Re: Bernardo Kastrup: "Analytic Idealism: A consciousness-only ontology) '

[spudb...@aol.com]

I will add, whether testable or not testable (yet) I ask, (my stubborn ignorance free of charge! How can this make life better? Subjective, I know!

-----Original Message-----
From: 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com>
To: everything-list <everyth...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wed, May 1, 2019 12:15 pm
Subject: Re: Bernardo Kastrup: "Analytic Idealism: A consciousness-only ontology"

But does Kastrup's TOE yield any testable predictions?

Brent

On 5/1/2019 12:28 AM, cloud...@gmail.com wrote:

Not my view of course, but here is 

Analytic Idealism: A consciousness-only ontology

Bernardo Kastrup

Dissertation, Radboud University Nijmegen (2019)

https://philpapers.org/rec/KASAIA-3

pdf: https://philpapers.org/archive/KASAIA-3.pdf

Abstract

This thesis articulates an analytic version of the ontology of idealism, according to which universal phenomenal consciousness is all there ultimately is, everything else in nature being reducible to patterns of excitation of this consciousness. The thesis’ key challenge is to explain how the seemingly distinct conscious inner lives of different subjects—such as you and me—can arise within this fundamentally unitary phenomenal field. Along the way, a variety of other challenges are addressed, such as: how we can reconcile idealism with the fact that we all inhabit a common external world; why this world unfolds independently of our personal volition or imagination; why there are such tight correlations between measured patterns of brain activity and reports of experience; etc. The core idea of this thesis can be summarized thus: we, as well as all other living organisms, are dissociated alters of universal phenomenal consciousness, analogously to how a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) manifests multiple disjoint centers of subjectivity also called ‘alters.’ We, and all other living organisms, are surrounded by the transpersonal phenomenal activity of universal consciousness, which unfolds beyond the dissociative boundary of our respective alter. The inanimate world we perceive around us is the extrinsic appearance—i.e. the phenomenal image imprinted from across our dissociative boundary—of this activity. The living organisms we share the world with are the extrinsic appearances of other alters.

Keywords

idealism  panpsychism  cosmopsychism  dissociation  altered states of consciousness  mind-body problem  consciousness  hard problem of consciousness  subject combination problem

The (1hr) thesis defense:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcMOape0PY8

- @philipthrift

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 1 May 2019, at 22:54, spudboy100 via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I will add, whether testable or not testable (yet) I ask, (my stubborn ignorance free of charge! How can this make life better? Subjective, I know!

Maybe my answer on quora might give light on this:

How can we bring in an age of enlightenment?

My answer:

<<

By bringing back theology at the faculty of science. Science is modesty, and doubts. Science only suggests theories and means to test them. 

Platonician theologies contains physics, derived from non physical principles (like mathematical), and so are indirectly testable. 

It is not well know, but the universal Turing machine, the one knowing that they are universal (with knowing in some standard mathematical sense, accepting some axioms and rules) have a very sophisticated theology, 

quite close to the neopythagoreans and the neoplatonicians. 

They contain physics, and are confirmed by the (quantum) observation of Nature.

The current darkness comes from the separation of theology from science, making exact science inexact and human science inhuman.

Religion is the only goal,

Science is the only mean.

>>

Now, I do think this would help to make life better. Instead of bombs and insults, we publish paper and test the theories.

There is no problem with institutions and communities, as long as the priest can blink and take distance with literal interpretation of text, out of mathematics. (cf Alan Watts).

As long as some people claim to know the fundamental truth, there will be problems.

Bruno

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/3/2019 7:53 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> The current darkness comes from the separation of theology from
> science, making exact science inexact and human science inhuman.
>
> Religion is the only goal,

That's the kind of absolutist pronouncement that priests and despots
have used to justify oppression and atrocities from auto-de-fe' to
Buchenwald.

>
> Science is the only mean.

