Book Review: Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell by Bernardo Kastrup

Bernardo Kastrup's "Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell" is a thought-provoking exploration of consciousness and reality. In this book, Kastrup challenges the materialist status quo and worldview, proposing that consciousness is the fundamental aspect of existence and an alternative worldview through metaphysical idealism. Bernardo Kastrup is currently the Executive Director of the Essentia Foundation, which promotes the philosophical investigation into metaphysical idealism, while holding two Ph.D's in Computer Engineering (Reconfigurable Computing and A.I.) and Philosophy of Mind (Ontology). Previously Kastrup worked at C.E.R.N. and the Philips Research Labs. He has authored many books on philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and psychology, where I will mention several in this review; Why Materialism is Baloney, Decoding Schopenhauer's Metaphysics, and Decoding Jung's Metaphysics.

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Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell is a significant contribution in metaphysics and an ontology based on real, natural, rational, and ontological arguments of what we perceive as reality and what reality is. Nutshell is a compelling read for anyone interested in consciousness, quantum mechanics, and Eastern philosophical discussions on spirituality and consciousness (how I discovered Bernardo). Nutshell summarizes around 15 years (and a Ph.D) of publishing on topics ranging from mind, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and many years of direct involvement with CERN/Large Hadron Colliders - there is a lot of material to unpack in Bernardo's arguments. Kastrup has a very well documented online presence through his online blog and interviews available on YouTube. I will link to his free and available online videos for more information on Analytic Idealism.

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As we are exploring viscous philosophical waters, we will limit the review to what Bernardo has presented over time. How I will structure this written review is based on a chapter-by-chapter summary with the usual visual aids I've created for this module and some of Bernardo's previous recorded material. Developing a thorough understanding of the ideas explored in Analytical Idealism is made simple through well developed metaphors, but it also takes time to appreciate this view if you are not predisposed to the conversations around consciousness. What I want to exclude from this review is a direct comparison between Eastern Philosophies and Kastrup's ideas, this will be subject to another lesson. Rather, I would like to keep the chapter discussion consistent with what Bernardo puts forward and provide commentary and visual aids when related to material covered in the book.

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Book Review

In this review, my goal is to connect the metaphysics and ontology presented in Analytical Idealism to Critical Sustainability by grounding our knowledge of the reality to a compatible knowledge framework. I do encourage you to buy Analytical Idealism in a Nutshell and read through Bernardo Kastrup's arguments on the nature of reality. I will make references directly from the text and meta-references to help process the argument Kastrup develops in Nutshell. Of course this material confronts many well established approaches in material/physicalist dogmas simultaneously, my effort is to narrate around the argument presented. However I do encourage you to watch the free 7 part course on YouTube (below) to do the heavy lifting behind arguments of Materialism, Idealism, and topics left out of the Nutshell book. In representing these ideas, contemplate that regardless of the model presented, reality continues to exist as it is and does what it continues to do. In the effort of philosophical underlabouring, the aim is to guide us to the most accurate view of reality and discard perpetuated incorrect views. Catch up on the videos, buy the book, and check out my chapter breakdown below!

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Chapter 1 - What is this book about

"This is a book about the nature of reality. It elaborates on the best hypothesis we have today, based on leading-edge science and analytic reasoning, about what reality is."

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We do start at an intersection for new readers on the topic of consciousness. The complicated topics explored in this brief book is well developed by Kastrup under rigorous analytic enquiry, utilizing several useful metaphors to deconstruct metaphysical myths to the most approximate claims made under Idealism. Kastrup demonstrates early on that science can only explain the behavior of what nature does and distinguishes that philosophy explains what nature is. This is the consequential point of the opening chapter for new readers to establish the dialectic between claims of metaphysicians, academic/business leaders, and popular science educators conflating  topics of; physicalism, panpsychism, and idealism. Does the technology we produce under these unexamined assumptions progress our well being?

Many-Sidedness Approach

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Analogies help us learn through shortcuts by delivering a concise metaphor which explains a multitude of expressible topics. A perfect/imperfect analogy is the wise blind men and the elephant. In the opening chapter, Bernardo identifies claims of consciousness made from material axioms of reality carry many, heavy claims of empirical reality. Many in the sense of multitude of claims of where and how consciousness can be generated from material transactions (particles combining to form experience aka physicalism). Heavy because these claims seek to maintain a dominant ideology and propagation by continuously ignoring the dubiousness of claims and contradictions found in their construct of scientific knowledge. What the original analogy wanted to suggest is that there are many sides to debate this unknown thing called consciousness (or simply reject it all together) and what first person experience is can have real, natural, rational, but complex explanation of what we observe through material transactions. The downside of the metaphor is what Nutshell unravels, the promotion of confusion in how we reconcile reality through unexamined assumptions limits us from exploring alternative explanations.

