If I follow you correctly, I agree with all of it up to the end part of God is fooled. How does that happen? So I take the problem for the idealist or consciousness monist to be - how has God, the singular subject, the ground of all being, the omniscient, become singular subjects like you and me?
Bernardo Kastrup analogizes it to Dissociative Identity Disorder — we are all God's the Cosmos's "alters"…
I don't think we need to posit that God ***as a whole*** is "fooled" — but we, each of us being a part of God, are fooled (into not seeing that we're part of the whole of God).
But if God has alters, that’s like God having a kind of pathological disease. While Kastrup uses that analogy, I don’t think he's focused on giving the theological details of what God is like, but proposing a solution acceptable to materialists and putting idealism on their radar.
I’m most familiar with Vedanta, but Kastrup’s idealism is something like Advaita. The relevant characteristic is there’s a strict identity between the soul and God, they are the exact same thing. Which means on enlightenment, the individual self, that sense of I, ceases to exist, it’s merged into God’s sense of self.
But that means God is presently under the illusion he’s a finite being, undergoing the experience of all the myriad horrors and sufferings of this world. Which raises lots of questions, but the most pressing is how can an omniscient God be ignorant of something (which is a logical contradiction). This isn’t just some minor detail he’s ignorant of, it’s something as fundamental as his true identity.
But I’m not sure if that’s your view because in some parts of your essay you say God is the same as the soul, but also God is more. Given that we have a singular subjective point of view I’m not sure how to make sense of that idea. What do you think happens at enlightenment? If we came to know the truth about it all, what would it feel like to be one of us? Would we cease to exist as a separate individual?
I fully agree that Kastrup's DID analogy brings pathology into the picture when that's neither necessary nor helpful. As I wrote in my follow-up post (https://hamletschimera.substack.com/p/update-chalmers-chalmer-and-consciousness): "If the idea is true, then it’s entirely natural… it’s not a disease, it’s just reality. Rather than analogizing to disease, we could just as well analogize to something positive — perhaps an immersive virtual reality entertainment experience that exceeds our current technological capacities, in which one person could experience the same story from one character’s perspective and then another… True, in that case, the VR experience would be neither permanent nor simultaneous… But one or both of the same points might be true for the DID analogy, too."
Meanwhile, I'm not sure what to say to “God is the same as the soul”. The central pillar of my claim is “ein od milvado,” “There is nothing else but Him.” So okay, sure, God is “the same as the soul” in the same way that God is also the same as the city of Secaucus, New Jersey. Any soul, or any body, or any tuna fish sandwich, anything whatsoever that you can name, is nothing at all except a part of God. Or perhaps put better, an *illusion* of being “a part” of Him, since in an ultimate sense, all separation, all plurality, all divisibility, is an illusion. We (not only our souls but our bodies, the planets, the stars, black holes, dark matter, everything) are dreams that God is having about Himself, entirely within Himself. (More on the latter theme here: https://hamletschimera.substack.com/p/numbers-are-fake .)
Fascinating, thoughtful, and well-written piece. I do wonder, however, if the problem with which you are grappling is really faith vs. agnosticism rather than atheism vs. pantheism. The problem of consciousness is at this point scientifically unanswerable so the answers are only "I don't know" or "it's God."
I really do think “atheism vs. pantheism” can be a difference in attitude more than in analysis… The pantheist is reverent where the atheist isn’t, toward the same reality on whose basic facts they might well agree. For the pantheist (for me, anyway), reverence is a given, and the key question is not “does God exist” but rather “what *kind* of God exists — One factually indistinguishable from atheism, or one who does literal miracles and chats up Moses on a mountain?”
Meanwhile, to me, the question of consciousness is theoretically distinct from all that, although obviously this inquiry led me from one into the other. But overall, my faith doesn’t depend on any particular empirical analysis of reality. If my faith were contingent on any set of facts, it would be quite brittle. And it isn’t — my faith can accommodate any set of facts, so I can investigate facts using science/logic/philosophy/whatever, and wherever the analysis leads, true faith is capacious enough to dance with the facts. (Remembering that all facts are provisional, since, cf. Descartes and Hume, there’s precious little we can take as certain.)
