A critique of Analytic Idealism

2026-01-11. Note that this critique is still under revision; I published it a little prematurely, reflecting a bit of a too-often habit of mine. On rereading my highlighted quotes from the reference works, I have realised that there are a few areas in which it is not quite accurate and fair, and where the overall structure and argumentation still need some work. I encourage you to bookmark it and come back to it in a few days rather than to read it now, even though it is mostly on-point. Having published it though, I won't take it down while I make those revisions.

Briefly, the main currently-planned revisions (more might be developed while writing) are:

  • A correction: in the reference works, contra to what this critique currently suggests, there is an explicit acknowledgement that what I've referred to as "the extensional representation" is misleading, explicitly motivating "the network representation".
  • A related addition: address the attempt to "derive" extension from the non-extended, especially given the heavy lifting and intuitive work done by the extensional representation, and the acknowledgement that experience itself is not extended.
  • An addition: address the idea that (space)time can "be" (reduced to / explained in terms of) experience.
  • Structurally, in the context of the overall argument against everything-as-experience: note that experience "is as it is", and that the above entail that it is something other than it actually is (more than; in fact, unexperienced).
  • Another correction: the section on the body currently claims that it is explained in terms of unreportable experiences alone and not dissociation; in fact, it is explained in terms of dissociation. The critique currently thus overreaches here and the claim of incoherence (currently explicit in the conclusion) is too strong. There are still serious problems with Analytic Idealism here though, planned to be addressed.

The basic problem with Analytic Idealism[1] is that it is impossible to account for all aspects of reality solely in terms of experience, which is all that Analytic Idealism recognises as real (aside from volition). This critique explores some of those aspects. The most serious problem in this respect is that real experience entails a real experient (self), which – since it recognises only experience (same caveat) – is lacking on Analytic Idealism.

🔗 Table of contents

🔗 The absent self

On Analytic Idealism, there is no real self: the self is nominal only; it is emptiness; potentiality, not actuality; amorphous; reduced to a “sense of”.

This is difficult to grasp at first because of all of the lip service paid to the idea of the self as “the universal subject”, but it becomes clear after some analysis. A good starting point is on p. 153 of WMIB[2]:

“We can then say that all that exists is the movement of the void. Since the subject of all experiences is the medium of mind itself, it too only becomes actualized in the form of experience: the one universal subject exists only insofar as the experiences it has.”

Note carefully that this quote explicitly disclaims the existence of any self (the subject of all experiences) apart from experience; any putatively real self is at best a “void”. Note too that it explicitly identifies that (non-distinct) self (“subject”) with “the medium of mind”, and then consider the following quote from the same page in that light (editing brackets mine; footnote elided):

“So, on the one hand, it is entirely valid to say that only experience exists, for the medium of mind is merely a potential, not an actuality. It concretizes into existence only when it moves and, at that point, it is nothing but the corresponding experiences. On the other hand, it is also entirely valid to talk metaphorically about a ‘medium of mind,’ insofar as this is a reference to a potential, not an actuality. [...] In the same way that there is nothing to the vibration of a guitar string other than the string itself, ultimately there is nothing to experience – and therefore to existence – other than the void that vibrates. So everything is a void or, as Adyashanti brilliantly put it, ‘emptiness dancing.’ Existence is but a disturbance of the void and, thus, fundamentally empty.”

Here, the self – as “the medium of mind” – is seen to be mere potentiality, not actuality; mere emptiness (albeit “dancing”) – again, a void. Again, its real (actual) existence apart from experience is explicitly denied.

Finally, consider this from p. 198 of WMIB (my editing brackets):

“[O]ur inner sense of ‘I’ is fundamentally independent of any story we could dress it up with. As such, it is entirely undifferentiated and identical in every person. It is formless. This undressed, naked, ‘amorphous I’ is inherent to the membrane of mind at large, the sole subject of existence. Not only does every person have the same inner sense of ‘I,’ I contend that every conscious being has it: cats, dogs, fish, etc. At the deepest, narrative-free levels, they must all feel exactly like us.”

Here, the referent (“I”) to the self – “the sole subject of existence” – is seen as “amorphous”, and reduced to a “sense of”, where there is nothing real to sense. There is no “there there”, so to speak.

In combination, these quotes demonstrate that Analytic Idealism lacks the concept of a real self: the self of which it conceives is merely nominal; unreal in another word; non-existent in yet another. Analytic Idealism seen properly, in this light, is a no-self theory.

The only apparent possibility (endorsed in the above quotes) for a real self on Analytic Idealism is for experience (all that really exists on that theory; same caveat as before) to be the self, but this in fact is not possible, because to be and to undergo (experiences) are two incompatible relations: a self can’t “be” the same experiences that it undergoes; it is logically prior to them.

This is not mere semantics: the lack of a real self to ground experience is the most serious problem with this theory (but not the only problem).

(Feel free to skip the following elaboration if the preceding point is already clear:)

To say that only experience exists, ungrounded by any real self, is like saying that only red exists, with no real object that could be coloured red.

While it is valid to refer to and consider colour or experience in the abstract divorced from object or self (respectively), when colour or experience are not abstract but instantiated, then they require a real object or self with respect to which they are a property of or undergone by (respectively).

In other words, light can be cast on the nature of (being of) experience by comparison to properties or attributes, which have no existence independent of that of which they are a property or attribute: similarly, experience has no existence independent of the experient (self) who undergoes it.

On Analytic Idealism, such a self is lacking: the self on Analytic Idealism is an empty placeholder that is never filled in.

🔗 The missing mind

Along similar lines, in the contexts in which mind and self are distinct (see below), Analytic Idealism does not recognise a real mind either, and, similarly, this can be difficult to grasp at first due to all of the lip service paid to the universal mind, mind-at-large, and "mind" in general, etc.

Again, on Analytic Idealism, there is no mind distinct from experience.