And every person is an end.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 3 May 2019, at 20:09, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 5/3/2019 7:53 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> The current darkness comes from the separation of theology from science, making exact science inexact and human science inhuman.
>>
>> Religion is the only goal,
>
> That's the kind of absolutist pronouncement that priests and despots have used to justify oppression and atrocities from auto-de-fe' to Buchenwald.

I could have put that truth, or meaning, or value, is the only goal, but, normally, with what follow, i.e. “science is the only mean”, people should understand that this assume the minimum spiritual maturity of those who knows that in the religion domain, the argument-per-authority is not just not valid, it is catastrophic.

>
>>
>> Science is the only mean.
>
> And every person is an end.

Absolutely.

Which should invite to be skeptic on all metaphysics which threat the existence of persons.

Theology is today full of BS, not because theology is BS, only because theology has been separated from science, with the goal to use it as a way to control people. The prohibition of medication, and the idea that a government can have a word on this, in place of you or your doctor, is the same phenomenon. It is how liars get power, by appropriating the domain out of the serious and modest inquirers. The USSR did that with genetics, because theology was already just forbidden, and materialism (even the strong version) was obligatory. It is always the use of the argument per authority, in place of questions and other questions.

Bruno



>
> Brent

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, May 6, 2019 at 10:47 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> On 3 May 2019, at 20:09, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 5/3/2019 7:53 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> The current darkness comes from the separation of theology from science, making exact science inexact and human science inhuman.
>>
>> Religion is the only goal,
>
> That's the kind of absolutist pronouncement that priests and despots have used to justify oppression and atrocities from auto-de-fe' to Buchenwald.

I could have put that truth, or meaning, or value, is the only goal, but, normally, with what follow, i.e. “science is the only mean”, people should understand that this assume the minimum spiritual maturity of those who knows that in the religion domain, the argument-per-authority is not just not valid, it is catastrophic.




>
>>
>> Science is the only mean.
>
> And every person is an end.

Absolutely.

Which should invite to be skeptic on all metaphysics which threat the existence of persons.

Theology is today full of BS, not because theology is BS, only because theology has been separated from science, with the goal to use it as a way to control people. The prohibition of medication, and the idea that a government can have a word on this, in place of you or your doctor, is the same phenomenon. It is how liars get power, by appropriating the domain out of the serious and modest inquirers. The USSR did that with genetics, because theology was already just forbidden, and materialism (even the strong version) was obligatory. It is always the use of the argument per authority, in place of questions and other questions.

Bruno

I just found this quote by Godel, where he concluded mostly the same:

There would be no danger of an atomic war if advances in history, the science of right and of state, philosophy, psychology, literature, art, etc. were as great as in physics. But instead of such progress, one is struck by significant regresses in many of the spiritual sciences. [123]

 http://kevincarmody.com/math/goedel.html

Jason

[Bruno Marchal]

The consequences of Mechanism assess many statement made by Gödel, including his skepticism toward naturalism. Unfortunately, like many, he taught that mechanism was a trick to defend materialism and naturalism, where, as I try to explain, mechanism and materialism are at the antipodes of each other.

Then Gödel was too much a mathematical realist. He was a set realist, on which I am rather neutral. With mechanism, finite set realism is assured, but the axiom of infinity is probably inconsistent at the ontological level. It would reintroduce too many “histories” and the white rabbits would come back (not that we can be sure they are eliminated with Mechanism, or even with the inferred quantum mechanics).

Gödel, like all those at the origin of Mathematical Logic (Boole, de Morgan, Peirce (the father)), was interested in theology, as illustrated by his formalisation of the Ontological Argument. Smullyan too. But, as Cohen explained, the theological motivation of mathematical logic has been forced to be hidden to permit the professionalisation of mathematics in the 18th century. 

All sciences are born from theology, which remind us that the belief in any reality out of personal consciousness requires an act of faith.

