Spoon

“A world is what it is only as over and against an experiencing I. Everything it contains is either directly experienced or belongs to the determinable indeterminate horizon of the currently experienced.” — Edmund Husserl

“I find myself here as a man in the world; likewise as experiencing and scientifically knowing the world, myself included. And now I say to myself: Whatever exists for me, exists for me thanks to my knowing consciousness; it is for me the experienced of my experiencing, the thought of my thinking, the theorized of my theorizing, the intellectually seen of my insight. … Objects exist for me, and are for me what they are, only as objects of actual and possible consciousness.” — Edmund Husserl

After Berkeley, Hume, Kant and Husserl, there is no need to explain at length the obvious: the only empirical reality that is ever directly given to us is the reality of phenomenal consciousness, everything else that we imagine to explain the fundamental nature of empirical reality are explanatory abstractions.

“The phenomenality of the empirical world is a basic insight of philosophical thought.” — Karl Jaspers

“[The purpose of scientific theories] is not to disclose the real essence of phenomena but only to track down, so far as it is possible, relations between the manifold aspects of [phenomenal] experience.” — Niels Bohr

“The world, extended in time and space, is nothing but our [phenomenal] representation. Experience does not give us the slightest hint that the world can be anything else — something Berkeley was well aware of.” — Erwin Schrödinger

“Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods for ordering and surveying human experience.” — Niels Bohr

“Descriptive universal science, as the science of the pregiven world in its universality, remains within the realm of actual and possible, direct and indirect, experience.” — Edmund Husserl

“Scientific cognition of things is not cognition of Being. Scientific cognition is particular, concerned with determinate [phenomenal] objects, not with Being itself. The philosophical relevance of science, therefore, is that, precisely by means of knowledge, it produces the most decisive knowledge of our lack of knowledge, namely our lack of knowledge of what Being itself is.” — Karl Jaspers

“What do we actually accomplish through [physics]? Nothing but prediction extended to infinity.” — Edmund Husserl

“There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out what nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.” — Niels Bohr

Similarly, we can say that there is no physical world in general; there is only an abstract physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out what nature is; physics concerns what we can say about nature in the language of mathematical formalism.

“In modern quantum theory there is hardly any doubt that elementary particles are ultimately mathematical forms. … For a physicist the thing-in-itself, if he uses this concept, is ultimately a mathematical structure.” — Werner Heisenberg

Therefore, ‘physical matter’ exists only in our imagination as a highly problematic (considering the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness) metaphysical concept and an abstract mathematical description of that which, from the point of view of the least problematic and most conceptually parsimonious ontological idealism (consciousness-only ontology), is not ‘physical matter’ but transcendental intersubjectivity whose elementary causal structures/processes are described mathematically as ‘elementary particles, waves, etc.’.

“…The hypothesis of a material world is metaphysical because nothing accessible to observation corresponds to it at all. …I will not hesitate to declare directly and openly mystico-metaphysical the hypothesis of a really existing external world…” — Erwin Schrödinger

“The attempt to conceive the universe of true being as something lying outside the universe of possible consciousness, possible knowledge, possible evidence, the two being related to one another merely externally by a rigid law, is nonsensical. They belong together essentially; and, as belonging together essentially, they are also concretely one, one in the only absolute concretion: transcendental subjectivity.” — Edmund Husserl

“Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist.” — Erwin Schrödinger

“It must be said that to Western thought this doctrine [of ontological idealism] has little appeal, it is unpalatable, it is dubbed fantastic, unscientific. Well, so it is because our science — Greek science — is based on objectivation, whereby it has cut itself off from an adequate understanding of the subject of cognisance, of the mind.” — Erwin Schrödinger

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” — Max Planck

“Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.” — Erwin Schrödinger

“The [metaphysical] concept of material substance is perhaps the greatest obstacle on the path towards a true understanding of nature.” — Niels Bohr

“The only thing that is fundamental is consciousness. Matter is a derivative concept, a category of consciousness… I regard consciousness as the fundamental stuff of the universe.” — Erwin Schrödinger

“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear-headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: there is no matter as such.” — Max Planck

“Materialism is false.” — Kurt Gödel

To see the truth of ontological idealism, one must abandon the naive pseudoscientific metaphysical mythology of materialism (physicalism) and surrender to the beauty of conceptual parsimony: the world is nothing but consciousness. But what is ‘consciousness’? What is consciousness in itself — the substance of the phenomenal and underlying transcendental streams of subjectivity and intersubjectivity?

“[Consciousness-in-itself] (vijñānamātratva) is the true nature of all [phenomena], because, remaining as it is at all times, it is [Transcendence] (tathātā).” — Vasubandhu

“[W]hat gives [science] meaning is precisely and solely that through understanding it comes up against that which is authentically un-understandable.” — Karl Jaspers

Therefore, there is no mythical ‘physical/material’ spoon, there is an intersubjectively constituted/projected phenomenal spoon — colorforms, sounds, sensations (olfactory, gustatory, tactile, etc.) and meanings — whose substance is transcendent*, for the substance of phenomena and meanings is consciousness-in-itself — Transcendence.

“The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer, but that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won’t get us very far.” — Niels Bohr

“The total number of minds in the Universe is one. In fact, consciousness is a singularity phasing within all beings.” — Erwin Schrödinger

“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.” — Werner Heisenberg

“Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, he must become foolish, so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God.” — 1 Corinthians 3:18–20

Wake up, Neo.

*) The transcendent must never be confused with the transcendental in the Kantian and Husserlian sense.