Essentia Foundation
Empirical Evidence Against Physicalism | COURSE (5/7) | Dr. Bernardo Kastrup
updated
Full interview youtube.com/watch?v=NVsBFOB7H44
Previously Essentia Foundation presented the work of Federico Faggin, and now a legendary contemporary of his, computer engineer Bill Mensch, presents his Theory of Embedded Intelligence (TEI) to us. Mensch was a major contributor to the Motorola 6800 and became famous for his work on the MOS Technology 6502 CPU, a chip that, because of it’s efficiency, completely revolutionized computing in the 80’s. From Arcade halls to the Apple II and Nintendo 8 bit consoles, 6502s could be found everywhere. Even to this day the chip is still used in children's toys and even in pacemakers and satellites.
Looking back at his career, Mensch realizes that building computer chips is in essence a form of ‘embedding’ intelligence in technology, just as nature has embedded intelligence in biological systems, like humans. In his TEI model intelligence is fundamental. This raises the philosophical question of how consciousness relates to intelligence, and for this reason Bernardo Kastrup joined in on the conversation Mensch and Hans Busstra had.
The value of a theory like Mensch’s is perhaps exactly that it is not philosophically fine-tuned to the terminology commonly used in philosophy of mind. By not taking the human mind and phenomenal consciousness as its departure point, but intelligence instead, Mensch arrives at a position in which the distinction between living beings and abiotic systems is less distinct.
Mensch's slides can be downloaded here: essentiafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/Theory-of-Embedded-Intelligence-by-Bill-Mensch-2024-08-30.pptx
00:00 Introduction
03:30 Bernardo Kastrup on the importance of Bill's work
08:17 Start of Bill Mensch's presentation
11:16 The model of intelligence in the TEI
14:06 Consciousness as Sense, Process, Communicate and Actuate (SPCA)
25:36 Evolution from Free Intelligence
30:53 Collective intelligence evolution
33:41 On Machine Intelligence
35:58 Learning from Nature
38:30 Learning from Embedded Intelligence Technology
41:20 End of presentation, Start Q&A
42:07 How does Bill's theory enrich Bernardo Kastrup?
45:34 How Bill's model of intelligence relates to an analytical idealist framework
49:40 Why is intelligence embedding itself in our universe?
52:57 Phenomenal consciousness and intelligence
55:32 The distinction between living systems and abiotic systems in Bill's theory
57:07 Sensing, cognition and relevance realization
59:04 Bill on cosmology
1:02:05 The difference between living systems and technology
1:08:57 In a certain sense we are the same as computerchips
1:10:23 On Michael Levin's work
1:13:58 Is Nature's Free Intelligence, GOD?
1:21:56 On mythology in science
1:26:35 Closing remarks
Copyright © 2024 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
Prof. Bernard Carr explains how Einstein's idea of the cosmological constant, first thought of as one of his biggest blunders, turned out to be one of his biggest contributions.
Watch The Entire Interview: youtu.be/pR0etE_OfMY?si=5MxwJrcGpBYFHbyG&t=3017
Copyright © 2023 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
Please use the links below to learn more about Julia's work.
jmossbridge.medium.com/five-ideas-about-unconditional-love-5dc5b7d81780
https://www.timemachine.love/
loveandtime.org
apa.org/pubs/books/4316171
thepremonitioncode.com
00:00:00 Interview intro
00:02:47 Julia's background and life journey
00:12:23 Julia's main areas of research
00:16:17 Most interesting research cases and AHA moments
00:25:20 Science and the nature of reality
00:36:21 Do we need the brain for ESP?
00:46:14 What is the fundamental level of reality?
00:48:45 Unconditional love: understanding and explaining vs. experiential approach
00:51:42 The role of the heart and mind in perception and cognition
00:56:24 Intuition vs. rational mind: a fresh look at systems 1 & 2
01:00:22 Flow states and altered states of consciousness: the importance for ESP
01:05:40 Free will: the misconstrued question
01:10:07 Hide-and-go-seek by the Universe
01:12:10 Can the future influence the past and present?
01:19:35 The nature of time and our experience of time
01:25:25 There is no 'now', only our experience
01:26:34 Precognition: likely scenarios and multiple timelines
01:28:22 Is consciousness also a fundamental reality?
01:30:36 The future of AI
01:33:34 Advice for ESP researchers and the future of science
01:36:12 Reflecting on free will
You can find interview with Partick Harpur here:
youtube.com/watch?v=w_sj8KOgO3Q&t=33s&pp=ygUiZXNzZW50aWEgZm91bmRhdGlvbiBwYXRyaWNrIGhhcnB1cg%3D%3D
You can find interview with Bernardo Kastrup here:
youtube.com/watch?v=zoOi79nQywE&t=79s&pp=ygUdZXNzZW50aWEgZm91bmRhdGlvbiBmcmVlIHdpbGw%3D
Copyright © 2024 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
Every week the Essentia Foundation selects the most insightful parts of the longer videos on this channel. In this clip, Bernardo Kastrup explains why the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment is often misunderstood. The cat is not dead and alive at the same time, because it is conscious itself, and consciousness as we know it only perceives nature in a defined state.
Copyright © 2024 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
Professor Bernard Carr and philosopher Bernardo Kastrup discuss the consciousness causes collapse interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and John Wheelers idea of 'history creation'.
Copyright © 2023 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
Hans Busstra sat down with John Vervaeke to discuss the meaning crisis, the Zombie myth we’re in, and how it all relates to what Vervaeke calls "rabbit hole metaphysics": the conspiratorial, outlandish and often absurd ideas people start believing in, in search of meaning. A characteristic of rabbit hole types of metaphysics is that they have a ‘thick’ description of reality: a constellation of ungrounded assumptions build up to a ‘once you get this, there’s no way back’ narrative, which repeats itself in online echo-chambers.
John Vervaeke's YouTube channel:
youtube.com @johnvervaeke
The Vervaeke Foundation:
vervaekefoundation.org
Chapters
00:00 Intro edit with highlights
06:01 Is John Vervaeke a 'Wounded Healer'?
09:53 The only modern myth is the myth of Zombies...
13:18 How to kill the Zombies?
15:25 What is the origin of the meaning crisis?
19:59 Metacognition and the Axial revolution
24:40 How we became locked into dualism
26:25 Hume's empiricism and Newton's attempt of integration
28:51 Unawareness of metaphysics: Vervaeke's critique on Kant's critique
32:51 Kant and ontology
34:20 Heidegger, Wittgenstein and the attempt to break out of the Cartesian split.
36:59 Quantum and a relationality ontology
39:57 Vervaeke's ontology of transcendent naturalism
45:29 On what's happening in psychedelic research 50:09 What about Buddhism and mindfullness without the ontology? 53:13 On the necessity of religion
56:59 Defining the sacred
1:00:46 Psychedelics and the advent of the sacred
1:03:52 On spiritual bypassing and rich ecologies of practices
1:08:20 Intelligence, rationality wisdom and relevance realization 1:16:39 The alignment problem
1:21:20 Where in your model do you fit phenomenal consciousness? 1:26:41 On the adverbial vs adjective quality of consciousness 1:28:12 Can machines be conscious and have relevance realization? 1:30:41 The library of Babel
1:34:03 On the syntax-semantics divide
1:37:29 Penrose's argument about the non-computability of consciousness and quantum mechanics
1:43:11 A consciousness theory should be compatible with cognition first, not physics 1:44:47 The work of the Vervaeke foundation
1:47:20 All the thinking that goes into a 'thin' description... 1:48:07 John's own ecology of practice
1:55:32 What was John's last moment of STRONG transcendence?