Each period of the human history where theology belonged to science have been enlightened, peaceful and prosperous. When theology is done with the scientific attitude, nobody agrees except on the necessity of research and dialogs. Once God is given a literal name, we get the lies, the war, the poverty. We get the feeling of superiority and inferiority, and the humans stop to recognise themselves in the others, leading to paranoïa and hysteria.

It is important, and unclear from the quite of Gödel, if he realised that when theology is back to science, we are just able to admit our ignorance, and become modest in the field. It is the claim of truth which is fatal in science and even more so in the fundamental science. Bringing back theology in science is equivalent to bringing back doubt, modesty, eventually even moral. The problem is that by separating theology from science, many get a wrong conception of science, like if it was truth by definition, when it is only doubt by definition. The idea that science = truth is not science, but scientism. 

Now, people want religion to be consolating, comforting, and based on wishful thinking. Maybe the humans are still a long way from this. Lies have their role too, both in arithmetic and in the human life. I am not still sure how to open the mind to people so that they can accept our ignorance. That requires some courage, I guess.

The danger (for harmonious life) is not ignorance, but the ignorance of ignorance. The attraction to complete knowledge, which simply cannot exist (assuming mechanism, or our local finiteness).

Bruno

[Brent Meeker]

On 5/9/2019 2:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> ll sciences are born from theology, which remind us that the belief in
> any reality out of personal consciousness requires an act of faith.

This is false.  Belief in an external reality is not "an act of faith". 
It's not an "act" at all, much less a conscious one.  It is a hard-wired
basis of belief provided by evolution.  Something obvious on a
physicalist theory of the world.

Brent

[Telmo Menezes]

On Thu, May 9, 2019, at 17:53, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
>
>
> On 5/9/2019 2:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> > ll sciences are born from theology, which remind us that the belief in
> > any reality out of personal consciousness requires an act of faith.
>
> This is false.  Belief in an external reality is not "an act of faith". 
> It's not an "act" at all, much less a conscious one.  It is a hard-wired
> basis of belief provided by evolution.

By appealing to evolution, aren't you just kicking the can down the road?
What is the difference between my "acts" and the things that are hard-wired into my monkey-self? This is not even a question of physicalism vs idealism, it's a question of dualism vs non-dualism, and you are the person I least expect to believe in souls.

Telmo.

> Something obvious on a
> physicalist theory of the world.
>
> Brent
>

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[Brent Meeker]

On 5/10/2019 6:24 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>
> On Thu, May 9, 2019, at 17:53, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
>>
>> On 5/9/2019 2:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>> ll sciences are born from theology, which remind us that the belief in
>>> any reality out of personal consciousness requires an act of faith.
>> This is false.  Belief in an external reality is not "an act of faith".
>> It's not an "act" at all, much less a conscious one.  It is a hard-wired
>> basis of belief provided by evolution.
> By appealing to evolution, aren't you just kicking the can down the road?
> What is the difference between my "acts" and the things that are hard-wired into my monkey-self? This is not even a question of physicalism vs idealism, it's a question of dualism vs non-dualism, and you are the person I least expect to believe in souls.

Right.  Belief is an act of the brain+body.  "Act of faith" sounds like
a soul choosing some belief.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

> On 10 May 2019, at 23:24, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 5/10/2019 6:24 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, May 9, 2019, at 17:53, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
>>>
>>> On 5/9/2019 2:50 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>>> ll sciences are born from theology, which remind us that the belief in
>>>> any reality out of personal consciousness requires an act of faith.
>>> This is false. Belief in an external reality is not "an act of faith".
>>> It's not an "act" at all, much less a conscious one. It is a hard-wired
>>> basis of belief provided by evolution.
>> By appealing to evolution, aren't you just kicking the can down the road?
>> What is the difference between my "acts" and the things that are hard-wired into my monkey-self? This is not even a question of physicalism vs idealism, it's a question of dualism vs non-dualism, and you are the person I least expect to believe in souls.
>
> Right. Belief is an act of the brain+body. "Act of faith" sounds like a soul choosing some belief.

