Junk and Gems at the Essentia Foundation Site

 An organization called the Essentia Foundation has a web site that tries to create a contrarian vibe, with some kind-of-rebellious sounding phrases occurring here and there. On an About Us page, we read this

"Essentia Foundation aims at communicating, in an accurate yet accessible way, the latest analytic and scientific indications that metaphysical materialism is fundamentally flawed. Indeed, clear reasoning and the evidence at hand indicate that metaphysical idealism or nondualism—the notion that nature is essentially mental—is the best explanatory model we currently have."

That sounds quite rebellious, although I think what we get from the site is mainly not much of a rebellion at all. What we get is mainly a promotion of a naturalist, atheist worldview (Bernardo Kastrup's "analytic idealism") that has little practical difference from the worldview of materialists (although there are quite a few superficial soundbite differences). The site seems to be devoted to promoting an outlook sometimes called analytic idealism, although it should be more accurately described as atheist idealism or atheistic immaterialism. 

Idealism (the philosophical viewpoint that only minds and their experiences exist) is a viewpoint that has been presented in a surprising credible form, in a theistic version. To someone who is not used to thinking as an idealist, idealism may initially seem absurd. But the case for idealism was advanced in a surprisingly forceful way in the eighteenth century, by British philosopher George Berkeley. In his classic philosophical work The Principles of Human Knowledge (which can be read here), Berkeley argued for immaterialism, the idea that matter has no existence outside of minds that perceive matter. 

Being a person who denies the reality of matter, an idealist needs to have a credible answer  to the question of why people report identical experiences of observing physical things that don't really exist according to the idealist.  For example, why do you and me and all of our relatives always have the same experience seeing a bright yellow thing in the sky during the day, and a bright white thing in the sky during the night? For a materialist or a dualist the answer is easy: because the sun really physically exists, and the moon really physically exists. But for the idealist who does not believe in the physical existence of the sun or the moon, this uniformity of observations is a problem. 

Berkeley got around this problem by imagining a divine reality (God) that causes such uniformity of perceptual experiences. So, according to Berkeley, when we look up at the sky and see the sun fairly often, it is not because there exists a physical sun independent of minds; it is instead because a divine mind is causing such perceptual regularities in our mind.

But idealism has never been credibly presented in an atheistic form.  An atheist idealist can have no credible answer to questions such as "Why would I keep seeing the sun every month, if the sun does not physically exist?"

Let us look at some of the articles on the Essentia Foundation's website (many more can be read here).