The mind, though, like the self, is not its experiences; rather, like the self, it undergoes experiences (and, in a sense, is permeated by – or with – experience). The problem here of the unreal (missing) mind is identical in nature to that of the problem of the unreal (absent) self.

Mind and self can be considered distinct in contexts in which the self is taken in a more limited, core sense as a subject of experience as well as a volitional agent, and mind is taken in a broader sense to include not just that core subjectivity and agency, but also in the sense of being the possessor of the mental faculties and properties beyond those, including memory, recollection, reasoning, intelligence, personality, and psychological traits and habits.

🔗 The inversion problem for plural selves

Sticking with the theme of self: each of the (plurality of) apparent selves (“psyches” or “alters”) in the unitary ocean of experience of which Analytic Idealism conceives is explained as being a subset of that ocean of experience. This ocean is ultimately (in later works) conceived of as akin to a semantic network such as a relational database. An ordinary self such as you or me then is a grouping of related and connected, presumably atomic, elements of experience that persists over time.

This might be tenable if those selves were taken to be real and preexisting, but they are not: they are each taken to be the same, unreal (non-)self, and to be brought into existence by the subdivision of the ocean of experience.

Aside from the previously-noted problem of an unreal (non-)self, one problem here is that, after correcting for real selves, those selves would then have been brought into existence by subdivision. This, however, mistakenly inverts the relationship between self and experience alluded to above: the self precedes experience, not the other way around (to help see why this is so, consider that a self who is temporarily not experiencing can be coherently conceived of, whereas an experience that is not being undergone by an experient (self) cannot – it could be a “proto”experience at best). Subdividing experience, then, cannot in itself give rise to a new self.

🔗 The causal inefficacy of bare experience

Another fatal problem for Analytic Idealism follows from the absent self and missing mind: in their absence, experience lacks causal efficacy, and, given that experience is all that exists, Analytic Idealism lacks causal efficacy altogether.

This is because it is the mind that is the causal agent, not experience: the causal effects of experience exist solely in virtue (by proxy) of the mind undergoing that experience.

In case this point is unclear, consider this analogy: concepts and ideas have no causal efficacy of their own; their causal effects exist solely in virtue (by proxy) of the mind that apprehends them. It is similar although not identical for experience: the main difference is that experience is more intimately bound up with – indeed, as, crucially, has been argued already, contingent on – mind, whereas concepts and ideas are rather more independent of, and of a more different existential nature than, mind.

🔗 The broader lack of causal efficacy

More generally, causal efficacy is anyway denied on Analytic Idealism. On p. 160 of AIIAN, the experiences of any given self are described in (the metaphorical) terms of watching a moving object (a cat) through fence slats.

The point seems to be that there is only a sequence of prefigured moments or slices of perceived reality, none of which is causally determined by any prior (nor subsequent) moment/slice; there is only the appearance, but not the reality, of causation.

Ultimately, then, the causal coherence of reality as a whole is left unexplained. There is nothing outside of experience – noting that, on Analytic Idealism, experience includes all spacetime – that could have coherently ordered reality, but nor is there anything within reality that could do (or have done) so either.

It might be contended that Analytic Idealism, in addition to experience, recognises the reality of volition – of the universal (and free) will – and that volition in combination with experience is sufficient to coherently order reality.

This contention fails though, because absent a real mind, volition is impotent: more to the point, just as experience cannot exist in the absence of an experiencer (self/mind), so will cannot exist in the absence of a willer (self/mind). Thus, the sort of will-in-itself proposed by Analytic Idealism is not even tenable (realisable) in the first place, let alone capable of the causal efficacy necessary to order an otherwise causeless reality.

Lest it be counter-asserted that its existence is not merely of itself, but that it is rather a property (or faculty) of the universal subject, recall that the universal subject is itself only nominal, not real, and thus there is nothing real of which the universal will could be a (real) property (or faculty), and, even granting the universal will status as the nominal property (or faculty) of the nominal universal subject, that subject lacks any other mental faculties (on which, more below) for the informed, intelligent exercise of that will.

Almost all of the subsequently described problems in this critique are essentially consequences of this absence of causal efficacy and of even an accounting of causal ordering on Analytic Idealism.

🔗 Noting appendices: the decombination problem and the shift in metaphorical representations

Taking a moment for a couple of asides:

One notorious problem for Analytic Idealism (and similar monistic idealisms) is the so-called “decombination” problem. I have relegated it to Appendix C: The decombination problem because I have come to realise that it misses the mark: it mistakenly assumes a conventional definition of “self” (in which selves really exist), whereas the effective definition on Analytic Idealism of “self” is “set of experiences (absent a real experient of them)”.

In any case, the previous two sections allude to one (potentially novel) form of the decombination problem: the “mechanistic” decombination problem as I have termed it, recapitulated in that appendix.

It is also worth noting that in earlier works (especially WMIB) on Analytic Idealism by its founder, Bernardo Kastrup, different metaphors than that of a relational semantic network (or database) were used, metaphors that implied or even outright stated (albeit with the qualification that they are just metaphors) that experience is dimensionally extended: whirlpools, vibrating membranes of mirrored tinfoil, etc.

In other words, that which might be referred to as “the extensional representation” has been replaced by the time of AIIAN[2] with that which might be referred to as “the network representation”, in which the nodes in the network might be referred to as “node experiences”.

Although I am not aware of any explicit disclaimer that the earlier extensional representation was misleading, there is a perhaps implicit recognition via the affirmation in the later work that “mentation is not extended” (p. 161, AIIAN); that is, that “you can’t take a tape measure to my next thought” (ibid).

I discuss these different representations in more detail in Appendix D: Metaphorical representations. Despite my having decided that it does not belong in the body of the critique, I do think that its insights are notable and important, so I encourage you to read that appendix.

🔗 The problem of accounting for mental faculties

Another set of problems arises in attempting to account for various of our mental faculties on Analytic Idealism, as follows.