Copyright © 2024 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
In this clip Professor Bernard Carr and philosopher Bernardo Kastrup PhD are interviewed by Hans Busstra about their perspective on time, and whether there is a difference between subjective time (time as we experience) and objective time (what clocks measure).
Copyright © 2024 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
Watch the entire interview here: youtu.be/Nv1OXXfTYfk?si=5gpR6LlbCm1mjoWQ&t=890
In this Q&A, Bernardo Kastrup (Director of the Essentia Foundation) and Hans Busstra delve into the concept of free will through the lens of analytical idealism. Do we truly possess free will or does determinism deny this. Or could they both be true at the same time?
Copyright © 2023 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
Roger Penrose's and Stuart Hameroff's original paper: doi.org/10.1098/rsta.1998.0254
Federico Faggins paper with Mauro D'Ariano:
arxiv.org/abs/2012.06580
This paper formed the basis for Faggin's new book which can be ordered here: amazon.com/Irreducible-Consciousness-Computers-Human-Nature/dp/1803415096#
00:00 Brief summary of the debate
04:29 Introduction of the speakers
05:48 Roger Penrose's theory and recent empirical findings in favor of it.
16:32 Bernardo Kastrup on the main differences between Roger Penrose's and Federico Faggin's views.
19:48 Roger Penrose responding to Kastrup's and Faggin's interpretation of quantum mechanics.
22:23 Federico Faggin on Penrose's view that quantum mechanics is an incomplete theory.
25:43 Roger Penrose on the idea of the collapse of the wave function as a free will decision.
30:38 Bernardo Kastrup responding to Penrose's ideas around a unifying theory and objective collapse
32:14 Kastrup telling Penrose collapse isn't real.
34:31 Could a unifying theory point to the fundamentality of consciousness?
37:10 Faggin replying to Penrose's objections to the idea of consciousness being primary.
39:55 To Roger Penrose: Is it fruitful to pursue the route of saying consciousness is fundamental?
44:42 Kastrup on a false dichotomy in collapse interpretations
54:11 Can we get from syntax to semantics?
57:57 Faggin on what qualia are
59:33 The ontology of Roger Penrose: does mathematics 'exist' ontically?
1:04:18 On Wheeler's participatory universe
1:13:51 Is there any point to consciousness without free will?
1:17:15 Is consciousness restricted to brains?
1:21:26 What defines the human?
1:26:37 Al is a misnomer it's not intelligent
1:29:15 Closing remarks
Copyright © 2024 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
Dr. Thomas's latest book on children's unexplained experiences:
collectiveinkbooks.com/essentia-books/our-books/childrens-unexplained-experiences-post-materialist-world
Essentia Books:
collectiveinkbooks.com/essentia-books
00:00:00 Interview Intro
00:01:45 Intro Dr. Donna Thomas
00:02:14 Personal journey: from NDE and transpersonal experiences to science
00:10:55 Children as partners and not just subjects in research
00:13:14 Donna's research and amazing stories from children
00:21:02 Problems, questions and methods in ESP research with children
00:32:38 Most common unexplained experiences in children
00:36:11 The biggest AHA moments
00:44:17 How materialistic science explains ESP in children
00:49:05 What metaphysics Donna's research points to
00:52:32 How philosophy supports Donna's research
00:59:56 What Donna's research tells us about consciousness
01:04:18 The mind-body problem
01:06:40 Color cross project with prof. Sarah Durston
01:10:35 Multidisciplinary research: Pros and cons
01:14:10 Challenges in social and natural sciences
01:18:57 Post-materialist science and the world
01:21:49 Donna's book: for whom is it useful?
01:23:21 Integrating ESP experiences into our lives. Advice.
Copyright © 2024 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
Song Copyright Code: CQFLKTT9C87UMQCU
You can learn more about Alex's work at:
agomezmarin.com
paricenter.com
00:00 Intro and guest introduction
00:04:02 Why should science study consciousness?
00:07:21 Challenges of studying consciousness: fringe phenomena & neuroscience
00:13:34 Alex's research: blind man with extra-ocular and extra-temporal perception
00:24:30 Can we all develop extrasensory abilities?
00:26:58 Hypotheses for extra-ocular perception: old and new views
00:36:34 How materialistic science explains ESP: the old paradigm trap
00:47:43 Mind-body relationship: skeptics & believers
00:54:46 Edges of consciousness: brain trauma & enhanced cognition
01:01:58 Brain function models: transmission, permission & emission
01:07:32 Science and the sacred in the age of AI
01:10:43 Theoretical frameworks: metaphors, models & metaphysics
01:18:36 Healing the wound at the heart of science: pluralism of metaphysics
01:28:41 Alex's research and the non-locality principle
01:36:48 From a PhD in physics to consciousness research
01:42:52 Alex's NDE story and transformation.
01:51:26 Defining consciousness: views of Alex and Natalia
01:59:31 The expression of consciousness through art, music & mystical moments
02:02:28 Consciousness studies: key barriers & what needs to change
02:10:21 Advice for the younger generation: a two-way street
02:14:05 Death: the meaning of life, big questions
02:20:10 The metaphysics of grace: 'us and them'
02:27:18 Where are memories stored: not in the brain?
02:33:04 Why can't we remember the future?
02:39:14 Final thoughts & resources
Copyright © 2024 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
Perhaps we should rather ask ourselves the question why we entertain the idea of sentient computers in the first place. According to Kastrup, this has a lot to do with the fact that most computer scientists are power users of computers but they've never built a computer themselves. If they had, they would be familiar with the nuts and bolts, and they would understand that the idea of microscopic transistors becoming conscious is not that different than proposing that a sufficiently complex sewage system—consisting of water pipes and valves—would become conscious.
Exactly because AI is having a fundamental impact on society with many regulatory and perhaps even existential challenges, it is very important that especially in academia we strongly distinguish between fact and fiction: to think that AI's running on Turing machines—i.e. all AI's we currently have—can become conscious is not even science fiction, it's pure fantasy.
00:00 Introduction
04:12 Start of Lecture on Al and Consciousness
06:23 Bernardo Kastrup's Background and Perspective
07:41 Early Career and Al Experimentation
10:43 Challenges in Al Consciousness
13:07 Philosophical and Practical Implications
15:45 Arguments & Critique of Al Sentience
18:55 Obvious Differences Between Al and Human Brain
21:32 Computer Scientists, Misconceptions & Sensationalism
28:42 Cultural and Psychological Factors
29:50 What Can We Learn From Nature About Consciousness?
