In this context of extraordinary change we must be extra careful and vigilant about how we define and look upon human dignity. For it is how we regard ourselves that sets the tone for whether the changes that are coming will tip towards something positive or vastly negative instead. For instance, the way we look upon ourselves will determine whether AI developments will equate us to mere mechanisms that are being rendered increasingly redundant, or creative miracles who will be set freer by the advent of AI. It is how we regard ourselves that will determine whether we care for the millions of Bangladeshis and Dutch whose homes will be flooded by higher sea levels once land ice in Greenland and Antartica melts (which will happen rather suddenly), or regard them merely as cattle that needs to be relocated to some tent camp somewhere dry.
The way we define human dignity is the crux of the matter here, and the common underlying theme that informs all of the converging dynamics cited above. What is it that makes human life valuable? What is it that makes it important? If you think these two questions are synonymous, then that is already an alarming misunderstanding that may determine whether we are all going to hell in a hand basket. For value and importance are two entirely different things, particularly when it comes to human lives.
We often associate both our value and importance with what we do in life. To convince yourself of it, just ask yourself if you think that someone who does nothing for a living is either important or valuable. Work or activity is tightly linked to our sense of dignity, and it has been so for a very long time. Therefore, it is crucial that we approach how activity determines our dignity in an examined, careful manner. It is crucial that we understand the relationship between activity and value on the one hand, and activity and importance on the other.
Value is determined by market dynamics of scarcity or abundance. If very few other people can perform the work you can perform, then your work is valuable. Let me take myself as an example: I am both a philosopher of mind and a computer scientist/engineer. Not many people can do these things, for they require long, arduous education and experience, as well as high intellectual capacity of a certain type. Because not many people out there can sit and design a Neural Processing Unit (NPU, an AI-focused computer processor), I get handsomely rewarded for designing one. In other words, it is market dynamics that determine my value. If something is highly desired but very few people can produce it, these few people become valuable.
But that doesn't mean that tasks that a great many people can perform, despite commanding less value, aren't important. Take trash collection, for instance: most people can perform the task of collecting trash. So trash collectors do not command high salaries, bonuses, or other forms of special financial compensation. If a trash collector becomes unhappy with their pay and decides to quit, countless others can be found to fill the vacancy. So trash collectors do not command high market value. Yet, this does not mean that trash collectors aren't important.
If all trash collectors were to disappear, civilisation would literally come to an end. There can be no industry, no system of education, no high technology, and generally no large-scale human productive activity without trash collection. You may say that, if trash collectors were to quit, you and I could collect the trash ourselves instead. And that is true; but it also means that there would still be trash collectors: you and I. The scenario here is that no one would collect trash, not even you or I. That would be a civilisation-ending scenario, which means that trash collection is very highly important, despite commanding low value.
In contrast, civilisation would continue without people like me: if all computer scientists/engineers and philosophers of mind were to disappear, our high technology and metaphysics would be in trouble but everything else would go merrily on. We would revert to living the way people lived before the Second World War, which was pretty alright. A fairly modern form of life would continue. But without trash collectors, it wouldn't; we would, instead, be thrown back to a pastoralist form of life, after which billions of us would die because pastoralism can't support 8 billion bipedal apes on this small rock. Clearly, thus, trash collectors are more important than philosophers of mind and computer scientists/engineers, even though the latter command more value because of the market dynamics of scarcity.
Now ask yourself this: which matters most when it comes to human dignity, value or importance? Methinks the answer here is crystal clear: importance, of course, is more central to human dignity. Value is merely a matter of changing market dynamics, while importance constitutes the very foundation of human civilisation. A trash collector is more important than me, quite literally, and this should be obvious to everyone, including the trash collector.
But we live in a culture that mistakes value for importance and, therefore, pooh-poohs the trash collector, the farmer, the carpenter, the sewer worker, the roofer, and all those people whose activity constitutes the indispensable foundation of human civilisation, even if they don't command high market value. Such a skewed and incredibly dangerous cultural dynamics, created and maintained by the psychology of urban elites, robs important people of their own sense of dignity. This, in turn, is what feeds a natural but equally skewed and dangerous reaction in the form of populism. For populist politicians pray on the justifiable sense of anger that reigns among those who have been robbed of their dignity by urban elites.
The responsibility for correcting this skewed and harmful state of affairs lies with all of us, but mostly with urban elites, which count me in their ranks. We must re-examined our knee-jerk assumptions and revise the way we look upon, and treat, those doing critically important work without which we couldn't have the lives we lead. We must become explicitly aware of the fundamental distinction between value and importance, and thereby treat important people with the dignity they deserve.
And as for those important people who command less market value than urban elites, it is incumbent upon them to separate their own sense of personal dignity from the knee-jerk discourse of urban elites. Know your importance, regardless of what others think. Those who think you are unimportant are simply confused and taken in by knee-jerk psychological issues; you don't need them to know how important you are. And know that your anger is justified. But beware of letting this justified anger make you easy pray to those eager to leverage it for their own gain, particularly those who, ironically, come precisely from the heart of urban elites and schmooze only with 'valuable' peers.
I regret the tone of my remarks in my interview with Curt Jaimungal, because I greatly respect you and your work. I am influenced by it. I think your promotion of Analytical Idealism has widened the scope of modern philosophical debate and opened up questions and discussions that might not otherwise have been possible. I apologise for expressing myself in a way you found hurtful.
When I was speaking to Curt about your work, I was talking to him as if it were a conversation between the two of us. We had already had several informal chats when he was in London soon before our discussion. Unfortunately, I was not thinking about the impact of the conversation on people who might not know very much about you, and for whom my comments could have been misleading. If I had thought more, I would first have made clear how Analytical Idealism differs from physicalism, before moving on to say that your Idealist position also includes some aspects of physicalism and reductionism. This became clear to me soon before my conversation with Curt because I had just read you new book.
In the subtitle of Analytical Idealism in a Nutshell, you call it “the 21st century’s only plausible metaphysics”. This is a provocative claim, and it provoked me into thinking about the basis for your rejection of all other forms of idealism. I could only conclude that this is because you still share some of the default assumptions of physicalism, including naturalism and reductionism, as you yourself make clear.
On page 2 of Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell, you write that Analytical Idealism “embraces reductionism”, by which you mean that “complex phenomena can be explained in terms of simpler ones.” As you point out, simpler does not necessarily mean smaller, but in the context of biology, reductionism in practice means reducing organisms to molecular processes, and behaviour to the activity of nerves.
I have spent sixty years struggling against reductionism in biology, psychology and consciousness studies. In biology, reductionism has long ruled the roost in the form of molecular biology, focussed on genes and other molecules. This reductionist attitude has inhibited holistic research in developmental biology, animal behaviour, psychology and medicine by forcing everything into a physicalist mould, pointing down towards the supposed ultimate foundation of everything, fundamental quantum physics. In the light of my own personal history, your advocacy of reductionism made me think of your position as close to physicalism, in spite of you being an Idealist.
