In introductory metaphysics classes, three central methods for understanding the essence of reality are always mentioned: materialism, dualism, and idealism. Materialism claims that all reality is composed of matter alone; dualism claims that reality is composed of two different basic essences – matter and spirit; while idealism claims that everything is spirit (or soul, or consciousness).
In the modern Western world in which we live, the first two approaches are dominant, as they wage a struggle for consciousness and worldview. The materialistic approach is most common among scientists, while people engaged in religion and spirituality, and it seems also the general public, tend to a certain type of dualism. At the center of the debate is man himself, with the big question being whether we are made of matter alone or whether we also have an immaterial soul or spirit. These questions have important implications, but for some reason the third approach, idealism, hardly receives serious representation. Most people have not heard of it, and few understand it properly. Those who have heard of it, usually in the context of the philosopher Berkeley, tend to dismiss it offhand as some baseless "Matrix theory" according to which reality is nothing but an illusion. And that, of course, is completely wrong.
One who is working to change this situation is Dr. Bernardo Kastrup, a philosopher and computer scientist active in some of the world's leading scientific laboratories. Kastrup has written several books dealing with the philosophy of mind and consciousness, the central of which is "Why Materialism is Baloney" [great title!!:-)]. In this book, Kastrup attacks the materialistic approach, which he sees as a childish and absurd superstition, and presents at length idealism as the most logical, well-founded, and successful alternative. This is by no means some New Age "hoo-ha" or something similar; the subtitle of the book is "How True Skeptics Know There Is No Death and Fathom Answers to Life, the Universe, and Everything." Kastrup's approach is indeed skeptical and critical, built on logical arguments and empirical findings, and precisely from this he determines that idealism is the most successful metaphysical explanation of reality.
But what is idealism anyway, and why is materialism nonsense? Although it is difficult to answer these questions without reading the entire thesis presented in the book, I will present here some of its main points.
According to materialism, all of reality is composed of matter, and of matter alone. Even our consciousness is nothing but a product produced by the material brain. It depends on it for its existence and will cease to exist with its death. Reality exists in a real way, that is, outside our consciousness; it will continue to exist regardless of whether we perceive it or not. We perceive external reality through our senses and consciousness, which create for us a picture of it within our consciousness. This picture is not identical to reality in itself, which we are never able to perceive as it is, but only expresses the way our senses and brain receive and interpret the wavelengths and various stimuli that exist outside.
Although this approach seems logical and convincing at first glance, it has some major problems:
1. The hard problem of consciousness. A question that materialism has no answer to is, how does something like consciousness appear from something like matter? How does the amazing wealth of self-awareness, thoughts, feelings, experiences, desires, memories, and so on grow out of a small gray mass like the brain? There is an amazing leap here between two completely different things, without a hint of an explanation as to how one supposedly produces the other. All materialism has to say on the subject is that it "just happens." Like magic. Connect a few neurons in the right way, and poof! Consciousness will appear. Sounds very dubious.
2. Materialism assumes that there is a complete real universe outside our consciousness. There is only one small problem: there is no evidence for the existence of such a universe! All that we see, hear, touch, experience, and feel – we perceive through consciousness. All our experiences exist only within consciousness. In fact, the only thing we ever experience is the existence of our consciousness and its various experiences. Why should we assume then that there is a whole universe outside of consciousness – instead of simply and economically assuming that all that exists is indeed consciousness? Materialism actually doubles the universe: it claims that there is an image of the universe as it exists within our consciousness, and in addition there is the real universe that exists outside our consciousness, which is incomprehensible and we have no direct access to it. But why should we add this incomprehensible shadow universe to our picture of reality? We know that consciousness can produce a tangible reality that seems to be external to us; every night in our dreams we experience such a reality. What is simpler then than to assume that the reality we experience while awake also exists within consciousness and not outside of it? If we adopt principles of economy and simplicity, like Occam's razor, then there is nothing more worthy of cutting from our picture of reality than that external, incomprehensible, and unproven universe (personally I do not accept principles like these, but for those who advocate them, this is the obvious conclusion). In conclusion – there is no proof of the existence of matter, and no reason to believe that anything exists outside of consciousness.
3. It is commonly mistakenly thought that according to materialism the things we see around us – cats, trees, rocks, and so on – are real and tangible, while according to idealism they are actually a kind of illusion. But the truth is exactly the opposite: according to materialism, we never see the real things, but only an image of them as created by our senses and brain. Moreover, we have good reasons to assume that this image does not faithfully reflect the real reality, since our brain (if we adopt evolution) developed not in a way that is directed to knowing the truth – but in a way that is most beneficial to survival. The picture of the world that it paints for us then is the one that contributes most to our survival, not the one that corresponds to the real reality (this is actually part of Plantinga's well-known argument). It turns out then that precisely according to materialism the world we see around us is a kind of illusion, while according to idealism we see things as they are – because they exist only within our consciousness, and not in some imaginary shadow world outside of it.
