Idealism as a network of minds
In my initial review of Bernardo Kastrup's book Why Materialism Is Baloney (WMIB), I pointed out that as Bernardo conceptualises idealism, it is compatible with panpsychism: more specifically, I now add, it is compatible with that form of panpsychism which these days goes by "cosmopsychism". Then, in a Q&A at the end of my argument against idealism from conflicting perspectives, I answered the question as to how I would fix the problem with idealism as identified by my argument by suggesting two possible solutions.
One of those solutions (the second) is essentially cosmopsychist: it preserves a sense of the shared reality which is mind/matter as being dimensionally structured, and I contend that dimensional structure is in some sense implied by Bernardo's idealistic model from the start; the sense in which mind can be "protruded", "vibrated", "excited", and "mirrored". Indeed, Bernardo makes this plain when on page 139 of the Kindle edition of WMIB he writes that the medium of mind can be conceived of as "a membrane with more than two dimensions vibrating in more than three dimensions of space" (emphasis in the original).
I expressed this second solution as follows:
Strip from [idealism] the idea of a universal mind altogether, and instead stipulate simply that all of the energy of reality has the property of mentality, and, when appropriately structured (into a psyche), reflectivity, and thus that all energy is potentially, or, more likely, actually associated with conscious minds.
This, too, was the thrust of my follow-up review of WMIB: that by an argument from parsimony, there is no need to postulate a universal mind at all.
There are, though, two drawbacks to this solution, which is why I listed it second. The first drawback is that one of the attractive characteristics of idealism is its conception of everything as mind, thus utterly eliminating the physical as an ontological reality and relegating it to a mental construct, and this idea that there exists a structured universal energy which is not necessarily associated with a mind, and which has some sort of (presumably ontologically basic) dimensional structure, in a sense smuggles the physical back into idealism.
The second drawback is that it is hard to see how it accounts for one of the apparent contingent facts of reality: that our universe is fine-tuned for life. You can read about this fine-tuning in many places. One that I find powerful is the George Wald lecture Life and Mind in the Universe.
Hence, my first solution being listed first: this solution overcomes the first drawback by preserving the sense of idealism as entirely mental without smuggling in a concept of a "real" dimensionally structured realm - albeit that it is impossible to avoid dimensional structure at all since that which minds experience, and presumably, too, that in which minds consist, has structure.
Note that this model is theoretical in the sense that it theorises the existence of a universal mind. This theory is useful in overcoming the second drawback of the second solution quoted above: the existence of a universal mind, insofar as it is intelligent, could explain the fine-tuning of our universe.
That first solution which overcomes the two drawbacks of the second as I expressed it on the previous page is as follows:
Stipulate that although a universal mind exists, psyches are not its "experiences", and do not exist "within" it, but rather exist separately from it. All minds would then be related to one another via a (communication) network, with the universal mind being the server and psyches being its clients, which potentially also communicate with one another peer-to-peer too.
Here, I elaborate a little on this model. I start with the idea of a universal Mind (from here on, I capitalise the first letter of Mind when referring to the universal Mind, and, in that which follows, please recall that I distinguish between mind, consciousness, and the subject of consciousness). It might be termed "God" seeing that it seems to fit the essential definition, but to eliminate confusion with the conventional definition in monotheistic religions such as Christianity, I do not use that term, and instead use "Source".
Now, because I am attempting to avoid as much as possible any connotations of materiality, including dimensionality, I stipulate that Source does not exist "in" anything material, nor is there anything material "outside" Source. Source simply exists - as do psyches, which are in a sense "outside" Source, but not in any sense associated with our three "physical" dimensions. Source as a mind has - at least - all of those attributes and abilities of mind that we recognise in ourselves: cognition, imagination, memory, intention, creativity, causal efficacy, and perception. Source needs those for what I propose next.
Somehow, now, I need to get from Source as a singular Mind to a bunch of individual minds (us, animals, plants, etc) who perceive an inter-subjectively consistent material (shared) reality: a reality however which is not really, ontologically, material, and cannot be translated as such. Instead, it is an immaterial illusion, a mere perception, of materiality.
