A Conscious Universe

[Angrboda]

Quantum mechanics accurately predicts the behavior of what we normally term reality. Whether that reality is stuff behaving according to the equations of QM, or ideas behaving like stuff according to the equations of QM is to me a difference without a difference. You seem to have ideas behaving like stuff in the macro world, and yet on the other hand you have ideas behaving like ideas in the mind. The sleight of hand of calling them both "idea" does not disguise the seeming fact that you have two distinctly different kinds of idea stuff that has to meet somewhere in the middle. This is the classic interface problem of substance dualism, and I don't see that you've solved it except metaphorically or semantically with vague talk of "context".

I find it odd that you pose challenges to physicalism such as identifying what things are capable of qualia that you can't resolve in the context of idealism. Is a cat capable of experiencing qualia? How does Idealism help us answer this question?

Wherever you go across the spectrum, physicalism provides evidence for its position; Idealism just assumes, hand waves, or engages in flowery metaphor that is no more explanatory than "It's magic!" or "Goddidit!"

Physicalism provides compelling, if not conclusive, evidence of the link between brain matter and qualia.

Wherever we find creatures that claim to have qualia, we find brains.

All the qualia we are capable of experiencing has corresponding sensory organs in the body, from sight to hearing to a network of muscoloskeletal sensors which tell us how are limbs are arranged and give rise to a body image. How does Idealism explain that coincidence? It's almost as if there were a relationship between the physical and the mental.

Evidence from the experience of drug use such as alcohol, rohypnol, and LSD seems to suggest that manipulation of brain chemistry brings about concomitant manipulation of the experience of mind. How does Idealism explain that?

Evidence from neurological conditions such as cerebral achromatopsia, blindness denial, hemi-neglect, frontal lobe trauma, and countless other neurological conditions show that manipulating the brain results in manipulating the experiences of mind (or if you prefer, manipulating the ideas that make up our "brain-like stuff" results in manipulation of our "idea stuff"). (Especially in cerebral achromatopsia where the patient loses the ability to experience color, even in their imagination, while retaining the ability for visual imagination.)

Evidence from split-brain studies and alien hand syndrome suggest that our experience of a single, unitary consciousness may not accurately reflect the way our minds actually work. If consciousness isn't unitary but is only experienced as unitary; what else is consciousness lying to itself about?

In sum, I don't care what is "under the hood" so long as it behaves according to the equations of QM. Whether it's ideas behaving like stuff, or stuff acting like stuff, I don't care. What I do care about is how this maneuver of making stuff into ideas explains consciousness (ideas as ideas), how it explains the physicalist evidence, and how the interaction between "ideas that behave like stuff" and "ideas that behave like ideas" occurs. Please explain these things in terms of your Idealism. Be as literal as you possibly can.