🔗 The subconscious

An attempt to account for the subconscious is made via the notion of unreportable experiences: on this account, the subconscious is really conscious, but we lack introspective (“metacognitive” or “meta-conscious”) access to those (our) experiences, and so we cannot “re-represent” them, or, in other words (on my paraphrasing) “experience that we are experiencing them”, so to speak.

On analysis though, it turns out that rather than these “experiences” being unreportable, they are simply unreported: they can be reported on when we choose to pay attention to them, e.g., when we become aware of our breathing to which we had hitherto not being paying any attention (there are edge cases such as blindsight, in which we might not strictly be capable of choosing to pay attention to the unreported “experience”, but such edge cases don't ultimately invalidate the analysis below, especially given that they are anyway readily accounted for via the intuitive alternative presented further below).

The (disentangled) idea here is that we are “really” experiencing these non-meta-conscious experiences even though we aren't but could be if we paid attention to them. It is blatantly incoherent when put like that, but I do think that that's a fair rendering of the idea after disentanglement, albeit one that adherents of Analytic Idealism are unlikely to be comfortable with. A more sensible rendering doesn't seem possible given that Bernardo explicitly distinguishes “unreportable” experiences from “dissociated” experiences, and a reductive explanation of “unreportable” experiences in terms of dissociation seems to be the only candidate for a more sensible rendering.

The references in this context, then, to “re-representing” experiences and even to “reportability” and “meta-”consciousness or “metacognition” are a red herring: what is really being referred to here is simply that which is actually being experienced, not to (re-)“representations” of any experience(s) nor to “reports” of experience(s) nor even to any “meta” mode of experience; these are irrelevant diversions because, while we could, through metacognition, become meta-conscious of any experience we actually are having, and thereby re-represent or report on it, this applies universally, to all of our experiences; it is not a special case for any subset of them.

On a more intuitive model then, these “experiences” (that, incoherently, aren't really being experienced) are in fact not experiences (which is why they're not really being experienced) but mental states of a real mind. When the mind is real and not (as on Analytic Idealism) misdefined as merely a set of phenomenal experiences, then it can have real states that need not be experienced when attention is not placed on them.

The intuitive idea here is that these mental states undergird experience: they are a precursor to it but do not entail it. When attention is not placed on them, they do not blossom into experience; they simply form part of a subconscious mental process. As a precursor though, they clearly have experience-like qualities, because even when we are not paying attention to them, we can sometimes project our attention back into the very recent past where we can recall them as though we had experienced them. For example, if we are in a conversation but briefly drift off into a reverie of thought, and then snap back to attention and try to recall what our friend has been saying to us while we drifted off, we can sometimes grasp onto a few recent words as though we actually had heard them consciously.

More generally, this more intuitive model affirms the reality of the self, which “clothes” itself, so to speak, in its (also real) mind, by and through which it both undergoes mental states, experiences, and expresses its will, along with all of its other faculties.

🔗 Recollection

A more challenging faculty to explain on Analytic Idealism is recollection, given that there is no mind in which to store memories; there is only experience. It might seem to be explained via psychic-like means, as the current subset of experience “reaching out” towards and apprehending – directly – a past subset of experiences in its own causal history, but experiences are not the sort of phenomenon that can actively reach out and apprehend; rather, they can at best be the outcome of a mind that does so (and that then undergoes them).

It might then be contended that the past experiences project themselves into the recollecting experiences, but this does not work for a similar reason: experiences as such do not have that capacity; they are, as discussed above, causally active only in virtue (by proxy) of a mind that undergoes them, a mind that is missing on Analytic Idealism. Too, this seems to violate the intuitive reality of the passing of time, by which long past events cannot directly affect the present.

🔗 Memory

As suggested by the preceding, memory itself does not seem to even exist on Analytic Idealism: while memories can be experienced (in the form of recollection), they can’t be experience.

🔗 Reasoning

Another challenging faculty to explain on Analytic Idealism is reasoning. Without a real mind capable of guiding the reasoning, it is unclear how and why any subset of experience would faithfully represent a chain of reasoning.

🔗 Intelligence

If reasoning in particular is challenging to explain on Analytic Idealism, then intelligence in general is even more so, given, as I contend, that experience is not in itself causally efficacious in an active sense. Given this contention, there is no reason for one subset of experience to lead in any particular direction over time, let alone in an intelligent one.

🔗 The problematic accounting for the physical self

Moving from accounting for mental faculties to accounting for the so-called physical self also leads, as might be expected, to difficult problems on this idealistic paradigm.

🔗 The brain

Even the easiest entity – as the bridge between the mental and the physical – the brain, is challenging to account for, but, in any case, it foreshadows problems to come.

The brain on Analytic Idealism does not exist in a conventional sense: as a physical, mind-independent lump of wet tissue. Rather, it “exists” solely as an image in the perceptual experience of its percipient(s), and the perceived image mirrors (after some sort of translation) the set of experiences of the psyche whose “brain” is being perceived.

Several questions raised here are:

  1. How does one psyche – a set of experiences – perceive, albeit after translation, the disconnected (“dissociated”) set of experiences that is another psyche?

  2. In virtue of what is the brain image (relatively) consistent over time?

  3. Why, given the great variety of different personal experiences, does the brain image not seem to reflect that variety in any overt way?

  4. (Related to the above) Why, given its free will, does the brain image appear to generally follow the mostly deterministic laws uncovered by physics?

The first question pertains to the foreshadowed problems, and is not unique to the brain, so it is deferred to the next section on sensory perception (which could as well have been considered with mental faculties; it, too, is a sort of bridging phenomenon), and the remainder seem best left as rhetorical, except that question #4 is referenced again later.

🔗 Sensory perception

Here, a form of question #1 in the above section is considered, broadened to include perceptions of all external experiences: how can one psyche – a set of experiences – perceive, albeit after translation, the pre-dissociated set of experiences of mind-at-large that underlie the “physical” world?

