping to streamline things. Without exception, at some point the framework fails. It cannot be smoothly extended to properly cover the whole story that is out for explanation.

Everyone starts from their preferred little corner of experience, only to realize (or not to realize) that their model - regardless what model, as long as it is a model - doesn’t allow us to come full circle, not because that particular model is wrong, as a model, but because it’s the modeling activity itself that is disastrously inadequate!

Combination, decombination or else, we can realize how these are not problems of this or that specific framework-approach to philosophy. Because any framework-approach - from physicalism to idealism and all variations in between - faces some sort of framework-based problem. The stumbling block resides in the framework approach itself, rather than in the particular framework one decides to become a partisan of, or to fight for, as intellectual gladiator - which is the role BK has chosen for himself in the philosophical fight of frameworks against frameworks.

The problem is that any sort of a-posteriori desk-pondering about experience overlooks that pondering itself should be factored in, because it's part of the mix of variables, and it's not possible to make that self-extraction without messing everything up. That's why all frameworks would like to describe reality, but ultimately they end up being self-reflective, they reflect the activity of the intellect. They enclose the inquiry within the confines of our own brain output, instead of daring to confront the experience of reality directly, by contextual immersion. So, ironically they end up structuring what they are not conscious of as they go about their mental speculations, i.e. their contextual reasoning activity itself. At the same time, reality is out there (and at the same time in here), calling for immersive understanding, and it remains unrecognized.

Experience - or reality through experience - in all its overwhelmingly mysterious complexity, is telling those who care to listen: “Hey you won’t be able to dig the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel with a children's shovel and spade beach set. Just stop.” Not only are frameworks radically unfit for the task, but also they induce us to reason on a reality that is shaped through reasoning, as if we could freeze it, as if we could ignore the real-time impact we are producing on that supposedly objective reality, just by the simple fact of activating our reasoning power.

It’s as if we were trying to take a full body pic of ourselves by means of a selfie. Materialists try to hold the phone in the left hand, they describe their right side in wealth of details but they face the hard problem that the left arm is missing from the picture. It doesn’t work. Idealists try on the right hand, and face the specular problem, it still doesn’t work. Bernardo comes in and screams: let’s hold a selfie stick in the right hand! But of course, it still impacts the picture, it won’t be an objective picture of our reality. No amount of extra work will improve the issue. Clearly, the solution is not to try to find a better and better selfie technique and gear. Rather, it is to realize that we have to switch gears completely. We have to expand our vision to a shared perspective, and realize that only a friend can help us take a viable picture of ourselves, as we do the same for them. Even better, a third friend can do that for us two, and a fourth friend for the three of us, and so forth. Only by leveraging our shared intention and shared medium of existence, can we approximate a truthful vision of (our) reality, and progressively extract ourselves from the arbitrariness of this or that arbitrarily preferred viewpoint or framework.

[V. Christodoulides]

Hello Federica,

Indeed, and I also appreciate that you put in the effort to provide feedback

My suggestive statements apply only to the field of Idealism. If Analytic Idealism is the best, most cutting-edge form of Idealism we currently have available, then I don't see why wouldn't it set the example for all other Idealistic theories. It is not the final answer but it can currently serve as the framework for progress to be made within Idealism. There is much more work to be done. Also, I am not advocating for strict uniformity across the board. Other theories should not constrict themselves to the boundaries of Analytic Idealism. Quite the opposite. If they happen to find it a useful and beneficial resource, they should expand and build upon it, always developing according to their own unique and diverse ways. It is precisely because I want Idealism to evolve, and not remain stagnated, that I am suggesting this.

