I defend a modern, analytic formulation of metaphysical idealism, according to which the ground of existence is phenomenal consciousness. Everything else - I maintain - is reducible to configurations and patterns of excitation of consciousness.

I propose an idealist ontology that makes sense of reality in a more parsimonious and empirically rigorous manner than mainstream physicalism, bottom-up panpsychism, and cosmopsychism. The proposed ontology also offers more explanatory power than these three alternatives, in that it does not fall prey to the hard problem of consciousness, the combination problem, or the decombination problem, respectively. It can be summarized as follows: there is only cosmic consciousness. We, as well as all other living organisms, are but dissociated alters of cosmic consciousness, surrounded by its thoughts. The inanimate world we see around us is the extrinsic appearance of these thoughts. The living organisms we share the world with are the extrinsic appearances of other dissociated alters.

In order to perceive the world, we need more than just raw sensory input: a subliminal paradigm of thought is required to interpret raw sensory data and, thereby, create the objects and events we perceive around ourselves. As such, the world we see reflects our own unexamined, culture-bound assumptions and expectations, which explains why every generation in history has believed that it more or less understood the world. Today, we perceive a world of objects and events outside and independent of mind, which merely reflects our current paradigm of thought. Anomalies that contradict this paradigm have been accumulated by physicists over the past couple of decades, which will eventually force our culture to move to a new paradigm. Under this new paradigm, a form of universal mind will be viewed as nature’s sole fundamental entity. In this paper, I offer a sketch of what the new paradigm may look like.

Upshot: It is admittedly difficult, if at all possible, to establish a direct, positive logical bridge from epistemic considerations to ontological conclusions. Yet, epistemic considerations can …

> Upshot . Kastrup's attempt to undermine the dichotomy between mind and matter is interesting but it leaves much to be desired. In particular, it suffers from the following three difficulties. First, it is predicated on a misguided working definition of dichotomy. Second, it conflates the concept of matter with the putative denotation of that concept. Lastly, it effectively presupposes the refutation of materialism, making it pointless to argue (as he does) that materialism is epistemically more costly than idealism.

Context: The alleged dichotomy between mind and matter is pervasive. Therefore, the attempt to explain matter in terms of mind (idealism) is often considered a mirror image of that of explaining …

I propose an idealist ontology that makes sense of reality in a more parsimonious and empirically rigorous manner than mainstream physicalism, bottom-up panpsychism, and cosmopsychism. The proposed ontology also offers more explanatory power than these three alternatives, in that it does not fall prey to the hard problem of consciousness, the combination problem, or the decombination problem, respectively. It can be summarized as follows: there is only cosmic consciousness. We, as well as all other living organisms, are but dissociated alters of cosmic consciousness, surrounded by its thoughts. The inanimate world we see around us is the extrinsic appearance of these thoughts. The living organisms we share the world with are the extrinsic appearances of other dissociated alters. 1. Brief Introduction This paper seeks to articulate an ontology that overcomes the principal limitations of the most popular alternatives. The first half of the paper comprises a detailed analysis of relevant literature, highlighting what advances have been made and what problems have been created or left unsolved by recent developments in analytic philosophy. In the second half, starting from what I consider to be the most promising current platform, I propose an idealist framework that may open viable new avenues for addressing the key questions left unanswered by this current platform. At the end, I hope to offer a coherent view of the nature of reality that accounts for all relevant facts without incurring any fundamental problem. Correspondence: Email: bernardo@bernardokastrup.com C op yr ig ht ( c) Im pr in t A ca de m ic 2 01 8 F or p er so na l u se o nl y -n ot fo r re pr od uc tio n

The contemporary cultural mindset posits that the world has no intrinsic semantic value. The meaning we see in it is supposedly projected onto the world by ourselves. Underpinning this view is the mainstream physicalist ontology, according to which mind is an emergent property or epiphenomenon of brains. As such, since the world beyond brains isn’t mental, it cannot a priori evoke anything beyond itself. But a consistent series of recent experimental results suggests strongly that the world may in fact be mental in nature, a hypothesis openly discussed in the field of foundations of physics. In this essay, these experimental results are reviewed and their hermeneutic implications discussed. If the world is mental, it points to something beyond its face-value appearances and is amenable to interpretation, just as ordinary dreams. In this case, the project of a Hermeneutic of Everything is metaphysically justifiable.

Depth psychology finds empirical validation today in a variety of observations that suggest the presence of causally effective mental processes outside conscious experience. I submit that this is due to misinterpretation of the observations: the subset of consciousness called “meta-consciousness” in the literature is often mistaken for consciousness proper, thereby artificially creating space for an “unconscious.” The implied hypothesis is that all mental processes may in fact be conscious, the appearance of unconsciousness arising from our dependence on self-reflective introspection for gauging awareness. After re-interpreting the empirical data according to a philosophically rigorous definition of consciousness, I show that two well-known phenomena corroborate this hypothesis: (a) experiences that, despite being conscious, aren’t re-represented during introspection; and (b) dissociated experiences inaccessible to the executive ego. If consciousness is inherent to all mentation, it may be fundamental in nature, as opposed to a product of particular types of brain function.

I argue for an idealist ontology consistent with empirical observations, which seeks to explain the facts of nature more parsimoniously than physicalism and bottom-up panpsychism. This ontology also attempts to offer more explanatory power than both physicalism and bottom-up panpsychism, in that it does not fall prey to either the 'hard problem of consciousness' or the 'subject combination problem', respectively. It can be summarized as follows: spatially unbound consciousness is posited to be nature's sole ontological primitive. We, as well as all other living organisms, are dissociated alters of this unbound consciousness. The universe we see around us is the extrinsic appearance of phenomenality surrounding-but dissociated from-our alter. The living organisms we share the world with are the extrinsic appearances of other dissociated alters. As such, the challenge to artificially create individualized consciousness becomes synonymous with the challenge to artificially induce abiogenesis.

