Would Kastrup not be operating within a distinction between perceiver and perceived, saying that consciousness is the medium and that the perceivers are conscious while the contents of consciousness, i.e., what is what is perceived, are not themselves conscious?

If everything we encounter is mental in nature, then in what sense are some things “alive” and others not? Under Kastrup’s account, are all entities manifestations of mind equally, or does “life” mark a further distinction beyond mere consciousness? — Tom Storm

In Kastrup’s analytic idealism, everything is mental in origin but not everything is a subject of experience. Non-living objects are the extrinsic appearances of mental processes that are not dissociated into bounded experiential perspectives, whereas living organisms correspond to dissociated, self-maintaining mental processes and therefore possess an inner life. “Life” does not mark a higher degree of consciousness, but a structural distinction: the emergence of a private point of view within mind-at-large. Tables and rocks exist as stable appearances of mental activity, governed by lawful regularities, but there is 'nothing it is like to be a table'. This distinction — between mentality as ontological ground and subjectivity as a special mode of organization — is developed most systematically in The Idea of the World.

A natural follow-up question is: if non-living objects are the extrinsic appearances of mental processes, whose mental processes are these? This is where Kastrup leans heavily on mind-at-large, a move that has clear affinities with Advaita Vedānta (he has many dialogues with Swami Sarvapriyananda) and with Berkeley, whom he occasionally acknowledges. But it’s also worth noting that if one tries to conceive of “the world” — a rock, a tree, anything at all — as existing in the total absence of mental processes, one quickly runs into an insoluble conundrum (per Schopenhauer, also the subject of one of Kastrup's books, Decoding Schopenhauer's Metaphysics).

I’ve been critical of Kastrup’s notion of mind-at-large, but I’ve come to see it less as a posit of a cosmic intelligence and more as a way of marking the unavoidable fact that existence always appears within the horizon of consciousness. In that sense, the world exists in and for mind, where “mind” does not name a single metaphysical super-entity so much as the condition that anything be manifest at all — that is, any mind.

Thanks. It’s tricky stuff, and it forces you to try to conceptualise something counterintuitive (given our conditioning and inclinations).

A natural follow-up question is: if non-living objects are the extrinsic appearances of mental processes, whose mental processes are these? This is where Kastrup leans heavily on mind-at-large, a move that has clear affinities with Advaita Vedānta (he has many dialogues with Swami Sarvapriyananda) and with Berkeley, whom he occasionally acknowledges. — Wayfarer

Yes, his mind-at-large appears to be non-metacognitive and entirely instinctive (unlike Berkeley's God). Does this align well with Eastern notions?

I don’t recall Kastrup inferring from his ontology that there is any sense of an overall plan for life. I know he isn’t arguing against one either; it seems to be bracketed for him. One imagines him eventually getting caught up (hijacked?) in one or other religious perspectives.

I’ve been critical of Kastrup’s notion of mind-at-large, but I’ve come to see it less as a posit of a cosmic intelligence and more as a way of marking the unavoidable fact that existence always appears within the horizon of consciousness. — Wayfarer

Do you think, perhaps, that M-a-L is a placeholder for an explanatory gap?

“Life” does not mark a higher degree of consciousness, but a structural distinction: the emergence of a private point of view within mind-at-large. Tables and rocks exist as stable appearances of mental activity, governed by lawful regularities, but there is 'nothing it is like to be a table'. — Wayfarer

It does may me wonder, why tables, and chairs? Why rocks and earth and sky Why even have such a stable appearance of mental activity?

But it’s also worth noting that if one tries to conceive of “the world” — a rock, a tree, anything at all — as existing in the total absence of mental processes, one quickly runs into an insoluble conundrum. — Wayfarer

There seems to be nothing without perception and experience; the possibility of meaning depends on it, I would have thought.