You also embrace naturalism. This is your own definition: “The phenomena of the external world unfold spontaneously, according to nature’s own inherent dispositions, and not according to external intervention by a divinity outside nature” (also on p. 2). In common usage, physicalism, naturalism and atheism are closely intertwined, and often treated as identical. Naturalism borrows its widespread credibility in the secular world from the prestige of physicalist science. I know that you distinguish Analytical Idealism from physicalism by making consciousness, rather than physical processes, fundamental, but as you yourself make explicit, you carry over several physicalist assumptions and attitudes into your brand of idealism, which is what I tried to summarize in the phrase “idealist physicalism”. I agree this is misleading, and it would be more accurate to say “physicalist-flavoured idealism”.
Our most fundamental disagreement concerns God. All believers in God, including me, are idealists in the sense that they regard divine consciousness as fundamental. You want to keep God out of science and philosophy, especially any kind of Abrahamic God. Espousing naturalism enables you to do so as a matter of principle. But even if you dismiss anything to do with Christianity, Judaism and Islam, Indian religions have plenty of examples of trinitarian or advaitic (non-dual) idealism. Moreover, most forms of trinitarian or advaitic idealism do not involve an external supernatural God intervening in the otherwise spontaneous running of nature. They are not claiming, as you put it, an “external intervention by a divinity outside nature”, but rather see divine consciousness as underlying and sustaining all nature all the time. The philosopher David Bentley Hart, for example, shows this very clearly in his book The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss.
We agree that there is a need to move on from old-style physicalism. We agree that idealism provides a better philosophical overview. But I take seriously religious or theological idealisms, whereas you rule them out a priori by invoking the naturalist principle. Then the only form of idealism left standing is you own.
It was unfair of me to call your form of Analytical Idealism an armchair theory and I am sorry about this remark. I tarred you with the brush of other philosophers, but in fact you have repeatedly engaged with detailed scientific and empirical findings. You have also made some visionary suggestions for empirical research. In your book More Than Allegory (2016), you created a science-fiction type fantasy in which you envisaged experiments on psychedelics in which people were given intravenous infusions of psychoactive substances (“the juice mix”) that prolonged their altered states of consciousness so they could explore them in great detail. Subsequently, this experiment was actually carried out, using dimethyl tryptamine (DMT), at Imperial College, London, with some very brave volunteers. The results were published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
You and I are both used to controversies and recognize that other people sincerely hold differing views. Ideas develop through dialogue, and we have already taken part in a good-natured discussion which anyone can watch online.
I hope that we will be able to continue our discussions in a spirit of openness.
06-Dec-2024 update: Rupert's rejoinder to the response below has now been published and can be found here.
Over the past several days, multiple people have commented in my blog and social media spaces about criticisms of Analytic Idealism made by Dr. Rupert Sheldrake in the Theories of Everything podcast/YouTube channel. Before today, I hadn't seen the video and thus had largely dismissed most of those comments as probably exaggerated, as I've known Rupert for years, and know him to be a careful, nuanced thinker and an impeccable gentleman. Today, however, after receiving yet another comment, I looked up the segment in question, which I link to below (see time stamp 8:14 min).
I confess to have been taken aback by this video. I shall try to respond to Rupert's criticisms as objectively as I can, but I will likely fail at times. For I have read, respected, and admired Rupert's work for years before I even started publishing my own. His attack comes as an entirely unexpected curveball from someone quite close to my philosophical (and even personal) heart, and thus brings up emotions that are best left out of analytic discourse.
Here are my responses, in the same chronological order with which Rupert's criticisms are laid out in the video above.
FOR SCIENCE, IT'S BUSINESS AS USUAL
Rupert seems to consider it a weakness of Analytic Idealism that it doesn't contradict science. I, on the other hand, consider it not as much a virtue as a prerequisite for any tenable metaphysics. For science has worked phenomenally well in attempting to model and predict the behavior of nature for the past four centuries. Any metaphysics implying that science should not work is thus simply wrong, on overwhelming empirical grounds. Science surely doesn't replace level-headed metaphysics, as some scientists have naively maintained, but as a modelling and predictive method it obviously works. And Rupert, as a scientist, surely knows this.
I have never been anti-science, much to the contrary. To my dismay, more and more I realize that a significant minority of my readers thought of me, for some reason, as being in some kind of anti-science crusade. I even expressed my befuddlement about this recently, as I don't understand where this vastly mistaken impression comes from. It has never been correct. Anyone paying attention to my output will definitely have noticed that I ground much of what I say in scientific results, and have done so from the outset.
Perhaps Rupert's point is that Analytic Idealism doesn't sufficiently open new degrees of freedom or avenues of investigation for science. But if so, that is simply wrong. Over the years, I have tirelessly emphasized precisely these new avenues for scientific investigation; so often, in fact, that I don't even know where to start quoting from my corpus.
In general lines, because, under Analytic Idealism, our minds are simply dissociated from the cognitive space that constitutes the rest of nature, it is entirely conceivable that factors that weaken the dissociation could lead to phenomena such as forms of telepathy and clairvoyance. I never elaborated at length on this merely because I am not an expert in parapsychology and do not have the background required to say something of distinguished value here. I am also not personally very interested in extraordinary phenomena because I find the ordinary mysterious and confusing enough. I say this with no prejudice or judgment; it's just how I feel. Either way, if Rupert's point was that Analytic Idealism doesn't open the doors to new avenues of investigation in science, such as those explored in his own work, then that is false.
Rupert highlights that Analytic Idealism is still naturalist and reductionist. That is entirely correct. I think the world unfolds spontaneously, according to its own inherent dispositions (i.e., the observed regularities we call the 'laws of nature'), and without supernatural intervention from an outside agent beyond the boundaries of nature itself. I am promoting an analytic ontology, not a religion. And I think reductionism, if interpreted correctly (namely, that complex things can be explained in terms of simpler ones, as opposed to the vulgar view of reductionism according to which big things must be reducible to small things), is more than likely true; or should at the very least be the operationally preferred avenue for modeling nature, since it has worked well for a few centuries now. The only view my naturalism and reductionism contradict is some form of Abrahamic theism, literally interpreted. But if Rupert's criticism is motivated by his theistic views, I think they are inappropriate in the context of science and philosophy; that is, his criticisms don't count. What he sees as a liability, I see as a strength.
ANALYTIC IDEALISM IS JUST A FORM OF PHYSICALISM
Prior to today, I could never have imagined that such a superficial misunderstanding could come from a nuanced and careful thinker and communicator as I have known Rupert to be. It is an in-your-face misrepresentation of Analytic Idealism, a vulgar straw man, conveyed in a confusingly enthusiastic, authoritative, and definitive tone. I'd have expected him to, at the very least, have preambled his unfortunate mischaracterization with words like, "as far as I understand it," or "insofar as I know from briefly looking at it," or something to that effect. That would have been a bare minimum, for the sake of transparency, caution, and honesty. But he presented himself, in both tone and demeanour, as an expert thoroughly acquainted with the thing he was liberally mischaracterizing.