These are, in a nutshell, the main points of the criticism that Kastrup raises against materialism in the first chapters. He dedicates the rest of the book to presenting his version of idealism, explaining it, and defending it against possible criticisms. For this he uses various metaphors. According to him, the only thing that exists at the base of reality is general consciousness, and every private consciousness of a certain person or other creature is part of it. He likens general consciousness to an ocean of mercury, and private consciousness to a vortex that has formed within it. The vortex symbolizes the self-awareness that part of the general consciousness gains, an awareness that causes it to feel like an independent entity and to perceive the rest of reality as something that is outside of it. Or alternatively, general consciousness is like a membrane, and private consciousnesses are like patterns of vibrations and tremors on the surface of that membrane. The brain, then, is not what produces consciousness, but the opposite: it is only the tangible image of that "vortex" or "vibration." It is understandable then why there is a correlation between brain states and mental states, and a two-way influence between brain and consciousness; not because the former produce the latter, but because they simply constitute their tangible image. Just as flames are the tangible image of an explosion, so a brain is a tangible image of a consciousness-loop that has developed self-awareness.
In my feeling, at some point Kastrup's metaphors become too complicated and lose some of their initial intuitiveness, but the idea at its base sounds very logical. One of his interesting claims is that, in fact, the focus of our consciousness on the boundaries of a certain "vortex" limits it, and prevents us from accessing the vast areas of general consciousness. Just as it is impossible to see the stars when the sun is shining, so our self-awareness hides from us the consciousness beyond the sense of ego. Precisely in situations where the loop loosens and the vortex disperses a little, our consciousness is more liberated and can achieve experiences and impressions that go beyond the here and now. Indeed, Kastrup brings a long line of brain phenomena, from suffocation, drugs, and G-LOC to near-death experiences, in which it turns out that precisely when there is less brain activity – the person experiences more special and richer experiences than the usual ones, which go beyond the time and space in which he is located. If materialism were correct, reducing brain activity should weaken the experiences, not intensify them! But according to Kastrup, this is understandable: the brain does not create consciousness but expresses its self-limitation, and when it stops functioning, consciousness expands, not disappears. Final death does not express the end of consciousness but rather its complete liberation. This is also the explanation for the fact that in less advanced cultures, where experiences such as hunger, disease, and proximity to death were more common, materialism did not take root from the start: these experiences opened the horizons of those people to a reality beyond the here and now, while the sated Western man remains closed within his narrow loop and is not aware of what is beyond it.
There are a few more points that are important to note. Idealism is not solipsism; it does not claim that only my consciousness exists and you all exist within it like characters in a dream, but that the consciousnesses of all of us are part of one general consciousness at the base of reality. We are all actually dreaming a shared dream. And why not solipsism? If we are already being economical, why not assume that only I exist? Kastrup admits that a certain leap of faith is required here, but it is not difficult to make it; after all, the behaviors of other people seem too different and diverse to believe that my subconscious produced them all, and therefore it is reasonable to believe that they have consciousnesses of their own.
Also, idealism is not a scientific approach but a metaphysical one. So is materialism. Science studies phenomena as we see them; the question of whether they exist outside our consciousness or within it is a philosophical metaphysical question, not a scientific one. Kastrup compares the scientist to a boy playing a computer game, who is familiar with the world in which the game takes place, without being aware of how the software and hardware create that game world. Idealism does not disagree in any way with the accepted scientific theories, and does not try to present an alternative to them. All it claims is that the same empirical world that science studies does not exist somewhere outside our consciousness, but exists entirely within it. What we perceive as the laws of nature is actually the internal law of that general consciousness that we are part of. We cannot change them as we wish, just as the vortex cannot change the laws of nature of the ocean.
Idealism has significant implications for our lives. According to materialism, we are only lumps of matter that happened to form in a meaningless universe indifferent to our existence, and all our troubles and suffering will cease with our death, and therefore nothing really matters. All that remains is to spend life pleasantly until its inevitable end, without any commitment or responsibility. And they call such an approach brave and sober... On the other hand, according to idealism, the world around us is not just an external surface in which we happened to grow, but it exists entirely within our consciousness – and therefore it is very meaningful for us. Just as we look at the images in our dreams to try to understand their meaning and learn from them about our soul, so we must look at reality as if it is an integral part of us – and try to understand what is the meaning of every event that happens to us. Every human consciousness is actually part of the general consciousness that is trying to understand itself through it, like a person who examines reality through many different points of view. We have a responsibility then to try to understand as much as possible the meaning of our existence, and death is not the end of existence but more like waking up from a dream to the real, more conscious reality, whose existence we forgot during sleep.
There are many more points that the book touches on, and it is impossible to bring them all here. The book is written in a systematic and orderly manner, covers all possible angles, and several times when a difficulty or criticism of what was said arose in me, it turned out that the answer to it appears later on. It addresses topics such as quantum theory, parapsychological forces, "supernatural" creatures, parallel universes, and the survival of the soul, and explains their place in an idealist worldview. Strangely enough, it almost completely ignores the religious context, and I think the word "God" does not appear at all throughout the book, although the most obvious thing is to identify God with that general consciousness at the base of reality. I am not sure that Kastrup manages to prove unequivocally that materialism is nonsense, but he certainly exposes the nakedness of materialism and shows that the king is naked, and until they demand from us proofs for the existence of things like the soul or God – let the materialists please prove to us that matter exists... Whether we actually adopt idealism in its entirety, or whether we prefer a more "moderate" dualistic approach, materialism turns out to be the weakest alternative of the three, and whoever advocates it is probably not a true skeptic but rather a blind believer.