35:11 Panpsychism and Its Flaws
38:27 Quantum Field Theory and Reality
43:44 Moving Forward with Clarity
48:39 Q&A Session
Check this great video by Steve Mould who actually built a computer running on water!
youtube.com/watch?v=IxXaizglscw&t=681s
Conference where this lecture was recorded: https://www.g10vandeeconomie.nl/
Copyright © 2024 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
00:00 Intro: Accessing reality through imagination.
03:58 Corbin saved my soul! From scientific materialism to philosophy of Henry Corbin.
12:23 Can we do natural sciences outside of materialist reductive paradigm?
18:10 Transformative experiences. Crazy stuff? Angels, paranormal, UFOs.
31:19 Are emotions just chemistry, and love not important? What's imagination for?
35:39 Literalism and fundamentalism. Literalizing - a mode of imagining. It's just love?
54:39 Access to the sacred: imaginal vs. imaginary. Mundus Imaginalis - the imaginal realm.
01:06:30 It's all imagination down and up! Corbin's Neoplatonic cosmology in the 21st century.
01:17:43 Where's our consciousness? Relationship: brain - mind/soul/consciousness.
01:20:57 What if our world queerer than we can suppose? Consciousness & language.
01:25:37 Sacred plant medicine experiences. Matter-mind, substance-meaning.
01:28:18 Success in sciences: mixed blessing? Learnings from indigenous cultures.
01:37:27 Science tells the truth? Our connection with arts, music, literature.
01:42:56 Corbin's theology: human-angel relationship. Can we retrieve the imagination?
01:48:10 Should we keep or abolish Corbin's cosmology?
01:56:15 Nature of reality: metaphysics of Corbin, Ibn Arabi and Suhrawardi.
02:01:33 Does materialism destroy the world? On the richness of being: living is glory!
02:16:40 I didn't choose Corbin, he chose me! Recommended literature.
Copyright © 2024 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
Federico Faggin is one of the greatest luminaries of high technology alive today. A physicist by education, he is the inventor of the microprocessor and the MOS silicon gate technology, both of which underlie the modern world's entire information technology. With the knowledge and experience of a lifetime in cutting-edge fields, Federico now turns his attention to consciousness and the nature of reality, sharing with us his profound insights on the classical and quantum worlds, artificial intelligence, life and the human mind. In this discussion, he elaborates on an idealist model of reality, produced after years of careful thought and direct experience, according to which nature's most fundamental level is that of consciousness as a quantum phenomenon, while the classical physical world consists merely of evocative symbols of a deeper reality.
Order "Irreducible: Consciousness, Life, Computers, and Human Nature" on Amazon: amazon.com/Irreducible-Consciousness-Computers-Human-Nature/dp/1803415096#
00:00 Intro
02:15 Announcing Irreducible: Consciousness, Life, Computers, and Human Nature
03:28 Core Message of Irreducible
05:23 Bernardo Kastrup on Irreducible
13:17 Introduction at ASML by Hans Busstra
18:55 Interview with Federico at ASML
21:37 When did you realize consciousness cannot be computed?
25:43 On the distinction between intelligence and consciousness
36:04 Federico's theory in relation to The Matrix
37:35 You have to start with consciousness and free will as postulates
42:42 Are emotions a product of consciousness?
43:30 What about a person who is brain-dead?
47:54 Federico on the fact that his theory is speculative but needed
49:24 On the order of consciousness, life, computers, human nature
50:57 The universe wants to know itself
52:37 Quantum theory and pre-modern intuitions
53:55 The evolution of life is cycle of meaning to symbol
Copyright © 2024 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
I. Bernard Carr and Bernardo Kastrup discussing their own views:
00:00 Intro
04:06 Opening
09:42 Bernard Carr on the bridge between physics an psi phenomena
10:50 Scientists don't like mystics and mystics don't like scientists...
11:26 Is the paranormal compatible with Einstein's Block Universe?
19:01 On physicists understanding of time
25:35 What is the relationship between time and mind?
28:18 Bernardo on the three different metaphysical interpretations of time
32:52 Levels of 'selves'
36:21 No philosopher seems to talk about the specious present...
37:32 Einsteins Block Universe
38:56 On Einstein calling the passage of time a stubborn illusion...
40:52 On the importance of careful language
43:16 How a multi-dimensional time model can explain different identities
52:10 On models and reality
54:20 Time in General Relativity
58:15 Time in Quantum Theory
59:21 Lee Smolin's understanding of time
1:00:38 The role of time in different branches of Quantum Theory
1:01:54 Is time fundamental, asked to Bernard Carr.
II. Bernard Carr and Bernardo Kastrup discussing the conference presentations:
1:02:34 On Lee Smolin's 'presentism'
1:08:31 On George Ellis' presentation: There is no way a physical block universe can have come into existence: the future not yet determined!
1:15:05 On Lee Smolin's presentation: The role of qualia in temporal naturalism
1:22:16 On Bernard Carr's own presentation: Making space for time and consciousness in physics
1:26:26 On Kip Thorne's ideas
1:30:39 Bernardo on the undeniability of parapsychological phenomena
1:33:10 On Jonathan Schooler's presentation: Could postulating three dimension of time address assorted disparities between physics and experience?
1:38:38 The Specious Present
1:38:54 On Marc Wittman's presentation: Subjective time during ordinary and altered states of consciousness
1:47:21 On Alex Gomez Marin's presentation: The consciousness of neuroscience
1:52:53 On Paul Davies's presentation: The muddlescape of time
1:59:51 On Julia Mossbridge's presentation: How do precognition and other perceptual anomalies shed light on models of consciousness, unconsciousness and time?
2:25:21 Closing remarks
You can watch all the presentations referred to in this conversation in full length here:
On George Ellis - There is no way a physical block universe can have come into existence: the future not yet determined!
youtube.com/watch?v=2Bnktj5_o6M&t=950s
Lee Smolin - The role of qualia in temporal naturalism
youtube.com/watch?v=2Bnktj5_o6M&t=3274s
Bernard Carr - Making space for time and consciousness in physics
youtube.com/watch?v=2Bnktj5_o6M&t=5326s
Jonathan Schooler - Could postulating three dimension of time address assorted disparities between physics and experience?
youtube.com/watch?v=2Bnktj5_o6M&t=7331s
Marc Wittman's - Subjective time during ordinary and altered states of consciousness
youtube.com/watch?v=atKCgbAOPhQ&t=1035s
Alex Gomez Marin - The consciousness of neuroscience
youtube.com/watch?v=atKCgbAOPhQ&t=3197s
Paul Davies - The muddlescape of time
youtube.com/watch?v=atKCgbAOPhQ&t=5655s
Julia Mossbridge's - How do precognition and other perceptual anomalies shed light on models of consciousness, unconsciousness and time?
youtube.com/watch?v=atKCgbAOPhQ&t=8103s
Bernard Carr's essay "Higher Dimensions of Consiousness": essentiafoundation.org/how-hyper-dimensional-spacetime-may-explain-individual-identity/reading
Credits for intro edit footage
Amadeus, Miloš Forman (1984, Warner Bros)
Interstellar, Christopher Nolan (2014, Paramount Pictures)
The art of precision | Jaeger-LeCoultre: youtube.com/watch?v=U4BdhuvZiug
Spacetime by Michael Murphy: youtube.com/watch?v=bygjCPH55aY
Neil de Grasse Tyson explaining the Tesseract in Interstellar: youtube.com/watch?v=5yQhiJjSWYk&t=15s
Let there be life by Melody Sheep: youtube.com/watch?v=iNSa8oq4vYQ
Playing with Time by Macro Room: youtube.com/watch?v=gooWdc6kb80
Amazing Mosaic Zoom out: youtube.com/watch?v=UWYNTkyUJS0
Beautiful art images: The Metaphysical Mirror: youtube.com/watch?v=9cOdyJDDUB0
Copyright © 2023-2024 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
What if the humanities would open their horizon to more metaphysical possibilities? Prof. Kripal has written a book about a future in which the humanities study the full human. In these superhumanities, the weird, the psi—in short, the impossible—is taken seriously metaphysically: anomalous phenomena are not only regarded as subjective truths, but also as objective claims about reality.
