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Arthur Haswell offers a devastating and delightfully well-argued deconstruction of the absurdities inherent in physicalism and its sibling, illusionism.
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CPU inventor and physicist Federico Faggin, together with Prof. Giacomo Mauro D’Ariano, proposes that consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain, but a fundamental aspect of reality itself: quantum fields are conscious and have free will. In this theory, our physical body is a quantum-classical ‘machine,’ operated by free will decisions of quantum fields. Faggin calls the theory ‘Quantum Information Panpsychism’ (QIP) and claims that it can give us testable predictions in the near future. If the theory is correct, it not only will be the most accurate theory of consciousness, it will also solve mysteries around the interpretation of quantum mechanics.
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Not only does John von Neumann’s seminal work in the mathematical modelling of quantum mechanics imply the irreducible nature of mind, the resulting idealist understanding of nature could lead to profound, and positive, changes in how we relate to one another and the world at large in the context of our economic system, writes Dr. Cocks.
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In this wide-ranging interview with Natalia Vorontsova, Professor Marjorie Woollacott draws remarkable parallels between 9th-10th century Kashmiri Shaivism and modern idealism, pointing to the fundamental and irreducible nature of consciousness. Moreover, her study of near-death experiences empirically supports this very hypothesis of the existence of a fundamental consciousness without neurons and beyond our five senses. This is an open conversation about life, death, and who we really are as ‘points of consciousness.’
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This is an involved, fairly technical, but deeply rewarding and potentially groundbreaking essay. It posits that the geometry of real (i.e., noumenal) spacetime may be exactly what our mathematical models tell us it is: a complex projective space in which there is no separation between objects and subject. If so, then the implication is that the foundation of the universe is a form of universal consciousness, that the ordinary spacetime we experience is but a perspectival model, and that the very structure of the universe is defined by mental archetypes, or universal ‘ideas.’ Right or wrong, this is one of the most daring but also most explicit and well-articulated ideas underpinning idealism with physical theory, and it surely deserves multiple careful reads.
Do we really live in a fundamentally physical universe? Are we essentially material beings? Essentia Foundation is a new force in the cultural dialogue about the nature of reality. Find out more about us.
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This is an involved, fairly technical, but deeply rewarding and potentially groundbreaking essay. It posits that the geometry of real (i.e., noumenal) spacetime may be exactly what our mathematical models tell us it is: a complex projective space in which there is no separation between objects and subject. If so, then the implication is that the foundation of the universe is a form of universal consciousness, that the ordinary spacetime we experience is but a perspectival model, and that the very structure of the universe is defined by mental archetypes, or universal ‘ideas.’ Right or wrong, this is one of the most daring but also most explicit and well-articulated ideas underpinning idealism with physical theory, and it surely deserves multiple careful reads.
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Jonathan Dinsmore proposes applying the same cautious inferential reasoning used in the scientific method to developing metaphysical beliefs based on first-person experience. This may open the door to a form of spirituality that, although still grounded in personal insight and, therefore, not objective in a strict scientific sense, is nonetheless based on the form of disciplined thinking that has made science so successful.
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The structures of our language, which function as directly accessible carriers of meaning, reveal remarkable parallels to physical systems—particularly quantum systems—which can therefore be regarded as carriers of meaning as well. This profound interconnectedness of language, thought and reality challenge our conventional understanding of what is going on, argues Dr. Sachs. His insightful observations reveal surprising ways to make sense of the paradoxes of quantum mechanics along linguistic—and therefore thought-like—lines. Though involved, we highly recommend that you give this essay a careful read, as it is surely worth the effort.
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If all of our scientific theories are but convenient fictions—in the sense that nature behaves as if these fictions were true—but say nothing about the actual structure of reality, are we free to decide which way to think about this structure suits us best? Rob Hamilton addresses this and related questions in this short essay.
Would you like to submit an essay?
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In this wide-ranging interview with Natalia Vorontsova, Professor Marjorie Woollacott draws remarkable parallels between 9th-10th century Kashmiri Shaivism and modern idealism, pointing to the fundamental and irreducible nature of consciousness. Moreover, her study of near-death experiences empirically supports this very hypothesis of the existence of a fundamental consciousness without neurons and beyond our five senses. This is an open conversation about life, death, and who we really are as ‘points of consciousness.’
Seeing
Videos
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Natalia Vorontsova talks to Dr Tom Cheetham about active imagination, consciousness and life-changing experiences in the context of the philosophy and theology of Henry Corbin, Ibn Arabi and Surhawardi. Tom offers a unique perspective on post-materialist science, having come full circle from scientific materialism through Jungian psychology and Sufi mysticism to the realization that science is not an obstacle to accessing the transcendent. It’s a thought-provoking conversation about the nature of reality and what it means to be human.
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A new groundbreaking theory on consciousness proposes that qualia — for instance, the scent of a rose — reside in quantum fields. Federico Faggin is one of the greatest luminaries of high technology alive today. A physicist by education, he is the inventor of the microprocessor and the MOS silicon gate technology, both of which underlie the modern world’s entire information technology. With the knowledge and experience of a lifetime in cutting-edge fields, Federico now turns his attention to consciousness and the nature of reality, sharing with us his profound insights on the classical and quantum worlds, artificial intelligence, life and the human mind. In this discussion, he elaborates on an idealist model of reality, produced after years of careful thought and direct experience, according to which nature’s most fundamental level is that of consciousness as a quantum phenomenon, while the classical physical world consists merely of evocative symbols of a deeper reality.
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Hans Busstra sat down with Bernard Carr and Bernardo Kastrup to discuss all presentations given at our ‘Time and Mind’ conference and elaborate further on their own ideas. For instance, both Carr and Kastrup agree that, if you take an idealist perspective, you need multiple time dimensions to account for the decomposition problem: the mechanism by which consciousness with a big ‘C’ resolves itself into consciousness with a small ‘c’.
From the archives
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Inside you there is a largely unexplored universe of 100 trillion bacteria. In this documentary, we embark on a journey into this microcosmos to discover the beauty and complexity of life’s origin on the nanoscale. In 2023 Essentia Foundation’s Hans Busstra created a documentary about bacteria that depicts our common ancestor in a never-before-seen manner. With the world’s leading artists in microscopy, like micro-photographer Wim van Egmond, SEM microscopist Jan Dijksterhuis, and a molecular cell biologist and his team at Digizyme Inc., he embarked on a unique mission: to capture the first moving images of a single bacterium at the molecular scale.
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Documentary filmmaker Hans Busstra shares with us, with the aid of amazing and scientifically accurate animations of the molecular world, the background story of his journey from imaging the hardcore science of molecular biology to the fundamental insights of metaphysics.
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Astronomer Harriet Witt argues that it is our scientifically outdated language that leads us into thinking of the sky as a remote reality ‘up there,’ instead of a felt experience ‘in here.’ She argues for an update to the words and concepts we use daily, so the holistic reality of our existence, and of our intimate relationship with all of nature, can again be felt.
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