Our coming journey into inner space

Does the destiny of the human race this century lie in the discovery of the inner worlds of the mind?

Materialism, asserts James Tartaglia, professor of metaphysical philosophy at Keele University, UK, ‘is only comfortable with outer space — it views inner space as a problem at best, at worst an enemy to be eradicated … like religion’.

He wants philosophy to reinvent itself ‘so that it can follow us inside’.

The most important and laudable thing about Prof Tartaglia’s new book, Inner Space Philosophy: Why the next stage of human development should be philosophical, explained radically, is the way he emphasises the debilitating effect of materialism — the operative philosophy of our world — revealing its limitations and failings, and advocates a wider acceptance of a metaphysical philosophy, indeed a new form of metaphysical idealism.

Briefly, metaphysical idealism holds that, at base, reality equates to mind, or consciousness, that it’s a mental construct and thus in opposition to materialism, or physicalism as it’s often now termed. It’s a form of monism, in that it asserts that there’s only one source of things in the universe.

In making a case for the next stage of human development being philosophical, for the human race to become a philosophical people, Prof Tartaglia (Iff…