How’s that for a crazy title! This post is a follow up from my last post on worldviews. You will no doubt think this entire post is crazy, but if you take some time to study it out, it might actually start to make sense.
Today, I want to share some thoughts about ontology as it relates to Christology and consciousness.
On the subject of consciousness, we had a lengthy discussion on panpsychism last time. Panpsychism is a popular view among materialists.
Consciousness is defined as the quality or state of being aware, especially of something within oneself (“inner self”).
A materialist, philosophically speaking, is a person who supports the theory that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications.
And this gets to the problem. As Bernardo Kastrup said in his book, Brief Peeks Beyond: Critical Essays on Metaphysics, Neuroscience, Freewill, Skepticism and Culture:
“Nobody in science or philosophy has ever managed to explain, even in principle how presumably unconscious matter could possibly give rise to subjective experience. This is known as the ‘hard problem of consciousness’ or ‘explanatory gap’ in philosophy of mind.” (p.58)
Kastrup argues that it’s a “hard problem” precisely because consciousness is tackled from a materialist paradigm. In the video clip below, he goes on to contrast his ontology (technically called monistic idealism) with panpsychism. Here’s a brief explanation:
Panpsychism: all matter has bits of consciousness. In other words, consciousness is a fundamental property of matter (like particles, spin, momentum).
Monistic Idealism: all matter is in consciousness.
To illustrate the difference between panpsychism and monistic idealism, see the diagram below (taken from video).
Both panpsychism (view 1) and monistic idealism (view 2) hold that consciousness is fundamental. It’s irreducible and cannot be explained in terms of something else.
Panpsychists believe that all matter contains bits of consciousness. The problem with this hypothesis is that there is zero evidence that inanimate objects have consciousness at all.
But Kastrup believes that his alternative position is the most logical, the most parsimonious, and the most empirically honest and consistent ontology that we can come up with. And it can be defended purely on reason and empirical evidence without appealing to spiritual insight (although he says that’s important, too).
Under monistic idealism, the body-brain system is more like the image of the process of localization in the stream of consciousness, like a whirlpool is the image of a process of localization in a stream of water. For exactly the same reason that a whirlpool doesn’t generate water, the body-brain doesn’t generate consciousness.
This is what we actually know:
- There is experience
- Therefore, there is “that which experiences” (Consciousness”)
- The perceptual experience called “brain function” correlates with other experiences.
- The brain is a material system like the rest of the cosmos.
Why is monistic idealism the simplest explanation for what we know?
- Experience is a behavior of “that-which-experiences,” can be understood like ripples of water or the dance of the dancer.
- There are two perspectives to the experience: first-person and second-person.
- The material brain is simply the second-person perspective of first-person experience (inner life).
In other words, someone observing the brain function with an fMRI is the second-person perspective; those signals and data are not the same thing as consciousness (first-person perspective).
Kastrup also proffers that the physical cosmos itself could be seen as the second-person perspective of God’s mind. Here’s a diagram from the video showing this correlation.
But does the cosmos look like a brain? Actually, it sort of does! (See diagram above)
“The structure of the universe and the laws that govern its growth may be more similar than previously thought to the structure and growth of the human brain.” (Jan Zverina, UC San Diego News Center, Nov.19, 2012)
Okay, that’s pretty crazy, but then…how are we unique as individuals?
According to Kastrup, our unique inner life could be analogous to an “alter” that’s forms in the human psyche in multiple personalities (Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)). This is only meant to be an analogy because Kastrop is using the term in a positive way.
Now, before we go any deeper into this ontology, I would like to step back and look at the big picture for a moment. As a Christian, this non-dualistic view (all matter in consciousness) may seem weird to you (which it probably is), but if you think about it, it’s not too far from the very heart of Christian ontology. Here’s what Paul said:
16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ( 1 Cor.1:16-17 NIV, emphasis added)
If all things consist and are held together in Christ, then it would stand to reason that all consciousness (or “Mind-at-large” Aldous Huxley) is in Christ. So, Christology, at least in principle, is in agreement with monistic idealism.
Furthermore, we can see that this “Mind-at-large,” or Cosmic Consciousness, easily corresponds to the “energies” of God (see my post, “The Divine Essence and Energies of God“) in the weak panentheism model (see diagram below).
In other words, this Cosmic Consciousness is part of how God interacts with His creation (material cosmos). We are the disassociated “alters” of God’s “mind.” We are the multiple split personalities of God which acquire an illusionary sense of separation. These are the personal and individual personalities. Our physical bodies are what the “alters” look like via perception.
