Analytic Idealism Course: Understanding Reality and Perception

Analytic idealism reveals our perceptions are mere interfaces, not true reflections of reality.

### Understanding Analytic Idealism: The Illusion of Ordinary Intuition
* 🌍 Welcome to the Essentia Foundation Course on Analytic Idealism, beginning with Module One, which **challenges our ordinary intuitions about reality and our relation to it**.
* 🧠 This module will explore how recent findings in neuroscience, analytic philosophy, and evolutionary theory have disproven our intuitive beliefs about the world, leading to the conclusion that our **perceptions do not reflect reality as it is in itself**.
* ⚛ The subsequent modules will delve deeper into mainstream physicalist metaphysics, argue its **inadequacies**, and introduce **constitutive panpsychism**, before presenting **analytic idealism** as a **compelling alternative**.
* 💡 A key argument against our intuitive perception is based on the concept of **entropy**; if our perceptions were accurate reflections of the external world, our internal states would **dissolve into disorder**, contradicting our ability to **maintain structural integrity**.
* 🔍 Additionally, evolutionary theory suggests that perceiving the world accurately would hinder survival, as it would **overwhelm us with unnecessary detail**, reinforcing the idea that our perceptions serve as **useful interfaces rather than truthful representations**.
* ✈ To illustrate this, the course uses the metaphor of a pilot flying by instruments, emphasizing that while our perceptions provide **valuable information**, they do not represent the **true nature of reality**, much like a dashboard does not depict the **environment outside**.
* 🌀 Ultimately, the course posits that what we perceive as the **physical world** is merely a **dashboard of indicators**, and our understanding of **space and time** is fundamentally **limited by this perspective**.
* 📚 As we conclude Module One, participants are encouraged to reflect on these insights before moving on to Module Two, which will critique **mainstream physicalism as a weak metaphysical hypothesis**.

Welcome everyone to the Essentia Foundation Course on Analytic Idealism. This is a course with several parts, several modules. If you wish, we will start today with Module One, which is about our ordinary intuitions about what the world is and how we relate to it. And we will look at

how these intuitions have been disproven by the latest understanding coming from neuroscience and analytic philosophy, even evolutionary theory. There will be many other modules. The next module, for instance, will go into more detail about our mainstream physicalist metaphysics and it will basically argue that it is

the worst metaphysical hypothesis on the table today. It is arguably incoherent. It is not conceptually parsimonious. It's very poor in terms of explanatory power, and to cap it all off, it is empirically inadequate based on

the latest results coming from foundations of physics and the neuroscience of consciousness. So, we will cover that in the next module, Module Two. We will cover panpsychism, or more specifically, constitutive panpsychism in Module Three, and we will also argue that

it is physically incoherent, amongst other shortcomings. In Module Four, we will offer an alternative, namely analytic idealism, which is what this course is all about. It's a metaphysical hypothesis which proposes that the world is fundamentally mental

not in my mind alone, not in your mind alone, but in an extended form of mind, a transpersonal mind, natural mind, not self-reflective, without this higher level mental functions that we have, but mental nonetheless, in the sense that its contents are experiential, and that extended mind

simply presents itself to us in the form that we call the physical or the material world. Um, in the module after that, we will look at the empirical evidence behind analytic idealism, and then in module six or seven, I forgot the count now, uh, we will look at the key distinction

that we need to make between consciousness and meta-consciousness, between vanilla phenomenal consciousness, which entails just experience, and self-reflective or metacognitive consciousness, which is a higher-level mental function built on top of phenomenal consciousness. And these two things are often conflated

even perhaps particularly by philosophers and neuroscientists, and that leads to a whole lot of confusion. But today, we will start with the first module or part one, which is the incoherence of our ordinary intuitions about the nature of reality. Now, keep in mind the following: this course

is prepared, it has been planned. I am going through the slides which have been planned in advance, but my words are not scripted, so it doesn't sound artificial. So, I would just be basically talking to you as I go over the material with you. So, part one, the incoherence of

our ordinary intuitions about the nature of reality. Now, suppose you are in an airplane, and you are looking out through this transparent window you have, and you see the clouds, the sky, maybe lightning, a storm outside. Do you then think that these clouds, the storm,

uh, lightning you see outside, do you regard that as the external world as it is in itself? In other words, is the world really made of clouds and lightning and whatever you see when you look out the transparent window? Our ordinary intuition about reality would say yes.