The basic answer is simply: it can't. Analytic Idealism lacks any ontological means by which a transfer capable of yielding sensory perception could occur at all.

This is for the same reason that recollection is impossible on Analytic Idealism, namely, that, as noted above, experience is not causally active in the absence of a real mind. There is thus no way for either the perceiver (as mere experience) to reach out causally to the objects of perception (also mere experience, albeit dissociated from the perceiver), nor for the objects of perception to do likewise to the perceiver.

This rules out the basic justification typically given for the possibility of perception on Analytic Idealism: that the contents of a single, albeit dissociated, mind are accessible across dissociative boundaries in virtue of it being, ultimately, a singular mind. As established at the start of this critique, on Analytic Idealism, both the self and mind are nominal only: there is no real self nor mind in or to which these (dissociated) experiences are occurring; there are only the experiences themselves. In the absence of a mind, experience stands alone; it cannot affect any other experience, dissociated or not.

It also rules out another possibility, albeit one not (as far as I know) explicitly canvassed by Analytic Idealism: some sort of psychic-like, mind-to-mind transfer. Similarly, this is ruled out because there are no real minds who could possess and exercise psychic abilities.

In any case, the existence of sensory organs seems strange in itself. They seem to make sense only in a physical reality that consists in extended stuff, which “travels” into and through those organs, not in a reality of pure (non-extended) experience.

Even assuming that somehow experiences could be perceived across a dissociative boundary, that perception remains difficult to explain. While it is impossible – per the tenets of Analytic Idealism itself – to know what mind-at-large’s experiences actually are, those experiences and the sensory perception of them seem to need to be something like this:

Its experience of the world is or implicitly includes a complex conceptual model, constantly updated in time in a manner consistent with the laws of physics, which themselves are part of the conceptual model. It is aware of the perspective on that model of each of the psyches (“dissociated” selves), and, for each psyche, it customises its conceptual model into an appropriate (contextualised) perceptual experience from that psyche’s perspective, which then is transferred across the dissociative boundary, somehow involving the sensory organs, which – bizarrely – themselves are experiences, to that psyche.

There are a couple of reasons why – aside from perception being ruled out in the first place, and even prior to that the lack of causal efficacy on Analytic Idealism – this is anyway impossible:

Moreover, on Analytic Idealism neither mind-at-large nor the universal mind are even self-aware. It is hard to see how a mind lacking self-awareness could be sufficiently aware of all of its dissociated minds as to carry out this transformation-and-transfer procedure for them regardless of the above two points. Additionally and relatedly, this all leaves open the question as to how mind-at-large perfectly tracks all of the dissociated minds and their perspectives on the conceptual model, and why it would go to all that bother even if it was sufficiently aware of what it was doing.

🔗 The (remainder of the) body

As for the brain, the body does not exist in a conventional sense, only as an image in perceptual experience.

The difference with the brain, which, headaches and the like aside, is not directly experienced personally by the brain’s “proprietor” (so to speak), is that, when we pay attention, we can directly experience (the rest of) our bodies directly, except in rare cases like quadriplegia.

Bracketing that to return to, the problem is that when we aren't paying attention, our bodies continue to exist in the sense that their metabolic processes continue and other people can perceive them. For this reason, Analytic Idealists propose that they are accounted for in the same way that the subconscious is accounted for: as “unreportable” experiences. As pointed out in that previous section though, that accounting is incoherent and it fails; it fails here too on the same analysis.

Returning to the bracketed observation: when we direct our attention at our body (feeling, for example, the tension of a muscle, or the beat of our heart, or the expansion of our lungs as we inhale), theoretically switching the hitherto unreported experience into a “reported” one, we do not perceive at all in the detail that we know exists in our bodies. Not only is there an unexperienced complex arrangement of cells, but each cell itself is a marvel of unexperienced complexity. Analytic Idealism cannot explain how this complexity – presumably present in the unreported experience – persists into a reported experience of a fidelity far too low to encompass it.

Finally, given that our bodies are merely, for the most part, so-called unreported experiences, and given that experience lacks active casual efficacy, it remains inexplicable why a change in the experience which is a body – such as the changed experience that corresponds to a fatal heart attack – causes the associated psyche to cease to experience altogether (die). This is connected with the broader problem of the inexplicability of the persistence of a psyche – merely a set of experience(s) – in the first place.

🔗 The problem of lawful continuity

It is worth taking inspiration from question #4 above under The brain at this point. There seem to be at least four domains of experience that the preceding critique has uncovered:

  1. The experiences of mind-at-large (which are translated into perceptions by psyches of the “physical” world).

  2. The reportable conscious experiences of each psyche (having the image of a brain when “externally” perceived by a psyche).

  3. The “unreportable” subconscious “experiences” of each psyche (presumably also included in the image of his/her brain). As analysed above, these aren't and can't really be experiences, albeit that Analytic Idealism treats them as such.

  4. The mostly “unreportable” (same caveat as above), but reported when paid attention to, experiences associated with each psyche’s body.

Now, each of these is in some sense distinct from the others, via either dissociation or “unreportability”. At the same time, Analytic Idealism affirms a form of naturalism in terms of the laws of physics, which thus must be applicable (in some sense, noting that these laws are under Analytic Idealism considered to be part of the “dashboard” onto experience and not the reality of experience) and continuous across all four domains.

This seems to be contradictory: whilst the external world is habitual, personal experience is far less so, sometimes radically less so, and the body is a combination of the two. If not contradictory, it is at least highly implausible that all four domains would be reducible (again, in some sense) to a small, basic set of fundamental laws. This is at the very least in need of cogent explanation.

🔗 Conclusion

As a response to the intellectual vices of materialism (aka physicalism), Analytic Idealism succeeds in ways in which that theory fails: by elevating consciousness to primacy, it dissolves the so-called “hard problem” that so bedevils materialism, and it recognises and takes seriously first-person experience without trying to reduce it to – nor to identify it with – something which it is not.