Einstein was right: our separateness is an “optical delusion.” (See “Everything is relational” for further thought on that!)
Okay, that’s as “out there” as I want to get for now. I would suggest you watch the first half of the video to get a better understanding (Kastrup shows the fallacies of panpsychism and materialist view of artificial sentience in the second half).
In My Father's House 
I don’t have a problem with “consciousness” as separate from the brain. That makes some sense to me. Just like certain aspects of “evolution” make sense as well. The problems arise when Panpsychism (or evolution) are offered as a complete explanation for reality.
Panpsychism cannot explain the existence of matter. That’s kind of important.
Exactly. It’s like a carpenter trying to fix his plumbing problem with a hammer and saw. It takes being open to all avenues to come up with a view that works.
Yeah, you would think that would be kind of important. But that’s what happens when your brain is just random, purposeless, and unguided. 🙂
Whew, this is some heady stuff, Mel. I like it!
Really appreciate this analogy, “our unique inner life could be analogous to an “alter” that’s forms in the human psyche in multiple personalities (Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)). This is only meant to be an analogy because Kastrop is using the term in a positive way.”
There is some really fascinating stuff that goes on within DID and PTSD, that really does spotlight what is being said here. The nature of this whole discussion kind of reminds me of the movie the 6th Sense, with the kid who says, “I see dead people.” The story kind of revolves around which one is the ghost, the psychiatrist trying to help the kid, or the kid himself? I’m laughing here, but it’s almost harder to prove your own existence than it is to prove God’s.
Yes, it’s very weird and heady stuff! At first I thought it was just another Eastern mystic take on ontology, but the more I studied it, the more it actually started to make sense from a scientific point of view. It’s actually more empirically sound than panpsychism, which is a more complex ontology that has zero evidence. Kastrup really shows how Eastern and Western religion and philosophy have commonalities and share some truth about reality. Of course, we believe, ultimately, Jesus is the “reason for everything” (the logos). 🙂
His book (“A Brief Peek Beyond”) provides a better and more thorough explanation than I could give.
I’m sure you’re busy, Mel, but I’ve written a few posts that touch on PTSD and the nature of the soul. Here’s one that was kind of fun,
One problem with the West is that we divide people into mind and body as if they were practically separate beings. The soul is hardly even recognized at all. You see this reflected in Western medicine. Each system and part requires a whole different doctor. The Eastern world tends to be more holistic in their perceptions, seeing people as mind, body, and spirit. In the West we like to worship at the altar of science and reason, very compartmentalized and disconnected. LOL, and we have the scars to prove it,too. Western atheists tend to really reflect this mindset, shunning the supernatural or anything perceived as “woo.”
Thanks IB. I’ll take a look at your post when I get a chance. I always loved the title of that movie, although I’ve never seen it. 🙂
It’s true that we live in a very compartmentalized, dualistic culture. This is totally Western, although we’ve greatly influenced the East because of our prosperity. Which makes it all so interesting in an ironic way: a materialist ontology leads to dualistic materialism! We end up pursuing and even worshiping “stuff” instead of pursuing inner peace. It’s revealed in how we define success in our culture. As Kastrup points out, the strength of materialism is its symbiotic relationship with the economic system and the power structures we have come to depend on in the West. Since reality is thought to be outside of “us,” we must look for fulfillment outside of ourselves. In our jobs, popularity, social status, wealth, etc. But we intuitively know that none of these things will ever fulfill us or satisfy our heart. Yet, Jesus said our fulfillment comes from seeking the Kingdom first (Matt.6:33), and that kingdom is within us (Luke 17:21).
So, we become materially successful but anemic in all the ways that really make life meaningful. As Kastrup says in his book:
This, and a host of other reasons, are why materialism is not a sustainable ontology. We might be very powerful and effective in economics and science, but we inevitably shrivel up on the inside. We can only manufacture so many toys to keep people under a delusion of happiness before the whole house of cards falls down. Maybe we should be saying, “He or she who dies with the most toys has an empty soul.”
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I’ve been reading Bernardo’s books for about a year now and it certainly feels right on an intuitive level to say that his work is quite compelling in getting us to think about Jesus (God) on a totally different level… it makes a good deal of sense in light of the fact that some of the harder stuff that Jesus said, or had said about Him like the above quote from Saint Paul, seem to support a higher level of consciousness about the nature of Divinity and our relationship to this “mind-at-large”. Another one that I like is found in The Gospel of John, chapter 17: “…that all of them may be one, Father just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be [one] in us…”
Thank you for an excellent article!