In his book, Prof. Kripal clearly shows how the nineteenth century ontology of materialism reigns in almost all of the humanities, which limits our scientific understanding of who we are as humans: there is no transcendence, the individual is nothing but a social body in spacetime, shaped by society. As Prof. Kripal likes to quip: “if there is one dogma in the humanities, it is that the truth has to be depressing.” The humanities need to expand beyond this depressing view, not because it’s depressing, but because it’s simply a half truth. We are conditioned social animals and transcendent beings. We are human and superhuman, as he argues.
Interestingly, the superhumanities can build on the same foundational thinkers as the humanities. When we read the full Friedrich Nietzsche, William James, or Jacques Derrida, for instance, we see that these thinkers very much acknowledged the super. It is only the postmodern reading of their texts in academia that filters out the ecstatic. When it comes to Nietzsche, Prof. Kripal convincingly argues that the ‘crazy’ Nietzsche was perhaps the real Nietzsche, at the pinnacle of his thought. But here’s the thing: did he think his way to the vision of the Übermensch—which later unjustly got contaminated by fascism—or did he somehow receive it as a vision? According to Prof. Kripal, Nietzsche's vision should be taken much more literally than we now take it: he was talking about an actual superspecies, with superhuman capabilities.
What if the humanities could scientifically investigate what happened when, for instance, Nikola Tesla had the visions that led to groundbreaking inventions? What happened when Einstein saw the principles of general relativity in a dream? Perhaps the key takeaway from Prof. Kripal's book is that, if the humanities would only dare to turn into the superhumanities, they would again become relevant for the other disciplines in academia.
00:00 Intro
06:49 The humanities only focus on Clark Kent...
08:45 The humanities reduce everything to society
10:53 The humanities are not aware of ontology
12:11 The humanities have to catch up with physics
13:25 What exactly is the 'super' in the super humanities?
15:31 The precognitive dreams of Schopenhauer
18:01 How is Nietzsche read in the humanities and how should we read it?
21:51 How 'super' was Nietzsche's Übermensch vision?
23:51 If you actually read Nietzsche not just about him...
26:58 God has to die so super humans can live
28:23 How the Superhuman has been kept alive in many traditions
30:27 How can the humanities deny empirical evidence in favor of the Super?
32:05 X-Men is true!
35:01 Are you opening the door to literal readings of religious stories?
39:39 On the miracles Ram Dass described
41:46 The ontology of William James
44:48 The pragmatist vs metaphysical William James
50:06 Jeffrey's critique on metaphysical 'agnosticism'
54:26 The immunological response of the humanities
1:00:53 The human as 2
1:05:09 Jung on UAP's
1:09:21 We need a story that unites us
1:12:43 Kripal's take on Foucault
1:15:17 What was Foucault's ontology?
1:17:27 The study of religion nowadays is only about the horizontal
1:19:28 On decolonizing reality
1:22:15 On the Afro pessimism movement
1:24:18 A day in college in the Superhumanities
1:26:33 The super humanities are very much alive outside of academia
1:29:03 Science should stay science
1:30:42 On Donald Hoffman
1:32:09 On the tyranny of clarity
1:35:36 On becoming AND studying the Superhuman
1:37:27 Integration of these experiences are NOT possible :)
1:46:56 Closing remarks on the lava and the rock...
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Copyright © 2024 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
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00:00:00 Intro: Kabbalistic insights and contemporary science
00:04:42 Kaballah: a personal story
00:07:34 What is Kabbalah actually?
00:09:54 The Origins of Kaballah
00:12:40 Ancient Kabbalah vs. Quantum Physics
00:14:05 Kabbalistic theology
00:15:47 Kabbalah: fundamental principles
00:18:30 Is Kabbalah a science?
00:22:50 The cosmology of Kabbalah
00:40:57 Interinclusion: fractal and holographic design of the cosmos
00:47:53 Interpenetration and quantum entanglement
00:56:07 Paradox of hierarchy and unity
00:57:44 Light and darkness
00:59:19 Kabbalistic Panpsychic ontology or how God runs the universe
01:07:25 The blueprint for the creation or 'shattering the vessels'
01:09:21 Kabbalistic Panpsychist domains and the 'spark of God'
01:16:09 The 'Unknowable Head', Heisenberg's uncertainty principle & free will
01:25:14 Kabbalah and ontic paradoxes
01:29:00 Kabbalah, Cosmopsychism & Psi phenomena
01:34:30 The book: Kabbalistic Panpsychism
01:35:00 The Big Bang cosmology and Kabbalah
01:39:18 Consciousness: what can we measure and study?
01:44:47 Science & its soul?
01:48:25 Is Divine Mind corroborated by science?
01:50:57 Kabbalah: personal impact
01:56:40 The future of science, advice to young scientists
Copyright © 2024 Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
Many physicists maintain that the passage of time is purely a feature of mind, beyond physics itself, while others argue that it points to some new physical paradigm, perhaps associated with the marriage of relativity theory and quantum theory. Certainly, the status of time in any final theory of physics remains unclear. What is clear, however, is that a theory that encompasses time and mind will have to go beyond Einstein’s Block Universe.
The possibility that physics may eventually accommodate and elucidate the nature of consciousness and associated experience suggests the need to address issues that are currently viewed as being on the borders of physics and philosophy. It also impinges on developments in neurophysics, cognitive science and psychology. So this is an interdisciplinary problem and this conference brings together experts in all the relevant fields. There are contributions from the physicists Bernard Carr, Paul Davies, George Ellis and Lee Smolin, the neurophysicist Alex Gomez-Marin, the cognitive neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge, and the psychologists Jonathan Schooler and Marc Wittmann.
Although the conference is organized by Essentia Foundation—which is associated with the philosophical tradition of Idealism—it covered a wide range of approaches. Our vision is to cover topics that are relevant to Idealism, but not to exclude alternative views from the conference.
Timestamps:
00:00 General introduction
06:11 Bernard Carr- Conference introduction
17:15 Marc Wittmann - Subjective time during ordinary and altered states of consciousness
53:17 Alex Gómez-Marin - The consciousness of neuroscience
1:34:15 Paul Davies - The muddlescape of time
2:15:03 Julia Mossbridge - How do precognition and other perceptual anomalies shed light on models of consciousness, unconsciousness and time?
