"I get asked similar questions a lot, as you can imagine, especially after that provocative sub title of the book. Emi have thought about it. Are their ways in which what people think are themselves survive? Are their ways that could happen?" He says he doesn't believe there is any ghost that floats out of your body and goes nast somewhere else. "It's actually quite reasonable, may be even a prediction of the logic of idealism."
In this expansive conversation, Michael Shermer speaks with Bernardo Kastrup, the executive director of Essentia Foundation. His work has been leading the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism, the notion that reality is essentially mental. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and another Ph.D. in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence). Shermer and Kastrup discuss: materialism, idealism, dualism, monism, panpsychism, free will, determinism, consciousness, the problem of other minds, artificial intelligence, out of body and near-death experiences, model dependent realism, and the ultimate nature of reality.