Idealism offers a more comprehensive and more parsimonious explanation of reality than materialism

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Empirical Evidences for Idealism

My understanding is as follows: “Matter is not that which produces Consciousness, but that which limits it, and confines its intensity within certain limits” (James, 1899; p. 67).

Materialism-physicalism is supposed to be an extension of realism — the hypothesis that matter exists objectively outside and independent of mind-consciousness, which is constituted by or engendered by the material brain. Materialists cite undeniable correlation between measurable brain function and inner experiences as evidences for this metaphysical position.

According to materialism, what we experience in our lives every day is not the world as such, but a brain-constructed ‘copy’ of the world. The outside, ‘real world’ of materialism is supposedly an amorphous, colorless, odorless, soundless, tasteless dance of abstract electromagnetic fields devoid of all qualities of experience. It’s more akin to a mathematical equation than to anything real. If all that exists is matter, and if consciousness is somehow produced by the suitable arrangement of matter represented by the brain, then it must be the case that all subjective perception resides in the brain; and in the brain only.

Therefore, our whole life – all reality we can ever know directly – is but an internal ‘copy’ of the ‘real reality.’ Materialism, thus, presupposes an abstract and unprovable ‘external’ universe next to the known, concrete, and undeniable universe of direct experience. Matter outside mind is actually not an empirical observation. It is rather an explanatory model to support a realism framework. Furthermore, physicalism cannot account how as the mechanical movements of particles that are colourless, tasteless etc., are accompanied by inner life? That the mind states are correlated with brain states does not necessarily imply that brain states cause mind states. Assuming so is a known fallacy in science and philosophy called the ‘cum hoc ergo propter hoc’ fallacy. the voices one hears coming out of an analog radio receiver correlate very tightly with the electromagnetic oscillations in the radio’s circuitry, but that does not mean that the radio circuitry synthesizes the voices.

We propose that Idealism, especially the version of non dualism taught by Vedanta is more comprehensive in respect of its explanatory power and is more parsimonious in that it it removes the abstraction layer that materialism is compelled to theorise on account of its foundation on so-called realism. As per non dualism of advaita, which is a form of idealism, consciousness is primary and irreducible. But, how do we then explain the empirical observation that, ordinarily, mind states correlate well with brain states?

As per non dualism, consciousness is without a beginning and unbound. Individual body-brain is a local constrained form of consciousness in space-time locus of the physical body. This is the general principal for all objects that are either subtle (mental thoughts and forms) or solid-graspable (the waking state forms). Consciousness is non dual and unchanging but appears as many separate individual egos that are distinct constrained consciousness packets. Metaphorically, the consciousness is the water, ocean the universe, and waves the individual forms. Or river is the flow of one consciousness as one mind and whirlpools are individuals.

The idealism can explain all empirical observations that are as support for the materialist world view that brain generates or constitutes the mind. The brain activation patterns that ordinarily correlate with conscious experience can be explained as the reflection of the filtering/ constraining process at work. The ordinarily observed correlations between brain and mind states are a direct and necessary consequence of the selective filtering of subjective experience. When the filtering mechanism is interfered with – physically, as in a blow to the head, or chemically, as during anesthesia or alcohol intoxication – the filtering process that modulates our conscious experience is perturbed, so that corresponding perturbations of experience follow.

Are there empirical evidences that support the premise of idealism that consciousness is beginning less and infinite and gives rise to appearance of worlds? Let us examine some evidences.

Direct experience of everyone

Everyone experiences infinite consciousness in deep sleep, which is devoid of space-time-objects iand so appears as if unconscious. In that same ground of apparent unconsciousness of deep sleep come up a) Dream state comprising subtle-mental self and corresponding world and b) Waking state comprising gross bodily self and a corresponding world. The self is that consciousness which links these three states.

Some folks may on reflecting upon the above everyday empirical experience immediately intuit the conscious self is itself pure consciousness empty of contents and is also the seer of all that appears and disappears in consciousness. When objects appear, mind appears to become conscious (as in dream and waking states). When consciousness is devoid of objects, nothing is known. ‘Not knowing anything is not absence of consciousness.

But most people will not be able to intuit that deep sleep state is not ‘unconscious’ but appears so to mind owing to absence of reflecting objects/contrasts. For these people an objective world can exist without consciousness. But these folks, conclude absence absence of ‘consciousness’ in case of personal phenomenal experience. As if mind itself is the consciousness. As if reflection in a mirror is the real man. As if non-cognition by a mentally-sensually deficient person would mean absence of consciousness.