The only metaphysical equivalence between Analytic Idealism and mainstream Physicalism is that both acknowledge the existence of an external world beyond our individual minds. But this is surely hard to contest, short of some form of solipsism. Even the emerging physics of first-person perspective (see video below, for instance) indirectly acknowledges some ontological ground common to different observers, and wherein observers appear to one another, even if such common ground isn't strictly physical. Under Analytic Idealism, it is mental, what we call 'physicality' being simply how we cognitively represent this common ontological ground upon observations. In other words, physicality is a dashboard representation, upon measurement, of the real and mental world that is measured. But this mental world measured is really real; it is really out there and doesn't depend on observation. After all, there is something that is measured. Why would Rupert expect anything else? How could anything else be defended in an analytically or empirically viable manner?
Beyond this, Analytic Idealism is entirely distinct from mainstream Physicalism, to such a vast and obvious degree it seems pointless to explain further to anyone who has ever become modestly acquainted with my output. Yet, I do acknowledge that thinking of Analytic Idealism as in some sense equivalent to Physicalism is a common misconception among superficial and careless 'social media pundits.' But I know Rupert not to be one of those. Be that as it may, I responded to this misconception in many places, most notably in my new book, Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell. I quote the relevant passage below:
“Well, Bernardo, if all science is still valid under Analytic Idealism, and there is still a world out there independent of us, then Analytic Idealism is basically Physicalism under a different label; it all boils down to the same thing.”
This astonishingly shortsighted perspective is surprisingly common. If you identified with it, don’t blame yourself too harshly. The reason why the perspective is shortsighted is that it wholly ignores the colossal differences in the implications of Analytic Idealism when compared to mainstream Physicalism. But our culture rewards quick judgment calls and, therefore, discourages the depth of thinking required to explore the implications of new ideas.
Under Analytic Idealism, your life, your metabolism, is not the cause or generator of your consciousness, but merely what your private mentation looks like from the outside; i.e., from across your dissociative boundary. Life is what the dissociation looks like. Therefore, the end of life is the end of the dissociation, not the end of consciousness.
The end of a dissociative process is also not the end of the mental states held within the dissociative boundary; it is merely the end of the dissociative boundary. This means that the mental states previously held by the alter—your lifetime of memories and insights—are released into the broader cognitive context of nature-at-large upon death. Our hard-earned memories and insights—typically the result of much suffering—are not lost upon death but, instead, become available to nature-at- large. Contrast this with the physicalist view: when you die, all your memories and insights are just lost forever, and all that suffering was for nothing. Clearly, these two scenarios aren’t even remotely similar, and their differences are of great relevance to our values, to how we make our life choices, and generally experience our lives.
In addition, although Analytic Idealism preserves— arguably even strengthens—the rationale for drugs and surgery in medicine, it opens an additional avenue for the treatment of organic ailments: talk therapy and related practices. For under Analytic Idealism, the body is not a mere mechanism distinct from mind, but the extrinsic appearance of mental processes. Therefore, any organic ailment is, at root, a mental ailment. This doesn’t mean that you can cure cancer with positive thinking—as we’ve discussed before, the ego complex is naturally dissociated from autonomous functions, and thus has limited causal influence on them. But it does mean that it’s sensible to research whether we can reach further down into our physiology through psychological means, so to address some ‘physical’ ailments. This, in fact, could be the missing account of the so-called placebo effect, which under Physicalism is just a vexing anomaly. Can we deliberately induce the effect through psychological methods, now that a coherent metaphysical framework validates and accounts for it?
I have already explored the implications of Analytic Idealism at length in previous writings, so won’t repeat all that here. It suffices to mention—as I did above—what I believe to be two of the more important ones. The invitation to you— especially if you feel tempted to regard Analytic Idealism as equivalent to Physicalism in any important sense—is to think about the different implications of these very different views. What changes for you if you understand yourself to be not a physical mechanism, but a mental being, whose mental contents and core subjectivity will never be lost to nature?
ANALYTIC IDEALISM MAKES NO EXPERIMENTAL PREDICTIONS THAT DISTINGUISH IT FROM PHYSICALISM
This is another rather crass and patently false misrepresentation, despite having been communicated with a tone of authority and definiteness. Again, I recently tackled this common but remarkably superficial straw man in my latest book. Here is the relevant passage:
“Isn’t Analytic Idealism unfalsifiable?”
Before directly answering this question, it’s important to notice that, when Karl Popper proposed falsifiability as a requirement for scientific theories, he was talking about, well, scientific theories—i.e., theories that model and predict the behavior of nature, not what nature is. A scientific theory must be falsifiable in the sense that it must make predictions about nature’s future behavior that can be checked against experimental outcomes. If this is not the case, the theory is unfalsifiable and, therefore, not a proper scientific theory.
But when it comes to Analytic Idealism—and mainstream Physicalism too—we’re not talking about a scientific theory that predicts nature’s future behavior; instead, we’re talking about metaphysical statements about what nature is. The criteria for choosing the best theory in this case is more diverse than falsifiability: they entail internal logical consistency, contextual coherence, conceptual parsimony, explanatory power, and empirical adequacy. The latter criterion means that the implications of a proper metaphysical theory must not contradict established science. And insofar as established science is falsifiable, a metaphysical theory must indeed relate to falsifiability, but only in an indirect way.
The applicable question is thus whether Analytic Idealism is consistent with established science. And the answer is an overwhelming ‘yes.’ As we have discussed earlier, established science has shown that—short of unfalsifiable theoretical fantasies for which there is no positive evidence—physical entities do not have standalone existence, being instead a product of measurement. This is exactly what Analytic Idealism maintains, since all ‘physical’ entities are dashboard representations of measurements, which only endure while a measurement is being performed. And it directly contradicts mainstream Physicalism, which presupposes precisely that physical entities, for being fundamental, must have standalone existence independent of observation.
Established science has also shown that there are cases— such as during the psychedelic state, as discussed earlier— in which brain activity decreases, while the richness and intensity of experience increases. This is at least very hard to make sense of under mainstream Physicalism, according to which there is nothing to experience but brain activity. But it can be comfortably accommodated by Analytic Idealism, according to which brain activity is just what inner experience looks like, from an external perspective; i.e., it is but an image of inner experience. And unlike causes, images don’t need to be complete: they don’t need to reveal everything there is to know about the phenomenon they represent. In the case of psychedelics, the images leave quite a bit out.
