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Here’s a refined comparison table with key similarities, differences, quotes, and a gist—in bullet form—between Susan Blackmore and Bernardo Kastrup, based on their views on consciousness:
Comparison Table: Susan Blackmore vs. Bernardo Kastrup
| Aspect | Susan Blackmore | Bernardo Kastrup |
|---|---|---|
| Core View on Consciousness | Consciousness is the experience of active mental models ("models = experience") — not something that arises. (themontrealreview.com) | Consciousness is the fundamental reality; the physical world emerges from universal mind (analytic idealism). (Wikipedia) |
| Ontology | Rejects materialism and emergentism: consciousness doesn’t arise from the brain; it is what models do. (themontrealreview.com) | Advocate of analytic idealism: reality is mind-only; materialism is false. (Wikipedia) |
| Approach to the “Hard Problem” | Illusionism → “delusionism”: the sense that consciousness “arises” is a delusion. (themontrealreview.com) | Rejects the hard problem framed under physicalism; instead suggests consciousness is primary. |
| Relation to Physical Reality | Models are based on predictive processing; consciousness is part of the brain’s modelling system. (themontrealreview.com) | Physical appearances are phenomena within universal consciousness; the physical is derivative. (Wikipedia) |
| Philosophical Style | Empirical and skeptical, informed by neuroscience and cognitive science; cautious about idealism. (themontrealreview.com, Wikipedia) | Philosophical and metaphysical, drawing on idealist traditions; supports metaphysical realism of mind. (Wikipedia, Apple Podcasts) |
| Shared Ground | Both challenge strict materialism and question “consciousness arising from brain.” | Both reject material-first ontology and engage with consciousness as metaphysically significant. |
Quotes
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Susan Blackmore:
“Consciousness is more intrinsic than emergent… what it is like to be a model… it does not need to emerge. It’s already right there in what brains are doing.” (themontrealreview.com)
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Bernardo Kastrup:
Recognised for “analytic idealism”—a philosophical system positing that phenomenal consciousness is the primary substrate of existence. (Wikipedia)
Gist in Bullet Points
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Similarities:
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Both reject classical physicalism—the idea that consciousness simply emerges from brain matter.
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Both see consciousness as metaphysically central, though they propose different roots and mechanisms.
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Differences:
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Blackmore: Views consciousness as experiential modeling within the brain—models themselves are the experience.
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Kastrup: Proposes the entire universe is consciousness; matter is a phenomenon within universal mind (analytic idealism).
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Blackmore is grounded in cognitive science and empirical skepticism; Kastrup is more philosophically metaphysical.
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Let me know if you'd like an audio summary, a visually formatted PDF of this comparison, or deeper elaborations on their debates!
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Metaphysical idealism is far more parsimonious and compelling than materialism/physicalism. The former is congruous with quantum weirdness and the latter suffers from an impasse: the hard problem of consciousness.
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Before we are born, there is nothing. Then we are conceived and develop in utero into an organism with a complex brain and nervous system. As we grow, our body (including the brain and nervous system) gathers information and experience, maturing into an organism struggling to survive and thrive within its given environment. What we call "consciousness" is simply a word we have invented to name and describe our experience of inner and outer awareness and memory—a process of our nervous system and how we, as organisms, navigate survival and reproduction. Other animals have awareness, memory, and some even exhibit self-recognition, which could also be called consciousness. However, it is fundamentally the same—a process of the brain and nervous system, which is a function of the body, matter, and material. We, as humans, have a particularly complex and unique nervous system that allows for abstract thoughts and capabilities that other animals do not possess, a result of evolutionary pressures to better survive and reproduce. Simply put, consciousness is not a field or a substance; it is just our experience of awareness as an organism. It is unique in certain ways, but why do we insist that it is something almost supernatural? When we die and our brains cease to function and decompose, our thoughts and the information contained within our neurons disintegrate with the rest of our body. As before we were born, there is nothing again.