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The way we understand how nature works informs us how we produce, consume, and reproduce knowledge of reality. This is a common thread in Nutshell where the evolution of the myth of materialism is described as not only an epistemic issue, but a social struggle engaged in a hegemonic, economic, and reputation laundering from established materialist views. There's a lot of money and research under these worldviews and Bernardo, who has first hand experience in the upper echelons of science, makes it abundantly clear that there is a culture of arrogance entrenched in producing empirically convenient fictions because the narratives serve their interest in power and funding viability. I find this part of the whole argument to be more relevant to Kastrup's professional colleagues and work environment, which the book later meta-references public debates and commentary on personal exchanges. As someone not involved in the culture of leading edge material sciences, this offers a peek into the psychology of the writer and whom he is addressing point blank with receipts.

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The historical argument Bernardo brings us to the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and the Council of Trent. During this period in European history, great schisms between the Catholic church and an emerging European intellectual circles divided amongst themselves the domains of the soul (Church) and the domains of material nature (bourgeois) to amplify their power in an increasingly stratified society. Kastrup connects that these "Enlightenment" thinkers were not necessarily concerned about being right, but wielding a new found power. We are working from past mistakes where there are internal logical contradictions and an explanatory gap through demonstrable empirical inadequacies. This is usually the fork in the road for many readers entrenched in identifying to prior assumptions (politically, economically, culturally, or ecologically). These inadequacies are compounded with multiple physicalist explanations around the topic of mind that lead to gaps in biomedical sciences and a "noisy" computer science field concerning A.I. and consciousness. While making the claim that the world "out there" is essentially mental (experiential), what gives rise to our thoughts and emotions is of the same field of subjective experience, yet we have exclusive access to our inner lives and experiences that distinguishes you and I. This claim that Analytical Idealism puts forward is in direct contrast with the common misconception that physicality produces mind or mind being part of matter discussed later on, but I suspect you will intuit it by the second chapter.

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Chapter 2 - What you see is not what you get

This chapter opens up with a metaphor of the dashboard model of reality, the relation between reality and our qualitative capacity to; sense, represent, and re-represent what we observe. In encouraging you to read Analytic Idealism, the overview of mechanics of how we developed this capacity to perceive reality is outlined in this chapter. Can the windows to the world (our sense organs) be the only way reality can be perceived? Bernardo asks:

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Let us now ask a more consequential question: although the world doesn't need to look like the contents of perception, can it look like what we perceive? Can perception be a transparent window into the world, even if it doesn't need to?

The short answer provided is No. If your eyes suddenly had the capacity to see reality as it is, no upper limits on entropy or information processing, you would turn to goo before the end of this sentence. Hence our cognitive states do not mirror the external world, but represent information after it was recognized by what our sensory system evolved to detect. This is a callback to Roy Bhaskar's Judgemental Rationality and will be extrapolated in Chapter 4. The dashboard model on the other hand is an apt metaphor to describe what is common sense to many, but difficult to reconcile once you are in the industry or on the path of material sciences. This is of course not to contradict empirical findings or science itself as the author (and myself) will point out, but a perspective of knowledge of what we are actually seeing when we know reality out there is attenuated in our conscious experience.

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Dashboard Model of Reality

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Right away with the dashboard model Kastrup puts forward the central claim that the physical world is a set of perceptual representations. We reproduce analogies of reality like a cloud, or a chair, or a stone in our hand as experiences and not physical objects that exist outside of the reality we perceive. Physicality is an experience in our first person perspective as relative internal representations felt by the Subject, where the real states of the world are not necessarily discernible through physical quantities. This is why the weight of a thought, or the length of despair, or the mass of intuition are incoherent statements as they are descriptors of experiential states, hence the same can be said of physical states in the contents of our perception.

This metaphor of the dashboard is straightforward for explaining what external objects seem to be when we perceive them occupying spacetime. The real states of the world are behind the measuring dials and beyond the dashboard the sky outside. This is not a trivial point as it directly flips the ontology around from claim of physical combinations generating experience (particles or brain) to experiential states generating physicality. This chapter prepares us for later refutations to materialism in chapters 3-5 and claims made under Idealism from this comparative basis from Chapter 6.

