With Reality in Mind: Bernardo Kastrup 5-Week Q&A with guest Christof Koch

You can still sign up to join this discussion series - you will have missed the meet and greet week, but none of the sessions with Bernardo.

“The breadth of Bernardo's insight and understanding into the nature of reality and all kinds of related subjects is utterly breathtaking. Thank you Bernardo and Amir for a wonderful, inspiring, transformative four weeks.” ★★★★★  - Karen
 
You are invited to a ground-breaking series of discussions with Bernardo in which notions of reality, physics, biology and consciousness are transformed, themed around Bernardo's new book “Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell: A straightforward summary of the 21st century’s only plausible metaphysics”

Bernardo Kastrup is undoubtedly the world's most articulate, rigorous and well-known defender of metaphysical idealism - the notion that all reality is consciousness. 

On November 12th we'll be joined by guest Christof Koch, the famous neuroscientist that has led the way on the neural correlates of consciousness since the 80s, and in collaboration with Giulio Tononi co-developed the Integrated Information Theory of consciousness.

These are incredibly unique opportunities to engage directly with minds that are shaping the future of our culture, in the company of fellow philosophers, scientists, mystics, and those curious about reality and life. 

We gather questions and reflections from participants, and together discuss the most fundamental questions and experiences life has to offer. 

If you have an interest in the convergence of philosophy, non-duality and cutting edge science, you've come to the right place! 

“Phenomenal talk. Bernardo is truly a great philosopher... inspiring and life-changing. So thank you to Bernardo,.. and to everybody else in attendance, who consistently asked profound questions!”  ★★★★★ - Andre

Week 0: Group Introduction and Orientation (29th Oct)

You will be sent video recordings of introductory material so you are ready to fully partake in the conversation. Please plan for about 4 hours of preliminary watching if you are new to Bernardo's work. 

Week 0 is without Bernardo, to meet the other course members, and review our understanding of:

1. The philosophical, logical and scientific evidence that refutes materialism as a good explanation for what we know about reality. 
   
   (Materialism is the belief that nothing exists except “physical things”, and that consciousness is somehow an emergent property of special arrangement. We will cover the many reasons why this artificially creates the ‘Hard Problem of Consciousness and the reasons why idealism is a more coherent approach.) 
    
2. The rational and empirical evidence for idealism, drawing on neuroscience, physics, philosophy and basic common sense. We will revise Bernardo's unique way of expressing the idea that individuals are much like whirlpools inside one vast oceanic universal consciousness - seperate in temporary activity but not in substance.

Week 1: What physicalism gets wrong

Each week the discussion emerges based on questions and proposals from the group. The following is an outline of likely topics:

In this first week with Bernardo, we'll prioritise topics from the first few chapters of the book, which include: 

• Understanding perception is a dashboard for reality
• Experimental evidence for incoherence of physicalism
• The evidence against physicalism from brain scans
• The hard problem of consciousness
• How physicalism survives

Week 2: with Guest Christof Koch

On November 12th we'll be joined by guest Christof Koch, the famous neuroscientist that has led the way on the neural correlates of consciousness since the 80s, and in collaboration with Giulio Tononi co-developed the Integrated Information Theory of consciousness.

We'll discuss his views on idealism, how science and philosophy relate, and what the neural correlates of consciousness can teach us.  

Week 3: Understanding the coherence of idealism

This week we'll aim to dispel common misunderstandings that emerge around idealism. This include the fact that many people don't realise that idealism doesn't contradict several values that are mistakenly thought to be the domain of physicalism, including: 

Realism - the notion that there is an external world independent of our individual minds, whether it’s physical or otherwise.
Naturalism - the notion that nature unfolds spontaneously, according to its own intrinsic dispositions, as opposed to the whimsical interventions of a deity outside nature.
Rationalism - the notion that the human intellect can recognize and model the regularities of nature’s behavior, and thereby predict it
Reductionism - the notion that we can account for complex natural phenomena in terms of simpler ones

Week 4: Time, space, identity, and structure 

We'll invite questions that clarify previous conversations, and tackle the difficult to understand notions of how one consciousness can appear as many, what time is, and the structures of consciousness. 

