Consciousness experiences; experience is not consciousness: a review of Bernardo Kastrup's "Why Materialism Is Baloney"

Introduction

When I first encountered Bernardo Kastrup's arguments for and conception of idealism, my reaction was "intrigued but skeptical". Over the years, I had come to be more and more comfortable with identifying as an interactionist dualist, so a nondualistic idealism was immediately suspect: it offended my intuitions, and I determined that I would have to ferret out exactly why. And so, having been informed that it was the most comprehensive presentation of his views on and arguments for idealism, I paged in its entirety through the Kindle edition of Bernardo's 2013 book, Why Materialism Is Baloney: How true skeptics know there is no death and fathom answers to life, the universe and everything.

That was roughly a year and a half ago. This is now my third major rewrite of this review, which I had set aside all that time ago after an initial drafting and series of minor/moderate rewrites, picking it up again only very recently - and along the way abandoning the very recent second major rewrite without even completing it. I am now finally satisfied with that which I have written: most of its initial, excessive verbosity has been culled, resulting in a more pointed, and to-the-point, essay.

Before getting to my critical analysis, some encouraging words are in order.

That which I admire in this book

Here, I canvas the areas in which Bernardo and I see eye-to-eye on the contents of this book, and where Bernardo has even provided me with valuable insights.

First, we thoroughly agree that materialism is baloney. Whether that materialism be of the form of eliminativism, emergentism, or epiphenomenalism, it is in all cases logically incoherent, and Bernardo does an excellent job of explaining exactly why, and of providing cogent arguments to that effect. He also does an excellent job of explicating the fact that materialism is - even when we are not explicitly aware of it, and even when we ostensibly hold beliefs incompatible with it - the default, fallback ontological position of most people in modern, Western society; most especially of those who have not made careful and thorough attempts to extricate themselves from it.

Second, we agree that free will is a fundamental aspect of consciousness. I would argue that it is not a logically necessary aspect of consciousness (we could, without contradiction, be merely passive experiencers, incapable of genuinely acting despite that we seem to experience ourselves as the free authors of our own acts), but it appears to be a metaphysically inherent aspect of consciousness. Furthermore, Bernardo provides a fantastic insight of which I am very appreciative: that, of necessity, free will admits of no explanation. I had vaguely intuited something like this up to reading that, and I immediately recognised the sense in it when I read that "if the word has any meaning at all, freewill must not have any explanation, otherwise it wouldn’t be free. An explanation always entails a chain of cause and effect that unfolds into the phenomenon being explained. If freewill could be explained, it would consist merely of the unfolding of causality, which contradicts the meaning of the word. Therefore, freewill is, by definition, something that can’t be explained or modeled"[1]. Nice! I would only clarify that explanations need not be causal - for example, the explanation of the solution to an equation is logical, rather than causal - but sure, it's hard to imagine a category of explanation for free will other than a causal one.

Third, I was very impressed by Bernardo's insight into, and framing/phrasing of, the distinction between the capacity of science and the capacity of philosophy when it comes to ontology (footnotes elided): "science can explain a body in terms of tissues; tissues in terms of cells; cells in terms of molecules; molecules in terms of atoms; and atoms in terms of subatomic particles. But then it can only explain one subatomic particle in terms of another, by highlighting their relative differences. Science cannot explain the fundamental nature of what a subatomic particle is in itself, since all scientific explanations need a frame of reference to provide contrasts.

"Capturing the observable patterns and regularities of the elements of reality, relative to each other, is an empirical and scientific question. But pondering about the fundamental nature of these elements is not; it is a philosophical question"[2].

Fourth, I was impressed by Bernardo's critique of the presumption of neurological correlates of conscious states; fifth, by his critique of the integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness as being an indicative measure rather than a causal explanation, and, sixth, by his impressive list of empirical evidence for the filter theory of consciousness.