Moreover, psychedelics are only one case in which, contrary to physicalist expectations, brain function and the richness of experience are inversely correlated. As we have seen above, constriction of blood flow to the brain due to strangulation or G-forces—which reduce brain metabolism due to oxygen deprivation, or hypoxia—can lead to psychedelic-like trances and “memorable dreams.” Hyperventilation—which also constricts blood flow to the brain because it induces high blood alkalinity levels—can lead to life-transforming insights, a phenomenon leveraged by some therapeutic breathwork techniques. Even outright brain damage can lead, in some specific cases, to richer inner experience. In a condition called ‘acquired savant syndrome’ (look it up), some people who have suffered brain damage because of head trauma incurred during car accidents, lightning strikes, and even bullet wounds to the head, suddenly manifest extraordinary cognitive skills such as artistic talents, the ability to perform complex calculations almost instantaneously, and perfect memory. A large group of Vietnam war veterans who suffered damage to the frontal or parietal lobes has also been shown to have a higher propensity to life-transforming religious experiences (see: “Neural correlates of mystical experience,” by Irene Cristofori et al., published in Neuropsychologia, 2016). Even patients who suffered brain damage because of surgery for the removal of tumors experience significantly higher “self-transcendence” (see: “The spiritual brain: Selective cortical lesions modulate human self- transcendence,” by Cosimo Urgesi et al., published in Neuron, 2010). Moreover, a group of so-called ‘trance mediums’ displayed significantly reduced activity in areas of the brain related to reasoning and language processing, precisely when engaged in activities that require high reasoning and language processing (see: “Neuroimaging during trance state: A contribution to the study of dissociation,” by Julio Fernando Peres et al., published in PLoS ONE, 2012).
I could go on and on, but you get the picture. Although most of the times brain activity directly correlates with the richness of inner experience, in some specific but broad and consistent cases the opposite is true. These cases are the black swans that disprove Physicalism and substantiate Analytic Idealism.
The scientific evidence discussed above not only addresses the question of falsifiability for Analytic Idealism and mainstream Physicalism, it also provides positive empirical confirmation for Analytic Idealism across very different fields of science.
Clearly, Analytic Idealism is one of the most empirically-substantiated metaphysical hypotheses out there. It has 50 years of experimental evidence in Foundations of Physics going for it and, insofar as it lines up with, and provides metaphysical ground to, Integrated Information Theory, also decades in Neuroscience of Consciousness. Remarkably, Rupert's criticism here is the very opposite of the truth; a truth he has been overwhelmingly in a position to know for the past many years.
ANALYTIC IDEALISM IS AN ARMCHAIR THEORY
The use of the "armchair theory" stick has historically been meant to be derogatory and insulting, in both science and philosophy, which Rupert is very well aware of. It is entirely unnecessary in the context of argument-based, constructive exchanges meant to advance a debate between people who respect each other and each other's work. In short, it is the equivalent of a low blow. Why Rupert would choose to deliberately, and utterly unnecessarily, insult me is beyond my comprehension, for I have never been anything but kind and supportive of his work, and of him as a person (think of his TEDx censorship debacle, during which I came out in his defense to the point of vowing to never again give a TEDx talk). If I have offended Rupert at some point since the last time we were together (during a dinner in the fall of 2018, if I recall), I have done so wholly unknowingly. Our tone towards each other, and each other's work, had always been cordial and respectful. I simply do not know where this change comes from.
Be that as it may, his accusation immediately raises the question of how, precisely, Rupert's own trinitarian, theist ontology of transcendence (which he enthusiastically discusses in the second half of the video above, along overtly biblical lines) isn't armchair theory itself. How does Rupert ground a transcendent but deliberate, interventionist, almighty deity, along with its triune nature, objectively and empirically? What experiments has he proposed to verify this non-trivial hypothesis? By his own criteria, and short of shameless hypocrisy, these are critical, potentially disqualifying questions for evaluating any metaphysical theory, including his own.
THE TROUBLE WITH ANALYTIC IDEALISM IS THAT IT CAN'T EXPLAIN MATTER
This is the most vulgar and ostensibly bad-faith misrepresentation of my work in the entire criticism. Rupert creates an outrageous straw man by overtly suggesting that my attempt to account for matter is limited to the "ripples on the ocean" metaphor. He also seems to misuse his personal acquaintance with me to project the authority of being privy to my private thinking on the matter. Obviously, he is not. His criticisms make it clear to me that Rupert either has no scholarly-level understanding of Analytic Idealism (let alone a privileged one), or has chosen to make statements that are contrary to such an understanding. I sincerely comprehend neither scenario.
Rupert is outrageously misrepresenting my attempt to make my work accessible to the general public through metaphor as lack of substance, rigour, and precision; and he knows it. That he, as a scholar, would choose to do so is beyond me. In my opinion, his statements here come dangerously close to a deliberate attempt to misinform by creating straw men, which is unbecoming of any scholar, let alone Rupert Sheldrake. And if his defence here is that he simply wasn't aware of the depth of my output (which I'd find totally implausible, as I know that he knows better than that), then the authoritative tone he chose to adopt, and the definitive statements of fact he chose to make, are questionable in precisely the same manner. When you know that you aren't necessarily familiar with what you are talking about, you just don't talk the way he does in the video above.
ANALYTIC IDEALISM IS WRONG BECAUSE IT STOPS AT VERSE 2 OF THE BOOK OF GENESIS
It is obvious to anyone how I am going to defend myself from this particular criticism. But before I do so, allow me to say this: I profoundly respect religious writings and intuitions. I believe they hint at aspects of reality that cannot be captured in language, Aristotelian logic, or conceptual models. I wrote extensively about this in my book More Than Allegory. As such, I am open to the possibility that Analytic Idealism is indeed incomplete; as a matter of fact, I'm downright sure of it, for how can bipedal apes come up with accurate and complete models of nature? So I do not pooh-pooh religion-based criticisms of Analytic Idealism. I've had no religious upbringing myself, but this also means that I have no axe to grind against religion.
However, I do not think that views based on religious intuition count as analytic or empirical arguments. And this is precisely what Rupert is ostensibly attempting to do here: to denounce Analytic Idealism as an inadequate philosophy on analytic and scientific grounds. This is obviously bad form, insofar as it misleadingly veils religious motivations with the veneer of rational argument. And it certainly doesn't justify the vast straw men, misrepresentations and misleading statements made with an equally misleading tone of authority.
GOD IS THE BASIC GROUND OF CONSCIOUSNESS, THEREFORE ANALYTIC IDEALISM IS WRONG
I shall leave this one unanswered, even though it's the part of his criticism where he spends by far the most time on, and seems to be emotionally invested in the most. I highlight it here simply because it seems to confirm a feeling I had throughout Rupert's activist manifesto against Analytic Idealism: I suspect that he, because of his religious dispositions, feels offended by Analytic Idealism's naturalist, reductionist ethos. Perhaps he sees the purely rational, dry, empirically-grounded articulation in my latest book as a betrayal of some tacit, implicit, unspoken pact of trust between us, of which I was unaware. Perhaps he sees my renewed emphasis on the complete and unreserved compatibility between science and Analytic Idealism, which I've always taken for granted to be self-evident, as a similar betrayal. But it is useless to speculate further on his motivations, as I have no direct access to Rupert's inner state when he chose to say what he said. All I am left with is my bafflement and disappointment in face of what he did say, and of how he said it.