Let me illustrate my overall point by using a specific example. There is a perennial problem facing Idealism. It is the question of how can a single mind be divided into many seemingly separate individual minds. What is the mechanism that allows for this to occur? Virtually all Idealistic theories that I've come across do not even try to explain this. They take it for granted. Therefore, if the concepts of Analytic Idealism are the best attempt we have so far in trying to explain this, then the other theories could only benefit by taking a look. If new and better concepts were to come up tomorrow I would say the same for them no matter where they came from. Analytic Idealism is not a priori the best theory. It just happens to have, in my opinion, and for the time being, the best concepts and arguments.

Ok V, let’s see how you take this. Again, I put it in a challenging form, but that's only the form


The blue in your reply prompts me to take a short step back, and ask: how does a philosophical interest in idealism arise? Is it a pastime, is it a game, is it brain masturbation, is it a means to shredding our way to an intellectually pleasing self-image, or is it a sincere, fervent, earnest, courageous, self-driven attempt to grasp the meaning of life in the context of the universe, and what we are supposed to do with this life, if we are to meaningfully realize our human potential?
Bernardo often says the latter is the reason for his early philosophical explorations, for his drive towards philosophical studies parallel to a different established profession, the reason that made him quit a thriving corporate life, create Essentia, etcetera.

If your philosophical impulse to analytic idealism is driven - as I suppose - by motives similar to Bernardo’s, and not by any indulging in intellectual selfieing, or any other sort of occupational 9-to-5 activity consisting of turning the crank of reasoning within the sandbox of a certain subject matter of choice, then your statement in support of a sort of Diversity and Inclusion approach to philosophical theories cannot make sense. If you are convinced that analytic idealism is the best philosophical tool at our disposal today, how can you consider idealism “a field”? How can you say that “other theories should not constrict themselves to the boundaries of Analytic Idealism”? You paradoxically put constraints on your fellow idealists, but you allow, and even recommend, that other theorists keep on macerating in their naive mistakes?

Why don’t you advocate first and foremost for other theories to understand the value of idealism, as Bernardo does? He dares to say: my idealism is the best explanation of reality we have. The fact that he is wrong, doesn’t mean his stance is not a minimum, necessary point of departure for any philosopher who wants to distinguish himself from the self-indulging type, and/or the salaried type I’ve described above.

Are you convinced that your philosophy of choice has explanatory power, or are you not? If you are, then take responsibility for that. Don’t say that other theories should not constrain themselves to the boundaries of Analytic Idealism. Alternatively, admit that you are ultimately only playing the game of philosophy. Much better game for self image, and public image, than Trivial Pursuit, if you ask me.

What I am really trying to say is that first, it is necessary to own our philosophical striving, as Bernardo does, but then we should also try to lift the eyes from the panorama of alternative philosophical frameworks and contemplate instead the sense of what we are actually doing when we turn our attention and dedicate our thoughts to philosophical questions.

You have referred to the so-called decomposition problem of idealism, that Bernardo has the merit to address directly. Good. Now let’s zoom out a little from the decomposition problem. I want to show that this problem, in its essence, is actually not specific to idealism at all. Look at panpsychism, for example. It’s interesting, they have the same exact problem but in reverse. Naturally, a problem opposite to decomposition arises - the combination problem of panpsychism - as soon as one try to tackle the issue from the opposite end. And guess what, physicalism, or materialism, has its own famous framework-based problem too - the hard problem of consciousness. In essence, we are talking about the same problem. It’s the problem of doing philosophy with the same highly inadequate tool, that is, our anxiously categorizing, desperately sequentializing, frameworking approach. In other words, the problem arises whenever we attempt to go about doing philosophy using conceptual frameworks, hoping to streamline things. Without exception, at some point the framework fails. It cannot be smoothly extended to properly cover the whole story that is out for explanation.

Everyone starts from their preferred little corner of experience, only to realize (or not to realize) that their model - regardless what model, as long as it is a model - doesn’t allow us to come full circle, not because that particular model is wrong, as a model, but because it’s the modeling activity itself that is disastrously inadequate!