Right. And your soul seems to choose the belief in brain+body, when simple arithmetic explains well how and why such beliefs develop, and are locally and phenomenologically true, without any other ontological commitment than in very simple things, like the term of any Turing complete theory.

And once you have brain and body, your actual belief are statistically related to computation made that brain and body, notwithstanding the fact that those brain and bodies are only how things look in a differentiating flux of consciousness in arithmetic (physics results from the first person indeterminacy on all computations).

Universal machine’s conception of Matter is really like in Plato and Plotinus’ reconstruction of Aristotle theory of matter. It is where God lose control, total and absolute indeterminacy, like in the “simple” duplication thought experience, yet extended to the whole set of all computations (a constructive set as the universal dovetailer illustrates).

Bruno

>
> Brent
>
>>
>> Telmo.
>>
>>> Something obvious on a
>>> physicalist theory of the world.
>>>
>>> Brent
>>>
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>
>
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[Jason Resch]

On Thu, May 9, 2019 at 4:50 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

On 6 May 2019, at 20:34, Jason Resch <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, May 6, 2019 at 10:47 AM Bruno Marchal <mar...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

> On 3 May 2019, at 20:09, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 5/3/2019 7:53 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> The current darkness comes from the separation of theology from science, making exact science inexact and human science inhuman.
>>
>> Religion is the only goal,
>
> That's the kind of absolutist pronouncement that priests and despots have used to justify oppression and atrocities from auto-de-fe' to Buchenwald.

I could have put that truth, or meaning, or value, is the only goal, but, normally, with what follow, i.e. “science is the only mean”, people should understand that this assume the minimum spiritual maturity of those who knows that in the religion domain, the argument-per-authority is not just not valid, it is catastrophic.




>
>>
>> Science is the only mean.
>
> And every person is an end.

Absolutely.

Which should invite to be skeptic on all metaphysics which threat the existence of persons.

Theology is today full of BS, not because theology is BS, only because theology has been separated from science, with the goal to use it as a way to control people. The prohibition of medication, and the idea that a government can have a word on this, in place of you or your doctor, is the same phenomenon. It is how liars get power, by appropriating the domain out of the serious and modest inquirers. The USSR did that with genetics, because theology was already just forbidden, and materialism (even the strong version) was obligatory. It is always the use of the argument per authority, in place of questions and other questions.

Bruno

I just found this quote by Godel, where he concluded mostly the same:

There would be no danger of an atomic war if advances in history, the science of right and of state, philosophy, psychology, literature, art, etc. were as great as in physics. But instead of such progress, one is struck by significant regresses in many of the spiritual sciences. [123]

 http://kevincarmody.com/math/goedel.html

Jason

The consequences of Mechanism assess many statement made by Gödel, including his skepticism toward naturalism. Unfortunately, like many, he taught that mechanism was a trick to defend materialism and naturalism, where, as I try to explain, mechanism and materialism are at the antipodes of each other.

Then Gödel was too much a mathematical realist. He was a set realist, on which I am rather neutral. With mechanism, finite set realism is assured, but the axiom of infinity is probably inconsistent at the ontological level. It would reintroduce too many “histories” and the white rabbits would come back (not that we can be sure they are eliminated with Mechanism, or even with the inferred quantum mechanics).

I found this quote by Godel regarding set realism. It seems he believed in sets because you need them to prove certain facts about the integers:

"if mathematical objects are our creations, then evidently integers and sets of integers will have to be two different creations, the first of which does not necessitate the second. However, in order to prove certain propositions about integers, the concept of set of integers is necessary. So here, in order to find out what properties we have given to certain objects of our imagination, [[we]] must first create certain other objects--a very strange situation indeed!"

Does this require finite or infinite set theory? Is either compatible with mechanism?