Offering some general praise for the book: Bernardo writes clearly and precisely, and his analogies are apt and easy to understand. To his credit, this is an easy read of a nuanced set of ideas. He has obviously put a huge amount of thought into it, and it shows. I am, too, greatly appreciative of Bernardo for setting out his conceptual schema so comprehensively and accessibly, because it has been the springboard for me to think much, much more deeply about why I have gradually and incrementally come to identify as a dualist: until reading and contemplating on this book, it had been a largely intuitive/instinctual identification; now, by contrasting my dualistic intuitions against Bernardo's explication of nondual idealism, I have come to a much clearer understanding of why dualism makes most sense to me.

Critical analysis

As a nondualist, Bernardo takes the position that (emphasis in the original) "Particular experiences – that is, particular contents of mind – are just mind in movement"[3]. Given that Bernardo defines "mind" as a synonym for "consciousness", this amounts to a conflation of consciousness and experience[4]. Such a conflation is difficult, in my view, to reconcile with Bernardo's other assertion that "Idealism does not entail that rocks and chairs experience things subjectively the way you and I do"[5]. In other words, whilst rocks and chairs are nothing but "mind in movement" aka consciousness, they are at the same time non-conscious. This amounts to consciousness being non-conscious: absurd on its face[6]. One response might be: "In fact, rocks and chairs are contents of mind (at large) aka consciousness, and it is perfectly coherent for the contents of consciousness to be non-conscious". This, though, would be at the expense of the original conflation of consciousness and experience - that is, it would distinguish between consciousness proper and the contents of - that is, the experiences within - consciousness.

Let us see where we get when we do incur that cost by making the following distinction:

Consciousness experiences; experience is not consciousness: instead, experience is of or occurs to or within consciousness.[10]

In this way, we can talk coherently about the non-conscious experiences of consciousness (such as rocks and chairs), rather than risking the seeming absurdity of talking, in effect, about "non-conscious consciousness". We can also reframe Bernardo's description (emphases in the original) of "the medium of mind as a membrane with more than two dimensions vibrating in more than three dimensions of space"[7], by associating this dimensionality not with consciousness - "the medium of mind" - itself, but with the experiences of that consciousness aka mind-at-large.

If we allow for a very broad and open definition of "matter" as "the non-conscious, structured energy of shared reality", then "matter" is compatible with that which we have just reframed as "the experiences of consciousness aka mind-at-large" - compatible in the sense that both are non-conscious, both are (dimensionally) structured energy, and both are a reality shared by individuals ("psyches", in Bernardo's terminology).

Now, some forms of panpsychism posit a universal consciousness which is in some sense uniformly spread out over, and coexistent with, the matter of the universe. This, in essence, is compatible with idealism as I have reframed it: both this form of panpsychism, and idealism given my reframing, amount to "a universal consciousness experiencing and expressing itself through the (dimensionally) structured non-conscious energy of that reality which is shared with and by its individual psyches". Both have the same explanatory need: how and why it is that the universal consciousness becomes split into individual psyches which are associated with particular aggregates of the non-conscious, structured energy of shared reality (that is: with brains and bodies).

I think it could even be helpful to choose another more neutral word - that is, not "matter" either - with which to refer to the "experiences" of mind-at-large; that which I have framed neutrally as "the non-conscious, structured energy of shared reality". As Bernardo acknowledges, mind-at-large is not a conventional mind/consciousness, and nor is its experience conventional. Choosing a different word than "experience" - albeit that it would be compromising on nondual terminology - might help to avoid confusion.

It could help in another way: it might clarify a conceptual difficulty with Bernardo's explanation for the existence of the "psyches" of mind-at-large; that explanation being essentially that psyches arise out of a self-reflexive structuring of a segment of mind-at-large's experience (essentially, a brain), with the conceptual problem being that this seems to invert the conventionally-understood contingency of the relationship between the subject of experience and experience itself. That is to say that, conventionally, we understand experience to be predicated upon the existence of a subject of experience; Bernardo's explanation inverts the contingency of this relationship such that the existence of one subject of experience (a psyche) is predicated upon the experience of another (mind-at-large).