As a modern variant of idealism – perhaps the preeminent one – that treats science, and the physical sciences in particular, as seriously as its ideological adversary does, it positions itself as a meaningful alternative to that ideology for those whose rational bent would otherwise lead them to adopt materialism.

These strengths make its ultimate failure to position itself as a coherent alternative to materialism's incoherence all the more significant and deserving of attention in the marketplace of ideas on consciousness.

Its incoherence arises out of its taking experience to be all that exists, such that it thus arguably treats experience as a substance (in the philosophical sense[3]) when it is not one. Its incoherence manifests more specifically in the following forms:

Given that incoherence is fatal, the argument from parsimony for Analytic Idealism of course could not and thus does not supersede nor outweigh these problems, and more intuitive and plausible theories of consciousness and its relationship with reality are in any case available, particularly variants of substance dualism, which, perplexingly, are rarely if ever given consideration in Analytic Idealist works.

🔗 Appendix A: What is Analytic Idealism?

Analytic Idealism is a theory advanced by the philosopher – among other things – Bernardo Kastrup. It posits that all that exists at the fundamental level of reality is mind, that the matter we perceive doesn't in fact exist beyond (all-inclusive) perception, and that, despite there being many of us, only one mind truly exists.

In more detail, it posits that:

The fundamental substrate of reality is the medium of mind, a void that, paradoxically, vibrates. These vibrations are experience. They are caused by freewill, an intrinsic, basic, and irreducible property of the medium of mind. Freewill is not itself an experience, and nor can it be experienced directly, only indirectly, via its effects on experience.

This all-encompassing mind is referred to as universal mind (as distinct from “mind-at-large” – see below).

There is nothing to mind beyond these vibrations, and thus nothing to mind beyond experience. If, then, the medium of mind was to stop vibrating, and thus there was no experience, then mind would in a meaningful sense cease to exist, at least until the vibrations resumed.

Nevertheless, the other intrinsic property of the medium of mind is its basic, core selfhood, the “undressed, naked, ‘amorphous I’” (p. 198, WMIB).

Via complex, dynamic structures into which the vibrations have formed, personal minds, including our own, have dissociated (“decombined” more typically in the broader literature) from it. Each of these (each of us) consists in only the proper subset of vibrations that has so been structured, and is referred to as a psyche or, borrowing again from psychiatric terminology with respect to dissociative identity disorder (DID), as an alter. (A side note for those unaware: DID was formerly known as multiple personality disorder (MPD).)

The subject of all psyches is nevertheless identical: the referent of every “I” is “the sole subject of existence” (p. 198, WMIB); that is to say that the universal mind's core selfhood is itself universal. All psyches are in this sense the same mind.

Nevertheless, for each psyche, the subset of experience via which it dissociates is not all that exists, and, in this sense, despite affirming the existence of only a single subject of a single mind, Analytic Idealism denies solipsism, the theory that there is no reality beyond that of any given psyche (such as the reader).

Each psyche appears to other psyches as a metabolising organism (a living body), which thus is the representation of the dissociated experiences (“vibrations”) of which a psyche is constituted.

The remaining subset of the universal mind which has not dissociated, mind-at-large, is the ultimate referent of that external, otherwise seemingly material world that we describe with physics. As mind, there is something that it is like to be it. Nevertheless, its own subjective experiences are not what we psyches ourselves perceive directly as the external world. Rather, its vibrations (experiences) impinge upon our own metabolic boundaries via our sensory organs, and we perceive it (via its “vibrations”) in an encoded and condensed form that has been optimised by evolutionary processes for our survival needs.

Despite all of the references to vibrations and structure, (the medium of) mind in fact does not consist in any sort of “stuff”, not even “mind stuff”, and nor is it even extended.

Rather than entailing the existence of any sort of “stuff”, these vibrations and structure refer to that which truly is simply experience as we understand it, in the sense of subjective perception, thoughts, and feelings, etc (albeit that the experiences of mind-at-large would probably seem very foreign to us were they to be our own).

Despite not being extended, (the medium of) mind is nevertheless structured – as it must be given the differentiation in reality – but this structure is not spatiotemporal; its structure is more like that of elements in a set (in set theory) or of entries in a database system, in which semantic units exist in relation to one another.

Following on from that, and as it suggests, (the medium of) mind is neither in nor subject to either space or time. Rather, space and time are within – are aspects of – (the medium of) mind and its “vibrations”, and, in a sense even, (the medium of) mind simply is spacetime.

In this sense, too, the medium of mind is analogous – or even identical – to the unified field of quantum field theory.

🔗 Primary reference works

My main (but not sole) references for the above summation are the Kindle editions of these three books by Bernardo:

In this critique, I refer to them (in their Kindle editions), respectively, as WMIB, TIOTW, and AIIAN.

🔗 Appendix B: In context as a monistic idealism

(Note: Mostly, I have restricted philosophical jargon to this appendix and Appendix C: The decombination problem. That jargon and this section can be skimmed over or skipped if it doesn't interest you, but do note the second-last paragraph, because the basic metaphor referenced in it is referenced in the main critique as “the ocean of experience”).

As a form of monistic idealism, close relatives if not synonyms of Analytic Idealism are those other monistic idealisms going by (non-exhaustively):

By “monistic idealism” I mean an ontological aka metaphysical idealism that goes beyond being a substance[3] monism – which all ontological idealisms are via their affirmation that only one type of substance, the mental, exists – to also being an existence monism or at least a priority monism, via its affirmation that only one token of that substance – a mind – exists, allowing in the case of priority monism a plurality of derivative minds that nevertheless is fully grounded in that singular mind.

For further clarity: Analytic Idealism seems pretty clearly to be an existence monism (although I am not aware of anywhere that this is made explicit), whereas cosmopsychism is explicitly a priority monism (at least as defended by Itay Shani).