that's what we call the world the world has these forms and shapes that I see on the screen of perception it has these objects that I can touch that I can smell that I can hear that I can see it is the world as it is in itself and

my perception simply discloses to me what the world already is and has been all along my perception simply provides me a sort of a transparent windscreen into the world that's our intuition about the nature of reality so the question is is it true based on what we know already

today is it true to say this well no it's not true and that there are at least two converging completely independent but converging lines of argument that prove mathematically even um that this cannot be true the first line of argument is based on the idea of

entropy the degree of disorder in the world which we know from the second law of thermodynamics tends to increase if you mix coffee with milk you can't unmix them you can't separate them unless you spend a lot of energy doing that they will not spontaneously separate

but coffee and milk will spontaneously mix so that order that you had to begin with separate coffee and separate milk that order tends to spontaneously turn into disorder because things tend to mix entropy tends to increase now our own bodies are a sort of a local effort to go against

the second law of thermodynamics because our bodies need to preserve their structural and dynamical integrity we don't want our liver and our lungs to mix with each other like coffee and milk spontaneously mix now to maintain this structure we spend energy that's why we eat and we breathe

So the question now is if our perception is a transparent window into the world, is that compatible with our ability to maintain our dynamical and structural integrity, in other words, to stay alive? Now, the argument that it's not, that it's not compatible with that, involves the following: If our perception were a transparent window into the world, then our internal representations, our internal perceptual states, would mirror the states of the world out there, the states of the world as it is in itself.

But if that were true, we would be incapable of maintaining our structural integrity because there is a lot of dispersion in the states of the world, a lot of variety, a lot of stuff happening outside. If we were to mirror all that inside, there would be a lot of dispersion in our inner states, and we would essentially dissolve into an entropic soup. Now, I'm sort of paraphrasing the argument in very simple terms, but you can look it up, you can look at this paper here. It's only one of the papers published by Karl Friston and his collaborators that make this point. I selected this because it seems to be the best one, but there is a very solid mathematical argument behind this. Our perceptual states do not mirror the world. What we see is not a mirror image of the world. It cannot be. Our perceptual states are encoded and inferential. They are our encoded best guesses about what might be going on outside, but they don't mirror, they don't reflect without distortion, what is actually going on outside the physical world that we apprehend on the screen of perception.

is an encoded form of perceiving the world as it is in itself, and because it is encoded, we have every reason to believe that the world as it is in itself looks nothing like what is on the screen of perception. Because again, the screen of perception

is encoded and inferential. It's an encoded best guess that we make based on very limited mirroring of external states, very, very limited. Now, a way to visualize this is suppose this is the world outside and it has a number of states, which I'm representing

here with the numbers, so state 1, state 2, state 3, all the way to state 6. If we were to mirror the states inside our brains, as you see here on the left-hand side, the entire dispersion of the states of the outside world

would be mirrored in the dispersion of our brain states, and if that were true, we wouldn't be able to maintain our structural integrity. Again, we would dissolve into an entropic soup, so our inner states are not mirror images of what's going on, going on

outside. They are a compressed, encoded, inferential, or best guess representation of what might be outside. Now, there is a completely different but converging line of argument that is not based on thermodynamics, which is what we've just seen, but it's based on evolutionary theory.