Pantheism is difficult to square with classical Rabbinic Judaism (see: Spinoza), though I say that as someone who doesn't interpret Genesis as a historical account of creation. Anyway, I secretly don't believe in object permanence (call me a quantum solipsist?), so pantheism doesn't really "feel right" to me.
I prefer an approach rooted in complexity science that sees consciousness as an emergent phenomenon. Rocks aren't conscious, not because there is some fundamental difference in _stuff_, but because that stuff isn't organized in a sufficiently complex way. But, crucially, this doesn't leave consciousness as a mere epiphenomenon ala Huxley. By way of analogy, one could regard societal norms as a emergent property of large groups of people trying to live and function together, but they clearly also reach back "down" to change the behavior of individual actors, as well. Still, it leaves me much closer to Dennett than to Chalmers.
To me, the "hard problem" is determinism. Complex and chaotic systems are _practically_ unpredictable, but as far as I understand, most people still believe them to be fundamentally deterministic. Wikipedia tells me that Dennett is a compatibilist, thought, so hooray for that.
And another point, you say, "Correlation doesn’t prove causation, but when you’ve only got one correlate to work with, and that correlate is very clear, it becomes the most plausible candidate for a cause."
That's not accurate, the problem here is we have two way causation. Brain effects mind, but the big problem is, mind effects brain. For example the experience of pain causes physical changes like groaning, taking medication etc. A belief there is a burglar moves my body to lock the doors. This causation from mind to brain is happening all day long.
I think things like beliefs about burglars exist only as info processing, which is to say only as brain processes. They are entirely explicable just the way a pure physicalist would say. So the interaction between sensory inputs, neuron activities creating thoughts about burglars, and further neuron activities creating signals that move your body to lock the doors — all of that is neatly explained by bog-standard physicalism. To my mind, the only thing the physicalists can't explain is how there is "anybody home" to *experience* all that info processing — why, in other words, all of that is happening to someone who is *someone* and not someone who is a philosophical zombie.
If I follow you correctly, I agree with all of it up to the end part of God is fooled. How does that happen? So I take the problem for the idealist or consciousness monist to be - how has God, the singular subject, the ground of all being, the omniscient, become singular subjects like you and me?
Bernardo Kastrup analogizes it to Dissociative Identity Disorder — we are all God's the Cosmos's "alters"…
I don't think we need to posit that God ***as a whole*** is "fooled" — but we, each of us being a part of God, are fooled (into not seeing that we're part of the whole of God).
We are all and each God, but none of us is all of God; God, meanwhile, is more than us, but is also all of us. More on this theme here: https://hamletschimera.substack.com/p/god-doesnt-suffer-with-us
But if God has alters, that’s like God having a kind of pathological disease. While Kastrup uses that analogy, I don’t think he's focused on giving the theological details of what God is like, but proposing a solution acceptable to materialists and putting idealism on their radar.
I’m most familiar with Vedanta, but Kastrup’s idealism is something like Advaita. The relevant characteristic is there’s a strict identity between the soul and God, they are the exact same thing. Which means on enlightenment, the individual self, that sense of I, ceases to exist, it’s merged into God’s sense of self.
But that means God is presently under the illusion he’s a finite being, undergoing the experience of all the myriad horrors and sufferings of this world. Which raises lots of questions, but the most pressing is how can an omniscient God be ignorant of something (which is a logical contradiction). This isn’t just some minor detail he’s ignorant of, it’s something as fundamental as his true identity.
But I’m not sure if that’s your view because in some parts of your essay you say God is the same as the soul, but also God is more. Given that we have a singular subjective point of view I’m not sure how to make sense of that idea. What do you think happens at enlightenment? If we came to know the truth about it all, what would it feel like to be one of us? Would we cease to exist as a separate individual?
I fully agree that Kastrup's DID analogy brings pathology into the picture when that's neither necessary nor helpful. As I wrote in my follow-up post (https://hamletschimera.substack.com/p/update-chalmers-chalmer-and-consciousness): "If the idea is true, then it’s entirely natural… it’s not a disease, it’s just reality. Rather than analogizing to disease, we could just as well analogize to something positive — perhaps an immersive virtual reality entertainment experience that exceeds our current technological capacities, in which one person could experience the same story from one character’s perspective and then another… True, in that case, the VR experience would be neither permanent nor simultaneous… But one or both of the same points might be true for the DID analogy, too."
