The Idea of the World

[droqen]

Regarding Bernardo Kastrup's
"The Idea of the World"
(subtitle "A multi-disciplinary argument for the mental nature of reality")

BACKLINK ~ contrast A Systemic Approach to Systemic Design, "The System of the World"

[droqen]

P. 26
. . . information requires a mental or material substrate . . . To say that information exists in and of itself is akin to speaking of spin without the top, of ripples without water. . .

[droqen]

P. 28
. . . the anti-realist view in the philosophy of science. According to it, abstract theoretical entities. . . .are but "convenient fictions. . .". In other words, the best we can say about subatomic particles and other abstract entities is that the observable world behaves as if these entities existed. This does not entail or imply that the entities actually exist, which we cannot be certain of either way . . .

[droqen]

What does it mean to exist. Ontology is "the philosophical study of being." Is it at all meaningful to determine what "is" and "is not"? Where lies the problem? Is it pure semantics? I may reread the (many) preface/overview/introduction sections to find out.

[droqen]

P. 10
Part I makes explicit the main artifacts of thought--unexamined assumptions, fallacious logical bridges, etc.--that plague the contemporary philosophical outlook regarding the nature of reality. By pointing out these seldom-discussed artifacts, I hope to establish the need for a different approach to ontology, which Part II then attempts to fulfill . . .

//

So the stated goal of Part I, which I have quoted in two of the above three posts, is to "establish the need for a different approach to ontology, which Part II then attempts to fulfill". I can sense my irritation at reading text of such a rhetorical nature, so I'll skip straight to Part II and come back here if I must. I am not looking to be convinced: I am looking for new deep truths--better explanations.

[droqen]

Part II

An idealist ontology

[droqen]

P. 52
. . . the best explanation for the facts of nature entails that these facts are essentially phenomenal.
. . . the ontology of idealism, according to which all existence consists solely of ideas: thoughts, emotions, perceptions, intuitions, imagination, etc.

[droqen]

on an earlier page Kastrup quotes Luciano Floridi, a "well-known advocate of information as ontological primitive", as saying "Information remains an elusive concept", and proceeds to say this:

P. 27
Such ambiguity lends ontic pancomputationalism a kind of conceptual fluidity that renders it impossible to pin down. After all, if the choice of ontological primitive is given by "an elusive concept," how can one definitely establish that the choice is wrong?

//

Kastrup therefore must consider ideas ("thoughts, emotions, perceptions, intuitions, imagination") to be less elusive than information. This seems in line with his arguments regarding ideas as things we mental beings can directly interact with, whereas the material world can only be experienced as mediated through . . . ideas. But is imagination not merely a subset of idea?

[droqen]

P. 55
Although contextuality -- with its experimental confirmation -- is seldom discussed outside the small and highly specialized community of foundations of physics, it renders untenable the naive-realist notion that the physical world we perceive around ourselves exists autonomously. We know, both theoretically and experimentally, that such is not the case.

//

Okay, I'm going to jump to this part of the book.

[droqen]

P. 88, 89
. . . bottom-up panpsychists posit that entities as small as subatomic particles are experiencing subjects in their own merit. . . . more complex experiencing subjects, such as human beings, arises from bottom-up combination of countless simpler subjects. The problem is that the bottom-up combination of subjects is an unexplainable process. . . . Inference 5 [and the concept of a universal, shared TWE] circumvents this altogether[.]

//

Is Kastrup's theory really more sensible? I have seen that the bottom-up combination of subjects can produce unpredictable and complex results (see Emergence, but also lots of experience with this kind of thing). The 'hard problem of consciousness' is certainly a hard problem, and yet to suppose that the solution is 'consciousness is a larger and even less explainable field' does not seem like a better explanation.

In other words, if there is an unexplainable phenomenon, Kastrup is criticizing approach A for relying on unexplainable smaller parts . . . while proposing a solution (approach B) that relies on unexplainable larger parts. (I speak not of physical size but of conceptual size, in the way that a set is larger than its subsets.)

It's an idea that takes a shape which is comforting to the human brain, but can it help us explain anything? What is the increased explanatory power of Kastrup's theory?

[droqen]

He appeals to human-level observation and intuitions. To say that people can experience dissociation and therefore the universe can experience dissociation is primarily rooted in relatability. This is misleading anthropocentrism. What reason could we possibly have for believing that our observations about the human mind should be at all applicable to the nature of reality at large?

On page 89 he says "unlike bottom-up combination, we actually understand and have plenty of empirical evidence for top-down dissociation. . ." as justification for Inference 5, which is that "Metabolizing organisms are the extrinsic appearance of alters of TWE." While I tentatively agree with the existence of TWE, there are some logical connections I cannot follow between the existence of some undefined TWE (that which experiences), and the assumption that dissociation in humans is comparable, is usable as evidence of, dissociation in TWE.

[droqen]

I've turned to outside forces, having decided Kastrup has likely made several errors when going from point A to point B, but I don't trust myself to make those connections myself. A poem guide helped me arrive at a better understanding of The Road Not Taken, why not let an expert guide me through the problems with Kastrup's The Idea of the World?

[droqen]

Now regarding Bill Meacham's
"Idealism, Process and Mind-At-Large"...
https://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?topic=381