Name 1 Intellectual Hero of Yours and Why They Inspire You

[Carl-Richard]

On 14.2.2023 at 2:30 AM, Carl-Richard said:

While Kastrup's approach has its own limitations,

If I might add, one of the ways it's limited is in how accurately it maps onto the current science, because science is still very materialistic and doesn't have a very good understanding of things like paranormal phenomena (clairvoyance, OBEs, remote viewing, astral travel, etc.). A model that better accounts for those things would be Tom Campell's TOE (he bases it largely on those very things). The weakness there of course is that it's mostly based on his own research, and thus there is a lack of replication.

Kastrup's limitations becomes evident in points like "biological life is the image of private conscious inner life". It fits well with scientific observations, but just intuitively it seems very restrictive. Campell's view is much less naturalistic than that ("consciousness can log onto any form if it so decides to"). As for the potential of AI consciousness, both agree that the structural-functional organization of stuff is not what "creates" consciousness, neither transpersonal consciousness nor private conscious inner life. Rather, looking at that stuff is simply a way to make reasonable inferences about private conscious inner life (e.g. a frog with its advanced nervous system and metabolic activity is likely to be privately conscious, while a rock is not).

While Kastrup restricts his inferences about private conscious inner life to biological life, Campell thinks that consciousness can decide to log on to a computer, but that such an event isn't technically limited to the underlying physical stuff in the first place.

Edited February 16, 2023 by Carl-Richard