I don’t recall Kastrup inferring from his ontology that there is any sense of an overall plan for life. I know he isn’t arguing against one either; it seems to be bracketed for him. One imagines him eventually getting caught up (hijacked?) in one or other religious perspectives. — Tom Storm

Caution needed here. I think Kastrup's natural tendency is much more convergent with the Hindu mokṣa than Christan eschatology, Are Vedantic or Buddhist perspectives 'religious'? Well, in a way, but they're also very different to the Biblical sense of religion. They're much more concerned with insight into the nature of mind and maybe much nearer to elements of gnositicism than to straight-ahead Christianity. But a large part of our cultural conditioning is to put all of them under the umbrella term 'religion', against which there is considerable animus, as you can see from any number of antireligious polemics on this forum.

I would never have expected a Western Christian frame from K. I use ‘religious’ as a synonym for spiritual system. I see him as moving away from the ineffable and apophatic and to more into an explanatory frame. But I infer this from how he talks rather than writes.

Yes, I know what you mean.

I'm actually looking at The Idea of the World again as I write this - I bought the Kindle edition a year ago. The chapter I'm reading on the dissociative boundary is footnoted to many empirical studies of the phenomenon.

Here's a sample of his reasoning:

(An) objection is this: nature unfolds according to patterns and regularities—the ‘laws of nature’—independent of our personal volition. Human beings cannot change these laws. But if nature is in consciousness, should that not be possible by a mere act of imagination?

... Notice that the implicit assumption here is that all mental activity is acquiescent to volition, which is patently false even in our own personal psyche. After all, by and large we cannot control our dreams, nightmares, emotions, and even many of our thoughts. They come, develop and go on their own terms. At a pathological level, schizophrenics cannot control their visions and people suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder are constantly at the mercy of oppressive thoughts. There are numerous examples of conscious activity that escapes the control of volition. Often, we do not even recognize this activity as our own; that is, we do not identify with it. It unfolds as autonomous, seemingly external phenomena, such as dreams and schizophrenic hallucinations. Yet, all this activity is unquestionably within consciousness. We perceive it as separate from ourselves because the segment of our psyche that gives rise to this activity is dissociated from the ego, the segment with which we do identify.

So that there is activity in universal consciousness that we do not identify with and cannot control is entirely consistent with idealism. This activity is simply dissociated from our ego and its sense of volition. — Kastrup, Bernardo. The Idea of the World: A Multi-Disciplinary Argument for the Mental Nature of Reality (pp. 136-137). (Function). Kindle Edition.

But it’s also worth noting that if one tries to conceive of “the world” — a rock, a tree, anything at all — as existing in the total absence of mental processes, one quickly runs into an insoluble conundrum. — Wayfarer


There seems to be nothing without perception and experience; the possibility of meaning depends on it, I would have thought. — Tom Storm

So, do you think as Wayfarer does that it is not merely the possibility of meaning that depends on consciousness, but the possibility even of existence?

My guess is that existence, and any related ideas we might explore, are inseparable from consciousness. Without consciousness, there are no propositions, it seems therefore that we cannot meaningfully speak of existence. The next question you might ask is, 'Did the earth exist before humans? Did dinosaurs?' My tentative answer is both yes and no. These phenomena exist retrospectively, insofar as we interpret them through our current understanding of reality; any meaning we ascribe to them is imposed after the fact.

I sit with the tentative view that if humans had never existed, then neither would dinosaurs. This is not to say that something approximating the phenomena we now call 'dinosaurs' did not exist, but that the notion of 'dinosaurs' is almost meaningless without human frameworks of language, classification, conceptualization, historical context, and scientific inquiry.

Pretty well how I see it also.

My guess is that existence, and any related ideas we might explore, are inseparable from consciousness. — Tom Storm

Okay, I don't agree because although 'existence' is an idea, I don't think existence is an idea.

The next question you might ask is, 'Did the earth exist before humans? Did dinosaurs?' My tentative answer is both yes and no. — Tom Storm

If the terms 'Earth ' and 'dinosaur' were understood to most coherently refer to representations or perceptual experiences then in that sense I agree. However I don't agree that those terms do most coherently refer to representations or perceptual experiences. They don't refer to appearances but rather to what appears.

Maybe that's what you mean by "yes and no". I don't know.

Anyway, there wouldn't seem to be much point arguing about it, so I'll leave you to it.

Would you say the chair someone is sat on would stop existing once all consciousness is extinguished? Sure we can’t make any statements or propositions about the world without consciousness but the world exists as a state of affairs despite consciousness. There is a difference between the table existing and the proposition of the “the table exists”.