2:54:04 Panel discussion and wrap up
Bernard J. Carr PhD, is the host and co-organiser of this conference. He is Professor of mathematics and astronomy at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL)
Marc Wittmann PhD, is a research fellow at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health in Freiburg.
Alex Gómez-Marin PhD, is researcher at the Human Cognition and Behavior Scientific Program at the Instituto de Neurociencias (CSIC-UMH) in Alicante.
Paul Davies PhD, is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist and director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University.
Julia Mossbridge PhD, is visiting scholar in the Psychology Department at Northwestern University and Associated Professor in Integral and Transpersonal Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies.
Copyright © 2023 by Essentia Foundation. With the exception of archival footage under fair-use policy, all rights are reserved.
The possibility that physics may eventually accommodate and elucidate the nature of consciousness and associated experience suggests the need to address issues that are currently viewed as being on the borders of physics and philosophy. It also impinges on developments in neurophysics, cognitive science and psychology. So this is an interdisciplinary problem and this conference brings together experts in all the relevant fields. There are contributions from the physicists Bernard Carr, Paul Davies, George Ellis and Lee Smolin, the neurophysicist Alex Gomez-Marin, the cognitive neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge, and the psychologists Jonathan Schooler and Marc Wittmann.
Although the conference is organized by Essentia Foundation—which is associated with the philosophical tradition of Idealism—it covered a wide range of approaches. Our vision is to cover topics that are relevant to Idealism, but not to exclude alternative views from the conference.
Timestamps
00:00 Brief overview
04:20 Bernard Carr - Introduction talk
15:50 George Ellis - There is no way a physical block universe can have come into existence: the future not yet determined!
54:34 Lee Smolin - The role of qualia in temporal naturalism
1:28:46 Bernard Carr - Making space for time and consciousness in physics
2:02:11 Jonathan Schooler - Could postulating three dimension of time address assorted disparities between physics and experience?
2:45:15 Panel discussion
Bernard J. Carr, host and co-organiser of this conference is Professor of mathematics and astronomy at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL)
George F. R. Ellis is emeritus Distinguished Professor of complex systems in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, this is the paper Ellis presented during the conference: arxiv.org/abs/2210.10107
Lee Smolin is faculty member at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and adjunct Professor of physics at the University of Waterloo and a member of the graduate faculty of the philosophy department at the University of Toronto. See this paper on temporal naturalism: arxiv.org/abs/1310.8539
Jonathan Schooler is distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Copyright © 2023 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
essentiafoundation.org/announcing-time-and-mind-a-free-online-conference/reading
For more information about Essentia Foundation, click here:
essentiafoundation.org/about-us-2
Copyright © 2023 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
This video has human-created English subtitles, so don't forget to click on the 'CC' button below the video to enable them.
00:00 Introduction
05:02 How did you get involved with parapsychology?
09:41 Bernard on trying to weigh a soul...
13:50 Is psychical research science?
16:03 The Enfield poltergeist claim
25:59 Are Psi phenomena real?
26:58 On the importance of true skepticism
28:55 Where are we in studying these phenomena scientifically?
34:44 Is having a scientific background a hindrance or a help when it comes to studying these phenomena?
38:55 In what sense are most scientists not 'believing' the phenomena?
43:54 On a post-materialist science
44:38 How does your notion of time relate to psi phenomena?
53:16 What is the relationship between time and consciousness?
1:01:10 Is time real?
1:04:20 What is the 'specious present'?
1:06:38 You might argue planet Earth is conscious
1:09:16 On the experience of time when falling
1:11:56 When the specious present seems to expand
1:15:51 How does the concept of the specious present explain certain psychic phenomena?
1:19:11 Natalia on the slowing down of time when falling off a mountain
1:23:17 Bernard on the movies Inception and Interstellar
1:24:44 Is time just a dial on our dashboard of perception?
1:27:25 When you either experience an eternal now or an eternal always...
1:28:00 On experiencing the transcendence of space and time
1:30:07 How do you interact with the world when you are in a different specious present?
1:32:53 How athletes are successful due to a specious present that is slowed down
1:33:58 What if our specious present is expanding?
1:37:02 Bernards view on the fine tuning problem
1:41:11 On the multiverse
1:42:47 Is there something before the Big Bang?
1:47:34 Hawking's theory about the origin of time
1:50:59 There must be a genesis of the universe, right?
1:52:06 God and the Big Bang
1:54:44 What is consciousness to you?
1:57:12 Are there actually 'laws' of physics?
2:01:32 Is a final theory possible?
2:05:08 How to fit consciousness - per definition the first-person experience - into science, which is about the third-person experience?
2:11:16 How to make a new physics that accommodates consciousness testable?
Copyright © 2023 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
In this video Hans Busstra discusses questions from viewers of our channel with Bernardo Kastrup (director of the Essentia Foundation)
Physicalism offered an equilibrium for around two hundred years. But if one closely looks in the fields of neuroscience, physics and philosophy, anomalies are piling up. The only way to still entertain the idea that physicalism can make sense of unexplainable empirical phenomena—ranging from loophole-free Bell inequality tests, to altered mental states, to undeniable new evidence around Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP’s)—is to literally ‘don’t look up,’ to paraphrase the hilarious Netflix film that actually was a painfully accurate cultural critique of our times.
In this Q&A Hans Busstra and Bernardo Kastrup discuss questions coming in around anomalies in the fields of NDE’s, UAP’s and fundamental physics. Though analytic idealism can’t offer clear-cut answers to most of these questions, it can—and this is a crucial difference with physicalism—in principle build testable theories around these phenomena. For instance, if nature consists of mental states, it is not unthinkable that when dissociative processes weaken—for instance, during NDE’s—that people can experience other people’s experiences. And if UAP’s in some cases seem to present themselves as mental phenomena, under idealism it doesn’t follow that they are imaginary.
If we want to continue the scientific endeavour of accurately describing and predicting the behaviour of nature, we need to ‘look up’ under all circumstances; analytic idealism offers us a new telescope to do so confidently. Our YouTube channel is the place where we look through the telescope playfully, allowing ourselves to be troubled as well as excited: a revolutionary shift in science seems ahead and we want to report it to you from the forefront.
00:00 Introduction
03:54 What Essentia is up to
05:02 Entropy is in the eye of the beholder
09:36 Shannon's way of looking at entropy
10:47 Maybe the universe is becoming increasingly ordered, instead of ordered
12:34 Do tables and computers have consciousness according to integrated information theory?
13:53 You don't have free will
17:15 'Could have been' is a fantasy...
18:50 Can you 'disallow' the universe to 'play' you?
23:20 How to apply 'no free will' to your life in a positive way
27:03 We are only talking about books written by men...
28:26 Lou Salomé on Nietzsche
31:53 Male versus female archetype
35:07 On transcending gender and individuation
37:26 How does music relate to time?
42:03 Bernardo on the Higgs Boson
45:02 On the beauty of Eulers equation
46:08 On reading math like a partiture
48:31 Let's talk about unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP's)
53:23 Physical evidence for the existence of UAP's
54:18 UAP's appear to be as much mental as physical phenomena
55:53 On how UAP's violate physics and metaphysics
1:03:23 How to make sense of the 'self' in an NDE from an idealist perspective?