Dates and Times

You will be sent recordings to watch in your own time before the live events to familiarise yourself with the basic concepts.
We gather on zoom over five Tuesdays in a row, at 7pm UK time, starting Tuesday 29th of October

Sessions run for at least 2 hours, sometimes significantly longer. Recordings of each session are set to all participants. Occasionally a speaker requests to share some thoughts ‘off the record' and these rare sections are not recorded. 

Tues 29th Oct, 7pm UK time (Orientation week to meet the group and revise pre-recorded material without Bernardo)
Tues 5th Nov, 7pm UK time - Live session with Bernardo Kastrup 
Tues 12th Nov, 7pm UK time - Live session with Bernardo & Christof Koch
Tues 19th Nov, 7pm UK time - Live session with Bernardo 
Tues 26th Nov, 7pm UK time - Live session with Bernardo

If money is a barrier to attendance, please get in touch, stating if you require a discount or free ticket: amir@adventuresinawareness.com
No one is turned away for lack of funds. 

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.

About Cristof Koch

Christof Koch was the president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle where he remains as a Meritorious Investigator. He is known for his interdisciplinary approach, combining insights from neuroscience, physics, and philosophy to tackle the complex problem of consciousness. His work has been published in over 350 scientific papers, significantly shaped modern understanding of the neural correlates of consciousness and visual perception.

In collaboration with Francis Crick, Cristof initiated the modern search for the neuronal correlates of consciousness, a systematic experimental program to identify the minimal bio-physical mechanisms jointly sufficient for any one specific conscious percept. In collaboration with Giulio Tononi, he co-developed the Integrated Information Theory of consciousness.

Christof writings and interests integrate theoretical, computational and experimental neuroscience with philosophy and contemporary trends, in particular artificial intelligence. His latest book, The Feeling of Life Itself – Why Consciousness is Everywhere But Can’t be Computed, was published by MIT Press in Autumn of 2019.

His previous book, Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist, blends science and memoir to explore topics in discovering the roots of consciousness. Stemming in part from a long-standing collaboration with the late Nobel Laureate Francis Crick, Christof authored the book The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach. Koch also authored the technical books Biophysics of Computation: Information Processing in Single Neurons and Methods in Neuronal Modeling: From Ions to Networks, and served as editor for several books on neural modeling and information processing.

FEEDBACK FROM PREVIOUS COURSES 

★★★★★  “Bernardo is a true pioneer and a brilliant thinker (and experiencer). One of my favorite aspects of Bernardo's personality is his humility and his unpretentiousness. Very enjoyable and enriching. Should follow up in 3 mos min.” - Tomas

★★★★★ “Listening to Bernardo makes my whole Being fizz with excitement. Excellent content, thank you so much for hosting this. And Amir is the ideal facilitator - curious, playful, respectful, attentive, and organised.” - Liam

★★★★★  “This was a fascinating 4 weeks on the nature of consciousness. Highly recommended.” Frank I

★★★★★  “It was a wonderful experience. I have learnt a lot through out this course, Bernardo is such a very articulate philosopher and Amir is such a very good coordinator. I am so grateful for having had this experience.” - Nour

★★★★★  "Great course! Very insightful and original. Impressive how Bernardo is able take a holistic/multidisciplinary perspective and is able to translate difficult philosophical and scientific concepts into everyday language. A course definitely worthwhile repeating!" - Frank 

REFUNDS: Please note that we do not arrange refunds or exchanges. We welcome swapping or reselling your tickets with people you know.

ACCESS: We do our best to include everyone in our events, regardless of employment or health circumstances. If you would like to attend this event but are truly unable to afford the ticket price, please do get in touch with the event organiser.