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.