Not long ago, I wrote an article on the subject of brain science, and why, contrary to popular opinion, it doesn't prove anything about the (non-)existence of a spiritual soul in man. Shortly thereafter, I was approached by a man writing a book in which he claims that science refutes the existence of the soul, and asked me for a review of his book; at the same time, and unrelated, I learned about the new book "Why Materialism is Baloney" by Dr. Bernardo Kastrup, a leading computer scientist, who logically and scientifically bases an idealist view. I was also reminded of the book "Mind and Cosmos" published in 2012 by Thomas Nagel, one of the greatest analytical philosophers of our time, in which he argues that consciousness cannot be the product of matter alone (which sparked a mass lynching against him by the heads of the atheist church, despite Nagel being an atheist himself). It seems that there is something about the materialistic view that makes ordinary people follow it, and requires greater philosophical sensitivity to expose the inherent problematic nature of it. In the following article, I will try to illustrate with an example what that problematic nature is, and to show why idealism [idealism in philosophy is a broad family of metaphysical views asserting that reality is fundamentally mental, spiritual, or idea-based—that mind, consciousness, or ideas are primary, and the physical world depends on or derives from them. This contrasts with materialism (reality is fundamentally matter) and realism (reality exists independently of the mind). Idealists argue that what we perceive as the external world is shaped by, constructed from, or reducible to mental phenomena] is a much better and more successful approach than materialism.
The problem with materialists is not the answers they give to the mind-body problem, but that they don't even understand the problem correctly. The following parable may clarify this.
Imagine you find a closed room with a teddy bear and a book containing a literary masterpiece.
"Who wrote the book?" you ask.
"The teddy bear, of course," replies the teddy bearist. "Do you see anyone else here?"
"What nonsense!" you respond. "How can a teddy bear write a book?!"
"What's the problem, look and see," says the teddy bearist. And before your eyes, the teddy bear stands on its feet, begins to wave its arms, and immediately letters, words, and sentences begin to appear on the pages of the book.
"You see," says the teddy bearist. "The movements of the teddy bear are what cause the book to be written. There is a direct relationship between the movements and what is written. We have discovered that any influence on the teddy bear's movements affects the words that appear in the book, and this proves that the teddy bear is indeed the one who writes it."
"But how does he do it?" you ask.
"I already said," replies the teddy bearist. "By moving his hands. What's not clear here?"
What is really the teddy bearist's problem in the story? The problem is that he doesn't understand the meaning of the question "How can a teddy bear write a book?". Instead of giving an explanation for this wonder, he simply describes the various events that take place in the room, as if this description and the connection between the teddy bear and the book provide an answer to the question. But he doesn't explain how the teddy bear is even able to move, how he knows how to move his hands, and how the movement of his hands creates the words that appear in the book and their content! He doesn't even understand what's strange about it! For him, "it just happens," and that's it. If you insist on continuing to ask, he will accuse you of prejudice against teddy bears, which prevents you from accepting the possibility that a teddy bear may indeed be able to write a book by the power of his hand movements.
We, on the other hand, do not think that a description of the connection between the teddy bear and the book constitutes an explanation of how the teddy bear works. We will tend to think that another force takes part in the process, perhaps pulling the teddy bear's strings or influencing the relationship between them and the book. Even if the teddy bear is made of special materials that are not found anywhere else, it would still not be enough to take seriously the claim "such a teddy bear can do such things". It still doesn't explain in any way how such a wonder can happen.
And to the parable: when the materialist is asked what is the source of consciousness, thoughts, feelings, and so on, he points to the brain. According to him, the brain, that gray and slimy mass lying between our ears, is what creates the wonderful wealth of the human soul, including that of the great thinkers, sages, and creators in history. When we ask him how the brain does this, he simply points to the fact that every mental phenomenon has a corresponding neurological state, and concludes from this that the neurological states are what generate the mental phenomena. But like the teddy bearist, he completely misses the depth of the question, and confuses description with explanation: even if there is such a connection between the physical and the mental, there is still no answer here as to how the physical creates the mental - how things like chemicals and electrons translate into experiences like awareness or love! There is a huge leap here between one field and another, which materialism does not even begin to answer, but only states that "it just happens" (and perhaps we will find an explanation someday). But the description in which a brain is able to produce mental states "just like that" is no clearer than a description in which a teddy bear writes a literary masterpiece, and even pointing to the complexity of the brain does not add anything. Something essential is missing in this description, and this is why materialism, which seems logical and reasonable at first glance, actually lacks any explanatory power. When asked how the physical produces the mental, it actually claims that it is magic, thereby ending the discussion. It may be right, in the same way that a teddy bear may be able to write a best-selling book; but it is certainly appropriate to doubt such a strange picture of reality, and to look for a slightly more successful explanation. Even if we have not seen someone pulling the strings of the teddy bear/brain, it does not mean that there is no such person.
Let's now move on to the opposite alternative to materialism, idealism. Both approaches are monistic, meaning they claim that reality is composed of only one essence, as opposed to dualism, which claims that reality (or at least man) is composed of two different essences, matter and spirit. However, idealism claims that this basic essence is not matter, as materialism believes, but consciousness, thought, or soul. Our consciousness is not inside the world, but the world exists inside our consciousness (or some consciousness), and in fact the entire universe is nothing but one big thought.
On the face of it, such an approach sounds mystical and strange, in the style of "life in the Matrix". Many misunderstand it, as if it claims that life is nothing but a dream or an illusion, and ridicule these arguments. But that is not the meaning of idealism. It does not claim that reality is an illusion, but that reality is a thought, and thoughts are no less real than matter and even more so.
