Martinus

Due to the difficulties of providing an adequate physicalist solution to the problem of consciousness, recent years have seen explorations of different avenues. Among these is the thesis of cosmopsychism, the view that the cosmos as a whole possesses consciousness. However, constitutive cosmopsychism is faced with the difficult problem of decombination: how to consistently maintain the claim that individual subjects are grounded in one absolute consciousness. This paper suggests a solution by outlining a theoretical model of a broadly idealistic and quantitative substance-monistic character. The key idea here is a triadic rather than monistic or dualistic conception of the subject. This conception allows us to affirm that the individual subject exists while simultaneously holding that its substance component is part of the one, undivided substance. This substance is in turn the substantive component of an all-encompassing, absolute subject. Notably, this model avoids the problem of decombination.

Outlining a cosmopsychistic and absolute idealistic metaphysics, synthesizing elements from  T.L.S. Sprigge's metaphysics and the world picture of the Danish mystic Martinus.
Treatise title (Danish); Virkeligheden som konsistent ontologisk totalitet – skitsering af en panpsykistisk absolut idealistisk metafysik under syntetiserende inddragelse af udvalgte dele af Martinus' ontologiske system (2019, unpublished).

Physicalism is the most widely accepted metaphysical view today. The thesis of physicalism, however, seems unable to adequately explain the existence and nature of consciousness. Moreover, the thesis is not itself a scientific finding but must be characterized as a metaphysical assumption. Hence, there are strong reasons to explore alternatives to the physicalist view. While metaphysical theses based on classic idealistic views like subjective or absolute idealism have been largely absent from the philosophical debate during most of the 20 th century, in the last few decades theses of this kind have been advocated, most notably by John Foster and Timothy Sprigge. Russell's and Moore's influential refutations of idealism have been severely questioned by recent scholarship, which means that conventional arguments against absolute idealism appear to be significantly less well-founded than what is usually assumed.
With Sprigge's panpsychistic absolute idealistic metaphysical system as the basis and by incorporating key elements in Foster's thinking, the present paper outlines an idealistic thesis which, it is argued, first of all escapes the problem of consciousness inherent in physicalism and secondly counters important arguments raised against Sprigge's views, including the question of personal identity and the problem of the one and the many. In addition, this thesis can be seen as naturalistic in a broad sense, thereby potentially being of existential relevance also within the framework of modernity.
Thus, it is the aim of the present paper to argue – although sketchily – that despite its controversial character in the light of contemporary mainstream views, panpsychistic absolute idealism demonstrates a significant explanatory power and is therefore of philosophical interest as a subject for further study.