With titles like "Why materialism is baloney" I am not surprised that he is not taken seriously.

Well, clearly it caught your attention, and dozens of reviewers on Amazon, so perhaps that's the intention. In any case, it's one title out of six, and I suggest the conclusion that he's not taken seriously seems a bit unwarranted, given that the editors of Scientific American find the ideas worthy of consideration -- hardly an obscure or unreliable source of information.

I clicked on your thread, and spent maybe 10 minutes on the first page of Google results (most of which are this guy's sites or sites affiliated with him). That's about as much time as this crank warrants, sorry.

I came across him in book form, not via a cursory google search. However, forget google, did you check out even one of the several peer-reviewed papers that have been published in various academic journals, presumably not in the habit of publishing 'cranks'? Is not even one of them worth the time and effort?

So just wondering if anyone here is familiar with his ideas, and if so, what might one make of them as a viable alternative to physicalism or panpsychism? — snowleopard

I agree this is crank as science. Or can you point to the observable consequences that could falsify his story? If it adds nothing as a metaphysics, then it explains nothing either.

The weak bit for me is his reliance on a division between perceptions and thoughts. I’ve only skimmed a couple of his writings. But so far I get the feeling he only accepts this rather general distinction, where he would have to really justify it in terms of psychology theories and their evidence if he wants to claim it as a grounding metaphysics for a science-level idealism.

Where is the mathematical model of thoughts and perceptions that would give his idealism hard deductible consequences? A hand waving folk psychology just isn’t enough.

So in what sense would he offer an alternative to physicalism if he cannot point to any observables that would be different under his framework, and his framework in turn would seem to predict none of the observables of the physicalist framework it would claim to transcend?

Thanks for your constructive analysis -- though I'm still a bit bemused that apparent 'cranks' get consideration in Scientific American, and seemingly reputable academic journals, albeit I suppose that they aren't necessarily precluded from having a lack of scientific acumen. But I appreciate your taking the time to respond, and will wait until I can take the time to carefully consider your response, before replying further.

Meanwhile, from a strictly metaphysical perspective, perhaps this interview will stimulate some further analysis, and help with my own edification, as I'm admittedly no adept when it comes to Ideallst ontology.

Cheers

though I'm still a bit bemused that apparent 'cranks' get consideration in Scientific American, and seemingly reputable academic journals — snowleopard

All the SciAm stuff looks like blog posts that talk around the subject. The papers are minor journal efforts again talking around the subject rather than advancing a thesis with clear consequences.

I admit I’ve only glanced at the abstracts so given him the most superficial of considerations. But crank academics are so numerous that the patterns are very easy to recognise.

You call him a hardcore CERN material scientist, but he is a computer engineer. That is another red flag.

The sociology of computer science permits a loose speculative approach to the questions of mind and reality. It won’t harm your career much to publish what is essentially crank science. A neuroscientist or physicist knows they will be judged far more harshly by their peers.

I personally don’t object to crank science in a strong way. But that is because I find it’s pathologies informative from a philosophy of science point of view. It reveals the paradigmatic nature of science. It really does have to rely on a socially constructed sense of what “smells right”.

So this guy - and how he is constructing an apparent publication record that includes SciAm and a track record at CERN - is another data point on that score.

For a rigorous, analytical summary of his philosophical ideas, see this freely available academic paper: http://www.mdpi.com/2409-9287/2/2/10

I took a gander at the paper he linked in his 'books' page.

I stopped reading at this point.

Let us start by neutrally and precisely stating four basic facts of reality, verifiable through observation, and therefore known to be valid irrespective of theory or metaphysics:
Fact 1: There are tight correlations between a person’s reported private experiences and the observed brain activity of the person.
We know this from the study of the neural correlates of consciousness (e.g., [5]).
Fact 2: We all seem to inhabit the same universe.
After all, what other people report about their perceptions of the universe is normally consistent with our own perceptions of it.
Fact 3: Reality normally unfolds according to patterns and regularities—that is, the laws of nature—independent of personal volition.
Fact 4: Macroscopic physical entities can be broken down into microscopic constituent parts, such as subatomic particles.

Seeing this I sort of gathered that the man is just not versed in philosophy very well. You can't just neutrally and precisely state four basic facts of reality without having at least some notional commitment to a metaphysics. "Fact" is even a controversial word. You can be precise, but why the claim to neutrality? And if something is verifiable by observation alone, then you haven't contended with philosophy of mind or science, by my lights. Surely you have to have a sort of idea, at a minimum, about perception (mind), or have a way of dealing with the underdetermination of evidence (science).