Personally, I don't see any fundamental contradiction between naturalism and reductionism on the one hand, and religious faith on the other, provided that one isn't a literalist. I regard nature as a vast ocean of subjectivity, which says enough about how these things could be reconciled. But I don't think it is appropriate for a scholar to misrepresent and attack another's analytic views because of religious convictions. Neither is the attack appropriate if it is motivated not by level-headed argument, but an emotional reaction to a perceived religious offence or betrayal instead.
I profoundly regret this episode, as it has robbed me of my dearly-held respect for someone I have overtly admired and regarded as a role model for many years. My disappointment is bitter, and the criticism, invalid as it is, did sting at a very personal level. But onwards we go, in the spirit of honesty and openness.
UPDATE post-publication: Someone from Facebook reached out to me by email and offered to correct the issue with my page, which had been incorrectly suspended by their algorithm/AI. The problem has been sorted out now. I appreciate Facebook's reaching out to me. I do hope, though, that their algorithm is improved so issues like this can be prevented from happening in the first place.
A few days ago I left Twitter, despite having 20K followers there. This was not an abrupt decision, but one I have been seriously considering for well over a year. After Twitter was acquired and turned into a private company, I noticed significant changes over the months and years that followed. Any post with even a very slight political take would attract hordes of crass, obnoxious replies from accounts that didn't follow me. Many were likely bots, but not all. In my experience, the broader community there has turned rather vulgar, so eventually it became impractical to moderate my presence to keep it minimally civil. And then, recent changes made it possible for blocked users to again see my posts, rendering moderation even harder. That was the final straw for me; I kept my account going until the US election, to reach people until that crucial moment, but no longer. I regret leaving my 20K followers, but you have alternatives to keep following my work.
As if by synchronicity, only a couple of days after my leaving Twitter, Facebook suspended my 'Bernardo Kastrup' page without any explanation as to why. On the announcement of the suspension, there was a link called 'More details.' Clicking on it, however, briefly opened an empty window that closed automatically in less than a second. I tried it in multiple computers, with multiple browsers and operating systems, but with no change. There was an option to protest Facebook's decision, but every time I tried to submit my protest, I'd get the message: "We cannot process your request at this time." This went on for over 24h until I gave up. Eventually, I found out how to check my page status elsewhere, getting the screen below:
Contradictorily, the screen says that my page was suspended due to violations of community standards, but also gives me the "good news" that my page has no violations of community standards! Clicking on either link from the "Your page has been suspended" lines does not clarify the problem. At some point a pop-up window highlights specifically that impersonating someone else is a violation of community standards. This suggests that Facebook thinks that I am impersonating Bernardo Kastrup (!), but even that isn't quite clear. Thinking of it, I had indeed updated my profile photo just before the suspension, using (with authorisation) professional photos originally made for an article in a French magazine. Perhaps Facebook's AI thought I was impersonating the famous Bernardo Kastrup from the French magazine! Be that as it may, there is no way to contact a person to clarify the issue. If Facebook's AI thinks you violated something, they suspend your account without an explanation and there's nothing you can do about it, other than fill out a 'feedback' form that will most-likely just add to some statistics, but not be read by a human. There's just no reasonable recourse, for the process is entirely opaque and rather arbitrary.
I had had some weird issues with Facebook in the previous weeks. Twice Facebook cancelled my sharing of posts by Essentia Foundation because apparently I had shared pornography (!). I laughed it off and didn't make an issue of it. But now I realise that those events were harbingers of things to come.
So I have been effectively forced to leave Facebook, and thus decided to leave all other Meta platforms as well, including my newly-created accounts on Instagram and Threads. This is not because of any political or activist position against Meta, or even as a protest against what happened (I can't get mad at mere AI), but because I simply do not trust those platforms and do not want to spend the significant effort required to (re-)build a following there just to see my accounts arbitrarily suspended in a couple of years. It makes no sense for me to build up an initial presence on Threads or Instagram, or to start a new Facebook page.
I left Twitter because it has become a wild-west due to lack of moderation and enforcement of community standards; it became a downright rude, obnoxious, unsafe space. So I support community standards enforcement, as Facebook tries to do. But then, the enforcement should be minimally logical and transparent, not ridiculously arbitrary and opaque as it turns out to be. Twitter and Facebook are now at opposite extremes of a spectrum, neither of which makes it minimally attractive for me to build or maintain a presence there. Neither seems to be reliable, or even viable, anymore as a platform for a (small) public figure to engage their audience.
I am still active on my relatively large YouTube community, BlueSky, Mastodon and LinkedIn. The latter one I use only for posts related to my technology and business activities, not philosophy. I am considering re-starting a discussion forum/community to replace my Twitter/Facebook presence. Such a forum/community would (will?) be owned by me and run on private servers not subject to third-party control. If (when?) I go ahead with this, you will hear it here and in my remaining social media platforms. I also plan to become much more active on my YouTube channel, cultivating a larger community there in the coming months. I'll be doing live community events, such as Ask-Me-Anythings (AMAs), starting from next year. I will also make more use of this blog for community related messages, such as this one. Notice that you can always check this page to see updates to my social media presence, including new platforms, as they come online. 2025 will be refreshing and exciting, a vigorous new start to my online presence, more focused on community building and more direct interactions between me and my audience.
I sense a synchronistic ethos behind my misadventures with social media. Just as my new book comes out, events push me away from the superficiality and brevity of social media, to more thoughtful, in-depth, content-rich spaces such as this blog, YouTube (the latter of which I plan, again, to make much more extensive use of starting next year), and a potential forum/community. I accept that this is what life is pushing me towards, and will happily act accordingly.
Believing the right thing—the right theory, idea, or principle—for the wrong reasons can sometimes be as bad, or even worse, than believing the wrong thing. The right belief for the wrong reasons is never truly transformative, never really sinks into the core of our being, and may even create cognitive dissonances that make it harder to navigate life than under the guidance of untrue beliefs.
In my social media interactions over the years, I have come to realise that a small but significant minority of people who endorse my views, or even merely respect me as a public intellectual, do so for the wrong reasons. While keenly aware that what I'll say below can only reduce—never boost—my audience and book sales, my commitment to truth and honesty is too overwhelming for me to overlook this issue. Therefore, here are some of the wrong reasons for you to take Analytic Idealism seriously, or even respect me as a public intellectual.
I believe Bernardo because he is anti-mainstream
While I am very critical of mainstream physicalism, I am so because of objective reasons, such as physicalism's internal inconsistency, empirical inadequacy, lack of conceptual parsimony, and glaring lack of explanatory power. I do not do so merely because physicalism happens to be the mainstream view. There are many—perhaps even most—mainstream views, beyond metaphysics, that are reasonable and well-based empirically, so I happily endorse them. Let me repeat this for clarity: I believe that a lot of mainstream thinking is largely correct, this being partly the reason why it is mainstream.
