THE ONTOLOGY OF EXISTENCE: THE NEXT PARADIGM. A REVIEW OF THE BOOK "THE IDEA OF THE WORLD: A MULTI-DISCIPLINARY ARGUMENT FOR THE MENTAL NATURE OF REALITY", BY BERNARDO KASTRUP

A new book by Bernardo Kastrup presents a rigorous formulation of idealism, arguing that reality is fundamentally experiential and that a universal phenomenal consciousness is the sole ontological primitive. Patterns of excitation in this consciousness constitute existence, and human beings are dissociated mental complexes within it, like islands surrounded by an ocean of mentation. Kastrup contrasts this idealist ontology with physicalism, microexperientialism, and cosmopsychism, and suggests that idealism may revive as the next paradigm, with universal mind as nature's sole fundamental entity.

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Abstract

In recent decades, attempts to create and argue a new ontology of existence that could provide a robust alternative to the mainstream physicalist metaphysics have been made in science and philosophy. A new book by Bernardo Kastrup (2019, 312 p.), a well-known specialist in the field of philosophy of mind and neuroscience of consciousness, offers the author's conceptually clear and rigorous formulation of the philosophical system. The author proves that appearance and reality in ontology are fundamentally experiential. A universal phenomenal consciousness is the sole ontological primitive, which patterns of excitation constitute existence, and a human being is dissociated mental complexes of this universal consciousness, surrounded like islands by the ocean of its mentation. Kastrup’s idea of the World has an idealist ontological underpinning. The author contrasts his vision of the world with the existing ideas of the world perception, such as physicalism, microexperientialism and cosmopsychism. The quality of the argument, which is given in the book, suggests the revival of the philosophy of idealism as the next paradigm, according to which a form of universal mind will be viewed as nature's sole fundamental entity.