Thanks for your comments, Anthony. I like what Bernardo is saying, too. It fits how the early church saw the “mind of God” behind the cosmos. We all participate in this consciousness in some small degree. There was no separation for them, only in our perception. It also explains intuition and prophecy.
You also quoted on one of my favorite passages in the Bible. 🙂
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Hello Mel,
I really need some clarification my friend, because I very much like this viewpoint but am finding myself encountering some heavy hesitations before I embrace it. I also struggle to see how the fall into outright pantheism is in any way unavoidable. My biggest hold ups with this view is that it does not account for two really major problems that I believe cause it to be horribly heretical:
1: If we are truly “We are the disassociated ‘alters’ of God’s ‘mind.'” then that is akin to saying that we are all God; it’s to take John 10:34 literally and out of context. Why? The best analogy I have thought of in my meditation on whole topic is as follows: God is “simulating” us like a Mac OSX might simulate a different operating system (virtual machines).
My point is this: Even if we draw a hard line between the thoughts of God’s mind with the mind itself, the virtualization process by God when He disassociates His various alter-egos are ultimately still all Him; He must simulate our free choices via His own freewill/omniscience, which means our free choices are not only not our own definitionally, but our choices are actually synonymous with God’s will 100% of the time by the model logically created by idealistic modalism. There is an even bigger implication: there is not a trinity of persons in God, but rather God is literally *MANY BILLIONS* of different persons in One Being. Aka, We are all God: we are merely avatars of a master puppet master so much so that even our own choices are directly determined by God’s own will via His simulation of us.
But it gets worse:
This also means that God must simulate the actions of all other beings as well: spirit beings, animals, and the physical world’s subatomic particles. All beings have that same relationship that mankind Has. Now, this is only a problem for the spirit beings because of HaSatan and Sin, which brings us to the biggest of my contentions:
2: How was sin introduced? This view of Idealistic monism does not properly account for the sinfulness of mankind. The implications are wholly unacceptable: (1) God has Sin within him, which 1 John 1:5 is evidence it cannot be so. Additionally, God would not be Good if so, and so Panentheism requires that from God’s divine energies emerge (or emanate) sinfulness via His sustaining virtualization of creation (2) The first Sin was God’s free choice through another being, and as I showed earlier, our freewill is merely an illusion as God acts as a puppet master. This means rebellion is likewise illusory, and God is incoherent. The analogy of Disassociate Identity Disorder is best understood non-allegorically as God is literally at war within himself, against himself, with himself as the winner and loser.
Please help clarify some things. I struggle to see how panentheism taken to it’s logical conclusions is not completely heretical.
Sincerely and pursuing truth,
Justin
Thanks for your question, Justin. I will try to briefly answer them. Keep in mind, Kastrup is not a Christian so he may not have a full explanation of his worldview. I don’t agree with every detail of his theory but I do see his point in principle.
1. I see what you’re saying, but you might be taking his use of the term “God’s mind” too literally. I don’t think he means we are literally in God’s own mind, or His essence (and I wouldn’t agree with him if he did), but that we are in some sort of shared consciousness created by God that He participates with us in. This would be the Weak Panentheist view (not Hard or Full Panentheism, which would be heretical). In other words, this is how God directly interacts with us. We are participating in God, but we are not God Himself (His essence). The Bible is very clear that God does hold everything together and that all things are in Him (Col.1:16-17). As Paul said, “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
This Weak Panentheism (not to be confused with Pantheism) is an orthodox Christian worldview going back to the early church. Unfortunately, we, in the modern West, have inherited a more Deistic view from the Enlightenment. With Weak Panentheism, we do not participate with God’s divine essence (God Himself) but we do very much participate in His energies (I wrote about that here.)
2. This question is answered by my reply in #1. While we do participate in God’s energies, we are separate entities from God Himself in His divine essence. We have free will to choose to do what we want (within a limited parameter). This is also required for love because love requires having a choice.
I hope this answers your questions and clarifies my point. Let me know if you have further questions. Blessings to you.
Dear Mel, where did you get these slides, please? Looks like a video; I’d care to watch if so.
Hi Joshua. If I remember right, the slides are screen shots from the video at the end of the post.