I have nothing fundamentally against the mere fact that some idea is mainstream; only against unreason. As a matter of fact, I hope that Analytic Idealism will, one day, become mainstream. That's what I am working for, so how could I be fundamentally against 'mainstreaming'? If reason prevails in mainstream thinking, then hurray for mainstream thinking!
I believe Bernardo because he is anti-science
I am not, and have never been, anti-science; much to the contrary. Even a cursory look at any single piece I've written—let alone the body of my work—will reveal that I systematically base my views on scientific results, as divulged in papers published in respected scientific journals. I take science very seriously. My first job title at CERN was 'scientist,' and I am rather proud of it. Science has been my life.
It is true that I have strongly criticised certain pieces of scientific work and—perhaps even more conspicuously—certain scientists. I am comfortable admitting that some of the scientists I've come across in my public-facing work have, in my opinion, deliberately misled the public, even outright lied. There are dishonest scientists out there, and I have met at least two. I am also comfortable admitting that there is plenty of published science that is flat-out wrong, sloppy, valueless, even dangerous. And I will point out those flaws at every opportunity I get. Does this mean that I am anti-science? Precisely not. Peer-review and peer-criticism are foundations of science, so my criticisms are part of the scientific method. They are intended to improve science, not destroy it. They reflect my commitment to science, not my rejection of it.
Aside from everything that is wrong in science—after all, it is a human activity susceptible to the gamut of human vices—there is a lot that is right. We owe a whole lot to science today, including the device you are using to read this, the medical procedure that has saved your life (and mine) at some point in the past, our understanding of the cosmos—which is today far broader than it was a mere century ago—and so many other facets of life that we take entirely for granted. If you bet on science, flawed as it is, you are overwhelmingly more likely to get it right than wrong. That you could sometimes get it wrong does not contradict the statement.
I believe in Analytic Idealism because it denies the myth of facts or objective truths
Analytic Idealism does no such thing, much to the contrary. It is a realist philosophy: there is an external world out there, whose nature and behaviour does not dependent on our preferences, wishes, views, opinions, morning affirmations, or even presence. It's a world that is what it is and does what it does, in the way it does it, regardless of whether we like it or not, witness it or not, believe it or not. Yes, it is a mental—an experiential—world, but its mentation does not depend on ours. As such, from our point of view, it is truly an objective world.
The things that are the case about the world are objective facts. That the world is mental does not deny the existence of such facts; it does not render the reality of the world dependent on our personal opinions. Beyond opinions there are facts, and when the opinions do not correspond to these facts, the opinions are simply wrong and that's all there is to it.
Analytic Idealism maintains that the colloquially 'physical' world—i.e., the things we perceive around us—is indeed merely a personal perspective, a dashboard representation created by us. But the real world that underlies perception—the thing that is perceived, that modulates the states of our perception—is not perspectival or relative; it is absolute and cares not about our perspective, just as the sky outside the airplane doesn't care about the airplane's dashboard indications: it is what it is regardless of perspective.
It is thus a vulgar and pernicious misunderstanding of Analytic Idealism to think that it is a relativist philosophy, either metaphysically or morally. It is no such a thing. Under Analytic Idealism there is a reality out there that doesn't depend on our views or opinions in the least bit. Under Analytic Idealism there are such things as facts, wrong opinions, lies and misrepresentations. Under Analytic Idealism there are objective criteria of truth, and there is such a thing as truth.
I believe Bernardo because he is anti-authority, in the sense of so-called 'experts'
I am surely anti-authoritarianism—i.e., against the misuse of authority for the sake of personal power over others—but certainly not anti-authority. Human knowledge has advanced to the point where no human being can master every bit of information and reasoning required to form a strictly independent opinion about everything that matters. It is fatally naive to think that one can always trust one's own call on every matter, above the opinion of experts who have dedicated their lives to studying the particular matter at hand. We must delegate certain judgments, and when we do so, we must rely on the expertise of others: the authority of the doctor that operates on your child (or would you prefer to cut into your child yourself?), of the pilot that flies your parents home (or would you prefer to pilot the airplane yourself?), of the technician that installs your home's electrical systems (or would you prefer to grab the wires yourself?), and so on.
None of the above means that authority is always right; it obviously isn't, for humans are fallible. There are many cases in which judgment calls made by authorities have gone very wrong. And you will often see me calling those out, criticising them strongly. This, too, is part of the game of improving the reliability of authority, not of trying to get rid of it. The more one knows, the more one realises how much one doesn't know. I know enough to know that I must rely on other people's expertise in a great many scenarios that are integral to life.
The thing that seems to get lost on people sometimes is this: statistically, we are better off trusting authority. Yes, authorities can make terrible judgment calls sometimes and, as a consequence, someone dies on an operating table, in a plane crash, or in a house fire. But if Joe the gardener, as much as we love him, were always the one performing the operation, flying the airplane, or installing your home's electrical system, then people would die almost every time they would undergo an operation, fly on an airplane, or flip a switch at home. Relying on authority and expertise is statistically best, and it is based on statistics that we must make social choices, not individual or anecdotal cases. Thus, no, I am not anti-authority or anti-expertise; I'm a little smarter than that.
As a matter of fact, I think the social backlash against authority and expertise that we are witnessing today is very dangerous. The other day someone showed me a comment that we moderated away on an Essentia Foundation posting, because we didn't want to let the commenter make a fool of himself. I don't recall his exact words, so I will paraphrase:
These experts are all full of shit, they can't think straight. It is so obvious that science is wrong about even the most basic things. For instance, this notion that space is a vacuum surrounding the Earth—if it were so, the air would be sucked into space and there would be no atmosphere! It's so obviously wrong, I don't know why people trust anything experts say.
No, this isn't from a completely uneducated farmer or fisherman in a far-away land; it is from someone educated and engaged enough to follow Essentia Foundation. Not only was this person utterly unable to understand how much he doesn't understand what is going on, he was also arrogant enough to think others understand even less. This combination of ignorance and hubris would be comical if it weren't so extraordinarily dangerous in a democracy, where every vote counts the same. Social media is giving clueless hubris—rooted in the Dunning-Kruger effect—a megaphone.
As much as I am aware that the popularity of my own views and philosophy largely rides on this dangerous wave of skepticism against expertise and authority, I do not espouse or support it. I don't do what I do so to 'stick it to the man,' or get some kind of vindictive catharsis at the expense of elites (though I do confess to being a natural anti-elitist), or 'put the authorities in their place,' or any other emotion-driven objective disguised as reason; I do it because I think my metaphysical views make more sense than the current alternatives; that's all. The mature attitude here is critical respect for authority: I will choose to trust the consensus among experts if I am not qualified to know better (even though I know that the experts can get it wrong, for they are humans too, and I consciously accept that risk); but if I am qualified—not because I read Joe the gardener's latest social media post, but because I studied the extant literature in depth and have the intellectual background required to evaluate it—then I will be critical of such consensus if I conclude that it is wrong. My criticism will then add a voice to the cultural debate and, perhaps, shift the consensus view among experts, just as Analytic Idealism is doing today. Again, this is an attempt to improve the reliability of authority, not to get rid of it.
