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Spinoza is wrongly considered a Pantheist for whom God is simply the physical world. Instead, a careful read of the Ethics reveals Spinoza to be an Idealist, argues Michael Asher.
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In his fascinating presentation during Essentia Foundation’s 2022 work conference, Prof. Caslav Brukner, PhD, discusses what it may be like to be Wigner’s friend, the famous character of an important thought experiment in foundations of quantum entanglement.
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Dr. Eric Cavalcanti, from Griffith University Center for Quantum Dynamics, discusses ways to inform metaphysics by leveraging laboratory experiments with quantum systems in a superposition.
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An introduction to the ‘physics of first-person perspective’ conference, highlighting the relevance of the topics addressed to our understanding of the nature of reality.
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In this episode of Essentia Readings, actress Nadia Hassan reads an article by Bernardo Kastrup, wherein he argues that time is what creates the illusion of personal identity in the framework of one universal mind.
Do we really live in a fundamentally physical universe? Are we essentially material beings? Essentia Foundation is a new force in the cultural dialogue about the nature of reality. Find out more about us.
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We’re releasing a new Analytic Idealism course, produced in a collaboration between Essentia Foundation and Keytoe Academy. Unlike our previous course, which was based on slides and more formal in nature, the present one is more informal and conversational. Our executive director, Bernardo Kastrup, simply talks to his audience without the use of formal visual aids. As such, the course is now easy to follow while you exercise, walk, or even lie in the bath!
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Failure to acknowledge the role that presuppositions play in the pursuit of scientific knowledge grants natural science the privileged status of the science of pure being once enjoyed by rationalist metaphysics; it does not get rid of dogmatism, but merely replaces one kind of uncritical dogmatic realism with another, argues Dr. D’Oro
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Today’s Essentia Readings podcast episode unpacks what makes a good metaphor, why metaphors are so valuable to our pursuit of Truth, and invites us to appreciate the simple elegance and explanatory power of one metaphor in particular, favored both in Eastern and Western thought.
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Prof. Donald Hoffman talks to Essentia Foundation’s Hans Busstra about his theory of conscious agents, according to which space and time are cognitive constructs in consciousness, not an objective scaffolding of the world outside. The interview also touches on Prof. Hoffman’s personal history and life, bringing the warmth of his humanity to the academic rigor of his theories.
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Professor Tallis—a philosopher, poet, novelist, cultural critic, retired medical physician and clinical neuroscientist—discusses the relationship between mind and brain, as well as the big questions about the nature of reality.
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Videos
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The Nobel Prize in physics this year (2022) went the scientists who showed that the physical world is a product of observation and relative to the observer. And so Essentia Foundation’s conference this year is organized in collaboration with the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Vienna (IQOQI-Vienna), home to Prof. Anton Zeilinger, one of this year’s Nobel Laureates in physics. The conference will be hosted by IQOQI-Vienna’s Dr. Markus Müller and feature seven other speakers.
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We tend to think that experiences are given to our personal subjectivity. Dr. Stew shows here, using easy-to-follow Western reasoning, that no such personal self needs to exist for experience itself to exist.
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The West has attempted to develop its own methodology for the objective study of our conscious inner states: phenomenology. A work in progress as it still may be, it provides an antidote to naive positivistic attitudes that have dominated science until very recently. Dr. Stew reviews the historical timeline of this methodology and relates it to materialism and idealism. In so doing, he provides a systematic framework for understanding much of what Essentia Foundation publishes and promotes. This is the first part of a two-part series that will be continued next week, so stay tuned for the follow-up.
From the archives
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The mental health professions may often play the role of enforcing social norms and conventions, as opposed—or in addition—to being methods for understanding and improving our mental lives, argue the authors. Essentia Foundation believes strongly in the scientific and clinical validity, as well as the critical importance, of psychology and psychiatry in reducing suffering in our society. As such, we may hold a different view than that of the authors. Nonetheless, we find this essay well argued and well documented, and believe it does offer thoughtful, valid points even to those who, like us, defend the validity and importance of the mental health professions.
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An informal chat between Dr. Markus Müller (IQOIQ-Vienna, Austrian Academy of Sciences), Dr. Bernardo Kastrup and Hans Busstra (Essentia Foundation), recorded just after the online conference “The physics of first-person perspective.” The conversation provides a tantalizing preview of the themes discussed in the conference, as well as their relevance to how we view the nature of reality.
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In the mental health fields, there are two views towards psychiatric diagnostic categories: the realist and constructionist, which correspond somewhat to materialism and idealism. Arguing that the psychiatric diagnoses we create do not literally exist as discernible brain states, but are instead just helpful constructs, is critically aligned with idealism and offers a very different perspective to patients and their self-image.
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