|
Astronomer Harriet Witt argues that it is our scientifically outdated language that leads us into thinking of the sky as a remote reality ‘up there,’ instead of a felt experience ‘in here.’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.
|
In our quest for meaning and self-understanding, language remains a valuable tool, but we must recognize its limitations. By balancing our conceptual and perceptual selves, we can live more fully, appreciating life beyond the distortions of thoughts and words. In doing so, we reconnect with the dimension of existence we have long suspected: one that’s whole and prior to the concepts of time and location, argues Steven Pashko.
|
Arthur Haswell invites us to pay attention to and, once again, like our ancestors once did, hear the rhyme and rhythm with which the world worlds. Reality, he maintains, unfolds according to a form of music that, in ages past, humans were matter-of-factly sensitive to. Granted that, if we could sense it again, we could find the codas of the modern world to be excessively depressing, frightening, and bleak. For this reason, perhaps subconsciously, we may not wish to hear them. But, he suspects, we could also find in them much beauty and harmony that enrich our lives. This is a profoundly edifying essay.
|
Prof. Dr. Caslav Brukner, Prof. Dr. Renato Renner and Dr. Eric Cavalcanti just won the Paul Ehrenfest Best Paper Award for Quantum Foundations. Their different no-go theorems make us reconsider the fundamental nature of reality. Bell’s theorem in quantum mechanics already confronted us with the fact that locality and ‘physical realism,’ in the sense that particles have predetermined physical properties prior to measurement, cannot both be true. But in certain variations of the Wigner’s Friend thought experiment an additional metaphysical assumption is now also put in question: the absoluteness of facts. In different words: can we safely assume that a measurement outcome for one observer is a measurement for all observers?
|
The acquiescence of physicalism within the broader cultural milieu allows for the smuggling of assumptions into scientific inquiry, which are then, in a circular manner, considered to be validated by science itself. This disastrous interplay perpetuates a continued myopia in distinguishing between the ontological claims of physicalism and the assumptions of scientific inquiry, argues Adebambo Adedire.
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.
|
Arthur Haswell invites us to pay attention to and, once again, like our ancestors once did, hear the rhyme and rhythm with which the world worlds. Reality, he maintains, unfolds according to a form of music that, in ages past, humans were matter-of-factly sensitive to. Granted that, if we could sense it again, we could find the codas of the modern world to be excessively depressing, frightening, and bleak. For this reason, perhaps subconsciously, we may not wish to hear them. But, he suspects, we could also find in them much beauty and harmony that enrich our lives. This is a profoundly edifying essay.
|
Dr. Walden introduces Ecstatic Naturalism, a metaphysics similar to Idealism but less committed to mind as we know it. While proposing that the archetypes—an eminently mental concept—serve as conduits to a fundamental layer of reality that is both transcendent and immanent in the so-called physical world and the human mind, it remains open to the possibility that such a layer may transcend our very understanding of what mind is.
|
Could the mythological figure of Dionysus, in ancient Greece, represent the non-dual ground of reality, instead of the god of chaos portraid by Nietzsche? Michael Asher argues that Dionysus represents eternal, infinite conscious life as the reality that underlies all nature, in which case the inception of non-dual idealism in the West arches back to the very origins of Western civilization.
|
When we dream of a triangle, we experience a geometric shape with the measurable characteristics—angles and lengths—of a triangle. But the neural correlates of this dream in the physical brain are not triangular. So if all that exists is physicality, where in the physical world is the dream triangle? In this essay, Arthur Haswell not only elaborates rigorously on this thought experiment, but also anticipates and addresses various possible objections. The conclusion, he claims, is that the experiment demonstrates that there is more to reality than what we colloquially call ‘the physical.’
Would you like to submit an essay?
|
Can we turn off our awareness (i.e., conscious metacognition) in meditation and then stay in that state for days without water, food, or going to the bathroom? A recent study by Dr. Ruben Laukkonen on the cessation of awareness in advanced meditation practitioners confirms this. In this interview, Natalia Vorontsova talks with Ruben about his research and its implications for our understanding of the nature of reality. This is a deep, yet light-hearted, conversation about mind, consciousness, time, AI, and the future of science, especially since Ruben is also an experienced meditation practitioner.
Seeing
Videos
|
This video contains all the presentations and debates originally broadcast live during Essentia Foundation’s 2023 work conference, on the topic of time and mind. Speakers include Prof. Bernard Carr, Prof. Lee Smolin, Prof. George Ellis, and Prof. Jonathan Schooler.
|
We begin our coverage of Essentia Foundation’s 2023 work conference with host, Prof. Bernard Carr’s introduction to the conference. He highlights how fundamental mind is to physics, and then elaborates on the intimate relationship between mind and time, suggesting that only a better understanding of time will allow us to make sense of individual minds.
|
Our brains do not produce consciousness, they ‘filter’ it and consciousness is related to the higher dimensions in string theory. In this thought-provoking conversation, distinguished Professor of mathematics and astronomy Bernard Carr explains his theory of consciousness and psi-phenomena.
From the archives
|
As any essay on free will, the present one is bound to be polemic. We believe the debate on free will is important and the present essay meaningfully contributes to it. Nonetheless, we feel bound to clarify our editorial position here: as a foundation dedicated to promoting objective formulations of metaphysical idealism, we endorse the existence of a reality beyond the seemingly personal self, which behaves in a predictable, lawful manner. An implication of this view is the impossibility of libertarian free will: we do make our own choices, but our choices are determined by that which we, and the universe around us, are. Yet we believe that there is a very important sense in which free will does exist: under idealism, the universe is constituted by the excitations of one, universal field of subjectivity. The impetus towards self-excitation that characterizes this field of subjectivity is free will, for it depends on nothing else. The entire dance of universal unfolding is a dance of universal free will. This is the sense in which, for example, Federico Faggin and our own Bernardo Kastrup defend the fundamental existence of free will in nature. This understanding of free will is entirely compatible with the understanding that our choices are determined but that which we truly are. Finally, objective formulations of metaphysical idealism deny, just as the author of the present essay does, the fundamental existence of a personal self. Instead, the latter is regarded as a transient, reducible configuration of the underlying field of subjectivity. As such, there cannot be such a thing as personal, egoic free will, for the personal self itself isn’t a fundamental construct.
|
Could it be a coincidence that two founding fathers of modern day computing, independently from each other, are both coming with theories of consciousness that are idealist in nature? Or does a deep understanding of what computation is—and what it is not—inevitably lead away from physicalist ideas on consciousness?
|
Essentia Foundation’s Hans Busstra visited Vienna to attend a conference on the foundations of quantum mechanics, and interview physicists on the metaphysical implications of quantum mechanics. In this essay, he argues that what is called ‘experimental metaphysics’ might be at the heart of future progress in physics, and that philosophy and physics are moving closer together.
Let us build the future of our culture together
Essentia Foundation is a registered non-profit committed to making its content as accessible as possible and without advertisements. Therefore, we depend on contributions from people like you to continue to do our work. There are many ways to contribute.