So what, then, are the good reasons to endorse Analytic Idealism?
There is only one good reason: it is because it makes better rational sense than the alternatives; that's it; it's that simple and uncomplicated. Nothing else is a valid reason to espouse Analytic Idealism or trust what I have to say. If you do so for any other reason, may this brief essay be an invitation to you to reconsider your views and, if need be, abandon your current opinion of me and my work.
Philosophers of mind talk much about the so-called 'Hard Problem of Consciousness.' But is it a real, objective problem to be solved, or just the subjective reflection of a confused way of thinking? And in the latter case, where and how, precisely, does the problem arise? In this essay, you will be surprised at how obvious and quaint the thought error is that underlies the hard problem, and flabbergasted that so many otherwise smart, educated people can consider the whole business a mystery of some sort. The essay is an extract from my new book, Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell, which is coming out at the end of October 2024.
To see why Physicalism fails to explain experience, notice that there is nothing about physical parameters—i.e., quantities and their abstract relationships, as given by, e.g., mathematical equations—in terms of which we could deduce, in principle, the qualities of experience. Even if neuroscientists knew, in all minute detail, the topology, network structure, electrical firing charges and timings, etc., of my visual cortex, they would still be unable to deduce, in principle, the experiential qualities of what I am seeing. This is the so-called ‘hard problem of consciousness’ that is much talked about in philosophy.
It is important to understand the claim here correctly. We know, empirically, of many correlations between measurable patterns of brain activity and inner experience. It is thus fair to say that, in many situations, we can correctly guess what experience the subject is having based solely on the subject’s measured patterns of brain activity. We have even been able to tell what subjects are dreaming of just by reading out the subject’s brain states. However, these correlations are purely empirical; that is, we don’t know why or how certain specific patterns of brain activity correlate with certain specific inner experiences; we just know that they do, as a brute empirical fact. And if we look at enough of these brute facts, we will eventually be able to extrapolate and start making good guesses about what people are experiencing, based on their measured brain states alone. None of this implies any understanding or account of what is going on; of how nature allegedly goes from quantitative brain states to qualitative experiential states. These brute facts are just empirical observations, not explanations of anything. We don’t owe brute facts to any theory or metaphysics, since they are observations, not accounts. Physicalism gets no credit for brute facts.
This is not just an abstract theoretical point I am trying to make here, but a very concrete one. We may know empirically that brain activity pattern, say, P1 correlates with inner experience X1, but we don’t know why X1 comes paired with P1 instead of P2, or P3, P4, Pwhatever. For any specific experience Xn—say, the experience of tasting strawberry—we have no way to deduce what brain activity pattern Pn should be associated with it, unless we have already empirically observed that association before, and thus know it merely as a brute fact. This means that there is nothing about Pn in terms of which we could deduce Xnin principle, under physicalist premises. This is the hard problem of consciousness, and it is, in and of itself, a fatal blow to mainstream Physicalism. It means that Physicalism cannot account for any one experience and, therefore, for nothing in the domain of human knowledge.
Notice that the hard problem is a fundamental epistemic problem, not a merely operational or contingent one; it isn’t amenable to solution with further exploration and analysis. Fundamentally, there is nothing about quantities in terms of which we could deduce qualities in principle. There is no logical bridge between X millimeters, Y grams, or Z milliseconds on the one hand, and the sweetness of strawberry, the bitterness of disappointment, or the warmth of love on the other; one can’t logically derive the latter from the former.
Going the other way around, from qualities to quantities, is possible by construction, for quantities were invented precisely as relative descriptions of qualities; i.e., descriptions of the experiential difference between, e.g., carrying a 50Kg-heavy piece of luggage and a 5Kg-heavy one (the experiential difference is described as 45Kg); driving a car for 100Km and 1Km (the experiential difference is described as 99Km); seeing blue and seeing red (the experiential difference is described as 750THz – 430THz = 320THz).
But the meaning of these relative descriptions is anchored in the very qualities they describe, which thus constitute their semantic reference. In other words, the meaning of ‘430THz’ is the felt quality of seeing red; the meaning of ‘5Kg’ is the felt quality of lifting a 5Kg weight (or the felt quality of seeing a 5Kg weight fall within a viscous fluid, bounce off an elastic surface, lie on a weighing scale and move its needle, or whatever other experience is describable by 5Kg). As such, one cannot start from quantities and try to generate qualities from them, for in this case the semantic reference—i.e., the qualities—is supposed to result from the quantities, and therefore can no longer preexist them. This robs the quantities of their meaning and makes it impossible to deduce anything from them.
Let me try to clarify this with a metaphor. Trying to deduce qualities from quantities alone is like trying to pull the territory out of the map. The lines on a map only have meaning insofar as they point to a territory that preexists the map, and to which the map refers. But if we try to account for the territory in terms of the map, then the territory can no longer preexist the map—for it’s now supposed to somehow arise from the map—and, therefore, the lines on the map lose their meaning entirely; nothing can be deduced from them anymore (that you could make this deduction based on other map-territory pairs you’ve seen before violates the spirit of the analogy; you must, instead, ask yourself whether you could deduce a territory from a map if the map were the first and only thing you had ever cognized in your life). This is exactly what the physicalist does when attempting to explain experiential qualities (the territory) in terms of physical quantities (the map).
The fundamental absence of a logical bridge to connect quantities to qualities, caused by the abandonment of the semantic reference that underpinned the meaning of the quantities to begin with, is the hard problem. The premises of mainstream Physicalism are such that, in order for quantities to have meaning, qualities need to preexist them. But when Physicalism then tries to account for the qualities in terms of the quantities, the latter must preexist the former and thus become literally meaningless. Nothing can be deduced in principle from meaningless things, and that’s the hard problem right there.
In trying to account for the territory in terms of the map, physicalists rob the map of its meaning and become confused when they fail to explain any experience in terms of it. They then promise that one day, when new and more advanced editions of the map are developed, our descendants will be able to reach into the map and pull the territory out of it; they mistake a fundamental epistemic contradiction for an operational or contingent problem.
Today’s generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications are impressive. Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, easily pass the Turing Test and are thus indistinguishable from humans in an online text conversation. They are used in professional settings to handle customer inquiries, draft legal texts, and a variety of tasks that, until recently, only humans could manage. Other generative AIs produce high-quality images, music, and video, often with high artistic value, based on simple descriptions or ‘queries.’ It has thus become difficult for the average educated person to avoid the conclusion that today’s AIs actually understand the questions or tasks posed to them, and even have artistic sensitivity.