Combination, decombination or else, we can realize how these are not problems of this or that specific framework-approach to philosophy. Because any framework-approach - from physicalism to idealism and all variations in between - faces some sort of framework-based problem. The stumbling block resides in the framework approach itself, rather than in the particular framework one decides to become a partisan of, or to fight for, as intellectual gladiator - which is the role BK has chosen for himself in the philosophical fight of frameworks against frameworks.

The problem is that any sort of a-posteriori desk-pondering about experience overlooks that pondering itself should be factored in, because it's part of the mix of variables, and it's not possible to make that self-extraction without messing everything up. That's why all frameworks would like to describe reality, but ultimately they end up being self-reflective, they reflect the activity of the intellect. They enclose the inquiry within the confines of our own brain output, instead of daring to confront the experience of reality directly, by contextual immersion. So, ironically they end up structuring what they are not conscious of as they go about their mental speculations, i.e. their contextual reasoning activity itself. At the same time, reality is out there (and at the same time in here), calling for immersive understanding, and it remains unrecognized.

Experience - or reality through experience - in all its overwhelmingly mysterious complexity, is telling those who care to listen: “Hey you won’t be able to dig the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel with a children's shovel and spade beach set. Just stop.” Not only are frameworks radically unfit for the task, but also they induce us to reason on a reality that is shaped through reasoning, as if we could freeze it, as if we could ignore the real-time impact we are producing on that supposedly objective reality, just by the simple fact of activating our reasoning power.

It’s as if we were trying to take a full body pic of ourselves by means of a selfie. Materialists try to hold the phone in the left hand, they describe their right side in wealth of details but they face the hard problem that the left arm is missing from the picture. It doesn’t work. Idealists try on the right hand, and face the specular problem, it still doesn’t work. Bernardo comes in and screams: let’s hold a selfie stick in the right hand! But of course, it still impacts the picture, it won’t be an objective picture of our reality. No amount of extra work will improve the issue. Clearly, the solution is not to try to find a better and better selfie technique and gear. Rather, it is to realize that we have to switch gears completely. We have to expand our vision to a shared perspective, and realize that only a friend can help us take a viable picture of ourselves, as we do the same for them. Even better, a third friend can do that for us two, and a fourth friend for the three of us, and so forth. Only by leveraging our shared intention and shared medium of existence, can we approximate a truthful vision of (our) reality, and progressively extract ourselves from the arbitrariness of this or that arbitrarily preferred viewpoint or framework.

Hello again, it's great that you lay all your thoughts regarding this topic on the table. This discussion is interesting for sure.

I do not see how the latter approach to philosophy is incompatible with a supportive stance towards diversity. Of course, I will not personally subscribe to anything I do not resonate with, and I will criticize it if necessary, but I am not against its existence. When it comes to a broader form of diversity, beyond Idealism, even the most absurd of theories may potentially contain a sliver of truth somewhere hidden within them that I am not aware of. Who am I to categorically say that anything other than Analytic Idealism is totally useless and false?

In my previous post, I was not addressing this broader diversity. I was recommending the fundamental concepts of Analytic Idealism as a beneficial resource for developments within Idealism to be made in diverse (and in my opinion plausible) ways. There are so many paths of exploration and speculation to take, once the basics are resolved. Could you consider the fact that I only recommend Analytic Idealism's basics as a basis for further expansion, a form of constriction? Yes, you could, but since I sincerely think that Analytic Idealism is the best theory we have so far in terms of post-enlightenment values, to recommend otherwise would be contradictory, as you already know. I never recommended that other theorists keep on macerating in their naive mistakes. But I do allow for that.

My very essay, from which all of this conversation started, is a suitable case in point. Have I constricted myself entirely to Analytic Idealism? No. The proposal put forward is not restricted to the strict boundaries of Analytic Idealism as precisely formulated by Bernardo. It most certainly adheres to the fundamental principles but it expands beyond the theory. Not only have I speculated further, but I have also argued against a specific part of Bernardo's formulation, particularly when it comes to the mind-body relationship.

