https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=aMf7xsRf9s4
So Chandler Trenna said, Jonathan, I must admit I was embarrassed and excited to see you in conversation with Bernardo Castro. I’ve been reading his books and following his work for a while now and I got to see a different side of him in your video. Bernardo’s work is often based around metaphysical idealism, which you didn’t discuss in too much detail during your talk. So I was wondering what your thoughts on the subject are and if you had any broader reflection on the conversations you had with him. Thanks. I really avoided the idea, the question of idealism, because I think in a certain manner, I think it’s like a false herring. There’s something about it that doesn’t matter. So when you notice Bernardo’s categories, so he says he denies matter. So he sees everything as mind, let’s say. But he doesn’t deny the objective existence of the things you find out there. He doesn’t mean that everything is idiosyncratic. Everything functions with a pattern and it’s like what we recognize as matter or objects. They are, let’s say, they are mentations, you know, but they all have a structure and they have a certain way of existing. And so in a way it was kind of like, I think that in a way I was like, I don’t think that that matters. Because if you could say, like if you said something, if you said something, something like all things exist in the mind of God, constantly, all things are constantly existing in the mind of God, that’s a completely Christian thing to say. Like there’s absolutely nothing weird about that. And that the idea that matter exists on its own and has a completely independent existence is something that Christians don’t believe either. Like I hope none of you believe that. It’s like matter doesn’t just exist, right? It is sustained by God and in God and it doesn’t have stability at the bottom, right? It’s held by logy and that’s how it finds its stability. So its stability is held in their purposes and in their higher things. And so the fact that we have, so I think that like whether you use the word mind or it’s like, I don’t think that that’s where the real debate is. I think it’s more about understanding the manner in which a system works and how to account for the fractality and the way that things fit into each other, you know, into the mind of God. And so I think that ultimately we probably disagree. We didn’t get to all the points of it. But I hope that we’re going to have another discussion at some point. So I hope that in our next discussion we can address some of those issues. So that’s why. So I think that the question of idealism and let’s say, at least in his case, it doesn’t, you really have to just look at the system itself and stop worrying about what it’s, how can I say this, of thinking that it, because the category, he has all the categories, even though he thinks that they’re bound, that they’re held in mind, let’s say. So he does have something like wood or table or, but they are held by, by mentations, by mental processes. That’s how they kind of are held together in our perception and in the world. And so, so when he says something like matter doesn’t exist, I think, I think it’s, it’s, how can I say this? It’s like, it’s kind of a scandalous statement. And I understand why people react to it. But if you actually look at his system, he doesn’t just mean that nothing exists. That’s not what he means. And so, so that’s why I didn’t want to go into that with him. I just, I wanted to go into the nitty gritty of the actual way in which all these things fit together. And I was really surprised. I was happily surprised to see that there was, that if I did it that way, that there was a lot more points of that, where we touched, our ideas touched and where we could find some kind of some connection than if I had started to, to argue about idealism itself. So hopefully that makes sense.