Rupert Sheldrake's rejoinder

Rupert has asked me to publish his rejoinder to the previous post in this blog, wherein I defended myself against his attack on Analytic Idealism. Here is his response, in the form of a letter, in full and unedited. I've added a link to it from my previous post. 

Dear Bernardo, 

I regret the tone of my remarks in my interview with Curt Jaimungal, because I greatly respect you and your work.  I am influenced by it.  I think your promotion of Analytical Idealism has widened the scope of modern philosophical debate and opened up questions and discussions that might not otherwise have been possible. I apologise for expressing myself in a way you found hurtful.  

When I was speaking to Curt about your work, I was talking to him as if it were a conversation between the two of us.  We had already had several informal chats when he was in London soon before our discussion. Unfortunately, I was not thinking about the impact of the conversation on people who might not know very much about you, and for whom my comments could have been misleading. If I had thought more, I would first have made clear how Analytical Idealism differs from physicalism, before moving on to say that your Idealist position also includes some aspects of physicalism and reductionism. This became clear to me soon before my conversation with Curt because I had just read you new book.

In the subtitle of Analytical Idealism in a Nutshell, you call it “the 21st  century’s only plausible metaphysics”. This is a provocative claim, and it provoked me into thinking about the basis for your rejection of all other forms of idealism. I could only conclude that this is because you still share some of the default assumptions of physicalism, including naturalism and reductionism, as you yourself make clear.

On page 2 of Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell, you write that Analytical Idealism “embraces reductionism”, by which you mean that  “complex phenomena can be explained in terms of simpler ones.” As you point out, simpler does not necessarily mean smaller, but in the context of biology, reductionism in practice means reducing organisms to molecular processes, and behaviour to the activity of nerves.

I have spent sixty years struggling against reductionism in biology, psychology and consciousness studies. In biology, reductionism has long ruled the roost in the form of molecular biology, focussed on genes and other molecules. This reductionist attitude has inhibited holistic research in developmental biology, animal behaviour, psychology and medicine by forcing everything into a physicalist mould, pointing down towards the supposed ultimate foundation of everything, fundamental quantum physics. In the light of my own personal history, your advocacy of reductionism made me think of your position as close to physicalism, in spite of you being an Idealist.

You also embrace naturalism. This is your own definition: “The phenomena of the external world unfold spontaneously, according to nature’s own inherent dispositions, and not according to external intervention by a divinity outside nature” (also on p. 2). In common usage, physicalism, naturalism and atheism are closely intertwined, and often treated as identical. Naturalism borrows its widespread credibility in the secular world from the prestige of physicalist science. I know that you distinguish Analytical Idealism from physicalism by making consciousness, rather than physical processes, fundamental, but as you yourself make explicit, you carry over several physicalist assumptions and attitudes into your brand of idealism, which is what I tried to summarize in the phrase “idealist physicalism”. I agree this is misleading, and it would be more accurate to say “physicalist-flavoured idealism”. 

Our most fundamental disagreement concerns God. All believers in God, including me, are idealists in the sense that they regard divine consciousness as fundamental. You want to keep God out of science and philosophy, especially any kind of Abrahamic God. Espousing naturalism enables you to do so as a matter of principle. But even if you dismiss anything to do with Christianity, Judaism and Islam, Indian religions have plenty of examples of trinitarian or advaitic (non-dual) idealism. Moreover, most forms of trinitarian or advaitic idealism do not involve an external supernatural God intervening in the otherwise spontaneous running of nature. They are not claiming, as you put it, an “external intervention by a divinity outside nature”, but rather see divine consciousness as underlying and sustaining all nature all the time. The philosopher David Bentley Hart, for example, shows this very clearly in his book The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss. 

We agree that there is a need to move on from old-style physicalism. We agree that idealism provides a better philosophical overview. But I take seriously religious or theological idealisms, whereas you rule them out a priori by invoking the naturalist principle. Then the only form of idealism left standing is you own.

It was unfair of me to call your form of Analytical Idealism an armchair theory and I am sorry about this remark. I tarred you with the brush of other philosophers, but in fact you have repeatedly engaged with detailed scientific and empirical findings. You have also made some visionary suggestions for empirical research. In your book More Than Allegory (2016), you created a science-fiction type fantasy in which you envisaged experiments on psychedelics in which people were given intravenous infusions of psychoactive substances (“the juice mix”) that prolonged their altered states of consciousness so they could explore them in great detail. Subsequently, this experiment was actually carried out, using dimethyl tryptamine (DMT), at Imperial College, London, with some very brave volunteers. The results were published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

You and I are both used to controversies and recognize that other people sincerely hold differing views. Ideas develop through dialogue, and we have already taken part in a good-natured discussion which anyone can watch online. 

I hope that we will be able to continue our discussions in a spirit of openness. 

Rupert

© 2024 by Rupert Sheldrake. Published with permission.