I agree with you though that propositions don’t exist without consciousness but objects earth, dinosaurs etc do. Consciousness only serves to observe already existing phenomena and does not in anyway affect whether they exist or not.

This can be tricky however because to exist is to be perceived is not true. I know that I exist despite no one perceiving me as my consciousness tells me so. Yet a rock who does not posses consciousness exists independently of me perceiving it. So I think this type of idealism fails to account for continued existence of object after conscious perception of them ceases.

Would you say the chair someone is sat on would stop existing once all consciousness is extinguished? Sure we can’t make any statements or propositions about the world without consciousness but the world exists as a state of affairs despite consciousness. There is a difference between the table existing and the proposition of the “the table exists”. — kindred

Yes, I think this is close to where I am at present. How meaningful is it, exactly, to say that something exists if there is no perspective from which to apprehend it? My fame isn't idealism here but a type of constructivism (as far as I can tell).

What is a dinosaur without a name, a description, proposed behaviours? In an important sense, we brought dinosaurs into being by transforming fossils into animals with identities, properties, and histories.

This is not to say that there were no things (that later became dinosaurs) before humans provided names and descriptors for them. Plainly, there were. The point is rather that something becomes meaningful, becomes a dinosaur rather than a mere arrangement of bones, only within a framework of perception, description, and shared inquiry. Existence may not depend on us, but intelligible existence does.

But even having a conversation about this seems challenging, because we smuggle a great many concepts into the chat simply by using words that come with built-in assumptions.

This can be tricky however because to exist is to be perceived is not true. I know that I exist despite no one perceiving me as my consciousness tells me so. Yet a rock who does not posses consciousness exists independently of me perceiving it. So I think this type of idealism fails to account for continued existence of object after conscious perception of them ceases. — kindred

Yes a familiar objection to idealism and you’re raising a separate conceptual framework. I’m not an idealist but I'd like to understand idealism as well as I can.

This is the view that all of reality is fundamentally mental. One of its most prominent contemporary proponents is Bernardo Kastrup. On his account, there is a single, universal consciousness, mind-at-large; a version perhaps of Schopenhauer's Will, which constitutes the whole of reality. Individual minds are not separate substances, but dissociated aspects of this universal mind.

On this view, the persistence of objects or the world does not depend on individual observers, but on mind-at-large itself. What we call the physical world is the extrinsic appearance of mental processes within this broader consciousness, structured so as to make intersubjective experience possible. Or something like this.

I don't agree that those terms do most coherently refer to representations or perceptual experiences. They don't refer to appearances but rather to what appears. — Janus

:up: :up:

On this view, the persistence of objects or the world does not depend on individual observers, but on mind-at-large itself. — Tom Storm

Two questions:

What does "the persistence of ... mind-at-large ... depend on"?

Why assume that "the persistence of objects or the world ... depends on" anything at all?

Is Kastrup a traditional idealist in that he only believes minds and ideas exist? For an idealist, something is alive if it has a mind, otherwise it's just an idea/mental projection.

He argues that there is no matter, only mentation.

Evidently there is a punk element to the formulation of the post's title. That which has novelty yet unyieldingly obscure.

Evidently there is a punk element to the formulation of the post's title. That which has novelty yet unyieldingly obscure. — Alexander Hine

Not unlike your 3 year silence until not 15 minutes ago, I suppose. Surely there's some philosophical parallels or some tangential point to be appreciated. :grin:

While this can't technically be a "welcome to the forum" post, it's in many ways a "welcome back" (to said forum) sentiment.

But on to the topic, and your (in my view) charitable interpretation or possible alternate take on it. Yes! Indeed! Do not words on a paper, if prepared by the right person, seemingly not only parallel or rival but exceed what we consider "life" or "human qualities" compared to some folk? Absolutely! So is life really a matter of breathing and circulation, not unlike a single-celled amoeba (again I said not unlike, I know they don't "breathe" in the way we do)? Or? Or! Is life simply a quality exclusively reserved for those who "contemplate"? Consciousness, that is commonly referred to. Ability to distinguish oneself from one's environment and other beings similar to one's self. An identity. Ah, this is so fascinating, and so much more to be written and discussed, at your leisure of course. What a joy you've decided to join us, after all this time. :snicker:

He argues that there is no matter, only mentation. — Tom Storm

I don't think that is what he argues. He argues that matter is what appearances look like to mind. It is the tangible aspect of mind, so to speak, not a separate substance. As I've said on these forums many times an idealism that does not posit universal mind in some form is incoherent and cannot explain what is clear to us from everyday experience―that we live in a shared world.