I don't think he means badly, at this point. But I also don't think he's really delved much into philosophy.

You may indeed make a valid point, although even as a computer engineer he is also very dubious about the cyber-age culture that underlies the attempts to replicate consciousness in AI, and the now popular computational and/or virtual reality-based cosmologies. However, he does seem to have some affinity for the ideas of Donald Hoffman, a professor of cognitive science at U of C, so perhaps there is a bridge to be built there.

I suppose it’s true enough to say that many so-called facts are at best true enough under the provisional circumstances, and are thus always subject to change (after all, it was once considered a ‘fact’ that the sun revolved around the earth, and it’s still a ‘fact’, according to materialism, that there is a mind-independent world of matter ‘out there’), and so perhaps Kastrup should refer to apparent facts. However, with respect, that doesn’t seem reason enough to stop reading at that point.

Anyway, my intention here is not to defend his ontology on his behalf, but rather to get input on his version of idealism, and idealism in general, so as to make some sense of it, one way or the other. The main reason being that my intuitive feeling, being more mystical than analytical, is that materialism, as the prevailing metaphysical model, fails to adequately explain even ordinary experience, never mind extraordinary or paranormal experience, and hence the ongoing search for an alternate model -- e.g. Idealism. Clearly it is predicated on the premise of the primacy of Consciousness, as the ontological primitive, and thus avoids the ‘hard problem’ faced by materialism, as there is no longer any need to explain its emergence, there being no ‘prior to’ Consciousness, and therefore no point of origin or causation. From there -- this being an admittedly simplified synopsis -- as the word idealism implies, it posits the emanations of the ideations of Consciousness (Platonic forms/ideas), akin to a Cosmic Mind, as the basis for the phenomenal experience of the individuated loci of Consciousness, i.e. sentient beings, which comprises one’s apparent subject/object perception. Our thoughts then become the recapitulation, or iterations, of that greater cognitive process. But of course one realizes that, while this avoids the so-called ‘hard problem’, it has its own hard problems, the challenge being to tie it in with the findings of quantum theory, evolutionary theory, the origins of life, etc.

Needless to say, idealism is at best a metaphysical model, as is physicalism, panpsychism, Hoffman’s conscious realism, indeed all such ‘isms’, and ultimately the map is not the territory, and one must bow to the opening lines of the Tao Te Ching. Nonetheless, it somehow seems important to conceive of an ontological/cosmological model upon which to base a cultural ethos. The question becomes, which one?

However, with respect, that doesn’t seem reason enough to stop reading at that point. — snowleopard

I could be more fair than what I was, I agree. But I'd have to want to :D. There's a lot of junk out there so sometimes I'll be less-than-fair to an author if I start to get the feeling that the argument isn't going to address what look to me obvious flaws in it and continues to move forward as if they just aren't there.

Anyway, my intention here is not to defend his ontology on his behalf, but rather to get input on his version of idealism, and idealism in general, so as to make some sense of it, one way or the other. The main reason being that my intuitive feeling, being more mystical than analytical, is that materialism, as the prevailing metaphysical model, fails to adequately explain even ordinary experience, never mind extraordinary or paranormal experience, and hence the ongoing search for an alternate model -- e.g. Idealism. Clearly it is predicated on the premise of the primacy of Consciousness, as the ontological primitive, and thus avoids the ‘hard problem’ faced by materialism, as there is no longer any need to explain its emergence, there being no ‘prior to’ Consciousness, and therefore no point of origin or causation. From there -- this being an admittedly simplified synopsis -- as the word idealism implies, it posits the emanations of the ideations of Consciousness (Platonic forms/ideas), akin to a Cosmic Mind, as the basis for the phenomenal experience of the individuated loci of Consciousness, i.e. sentient beings, which comprises one’s apparent subject/object perception. Our thoughts then become the recapitulation, or iterations, of that greater cognitive process. But of course one realizes that, while this avoids the so-called ‘hard problem’, it has its own hard problems, the challenge being to tie it in with the findings of quantum theory, evolutionary theory, the origins of life, etc. — snowleopard

Cool. Idealism is an interesting topic to me, at least historically speaking.

I don't believe the world is only consciousness in some ultimate sense. But then, I have deep reservations about positing any sort of ultimate ontology -- be it physicalism or idealism or neutral monism or dualism or whatever. Not that I haven't believed some of these to be true at some point. But I've become more skeptical with regards to fundamental or foundational ontology, in general.

