The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 180. A Conversation so Intense It Might as Well Be Psychedelic ｜ John Vervaeke

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and

00:00:05.560 important. Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those

00:00:10.560 battling depression and anxiety. We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can

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00:00:20.080 With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you

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00:00:48.080 the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

00:00:56.680 This is season four, episode 34. My father's joined by John Verveke, a colleague of his. John is an

00:01:03.860 associate professor at the University of Toronto. He teaches courses in the psychology department on

00:01:08.920 thinking and reasoning with an emphasis on problem solving associated with creativity,

00:01:13.620 cognitive development with an emphasis on the dynamic nature of development, and higher

00:01:19.360 cognitive processes with an emphasis on intelligence, rationality, mindfulness, and the

00:01:24.600 psychology of wisdom. My father and John discuss how they know each other the last time they saw one

00:01:29.740 another, Christianity, power, perspective, atheists, religion, Heidegger, and more. This episode is

00:01:37.780 brought to you by Self-Authoring. Self-Authoring was developed by my dad over the last 30 years with

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00:02:34.400 I hope you enjoy this episode.

00:02:55.480 Hello everyone. I'm pleased to speak today with John Vervecki, a colleague of mine. He's an associate

00:03:00.440 professor in the teaching stream. He's been teaching at the University of Toronto since 1994.

00:03:06.020 He currently teaches extremely popular and well-received courses in the psychology department

00:03:10.960 on thinking and reasoning with an emphasis on insight problem solving associated with creativity,

00:03:17.600 cognitive development with an emphasis on the dynamic nature of development,

00:03:21.000 and higher cognitive processes with an emphasis on intelligence, rationality, mindfulness,

00:03:27.140 and the psychology of wisdom. He's the director of the cognitive science program, where he also

00:03:32.680 teaches courses on the introduction to cognitive science and the cognitive science of consciousness,

00:03:37.220 wherein he emphasizes 4E for consciousness, embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended models of

00:03:46.040 cognition and consciousness. In addition, he chooses a course in the Buddhism psychology and mental health

00:03:51.340 program on Buddhism and cognitive science. He's director of the consciousness and wisdom studies

00:03:56.280 laboratory. He has won and been nominated for several teaching awards, including the 2001 Students

00:04:02.980 Administrative Council and Association of Part-Time Undergraduate Students Teaching Award for the

00:04:07.200 Humanities and the 2012 Ranjini Ghosh Excellence in Teaching Award. He's published articles on relevance,

00:04:15.440 realization, general intelligence, mindfulness, flow, metaphor, and wisdom. He's the first author of the book

00:04:21.560 Zombies in Western Culture, a 21st Century Crisis, which integrates psychology and cognitive science to

00:04:28.260 address the meaning crisis in Western society. He's the author and preventer of the YouTube series

00:04:33.220 Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. And the meaning, meaning is what we're going to talk to John about today.

00:04:40.200 John, do you remember when we met last?

00:04:42.120 I think the last time we were physically present was in 2015. We were at a Mind Masters discussion,

00:04:52.980 you and I. It's on YouTube. And we were talking about meaning and life at that time. That was the

00:04:57.800 last time I think we were present together.

00:05:00.820 So that's been six years, man. A lot of water under the bridge since that time.

00:05:06.540 So tell us about your current projects, if you would.

00:05:11.400 Oh, well, I'm currently engaged in a project of, there's two projects. One I've just finished,

00:05:22.760 one I've been finishing. One was a cog-sci project on consciousness called Untangling the World Knot.

00:05:28.780 And in that, I was experimenting not only with new theoretical material, I was experimenting with

00:05:36.000 a new way of presenting material. So I presented the material rather than monologically, I presented

00:05:41.060 it dialogically with a friend of mine, a psychologist, Greg Enricus. And so the material was presented

00:05:46.000 dialogically, which was very interesting for me because I've, well, hopefully we can talk a bit more

00:05:52.220 about that. I've been, my core project is a project of trying to understand more deeply the process of

00:05:57.420 dialogue and what it does in distributed cognition. The other thing I'm doing-

00:06:01.740 So do you, what do you think is the difference between dialogue and thought?

00:06:05.720 I mean, is thought an inner dialogue or trialogue or quadrilogue?

00:06:09.640 Well, that's a really good question because one of the things that I think we are playing around

00:06:16.880 with right now in the culture is a consideration of whether or not the monological model of thought,

00:06:22.060 which has been very predominant and the prototypical way in which you present your thought is with

00:06:26.780 the treatise, for example. And we're now opening up to the idea that perhaps thought is more

00:06:32.220 dialogical in nature. In fact, the idea that thought might be, even reason might be more

00:06:37.900 dialogical in nature is coming into sort of the mainstream of cognitive science.

