In
his recent book Beyond Biocentrism, Robert Lanza MD and his
co-author Bob Berman offer another case for the philosophy they
advanced in their earlier work Biocentrism. Their
philosophy of biocentrism is an example of what philosophers call
idealism. Idealism is the philosophical position that matter has no
independent existence outside of minds that perceive matter. An
idealist is someone who believes that the universe is just a
collection of minds. An idealist is someone who thinks that instead
of our minds existing inside the solar system, it's the other way
around: the solar system is merely something that exists as a
perceptual regularity inside of minds such as ours.
To
someone who is not used to thinking as an idealist, idealism may
initially seem absurd. But the case for idealism was advanced in a
surprisingly forceful way in the eighteenth century, by British
philosopher George Berkeley. In his classic philosophical work The
Principles of Human Knowledge (which can be read here), Berkeley
argued for immaterialism, the idea that matter has no existence
outside of minds that perceive matter. His classic slogan was: to
be is to be perceived.
In
order to get a handle on this concept, let's try a thought
experiment. Imagine that there exists no Earth at all, and no matter
at all. But let's imagine that there exists a particular number of
immaterial minds that have a spiritual existence. Suppose that some
unknown thing causes these immaterial minds to have a series of
thoughts and perceptions and sensations. Suppose also that instead
of each of these minds having its own random set of thoughts and
perceptions and sensations (like 30 different people having 30
different dreams, all totally different), there is instead a certain
degree of similarity, a set of recurring patterns, so that there are
various similarities in what goes on inside these immaterial minds.
Imagine that all of these minds have somewhat similar thoughts,
perceptions and sensations, with these corresponding to earthly
experience (such as the experience of seeing it get dark every night,
and the experience of seeing a blue sky).
The
question then arises: how can you tell that you are not such an
immaterial mind living in a universe without matter, in which your
sensations of matter are coming from some unknown external source?
The answer is: you really can't. There is really no way for you to
figure out whether you are a matter person living in a mainly matter
world or whether you are a mind person living in a totally mind
world. From this standpoint, idealism seems like a rather plausible
option, or at least something that is perhaps as likely to be true as
not, a kind of 50-50 bet.
But
if you are going to be an idealist and not willing to dismiss your
fellow human beings as just perceptions in your mind (which would
lead you to the morally disastrous position called solipsism), you
would need to believe that there is something that causes multiple
human beings to have the perceptual regularities and similarities
that they have (such as a daily experience of the sky getting dark).
Being a theist, George Berkeley simply argued that God was the source
of perceptual regularities. If you had asked Berkeley whether the moon
will disappear if humans become extinct, Berkeley probably would have
said: no, because the moon will continue to persist as an idea in the
mind of God. Someone taking a similar approach might argue that we
experience sensations of gravitational attraction not because there
is really matter undergoing self-attraction but because a divine
agent has set up a kind of perceptual rule that all minds will
experience perceptions of gravitational attraction.
But
what is the philosophy of biocentrism that Lanza has recently been
arguing for? It seems like Berkeley-style idealism, but one that is
without any core explanation to explain the regularities of human
perceptions. It seems like a kind of minimalist, stripped-down,
bare-bones form of idealism.
On
page 125, the authors say, “The world we see is the visual
perception located in our head.” On page 137 the authors say,
“There is nothing 'out there' beyond the reality constructed in our
minds.” On page 186 the authors say, “We start by seeing that
there is no real world 'out there' beyond us.”
This
at first may sound like Berkeley-style idealism. But it seems there
is a big difference. The biocentrism of Lanza and Berman apparently
wishes to reduce the world to what goes on in the human mind, but
their philosophy makes no attempt to describe anything that may be
the source of human minds or the regularity of human experiences.
This
has a certain advantage from the standpoint of simplicity. A typical
scientist may want to think the universe is basically matter plus
human minds. A Berkeley-style idealist might argue that the correct
description of the universe is: human minds plus a divine mind. But
biocentrism seems to speak as if the universe is simply: human minds
(without any matter). That's simpler than either of the previous two
options. But it's not very plausible. Without anything other than
human minds, why would there exist human minds that happen to share
so many perceptual regularities (such as the experience of seeing the
moon in the sky and seeing a blue sky)? If there were just human
minds, we would not expect such regularities.
We
can imagine how things might be if there was an immaterial universe
consisting of only random human minds with random experiences,
without some type of cosmic cause of perceptual regularities. Such
minds might have conversations like this:
Human
#1: Why I had a lovely day today. It was fun watching all those
elephants flying about in the green sky above me, and the five moons
in the sky made it look even lovelier.
Human
#2: My day wasn't so good. There were too many purple fireballs
falling from the yellow sky. I much preferred yesterday's chocolate
sky, which gave such a tasty rain.
Our
experience has hundreds of perceptual regularities, which a
non-idealist can account for by assuming matter and natural laws. A
theistic idealist can also explain such perceptual regularities by
assuming a perception-ordering agent that sets up certain “rules of
the game.” But how do we explain the regularities of experience
using the “only human minds” kind of thinking of biocentrism? It
would seem that this is a big hole in their “bare bones” theory.
Lanza and Berman have done nothing to explain the regularities of
human perceptions. If we imagine only human minds, and that matter
does not exist, we have no explanation of why human experiences are
so similar, and why they share so many perceptual regularities.
There might be some way for an idealist to explain such a thing in a
non-theistic way, but Lanza and Berman have not attempted to do so. By
making statements such as “There is nothing 'out there' beyond the
reality constructed in our minds, “ Lanza and Berman seem to be
advancing a “just human minds” description of the universe, one
that is not very plausible because it lacks an explanation for the
similarities and regularities of our experiences and perceptions.
We
can compare the biocentrism of Lanza and Berman to the idea that our
experience is produced by some computer simulation created by an
extraterrestrial civilization (an idea that also involves a claim
that matter isn't really out there). Such an idea has its own
difficulties, but at least it is able to explain the regularities of
human perceptions. Just as all players of a video game have certain
common perceptual experiences, because the game was programmed with
a certain set of rules, under the simulated universe idea we can
account for similarities of human perceptions by imagining that it is
“part of the programming.” But if we just imagine that the
universe consists of nothing but human minds, without attempting to
account for why such minds exist, there is no obvious way to account
for the similarities of human perceptions.
Bernardo Kastrup is a contemporary idealist who has a model/theory of reality called analytical idealism. It's a mix of subjective idealism (immaterial) and objective idealism, I think.
ReplyDeleteIncase you are interested here is a link to freely read his paper/work on it from a few years back https://www.academia.edu/38498913/Analytic_Idealism_A_consciousness_only_ontology
He also sells books online such as on Amazon
Kastrup is the reason I take some form of idealism seriously. Before that, I thought dualism was the best explanation for the "Hard Problem of Consciousness". He makes a convincing case that materialism/physicalism is untenable and that idealism is the most parsimonious metaphysical view.
DeleteHe's a bit too combative, though. He called Dan Dennett a fraud on Twitter, and I think he kind of got himself kicked out of the academic philosopher club with Philip Goff and others... 😔
I take idealism as a serious contender for a theory of the mind/body. George Berkeley made a very weighty case for idealism, in his "Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge," which you can read at the link below. Idealism is at its most credible within a theistic context, for that helps to dispose of the "does Alpha Centauri stop existing when no one looks at it" kind of objection. Both dualism and idealism seem like credible possibilities to me.
Deletehttps://archive.org/details/worksgeorgeberk11berkgoog/page/n24/mode/2up