Such people will assume that deep sleep or fainting means absence of consciousness. The idea is that, when we faint or undergo general anesthesia, or enter deep sleep, we become seemingly unconscious. Yet, we do not cease to exist because of it, which may seem to contradict the idealist tenet that our body is the extrinsic appearance of conscious inner life. The misconception here is a conflation of consciousness proper with reflection of it in mind. Consciousness is a continuum where some levels are connected to awareness and others are not, extending down to levels that are eventually very basic and non-reflective.

To report an experience—such as making a decision to act or seeing danger ahead—to another or to oneself, one has to both (a) have the experience and (b) know that one has the experience. Self reflection is just a particular configuration of consciousness, whereby consciousness turns in upon itself to experience knowledge of its own phenomenality.

Empirical data indeed shows that episodes of seeming unconsciousness are associated with an impairment of memory access or lack of eflection, but not necessarily with absence of phenomenality.

For example, fainting caused by asphyxiation, strangulation or hyperventilation is known to correlate with euphoria, euphoria, insights and visions (Neal 2008: 310-315, Rhinewine & Williams 2007, Retz 2007). G-force-induced loss of consciousness (G-LOC) is also known to correlate with “memorable dreams” (Whinnery & Whinnery 1990). There is even evidence for “implicit perception” during general anesthesia (Kihlstrom & Cork 2007).

Sleep, again, is known to correlate with dreams and also with non-recallable phenomenality distinct from dreams. Windt, Nielsen & Thompson 2016: 871 state “..there are good empirical and theoretical reasons for saying that a range of different types of sleep experience, some of which are distinct from dreaming, can occur in all stages of sleep“. Authors identify three different categories of sleep experiences distinct from dreams: (a) non-immersive imagery and sleep thinking, (b) perceptions and bodily sensations, and (c) ‘selfless’ states and contentless sleep experiences that may be similar to those reported by experienced meditators.
So, one may experience unconscious episodes due to poor recollection of memory or due to absence of objects in consciousness.

References:

Neal, RM (2008). The Path to Addiction: “And Other Troubles We Are Born to Know.” Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse.

Rhinewine, JP and Williams, OJ (2007). Holotropic Breathwork: The Potential Role of a Prolonged, Voluntary Hyperventilation Procedure as an Adjunct to Psychotherapy. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 13 (7): 771-776.

Retz (2007). Tripping without drugs: Experience with hyperventilation (ID 14651).

Whinnery, J. and Whinnery, A. (1990). Acceleration-Induced Loss of Consciousness: A Review of 500 Episodes. Archives of Neurology, 47 (7): 764-776.

Kihlstrom, J. and Cork, R. (2007). Anesthesia. In: Velmans, M. & Schneider, S. (eds.). The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Windt, J., Nielsen, T. and Thompson, E. (2016). Does Consciousness Disappear in Dreamless Sleep? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20 (12): 871-882.

Kastrup, Bernardo. The Idea of the World. John Hunt Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Collective Unconscious and Transpersonal experiences
The worldview of Idealism, unlike materialism, predicts the existence of a ‘collective unconscious;’ a shared repository of potential experiences that underlies the genetic predispositions of a species. The idealistic world view predicts that one can possibly have unconstrained experiences that may not correlate with one’s brain states. In other words, if idealism is true then, transpersonal, non-local experiences can conceivably happen when particular brain processes are partially or temporarily deactivated. And therefore, non-local, transpersonal experiences are expected to correlate with certain reductions of excitatory brain activity. This is counterintuitive from a materialist perspective, since the latter entails that experience is brain activity.

Empirical evidence for the existence of a ‘collective unconscious’ was, first compiled by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, based on his clinical experience with patients and self-experimentation. Jung found that mental contents from the ‘collective unconscious’ can penetrate awareness through dreams, visions, and other non-ordinary states. Under the field of Transpersonal Psychology, a body of empirical evidence has been accumulated for the existence of an ‘unconscious’ segment of the mind that spans across individuals.

Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious - Wikipedia

There is also a broad pattern of empirical evidence associating non-local, transpersonal experiences with procedures that reduce brain activity. Reduction in brain activity is expected to correlate to greater non local experiences from the premise that brain constrains the unbound consciousness within certain packets to instantiate distinct local egos. Removal of constraints, as evidenced by reduced brain activities lead to increased non local experiences in cases of fainting induced by asphyxiation, G force induced loss of consciousness, Holotropic breath work or Yogic breathing (hyperventilation), entheogen intake, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, acquired savant syndrome, partial brain damage, and NDEs. The most complex, coherent, intense, non-local, and transpersonal experiences people report are associated precisely with reductions, or even elimination, of brain activity.

Neural correlates of the psychedelic state as determined by fMRI studies with psilocybin. - PubMed - NCBI

(Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 Feb 7;109(6):2138-43. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1119598109. Epub 2012 Jan 23. Neural correlates of the psychedelic state as determined by fMRI studies with psilocybin., Carhart-Harris RL1, Erritzoe D, Williams T, Stone JM, Reed LJ, Colasanti A, Tyacke RJ, Leech R, Malizia AL, Murphy K, Hobden P, Evans J, Feilding A, Wise RG, Nutt DJ.)
The entropic brain: a theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs
The savant syndrome: an extraordinary condition. A synopsis: past, present, future

(Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2009 May 27; 364(1522): 1351–1357, The savant syndrome: an extraordinary condition. A synopsis: past, present, future
Darold A. Treffert)
Neuroimaging during Trance State: A Contribution to the Study of Dissociation

(Neuroimaging during Trance State: A Contribution to the Study of DissociationJulio Fernando Peres Alexander Moreira-Almeida, Leonardo Caixeta, Frederico Leao, Andrew Newberg)
https://www.researchgate.net/public...ical_and_Altered_States_within_the_Laboratory

If brain modulates and localises consciousness, without causing it, it is reasonable and expected that physical interference with the brain should change one’s subjective state. Partial de-activation of certain brain processes through physical means – by psychoactive drugs, magnetic fields, hyper-ventilation, asphyxiation, ordeals, sensory deprivation, etc. – should allow consciousness to partially de-localise and expand, which is perfectly consistent with the types of listed transpersonal experiences.

The broad pattern that associates peak transpersonal experiences with reductions of brain activity points to a consistent phenomenon, explainable only by the paradigm that brain is a localised constrained form of consciousness and that reduction of its activity allows expanded diverse transpersonal experiences.

Neuroplasticity
Mental causation is real and is important. The possibility of human agency, and hence our moral practice, requires that our mental states have causal effects in the physical world. That is how we manage to navigate around the objects in our surroundings. The possibility of human knowledge presupposes the reality of mental causation: perception, our sole window on the world, requires the causation of perceptual experiences and beliefs by objects and events around us. Reasoning, by which we acquire new knowledge and belief from the existing fund of what we already know or believe, involves the causation of new belief by old belief. Memory is a causal process involving experiences, physical storage of the information contained therein, and its retrieval.

We know that our individual thoughts and feelings can potentially change our psychic structures and alter the set of constraints that our experiences are ordinarily bound to. Since, in the non dual idealists’s world view, brains are partial images of these structures, it is conceivable that our thoughts and feelings could change the anatomy and ‘wiring’ of our brains, an effect neuroscience has come to call ‘self-directed neuroplasticity.’

And indeed, there is strong empirical evidence that the effect happens. For instance, experiments have been performed in which patients suffering from OCD have been able to physically alter their own brain anatomy and neural ‘wiring’ – thereby curing themselves – simply by focusing their thoughts.127 Several other studies have been done showing similar results.

Consciousness, Emotional Self-Regulation and the Brain

https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Brain-Neuroplasticity-Power-Mental/dp/0060988479

Neuroplasticity, Psychosocial Genomics, and the Biopsychosocial Paradigm in the 21st Century


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Brain states of meditators: Meditation Reduces Activity in the Brain’s “Me Center”
One of the most interesting studies in the last few years, carried out at Yale University, found that mindfulness meditation decreases activity in the default mode network (DMN), the brain network responsible for mind-wandering and self-referential thoughts. There is evidence that meditation helps preserve the aging brain

Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity
Judson A. Brewer, Patrick D. Worhunsky, Jeremy R. Gray, Yi-Yuan Tang, Jochen Weber, and Hedy Kober
PNAS December 13, 2011 108 (50) 20254-20259; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1112029108

Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity

Consciousness without cortex
Consciousness without cortex: a hydranencephaly family survey. - PubMed - NCBI

The generic behavioural characteristics of hydranencephaly are incompatible with the unconsciousness characteristic of the vegetative state.