Also, Idealism is a vast, vast field which we have only begun to explore. Analytic Idealism is just the most promising intellect-based tool to help us with this exploration. Don't get me wrong though, there are intuitive and introspective approaches that are as valid (if not even more valid) to this exploration. Bernardo himself says that this kind of direct method is the royal avenue. However, for all of us whose minds are the bouncers of our hearts, analytical concepts and models are necessary intermediary steps. The ultimate goal is always in all cases to connect the mind with the heart. To reach knowledge by acquaintance so that you may fully embody that knowledge in your day-to-day living. Or as you put it, "...confront the experience of reality directly, by contextual immersion." But, I can not see why these two approaches have to be mutually exclusive. One against the other as you seem to imply. Couldn't they be complementary?

The hard problem of Materialism, the combination problem of Panpsychism, and the decomposition problem of Idealism are not the same problem. Each one is specific to its corresponding theory. In essence, they are necessary assumptions within the theories that require substantiation and explanation. Materialism implies the emergence of subjects from objects, Panpsychism implies the formation of big unified subjects through the combination of many separate tiny subjects, and Idealism implies the decomposition of one unified subject into many seemingly separate individual subjects. They are either right or false assumptions. Or more correctly, either possible or impossible. Finding out which is which, will greatly help us in explaining our empirical observations of subjectivity. All I can say about the decomposition problem is that we know for an empirical fact (Dissociative Identity Disorder) that decomposition, in the form of dissociation, can and does happen in nature. To be able to show that your assumption is at least possible is huge progress. The other problems that pertain to the other theories do not have such a clear, unambiguous empirical substantiation.

And yes, of course they are all framework-based. What else could they be? They come with the territory, and thus a solution/possible explanation is by definition to be found in that territory within which they arise. Do you imply that they are not important to consider? Do you recommend that we bypass these problems without trying to solve/explain them (each their own problem)? If so, then you are working outside of analytic philosophy. This is not necessarily wrong as an approach, but I do not see how it applies here. Also, I do not see how a no-concept, no-model approach can better explain stuff. To explain is to conceptualize, rationalize in order to simplify and facilitate understanding. Any explanation is perforce a kind of model.

Indeed, models are not Reality in and of itself. Reality just is. Explanations for this primordial, pre-existing isness of Reality come secondarily and they can only aspire to capture, in representative form, facets of reality and not reality in its fullness. I ultimately agree, all conceptual frameworks no matter how accurate and advanced will fail in that regard. The point is not to take them beyond their reach but it is to utilise them within their respective areas. There lies their value and usefulness.

"We have to expand our vision to a shared perspective, and realize that only a friend can help us take a viable picture of ourselves, as we do the same for them. Even better, a third friend can do that for us two, and a fourth friend for the three of us, and so forth. Only by leveraging our shared intention and shared medium of existence, can we approximate a truthful vision of (our) reality, and progressively extract ourselves from the arbitrariness of this or that arbitrarily preferred viewpoint or framework." Again, I do not see how is Analytic Idealism in conflict with this. Why does it have to be one or the other?

I am also curious to know why Analytic Idealism is not the best philosophical theory and how has it been overcome. I would be glad to know more about your take on this. This particular room we are in ("Bernardo gets a room of his own") is not about other theories and approaches but I am sure it will be alright if you post such information here.

[AshvinP]

I am also curious to know why Analytic Idealism is not the best philosophical theory and how has it been overcome. I would be glad to know more about your take on this. This particular room we are in ("Bernardo gets a room of his own") is not about other theories and approaches but I am sure it will be alright if you post such information here.

Indeed, it would be more than fine to pursue such topics here. This is a great discussion - thank you both! I didn't even notice it until recently because I am in the habit of only checking the General Discussion section. Maybe it would be better to move it to that section in case other readers are also missing it? If you are both fine with that, I'm sure Federica can make that happen.