Making Sense of the Mental Universe — Bernardo Kastrup

The recent loophole-free verification of Bell’s inequalities [Hensen et al., 2015] has shown that no theory based on the joint assumptions of realism and locality is tenable. This already restricts the viability of realism — the view that there is an objective physical world; that is, a world (a) ontologically distinct from mentation that (b) exists independently of being observed — to nonlocal hidden-variables theories. More specifically, other recent experiments have shown that the physical world is contextual: its measurable physical properties do not exist before being observed [Grö blacher et al., 2007; Lapkiewicz et al., 2011; Manning et al., 2015]. Contextuality is a formidable challenge to the viability of realism. 

These developments seem to corroborate Richard Conn Henry’s assertion in his 2005 Nature essay that “The Universe is entirely mental” [Henry, 2005: 29]. After all, in a mental universe (a) observation necessarily boils down to perceptual experience — what else? — and (b) the physical properties of the world exist only insofar as they are perceptually experienced. There is no ontological ground outside mind where these properties could otherwise reside before being represented in mind. Indeed, in a mental universe observation is the physical world — not merely a representation of the world — which not only echoes but makes sense of contextuality.

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