One possible response to this is: the contingency of this relationship need not be conceived to be unidirectional; it can legitimately be conceived of as bidirectional - that is to say that it could be true both that experience is predicated upon a subject of experience as well as that a subject of experience is predicated upon its experience(s). A potential problem with this contention is that it seems that it is the self-reflexively structured "experiences" of mind-at-large that cause a new subject of experience, and thus that the contingency is, at least in that case, unidirectional. In any case, let us for the sake of argument allow the legitimacy of this possible response. It nevertheless seems conceptually problematic for the "experience" of one subject of experience (mind-at-large) to at the same time effect a new subject of experience (a psyche). Avoiding the term "experience" when talking about mind-at-large might be one way of avoiding these conceptual difficulties.

Too, it might avoid another, related, conceptual difficulty: if we are to allow that the "experiences" of mind-at-large can, due to their self-reflexive structure, effect a new subject of experience, then there is no theoretical barrier to some self-reflexive experiences of that new subject of experience effecting another subject of experience, and of some self-reflexive experiences of that new subject of experience effecting yet another new subject of experience, ad infinitum. It is difficult for me to swallow the possibility, even if only in theory, of some subset of my experiences spawning a mini-me, let alone the possibility - again, even if only theoretical - of that process of spawning continuing indefinitely like some infinitely-nested matryoshka doll. Here, again, avoiding the term "experience" when talking about mind-at-large - as opposed to its psyches - might help to avoid the need to swallow this theoretical possibility.

I understand if Bernardo feels that this reframing tortures his conceptual schema beyond recognition. One way to think about it though is as a slight abstraction into which some senses of idealism, panpsychism, and dualism can each be slotted, with in some cases a little extra stipulating. Its compatibility with some sense of dualism, until now unmentioned, is in that it distinguishes between consciousness proper, and the non-conscious, structured energy of shared reality through which that consciousness expresses and experiences itself. Some possibilities for restoring a more stringent idealism are to stipulate that that "non-conscious, structured energy of shared reality", whilst strictly not consciousness/mind itself, is in fact either (1) "mental" in kind - that is, as opposed to being "matter" in strict, literalist kind (versus the broad definition that for compatibility I introduced above) - or (2) an extension of mind/consciousness.

Whether any reasonable stipulations could be supplied to restore a nondual outlook is questionable - however, as might have become clear already, I am not so sure that nondualism makes all that much sense anyway: it seems to me that to impute (dimensional) structure to consciousness is to mistakenly reify it[8]. More sensical to me is that consciousness itself does not (cannot) have (dimensional) structure; it is only the experience and objects of experience of consciousness that (can) have (dimensional) structure.

In any case: beyond its three-way compatibility, an advantage of this framing is that, as an abstraction, it commits to less, which reduces the possibility of it being wrong.

All of that said, even if we choose a different term than "experience" for mind-at-large, the idea of a universal mind splitting into psyches based on some sort of self-reflexivity of structure does not seem most plausible to me, nor does the idea that a universal mind that is not even self-aware could create our universe given its apparently intelligent fine-tuning, and I also find it difficult to reconcile the existence and extent of evil in our reality with a universal mind which supposedly is constantly evolving and therefore presumably constantly diminishing the extent of evil in its reality.

Finally, even granting that Bernardo makes a valiant attempt to allow for the notion of something like a soul - being, in his terms, a more fundamental vibrational loop underlying the overlaid vibrational loop of the psyche in this shared (so-called "physical") reality - and which, upon the cessation of the overlaid whirlpool of the psyche in this shared reality, continues to exist beyond it[9], I do not think that this idealistic description accounts most plausibly for the evidence for post-mortem existence; in particular, for the evidence from so-called (and, especially, veridical) near-death experiences.

