Why Materialism Is Baloney: How True Skeptics Know There Is No Death and Fathom Answers to life, the Universe, and Everything

by Bernardo Kastrup

Another common misunderstanding of idealism is reflected on this question: if everything is in mind, why can’t we influence reality at will, just like we can influence our own thoughts and fantasies at will? The misunderstanding here – a very forgivable one – is to equate mind at large with that particular, limited, small part of mind that we call the ego. The ego can even be defined as the part of mind that we ordinarily identify with and feel we can control. But there is nothing in my formulation of idealism restricting mind to the ego; on the contrary.

consider this example: you probably accept that other people also are conscious. Therefore, you must accept that their entire inner lives take place in other segments of mind that are external to your ego and which you have no control over.

neuroses and psychoses – such as some obsessions, phobias, and schizophrenic visions – all seem to arise from a part of mind that we do not at all identify with; a part of mind that feels entirely alien, external to the ego. It is, thus, not so difficult to imagine that it is also a part of mind that we do not identify with, and do not seem to have control over, that projects the so-called ‘external world.’ And then, it is also not so difficult to conceive that the contents of this part of mind unfold according to stable patterns and regularities.

What I am thus claiming is that the brain is the image of a process of localization of mental contents. This is what the brain is, primarily. Any other qualities or properties we attach to the concept ‘brain’ reflect simply our culture’s current (mis)understanding of that image. Moreover, unless and until we have good reasons to believe otherwise, we must assume that this image is a partial one. It does not necessarily capture all relevant information about the process it depicts, just like clots don’t capture in their form and color all relevant information about the process of coagulation.

the case of people who had their corpus callosum – the structure that connects the two hemispheres of the brain – physically severed by surgery. These individuals are reported to have two separate centers of consciousness, as if they had become two different individuals.