00:06:42.540 Well, let me throw an idea at you and tell me what you think of it. It's something I've been

00:06:45.700 working with. We might as well dive right into this. It seems to me that thought has

00:06:50.600 two main components. There's a revelatory component, and that manifests itself most

00:06:58.540 remarkably, I would say, in flashes of insight, but those may be spread all the way out to religious

00:07:05.060 revelation along a similar continuum. So there's a revelatory element to thought, and that's the

00:07:10.640 thought that in some sense springs out of the void. And I think the way that you manifest that

00:07:14.660 thought is by consciously or unconsciously posing yourself a problem. And I think in some sense,

00:07:23.720 it's akin to prayer, although we don't notice that. And maybe that's because we've internalized

00:07:28.880 prayer so deeply, we don't even notice we do it anymore. I mean, people have been praying for a

00:07:33.340 long time, right? So you have a problem, you want a solution, you ask yourself, well, what do you think

00:07:37.740 of this? And then you wait. And then at some point, sometimes when you're sleeping, sometimes when you're

00:07:43.060 awake, I mean, sometimes so powerfully when you're sleeping, it jerks you awake. The answer appears

00:07:47.080 and you think, well, I thought that up. But that's a strange thing to think. I mean, one of the things

00:07:53.600 Jung said about thought was that most people encounter thoughts, nobody will ever find this

00:07:57.780 quote, of course, because I'm sure I've modified it, but like they find a table when they walk into a

00:08:02.200 room. It's just there. And then we attribute it to ourself. But then there's the dialogical element

00:08:08.020 where we take a look at the thought, or there might be the dialogical element if you're

00:08:11.580 further along in the development of your thought. You take the thought and you subject it to a

00:08:16.180 critical dialogue or trialogue or with inner avatars. So, okay, your turn, man.

00:08:22.300 Yeah, that's great. So I think that's an important note. I do a lot of work on the nature of insight.

00:08:31.880 And I think the theoretical argument and the empirical evidence, I think, is converging on the idea

00:08:37.040 that the insight processes, or perhaps we'll just say the insight process, makes use of cognitive

00:08:45.440 machinery that's very different from inferential machinery. In fact, there is times when they

00:08:51.960 can even be opposed or interfere with each other.

00:08:56.080 Okay, so I have a comment about that.

00:08:58.040 Yeah.

00:08:58.220 You know that when people develop prefrontal dementia, sometimes they experience a burst of

00:09:04.040 creativity. Of course.

00:09:05.960 Yes, and it's because the editor module goes down. And that's associated, I think, with

00:09:11.120 the cognitive module for thought, that's Wernicke's area, rather than Broca's area.

00:09:17.060 If I got that right?

00:09:18.560 Yeah, you do. You also get similar things if you get sort of minor damage in sort of right

00:09:24.960 prefrontal. You'll also get, River Berry did some experiments where people who have that kind

00:09:30.080 of damage also show increased facility with insight problems.

00:09:33.340 Right. So, you know, I'm building this writing app right now, and we're going to launch it

00:09:37.960 in about a month, but I'm suggesting to people that when they write, they separate out the

00:09:41.800 editing process entirely. And so they try to rely on the non-critical revelatory process

00:09:48.020 to generate ideas. And that means they can't try to write a perfect sentence to begin with.

00:09:52.860 They just have to restrict the editor and ask the revelatory system to step forward.

00:09:59.160 And so what do you think about its akinness to prayer? I know that's kind of a radical idea.

00:10:03.740 Well, it's a really radical idea.

00:10:05.180 I don't think it's that radical.

00:10:07.720 Well, you're a radical, so that's why it's fun to talk to you.

00:10:13.840 Well, the idea, I think it's only radical if you go in with some presupposed epistemologies of

00:10:21.920 what's going on in thought. I mean, you may be an empiricist in which you think your relationship

00:10:26.420 to thought or any knowledge acquisition process is a purely passive, receptive one.

00:10:31.720 Or you may be in a romantic where you think that thought is literally, you know, you hear it

00:10:37.100 literally in the expression, an expression pushing out an act of imposition on the world.

00:10:43.160 But what I think the phenomena of insight does is reveal that a lot of our thinking is neither

00:10:48.680 active nor passive. It's what I like to call participatory. It's the same kind of thing like,

00:10:53.920 you know, participating in a conversation. It's not just a sequence of, you know, actions and

00:11:01.040 passive receptivity. There's a co-collaboration. We're co-creating. We're making something together.

