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The 10 books that will make it hard to believe in a physical universe

Reading | Philosophy | 2023-09-17

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Essentia is starting its own book club on YouTube! In a series of videos, we will discuss 20th-century must reads by authors like Carl Gustav Jung, Noam Chomsky and Thomas Kuhn, to seminal work by idealists such as Schopenhauer. And, of course, we will pay tribute to foundational ancients texts as discussed by, for instance, Peter Kingsley and Patrick Harpur. As a starter, Hans Busstra asked Bernardo Kastrup to pick 10 books from his own shelf that most influenced his philosophical work. In this video, Bernardo briefly runs through the main ideas put forward in these books and how they changed his life. In the upcoming videos, Hans will do the homework by reading and reviewing these 10 books. You are, of course, invited to read along and send in your own insights and questions (please do so via our YouTube community page: https://www.youtube.com/@essentiafoundation/community). The first book to be discussed after this video will be ‘Answer to Job,’ by Carl Gustav Jung.

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Essentia Foundation communicates, in an accessible but rigorous manner, the latest results in science and philosophy that point to the mental nature of reality. We are committed to strict, academic-level curation of the material we publish.

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Bergson versus Descartes: The conflict of worldviews upon which our future may depend

Prof. Larry Nazareth recounts the fundamental difference in perspective that underlies the Cartesian and Bergsonian views of life and world. The former’s dictum states: ‘I compute, algorithmically, therefore I think, symbolically, therefore I am, experientially.’ The latter, however, reverses this dictum: ‘I am, experientially, therefore I think, symbolically, therefore I compute, algorithmically.’ Depending on which of these views we choose to base our understanding of nature and life, we may or may not have a future, Nazareth argues.

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Not just smoke and feathers!

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