Consciousness And The Universe
The main focus of the book 'The Sapient Cosmos' is to assess the viability of a consciousness-only view of reality. In other words, how can we understand the recent renaissance of metaphysical idealism in the philosophy of mind? To this aim, the doctrine of physicalism, idealism’s antithesis, is scrutinized. Physicalism posits that everything in the universe can be reduced to and explained by physical entities, their properties, and interactions. It is a metaphysical proposition, assuming a materialist-reductionist ontology. Interestingly, physicalism has unwittingly been adopted by most scientifically-minded people who believe it to be a scientific claim. This, however, is a category mistake, as it conflates the descriptive scope of science with a metaphysical claim about the ultimate nature of reality. By definition, metaphysics begins where physics ends. So, while the latter inquires about the 'how', the former contemplates the 'what'. As a result, most acade...