In 2005, an essay was published in Nature asserting that the universe is mental and that we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things. Since then, experiments have confirmed that - as predicted by quantum mechanics - reality is contextual, which contradicts at least intuitive formulations of realism and corroborates the hypothesis of a mental universe. Yet, to give this hypothesis a coherent rendering, one must explain how a mental universe can - at least in principle - accommodate (a) our experience of ourselves as distinct individual minds sharing a world beyond the control of our volition; and (b) the empirical fact that this world is contextual despite being seemingly shared. By combining a modern formulation of the ontology of idealism with the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics, the present paper attempts to provide a viable explanatory framework for both points. In the process of doing so, the paper also addresses key philosophical qualms of the relational interpretation.

Questions about the nature of reality and consciousness remain unresolved in philosophy today, but not for lack of hypotheses. Ontologies as varied as physicalism, microexperientialism and cosmopsychism enrich the philosophical menu. Each of these ontologies faces a seemingly fundamental problem: under physicalism, for instance, we have the ‘hard problem of consciousness,’ whereas under microexperientialism we have the ‘subject combination problem.’ I argue that these problems are thought artifacts, having no grounding in empirical reality. In a manner akin to semantic paradoxes, they exist only in the internal logico-conceptual structure of their respective ontologies.

Several alternatives vie today for recognition as the most plausible ontology, from physicalism to panpsychism. By and large, these ontologies entail that physical structures circumscribe consciousness by bearing phenomenal properties within their physical boundaries. The ontology of idealism, on the other hand, entails that all physical structures are circumscribed by consciousness in that they exist solely as phenomenality in the first place. Unlike the other alternatives, however, idealism is often considered implausible today, particularly by analytic philosophers. A reason for this is the strong intuition that an objective world transcending phenomenality is a self-evident fact. Other arguments-such as the dependency of phenomenal experience on brain function, the evidence for the existence of the universe before the origin of conscious life, etc.-are also often cited. In this essay, I will argue that these objections against the plausibility of idealism are false. As such, this essay seeks to show that idealism is an entirely plausible ontology.

To make educated guesses about what happens to consciousness upon bodily death, one has to have some understanding of the relationship between body and consciousness during life. This relationship, of course, reflects an ontology. In this brief essay, the tenability of both the physicalist and dualist ontologies will be assessed in view of recent experimental results in physics. The alternative ontology of idealism will then be discussed, which not only can be reconciled with the available empirical evidence, but also overcomes the lack of parsimony and limited explanatory power of physicalism and dualism. Idealism elegantly explains the basic facts of reality, such as (a) the fact that brain activity correlates with experience, (b) the fact that we all seem to share the same world, and (c) the fact that we can’t change the laws of nature at will. If idealism is correct, the implication is that, instead of disappearing, conscious inner life expands upon bodily death, a prediction that finds circumstantial but significant confirmation in reports of near-death experiences and psychedelic trances, both of which can be construed as glimpses into the early stages of the death process.

The physicalist worldview is often portrayed as a dispassionate interpretation of reality motivated purely by observable facts. In this article, ideas of both depth and social psychology are used to show that this portrayal may not be accurate. Physicalism—whether it ultimately turns out to be philosophically correct or not—is hypothesized to be partly motivated by the neurotic endeavor to project onto the world attributes that help one avoid confronting unacknowledged aspects of one’s own inner life. Moreover, contrary to what most people assume, physicalism creates an opportunity for the intellectual elites who develop and promote it to maintain a sense of meaning in their own lives through fluid compensation. However, because this compensatory strategy does not apply to a large segment of society, it creates a schism—with corresponding tensions—that may help explain the contemporary conflict between neo-atheism and religious belief.

For many critical lithography applications the main contributor to wafer intra-field CD variation is the reticle CD variation. Current practice is that the input data needed to correct the effect of the reticle on the wafer CD is gathered using wafer exposures and SEM or scatterometry analysis. This approach consumes valuable scanner time and adds wafer costs. In this work we evaluate the potential for Intra-Field CD non-uniformity (CDU) correction based on aerial image reticle measurements for a complex 2D structure, including peripheral structures. The application selected is a 45nm rotated brick wall structure (active area DRAM). A total of 10 line / space structures (both horizontal and vertical) through pitch represent the periphery. Mask qualification has been performed using the newly developed Zeiss WLCD32 metrology tool, which measures wafer level CD on masks using aerial imaging technology. Excellent correlation is shown between intra-field wafer data and WLCD32 data. Furthermore, a comparison is made between the correction potential of ASML DoseMapper recipes based on wafer data and on WLCD32 mask data, indicating that the potential CDU improvement via both approaches is similar. Exposures with the resulting dose recipes have been used to confirm this predicted correction potential in a realistic setting.

In the ConCISe project, an embedded programmable processor is augmented with a Reconfigurable Functional Unit (RFU) based on Field-Programmable Logic (FPL), in a technique that aims at being cost-effective for high volume production. The target domain is embedded encryption. In this paper, we focus on ConCISe’s programming tool-set. A smart assembler, capable of automatically performing HW/SW partitioning and HW synthesis, generates the custom operations that are implemented in the RFU. Benchmarks carried out with ConCISe’s simulators show that the RFU may speed up off-the-shelf encryption applications by as much as 50