Why would you say that the hard problems of idealism are reconciling it with science? I guess it depends on the idealism, but it would seem to me that you could fashion an argument from the findings of science to idealism. If the world were consciousness then it would explain how we could know about the world -- there is no disconnect between our minds and the world, in that case. True beliefs would just be micro-reflections of the world we inhabit. Correspondence could make more sense -- to correspond is just to equal a true statement. So when I believe a true statement it corresponds to a fact in the world; that the Earth revolves around the sun. I believe "The Earth revolves around the sun", "The Earth revolves around the sun" is true, and The Earth revolves around the sun = The Earth revolves around the sun.

Theoretically we could come to know everything because everything just is the set of true statements. (in this hastily constructed kind of idealism)

So you could actually say because we know the world through science we can infer that the universe is ideal as it explains how we can come to know the world -- the world is made of propositions so we should expect our knowledge to reflect that.

Nonetheless, it somehow seems important to conceive of an ontological/cosmological model upon which to base a cultural ethos. The question becomes, which one? — snowleopard

If that's the motivation for constructing some ultimate ontology, then wouldn't it depend on the ethos, first, and then hashing out which ontology to believe based upon how believing in it practically effects the actions of human beings?

Thanks for the feedback ... all quite cogent insights, which I look forward to pondering more deeply. I certainly respect your caution regarding not wishing to fixate on any one model, as perhaps even a hybrid of such models may be more fitting -- insofar as there can ever be an ultimate, definitive model. I guess the reason I feel that Idealism should at least attempt to be reconcilable with current science, is that it may then make it more tenable for the scientific mindset to consider it as a premise on which to advance their scientific theories, most especially in QM, where there are currently several versions, and counting, competing for attention, with no unified theory in sight.

And this also speaks to your point about basing a cultural ethos on such a model, in that most folks don’t ever give ontology or cosmology much thought at all, if ever. And if the scientific revolution during the Age of Enlightenment is any indication, they just rely on the high priests of science to set the epistemological agenda, which then becomes the default foundation for all further indoctrination into the given paradigm, via mass education/media. Hence, if that paradigm is ever going to shift, it seems that it has to start with those who set the paradigmatic agenda, and the cultural ethos at large then follows suit. But you make a good point, and may well be correct, that it may start with a more grass-roots shift, and a mass rejection of the current prevailing model, when enough folks like myself no longer feel that it resonates with their experience, and their beliefs about the world are radically altered -- based upon who knows what mysterious ‘awakening’ events -- despite what the high priests are saying, culminating in some tipping point.

in that most folks don’t ever give ontology or cosmology much thought at all, if ever. — snowleopard

While I agree that formally speaking such thinking is unpopular, I'd say that informally it is not. People talk about their beliefs regarding the world and its beginning quite often, in the right setting. And I'm not so sure that people, at large, lap up scientific theses as a Biblical truth, either. Some people do -- it's something which some groups have fallen into the habit of doing without much critical reflection -- but I'd be pretty hesitant to say that there is a successful brainwashing program based on the sciences in practice, and much less so that it is successful even if there happens to be one.

This is 4 years old, but I don't think things have changed much: http://news.gallup.com/poll/170822/believe-creationist-view-human-origins.aspx

Evolution is one of the most well founded scientific hypotheses. But in the U.S it's regarded with suspicion by a very large percentage of the population.

I find it hard to reconcile the notion that science is a priesthood brainwashing the population with facts like that.

Scientism is off the mark. But that doesn't mean that the dominant pardigm is scientistic either.

Once again, you make some valid points. No doubt it's not cut and dried why folks believe what they believe, but messy, complicated and nuanced. And it surely does seem that whatever the factors may be, scientific, religious, or the slings and arrows of fate, the truism may often be that believing is seeing, and not the other way around.

Evolution is one of the most well founded scientific hypotheses. But in the U.S it's regarded with suspicion by a very large percentage of the population. — Moliere

Not least because of its use by culture warriors such as Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins to attack religion at every possible opportunity. It’s perfectly true that religious beliefs ought not to be introduced into science class but the converse is equally valid.

I ran across Kastrup a couple of years ago and naturally am inclined to agree with him, but that’s because I have always held the view that scientific materialism was indeed baloney.

But I think Thomas Nagel’s is a more important voice than Kastrup, because he’s arguing from within the tradition that he’s criticising, whereas Kastrup is clearly counter-cultural. Not that there’s anything the matter with being counter-cultural, but it does mean that many of those who most need to consider such an argument will feel perfectly justified in ignoring him on those grounds.

