Kastrup's analytic idealism: the brain is an appearance within consciousness, not its producer

{
 "question_id": "q:brain-if-consciousness-fundamental",
 "source_role": "appearance-within-consciousness",
 "title": "Kastrup's analytic idealism: the brain is an appearance within consciousness, not its producer",
 "tradition": "analytic_idealism",
 "central_reading": "Bernardo Kastrup has developed 'analytic idealism' as a systematic, empirically-informed idealist ontology. He argues that phenomenal consciousness is the sole ontological primitive, and that all physical structures — including the brain — exist solely as appearances (phenomenality) within consciousness. Neural correlates of consciousness are therefore correlates of dissociative processes within consciousness, not evidence that the brain produces consciousness.",
 "claims": [
  {
   "id": "cl:kastrup-disputatio-idealism-refutes-production",
   "text": "Physical structures do not circumscribe or produce consciousness; rather, all physical structures are circumscribed by consciousness, existing solely as phenomenality. The dependency of phenomenal experience on brain function does not refute idealism because the brain itself is an appearance within consciousness.",
   "source_id": "doi:10.2478/disp-2017-0025",
   "source_span": "Disputatio 9(47), 2017 — entire essay, abstract and body",
   "quote": "The ontology of idealism... entails that all physical structures are circumscribed by consciousness in that they exist solely as phenomenality in the first place.",
   "evidence": "textual (published peer-reviewed journal article)",
   "pramana": "sabda",
   "hetu": "Idealism is refuted by the dependency of phenomenal experience on brain function, but this objection is false because the brain itself is circumscribed by consciousness.",
   "sadhya": "Idealism is a plausible ontology despite apparently contrary empirical observations about brain-dependence.",
   "vyapti": "If physical structures exist solely as phenomenality within consciousness, then the brain's correlation with experience does not imply that the brain produces consciousness — the brain is the extrinsic appearance of a dissociative process within consciousness.",
   "vyapti_confidence": 0.7,
   "falsifier": "Show that the brain produces consciousness in a way that cannot be explained as the extrinsic appearance of dissociative phenomenality — i.e., that the causal arrow runs from neural activity to experience in a way that is ontologically asymmetric and not reducible to appearance-within-consciousness.",
   "falsifier_status": "untested",
   "weight": 0.4,
   "w_rel": 0.72,
   "w_map": 0.65,
   "w_aux": 0.68,
   "targets": [
    {
     "id": "cand:brain-as-appearance-within-consciousness",
     "type": "candidate_explanation",
     "role": "support",
     "strength": 0.7,
     "rationale": "Direct peer-reviewed argument that all physical structure is circumscribed by consciousness, that brain-dependence does not refute idealism, and that NCCs are not evidence of production."
    }
   ]
  },
  {
   "id": "cl:kastrup-philosophies-ontological-primitive",
   "text": "Spatially unbound consciousness is nature's sole ontological primitive. Living organisms are dissociated alters of this unbound consciousness, and the physical universe — including brains — is the extrinsic appearance of phenomenality surrounding each alter.",
   "source_id": "doi:10.3390/philosophies2020010",
   "source_span": "Philosophies 2(2), 2017 — entire essay",
   "quote": "spatially unbound consciousness is posited to be nature's sole ontological primitive. We, as well as all other living organisms, are dissociated alters of this unbound consciousness. The universe we see around us is the extrinsic appearance of phenomenality surrounding—but dissociated from—our alter.",
   "evidence": "textual (published peer-reviewed journal article)",
   "pramana": "sabda",
   "hetu": "The hard problem of consciousness and the subject combination problem arise from assuming physicalism or bottom-up panpsychism; an idealist ontology resolves both