Meanwhile, I'm not sure what to say to “God is the same as the soul”. The central pillar of my claim is “ein od milvado,” “There is nothing else but Him.” So okay, sure, God is “the same as the soul” in the same way that God is also the same as the city of Secaucus, New Jersey. Any soul, or any body, or any tuna fish sandwich, anything whatsoever that you can name, is nothing at all except a part of God. Or perhaps put better, an *illusion* of being “a part” of Him, since in an ultimate sense, all separation, all plurality, all divisibility, is an illusion. We (not only our souls but our bodies, the planets, the stars, black holes, dark matter, everything) are dreams that God is having about Himself, entirely within Himself. (More on the latter theme here: https://hamletschimera.substack.com/p/numbers-are-fake .)
Fascinating, thoughtful, and well-written piece. I do wonder, however, if the problem with which you are grappling is really faith vs. agnosticism rather than atheism vs. pantheism. The problem of consciousness is at this point scientifically unanswerable so the answers are only "I don't know" or "it's God."
Thanks Jared! I appreciate that!
I really do think “atheism vs. pantheism” can be a difference in attitude more than in analysis… The pantheist is reverent where the atheist isn’t, toward the same reality on whose basic facts they might well agree. For the pantheist (for me, anyway), reverence is a given, and the key question is not “does God exist” but rather “what *kind* of God exists — One factually indistinguishable from atheism, or one who does literal miracles and chats up Moses on a mountain?”
Meanwhile, to me, the question of consciousness is theoretically distinct from all that, although obviously this inquiry led me from one into the other. But overall, my faith doesn’t depend on any particular empirical analysis of reality. If my faith were contingent on any set of facts, it would be quite brittle. And it isn’t — my faith can accommodate any set of facts, so I can investigate facts using science/logic/philosophy/whatever, and wherever the analysis leads, true faith is capacious enough to dance with the facts. (Remembering that all facts are provisional, since, cf. Descartes and Hume, there’s precious little we can take as certain.)
Pantheism is difficult to square with classical Rabbinic Judaism (see: Spinoza), though I say that as someone who doesn't interpret Genesis as a historical account of creation. Anyway, I secretly don't believe in object permanence (call me a quantum solipsist?), so pantheism doesn't really "feel right" to me.
I prefer an approach rooted in complexity science that sees consciousness as an emergent phenomenon. Rocks aren't conscious, not because there is some fundamental difference in _stuff_, but because that stuff isn't organized in a sufficiently complex way. But, crucially, this doesn't leave consciousness as a mere epiphenomenon ala Huxley. By way of analogy, one could regard societal norms as a emergent property of large groups of people trying to live and function together, but they clearly also reach back "down" to change the behavior of individual actors, as well. Still, it leaves me much closer to Dennett than to Chalmers.
To me, the "hard problem" is determinism. Complex and chaotic systems are _practically_ unpredictable, but as far as I understand, most people still believe them to be fundamentally deterministic. Wikipedia tells me that Dennett is a compatibilist, thought, so hooray for that.
I want to hear more about not believing in object permanence.
And another point, you say, "Correlation doesn’t prove causation, but when you’ve only got one correlate to work with, and that correlate is very clear, it becomes the most plausible candidate for a cause."
That's not accurate, the problem here is we have two way causation. Brain effects mind, but the big problem is, mind effects brain. For example the experience of pain causes physical changes like groaning, taking medication etc. A belief there is a burglar moves my body to lock the doors. This causation from mind to brain is happening all day long.
I think things like beliefs about burglars exist only as info processing, which is to say only as brain processes. They are entirely explicable just the way a pure physicalist would say. So the interaction between sensory inputs, neuron activities creating thoughts about burglars, and further neuron activities creating signals that move your body to lock the doors — all of that is neatly explained by bog-standard physicalism. To my mind, the only thing the physicalists can't explain is how there is "anybody home" to *experience* all that info processing — why, in other words, all of that is happening to someone who is *someone* and not someone who is a philosophical zombie.