And again, there are a number of papers covering that. I'm just showing one relatively old one. There's a lot more recent work on this. This one is from 2014. There's a lot more recent work, better work even done by the same group.

and and the argument goes as follows would evolution by natural selection favor our ability to see the truth of the world in other words to perceive the world as it is in itself and the answer to this question based not only on simulations but mathematical proofs there's a theorem

about this recently proven the answer is no if we perceive suppose that mutations would lead to a being that perceives the world truthfully perceive the world as it really is we can prove mathematically that evolution by natural selection would drive these beings

swiftly to extinction they would not be able to survive now why because seeing the truth is not conducive to survival and professor uh Donald Hoffman uses the metaphor of of a desktop on a computer a desktop on a computer screen is a metaphor for a table

where you have files drawers and files are represented by little rectangles with a certain color now is that true that representation you see on the screen no it's not true a file in your computer looks nothing like a little blue rectangle or directory in your computer looks nothing

like a little blue rectangle or a yellow rectangle or a yellow folder a file or a directory in your computer is a pattern of microscopic switches that are either on or off it looks nothing like it like what is on the desktop now suppose that instead of this desktop

metaphor you could see the files and the directories in your computer for what they truly are in other words millions gazillions of microscopic little switches that are either on or off would that be conducive to a fast efficient utilization of the computer of course it wouldn't you'd be lost in

confusion that would be too much data, too many details, too much truth that wouldn't be conducive to your using the computer effectively. That's why we have a desktop metaphor. That's why we represent true data stored in your computer's files as little blue or yellow rectangles

on the screen because it's useful. It allows you to do your work better. Now, in the same way, evolution would favor us not to see the world as it truly is, but to see it through an interface, a user interface, which is the metaphor

Don Hoffman uses, that would allow us to act more quickly, act on relevant data to give us an at-a-glance overview of what really matters instead of seeing the truth of the matter, which may be too detailed, too complicated and and basically lead us to ineffective

attempts to survive and would drive us to extinction. So this second line of argument has nothing to do with thermodynamics, but it arrives at the same conclusion. And when you have this convergence of independent lines of argument, that's when you can have high confidence about the conclusion, and

the conclusion is that when you look out the transparent window of your plane and you see clouds and lightning and the storm and all that, you are not seeing the world as it is in itself. What you're seeing is a user interface, a kind of virtual reality that helps you

survive and helps you maintain your structural and dynamical integrity. The clouds, the lightning, the world out there as we see it is not the truth of reality. It is not the truth of the world as it is in itself. What we call the physical world is an

interface, uh, or a dashboard of dials, which is my favorite metaphor, which I'm going to explore with you now. Imagine that instead of being a passenger in that plane, you are in the cockpit, and imagine that the storm is so severe, uh, there's so much rain, uh, the clouds

are so heavy and you're flying at night that you cannot see anything through your windshield. So what do you do? You're a pilot, well, you fly by instruments. And this instrument on your dashboard, on your instrument panel in front of you, I'm showing a representation of it here.

Those instruments are very important. You better take those dials, those instruments, very, very seriously if you want to fly safely and land safely. And guess what? Pilots who fly by instruments, uh, that's how they fly safely. They can trust their instruments to give

them accurate information about the world in order to fly safely, even though you can't see the world as it is in itself. However, we should not confuse this accuracy with truthfulness. In other words, the world outside doesn't look at all like a dashboard of instruments on your

instrument panel. It doesn't look like little dials and needles. It looks like clouds and lightning and rain and winds and whatever is the world out there. The instruments convey to you accurate information about the world, but they don't look like the world. It's a completely

different paradigm. You're not seeing clouds and lightning. You're seeing needles moving in a dial. So do you see the difference? The world as we see the physical world, what appears on the screen of perception, the objects we touch, the flavors we smell, the sounds we hear

the forms and colors we see, these are the dashboard, these are dials on our instrument panel. The world as it is in itself looks nothing like it. It's a totally different paradigm. We don't know how it looks like, but whatever it is, it's

it looks nothing like what we perceive on the screen of perception. It looks nothing like the forms and colors and flavors and and melodies that we perceive because the colors, forms, and flavors and melodies are dials on our dashboard. That's what we need in order

to not dissolve into an entropic soup and in order to survive according to the pressures of natural selection. We do not have a transparent windshield into the world. In other words, we are pilots sitting on the cockpit, but unlike what you see here where the

pilots have transparent windshields into the world, we do not have these transparent windshields into the world at all. All we have is the instrument panel and we should take the instrument panel very seriously otherwise we die, but we shouldn't take it literally.