• "Post-materialist cognitive science: Is it viable?"  The article fails to give any of the better reasons for rejecting physicalism.  
• "An unfelt surprise upon being uploaded into the cloud." We get an article by Christof Koch, who has been involved in faulty attempts to explain away near-death experiences as brain activity (as I describe here). He sounds skeptical about uploading minds into computers, but fails to mention the better reasons for rejecting such a possibility. 
• "The cell membrane as the ‘missing link’ for the evolution of consciousness." The essay seems like something a conventional "brains make minds" materialist would write. 
• "Has experimental psychology proven that consciousness causes the collapse of the wave function?"  There's nothing challenging "brains make minds" orthodoxy here. 
• "Psychedelics, the self, and the collapse of materialist assumptions." We hear some discussion of people having profound or remarkable experiences while taking psychedelics. The author then states, "These findings support the notion that consciousness is not generated by the brain but accessed through it or even embodied in all of us," without really supporting such a statement. There are very many reasons for rejecting "brains make minds" dogma, but the author has failed to give any of the stronger ones. 
• "NDEs and existential angst."  Near-death experiences are an important line of evidence against "brains make minds" ideology, when discussed well. Here the article fails to well-describe the phenomenon, giving a distorted discussion of it. 
•  "Analytic Idealism and the possibility of a meta-conscious cosmic mind." This is one of the better articles at the site, but only because it helps to illuminate that Bernardo Kastrup's "analytic idealism" is a metaphysically impoverished affair that is really just atheism in new clothing, a kind of metaphysical dress. The author tells us that Kastrup "has stated in many places that universal consciousness is most likely not meta-conscious and that, in this sense, does not entail any personal, intentional, or self-aware aspect at its most fundamental level," and suggests we need something much more.  Given how badly brains fail to explain minds and how badly Darwinism fails to explain the wonders of biology and cosmic fine-tuning, it seems that what we need to explain the ingenious design of our universe and the wonders of human bodies and human minds is something like a super-intelligent, purposeful and vastly powerful mind, not merely  some so-called "universal consciousness" lacking any intention or self-awareness.  
• "The social pay off of idealism."  The article furthers my suspicion that what the Essentia Foundation is mainly promoting is atheism in metaphysical dress, because the author speaks with seeming contempt while mentioning "gods and spirits,"  and makes clear that he does not believe in "anything supernatural." 
• "Freedom from free will: Good riddance to the self" is a very bad essay engaging in the atrocious error of free will denialism, which is the worst type of denialism. The writer presents this nonsense as the "editorial position" of the Essentia Foundation run by Kastrup. We read this: "From a mental health perspective, while for a protagonist personality acceptance of no free will is a welcome cooling of passions, it may not seem beneficial for all. But what it points to is something that does have the potential to ease suffering for all: the absence of a self."  This is the worst type of nonsense, delusion and falsehood. Each of us is a self, and we do have free will. So now it is rather clear that we should not have any great confidence in the teachings of the Essentia Foundation. 
• "The broad horizons of Ecstatic Naturalism" sells atheism with some happy-face twist. The essay deepens my suspicion that the Essentia Foundation is mainly dedicated to selling atheism in new clothes, a kind of metaphysical garb. 
• "The science of consciousness after death." Contradicting some of the essays above, this author says the evidence for life after death is very strong, and discusses some of it. 
• "In defense of Integrated Information Theory (IIT)" by Bernardo Kastrup is strangely a defense of a  "brains-make-minds" theory favored by materialists. We have an additional reason for suspecting that Kastrup's "analytic idealism" is just atheism in a little metaphysical dressing. 
• "Materialism in academia is a fundamentalist belief system." This good essay is by a cognitive scientist with some insight as to how the materialist culture within academia is like the culture of an organized religion. Courageously, the scientist discusses her experience with a phenomena sometimes called after-death communication or ADC. She states this: "In October of 2019 I ‘lost’ a dearest friend and colleague to suicide. Just after his passing, I started experiencing what were very unusual phenomena for me. Vivid dreams full of information I didn’t know before, messages, significant signs and feelings, none of which I could explain but somehow knew were given to me from my friend."  Another similar essay by the same cognitive scientist is here, one worth reading. 
• "The red herring of free will in objective idealism." More appalling nonsense denying or belittling free will, this time from Bernardo Kastrup, the director of the Essentia Foundation, who makes the false-as-false-can-be claim that "the very idea of free will turns out to be empty, semantically void." 
• "Experience requires no personal self." Here we have more very bad nonsense involving denial of the self.
• "Near-Death Experiences during cardiac arrest."  This is a good overview of important research on near-death experiences, by an important researcher in this field. Often involving reports of people viewing their bodies from outside their bodies, near-death experiences are actually suggestive of dualism (that you have a mind or soul different from your body), rather than idealism. Contrary to the denial of selfhood nonsense in some of the articles above, near-death experiences suggest that you do have a self, and one that survives death. 
• 'How Can You Be Me? The Answer Is Time." Some very bad nonsense here, in which Bernardo Kastrup claims that "you are me, at the same time that you are yourself"  and that "when you talk to another person, that other person is just you in  a ‘parallel timeline.' "  Oops to the second power. 

Overall my impressions reading the posts at this site agree with the impression I got earlier that Bernardo Kastrup's "analytic idealism" is a bit of a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing type of thing:  a form of atheism dressed up in metaphysical garb, possibly to attract some people repelled by the unbelievable standard sales pitches of atheists. It is a huge mistake to be describing human minds (involving such an enormously rich diversity of capabilities)  and human mental experiences (involving so many different types of phenomena vastly greater than mere awareness) by using the shadow-speaking term "consciousness," and to then think that the human mind can be explained by postulating some mere "universal consciousness" lacking in intention or intelligence or self-awareness. 

Very much an "armchair reasoning" affair apparently not mainly inspired by observations, Kastrup's "analytic idealism" involves the strange business of denying that there's matter, and postulating that all that exists are minds like ours or minds of other planetary creatures. You might call it atheism without physical matter. Under his scheme the term "universal consciousness" is used apparently as just a term meaning the collection of all minds like human minds. Humans are described as fragments or "alters" of this universal consciousness. 

To try to make his strange philosophy work, Kastrup is forced into depicting a human being as a mere shadow of what a human being is.  This involves the foolishness of denial of the self and the foolishness of denial of free will. Kastrup twists himself into knots trying to make this scheme work, making patently untrue statements such as "desire is necessity, and necessity is desire," and referring to "the egomaniacal delusion of individual agency." Such statements by Kastrup are bad examples of nonsense and falsehood.

We have an example of Kastrup's way-wrong shadow-speaking in this quote by him

"Under objective idealism, however, subjectivity is the foundation of reality; it is the one thing that exists irreducibly. Everything else—all experiential states in nature—are merely patterns of excitation of this fundamental subjectivity, just as different musical notes are patterns of vibration of one and the same guitar string."

No, that's way, way wrong. You are a thinking, knowing, believing, loving, caring, planning, questioning, seeing, hearing, creating, imagining, willing, speaking, reading, aspiring, instantly learning, recognizing, striving, enjoying, suffering and comprehending unified self, a person capable of insight, compassion, moral choice, self-introspection, instant recall, philosophical inquiry, appreciation and spirituality. Such realities and capabilities are not anything like musical notes, and are not intelligently described as  "excitations of subjectivity."

The dialog below illustrates the stupidity of trying to explain human minds by describing a human mind as mere "consciousness" and then trying to create a "theory of consciousness" that applies to everything conscious. 