Does Self-Awareness Require a Complex Brain?

One would expect that a man missing portions of his cerebral cortex would lose at least some of his self-awareness. The case of Roger, a 57-year-old man cited in above links contradict that expectation. Roger suffered brain damage in 1980 after a bout of herpes simplex encephalitis. The disease destroyed most of Roger's insular cortex, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), all brain regions thought to be essential for self-awareness. About 10 percent of his insula remains and only one percent of his ACC. Roger cannot remember much of what happened to him between 1970 and 1980 and he has great difficulty forming new memories. He cannot taste or smell either. But he still knows who he is—he has a sense of self. He recognizes himself in the mirror and in photographs. To most people, Roger seems like a relatively typical man who does not act out of the ordinary.

Philippi and Rudrauf ’s study provides review of studies of children with hydranencephaly—a rare disorder in which fluid-filled sacs replace the brain's cerebral hemispheres. Research on hydranencephaly and Roger's case study indicate that self-awareness might be more universal than we realized.

Preserved Self-Awareness following Extensive Bilateral Brain Damage to the Insula, Anterior Cingulate, and Medial Prefrontal Cortices
Carissa L. Philippi,# 1 Justin S. Feinstein,# 1 , * Sahib S. Khalsa, 2 Antonio Damasio, 3 Daniel Tranel, 1 Gregory Landini, 4 Kenneth Williford, 5 and David Rudrauf# 1
Preserved Self-Awareness following Extensive Bilateral Brain Damage to the Insula, Anterior Cingulate, and Medial Prefrontal Cortices

Consciousness in congenitally decorticate children: developmental vegetative state as self-fulfilling prophecy.
Shewmon DA1, Holmes GL, Byrne PA.
Consciousness in congenitally decorticate children: developmental vegetative state as self-fulfilling prophecy. - PubMed - NCBI

Terminal Lucidity
Terminal lucidity is the (re-)emergence of normal or unusually enhanced mental abilities in dull, unconscious, or mentally ill patients shortly before death, including considerable elevation of mood and spiritual affectation, or the ability to speak in a previously unusual spiritualized and elated manner. The following records such cases.

One Last Goodbye: The Strange Case of Terminal Lucidity

A 92-year-old woman with advanced Alzheimer’s disease, for instance, hadn’t recognized her family for years, but the day before her death, she had a pleasantly bright conversation with them, recalling everyone’s name. She was even aware of her own age and where she’d been living all this time. “

If terminal lucidity is a genuine phenomenon, there can be logical scientific explanation involving some unknown brain physiology. Nahm and Greyson don’t discount this possibility entirely, but for cases involving obvious brain damage (such as strokes, tumors, advanced Alzheimer’s disease) that should render the patient all but vegetative, not functioning normally, it’s a genuine medical mystery.

Terminal Lucidity in Patients With Chronic Schizophrenia and Dementia: A Survey of the Literature
Nahm, Michael PhD*; Greyson, Bruce MD†
The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease: December 2009 - Volume

Terminal Lucidity in Patients With Chronic Schizophrenia... : The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease

Also see: Why Some People Rally for One Last Goodbye Before Death

These findings suggest that normal cognition can occur in spite of a severely damaged brain. How is it possible for someone’s brain to be destroyed by a disease, and yet the person can become lucid and engaging close to death?

Consciousness During CPR
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306987707001636

Four published studies of cardiac arrest survivors have demonstrated that human mind and consciousness may continue to function during cardiac arrest. This is despite the well demonstrated finding that cerebral functioning as measured by electrical activity of the brain ceases during cardiac arrest, thus raising the possibility that human mind and consciousness may continue to function in the absence of brain function.
...

Evidence from Quantum Mechanics

The physical laws relevant to the brain are encompassed by the Standard Model of elementary particles, plus Newtonian gravity. Currently, Quantum contextuality is a feature of quantum mechanics whereby measurements of quantum observables cannot simply be thought of as revealing pre-existing values. The measurement result of a quantum observable is dependent upon which other commuting observables are within the same measurement set. It is weird if you think an electron's spin (or a person's height) had a preset value before you measured it.

Contextuality — The most quantum thing

Gröblacher et al. (2007) refutes non contextual realist theories of nature. ‘non-contextuality’ entails that nature is what it is, regardless of what you know about it. Non-contextuality is almost synonymous with realism. Gröblacher et al. (2007) implies either that (a) some form of idealism is correct, or that (b) realism is correct but contextual, instead of non-contextual.