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Chapter 3 - How Physicalism gets it wrong

Chapter 3 is dense and the bulk of the argument that made the cut is woven from Kastrup's earlier books, which build on more detailed and nuanced portions of physicalist arguments. I would recommend reviewing independently for specific claims, however, in Nutshell we are given a structured incorporation of previous arguments and current (as of 2023) analogies that reinforce the dashboard model of reality. Starting from the summary provided at the end of chapter 3, Bernardo recaps the position established in the earlier chapters with refined arguments made in the current chapter.

1. Naive assumption that the structure of the contents of perception is the structure of reality.
2. Incoherent postulate that descriptions precede the thing described.
3. Insisting that physical entities have standalone existence.
4. Inability to account for experience is an epistemic issue related to the hard problem.

Arguments made about Quantum Physics, neuroimaging + psychedelics, brain metabolism + brain noise, and the hard problem of consciousness. The way Kastrup explores this material tackles earlier claims made by Enlightenment thinking and proceeds to evaluate modern claims in neuroscience and quantum mechanics. Bernardo captures the essence of physicalist arguments and interprets each of these fields coherently through the language of the dashboard (or broadly at Analytical Idealism). What I will do is split the arguments in three parts to focus on the flow of discussion points transitioning from the first couple chapters worth of physicalist bias to these main topics covered below.

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Consciousness-Information-Physical Framework

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Now for a meta-reference, Kastrup as director of Essentia Foundation has introduced me to other researchers into consciousness including Federico Faggin. Faggin has released an English version of his 2022 Irreducible: Consciousness, Life, Computers, and Human Nature. I would highly recommend this well rounded book that highlights a well established engineering perspective that summarizes quantum mechanics and a variety of theories (debunked and substantiated) in relation to his journey in understanding consciousness. This book has aided my understanding behind Quantum mechanics and Bernardo's Analytical Idealism theory, it can aid in yours as well, otherwise I would recommend the interview to aid in the historical development of quantum mechanics.

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The arguments made from Bernardo's perspective is to establish the legitimacy behind quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and reconciling 2022's Nobel Prize in physics validating 40 years of empirical research into quantum entanglement experiments. There are research circles that proclaim quantum mechanics are incomplete, incorrect, or do not suggest that a mind exists at all (an unexplained physical byproduct). Kastrup previously worked at Philips Lab which discovered the Casimir effect, and this physical force is reliably incorporated in our theoretical understanding of the world. The theoretical base Bernardo develops has roots in quantum field theory to substantiate quantum states vibrating from a quantum field that appears once observed (or once the dashboard measures and represents an object). This suggests that particles do not have stand alone existence and require observation for it to physically appear, which directly debunks physical realism. These observations are often not understood or reconciled with and we carry archaic intellectual baggage and a misapprehension of reality because of it.

Many extravagant claims are made in academic and cultural circles under the guise of quantum theory; like multiple/many/parallel universes and the loophole of superdeterminism/non-locality. Kastrup does his part to address each  topic in order to make strong theoretical foundation for a single field of subjectivity. By addressing these extraneous claims, we begin to simplify the conversation of what quantum theories are substantiated to the more complex neuroscience research.

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Neuromyths

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As Bernardo points out, there are many misconceptions to how the brain actually works. The knowledge debated in this chapter extends into the educational neuroscience field, explored in the Epistemology module, which has its own set of "neuromyths" (OECD reference to scientific misinformation regarding the brain and education). These pervasive myths such as; left/right brain function, critical development periods, 10% use, or enriched environments (like Montessori classroom environments) are usually interwoven with a cultural narrative. Pop culture, mass produced education, hegemonic control for economic monopoly, all of these cultural byproducts are brought into Nutshell from Kastrup's perspective. The key commentary of science communication of popular knowledge often mistake reality for the objects perceived by perception itself or the description of the (research) object fundamentally precedes the thing being described. Physicalists acknowledge red is red, however they constitute physical quantities to describe qualia with no expository power since this perspective took root from the aforementioned social power over certainty.

In this chapter there are two main arguments that substantiate Kastrup's claim behind the brain does not generate qualitative experience. One argument related to brain scans under psychedelics to address brain metabolic activity, the other argument relates to the formers finding of lower brain activity as a form of "noise" generated from remaining brain activity. Before any adversity arise from conversations of altered states of consciousness, I will ask the reader a simple question, doesn't everything we consume alter our state of being? This is a conversation for epistemology and additional caffeine from a strong afternoon tea, however the relevance here is how psychedelics are understudied and misunderstood within empirical research of what happens to your brain under strong psychedelics. What is unique from Kastrup's direct experience is an analytical perspective of psychedelic substances and the journey in understanding the brain and consciousness link. For the readers disclosure, my voluntary psychedelic experience is limited to 2 grams of blue meanie (Panaeolus cyanescens), which is an intermediate amount compared to the body-mind separating amount of a heroes dose (5g). I would also assume that the reader has some knowledge of psychedelic art and testimonies of psychedelic experience.

