The Mind-Created World

This paper defends an idealist form of non-reductivism in the philosophy of mind. I refer to it as a kind of conceptual dualism without substance dualism. I contrast this idealist alternative with the two most widespread forms of non-reductivism: multiple realisability functionalism and anomalous monism. I argue first, that functionalism fails to challenge seriously the claim for methodological unity since it is quite comfortable with the idea that it is possible to articulate a descriptive theory of the mind. Second, that as an attempt to graft conceptual mind-body dualism onto a monistic metaphysics, the idealist alternative bears some similarities to anomalous monism, but that it is superior to it because it is not vulnerable to the charge of epiphenomenalism. I conclude that this idealist alternative should be given serious consideration by those who remain unconvinced that a successful defence of the non-reducibility of the mental is compatible with the pursuit of a naturalistic agenda.

Several alternatives vie today for recognition as the most plausible ontology, from physicalism to panpsychism. By and large, these ontologies entail that physical structures circumscribe consciousness by bearing phenomenal properties within their physical boundaries. The ontology of idealism, on the other hand, entails that all physical structures are circumscribed by consciousness in that they exist solely as phenomenality in the first place. Unlike the other alternatives, however, idealism is often considered implausible today, particularly by analytic philosophers. A reason for this is the strong intuition that an objective world transcending phenomenality is a self-evident fact. Other arguments—such as the dependency of phenomenal experience on brain function, the evidence for the existence of the universe before the origin of conscious life, etc.—are also often cited. In this essay, I will argue that these objections against the plausibility of idealism are false. As such, this essay seeks to show that idealism is an entirely plausible ontology.

in Responses to Naturalism: Critical Perspectives from Idealism and Pragmatism, Paul Giladi (ed.), 2019, Routledge

Naturalism, in its scientific as well as in certain forms of its so-called liberal versions, for example the subject naturalism of Huw Price, gives natural scientific accounts of reality priority over any other kind of explanation. A corollary of this position is that philosophy is continuous with the natural sciences, with the claims of the natural sciences taking priority over any philosophical claims. There is a tradition of idealist thought, starting with Kant, which opposes this naturalist framework. Instead of taking the results of science as a starting point, it asks about the presuppositions of scientific enquiry. In this effort it highlights the fact that the explanatory framework of natural science seems to already presuppose and depend on a different explanatory framework, one associated with the mind or the subject. This observation has the implication that the mind or the subject cannot be given a complete natural scientific account, as naturalism seems to claim. This is a transcendental form of argument against naturalism: If the conditions for the possibility of natural scientific accounts cannot themselves be given a scientific account, then naturalism’s claim about the priority of scientific accounts does not hold. It is also an idealist argument against naturalism to the extent that the explanatory framework it gives priority to is that of the mind. In this paper I briefly highlight the origins of this line of thought in Kant, and then move on to show how it echoes in Hegel’s as well as in Husserl’s accounts of the relationship between mind and scientific explanations of nature. For Kant, the explanatory framework that takes priority over that of science is that of the understanding, conditioning the ways in which nature can be intelligible. This position leads to well-rehearsed complications to do with the transcendental ego’s status as something super-sensible. What I want to argue in this paper is that Hegel’s claim of the priority of spirit over nature, as well as Husserl’s claim regarding the priority of the life world over the explanations offered by science, can be read as ways of preserving the transcendental, as well as the idealist nature of Kant’s argument against naturalism, whilst avoiding the unwanted complications to do with the transcendental ego. Ultimately this idealist tradition makes available a conception of philosophy that is contrary to the one currently dominating naturalist platforms, namely one according to which it is philosophy that enjoys a logical priority over the claims of the natural sciences, not the other way around.

Inquiry, 2018

According to many naturalists, our ordinary conception of the world is in tension with the scientific image: the conception of the world provided by the natural sciences. But in this paper, I present a critique of naturalism with precedents in the post-Kantian idealist tradition. I argue that, when we consider our actual linguistic behavior, there is no evidence that the truth of our ordinary judgments hinges on what the scientific image turns out to be like. I then argue that the best explanation of this result is that the norms and presuppositions operating in ordinary discourse are different from the norms and presuppositions operating in scientific discourse. So naturalistic attempts to undermine the manifest image are illegitimate attempts to critique a practice "from the outside."

Doctoral Dissertation, 2019

This thesis articulates an analytic version of the ontology of idealism, according to which universal phenomenal consciousness is all there ultimately is, everything else in nature being reducible to patterns of excitation of this consciousness. The thesis’ key challenge is to explain how the seemingly distinct conscious inner lives of different subjects—such as you and me—can arise within this fundamentally unitary phenomenal field. Along the way, a variety of other challenges are addressed, such as: how we can reconcile idealism with the fact that we all inhabit a common external world; why this world unfolds independently of our personal volition or imagination; why there are such tight correlations between measured patterns of brain activity and reports of experience; etc. The core idea of this thesis can be summarized thus: we, as well as all other living organisms, are dissociated alters of universal phenomenal consciousness, analogously to how a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) manifests multiple disjoint centers of subjectivity also called ‘alters.’ We, and all other living organisms, are surrounded by the transpersonal phenomenal activity of universal consciousness, which unfolds beyond the dissociative boundary of our respective alter. The inanimate world we perceive around us is the extrinsic appearance—i.e. the phenomenal image imprinted from across our dissociative boundary—of this activity. The living organisms we share the world with are the extrinsic appearances of other alters.

Philosophia: International Journal of Philosophy 35 (1) , 2006

The article discusses the epistemological and metaphysical views of Immanuel Kant and other German idealists in light of the epistemological considerations of contemporary Philosophy of Mind. In particular, it tries to show that despite the rejection of certain ideas of Kant and other German idealists by the analytic philosophical tradition in terms of external reality and the mind-body problem, the spirit of their philosophical theorizing still remains vibrant in today’s Philosophy of Mind.

Metodo. International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy, 2013

If one disputes the ontological content of the naturalism that is involved in the naturalization of the mind, it seems that, inasmuch as naturalism corresponds to some methodological claims, it goes with a certain idea of what reality is, that is ‘objectivism’. The purpose of this paper is to examine the criticisms that phenomenology expresses towards ‘objectivism’, and hence towards naturalism, and the way phenomenologists (and Merleau-Ponty in particular) fall or try to avoid falling into traps similar to it. Here the traps of ‘idealism’ in its various forms are in a sense deeper than the traps of naturalism. We would like to suggest that there exists some idealist solidarity between naturalism and transcendentalism and that therefore any real philosophical criticism of naturalism that undermines its ontological reductionism, whether it is phenomenological or not, should renounce any form of transcendentalism.

The Routledge Handbook of Idealism & Immaterialism, 2021

An extended argument for theistic quantum-informational idealism on the basis of the metaphysical implications of quantum physics and the nature of consciousness. [Published in in Joshua Farris and Benedikt Paul Göcke, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Idealism and Immaterialism. London: Routledge, 2021, pp.536-575]

Kant Studies Online