b. 1974 · A portrait
A Dutch philosopher and computer scientist argues reality is fundamentally mental, with individual minds as dissociated fragments of one universal consciousness. Most philosophers of mind still favor some form of physicalism.
The line above is how his claims were received — by the scientists whose job was to doubt them. It rises as a claim is tested and accepted, and the room brightens with it. It is not a verdict on truth: some accepted ideas are later overturned, and some rejected ones come back. A hollow point is a claim still open.
In this book Kastrup first laid out, for a general audience, the claim that mind is the one thing known to exist directly, and that matter is how mind appears from an outside vantage point rather than the other way round.
He published 'An Ontological Solution to the Mind-Body Problem' in the peer-reviewed journal Philosophies, formalizing analytic idealism and describing individual minds as 'dissociated alters' of one unbound consciousness — the position's first sustained academic defense.
Panpsychist philosopher Philip Goff and Kastrup traded public essays, Goff arguing idealism doesn't dissolve the hard problem of consciousness so much as relocate it — from how matter makes mind to how one mind divides into many.
Analytic idealism remains a minority position. Kastrup continues publishing peer-reviewed papers defending it and debating physicalists and panpsychists directly, but most working philosophers of mind still hold some form of physicalism more likely true.