I'm not so sure that people, at large, lap up scientific theses as a Biblical truth, either. Some people do -- it's something which some groups have fallen into the habit of doing without much critical reflection -- but I'd be pretty hesitant to say that there is a successful brainwashing program based on the sciences in practice, and much less so that it is successful even if there happens to be one. — Moliere

It's more a matter that a secular, non-religious outlook is normalised in a secular culture such as ours. As you say - this doesn't mean that holding this kind of view has necessarily entails 'scientism'. But many are more likely to accept that whatever answers there are to be sought, are best sought, or can only be sought, by scientific means. But even that has existential implications, in that the scientific stance is one in which there is an implicit separation between the object of knowledge and the knowing subject. Whereas in pre-modern cultures, there is a felt sense of 'relatedness' to the Cosmos; that sense of it being totally 'other' to the observer is not so pronounced as it has become in the modern age.

Anyway - I'm reading Kastrup's essay, Making Sense of the Mental Universe, and it seems pretty carefully reasoned to me.

I also resonate with what you have to say here. My point about how science may or may not influence the cultural ethos and narrative can be illustrated by one simple example. When we speak to our impressionable children and say 'Look darling, the sun is setting', this is a true enough 'fact' of our experience, now embedded into the language construct. However, according to scientific astronomy, it's not an actual fact at all, and the story we should be telling the child is 'Look darling, we are moving away from the sun on the rotating planet earth into the darkness of its shadow.' Yet the factual truth that science tells us, does not trump the quaint story that we tell our children, which they implicitly believe, until educated otherwise. So perhaps this example can also be extrapolated to the story that we tell ourselves about there being a mind-independent world of matter 'out there', which quantum physicists tell us is also not strictly factual.

Coincidentally, I just came upon Kastrup's latest paper, which speaks to the shiftiness of paradigms, which may be of interest here, if so inclined ...

My considered view after about a decade of these debates is that knowledge has an irreducibly subjective pole. The notion of a ‘mind-independent reality’ is a mistaken belief that arises from drawing metaphysical conclusions from methodological premisses. What has happened is that physics has simply made this unarguable.

Agreed. Although as far as I am concerned he is probably on the side of the angels, he is a very good example of an excellent scientist and execrable philosopher.

Wow, this is a tough crowd ! If Kastrup is execrable, what does that make me ?

Anyway - I'm reading Kastrup's essay, Making Sense of the Mental Universe, and it seems pretty carefully reasoned to me. — Wayfarer

Just some comments on his opening paragraph...

Contextuality is a formidable challenge to the viability of realism. — Bernardo Kastrup

It's actually not a challenge at all. Kastrup's claims depend on a narrow definition of realism as counterfactual definiteness, not as mind-independence. Bell's inequalities show that counterfactual definiteness and locality can't both be true, not that mind-independent realism and locality can't both be true.

Bohmian Mechanics, Many Worlds and RQM are all contextual realist theories (in the mind-independent sense). As Rovelli says:

In order to prevent the reader from channeling his/her thoughts in the wrong direction, let me anticipate a few terminological remarks. By using the word “observer” I do not make any reference to conscious, animate, or computing, or in any other manner special, system. I use the word “observer” in the sense in which it is conventionally used in Galilean relativity when we say that an object has a velocity “with respect to a certain observer”. The observer can be any physical object having a definite state of motion. For instance, I say that my hand moves at a velocity v with respect to the lamp on my table. Velocity is a relational notion (in Galilean as well as in special relativistic physics), and thus it is always (explicitly or implicitly) referred to something; it is traditional to denote this something as the observer, but it is important in the following discussion to keep in mind that the observer can be a table lamp. — Relational Quantum Mechanics - Carlo Rovelli

The conceptual issues that quantum mechanics raises are to due to classical assumptions like non-contextualism, not philosophical realism itself. So I can agree with Kastrup when he quotes Rovelli here:

Carlo Rovelli’s relational interpretation [Rovelli, 2008], on the other hand, sticks to plain quantum theory and embraces contextuality. Instead of loading it with unnecessary baggage, it simply interprets what quantum theory tells us about the world and bites the bullet of its implications. Rovelli’s goal “is not to modify quantum mechanics to make it consistent with [his] view of the world, but to modify [his] view of the world to make it consistent with quantum mechanics” [Rovelli, 2008: 16]. — Bernardo Kastrup

I always think of ketchup when I see this title, just so y'all know...

Kastrup's claims depend on a narrow definition of realism as counterfactual definiteness, not as mind-independence — Andrew M

You lost me there, Andrew. Care to elucidate the distinction?