I start, then, by considering the nature of this shared reality. Because Source has the faculties of imagination and creativity, I stipulate that Source creatively imagines this reality. It is possible to say that this imagined reality is "in" Source's mind, although if I really wanted to avoid dimensional concepts as much as possible (including "insides" and "outsides"), I might not say that: I might say instead that it has some unspecified, but tight, and exclusive, relationship with Source's mind, just like our own imagined visions have with our own minds. I do not see a need to be so strict though, given that, as indicated above, it is anyway impossible to avoid dimensional structure in/of minds altogether. In either case, it is possible to say that the imagined reality is had by Source's Mind.
So far, so good. Now, what of our individual minds? There are two possibilities, one more idealistic and one less. The first, less idealistic possibility is that Source does not share consciousness with us, and that instead, Source uses faculties of creativity and causal efficacy to create each of our individual consciousnesses in the image of Source, and bestows them with minds with similar faculties as the Mind of Source has. I consider the second possibility later.
Next, I need a mechanism by which Source shares an imagined vision of a physical reality with each of our individual minds, such that we perceive that we are "in" it, even though this in-ness is merely imagined, and not ontologically basic.
Source cannot connect our minds with the vision of "material reality" directly, because it has no existence independent of Source's Mind: instead, everything has to go through Source, and, more specifically, through inputs to the Mind of Source. Thus, one part of the causal efficacy (an output) of each of our individual minds connects with one part of Source's faculty of perception (an input), and, equally, one part of Source's causal efficacy (an output) connects with one part of our faculty of perception (an input). Through these input-output relationships, Source updates an imagined vision of reality as we "act" in it, and shares with our minds the updates: the changes to our perception "in" this virtual reality based on the "acts" of all players, including ourselves, from our perspective "in" it.
The model, in computer science terms, is client-server, with Source as the "server" maintaining the central "virtual reality" in Mind through the faculty of memory, and providing updates to us as the "clients" based on the inputs we provide to Source as "server" after synchronising them all within Mind. And this all comes with the reminder that none of these - neither clients nor server - exist as material objects; they are neither "within" nor "outside of" any matter; instead, their existence is immaterial, having only the specified input-output relationships with one another.
Returning to the second, more idealistic possibility for individual consciousnesses (the subjects of the minds which are the "clients" of the client-server model): this possibility is that somehow, though they exist separately from Source subject of consciousness in a sense, they ultimately have the same identity; they are each and all ultimately the one undifferentiated, unitary subject "peering out and poking" at reality from all perspectives at once: both from the server and from each of the clients. Thus, in this possibility, Source did not create their conscious subjects, only the client portals, including their minds, via which they experience a connection with Source as a server portal. [Update of 28 August 2019: Having discussed and considered this notion more carefully, I am far less convinced that it is, after all, a coherent one. It is very likely, in my view, incoherent, in the sense that I would now very likely endorse the following contention: "Necessarily, the identity of each self is in a one-to-one correspondence with the identity of a singular stream of phenomenal experience", and thus that one subject can only "peer out and poke" through a single portal at a time, not through multiple.]
Too, it is possible on top of a client-server model to posit a peer-to-peer model, with clients communicating between one another directly. The peer-to-peer communication would eliminate the server, and thus any updates to shared reality based on the peer-to-peer communication would need to come from the clients involved subsequently communicating with the server to update it, and would presumably be limited to their normal capacity to supply inputs to the "server" that is Source lest the shared reality become idiosyncratic to each client or pair of communicating clients.
(As an aside: I am aware that at least one entirely peer-to-peer model has been proposed which eliminates "Source" as "server" altogether, but I have not carefully considered that model and its coherence, plausibility, and implications, and so for now I do not have any detailed comment to make on it. My sense, though, is that it does not work, for several reasons. Firstly, I do not see how it accounts for the fine-tuning of the universe. Secondly, it lacks parsimony: maintaining a coherent shared state via peer-to-peer communication alone is much more challenging than doing so by maintaining that shared state centrally. Thirdly, it seems that in many scenarios, it is impossible to maintain a state. This third point brings to mind the old zen koan, which I will adapt here: if a tree falls in the forest and no peer is observing it, what does it look like when some peer finally does observe it?)
Now, unlike Bernardo's conception of idealism, I can't see a way to falsify this form of idealism, but I can ask: how plausible/parsimonious is it compared to the equally unfalsifiable alternatives? This client-server model has its deficiencies: in particular, it requires that Source's Mind actively processes inputs and outputs, and synchronises the virtual reality amongst clients. That's quite a task for a Mind to have to undertake day in and day out. The next page explores a common-sense solution to this problem.
