Bernardo Kastrup

Bernardo Kastrup has a Ph.D. in computer engineering from Eindhoven University of Technology and specializations in artificial intelligence and reconfigurable computing. He has worked as a scientist in some of the world's foremost research laboratories, including the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories. He has authored many science and philosophy papers, as well as several philosophy books. His three most recent books are: "More Than Allegory," "Brief Peeks Beyond" and "Why Materialism Is Baloney."

 

Issue: 6:4 (The twenty fourth issue)

Questions about the nature of reality and consciousness remain unresolved in
philosophy today, but not for lack of hypotheses. Ontologies as varied as
physicalism, microexperientialism and cosmopsychism enrich the
philosophical menu. Each of these ontologies faces a seemingly fundamental
problem: under physicalism, for instance, we have the ‘hard problem of
consciousness,’ whereas under microexperientialism we have the ‘subject
combination problem.’ I argue that these problems are thought artifacts, having
no grounding in empirical reality. In a manner akin to semantic paradoxes, they
exist only in the internal logico-conceptual structure of their respective
ontologies.