Some of the relevant features that these sort of monistic idealisms have in common are that each of them is simultaneously a monism about:

One metaphor typically given to explain the posited common identity between a singular mind, a singular self aka subject, consciousness, and experience is that experience is “mind in motion” like a wave is “water in motion”: just as the wave is nothing more than a dynamic pattern of water, and in that sense is identical to the water, so experience is nothing more than a dynamic pattern of mind (as consciousness aka the singular self/subject) and in that sense is identical to mind (again, as consciousness aka the singular self/subject). One caveat given this metaphor is that mind can – at least theoretically – be at rest, in which case there is no experience (as noted already in Appendix A: What is Analytic Idealism?).

As a substance monism, monistic idealism is not to be confused with physicalism aka materialism, which, although also a substance monism, takes the single category of being in reality to be matter rather than mind (and which has fatal problems of its own).

🔗 Appendix C: The decombination problem

Prefatory note: As indicated above (see Noting appendices: the decombination problem and the shift in metaphorical representations), I have relegated this problem to an appendix because, although notorious, I have come to see that it misses the mark. Elaborating on my comments in that above section: if “self” is defined – as, in effect, it is on Analytic Idealism – as “set of experiences (absent a real experient of them)”, then there is no problem with there being both a singular self (the superset of experience aka “the universal self”) as well as plural selves (the multiple dissociated subsets plus the “left over” mind-at-large subset). It is only when the self is defined conventionally – as real – that this problem is a genuine one (because one real self cannot at the same time be subdivided into multiple real selves; that’s truly contradictory). That is not to deny that there remains a problem underlying all of this, because, of course, the very fact that the self is not defined conventionally, and in fact is absent other than in name, on Analytic Idealism, is a (the main) problem in itself.

In the philosophical literature, “the decombination problem” is sometimes also referred to as the “decomposition”, “derivation”, or “fragmentation” problem. These terms are all at least roughly equivalent with the preferred term on Analytic Idealism, “dissociation”.

Some of the – fairly similar – ways in which various scholars have characterised this broad and rather vague problem, of unclear scope, are that it “concerns the derivation of subjects from the absolute”[4], “asks how the cosmic consciousness can be built from medium-size individual consciousnesses”[5], and poses the questions, “How could medium-size individual consciousnesses be derived from the cosmic consciousness?”[5] and, (my editing brackets) “[H]ow can a subject and its experience decompose into other subjects and their experiences?”[6]

I have categorised it into two main sub-problems: the numerical decombination problem, premised on the existence of decombined selves (“psyches” or “alters”), and deriving a contradiction from their existence with that of the singular self (“the universal mind”), and the mechanistic decombination problem, which in contrast shows that the necessary condition under which these decombined selves could come into existence in the first place is not satisfied.

The subcategorising (dare I suggest decombining?) of the problem in this way, and the names I have given to the subcategories and their instances, are my own invention.

🔗 The numerical decombination problem (singularity ≠ plurality)

The problem: Whereas Analytic Idealism posits a singular self (the universal mind), at the same time it posits a plurality of selves (mind-at-large and the psyches), and the only coherent solution to this contradiction – that what seems to be is not in fact the case, and, rather, that metaphysical solipsism is the case – is ruled out by definition.

The numerical decombination problem can be formulated or instantiated in more particular ways. The three formulations of which I'm aware are those with respect to the structure of phenomenal experience, the stream of phenomenal experience, and subjective perspective. These formulations follow.

🔗 The structural numerical decombination problem (homogeneity ≠ heterogeneity)

The problem: The posited singular self (the universal mind) must be structurally homogeneous (lacking internal boundaries) so as to qualify as singular, yet it must simultaneously be structurally heterogeneous (containing internal boundaries) given that there are simultaneously multiple (dissociated) selves (mind-at-large and the psyches, each of which must itself be structurally homogeneous so as to qualify as a coherent self of its own). This is contradictory: structural homogeneity is inconsistent with structural heterogeneity.

Clarification: By way of explanation, consider two phenomenal experiences, such as of eating a plum and of listening to the radio. These can be experienced either separately or together. When experienced together, they are unified, and consciousness (as phenomenal experience) is structurally homogeneous, with no internal boundaries (but presumably or at least potentially an outer boundary). When experienced separately, they are disunified, and consciousness (as phenomenal experience) is structurally heterogeneous, with internal boundaries (which serve as outer boundaries for distinct selves).

Source: The Decombination Problem for Cosmopsychism is not the Heterogeneity Problem for Priority Monism by Gregory Miller.

🔗 The streaming numerical decombination problem (streams ≠ stream)

The problem: A necessary condition for the posited singular self (the universal mind) to be consistent with the plurality of selves (mind-at-large and the psyches) is that the stream of phenomenal experience of each self be identical with that of all others, and include literally everything being experienced by every self, but this condition does not obtain: not all of us have, and probably none of us has, a stream of phenomenal experience that includes literally everything being experienced by everybody. In particular, we do not each experience the contents of each other's stream of phenomenal experience. This necessary condition not being met, the posited singular self is, therefore, not consistent with the plurality of selves.

Source: Is noetic monism tenable? by Titus Rivas, which also lists potential refutations and explains why each fails.

See also: Post #5, by me, in the Essentia Foundation: It’s Time for Mindful physics! thread on the Psience Quest forums, which includes an explanation of the failure of an additional potential refutation based on multiple timelines and/or time-travelling.

🔗 The perspectival numerical decombination problem (perspective ≠ perspectives)

The argument: The experience of each psyche entails its subjective perspective, but when the posited singular self (the universal mind) is also the subject of that experience, then the same subjective perspective is entailed for it, and thus its subjective perspective is a (conflicting) plurality. A singular self's subjective perspective is also by definition singular though. This is contradictory: a self's subjective perspective cannot be both singular and plural.

Note: This argument includes a controversial premise: that the universal self experiences the experiences of its dissociated selves (psyches). In practice, an Analytic Idealist might want to deny this premise, but then, (s)he would be implicitly denying that there is only one self (and, equivalently, only one mind), because if there is only one self and mind to undergo experiences, then that one self and mind must experience everything that is being experienced.