Yet, nothing could be farther from the truth. For AIs—yes, even today’s AIs—do not understand anything; nothing at all. And they have no creativity in any sense of the word that could be even remotely related to human creativity. Allow me to elaborate.
Let’s take LLMs as our example, for the feats of ChatGPT tend to be regarded as the most compelling when it comes to attributing understanding and creativity to generative AIs. LLMs are transformers (a technical term), meaning that they take input text, apply a series of geometric transformations to it, and spit out the resulting text one word at a time. The answer ChatGPT gives you is a ‘transformation’ of your question.
The particular parameters of the geometric transformations applied are defined during a so-called ‘training’ phase, when the LLM is exposed to an enormous database of human-written text. Its parameters are then iteratively adjusted—calibrated, fine-tuned—so to represent how words tend to appear together in human-produced text. Once the training is complete and the parameters set, the LLM can then infer, given an input sentence (i.e. the question or query), what the most likely word is to appear next in the output sentence (i.e. the answer). Once that is done, the new output sentence—with one more word appended to its end—is fed back to the LLM, which then infers the next word, and so on, until the answer is complete. This so-called ‘inference’ phase is what we users get exposed to when we interact with ChatGPT online.
From the point of view of the LLM, the text database used during training contains merely a gigantic collection of signs. These signs happen to be English words—or some parts of words—but they might as well be squiggles; it doesn’t matter, for the LLM is not aware of the meaning of the words (or of anything else, for that matter). All it is trained to do is to capture and represent the statistical regularities with which words occur together, or follow one another, in the human-written text of the training database. If squiggles were used during training—instead of words—the LLM would still capture the regularities with which the squiggles tend to appear; from its point of view, it’s all the same thing. The LLM has no understanding of the meaning of the text it is trained on. It merely deals with how signs—squiggles, words—relate to one another in the training database.
Once the statistical regularities with which words tend to occur are captured in the LLM’s parameters, the LLM can start inferring which words to use in response to a query. From its own point of view, its answer is thus just a series of squiggles whose meaning it does not understand; it only knows that these are the squiggles that are most likely to appear following your query, given the way squiggles appeared in the training database. That’s all there is to it. At no point does understanding or creativity come into the picture.
So why does it seem to us as though the LLM really did understand our query, and produced a fully understandable answer? How does the LLM produce such coherent outputs if it has no understanding of language? The answer is quite simple: it's because the LLM was trained on human-written text, and it is always a human who interprets its outputs. Now, humans do understand what the words mean! The understanding involved here is thus always human understanding, as embedded in both the training database and the interpretation of inferred answers. The meaning we discern in an answer produced by ChatGPT is (a) the meaning imparted on the training database by the humans who wrote the corresponding texts, and (b) the meaning we impart on the answer when reading and interpreting it. ChatGPT itself only ever sees squiggles and the statistical regularities with which they tend to occur; it understands nothing; it creates nothing; it only rearranges—‘transforms’—meaningless squiggles. All meaning is imparted and projected on the squiggles by us humans.
The same goes for generative AI art: all artistic creativity involved is that of the human artists who composed the images used in the training database. All the AI ever does is rearrange—‘transform,’ combine—elements of those images based on a query. Generative AIs thus merely recycle the products of human understanding and creativity, nothing else. The only reason why ChatGPT can pass a bar examination is that it was trained on text written by capable human lawyers. If there weren’t human lawyers, ChatGPT would produce gibberish in a bar examination. The only reason it can tell you what Analytic Idealism is, is that it was trained on text written by me; it has no understanding of Analytic Idealism. The only reason other generative AIs can produce beautiful art is that they were trained on beautiful art produced by creative, sensitive people. If you take human input out of the equation, generative AIs can do nothing; they have no understanding or creativity of their own; they just transform—recycle—human understanding and creativity.
That’s why there is a strong sense in which the output of generative AIs is always a—sophisticated, complex—form of plagiarism. AIs can never produce something whose building blocks weren’t first produced by human beings. At best, AIs can find associations—connections—across different products of human creativity and insight that would, otherwise, be difficult for humans to find on their own, since AIs operate on much larger training databases than humans can accommodate in their minds. But the building blocks are always human-produced; no exceptions. The meaning is always human-imparted; no exceptions. There is no such thing as AI creativity or understanding.
The problem, however, is that the plagiarism is so sophisticated and nuanced that a PhD in computer science and engineering is necessary for one to understand what is truly going on. And things will only get worse as larger and larger AIs—with more and more parameters—are trained on larger and larger databases. The illusion of artificial understanding and creativity, already so compelling, will become irresistible for the vast majority of people. This is a great danger, for we risk losing sight of our own value and dignity by projecting all of it onto electronic mechanisms. This is a form of ‘kenosis,’ an emptying out of ourselves, wholly unjustified by the facts.
Businesses see so much value in generative AI because of its effectiveness in recycling, adapting, and re-using human output. If a few lawyers somewhere managed to write very clever legal texts, an AI trained on those texts can produce clever legal texts for your business on demand, without your having to pay new lawyers to do the same kind of creative, intellectual work again; someone else, somewhere else, already paid for the originals. If clever artists have produced a large database of effective illustrations somewhere, you don’t need to pay new artists to do it for you again; an AI can cleverly re-use and adapt that previous human output to your particular needs. Economically, this is incredibly efficient. But it requires no understanding or creativity beyond those already embedded in the training database and the minds of the people who contemplate the outputs of the AI. The latter simply rearranges things.
It is critically important for us to understand that AI does not replace human creativity and understanding; on the contrary, it entirely relies on them. Its value resides solely in stretching, leveraging the re-use potential of human production, not replacing it. AI amplifies the reach of human productivity; it doesn’t render it redundant. All meaning and all creativity discernible in the outputs of AIs are human meaning and human creativity. Without human input in the form of training databases, AIs are wholly useless. Without the understanding projected by humans onto their outputs, AIs are only capable of spitting out meaningless squiggles. Artificial Intelligence ultimately is human intelligence.
I'm the Executive Director of Essentia Foundation and Chief Scientist at AI processor company Syncthetics BV. My work has set off the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism. I have a Ph.D. in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and another in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence). As a scientist, I have worked for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the 'Casimir Effect' of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). I've also been creatively active in the high-tech industry for almost 30 years, having founded parallel processor company Silicon Hive (acquired by Intel in 2011) and worked as a technology strategist for the geopolitically significant company ASML. Most recently, I've founded AI company Syncthetics BV. Formulated in detail in many academic papers and books, my ideas have been featured on 'Scientific American,' the magazine of 'The Institute of Art and Ideas,' the 'Blog of the American Philosophical Association' and 'Big Think,' among others. My latest book is 'Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell: A straightforward summary of the 21st-century's only plausible metaphysics.'
