Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

   Post 89. July 4, 2019 continued . . .

  Reality is Ideality

   Virtual Reality

 Having established his notion of personal human conscious-ness as a fragment of the cosmic Mind7, he examines some implications of that whole/part dichotomy. “One may ask, for instance, why universal consciousness has chosen to dissociate itself into alters8 so prone to suffering.” He then notes an un-warranted assumption in the question : “ . . . attributes to the the whole of universal consciousness particular configurations – such as self-reflection – that it may not have outside its alters.” In other words, G*D may not be a Self, in the sense of a humanoid person. It may be more like an impersonal force8 or power. I too doubt that the Whole would be like the parts, in the sense of Anthropomorphism. Still, some allusions to human characteristics are unavoidable in discussions of a concept so far beyond our understanding. So, I have made an analogy to divine Will, in my concept of EnFormAction. But, since an infinite entity could have no “wants”, this kind of Will might be more like an irresistible Force than a human desire.

Kastrup next attempts to imagine how, if there is only one substance (mind), an Alter9 could be distinguished from the “All”. He compares the Cosmic Consciousness to a Quantum Field, within which virtual particles arise from mathematical probability to form the physical particles that make-up our reality. He postulates that “. . . reality consists of patterns of excitation of a universal mind.” Perhaps an easier metaphor to grasp is that of a single-cell bacterium, which is separated from its soupy environment by a membrane. Yet, both the ‘brane and the cell contents are made of the same stuff as the sur-roundings, merely in a different arrangement & concentration. Likewise, a living Self is merely a unique form of the inert Non-Self of the inanimate world around it. Since it’s all the same malleable stuff (en-form-ation), there is no need for the addition of a spooky soul at the quickening of a fetus. In this analogy, the potential for Energy & Matter and Life & Mind was already embodied in the design (Form) of the cosmic seed.

The concept of Platonic Idealism has been a part of human culture for thousands of years. And it has been accepted as compatible with some religious worldviews. But only recently has an empirical scientific argument for that philosophically logical conjecture become credible. So, not content to merely take it as an unproven axiom, Kastrup endeavors to prove that Meta-physicalism is a more plausible & rigorous explanation, for how the real world works from top to bottom, than material Physicalism. He tackles that project by dealing with traditional objections one-by-one. For example, Bishop Berkeley’s theory of Immaterialism was rejected by the poet Samuel Johnson, who said, “I refute it, thus!”, by kicking a large stone. That is the “felt concreteness” problem. We don’t have to take those ghostly virtual objects on faith, because they “seem” to be made of solid matter. Yet quantum theory has demonstrated that seeming is deceiving, in that visually opaque objects are found to consist mostly of empty space. If it weren’t for the fact that the space between atoms is smaller than the wave-length of light, we could see right through them. Moreover, if it weren’t for atoms repelling each other across space — via force fields — we could never touch material objects. Although these empirical  “facts” are reasonable, they contradict our macro-scale sensory intuition. Check one for science, but X one for sense.         Post 89 continued . . . click Next

Virtual Reality
is
not Ideal

I refute it thus!

Ouch!

7. Universal mind :
. . . or universal conscious-ness is a concept that tries to address the underlying essence of all being and becoming in the universe. It includes the being and becoming that occurred in the universe prior to the arising of the concept of "Mind", a term that more appropriately refers to the organic, human, aspect of universal consciousness.
Wikipedia

8. The Force  :
   The Star Wars field of impersonal mind power would be a good illustration of the Cosmic Mind, except for the dramatic fiction of lending magical powers to those with Faith, or some special Gnosis. In reality though, there is no empirical evidence of such mind-over-matter energies, only as-if anecdotal fables.

9. Alters :
   In Multiple Personality Disorder each persona is referred to as an “alter”, meaning “other” – as in Alter Ego (other self).
   In my own video game analogy, I refer to human persons as Avatars. In Hinduism, an “avatar” is a physical manifestation of an immaterial deity. Likewise, Jesus might be called an avatar of Jehovah.
   What used to be called the “Soul, is like an Avatar of the game player, who is outside the game itself. In this analogy, the game designer also plays all the roles in the whole system. You and I are essentially personas of a schizo deity.

I refute you

Thus!

IDEALISM