1:08:46 How you can experience being someone else during an NDE---
1:12:35 How are our experiences being reported back to mind at large when we die?
1:14:33 There are only present states in the universe
1:15:57 Are bacteria conscious?
1:18:28 A sign of metacognition is when species start acting against instinct...
1:21:05 How do you know what Nature's purpose with you is?
1:25:31 The impersonal that moves through us does not give a damn
1:28:54 How to derive an ethics from analytic idealism?
1:34:47 It is our obligation to pass moral judgment upon nature
Copyright © 2023 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
This video has human-created English subtitles, so don't forget to click on the 'CC' button below the video to enable them.
If you would like to learn more about Islamic philosophy, you may wish to visit historyofphilosophy.net
00:00 Intro
00:02:07 The Renaissance and Islamic philosophy
00:10:46 Perennial wisdom and translation movements
00:15:39 Western thought: footnotes to Plato?
00:18:09 Why did the scientific revolution take place in Europe and not in the Islamic world?
00:24:52 Mathematical and mechanistic approaches to nature
00:31:14 Islamic philosophy: followers of Aristotle or Plato & Neoplatonism?
00:36:51 Idealism? Materialism? Something else?
00:43:42 Influence of Islamic philosophy on post-classical European thought
00:46:45 The metaphysics of Avicenna
00:49:58 Avicenna on the mind-body problem
00:53:44 Followers of Avicenna: Suhrawardi and his metaphysics
01:01:07 Suhrawardi: intuitive versus discursive philosophy
01:06:32 Surhawardi: the non-dual approach
01:08:52 Saladin and the fate of Suhrawardi
01:13:17 Ibn Arabi, his metaphysics and Sufi philosophy
01:22:23 Conclusions: the role of Islamic philosophy
01:27:13 Recommended reading
01:28:25 An afterthought
Copyright © 2023 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
Interviewees: Dr. Hans van den Hooff, Jungian psychoanalyst and Bernardo Kastrup PhD, philosopher and director of the Essentia Foundation.
Regarded by Jung as his most important work, Answer to Job is a tour de force in which classical Christian doctrine is turned upside down: Jung argued that the incarnation of Christ was not to redeem humanity for its sins against God, but to redeem God for his sin against Job.
In the Book of Job it became clear to Jung that Yahweh, though omniscient, had not consulted his own omniscience, remaining 'unconscious' of a dark side within himself—i.e. his fallen son Satan. In the language of analytic idealism: mind at large is not meta-cognitive.
In almost all of Christian theology the Book of Job is analyzed as an example of God's mysterious ways, his unfathomable masterplan for the universe. Ergo, Job suffers purposefully, but will never be able to grasp the higher divine reason of his suffering. Yet, Jung concluded exactly the opposite: Yahweh does not have a full picture, he is an amoral force of nature ‘that cannot see its own back.’ Job is morally superior to Yahweh as he does see the inner antinomy within Yahweh.
According to Jung, if held up to his own standards, Yahweh had sinned against Job, and Job subtly confronted Yahweh with this fact. This made the incarnation of Christ not a story about the redemption of humanity for its sins against God, but a redemption of God for his sin against Job.
To Hans Busstra, who has a Christian background, this ‘blasphemous’ analysis of Jung made a deep impact, in a positive sense. Though it is highly unlikely that the Church will ever accept Jung's reading, the new depth he saw in Christian mythology makes the tradition urgently relevant again for this day and age. Nature, God, Mind at Large becomes meta-cognitive through us, and this makes the human experience of crucial importance in our universe.
00:00 Intro
01:21 Did Jung believe in God?
03:33 Jung predicted the rise of the Nazi's through studying the unconscious
05:28 Brief summary of the Book of Job
07:09 God's unsatisfying answer to Job
10:31 The interaction between the Ego and the Self
13:33 God has no morality
17:59 The seminal importance of Job's interaction with Yahweh
18:59 Jesus died for God's sins...
22:42 God's dark side and the incongruity in Christianity
26:54 The clinical take-away from Answer to Job
29:47 What it means to Hans personally
32:15 The importance of Answer to Job according to Bernardo Kastrup
34:14 How Jung vindicate his father through this book
35:39 This is the book that can save Christianity!
37:12 What does Jung mean when he talks about Yahweh?
38:09 How Job made Yahweh more conscious
41:13 Satan, Yahweh and the work of Hegel
43:03 The evolution of Satan
44:31 On the feminine side of God: Sophia,Wisdom
51:02 The male versus the female archetype when it comes to God
54:24 The importance of Answer to Job to this day and age
1:00:20 Jung's idealist metaphysics
1:02:25 Closing remarks: how this book can save Christianity
Copyright © 2023 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2023 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
A couple of weeks ago Bernardo Kastrup, the executive director of the Essentia Foundation, wrote an essay (essentiafoundation.org/the-red-herring-of-free-will-in-objective-idealism/reading) arguing that, under objective idealism, the whole convulsiveness around free will is a meaningless red herring. In his opinion, the free will vs determinism debate misses the point, because fundamentally there is no distinction between nature’s will and what nature is necessitated to do. In other words: what we assume to be free will is, on a universal level, exactly the same as determinism.
In this video ,Hans Busstra sits down with Bernardo Kastrup to discuss this line of reasoning while also trying to make it personal: why do we want free will so badly on a psychological level? Why, as a culture, do we usually associate determinism with nihilism and meaninglessness? The conversation covers Laplace’s Demon, computational irreducibility, and works towards Kastrup's main point: if you can accept that, on a personal level, you don't have free will, you realize that you are being ‘played’ by a universe that—due to computational irreducibility—cannot 'see' where it's going before it goes. Instead of suffering as an effect of 'bad' free will decisions by human agents, suffering becomes part of the inevitable evolution of the universe.
00:00 Introduction
04:33 Why do we want free will so badly?
07:33 Laplace's Demon
09:09 Bernardo explaining computational irreducibility
13:22 Is there a GRAND algorithm? Bernardo on randomness...
16:17 Wa cannot NOT be what we are, therefore in a sense we are fully determined...
17:40 If we truly had free will we would be completely happy
24:04 On compatabilism, the idea that free will is somehow an emergent phenomenon
26:12 Does free will have a function, evolutionary?
32:10 On B.F.Skinner and behaviorism
35:14 How Silicon Valley likes the idea of no free will to nudge our behaviour
38:09 To model a human mind, you need to model the whole universe
38:45 On strong emergence
41:30 We are addicted to free will thinking
45:29 Is your life like a movie that you watch?
48:21 On the WILL of the universe according to Schopenhauer
51:30 If desire and necessity are the same thing, the concept of free will becomes meaningless
53:41 Can the universe WILL something completely else, that would change the regularities we see in nature?
56:03 If we would go back to the initial state, would we end up with the same universe?