The world as it is in itself doesn't look like perception for the same reason that these clouds here don't look like these little dials that you see here. They don't look like that, although the diodes provide accurate information about the clouds and whatever is going on

outside. So when we say that reality is material or that reality is physical, we are making a fundamental mistake. We are saying that reality is the dashboard, that what is outside is the instrument panel. It is not, and we know now, we have proven it a multiple way.

multiple ways, multiple uh, different but converging ways that this is not what's going on. Whatever is outside it is by definition not the physical world because the physical world is the dashboard. It's not what is outside. So even ideas, concepts like space and time belong to the paradigm of the dashboard.

There is no reason for us to think that space-time is an objective scaffolding of the world out there. That there is like three little dimensions of space and one flowing dimension of time outside. Why? Because these, this is the paradigm. Space-time represents the paradigm of

perception. Perception can be described in terms of a scaffolding of space-time, but perception is the dashboard. So space and time are the dimensions here of the dials, or or say this circular dimension here. Uh, this is space-time. It's the stuff in the dials is how we

make sense of this stuff that is presented to us on the dashboard. Space-time is not outside. And by the way, you can arrive at this exact same conclusion via independent lines of reasoning. Arguably, general relativity makes space-time malleable, bendable, and relative. Neuroscience is

showing us that time is extremely subjective. Even the, the relative order of events is a subjective thing. And the latest attempt to reconcile general relativity with quantum field theory systematically involve giving up the notion that time is is an objective dimension. Time becomes emergent, becomes something

that arises out of microscopic quantum processes that are themselves outside time. So the idea that space-time is relative, that it belongs on the dashboard and not on the world outside is an idea that has support again via very different lines of argument, which converge and therefore

we can have high confidence about it now you may say well but you know our perception is limited granted but we can enhance our perception through instrumentation we can use microscopes and telescopes uh to to to increase the resolution of our vision uh we can use infrared cameras radar

lidar you know um high energy accelerators to see into the heart of matter doesn't that mean that we have transcended the dashboard well of course not because this all these instruments are only useful to you in so far as you can perceive their

output you have to perceive with your eyes what the telescope is showing you have to perceive with your eyes what the radar screen is showing so all of that gets funneled through the filter of your dashboard if all of that goes through the dashboard then all of that ultimately is what is

displayed on your dashboard maybe you can say you enhanced your dashboard but you didn't escape the paradigm of the dashboard the paradigm of the dashboard is what we call physicality in space-time you have not transcended that paradigm because you used instrumentation

since whatever that instrumentation produces as data has to be displayed on your dashboard you have to perceive the output of whatever instrument you use even at CERN with the LHC the giant accelerator we have to look at a computer screen displaying histograms we have to

perceive that computer screen with histogram information to say well there is the Higgs boson right there so all of that is still belonging to the paradigm of the dashboard it's not an argument against what I'm saying to appeal to instrumentation now now I

I want to show you a short film that sort of summarizes all this, so let's look at it. It is what you see, what you get. The world's smartest scientists are saying it's actually not. Imagine a pilot flying an airplane at night in bad weather. He can't peek

into the world outside of his plane. All he has are the instruments on his dashboard, indicators of speed, air pressure, all kinds of dials that tell him about a world he cannot directly see. They're very reliable and provide the pilot with what he needs

to maneuver safely through his environment. So, is this dashboard the same thing as the environment? Well, of course not. Something that tells you about the world is not the same as the world. Just because the menu in a restaurant can give you accurate information about the food, it isn't the food.

The menu is not the meal. It seems like you couldn't possibly confuse the two, and yet this is exactly what human beings do all the time. By looking upon our world as fundamentally material, we deal with matter and therefore assume that it is reality. But matter is only our dashboard, it is the

interface we use to interact with reality. All we have are these indicators to touch, smell, and feel. So, our intuition tells us those indicators are all there is. In this sense, the way humans deal with matter is like pilots flying by instruments without a clear

glass windshield. We can never see the actual reality outside, although many scientists are trying. Like this team of neuroscientists from the Institute of Neurology of the Wellcome Trust Center for Neuroimaging in London. They discovered that organisms must represent their environment in an encoded manner to survive.

