🧠✨ Consciousness and Structural Realism: Descartes’ Philosophy as a Metaphysical Foundation 🌌 Let’s imagine that the entire physical universe were to suddenly cease to exist. What would remain? René Descartes already recognized in a brilliant thought experiment: The only thing whose solitary existence we can logically conceive of is pure consciousness. While everything material around us could theoretically be a dream or an illusion, psychological experience is absolutely certain. Thus, properties of consciousness are the only qualities that are completely intrinsic—that is, existing in and of themselves—and not relational (based on relationships). It is precisely here that modern philosophy of mind builds a fascinating and highly relevant bridge to structural realism. If modern physics describes the world primarily as a pure network of mathematical relationships (structures), the fundamental question arises: What does this structure actually rest upon? After all, a relation requires relata—fundamental carriers that connect and sustain the network of relationships in the first place. The radical thesis of modern panpsychism: The only thing that could underpin the nature of structures without itself being merely another mathematical structure is the mental. The world, therefore, rests on a mental foundation. As elegantly as this metaphysical solution resolves the ontological puzzle of our description of the world, it poses a radical challenge to cognitive neuroscience. For purely material, brain-centered research, this fundamental role of the mind presents an enormous theoretical conundrum that must first be solved. In our Zoomposium, my colleague Axel Stöcker and I explored precisely these deep waters of metaphysics. We had the great honor and pleasure of speaking with the renowned philosopher Prof. Dr. Godehard Brüntrup SJ (Munich School of Philosophy). The central themes of our two-part interview: • The metaphysics of consciousness: How can the persistent explanatory gap between phenomenal experience and neural activity be bridged by concepts such as liberal naturalism or the process philosophy of Alfred N. Whitehead? • The bridge to structural realism: How is the fundamental assumption justified that consciousness constitutes the inner properties of physical relata? This conversation takes us right to the limits of pure physicalism and invites us to completely rethink the nature of our minds and reality. What do you think? Must the structure of the universe ultimately rest on a mental foundation, or can the world ultimately be explained in purely material and relational terms? I look forward to your perspectives in the comments! 👇 📎 Information: https://philosophies.de/index.php/2022/09/27/metaphysik-des-bewusstseins/ You can find the full interview, including the fascinating segment on near-death research, on our YouTube channel “Zoomposium”. 🎥 Interview: https://youtu.be/hoqiI_TElv4