The option (b) means that when we observe the world around us, we instantaneously physically change that world by the mere act of observation. This also means that there is a world independent of our observation that we can never know. We can only know the altered state available to us.

An experimental test of non-local realism
https://arxiv.org/pdf/0704.2529.pdf

This is further discussed in following article from Nature.

Physicists bid farewell to reality? : Nature News

Implication is that a belief in realism-materialism will mean that we can never know the reality but an interpreted version of it. OTOH, in case of idealism, there is no need to impose this absurdity — whatever is true in consciousness, since consciousness is true (not derived, born, or created).

Mathematical case: Consciousness is not Computable

There is no doubt that the qualitative experiences are not amenable to be functionalised in terms of mechanism, computation, or even correlation. There is no doubt that if a Turing machine ever succeeded to pass the Turing imitation test, it would not constitute subjective consciousness since there is nothing in Turing machine that represents the subjective experience that each one of us can vouch for. Furthermore, even if a machine passes the test, it will be a human who will declare that a machine has passed the criterion and that the machine is behaviourally similar to a conscious being.

But there are people who are neck deep stuck in realism-materialism worldview. For them, there is nothing other than what physics and mathematics ordains that is required to explain consciousness. This conclusion they arrive at using their own consciousness. It does not occur to such folks who are deeply committed to ‘matter only’ and consequent ‘empiricism’ view that the conclusion that there is nothing to consciousness beyond what physics and maths entail, is self refuting. The conclusion itself is not empirical.

A living being is conscious: has the ability to cognise, think, perceive and feel. How these qualities are linked to the life process is not known. Whereas, an AI machine will run on some energy switch for which will be vested with some dictator.

But even from the standpoint of materialism, I offer some evidences that consciousness is not computable. These points are fundamental and not such that a promise of more knowledge in future can invalidate these.

1. Gödel, discussed his views on computability of mind based on his own Incompleteness theorems in his famous “Gibbs lecture” in 1951, stating:

So the following disjunctive conclusion is inevitable: Either mathematics is incompletable in this sense, that its evident axioms can never be comprised in a finite rule, that is to say, the human mind (even within the realm of pure mathematics) infinitely surpasses the powers of any finite machine, or else there exist absolutely unsolvable diophantine problems of the type specified . . . (Gödel 1995: 310).

That is, his result shows that either (i) the human mind is not a Turing machine or (ii) there are certain unsolvable mathematical problems.

https://www.iep.utm.edu/lp-argue/#H4

2. Subhas Kak in a recent paper invoked ‘Halting problem’ to conclude that consciousness may not be computable. He says “Consciousness appears to be a privileged state of the mind that makes brain processes halt and its contents registered irrespective of the initial state of the immediately preceding process. But such halting to arbitrary input is impossible from a computability point of view.”

NeuroQuantology | May 2019| Volume 17 | Issue 05 | Page 71-75| doi: 10.14704/nq.2019.17.05.2359 Kak S., Is Consciousness Computable?

3. Catherine M Reason in her paper “Consciousness is not a physically provable property” concludes as below:

We present a logical proof that computing machines, and by extension physical systems, can never be certain if they possess conscious awareness. This implies that human consciousness is associated with a violation of energy conservation.

“Reason, C. M., (2016) JMB 37 (1) pp 31-46, Consciousness is not a physically provable property

Home - The Journal of Mind and Behavior - University of Maine

4. Scott Aaronson has written on this subject. I like his conclusions. I have linked two of his lectures below for those who may wish to study the subject in deep.

Scott says:

I’d like to point to one empirical thing about the brain that currently separates it from any existing computer program. Namely, we know how to copy a computer program. We know how to rerun it with different initial conditions but everything else the same. We know how to transfer it from one substrate to another. With the brain, we don’t know how to do any of those things.

…if you needed to go down to the quantum-mechanical level to make a good enough copy (whatever “good enough” means here), then you’d run up against the No-Cloning Theorem, which says that you can’t make such a copy.

…is there something about your identity, your individual consciousness, that’s inextricably bound up with degrees of freedom that it’s physically impossible to clone?

…I’d argue that this copyability question bears not only on consciousness, but also on free will. For the question is equivalent to asking: could an entity external to you perfectly predict what you’re going to do, without killing you in the process?