Jason 

Gödel, like all those at the origin of Mathematical Logic (Boole, de Morgan, Peirce (the father)), was interested in theology, as illustrated by his formalisation of the Ontological Argument. Smullyan too. But, as Cohen explained, the theological motivation of mathematical logic has been forced to be hidden to permit the professionalisation of mathematics in the 18th century. 

All sciences are born from theology, which remind us that the belief in any reality out of personal consciousness requires an act of faith.

Each period of the human history where theology belonged to science have been enlightened, peaceful and prosperous. When theology is done with the scientific attitude, nobody agrees except on the necessity of research and dialogs. Once God is given a literal name, we get the lies, the war, the poverty. We get the feeling of superiority and inferiority, and the humans stop to recognise themselves in the others, leading to paranoïa and hysteria.

It is important, and unclear from the quite of Gödel, if he realised that when theology is back to science, we are just able to admit our ignorance, and become modest in the field. It is the claim of truth which is fatal in science and even more so in the fundamental science. Bringing back theology in science is equivalent to bringing back doubt, modesty, eventually even moral. The problem is that by separating theology from science, many get a wrong conception of science, like if it was truth by definition, when it is only doubt by definition. The idea that science = truth is not science, but scientism. 

Now, people want religion to be consolating, comforting, and based on wishful thinking. Maybe the humans are still a long way from this. Lies have their role too, both in arithmetic and in the human life. I am not still sure how to open the mind to people so that they can accept our ignorance. That requires some courage, I guess.

The danger (for harmonious life) is not ignorance, but the ignorance of ignorance. The attraction to complete knowledge, which simply cannot exist (assuming mechanism, or our local finiteness).

Bruno

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[Bruno Marchal]

With Mechanism, and actually with the help of Gödel’s theorem, this is clarified: the ontological reality os very simple (arithmetic), and set theories, analysis and physics are mental construct by the natural numbers to understand themselves. In the process the phenomenology is unbounded. Arithmetic is very simple as seen from “outside it”, but is bigger than math and physics when seen from inside. It is a paradox of Skolem sort of phenomenon.

Set theory is (vertical) theology. It is the theory of infinity. All numbers are confronted to it in the unbounded phenomenology. 

Gödel missed Mechanism, like he missed CT. 

I have to go. More on this later.

Bruno 

Jason 

Gödel, like all those at the origin of Mathematical Logic (Boole, de Morgan, Peirce (the father)), was interested in theology, as illustrated by his formalisation of the Ontological Argument. Smullyan too. But, as Cohen explained, the theological motivation of mathematical logic has been forced to be hidden to permit the professionalisation of mathematics in the 18th century. 

All sciences are born from theology, which remind us that the belief in any reality out of personal consciousness requires an act of faith.

Each period of the human history where theology belonged to science have been enlightened, peaceful and prosperous. When theology is done with the scientific attitude, nobody agrees except on the necessity of research and dialogs. Once God is given a literal name, we get the lies, the war, the poverty. We get the feeling of superiority and inferiority, and the humans stop to recognise themselves in the others, leading to paranoïa and hysteria.

It is important, and unclear from the quite of Gödel, if he realised that when theology is back to science, we are just able to admit our ignorance, and become modest in the field. It is the claim of truth which is fatal in science and even more so in the fundamental science. Bringing back theology in science is equivalent to bringing back doubt, modesty, eventually even moral. The problem is that by separating theology from science, many get a wrong conception of science, like if it was truth by definition, when it is only doubt by definition. The idea that science = truth is not science, but scientism. 

Now, people want religion to be consolating, comforting, and based on wishful thinking. Maybe the humans are still a long way from this. Lies have their role too, both in arithmetic and in the human life. I am not still sure how to open the mind to people so that they can accept our ignorance. That requires some courage, I guess.

The danger (for harmonious life) is not ignorance, but the ignorance of ignorance. The attraction to complete knowledge, which simply cannot exist (assuming mechanism, or our local finiteness).

Bruno

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