Bernardo Kastrup
Bernardo Kastrup is a Dutch philosopher and computer engineer whose work centres on consciousness studies and analytic idealism, a form of metaphysical idealism developed within the analytic tradition. He questions physicalism and argues that consciousness lies at the foundation of reality.
Kastrup serves as executive director of the Essentia Foundation, a Dutch charity in the field of consciousness studies and metaphysics, and is the founder and CEO of the AI systems company Euclyd.
Life
Kastrup was born in the Niterói municipality of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He later relocated to Switzerland, before settling in the Netherlands.He completed his undergraduate studies in electronic engineering at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 1997. In 2001, he earned a PhD in computer engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology, focusing on artificial intelligence and reconfigurable computing. In 2019, he obtained a second PhD in philosophy from Radboud University Nijmegen, with a dissertation centered on ontology and philosophy of mind, titled Analytic Idealism: A consciousness-only ontology.
As a scientist and computer engineer, Kastrup works in fields such as AI and information security, having held positions at the European Organization for Nuclear Research , the Philips Research Laboratories, and, as a product strategist and marketing director, at ASML Holding. He co-founded Silicon Hive, a parallel processor company acquired by Intel in 2011, and the AI systems company Euclyd B.V.
In the field of philosophical investigation and dissemination, Kastrup is the executive director of the Essentia Foundation, a Dutch nonprofit that publishes and curates work on metaphysics from an idealist perspective. He has published in both academic and popular venues, including ''Scientific American.''
Philosophical work
Kastrup's work focuses on "analytic idealism", which he interprets as a philosophical system that posits phenomenal consciousness as the primary substrate of existence, with individual minds representing dissociated segments of a universal consciousness. In an opinion article in Scientific American, he argued for an idealist alternative to mainstream interpretations of consciousness, and in his books, including Why Materialism is Baloney, The Idea of the World, and Decoding Jung's Metaphysics, he explored the implications of analytic idealism for understanding mind and reality.Kastrup has participated in public debates with scientists and philosophers such as Christof Koch, Philip Goff, Sabine Hossenfelder, Michael Egnor, Graham Oppy, Susan Blackmore, and Donald D. Hoffman. After physicist Sean Carroll criticised Kastrup in 2018 for an article on quantum mechanics, science journalist John Horgan defended Kastrup's work, describing it as reminiscent of the work of physicist John Archibald Wheeler.