57:33 Hans still wants a little bit of free will
59:53 Bernardo on the result orientedness of society
1:02:00 But what if I kick you Bernardo? On moral responsibility
1:06:28 On the ethical implications and Daniel Dennet's plea to stop telling people they don't have free will
1:07:31 Why nihilism is the wrong conclusion
1:08:46 If we would consider ourselves as chips in a computer
1:11:10 We DO have moral responsibility
1:12:52 Our suffering is valuable input for the universe
1:14:58 The two habits of thinking that obscure us
1:18:04 Conclusion by Bernardo, quoting Fred Matser: life is about being played by the universe
Films fragments as quoted in this video, in order of appearance (as a non-profit, Essentia Foundation uses fragments like these, as is common in YouTube edits, under fair use provisions; but if copyright holders do not agree, please let us know):
I Origins (2014)
Cast Away (2000)
Into the Wild (2007)
The Pursuit Of Happyness (2006)
Copyright © 2023 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
Essentia is starting its own book club on YouTube! In a series of videos, we will discuss 20th-century must reads by authors like Carl Gustav Jung, Noam Chomsky and Thomas Kuhn, to seminal work by idealists such as Schopenhauer. And, of course, we will pay tribute to foundational ancients texts as discussed by, for instance, Peter Kingsley and Patrick Harpur. As a starter, Hans Busstra asked Bernardo Kastrup to pick 10 books from his own shelf that most influenced his philosophical work. In this video, Bernardo briefly runs through the main ideas put forward in these books and how they changed his life. In the upcoming videos, Hans will do the homework by reading and reviewing these 10 books. You are, of course, invited to read along and send in your own insights and questions (please do so via our YouTube community page: youtube.com/@essentiafoundation/community). The first book to be discussed after this video will be ‘Answer to Job,’ by Carl Gustav Jung.
00:00 Introduction
01:50 #1 Answer to Job - Carl Gustav Jung
07:25 #2 On the Nature of the Psyche - Carl Gustav Jung
14:28 #3 Saving the Appearances - Owen Barfield
20:03 #4 The Philosophers' Secret Fire - Patrick Harpur
24:38 #5 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Thomas S. Kuhn
32:00 #6 The Sense of the World - Adrés Ortiz-Osés
34:30 #7 Language and Mind - Noam Chomsky
42:53 #8 Passport to Magonia - Jacques Vallée
44:48 #9 The World as Will and Representation - Arthur Schopenhauer
54:18 #10 Reality - Peter Kingsley
Copyright © 2023 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
We've added plenty of chapter marks so you can find the stuff you like. Thanks so much for watching and subscribing and the next stop is 100k!
00:00 Start
00:34 Introduction
01:54 Bernardo Kastrup on his work as a philosopher and as director of the Essentia Foundation
02:33 Essentia's mission statement
04:34 Hans Busstra on his position
05:02 What about Bernardo's Daimon?
06:04 How does the Daimon go about?
09:39 How does Bernardo's philosophy handle the Schrödingers cat scenario?
15:58 Can we know mind at large?
18:36 Near death experiences impair dissociation
19:19 Bernardo on being stuck in his hard head
21:40 Mind at large from a pan-psychist point of view
23:20 Can you 'feel' idealism as being real?
23:48 Panpsychism says your fist is conscious
26:13 Is the Amazon river conscious?
27:40 Isn't panpsychism a form of dualism?
31:17 Is the quantum field mind at large?
31:54 No one has ever seen an electron?
33:03 Science operates on convenient fictions
35:19 What is meta-cognition and why is it dependent on brains and more broadly on metabolism?
38:33 Could a table or the sun be meta cognitive?
41:14 Are stars conscious?
43:15 Can the universe 'build' on its own dreams or nightmares?
49:31 Can the universe become metacognitive?
50:08 How is human memory stored in the universe?
53:58 How worms when you cut off their head can still remember stuff
57:52 Could memory be stored in electromagnetic fields?
1:00:12 All physical states in nature are present states
1:01:23 Do we literally bring the past into presence when we recall a memory?
1:04:05 The Alan Watts metaphor that explains the problem of our thinking in terms of causality
1:07:04 Can our minds literally travel back in time?
1:07:27 Why memories are not reliable
1:09:21 Spacetime is doomed
1:10:49 If the brain were a computer could it store all our memories?
1:13:06 How to account for precognition?
1:15:52 Scientific studies indicating forms of precognition
1:17:02 On the phenomenon of retro causation
1:18:14 On the story of Genesis
1:22:18 God is not metacognitive
1:22:59 Metacognition lets you access worlds in your own mind
1:23:52 Do you apply morality to the Genesis story?
1:25:01 Did Eve perform the first quantum measurement by eating the apple?
1:28:09 Our longing back to Eden, the state before we became metacognitive...
1:29:46 On our non-heroic suffering as humans...
1:31:58 Who suffered more, Job or Christ?
1:32:57 Job put a mirror in front of God
1:34:41 How through Christianity the notion of sacrifice enters Western thinking
1:36:39 Why you will suffer less if you know how to suffer
1:38:10 Bernardo talks openly about the 30 minutes in which he wanted to end his life.
1:40:11 The danger of idealism
1:41:53 How suffering from tinnitus led Bernardo to become the director the Essentia Foundation
1:47:03 What are you proud of, now Essentia is three years old?
1:47:56 What are the two major breakthroughs we will see in the next two decades?
1:52:40 Are bacteria conscious?
1:59:22 We hide bullshit behind complexity
2:01:26 We may never have the capabilities to simulate a single bacterium from first principles
2:04:33 Becoming metacognitive is to fall from Eden
2:05:57 Why monkeys didn't start domesticating and riding goats to then chase the bad guys
2:07:38 Does nature have a sense of being?
2:09:09 The benefit and price of metaconsciousness
2:10:52 The race between egotism and the realization that life is sacrificial determines the future of humanity
2:12:19 On the popular resurgence of Stoicism and the meaning of life
2:14:18 The 10K subscriber cake!
Copyright © 2023 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
00:05 Intro: visiting the International Conference on Psychedelic Research (ICPR 2022)
01:14 The scientific definition of psychedelics
01:57 Psychedelics cause a change in metaphysical beliefs
03:15 Metaphysics is entering psychiatry
04:47 On the need to be metaphysically agnostic
05:14 We need a metaphysical menu
06:48 Cooking an idealist dish
07:58 A brief history of psychedelic discourse
09:40 Overview of the classic literature (almost all idealist!)
10:38 The Doors of Perceptions (Huxley)
11:18 The Psychedelic Experience (Alpert, Leary)
12:06 The Psychedelic Explorers Guide (Fadiman)
12:35 An idealist interpretation of the psychedelic experience
16:13 'Naturalism' as proposed by Chris Letheby
18:33 Jussi Jylkkä on the comforting delusion objection
19:36 The comforting delusion explained
22:31 Scientistic Naturalism opposed to Real Naturalism
26:03 Our models limit our experience on reality
27:39 Alison Gopnik on the psychedelic experience as the 'baby state'
28:26 Why have we evolved into beings relying on models?
33:02 Terrence McKenna on boundary dissolution, now empirically established
35:02 Can you gain veridical knowledge in the psychedelic state?
37:53 Trying to understand the comforting delusion objection
39:23 Huxley's prism metaphor
42:21 Models collapse: and that also goes for science! (the hard problem then is a non-problem!)
