Iain McGilchrist & Bernardo Kastrup Representing Reality

Iain McGilchrist is one of the most sought-after thinkers of our time. His research into brain lateralisation has helped illuminate the crises of modern life by showing how different modes of attention shape not only individual perception, but culture, science and our wider sense of reality.

Bernardo Kastrup is leading the modern renaissance of ‘metaphysical idealism’ - the notion that reality is essentially consciousness, based on analytic philosophy, science and psychology. 

Iain has argued that our civilisation is captured by a distorted mode of attention that seeks control over a universe made of things. He pushes against this modern habit of treating the world as fragmented and mechanical, and in its place presents a view of the world as dynamic, relational, flowing, and internally connected.

In this discussion, Iain and Bernardo shared their arguments for idealism, (that consciousness is a primary substrate of reality) cleared up misunderstandings about ‘the dashboard of perception’ and compared their different views on time. (For Bernardo it is an illusion, for Iain it is real - a continuous flow indicative of the unity of nature.)

They also shared their personal experiences of surrendering to their daimon, the impersonal will described as a real and often demanding force in their lives whose meaning is often only revealed in retrospect. 

Perhaps most important is where they most align: consciousness is primary, and to perceive is to participate in both the purpose and unfolding of reality. 

About Iain McGilchrist

Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist, author, and public intellectual whose work bridges neuroscience, philosophy, and culture. He has held fellowships at Oxford (including All Souls and Green Templeton), worked as a Consultant Psychiatrist at the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley NHS Trust in London, and was a research fellow in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins University Medical School. He now lives on the Isle of Skye, where he continues to write and lecture internationally.

He is known for arguing that mind and brain can only be understood within the widest context: our embodied lives, spiritual depth, and the cultures that shape (and are shaped by) how we attend to reality. His career is unusual in that he first studied English at Oxford before retraining in medicine and psychiatry, bringing literary and philosophical sensitivity into clinical and scientific work.

McGilchrist has published across psychiatry, neuroscience, and the humanities, and has appeared widely in broadcast media and long-form interviews. His books include The Master and His Emissary, Ways of Attending, and the two-volume The Matter with Things (2021), a major critique of reductive materialism that ranges across questions of identity, reality, time, value, purpose, and the divine.

About Bernardo Kastrup

Photo by Pedro Henrique Casarin

Bernardo Kastrup's work has been leading the modern renaissance of the philosophical position, ‘metaphysical idealism’ that reality is essentially mental, an appearance in ‘mind.’  

Bernardo has a Ph.D. in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and another Ph.D. in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence). As a scientist, Bernardo has worked for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the 'Casimir Effect' of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). 

Formulated in detail in many academic papers and books, his ideas have been featured on Scientific American, the Institute of Art and Ideas, the Blog of the American Philosophical Association and Big Think, among others. Bernardo's most recent book is The Idea of the World: A multi-disciplinary argument for the mental nature of reality. For more information, freely downloadable papers, videos, etc., please visit www.bernardokastrup.com. 

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