Perhaps I'm being a little harsh - although I did describe him as an excellent scientist. But even in the more reasonably argued artice Waferer talks about Kastrup makes a basic philosophical error:

There have been attempts to preserve some form of realism by finding a subset of
physical properties whose values can be determined in a non-contextual manner under certain circumstances. The idea is then to claim that this subset is the objective physical world. For instance, Philippe Grangier [Grangier, 2001], inspired by Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen’s view of what constitutes physical objectivity, contends that the quantum state of a system, defined by the values of a set of physical quantities, which can be predicted with certainty and measured repeatedly without perturbingin any way the system, is an objective physical entity.
The problem with this approach is highlighted by Grangier himself: the “definition [of
the quantum state] is inferred from observations which are made at the macroscopic level”. In other words, the supposedly physically objective quantum state of a system depends on the a priori existence of a physically objective classical world surroundingthe system. This begs the question of physical objectivity instead of rendering it viable under contextuality. Because “a quantum state‘involving the environment’ cannot be consistently defined” [Grangier, 2001: 4], Grangier’s approach fails to reconcile contextuality with a supposedly physically objective world

What's the philosophical error? The challenge Kastrup seems to think the realist must meet is to render realism a coherent position in the face of contextuality. Fine, but that is a very different challenge from proving that realism is true. The accusation of question begging Kastrup levels against Grangier would only undermine the attempt to do the latter, not the former. If your aim is to reconcile a position with another position you are perfectly entitled to assume both positions are true, you don't have to argue for or against either one of them.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no hardheaded realist, but sloppy reasoning does no favours for idealism.

Perhaps I am being a little harsh, although I did also describe him as an excellent scientist. The problem scientists have when they venture into philosophy unprepared is that they make very basic errors, errors which undermine their whole point. Take, for instance, the following couple of paragraphs from the beginning of the paper Wayfarer provided the link to:

There have been attempts to preserve some form of realism by finding a subset of
physical properties whose values can be determined in a non-contextual manner under certain circumstances. The idea is then to claim that this subset isthe objective physical world. For instance, Philippe Grangier [Grangier, 2001], inspired by Einst
ein-Podolsky-Rosen’s view of what constitutes physical objectivity, contends that the qua
ntum state of a system, defined “by the values of a set of physical quantities, which can be predicted with certainty and measured repeatedly without perturbing in any way the system,” [Grangier, 2001: 1] is an objective physical entity.
The problem with this approach is highlighted by Grangier himself: the “defi
nition [of the quantum state] is inferred from observations which are made
at the macroscopic level” [Grangier, 2001: 2]. In other words, the supposedly physically
objective quantum state of a system depends on the a priori existence of a physically objective classical world surrounding the system. This begs the question of physical objectivity instead of rendering it viable under contextuality. Because “a quantum state ‘involving the environment’ cannot be consistently defined” [Grangier, 2001: 4], Grangier’s approach fails to reconcile contextuality with a supposedly physically objective world. — Kastrup

What's the fundamental philosophical mistake Kastrup is making? The point he is dealing with is the attempt to reconcile realism with contextuality (by which he seems to mean the alledged fact that in experimental realm of quantum mechanics, observation affects outcomes). Perhaps he is right that realism faces this challenge. However, that challenge is a very different challenge from attempting to prove that realism is true. Kastrup's claims about question begging would only undermine Grangier if Grangier were attempting to prove realism, not if he is simply trying to reconcile two apparently contradictory positions. When reconciling two positions you are perfectly entitled (in fact are probably obligated) to assume the truth of both positions and you do not have to argue non-circularly for either one of them.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no hardheaded realist, but it does no favours for idealism when its advocates make basic errors of this kind.

it is traditional to denote this something as the observer, but it is important in the following discussion to keep in mind that the observer can be a table lamp. — Relational Quantum Mechanics - Carlo Rovelli

This would seem to be a radical redefinition of the word 'observer.' Surely any claim whatsoever can be rationalized, if you arbitrarily redefine words so that what you want to claim then ends up making linguistic sense.

'Observer' in QM has always meant a physical apparatus. Always. If this has caused confusion among those unversed in QM, then so much the worse for them.

I'm not sure that this is right - or at least it is part of the problem under discussion. Suppose we neutrally define "observer" as whatever takes measurements. Whilst physical apparatus might be used to take measurements, it is the experimenter him or her self that actually takes/records the measurements. At least that is a distinction that it is extremely natural to make. Rovelli saying that an observer can be a table lamp seems to be ignoring this distinction and thus stomping right over the fundamental metaphysical problems.

Do you mean, a self-assembling apparatus? The self-assembling apparatus that interprets the findings? That kind of observer?