…to be conscious, a physical entity would have to do more than carry out the right sorts of computations. It would have to, as it were, fully participate in the thermodynamic arrow of time: that is, repeatedly take microscopic degrees of freedom that have been unmeasured and unrecorded since the very early universe, and amplify them to macroscopic scale.

…for reasons related to the AI’s copyability and predictability by outside observers, there’s “nothing that it’s like to be the AI,” and that therefore, even deleting the last copy of the AI still wouldn’t be murder.

Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » “Could a Quantum Computer Have Subjective Experience?”
Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » “Can computers become conscious?”: My reply to Roger Penrose

Logical case for idealism

Materialism requires the following four statements about reality to be true: Our conscious perceptions exist; The conscious perceptions of other living entities, different from our own, also exist; There are things that exist independently of, and outside, the conscious perception; Things that exist independently of, and outside, conscious perception generate the conscious perception.

Statement 1 is very close to the famous ‘I think, therefore I am’. If one can be sure of anything at all, it is that one’s conscious perceptions exist. So statement 1 is the one absolute certainty one can ever have. Statement 2 requires a small leap of faith: it states that there are other conscious entities, like other people or animals. This is a logical leap, based on our empirical everyday experiences. We see pain and joy of others. We interact based on mutual understanding.

Statement 3, on the other hand, requires a more significant leap of faith, since it postulates an entirely new category – namely, inanimate things outside conscious perception – for which we can never have any direct evidence.

Statement 4 is most difficult and is actually absurd. It postulates that objects that you cognise and that you can never be sure to exist are actually responsible for your own consciousness. It postulates that abstractions generate what is concrete. It postulates that the seen generates the seer that the known generates the knower. It is absurd.

The electrochemical processes of brain are not remotely related causally to the phenomenal consciousness. The Hard problem of consciousness does not relate to measurable parameters. Suppose that an event in cortex correlates with a particular consciousness. But think. We are conscious of what? Are we conscious of the passing nerve current? No. Of the stimuli that originated it on the surface of the body? No.. We are not aware of any of these things.

Explanatory Gap
Explanatory gap - Wikipedia

In philosophy of mind and consciousness, the explanatory gap is the difficulty that physicalist theories have in explaining how physical properties give rise to the way things feel when they are experienced. It is a term introduced by philosopher Joseph Levine.[1] In the 1983 paper in which he first used the term, he used as an example the sentence, "Pain is the firing of C fibers", pointing out that while it might be valid in a physiological

Decoding the neuroscience of consciousness

Consciousness is often described as the mind’s subjective experience. Whereas a basic robot can unconsciously detect conditions such as colour, temperature or sound, consciousness describes the qualitative feeling that is associated with those perceptions, together with the deeper processes of reflection, communication and thought, says Matthias Michel, a philosopher of science and a PhD student at Sorbonne University in Paris.

Anil Seth, a cognitive and computational neuroscientist and co-director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK, says “But even as research progresses, and ideas from science and philosophy continue to meld, essential questions remain unanswered. “It’s still just fundamentally mysterious how consciousness happens. ” . Seth further adds “The hope is that consciousness researchers can “move to a more twenty-first century sort of psychiatry, where we can intervene more specifically in the mechanisms to resolve specific symptoms”. So, Seth is actually looking more towards practical applications rather than explaining ontology of consciousness.

Materialism cannot avoid being ‘epistemically ideal’. Bertrand Russel and GE Moore overturned idealism and helped to popularise materialism. They mainly objected to, in their opinion, in wrongfully identifying the content of “consciousness” with its object, meaning that (a) that objects exist independently of us and (b) that to know an object means to be immediately related to the object as it is in itself (i.e., as it is undistorted by and independent from any mental activity).

As per Russel (and in essence also as per Moore), knowledge consists in standing in an immediate relation to an independent individual object (assumption b above). If, by stipulation, knowledge is ultimately knowledge “by acquaintance,” then knowledge is restricted to knowledge of individual objects — this is knowledge of something or non-propositional knowledge, and this concept fails to give an account of the possibility of propositional knowledge. Both Moore and Russel were aware of this limitation and went about in different ways to overcome this limitation.

There are two ways to overcome the problem of limitation of propositional knowledge provided that assumption (b) is agreed upon. The first is to claim that propositions (Moore prefers the term “judgment” in this context) are individual objects with which the subject is acquainted. The second is to broaden the concept of knowledge by not restricting knowledge to knowledge by acquaintance but to allow for other forms of knowledge as well. The first approach was employed by Moore and the latter by Russel.

