Bernardo Kastrup, Mainstreaming Controversial Philosophy of Mind Theories |378|

If Idealism is true, do you think it is possible that ideas start out as myths, and then those myths invade the reality generating bits of consciousness, and start to manifest themselves as UFO's and other entities?

David
David are you familiar with the "Slenderman" phenomena? Maybe Ill start a thread on it. Slenderman was created by a man on a certain website. But many paranormal researchers believe that it became manifested as a thought form and gained sentience as more and more people became obsessed with it. Its not exaggerating to say that this "Slenderman" (or at least the idea of Slenderman) has ruined several lives. People become obsessed with him and their lives become ruined. I heard an interview with a gentleman who wrote a book on this topic. He states that the Slenderman obsession ruins lives like no other sort of paranormal obsession. I personally think an argument could be made for several other individuals with regards to demonic obsession, but I digress. In one case, two 12 year old girls attempted to kill their friend by stabbing her several times in order to "appease Slenderman." During questioning they spoke of him as if he were very real, and spoke at length about his personality and attributes. There are several other tragic stories.
 
David are you familiar with the "Slenderman" phenomena? Maybe Ill start a thread on it. Slenderman was created by a man on a certain website. But many paranormal researchers believe that it became manifested as a thought form and gained sentience as more and more people became obsessed with it. Its not exaggerating to say that this "Slenderman" (or at least the idea of Slenderman) has ruined several lives. People become obsessed with him and their lives become ruined. I heard an interview with a gentleman who wrote a book on this topic. He states that the Slenderman obsession ruins lives like no other sort of paranormal obsession. I personally think an argument could be made for several other individuals with regards to demonic obsession, but I digress. In one case, two 12 year old girls attempted to kill their friend by stabbing her several times in order to "appease Slenderman." During questioning they spoke of him as if he were very real, and spoke at length about his personality and attributes. There are several other tragic stories.

This is a fascinating phenomenon that has occurred several times, but right now the other instances escape my recall. The creation of thought forms is well known, and in some instances they can be occupied by spirits. Of course this ties into the incubi and succubi, tulpas and other obsessional constructions. The mechanism can be employed by the religious to create presences of their divine inspiration, or by 'black magicians' to create malign presences.

And it opens up a whole can of worms too.
 
David are you familiar with the "Slenderman" phenomena? Maybe Ill start a thread on it. Slenderman was created by a man on a certain website. But many paranormal researchers believe that it became manifested as a thought form and gained sentience as more and more people became obsessed with it. Its not exaggerating to say that this "Slenderman" (or at least the idea of Slenderman) has ruined several lives. People become obsessed with him and their lives become ruined. I heard an interview with a gentleman who wrote a book on this topic. He states that the Slenderman obsession ruins lives like no other sort of paranormal obsession. I personally think an argument could be made for several other individuals with regards to demonic obsession, but I digress. In one case, two 12 year old girls attempted to kill their friend by stabbing her several times in order to "appease Slenderman." During questioning they spoke of him as if he were very real, and spoke at length about his personality and attributes. There are several other tragic stories.

I had a vague memory that something of this sort had been claimed, but no details. It sounds as if this isn't something it would be wise to investigate!

David
 
You know what tickled me pink, Bernardo's latest paper:

The Universe in Consciousness
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(PDF 648.9 kb)

Author: Kastrup, B.

Source: Journal of Consciousness Studies, Volume 25, Numbers 5-6, 2018, pp. 125-155(31)

Publisher: Imprint Academic

Abstract: I propose an idealist ontology that makes sense of reality in a more parsimonious and empirically rigorous manner than mainstream physicalism, bottom-up panpsychism, and cosmopsychism. The proposed ontology also offers more explanatory power than these three alternatives, in that it does not fall prey to the hard problem of consciousness, the combination problem, or the decombination problem, respectively. It can be summarized as follows: there is only cosmic consciousness. We, as well as all other living organisms, are but dissociated alters of cosmic consciousness, surrounded by its thoughts. The inanimate world we see around us is the extrinsic appearance of these thoughts. The living organisms we share the world with are the extrinsic appearances of other dissociated alters.

He defeated my complaints by adding some more precision to the term panpsychism. Nice move, Bernardo. I've got this printed out, will read it this weekend.
 
I've had a hard time deciding where to post this video -- it is relevant to a number of different podcasts we've had recently. In the end, I decided to place it here, where Bernardo was last interviewed on Skeptiko, a). because it too represents his ideas, and b). what he says is applicable to many threads, so short of placing it in all of those, this seems like a logical place to put it. Let me just say that once again I am staggered not only by Bernardo's erudition, but by his great facility in expressing complex ideas in terms an average person stands a chance of understanding.


(Jan 30, 2019)

PS: see if you can spot the nods to Donald Hoffman and Rupert Sheldrake, neither of whom he explicitly mentions.
 
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Yes, that means Mishlove has now done 3 very recent interviews with Bernardo. I haven't watched the one you just posted Michael (save that for this evening) but the other two recent ones are:

(28 Nov 2018)

(and)

(12 Dec 2018)

Thanks very much for the heads-up. :)
 
Yes, that means Mishlove has now done 3 very recent interviews with Bernardo. I haven't watched the one you just posted Michael (save that for this evening) but the other two recent ones are:

Thanks very much for the heads-up. :)

And thanks for these -- I think I may have seen at least one of them, but I'll check them out to see. By the way, the video I posted is the latest in the series, and I've amended the post to indicate the date in the same way you did.
 
And thanks for these -- I think I may have seen at least one of them, but I'll check them out to see. By the way, the video I posted is the latest in the series, and I've amended the post to indicate the date in the same way you did.

I watched both of them first time round, but I watched them again. It's good sometimes to do that because one picks up on things one might have missed previously.:)
 
Here's a video of Bernardo's defence of his second PhD, this time in philosophy (his first was in computer engineering), plus the degree granting ceremony. His thesis can be downloaded here, and his latest book, (The Idea Of The World), a somewhat more digestible version of the thesis, is now available on Amazon.


Many Congrats, Bernardo!
 
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