46:40 Letheby is mistaken, we have to let go of our fictions
48:14 The phenomenological 'turn' to solve the problem within a physicalist framework
52:04 We can know nature by being part of nature: on the role of psychedelics
54:21 Closing remark: model collapse a good thing for humanity
For more information on the ICPR conference visit:
icpr-conference.com
Copyright © 2023 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
essentiafoundation.org
Cardiologist Dr. Pim van Lommel became internationally known after his ground-breaking study on NDEs (Near Death Experiences) was published in the respected medical journal The Lancet, in 2001. The study was remarkable in that it was a prospective one: conditions were set and ready before patients underwent cardiac arrest. The results showed that merely physiological explanations for the NDEs were inadequate, thereby raising profound questions about the nature of consciousness and its relation to brain function. In this in-depth interview, Essentia Foundation's Natalia Vorontsova discusses the philosophical implications of these findings with Dr. van Lommel, at his house in the Netherlands.
This video has human-created English, Spanish and Russian subtitles, so don't forget to click on the 'CC' button and Settings icon below the video to enable them.
00:00 Intro
00:03:25 Involvement with NDE research
00:07:55 Perceptual change
00:09:45 Possible root causes
00:25:05 Explain unexplainable
00:28:58 A man who lost his dentures
00:34:08 What about science?
00:37:11 Consciousness and body
00:46:03 Science and subjective experience
00:49:37 Science and non-local consciousness
00:53:53 Paradigm shift
00:56:38 Personal impact
00:58:57 Personal insights
Copyright © 2023 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
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Though QBism does not equal analytical idealism, in this conversation we touch upon a striking similarity: namely, that pure experience (i.e. phenomenal consciousness) is what quantum theory points to as fundamental in nature. And this, in turn, has implications for how we look upon the meaning of life. In Fuchs' words: quantum theory gives meaning to life.
00:00 Introduction
01:30 Some opening remarks on experience and 'nature striking back'
04:27 Chris Fuchs on the definition of QBism
05:12 Was Copernicus wrong? Why QBism is a free fall
06:46 On Cubism in art and QBism in quantum theory
09:24 The metaphysical debate within quantum mechanics
11:04 What is QBism?
14:23 We bet on the behavior of the universe with us
15:51 What is an agent, an observer, a decision maker?
16:53 Quantum theory is just a manual that agents use
18:10 Chris Fuchs on his mentor John Wheeler
20:24 The participatory universe
20:57 The broken glass between observer and observed
21:50 There is no physical reality prior to measurement
22:18 Back in the quantum museum...
23:37 Chris Fuchs on the different interpretations of the wave function
25:02 Agents perform 'actions': measurement is a term we shouldn't use anymore
26:29 Must an electron 'obey' our gambles on it?
27:36 The multiverse is a dead universe
30:05 The many worlds interpretation wants to uphold determinism
32:03 Genuine novelty comes into the world, the universe is being created on the fly
33:02 From the abstract to the concrete: QBism in practice
38:16 Is QBism doing best in progressing quantum physics?
41:47 The solipsist critique: how to account for a shared world?
44:33 Order in the universe is placed there by us, by the human mind
45:38 What is the ontology of QBism?
47:24 The stuff of the world is neither mind nor matter
50:21 QBism in relationship to analytical idealism
53:06 Can quantum mechanics tell us something about the meaning of life?
58:09 A personal conclusion of the interviewer
For more video's on QBism here's a playlist:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKcJJ1R6Ypwg2NPmtNc_XgHyN2LtF0pnd
or check Chris Fuchs' own channel: youtube.com/channel/UCuokFP9QsjtvAzdHt9VVJKw
Thumbnail inspiration image: Vecteezy.com
This video is the record of the Q&A session at the end of the conference's second and last day. The participants discuss whether there are objective physical laws out there in nature, whether the double-slit and similar experiments capture the essence of quantum mechanics, whether the scientific method demands inter-subjective confirmation, and what constitutes an observing agent under Quantum Bayesianism.
Copyright © 2022 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
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In this presentation, Dr. Lorenzo Catani argues that interference phenomena, such as observed in the famous double-slit experiment, in fact do not capture the essence of quantum theory.
Copyright © 2022 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
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In this, one of the most intriguing presentations of the conference, Dr. Daniele Oriti, from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, defends the view that physical laws are epistemic in nature, having no independent ontological status.
Copyright © 2022 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
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In this presentation, Dr. Emily Adlam discusses the problem of confirmation in orthodox interpretations of quantum mechanics.
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This video has human-created English subtitles, so don't forget to click on the 'CC' button below the video to enable them.
Copyright © 2023 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
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In this presentation, Dr. Jacques Pienaar discusses the notion of an embodied agent in the context of Quantum Bayesianism ('QBism,' for short). QBism is an interpretation of quantum mechanics according to which the wave function represents simply what we know about reality—a kind of betting strategy about what we will see next—as opposed to reality itself.
Copyright © 2022 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
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This video contains the panel discussion at the end of the conference's first day. The participants are Markus Müller, Caslav Brukner, Nuryia Nurgalieva and Eric Cavalcanti.
Copyright © 2022 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
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In this presentation, Nuriya Nurgalieva, M.Sc., discusses the ontological implications of thought experiments on a quantum computer.
Copyright © 2022 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
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In this presentation, Prof. Caslav Brukner, PhD, also from the IQOQI-Vienna, discusses what it may be like to be Wigner's friend, the famous character of an important thought experiment in foundations of quantum entanglement.
Copyright © 2022 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
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In this presentation, Dr. Eric Cavalcanti, from Griffith University Center for Quantum Dynamics, discusses experimental metaphysics with first-person perspectives.
Copyright © 2022 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
essentiafoundation.org
Copyright © 2022 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
essentiafoundation.org
Copyright © 2022 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
essentiafoundation.org
For more information on the IQOQI-Vienna: https://www.iqoqi-vienna.at/
For more information on Essentia Foundation: essentiafoundation.org/about-us-2
Chapters:
00:00 Highlights
01:53 Intro
03:18 Quantum physics and the first person perspective
05:00 Anton Zeilinger and where the field of quantum mechanics stands
08:18 End of the shut up and calculate era?
09:58 "What do physicists say after two glasses of wine?
11:54 What is a measurement and what constitutes an observer?
13:11 Key insights from the conference
16:16 The importance of being metaphysically agnostic
17:43 No go theorems instead of metaphysics
19:28 Is the field progressing?
22:39 Bernardo on Rovelli's relational interpretation of quantum mechanics
29:14 What is Marks Müllers theoretical departure point?
32:28 The only metaphysically neutral question is: what will I see next?
35:02 On Wigners Friend
37:57 No go theorems on the basis of Wigners Friend
39:39 Isn't quantum theory simply incomplete or wrong?
41:30 Quantum theory is only weird when you assume physical states are fundamental
47:24 What could a real life Wigners Friend experiment tell us philosophically?
49:48 How are measurements 'synced'? How to avoid solipsism?
54:57 The world is a less intuitive place then we think...
Copyright © 2022 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.
essentiafoundation.org