Following the observations made under psychedelics reported by materialist scientists, Kastrup and Prof. Edward F. Kelly critiqued the contextual representations of these observations (titled "Misreporting and Confirmation Bias is Psychedelic Research"). The claim Kastrup puts forward is that much of the published research and scientific cultural interpretation of brain activity under psychedelics pre-supposes that the brain "lights up like a Christmas tree" (increased activity, especially in localized centers = increased felt experience). However, the research actually suggests that there is an "impressive and direct measurements of decreased brain activity". Where this contradicts materialist claims is simple, the rich qualitative experience is pre-supposed from increased brain metabolism where in fact the opposite occurs, lower brain activity generates a richer experience is empirically demonstrated. Kastrup addresses the Neural Correlates of Consciousness deftly by extending the contradiction to point out that under physicalist terms, psychedelics are plausibly inhibit brain activity in localized areas, but there should be some increased activity somewhere in the brain that produces the rich psychedelic experience, but "no such thing has been seen."

The second physicalist claim to brain generating mind is a continuation of the implications from the first study, if there is lowered activity while under psychedelics, somewhere in the brain ought to be doing something. The leading narrative provided is Robin L Carhart-Harris "The entropic brain - revisited", where it is posited that residual brain activity (noise) desynchronizes (viz psychedelics) thereby the randomness (entropy and degrees of disorder in activity) is supposed to account for the qualitative experience. Think of the static from older televisions, this "Information" from residual activity supposedly accounts for the richer experience, the word information does a metric ton in heavy lifting and is the subject of scrutiny. Bernardo's background in computer engineering gives us a communications 101 on Shannon's Information vs. semantic information (I vs. i), which are conflated in Carhart-Harris's publication and undermines the argument presented. Shannon's definition is a technical approach in communications engineering to "calculate the minimum amount of bandwidth of the communication channel require to transmit the message after compression." It does not replace the colloquial use of the word information, which is the amount of semantic content in a message (tv static has a lot of information, but means nothing to us). These are two contradictory definitions and misappropriated in Carhart-Harris's publication, and when one understands Information will see through the logic presented.

Kastrup begins to transition from these two arguments to continue to refute how Physicalism can explain any experience given. There is a third critique of Prof. David Nutt, but in reviewing the book, it may be better to read the article as it deviates from the second case study (Brain noise doesn't explain consciousness). What is encouraged to evaluate is how new definitions of consciousness based on different theories and empirical observations becomes unfalsifiable amongst the many theories presented in neuroscience. Years of research have correlated brain activity with inner experience, yet psychedelics alone demonstrates something totally different accounts for experience given the two cases presented (and more found online through Kastrup's publications). So far we have covered "easy problems" of consciousness, which seek to provide a mechanistic explanation of neural processes that accompany behavior, problems that can be analyzed through structure and functions of the brain, but as we will now cover, these neural processes do not explain the how and why qualitative experience is accompanied by neuronal processes.

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Hard Problem of Consciousness

Lending from David Chalmer's masterpiece The Conscious Mind (1996), we are ready to jump into modern Western philosophy of mind's favorite conversation, the hard problem of consciousness. How and why do we have subjective experience? In this part of Nutshell, I will rely on a previous 3 minute explanation below on the Hard Problem rather than attempting to re-present logical formulations provided (again, I encourage you to buy the book). Rather, Bernardo, Chalmers, and many others deduce that the Hard Problem is simply an Epistemic issue, and not an Ontological argument made under promissory materialism.

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Following Alfred Korzybski's analogy of "the map is not the territory", what physicalism implies is that 'deducing qualities from quantities alone is like pulling the territory out of the map'. The territory pre-exists the map and further implicates materialist cartographers by fundamentally misleading the public about the core subjective experience we all share. The mind must somehow account for itself after the same mind proposed an abstract concept of matter, a thing of the minds own invention! The map-territory argument stems from the original discourse on cultural hegemony and reincorporates itself in the conclusions of material science belief. I see it as a form of highly evolved gaslighting when someone with a PhD and financial incentive strongly believes a fundamental characteristic about reality without clearly examining the evidence presented and doubles down in their contempt for others pointing out an obvious flaw in their logic. However, there is another theory, covered in chapter 5, that acknowledges all of the flaws above and attempts to reconcile these obvious errors in thinking. My commentary on the Hard Problem will continue in the follow up to this lesson as this topic is literally ancient (7th-5th century BCE was a golden era of philosophical development), stemming from debates between Sampradayas (spiritual traditions from India). There is simply too many historic examples that are parallel in Eastern philosophy (including the Tao) and most importantly, were used with observations made from the human mind rather than ultra expensive machines that point to the same observations made 2,500 years ago!