Let's now present some of the advantages of idealism over materialism:
1. Economy. Materialism is actually the complete opposite of ontological economy; it requires us to believe that, in addition to the universe as it is perceived in our consciousness, there is also the universe "as it is in itself", the world of matter to which we have no direct access. But why assume the existence of such a "dark universe"? Why not simply assume that the universe exists within our consciousness - and that's it, and there is nothing outside of it? Although I am personally not a fan of Ockham and his razor at all, those who tend to follow him should definitely take such a consideration into account. Just as dreams can be seen as a reality that exists only in our consciousness, without assuming that there is somewhere a real "dream world", so the whole of reality can be seen as existing in our consciousness. Whoever wants to add matter to the picture of the world, must bring a proof.
2. The position of what is familiar. We know very well that consciousness can indeed create a picture of the world that looks real and convincing to those who are in it. We experience this every night in our dreams. There is no reason, therefore, to assume that consciousness can also create the picture of the world that we are familiar with from waking hours. Consciousness is certainly capable of creating "matter". On the other hand, we have not seen anywhere matter that creates consciousness. The only matter to which such a property is attributed is the brain itself, which is at the center of the controversy. A claim that the brain creates consciousness requires treating it as a unique phenomenon, and still does not explain at all how exactly it does so, as we saw above. Why then introduce into our world picture an unusual and incomprehensible assumption, instead of simply explaining that consciousness is what creates the appearance of matter, and not the other way around?
3. Solving the mind-body problem. Materialism is unable to explain how the brain produces the soul and influences it, and even less so how the soul in turn influences matter, and how thoughts and desires lead to physiological reactions in man. Idealism, on the other hand, explains both things simply. Consciousness can influence the body because it is nothing but an image created by it (again, remember the dreams), and on the other hand, influence on the body and brain affects consciousness in return, because they are the same thing. Kastrup compared the relationship between consciousness and the brain to the relationship between water and a whirlpool. A whirlpool does not create water; it is created when water concentrates in a certain way. Similarly, the brain does not produce consciousness, but it is consciousness that is concentrated in a certain way. Interference in the whirlpool affects what happens in the water, because the whirlpool is itself the water, but not because it is the source from which the water flows. In this way, influence on the brain affects consciousness, because the brain is the form in which it focuses, but this does not show that the brain is the source of consciousness. It is easier to understand how consciousness creates an image of a brain, than how a brain creates real consciousness.
4. Explanation of the laws of nature and the unity of the universe. Materialism offers no explanation for the precise regularity in nature, which governs uniformly throughout the universe. There is no answer to the question of how all the particles of the universe "know" to behave in such a coordinated and precise way. From the point of view of materialism, "it's just like that". The word "law of nature" does not explain anything, but only describes. Also, materialism does not explain how there is such a successful match between our consciousness (which stems from a brain that developed according to it in a blind evolutionary process) and the universe - how is it possible that mathematical equations, for example, which are a human invention, actually manage to describe the universe so accurately. According to idealism, on the other hand, all these questions are solved. The universe is uniform because it is the product of a uniform consciousness, not of a multitude of particles that are not related to each other. The laws of nature are an expression of the will of that consciousness; the only thing we know from personal experience that is capable of causing movement is thought and will, and therefore it is appropriate to see the movement of all the particles of the universe as an expression of thought and will. That consciousness is what unites the universe and drives it on its path. This is a more successful explanation than "that's how it is", or pretending that the words "laws of nature" explain something. Also, it is understandable why there is a match between our consciousness and reality - because reality exists within our consciousness, not the other way around.
5. Explanation of supernatural phenomena. There are countless testimonies to the existence of supernatural phenomena, which indicate that the soul can exist and function separately from the body. Near-death experiences, encounters with spirits, reincarnations, telepathy, astral projection, predicting the future, parapsychological powers, and so on. Although no such phenomenon has been scientifically proven, their cumulative weight strengthens the belief that there is something to it. While materialism is committed to denying a priori the possibility of the existence of these phenomena, and to automatically treat them as hallucinations and fantasies, idealism can explain them simply. Since the body is a product of consciousness and not the other way around, there is no reason not to assume that sometimes consciousness can also function without an image of a body. It is possible that physical death is nothing but the release of consciousness from the "whirlpool" that the brain constituted for it, and a transition to a wider form of existence and perception. Anyway, it is sometimes possible to encounter non-corporeal consciousnesses.
Of course, one can ask different questions about idealism, but I am not aware of any decisive argument against it (most philosophical criticisms are directed against the logical proofs that try to establish idealism, not against the idea itself). There is no difficult problem in the view that reality is the product of one great consciousness, which "dresses" simultaneously in a large number of "foci" (- brains), in the same way that our consciousness in a dream dresses in a certain image that we identify as "I", while at the same time it also produces all the other objects and figures in the dream. There is also no reason to assume that if the universe existed in our consciousness, we would be able to control it by the power of thought (first, this is not solipsism, and our small consciousnesses are only part of the larger consciousness. Secondly, even in a dream we do not control it completely, let alone in waking reality). In addition to the things that this approach explains, as we saw above, it may also be consistent with the findings that arise from quantum theory, such as the influence of the observer on the experiment. James Hopwood Jeans, one of the pioneers of quantum theory, once said that the universe seemed to him less like a large machine and more like a large thought. Philosophers, thinkers, and mystics have developed the idea.
In light of the above, it seems that there is no reason not to prefer idealism over materialism. If the idea of a "great consciousness" threatens someone, or seems less reasonable to him than the idea of a teddy bear that writes stories by itself, he should examine himself and try to think about what is behind this tendency.