The alternative paradigm that currently best resolves all of these difficulties for me is that in which a benevolent Source consciousness (God/Goddess/Union) created through an act of will individual consciousnesses (souls), which He/She/They then imbued into a (our) shared reality, having also stipulated - again through an act of creative will - the means by which those (our) consciousnesses integrate with aggregates of the non-conscious, structured energy of our shared reality (that is, brains and bodies), and that that Source also stipulated where to, and how, those (our) individual consciousnesses transition after "biological" death - and that then at some later point, a malevolent Consciousness (something like a mind-at-large) discovered and intruded into this (our) shared reality, causing strife and complication, and corrupting it in the way that some of us intuit that it has been corrupted.

Update of 2019-07-22: I have revisited this book in a follow-up review Of parsimony and the universal mind: revisiting Bernardo Kastrup's "Why Materialism Is Baloney".

Update of 2019-08-06: I have clarified my ontological thinking and confirmed my hitherto private intuition that idealism is incoherent in a series on clear semantic modelling culminating in An analysis of Bernardo Kastrup's semantic model of idealism.

Update of 2019-08-11: I have now also developed that unresolved paradox at the heart of the incoherence referenced in the above update into a rigorous argument against idealism: The argument against idealism from conflicting perspectives.

Footnotes

Questions that could be asked of Bernardo based on all of the above

  1. What do you make of the idea that avoiding due to its unnecessary inflation the conception of our shared reality as being composed of "matter" - by a hard, literalist definition of that term - need not entail that we conceive of our shared reality as "consciousness" or "mind" either, but that we could, instead, without unnecessary inflation, conceive of it in such relatively ontologically-agnostic terms as "the non-conscious, structured energy through which the universal consciousness expresses and experiences itself"?
  2. By your nondual framing, consciousness, mind, and experience are all one and the same, and have dimensional structure: what do you make of the idea that this is no more reasonable nor plausible than the view (arguably more orthodox and even inherent in our language) that experiencer (that is, consciousness), experience, and experienced are meaningfully different, and that consciousness itself has no (dimensional) structure, it being only experience and that which is experienced that (can) have (dimensional) structure?
  3. Are you amenable to the idea that allowing for mind-at-large to "experience" causes a conceptual and potentially logical difficulty in that in the process of explaining the existence of "psyches", the conventionally-understood contingency of the relationship between "subject of experience" and "experience" is inverted? Or would you, as suggested above, contend that this contingency could reasonably be considered to be bidirectional rather than unidirectional? If so, would you at least agree that it seems to be implied that the self-reflexive "experiences" of mind-at-large cause a new subject of experience (a psyche), and thus that the contingency is at least implied to be unidirectional? If you are amenable to the idea that any of this is conceptually problematic, then how would you go about resolving this/these conceptual difficulty/difficulties - and, in particular, are you open to the potential resolution of switching to another word for the "experience" of mind-at-large?
  4. How would you respond to the suggestion that, given your conceptual schema, it is theoretically possible that some self-reflexivity in the experiences of a subject of experience effects a new subject of experience, some self-reflexivity in the experiences of whom effects a new subject of experience, ad infinitum? If you accept the suggestion, then would you agree that this is a difficult possibility to swallow, and, if you do, then how would you resolve this difficulty - again, in particular, are you open to the potential resolution of switching to another word for the "experience" of mind-at-large?
  5. Do you agree in general that it is problematic to use the same word, "experience", to describe both that which occurs to psyches, as well as the shared reality of mind-at-large in which those psyches exist, given that the referents of those terms are in a meaningful sense different; that is, that mind-at-large is not a conventional mind in the sense of the minds of us psyches with which we are intimately familiar, and that nor is its "experience" conventional in the sense of the familiar experiences of us psyches? If so, how would you respond to the suggestion that you compromise your nondual framing somewhat by coining a neologism - or borrowing another word - for the latter (the "experience" of mind-at-large, also known as our shared reality)?
  6. How do you reconcile the intelligent fine-tuning of our universe with a mind-at-large that is not even self-aware?
  7. How do you reconcile a mind-at-large that has been evolving for billions of years with the current extent of evil in its reality?
  8. What do you make of the possibility that there might be more than one mind-at-large? If you think this is possible, then do you think that it might be possible to communicate between these minds-at-large, or between some two of their respective psyches, or for them to otherwise affect one another?