James: John, I've made great progress in explaining how the human body arises during a mother's pregnancy. John: Great, tell me about it. James: I call my explanation a “theory of solidity.” John: A theory of solidity? James: Yes, because that's the essential nature of human bodies, that they are solid. So my theory attempts to explain how solidity arises. John: I think you've gone in the wrong direction, and made a big mistake. James: Why? John: Because a human body is something gigantically greater than mere “solidity.” A human body is a state of vast hierarchical organization, with a oceanic level of functional complexity. For example, in our bodies are 20,000 different protein inventions, most very special arrangements of many thousands of atoms. And we have 200 types of cells, each so complex they are compared to factories. You would do nothing to explain so impressive a reality of physical organization by merely explaining “solidity.” Your body is something gigantically more than mere “solidity.”

James: John, I've made great progress in explaining how the human mind arises. John: Great, tell me about it. James: I call my explanation a “theory of consciousness.” John: A theory of consciousness? James: Yes, because that's the essential nature of human minds, that they are conscious. So my theory attempts to explain how consciousness arises. John: I think you've gone in the wrong direction, and made a big mistake. James: Why? John: Because a human mind is something gigantically greater than mere “consciousness.” You and I are not merely “some consciousness.” We are thinking, believing, seeing, reading, hearing, loving imagining minds with insight, emotions, viewpoints, and a great variety of mental powers such as instant learning ability, the ability to hold memories for decades, and the ability to instantly recall knowledge when only hearing a word or seeing a face. Human minds and human mental experiences are a reality of oceanic depth, so much more than mere “consciousness.”

The main problems with materialism are not that it postulates that matter exists but (1) that materialism fails to credibly explain minds, which are realities of the most enormous and stupendous diversity of capabilities and experiences, and (2) that materialism fails to credibly explain the most impressive examples of matter that we observe (such as human bodies so enormously organized). You do not get rid of the problems with materialism by simply getting rid of matter. 

Although idealism seems less plausible than dualism, it could conceivably be that only minds exist, but only if there existed some stupendous reality explaining why so many humans would have the same types of perceptions suggesting an external existence of matter. You could only explain that by postulating some transcendent reality capable of explaining the day-to-day uniformity of human experiences (rather as Berkeley did), not by postulating that there are only human minds, without matter. 

"Just say there's no matter" is not a sensible strategy for dealing with the explanatory shortfalls of materialism and "brains make minds" dogma. The wise direction is "something much more," not just "something much less."

Some of the essays at the Essentia Foundation are very bad examples of falsehood and nonsense. But on the plus side, the web site of the foundation does show a willingness to publish essays from thinkers with a variety of viewpoints, and some of the essays are laudable. So it may be worth periodically checking the site for essays worth reading, if you have the time to sidestep the abundant junk.   

I think readers of all viewpoints may agree that the site needs a physical reformatting, to make it easier to read on laptops. Currently when viewed on laptops the articles have about twenty words per line, which is tedious to read. 

There are three reasons why material reality is the greatest embarrassment to atheists. The first is that astronomy observations tell us that the universe suddenly originated in a very fine-tuned way, just as if it has been specially created.  The second is that the laws and fundamental constants of the universe are fine-tuned with extreme precision, allowing a habitable universe. This involves physical fine-tuning we would not expect 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 random universes to have. The third is that the bodies of organisms such as humans show everywhere the most enormous purposeful organization, with the human body containing more than 20,000 types of complex inventions: more than 20,000 different types of protein molecules that each require a very special arrangement of hundreds or thousands of parts.  The human body is a staggering wonder of fine-tuned systems made of fine-tuned systems made of fine-tuned systems. Materialism lacks any credible explanation for such wonders of engineering within a body, Darwinism and gradualism being no such thing. And Darwinism is worthless in explaining how a speck-sized zygote progresses to become a body with so very many systems and interdependent components, largely because it simply is not true that DNA contains a specification of how to make a human body or any of its cells or any of the organelles of such cells. DNA does not explain how there appears  abundantly within a human body accidentally unachievable protein complexes, specialized teams of different types of proteins which are often so machine-like that they are nowadays often referred to as "molecular machines."

I can understand why an atheist might want to try to get rid of all of these realities suggesting that our universe, the human species and every human body is the result of purposeful transcendent agency, by some desperate-sounding "matter does not even exist" claim.  

Postscript: See my 2016 post here for a critique of a philosopher (Robert Lanza) who seems to take an  approach similar to Kastrup. Lanza calls his philosophy "biocentrism." In that 2016 post I state, "The biocentrism of Lanza and Berman apparently wishes to reduce the world to what goes on in the human mind, but their philosophy makes no attempt to describe anything that may be the source of human minds or the regularity of human experiences."

At the link here you can read quite a bit of a 2020 book by Lanza on his philosophy. I don't see any signs of improvement over the book I reviewed in 2016. Lanza gives us a great deal of murky talk about quantum mechanics, which does not clearly support the claims he is making.