Kastrup posits universal mind, which then makes it coherent to say that matter exists independently of the human mind and is naturally intelligible and that human consciousness is not central or necessary to existence. It also follows from this that real objects and beings of all kinds can have existed prior to the advent of human consciousness and that we can coherently talk about that existence as being human mind-independent.

Kastrup's philosophy is pretty much Schopenhauer reheated.

@180 Proof

What I struggle to understand is how this framework accounts for the apparent distinction within the world between living entities (animals, plants, bacteria) and non-living ones (chairs, rocks, bottles). — Tom Storm

I don't know Kastrup's answer, but there is no scientific definition of life (according to Robert Rosen). What we're referring to by "life" requires the concept of purpose, or final cause. That's not something we detect, per se. It's an idea we use to organize our experience, so it may be like a Kantian category.

Kastrup's philosophy is pretty much Schopenhauer reheated. — Janus

Kastrup is pretty up front about the large influence Schop has had on him. Jung too. I don't think "reheated" sounds right unless you hold a pejorative view of K's work.

I don't think that is what he argues. He argues that matter is what appearances look like to mind. It is the tangible aspect of mind, so to speak, not a separate substance. — Janus

Kastrup is a monist. There is only consciousness; he generally says matter is the extrinsic appearance of mental processes. For details his book Why Materialism Is Boloney sets out the arguments in great and sometimes boring detail. In some respects he's like a more evolved version of Donald Hoffman.

It also follows from this that real objects and beings of all kinds can have existed prior to the advent of human consciousness and that we can coherently talk about that existence as being human mind-independent. — Janus

Strictly speaking matter is not mind-independent in general: it is independent of individual human minds, but not of mind as such, since it is the extrinsic appearance of processes in universal consciousness.

I don't know Kastrup's answer, but there is no scientific definition of life (according to Robert Rosen). — frank

Could well be. My question doesn’t change, however: what is the reason, in idealism, for the division between apparently dead matter and conscious beings? If all that exists is mental in nature, why does some of it present as "lifeless" structure while other portions present as subjects with inner experience?

Could well be. My question doesn’t change, however: what is the reason, in idealism, for the division between apparently dead matter and conscious beings? If all that exists is mental in nature, why does some of it present as "lifeless" structure while other portions present as subjects with inner experience? — Tom Storm

The question goes back a long way, at least to Plotinus, who was an idealist monist. Monism of either variety has this problem, and seems to require eliminativism, in other words, we identify the thing we don't want as an illusion. That was Plotinus' answer: that matter is maximal privation of the Good (which he thought is identical to God and intelligence), and according to his interpreters, he was saying that matter in its fullest extent is an illusion. I went looking in his writings for where exactly he explained it and was disappointed that he didn't address it in a very full bodied way. He just sort of trailed off. Btw, Kastrup's view is vaguely Neoplatonic like Plotinus' view.

That compares to the present moment, when consciousness is the thing some would like to eliminate in favor of monistic materialism (like Daniel Dennett). The same thing happens. If you go to where Dennett is supposed to be tucking this problem away, he resorts to open-ended questions designed to help us doubt that consciousness is what we think it is. Monists can't seem to nail down how we're all enjoying a big fat illusion, but they're sure we are.

Btw, Kastrup's view is vaguely Neoplatonic like Plotinus' view. — frank

Yes. I’m not committed to materialism or idealism; I just want to understand the arguments as best I can. But I’m not a scientist or a philosopher, so like most of us, all I can do is mess around in the shallow end of the pool.

