Transcription
If I accept your view that there is just this one big mind, I would expect, I think, you know, it's hard to imagine what I would expect if I was not a unified, you know, agent, but I think I would expect that there would just be sort of one big ball of experience, right? But for some reason it just like you know, it is it like that it wants to? Can you even speak of desires like in in this sense? Like I'm trying to think of like how to picture what's actually happening there in like your language, as it were.
I I I I get where you're going with it. So, I I I will make a concession, but I first give a few disclaimers, if uh if if you're okay with it. Um um I'm a naturalist. I think nature does what it does because it is what it is. And nature has its archetypal templates of behavior. Um and um nature's unfolding is the natural unfolding of these archetypal templates of behavior. Nature does what it does because it is what it is. That And so, I'm a naturalist. There is no external intervention into nature from some kind of individu- individuated force standing outside nature. That wouldn't be naturalism. So, I I'm a a committed naturalist. Um I also guard against anthropomorphizing things because one thing I have seen a lot amongst people who sympathize with analytic idealism and idealism in general is the temptation to say, "Well, if the entire universe is made of mental states just like I am, then it should behave and think and then and desire like I do." No. Uh our complexities evolved um on the surface of a rock over 4 billion years because of a scarcity of resources. The other mental states out there didn't undergo that process, so there is no reason to think that they would be even remotely akin to ours. The only similarity would be that whatever their inner life is, it's also qualitative, but it may not have anything else related to how we feel from from within.
So, having made these two disclaimers, I will concede this. With just about any other metaphysics, certainly with physicalism, which is a metaphysics, um you cannot speak of why. There is no why. There is just the mechanical unfolding of nature's intrinsic regularities. Uh and you can add a little bit of chance as the source of auto-excitation to kickstart the process. Um but under idealism, if it is all one great field of subjectivity, then yes, strictly strictly speaking, we can talk of a why. We can talk of a felt impetus to action. And we can, with a lot of caution, imagine what that felt impetus might have been like. Uh exploring the notion that that impetus was felt in a mind, and I am also a mind. And although these are completely incommensurable minds, there is a point of singularity. There is a point in which these two things are one and the same field of subjectivity.
So, with all these disclaimers that I just made, and um highlighting that what I'm about to say is speculation, and that even if it is completely wrong, it does not in any way affect the plausibility of analytic idealism. Analytic idealism does not depend at all on what I'm about to say. Um and it is a slight form of anthropomorphization, but I will entertain it. What could have been the impetus to action that kick-started all this? The only thing I can imagine Well, there are there are two things I can imagine. One is an irresistible desire to self-knowledge. What is it that is going on? What is it that I am? Um not articulated in this way because I articulated it in a self-reflective way and self-reflection is the result of 4 billion years of painful blood evolution on this rock. So, the mind of nature in its primordial state is not going to self-reflect. Otherwise, flies and amoeba would self-reflect and we have no empirical reason to think that they do, right? So, I am saying this out of my own self-reflection, but one could imagine that there is an instinctive felt, not articulated, but felt impetus to self-knowledge. That's one possibility. Another possibility is a sheer solitude. How mind-breaking sheer solitude um could be. But again, this is poetic imagination. I'm I'm I'm I'm sort of going off to the races with poetic imagination. This is no longer analytic philosophy.
Of course. Um but I I Of course, the other question that it sort of raises is Okay, so you're telling me that we all kind of exist as the result of a kind of mental activity of this great big ultimate mind which is the ground of all being and of all consciousness and in whom we sort of get our existence and it starts to sound a little bit pantheistic. It starts to sound a little bit like you're describing something like the mind of God, right? Like when when people say the world is created by an intelligent sort of like a creative intelligence, right? Which in some sense is like kind of non-physical, but produces the physical world. And it's all a little bit of a mystery. So, like, oh, okay. Oh, we've we've now been led to this idea that the universe crops up as the result of one big mind. And do you think that it is fair to characterize that as verging on a religious position?
Yes, I would be dishonest if I if I didn't say yes to this. Um only some form of extreme prejudice would have to stop one from acknowledging uh this. Um but I Look, I I don't know what people mean when they say God. I think there are 8 billion definitions of God out there, right? One for each person. So, if I say, "Well, I acknowledge God." I don't know what I'm acknowledging in the minds of the people who are listening to you. I'll tell you this. I don't think the God that um that I would imagine uh under analytic idealism, I don't think it is deliberate. I don't think it had a plan. Um I don't think it's passing moral judgment. Um I don't think it is self-reflecting. I think it is doing what it is doing barely spontaneous spontaneously. It's simply unfolding its own mental archetypes in a spontaneous I'm tempted to use the word automatic, but that goes too far. In in in a regular, predictable, spontaneous manner. Yes, it is mental stuff. Yes, it is omniscient by definition. It's the sum total of nature and its mental states. So, it is scient. Therefore, it is omniscient. It is omnipresent because it's all there is, and it's omnipotent in the sense that everything that happens happens by virtue of its unfolding, its doing, its behavior. So, you could say the universe is God dancing. Um and um you could even say um I lost my train of thought. So, I I I'll give you that. It comes close to religious traditions. And um um I would be dishonest if I wouldn't acknowledge that, but I guard against all the baggage of attributions that people might make and place on analytic idealism because of this acknowledgement. Uh I I'm not talking about a God sitting in a throne and deciding the fate of man in a capricious, deliberate uh way. I'm talking about a spontaneous unfolding of natural processes that happen to be mental in nature.