Every species, including human beings, has its own set of dials and indicators. The forms and colors we see, the sounds we hear, the flavors we taste, what we see is an evolutionary best guess constructed by our biology. It paints a nice picture, but a picture isn't reality.

This is the startling conclusion arrived at by a team at the University of California through analysis and experimentation. They've shown that our senses are evolutionarily built to construct a useful but untrue picture of reality, one that suits our survival. As Professor Donald Hoffman likes to say,

We should take these stars seriously, but not literally. It may all sound very complex because, well, it is, but it all comes down to the most important question of all: What is reality? If it stands to be quite different from the colors, shapes, sounds, and textures that we call

matter, then what is it? When we get down to the essence, what do we see, and what do we get? So this was it for this part one. I hope you've enjoyed it. Um, in the next part, we will be looking at the problems or the weaknesses of

mainstream physicalism, which is, I would argue, the worst, the weakest metaphysical hypothesis we have on the table today. Just about everything else is better. So in the next part, I will try to motivate this position to you very explicitly and very clearly.

Stay tuned for that. I hope you've enjoyed this. I hope it has been informative to you. I would recommend you to not immediately jump to part two if you're already watching it when all the parts are available. I would recommend that you don't.

immediately go to part two I would recommend that you give yourself at least a day to sort of think about what you've heard uh in this part one integrate it uh think about the implications of it for you for your daily life what this all means

let it sink in before you go to the next part Anyway stay tuned take care and I'll see you next time

The Hidden Flaws In Our Common Worldview | COURSE (1/7) |  Dr. Bernardo Kastrup

Essentia Foundation

Course Overview and Introduction to Module One

Introduction to the Essentia Foundation Course on Analytic Idealism.

Module One focuses on ordinary intuitions about the world and how neuroscience, philosophy, and evolutionary theory disprove them.

Module Two critiques mainstream physicalist metaphysics.

Module Three discusses panpsychism, specifically constitutive panpsychism.

Module Four introduces analytic idealism as an alternative metaphysical hypothesis.

Incoherence of Ordinary Intuitions about Reality

The lecture uses unscripted language to explain the topic.

The example of viewing clouds from an airplane introduces the idea that perception may not represent reality as it is.

The first argument against the transparency of perception is based on entropy and the second law of thermodynamics.

If perception mirrored the world, organisms would be unable to maintain structural integrity due to the high level of disorder in the world.

Perception is an encoded, inferential process, not a direct reflection of reality.

Evolutionary Argument Against Direct Perception of Reality

A second argument, based on evolutionary theory, supports the conclusion that perception doesn't directly reflect reality.

Evolution would not favor organisms that perceive the world truthfully, as this would hinder survival.

The computer desktop metaphor illustrates how simplified representations are more useful for interaction than a direct representation of reality.

Evolution favors a user interface that provides useful information for survival, not a true representation of reality.

The Dashboard Metaphor: Perception as a User Interface

The analogy of a pilot flying by instruments illustrates how perception functions as a user interface.

Instruments provide accurate information but do not represent the world's true nature.

The physical world is analogous to an instrument panel, providing information but not mirroring reality.

Humans lack a transparent view of reality, only possessing the instrument panel of perception.

The concept of the physical world as a dashboard is argued to be incorrect.

Concepts like space and time are part of the perceptual dashboard, not objective features of reality.

General relativity and neuroscience support the idea of subjective and relative space and time.

Using instruments like microscopes and telescopes does not transcend the dashboard paradigm.

Instrumentation enhances the dashboard but does not escape its limitations.

A short film summarizes the key arguments.

The lecture concludes by reiterating the main point that reality is different from what we perceive.

A preview of the next module, focusing on the weaknesses of mainstream physicalism.

The speaker recommends taking time to reflect on the material before proceeding to the next module.