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Chapter 4 - How does Physicalism survive

We left off the previous chapter on modern metaphysical assumptions made under neuroscience to explain the effects of psychedelics and its role in conscious experience, leading to the hard problem of consciousness. The fourth chapter revisits themes from the second in seeking to understand why this set of materialist beliefs have taken root deep into cultural reproduction of knowledge. Kastrup describes it as a self-fulling prophecy that disables people from perceiving a worldview outside of their own, as well as the predictable arrogance, laziness, and entrenched perception of pristine knowledge that emirates from the ivory tower.

There is an overlap between Bernardo Kastrup's work and Roy Bhaskar's Critical Realism that I previously covered in the Ontology module. I will borrow concept art to point out shared logic and make the distinction that Bhaskar evolved his approach to social sciences based on parallel advances in natural sciences of his day. In interest of focusing on the arguments in the book, we will work around any comparisons to Bhaskar directly and rely on previous instruction for relatedness. In future lessons, I will circle back to this review in bridging the gap between the two philosophers because encountering Bernardo well after Bhaskar forced me to reconcile my own interpretation of Critical Realism.

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Revisiting Critical Realism Holy Trinity

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Amongst the arena of metaphysical theories, a common ground established in material sciences is the structured approach to extract scientific knowledge for the purpose of modeling observed behavior. This is the underlying point behind philosophical underlabouring, through deep analytical scrutiny, find out what is real and discard what is not real. The problem with this notion, as Bhaskar and Kastrup (and I'm sure you are aware by now), people do not challenge their own beliefs or self-deceive to conserve power/economic hegemony. This becomes a problem when Kastrup utilizes the same scientific approach used by materialists to produce their observations and analysis. The main philosophical arguments Kastrup puts forward comparable to physicalism (and CR) is that Analytic Idealism abides in:

1. Realism (the notion that there is an external world independent of our individual minds, physical or not).
2. Naturalism (the notion that nature unfolds under its own dispositions and not that of a deity).
3. Rationalism (the notion that the human intellect can recognize and model the regularities of natures behavior thereby predicting it).
4. (Ontological) Reductionism (the notion that we can explain complex phenomena in terms of simpler ones).

This misconception of what Idealism is amongst physicalists plays an important part in understanding why materialism survives to this day. These misconceptions range from believing the world solely exists inside of your head, Idealism is spiritual "woo-woo", or physicalism is the only rational approach because it is what we observe. Just take a look at the Hard Problem of Consciousness wikipedia entry amongst the varieties of materialist hypotheses and maybe a single paragraph related to Bernardo's claims under Idealism. Of course Wikipedia is a contentious platform, but when you analyze these entries it points to a lack of coherency in metaphysical claims that a) lead to contradictions or b) are just flat out irreconcilable with modern quantum mechanics (of course, one can reject the theory of quantum mechanics outright, but that is another problem). Related to this issue, Bernardo resurfaces public debates between physicalists (Susan Blackmore, 2023) and the lack of self-awareness in not being able to reconcile that:

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(a) the empirical fact of an external world behaving regularly and predictably, with (b) the notion that this world may be mental.

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I draw attention to this quote because of the common misconceptions are reproduced in academic papers, science editorials, and consumer journalist outlets (the self-fulfilling prophecy). Why bother looking for an alternative perspective when it is never presented to you? Nobody thinks about the world being mental because the amount of 'social noise' matter generates in our milieu. You can optionally watch the debate between Kastrup and Blackmore on YouTube if you are curious regarding the argumentation under an unexamined physicalist point of view:

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Transcendental Realism

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Critical Naturalism

Judgemental Rationality

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Ontological Reductionism

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Chapter 5 - The remedy is worse than the disease

Chapter 6 - Analytic Idealism

Consciousness-Information-Physical Framework

Structured Dissociation

Will-at-Large

Human Alter

Sensorium

Chapter 7 - Circumambulation

Extended Mind Thesis

Dependent Origination

Recognition

Pranayama

Willpower

Chapter 8 - Time, space, identity, and structure

Perception

Spanda

Vijnana

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Chapter 9 - Wrap up

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