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Here's how to see why Kartrup's idealism is unworkable. According to him subjective/conscious qualities are the fundamental layer of reality. The physical things we perceive are at the fundamental level also conscious qualities they only appear to us physical because we only indirectly access them through the "screen or perception" . OK. Now according to him the "redness of the red" is one of the fundamental conscious qualities that we are "directly acquainted" with. Is this quality also reflected on the screen of perception ? First you might say, yes. When I think of red light or study it with scientific instruments what I'm accessing through the screen or perception is this conscious quality because of the correlation between things that happen to the "appearance" that I call EM radiation of ~590nm and the subjective experience of the redness of the red. But there is a problem. There are many other things "on the screen of perception" that I can change in a way that it will affect (even prevent) the experience of the redness of the red. Most obviously, I can change my brain . So are the relevant parts of my brain also "projections" of the fundamental quality of the "redness of red" onto the screen of perception ? More generally, we would be forced to conclude that everything in the world that affects my color experience is a part of the projection of this quality. Does thins mean all red objects , or only parts of the object ? Or is the process of light absorption a projection of color experience ? How on Earth could anyone make sense of trying to actually decipher what these "qualities" are and how they give rise to physical reality as "appearances" ?? Notice that this problem disappears if you start with physical things to try to derive the redness of the red. Starting with physical things we are working on stuff that we can actually study. We can figure what the brain is made of, how those things interact, how neurons behave how the activity of different cells correlate with precisely defined dimensions of subjective experience (say, hue, saturation or brightness), and we can (at some future point) study how and why introspection fails when we try to use it to reverse engineer the brain by sitting in an arm chair introspecting our internal landscape of "qualities" None of this explanatory work can be done starting with qualia, precisely because the only access to it is through introspection which does not allow us to decipher anything about the nature of these qualities. So Kastrup's grand theory is simply vague science fiction. He can only try to salvage it by claiming that he does not reject the findings of neuroscience just choses to have "conscious qualities" as the fundamental layer of what elementary fields/particles are made of. But this is simply a naming game and an empty one. Calling quantum fields "fields of phenomenality" (as he sometimes does) is pure science fiction- he is not adding anything to these constructs other than renaming them. Strikingly the very thing that his project fails at is finding an explanatory connection between the "appearances" and the "fundamental" qualities. What the above discussion of the redness of red shows is exactly that taking subjective qualities as fundamental does not make them in any way better understood. It's an embarassment that in the 21st century we are still entertaining these supernatural ghost stories
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Here’s a refined summary of the YouTube debate “What is Consciousness? | Bernardo Kastrup vs Susan Blackmore”—though I couldn’t access the video directly, I synthesized the key points from secondary sources and descriptions:
What is Consciousness? | Bernardo Kastrup vs Susan Blackmore
Bullet-Point Gist of the Debate
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Bernardo Kastrup (Analytic Idealism):
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Reality is fundamentally mental, not material.
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Consciousness is primary; matter arises from the mind.
(Wikipedia)
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Susan Blackmore (Delusionist/Illusionist):
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Phenomenal consciousness is an illusion—our brains model the world, and those models are the experience, not some emergent “something.”
(Wikipedia, themontrealreview.com) -
The quest for neural correlates of consciousness is misguided—it's premised on the false assumption that consciousness “arises” from the brain.
(themontrealreview.com, Wikipedia)
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Key Points of Discord:
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Kastrup sees reality as mind-only, with consciousness as ontologically foundational.
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Blackmore maintains that consciousness is an active modeling process; the idea of something “extra” beyond that is a delusion.
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Both critique materialist frameworks—but Kastrup offers a metaphysical overhaul, while Blackmore reframes consciousness in cognitive-scientific terms.
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Notable Quote (Paraphrased)
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Blackmore:
“I call my view ‘delusionism’—the idea that consciousness arises from the brain is a delusion guaranteed to fail.”
(themontrealreview.com)
Overview at a Glance
| Thinker | Core Claim | Notable Stance |
|---|---|---|
| Bernardo Kastrup | Consciousness is fundamental; matter emerges from mind | Advocates analytic idealism |
| Susan Blackmore | Consciousness is not separate—it's the brain’s self-modeling | Proposes delusionism/illusionism |
Let me know if you’d like a full transcript breakdown, deeper quotes, or a visual slide comparing their core positions!
And if there’s another specific debate or chapter you want broken down like this, I’m happy to help—just say the word.
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