En ny högviktig i Nederländerna baserad organisation som befrämjar den konsekventa filosofiska idealismen under beaktande av såväl traditionella andliga som samtida vetenskapliga perspektiv, och med medverkan av på denna nätplats flera gånger figurerande Bernardo Kastrup (länkar här), bildades härom året: Essentia Foundation.
Så här inleder den beskrivningen av sig själv, under rubriken “The Challenge”:
“We live under a materialist metaphysics: all that supposedly exists is matter, an abstract entity conceptually defined as being outside and independent of consciousness. This metaphysics is often conflated with science itself, even though the scientific method only allows us to determine how nature behaves, not what nature is in and of itself.
The mainstream cultural endorsement of metaphysical materialism became firmly established in the second half of the nineteenth century. Since then, however, its strength has been derived mainly from intellectual habit and inherited assumptions, not from clear reasoning, evidence or explanatory power. As a matter of fact, over the past few decades evidence has been accumulating in foundations of physics, neuroscience and analytic philosophy that materialism is false.
Nonetheless, the cultural prevalence of metaphysical materialism has myriad – and arguably dysfunctional – implications at both individual and social levels: it impacts our sense of meaning and purpose, our value systems, our understanding of health, disease and death, as well as the way we relate to others, the planet and even ourselves.”
Mot detta uppställer Essentia Foundation följande målsättningar, under rubriken “The Goal”:
“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. This is known in specialist communities, but hasn’t yet been openly communicated, in an accessible manner, to the culture at large. Essentia Foundation hopes to help close this communication gap.
Although we acknowledge that analytic or scientific understanding, in and of itself, isn’t life- or behavior-changing – only felt experience or knowledge by direct acquaintance is – in modern culture the intellect is the bouncer of the heart. Therefore, we aim to create intellectual space and legitimacy for the notion that, at its most fundamental level, all reality unfolds in an extended field of mentation.”
Detta ligger helt i linje med de allmänna idealistiska positioner jag här, i många inlägg i kategorierna Idealism (under Philosophy) och Spirituality försökt försvara och lyft fram tänkare och andliga lärare som företräder. Flera av formuleringarna låter ana Kastrups intellektuella ledarskap. Termerna “mental” och “mentation” behöver från mitt perspektiv på visst problematiserande sätt diskuteras i termer av å ena sidan medvetandet i sig och å den andra de olika nivåerna av fenomenellt medvetandeinnehåll, men de överensstämmer med exempelvis Bruntons terminologi.
Hur ska man då uppnå dessa mål? Avsnittet “Way of Working” beskriver det:
“Essentia Foundation questions metaphysical materialism and argues for the plausibility of idealism by leveraging the exact same epistemic values our culture reifies today: coherence, internal logical consistency, conceptual parsimony, empirical adequacy and explanatory power. We show that, if applied objectively and consequently, these values point directly at idealism, while contradicting materialism.
Operationally, Essentia Foundation identifies and helps to promote scientific and philosophical work relevant to metaphysical idealism or nondualism. As such, we can be regarded as an information hub – strictly and thoroughly curated to weed out nonsense and pseudo-science – for the latest developments in science, analytic philosophy and other areas of scholarly work with a bearing on our culture’s metaphysical views. Our community of authors lists a growing number of academics, scholars, philosophers, scientists and authors whose works are opening the way for a new, more functional and true understanding of ourselves and reality at large.”
Detta kunde knappast formuleras på ett mer föredömligt sätt. Presentationen under About us-fliken avslutas med en förklaring av vad de kallar sitt “Editorial Commitment”:
“Essentia Foundation is not philosophically neutral: we were created precisely to address an imbalance in how the metaphysical implications of results from science and philosophy are communicated by the media.
That said, you can expect from us editorial rigor, accuracy and careful selection of the material we choose to publish. Strict curation – erring rather on the side of caution in cases of high uncertainty – is what characterizes our approach. To put it simply, we only publish credible work. And although we do try to communicate in an accessible manner – dispensing with jargon and academic obscurantism as much as possible – we are committed to not allowing these simplifications to misrepresent the original material.
Again, Essentia Foundation shall never promote nonsense, pseudo-science or gullible, unsubstantiated claims of the kind often associated with mind-first ontologies in the popular culture. This is our firm commitment to you. Whatever you see in our material may be polemical – in the spirit that every major scientific or philosophical advancement has originally been polemical – but shall never be unsubstantiated, irrational or deceiving. In cases where the solidity or credibility of a relevant result isn’t clear, we consult our Academic Advisory Board before publishing it.”
“Our team” består av Fred Matser (Founder and Honorary Chairman), Prof. dr. Jan van der Greef (Chairman), Machtelt Groothuis (Non-Executive Director), Steven Schuurman (Non-Executive Director), Bernardo Kastrup, PhD, PhD (Executive Director), och deras Academic Advisory Board av Prof. Jeffrey J. Kripal, PhD, Prof. Hyman M. Schipper, MD, PhD, FRCPC, Prof. Edward F. Kelly, PhD, Prof. Donald D. Hoffman, PhD, Prof. dr. Jan van der Greef, Prof. dr. Sarah Durston, Prof. Mikhail Ilyin, PhD, PhD, Dr. Iain McGilchrist, Claus Metzner, PhD, och Prof. Bernard Carr, PhD.
Följ dem på den ovan länkade hemsidan och på YouTube, Twitter och Facebook.
Jan Olof Bengtsson 