Bernardo Kastrup, "The Universe in Consciousness", Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 25, iss. 5-6 (2018), p. 125
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I propose an idealist ontology that makes sense of reality in a more parsimonious and empirically rigorous manner than mainstream physicalism, bottom-up panpsychism, and cosmopsychism. The proposed ontology also offers more explanatory power than these three alternatives, in that it does not fall prey to the hard problem of consciousness, the combination problem, or the decombination problem, respectively. It can be summarized as follows: there is only cosmic consciousness. We, as well as all other living organisms, are but dissociated alters of cosmic consciousness, surrounded by its thoughts. The inanimate world we see around us is the extrinsic appearance of these thoughts. The living organisms we share the world with are the extrinsic appearances of other dissociated alters.

— Bernardo Kastrup on Open individualism

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "I propose an idealist ontology that makes sense of reality in a more parsimonious and empirically rigorous manner than mainstream physicalism, bottom-up panpsychism, and cosmopsychism. The proposed ontology also offers more explanatory power than these three alternatives, in that it does not fall prey to the hard problem of consciousness, the combination problem, or the decombination problem, respectively. It can be summarized as follows: there is only cosmic consciousness. We, as well as all other living organisms, are but dissociated alters of cosmic consciousness, surrounded by its thoughts. The inanimate world we see around us is the extrinsic appearance of these thoughts. The living organisms we share the world with are the extrinsic appearances of other dissociated alters." in the context of "Bernardo Kastrup, "The Universe in Consciousness", Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 25, iss. 5-6 (2018), p. 125" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Open individualism" (K) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Bernardo Kastrup

About Bernardo Kastrup

Bernardo Kastrup is a Dutch computer scientist and philosopher at the Eindhoven University of Technology.