Category: Analytic Idealism

Reality Plus | David Chalmers & Swami Sarvapriyananda

Dr. David J. Chalmers is the Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at the New York University. He is the author of several books including his latest publication: Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy. In this engaging conversation, Swami Sarvapriyananda and Dr. Chalmers discuss ancient and modern perspectives on consciousness.

This text about Analytic Idealism was generated by OpenAI’s chatGPT:

Analytic idealism is a philosophical perspective that combines elements of idealism, a traditional philosophical position that holds that reality is fundamentally mental or spiritual in nature, with the rigor and clarity of analytic philosophy, a modern movement that emphasizes logical and linguistic analysis.

Analytic idealism argues that the fundamental nature of reality is mental or spiritual, rather than material or physical. According to this perspective, the material world and the physical objects we perceive are ultimately reducible to mental or spiritual entities, and it is these mental or spiritual entities that are the fundamental building blocks of reality.

One of the key figures in the development of analytic idealism is the philosopher David Chalmers, who has written extensively on the subject. In his book “The Character of Consciousness,” Chalmers argues that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality, and that it cannot be reduced to or explained by material or physical processes. He suggests that the most plausible explanation for consciousness is that it is a fundamental aspect of reality, akin to space, time, and mass.

Overall, analytic idealism is a philosophical perspective that offers a unique and thought-provoking perspective on the nature of reality and consciousness. It challenges traditional materialist assumptions about the nature of reality and suggests that consciousness and the mental may be more fundamental than the physical. By considering this perspective, we can gain a deeper understanding of the nature of reality and the place of consciousness within it.

Who’s Driving the Dreambus? (FULL DOCUMENTARY)

This radical and challenging documentary ventures into the heart of the mystery of identity, flipping the idea of spiritual endeavour on its head, revealing a message so profound and yet so simple that it might just end the search.

Experimental metaphysics with first-person perspectives, by Dr. Eric Cavalcanti

The Nobel Prize in physics in 2022 went to scientists who, for over 40 years, have carried out a series of experiments indicating that, contrary to materialist expectations, physical entities do not have standalone existence but are, in fact, products of observation. This result is extraordinarily relevant to our understanding of the nature of reality, and so Essentia Foundation, in collaboration with the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Vienna, of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (home to Prof. Anton Zeilinger, one of this year’s Nobel Laureates in physics), organized a conference discussing the implications of this result. The conference was hosted by IQOQI-Vienna’s Dr. Markus Müller and featured seven other speakers. In this presentation, Dr. Eric Cavalcanti, from Griffith University Center for Quantum Dynamics, discusses experimental metaphysics with first-person perspectives.

The Death of SpaceTime & Birth of Conscious Agents, Donald Hoffman

Spacetime is doomed. It, and its particles, cannot be fundamental in physical theory, but must emerge from a more fundamental theory. I review the converging evidence for this claim from physics and evolution, and then propose a new way to think of spacetime: as a data-compressing and error-correcting channel for information about fitness. I propose that a theory of conscious agents is a good candidate for the more fundamental theory to replace spacetime. Spacetime then appears as one kind of interface for communication between conscious agents.

Donald Hoffman is a cognitive scientist and author of more than 90 scientific papers and three books, including Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See (W.W. Norton, 2000). He received his BA from UCLA in Quantitative Psychology and his Ph.D. from MIT in Computational Psychology. He joined the faculty of UC Irvine in 1983, where he is now a full professor in the departments of cognitive science, computer science and philosophy. He received a Distinguished Scientific Award of the American Psychological Association for early career research into visual perception, the Rustum Roy Award of the Chopra Foundation, and the Troland Research Award of the US National Academy of Sciences. He was chosen by students at UC Irvine to receive a campus-wide teaching award, and to be included in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers. Hoffman studies visual perception, visual attention and consciousness using mathematical models, computer simulations, and psychological experiments. His empirical research has led to new insights into how we perceive objects, colors and motion. His theoretical research has led to a “user interface” theory of perception—which proposes that natural selection shapes our perceptions not to report truth but simply to guide adaptive behavior. It has also led to a “conscious realism” theory of consciousness—which proposes a formal model of consciousness and the mind-body problem that takes consciousness as fundamental.

Analytic Idealism Course

 

In this Part I of Essentia Foundation’s Analytic Idealism Course, we investigate whether our ordinary intuitions about the nature of reality and the world at large can be true at all.

Link to PART II: https://youtu.be/BbnfnveWUh0

Nobel Prize 2022 – Universe is not real | Where quantum physics meets Vedanta

The Nobel prize for physics this year has been awarded to physicists who proved that the universe in not real. ‘The Universe is not real’ – a concept that Vedanta has been proclaiming for millenia. The latest proof to this comes from this year’s Nobel Prize winning physicists Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger. We have finally arrived at a day where we are discussing the paradoxical aspects of quantum physics that can be easily resolved by applying the principles of Advaita Vedanta. Physicists are now toying with the idea that the very purpose of the universe was to create conscious observers. Until observers appeared, the universe was in a state of quantum flux. It did not have any shape or form before observers came into being. All these sound less like physics and more in the territory of metaphysics. Is it possible to make sense of these bizarre findings? It indeed makes perfect sense when you look through the lens of Vedanta.