Elaboration: This argument is also premised on the affirmation that a self's (unique) subjective perspective is entailed by the (unique) experience it is undergoing. This might not seem obvious at first, but it does seem to be the case: experience is all that exists on Analytic Idealism, and so there is nothing else that could entail a self's subjective perspective.

Potential response: Itay Shani's defence[4] against the decombination problem, while not perfectly relevant here, is most relevant here given that he is most concerned with the decombination problem as it pertains to perspectives. Here is my summary of his defence, and my translation of it in context:

The problem framing: While recognising a broader decombination problem, Itay Shani focusses on the decombination problem as the problem of how the perspectives of decombined selves could compose the perspective of the singular self, or, framed in reverse, the problem of how the perspective of the singular self decomposes into the perspectives of decombined selves. Hence, his preferred nomenclature is the “decomposition” problem.

His counter-assertion: No perspective does either compose, nor decompose from, any other perspective: the perspective of each decombined self, he contends, is only “partially” grounded in (and by) the perspective of the (non-decombined) singular self. In other words, the fact that the singular self has a perspective, while relevant, does not fully ground the fact that decombined selves have perspectives.

Its applicability: The closest – though not exact – match for the argument against which Itay is counter-asserting out of those I've presented is this one, the perspectival numerical decombination problem. Whereas his counter-assertion is premised on plural perspectives “composing” the singular perspective, this perspectival numerical decombination is based on the closely-related idea that each plural perspective must instantiate as the singular perspective.

His counter-assertion thus needs some translating to apply it to this argument. Perhaps Itay might say something like this: just as the singular self's perspective only partially grounds the plural perspectives, so the conditions of each plural self that give rise to its perspective only partially apply to the singular self, and thus the singular self need not instantiate each of those plural perspectives.

At this level, it would be difficult to respond in turn to that potential response of Itay's; we would need to get more specific about the conditions and when and why they do or don't apply. It is anyway, as I hope is clear from the body of the critique, already challenging - in fact, impossible, I contend - to derive a (subjective) perspective from a mere set of experiences ungrounded by a self, let alone by a mind, so it's all rather hypothetical and academic in the pejorative sense.

🔗 Taking stock after the numerical decombination problem

Where is the Analytic Idealist left after the numerical decombination problem (especially if (s)he recognises in the first place the need for a more than nominal self, and affirms real selfhood)?

At a minimum, (s)he is forced to accept that there must truly be more than one (real) self (and, thus, more than one mind) in existence. (S)he is forced, then, from existence monism into existence pluralism. At this point, though, it seems possible for the Analytic Idealist to nevertheless claim that the plurality of selves and hence minds did and does dissociate out of an originally singular self and mind (the universal mind). The mechanistic decombination problem, next, exposes the vulnerability of that claim.

🔗 The mechanistic decombination problem

The problem here is that there is no viable mechanism for the dissociation of the universal mind into psyches: given that experience is not in itself an active causal agent, yet that on Analytic Idealism it is all that exists, nothing is capable of causing experience to dissociate into subsets (“psyches”).

Again, this ignores the even deeper problem that experience is contingent on a (real) self (which – again, a deeper problem – is not actually present on Analytic Idealism), rather than the other way around, and thus that splitting experience off into a subset cannot anyway create a new self.

Note carefully in the event of the retort, "But given the empirical existence of dissociative identity disorder (DID) out there in the real world, there must be a mechanism, so this problem is – somehow – necessarily misconceived", that (1) the problem is predicated on the lack of a viable mechanism given the premise that experience is all that exists, and (2) that this retort anyway simply presumes – begging the question – that DID is explained via an analogous process as on Analytic Idealism. The latter presumption is almost certainly false, and viable mechanisms might anyway be possible when real minds and selves – among other potential ontological substances and categories of being – are granted existence beyond their experiences (granting though that the analogy with Analytic Idealism's concept of dissociation in that case is probably going to be irreparably broken anyway).

🔗 Taking stock after the mechanistic decombination problem

Where is the Analytic Idealist left after the mechanistic decombination problem? At a minimum, (s)he is forced to accept that the true plurality of selves in existence could not have dissociated out of a singular self: they must either have originated in some other way, or simply be assumed to exist.

🔗 Appendix D: Metaphorical representations

As briefly discussed in the body of this critique under Noting appendices: the decombination problem and the shift in metaphorical representations, over the course of the books that introduce and elaborate on Analytic Idealism, the metaphors used to represent it change in character, from what I have referred to as “the extensional representation” (used earlier, particularly in WMIB) to “the network representation” (my label again) of the latest (at time of writing), AIIAN.

In this appendix, I elaborate on those representations, what might motivate each, how they differ, and why neither, when taken as representative of Analytic Idealism's core concepts, suffices as a coherent, plausible description of reality.

The extensional representation is present right at the start, in the notion of a “vibrating” membrane. More specific analogies are laid out in detail in WMIB, from watery whirlpools to an ocean of mercury, to tinfoil membranes reflecting and vibrating in multiple dimensions.

That which all of them has in common is the notion of dynamic, dimensionally-extended stuff. The dynamic dimensionality (and arguably even the “stuffiness”, so to speak) is made explicit on page 139 of WMIB where reference is made to “the medium of mind as a membrane with more than two dimensions vibrating in more than three dimensions of space”.

It is easy to see why these analogies are so appealing in this respect, because that is the natural way to explain the emergence of a psyche: via some sort of extended mental stuff that dynamically structures and restructures itself (thus dissociating from the mental stuff surrounding it) into that psyche. It is difficult to see how a psyche could otherwise dissociate, because subjective experience itself lacks the capacity to do so, as pointed out in Appendix C under The mechanistic decombination problem.

