In effect, Hume awakened Kant from his “dogmatic slumber.” The result was an existential blow (Tarnas 1991): Hume’s philosophy stimulated “Immanuel Kant to develop the central philosophical position of the era” (Tarnas 1991, p. If all human knowledge is based on empiricism, yet induction cannot be logically justified, then man can have no certain knowledge.All is contingent.
more disturbing consequence of Hume’s critical analysis was its apparent undermining of empirical science itself, for the latter’s logical foundation, induction, was now recognized as unjustifiable. Like Berkeley, Hume could not accept Locke’s views on representative perception, but neither could he accept Berkeley’s identification of external objects with internal ideas, rooted ultimately in the mind of God.He drove the critique of empiricism to its final extreme (Tarnas 1991, p. The reason that objectivity exists, that different individuals continually perceive a similar world, and that a reliable order inheres that world, is that the world and its order depend on a mind that transcends individual minds and is universal-namely, God’s mind.The next iteration in this line of reasoning came in the form of David Hume’s skepticism (Tarnas 1991, p. We can hold on to the idea of independently existing material substance, but at the cost of having to accept that we can ascribe no independently real properties to it, and can never hope to explain how this substance might give rise to the perceptions we have of it.So, why do we appear to witness the same objective reality, if all things are intangible? For Berkeley it was clear (Tarnas 1991, p. 100):īerkeley’s logic is merciless but compelling. Locke was followed by Bishop Berkeley, who pointed out that if the empiricist analysis of human knowledge is carried through rigorously, then it must be admitted that all qualities that the human mind registers, whether primary or secondary, are ultimately experienced as ideas in the mind, and there can be no conclusive inference whether or not some of those qualities “genuinely” represent or resemble an outside object.Indeed (Baggott 2009, p. Secondary qualities such as color exist only in our minds and therefore cannot be said to be independently existing real qualities of physical objects.This view is compatible with empiricism and rationalism (Chap. Hysical objects possess primary qualities such as extension in space, shape, motion, density, number, and so on, all underpinned by the concept of material substance. According to René Descartes and John Locke, a distinction needs to be introduced when thinking about material entities. The latter question of how consciousness can acquire knowledge about the external world has a long history in philosophy.
The well-served and previously glorious materialistic and reductionistic scientific worldview is yielding to a novel scientific conception of subjective consciousness and objective reality-and their unexpected intimate kinship. In essence, the human mind is witnessing the most radical paradigm shift in its own history. Beginning with an information ontology, a radical participatory ontology is hinted at. As the cracks in the current edifice of science continually grow, the new information-theoretic paradigm is embraced. Moreover, peer-reviewed studies are appearing in the physics literature describing mind-matter interactions in double-slit quantum experiments-a long suspected connection by many pioneers of quantum mechanics. Then, the surprising therapeutic effects of psychedelics is discovered, next to a myriad of transcendental planes of being, accessible to pure consciousness. Moving towards a more empirical analysis, the enigma of intelligence is discussed, arising in decentralized systems and even in inanimate structures. The notion of spirituality is creeping back into science. The nature of consciousness, as has been suggested by ancient Eastern and shamanic traditions, is necessarily universal and primal. In attempts to bridge the chasm between the objective and subjective, scientists and philosophers have opened up to the unspeakable. This gives rise to the very first formal description of consciousness. By extending the information-theoretic paradigm, the informational nature of consciousness is uncovered.
Finally, the human mind faces its own nature.