Scientific Materialism, Consciousness and the New Idealism: An exploration of some implications for education

A number of scientists and philosophers—Bernardo Kastrup, Steve Taylor, Donald Hoffman, and Iain McGilchrist—argue that scientific materialism is not metaphysically justified by its technological achievements and that its failure to solve the hard problem of consciousness is a major shortcoming. They propose new forms of idealism, claiming consciousness is the sole ontological primitive, offering a more cogent and parsimonious foundation for knowledge. The article examines these neo-idealist arguments and explores their implications for education, particularly in epistemology, ethics, and spirituality.

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Abstract

In response to the intractability of the hard problem of consciousness, a number of scientists and philosophersin particular Bernardo Kastrup, Steve Taylor, Donald Hoffman, and Iain McGilchristhave advanced arguments for new forms of idealism which challenge the basic tenets of scientific materialism.The central claims are thatin spite of the impressive achievements of contemporary science and technologythe metaphysical basis of scientific materialism is not justified by these achievements.Moreover, in addition to the many flaws and shortcomings of materialismchief amongst which is the abject failure to solve the hard problem of consciousnessidealist perspectives which propose that consciousness is the sole ontological primitive provide a more cogent and parsimonious foundation for our knowledge of the world than scientific materialism.These new conceptions call for a radical transformation of our beliefs and experience of the world andfollowing an examination of the principal neo-idealist argumentsthe implications for education, in particular in the realms of epistemology, ethics and spirituality will be investigated.