According to Moore a proposition is composed out of concepts. Moore was well aware that his view of the nature of concepts commits him to the claim that the world insofar as it is an object of propositional knowledge consists of concepts because these are the only things one can be acquainted with if acquaintance is a condition of knowledge. Thus he wrote: “It seems necessary, then, to regard the world as formed of concepts. These are the only objects of knowledge. So, ultimately, we see that metaphysical commitments Moore’s theory are precisely a form of ontological idealism.

Russel, on the other hand, distinguishes between knowledge of things — knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge of truths — knowledge by description. Examples of truths that can be known this way are logical principles, the principle of induction, and everything we know a priori. Now, what are we acquainted with? As per Russel, there are exactly two kinds of things we can be acquainted with, namely particulars, i.e., things that exist, and universals, i.e., things that subsist (concepts running through more than one particulars).

However, Physical objects are constructions we form out of sense-data together with some descriptive devices, and only with respect to these constructions can we have knowledge by description, i.e. propositional knowledge. If epistemological idealism is understood as involving the claim that what we take to be objects of knowledge are heavily dependent on some activity of the knowing subject, then the very idea of an object as a construction guarantees the endorsement of epistemological idealism. Thus, in contrast to their self-proclaimed revolt against the idealism of Berkeley and Bradley, the positions of both Moore and Russell are by no means free of traits that connect them rather closely to well known currents in modern idealism;

More about this can be read at

Idealism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Rapid effects of brief intensive cognitive-behavioral therapy on brain glucose metabolism in obsessive-compulsive disorder. - PubMed - NCBI
Neuroanatomical aspects of cognitive-behavioural therapy response in obsessive-compulsive disorder. An evolving perspective on brain and behaviour. - PubMed - NCBI
Systematic changes in cerebral glucose metabolic rate after successful behavior modification treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder. - PubMed - NCBI

All these papers point to neuroplasticity, an effect that would never be expected with 'bottom up causation only' scenario.

The following paper published in Nature shows large salutary changes in gene expression networks due to the vacation effect. But for meditators, a retreat appears to provide additional benefits to cellular health beyond the vacation effect.

Regular meditators showed a trend toward increased telomerase activity compared with randomized women, who showed increased plasma Aβ42/Aβ40 ratios and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) levels.

Meditation and vacation effects have an impact on disease-associated molecular phenotypes

The results of this study (and many other studies) demonstrate that human mind-will can, with proper attention, modify the gene expressions.
...

I am bumping a thread that was made detailing many indicative pieces of evidence of 'Consciousness first'. The empirical evidence that idealism offers a more parsimonious explanation than materialism is presented in posts 81 to 89. Starting from #81.

Below are linkages to 5 full papers from reputed journals. These papers point that the universe is essentially mental.

The mental Universe
The author says "The only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things."

In other words, the author points to the fact that the universe is our observation, but we forget the observation part and ascribe primacy to the 'observed'.

An experimental test of non-local realism | Nature
The authors conclude that giving up the concept of locality is not sufficient to be consistent with quantum experiments unless certain intuitive features of realism are abandoned.

In other words, the authors indicate that 'locality' and 'realism', the two axioms of Physicalsitic worldview, are untenable in light of results of their experiments.

Experimental non-classicality of an indivisible quantum system | Nature

The authors conclude "Our results illustrate a deep incompatibility between quantum mechanics and classical physics that cannot in any way result from entanglement."

Physicalists usually explain away the startling results of quantum mechanics by resorting to entanglement. This paper indicates that no non-contextual theory can be tenable -- there can be no a priori truth apart from the observation. All quantum theories are contextual and we surely constitute the most important context.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys3343.pdf?proof=true

Manning et al., conclude "Our experiment confirms Bohr’s view that it does not make sense to ascribe the wave or particle behaviour to a massive particle before the measurement takes place."

Wheeler’s supposition that a choice affects the ‘past history’ (of the photon) has been shown to be correct in past experiments using photon paths. In this paper, authors re-demonstrate with slow-moving massive helium atom what was already known for massless fast-moving photons that a future event (the method of detection) causes the photon (or the helium atom) to decide its past.

Quantum erasure with causally disconnected choice

The paper recommends abandoning the ‘Realism’ worldview altogether, as no realistic picture is compatible with its results which hinge causally on disconnected choice.

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