Nevertheless, even in WMIB, the point is driven home that they are not to be taken as implying the real existence of any dimensionally-extended stuff (page 66; my editing brackets):

“Many people [...] conclude [...] the existence of some kind of literal ‘mind stuff.’ [...] Well, there is no such stuff. [...] Instead, what idealism is saying is precisely that there is no stuff. There is only subjective perception”.

Even more explicitly, in this post of only two years later, Bernardo asserts (my editing brackets; emphasis in the original) that:

“When I talk of 'excitations' or 'vibrations' of consciousness I am making [...] an appeal in order to convey certain ideas. Clearly, however, this should be understood as a metaphor. Consciousness, of course, doesn't literally vibrate, since it isn't a thing; it's the experiencer.”

The problem here is that the absence (denial) of any sort of dimensionally-extended stuff in motion renders these sort of metaphors inapplicable, because that is the essence of what they convey. WMIB thus trades on the benefit that the extensional representation provides – an accessible and even visual way to account for and explain dissociation – while at the same time explicitly denying that essence by which it facilitates that accessible accounting and explanation.

The network representation – presumably developed in recognition of this problem, although this is never explicitly acknowledged – explicitly does away with any connotations of real, ontological extension, of stuff, of vibration, and of any sort of motion at all. Instead, its core metaphor is that of a relational database, where the relations are purely semantic.

This is much truer to Analytic Idealism's ontological schema, but the trade-off is that it is now much more challenging to explain dissociation: a static network by definition lacks any dynamism that could lead parts of the whole to separate (“dissociate”) from that whole. The dissociation – into what might be termed “subnetworks” – has to be presupposed, in a sort of preharmonisation somewhat similar to that of the monads of Leibniz's monadology. Unlike for Leibniz's monadology, however, on Analytic Idealism there is no God outside of space and time to perform this preharmonisation.

The extensional representation also has the advantage over the network representation of much better accounting for the selves that as this critique makes clear do not really exist: a dynamic structure of extended stuff is far more relatable as a self – ironically, in an almost materialist sense – than an abstract-sounding (dis)connected graph of semantic-like nodes of experience.

Finally, it has the advantage in accounting for the experience that is mind-at-large and that underlies perceptions of the “physical” world: “structured stuff changing and moving dynamically over time” could very easily pass for a description of physical reality as it is anyway (at least naively) conceived under materialism. It intuitively accommodates the (naive) materialist reduction base of subatomic particles: structure implies the possibility of divisibility to that level of granularity, and particles are, naively, a sort of stuff. On the other hand, “a preconfigured graph of node experiences” doesn't sound at all like the world as we perceive it, and nor is it at all intuitively obvious how it might accommodate the (naive) materialist reduction base of subatomic particles.

An additional problem on the network representation is that the discretisation of experience raises an unaddressed (so far as I know) question of its own: what is the scope of each node experience? (And, again, “node experience” is my term for each of the nodes in the representative network). Is it rich enough to represent the fullness of a psyche's entire subjectivity at an instant of time? If not, how is the set of node experiences “bundled” into that psyche's full subjectivity, and, moreover, in virtue of what is that bundling effectuated?

Depending on the answers to these questions, it is possible that something very like – if not identical to – the combination problem for panpsychism is recreated: the problem of how a large number of micro-experiences (node experiences on Analytic Idealism) could combine into a coherent macro experience (that of a psyche on Analytic Idealism).

Here is a handy summary comparison of the two:

On the extensional representation On the network representation
Experience is extended. Experience is non-extended.
Experience is substance-like. Experience is semantic-like.
Structure is predicated on ontologically-real dimensionality. Structure is predicated on semantic-like relations.
Experience is continuous. Experience is discretised (into what I've termed “node experiences”).
Experience is dynamic; it “vibrates” and thus “moves”. Experience is static; the entire network structure is fixed for all time.
Experience is thus subject to time. Experience is not subject to time; rather, time is abstractly incorporated within (“as” even) the network structure of experience(s).
Dissociation is intuitively explicable via the dynamic restructuring of extended stuff. Dissociation has no intuitive explanation.
The self is intuitively recognisable as a dynamic structure of extended stuff. The self is intuitively unrecognisable as a semantic-like graph of node experiences.
The physical world is intuitively recognisable as a dynamic structure of extended stuff. The physical world is intuitively unrecognisable as a semantic-like graph of node experiences.

🔗 Appendix E: Who am I, why did I write this, and why should it be taken seriously?

In one sense, I'm just a guy on the internet (with an opinion). While I've always been fascinated by both consciousness and analytic thought, I have never formally studied either, nor even delved deeply into the literature.

On the more positive side of the ledger, while I abandoned my university degree (in Computer Systems Engineering) after a downward spiral, I was a high-achiever academically prior to that spiral. I graduated from high school with a Tertiary Entrance Rank (TER) of 99.95, the second-highest possible (100 was the highest possible at the time).

Too, this critique is the result of almost a decade – admittedly, very much on-and-off – of grappling with Analytic Idealism: developing ideas, abandoning them, developing new ones, returning to older ones, gathering more context, and refining and honing those which survived scrutiny. I have read and taken notes on the three books Bernardo has written explicitly on Analytic Idealism, as well as having consumed a variety of other media that he has published or been interviewed in.

I am confident that at this point, it is a mature, considered, and – most importantly – fair and honest critique, and probably one that comes from a perspective that not many others have taken in their own critiques of Analytic Idealism.

I decided to write it for two main reasons. The first is that over time, I have deepened my understanding of Analytic Idealism and realised where and why my previous commentary and critique has been inadequate or simply mistaken. As something of a perfectionist, I wanted to gather up all that I've learnt and gained insight into, and package it up into one comprehensive, fully up-to-date work.

The second is that reflecting on where and why Analytic Idealism goes wrong is very helpful in my own journey towards clarifying for myself a theory that is “least wrong”. I hope that in this sense, it has been time well spent.

🔗 Footnotes

🔗 Changelog (most recent first)