Monists can't seem to nail down how we're all enjoying a big fat illusion, but they're sure we are. — frank

I think it is highly likely that our understanding of 'reality' is mistaken or incomplete, regardless of which framework we've adopted. (This is a fraught sentence because it implies there is a reality and it can be uncovered, I don't necessarily think this is accurate) In a few centuries, assuming civilization endures, scientific models will have evolved beyond recognition, and the reality we take for granted today will likely appear quaint and rudimentary.

Are you a dualist?

There is only consciousness; he generally says matter is the extrinsic appearance of mental processes. — Tom Storm

As such matter is real and human mind-independent, as it "mind-at-large". As I read Kastrup, he understands matter to be the "visible" or tangible aspect of mind. It's not as if mind could exist without matter, any more than matter could exist without mind, for Kastrup. It's just mind is the "thing-in-itself" whereas matter is its appearances. I read "appearances" to signify any relation or interaction at all, not just appearances for humans or even animals.

As such matter is real and human mind-independent, as it "mind-at-large". — Janus

Depends on what you mean by 'real.' If you mean our perception of reality, then perhaps. But you’d have to take that up with Kastrup or one of his acolytes; I can hardly argue on behalf of a guy whose work I don’t follow closely.

It's not as if mind could exist without matter, any more than matter could exist without mind, for Kastrup. — Janus

This seems to be a separate argument against idealism more broadly, which already takes matter as a given truth. Everywhere you look, Kastrup says things like this below (and obviously, to properly debate these points, you would need to go into his reasoning and move beyond this type of statement)

...materialism is a fantasy. It’s based on unnecessary postulates, circular reasoning and selective consideration of evidence and data. Materialism is by no stretch of the imagination a scientific conclusion, but merely a metaphysical opinion that helps some people interpret scientific conclusions.

Now, I am not particularly interested in debating whether idealism is justifiable; there are already thousands of words on that on the forum. I am interested in exploring what the model is meant to be. Why is the world full of things? How does a chair or a rock relate to a turtle or a human?

Are you a dualist? — Tom Storm

Thought is necessarily dualistic. Implied is some unified world beyond thought. This is Hegelian. He's an example of the way I think.

As I've said on these forums many times an idealism that does not posit universal mind in some form is incoherent and cannot explain what is clear to us from everyday experience―that we live in a shared world. — Janus

But it can, though. We live in a shared world, because we have highly convergent minds, sensory systems, and languages. So we will converge on similar understandings of what is real, due to those shared elements. I mean, genetically, we're all identical, up until the top-most layer of differentiation.

There's a thought-experiment I will give to make this point. Imagine a sentient mountain. Mountains have lifespans of hundreds of millions of years. From the perspective of a sentient mountain, humans are far too ephemeral and small to even notice. Rivers, you will notice, because they'll be around long enough to carve out ravines in your sides. But humans are to a mountain as microbes are to humans.

Speaking of microbes, if there were rational sentient microbes then the scale of human existence would likely also be incomprehensible. Humans would be so vast, and their life-spans so long, they would seem like solar systems to humans.

So, there are shared worlds, on many levels. There's this human world, which is shared by the other billions of humans. But the fact that we inhabit a shared world says nothing about its ultimate nature, whether and in what sense it has a reality above and beyond the sensory and experiential data that we receive and interpret. Kastrup's criticism of materialism is that it posits something beyond and outside those experiential states which account for those states, as being somehow fundamental and ontologically prior to the mind which receives and interprets these data.

The appeal to a universal mind does not arise from idealism as such, but from the attempt to preserve the intuition that the world must exist in the same way when unobserved as when observed. But that intuition is inherited from realism, not established by argument. Once we recognise that any account of what the world is “in itself” already deploys the cognitive resources of the mind, the supposed need for a universal observer evaporates.

As Zen puts it, “Mind is no mind.” That seems to me exactly the point here — mind is not something we can turn into an object, whether individual or universal, even though experience is always for a mind. The mind is the ever-present subject, nowhere to be found.

Thought is necessarily dualistic. Implied is some unified world beyond thought. This is Hegelian. He's an example of the way I think. — frank

I thought Hegel was a monist idealist, like Kastrup? Doesn't H see matter as a manifestation of Geist? Or is this what you mean by "unified world beyond"?

That sounds reasonable.