00:11:06.240 In fact, that's one of the defining features I have for what I call dialogos. I try to use the

00:11:10.860 ancient Greek word rather than the modern word.

00:11:13.440 Logos.

00:11:13.860 Yeah, well, that's also a word I use frequently. We haven't talked about why people want us to talk.

00:11:20.920 And the reason they want us to talk is because our ideas dovetail to a substantial degree and also

00:11:26.280 diverge, interestingly. And so I guess they want us to talk so that we can think.

00:11:31.080 Well, that's it. And let's see, that's what I was going to say. That's one of the defining,

00:11:34.360 I would say one of the defining, it certainly seems to be the case as a defining criteria for

00:11:39.500 Socrates, that if you and I can get to places in the dialogos that we couldn't get to individually,

00:11:46.560 then real dialogos has come into existence. And that's philia sophia, the love of wisdom,

00:11:53.220 as opposed to philia nikea, the love of victory. And so...

00:11:57.220 Right, right, right. I didn't know those phrases.

00:11:59.700 Philia, say it again?

00:12:01.380 Philia sophia, which is the...

00:12:03.000 Philia, philia sophia, sure. Wisdom is the feminine essence of God.

00:12:06.880 Yeah, well, and also the philia is, you know, it's itself a collaborative love.

00:12:12.560 Oh, did you say philia? Yeah.

00:12:14.580 Philia, yeah. Philia.

00:12:16.760 Philia and ph... 0.73

00:12:18.200 Philia, philia sophia.

00:12:21.000 So...

00:12:21.400 Philia sophia.

00:12:22.440 The three loves, eros, philia, agape. This is philia. And philia is the love that is done,

00:12:28.240 is expressed and shared in community. And then sophia, of course, is the word for wisdom. That's

00:12:33.940 where we get philosophy from. I mean, philia, philia, nikea is the love of victory, like

00:12:39.020 Nike, victory.

00:12:40.680 Right. And yeah, it's interesting because the... Tell me what you think of this. I think

00:12:45.400 the YouTube dialogues that we undertake are characterized by philia, philia sophia, and

00:12:51.000 the YouTube dialogues conducted in the main by the... What would you call it? Legacy media

00:12:57.180 are philia, philia, philia, nikea, nikea, philia, nikea. And I think people appreciate philia

00:13:04.600 sophia much better.

00:13:07.140 You better believe it.

00:13:08.220 I certainly appreciate it much better.

00:13:10.340 I did. I just did a... I did two of these with Bernardo Castro. One was three hours and

00:13:16.680 one was four hours. And the accepted wisdom is nobody's going to listen to those. And these

00:13:22.520 are extremely popular. People are willing to hang in precisely because...

00:13:26.560 How popular?

00:13:28.060 Well, I mean, there's been, I think, 20,000 views for the first one, and it's been up for

00:13:33.240 like a week. And there's been like, I don't know, 8,000 views of the second one that's been

00:13:38.700 up for a couple of days. And this is for a four-hour video.

00:13:41.020 Yeah. I mean, people came... 10,000 people came to see Sam Harris and I talk in Ireland.

00:13:47.140 And that was primarily philia sophia with a hint of philia... Perhaps I forgot it again.

00:13:54.260 Philia.

00:13:54.920 Nikea.

00:13:55.380 Nikea. Yes, of course.

00:13:56.800 Nike the shoe.

00:13:57.740 I just have to picture the shoe. Philia, Nikea. Yes, I'm accused of loving philia, Nikea,

00:14:04.900 but I don't. I find that distasteful. And I'm much more comfortable with philia sophia. And

00:14:11.300 I hope that's evident.

00:14:13.100 Well, that's very much... I mean, this sort of started with my projects, my major project

00:14:18.920 right now. And this is why I'm doing these other things in this manner, is I put together

00:14:22.900 an anthology for publication. And, you know, I'm doing a lot of work on it as I'm trying

00:14:26.780 to understand what is Dialogos? How do we bring it about? And I'm looking... The two areas

00:14:34.980 of research are, I'm, of course, looking back into the philosophical heritage, the whole

00:14:38.620 Socratic tradition. But I'm also doing a lot of participant observation, participant

00:14:43.180 experimentation in all these emerging communities. You know, the circling community, the authentic

00:14:48.140 relating community, philosophical insight, philosophical fellowship. I'm trying to learn

00:14:54.000 how to do this, share with this with other people.

00:14:55.860 It seems to me, tell me what you think of this. It seems to me that this... Okay, so you're a

00:15:02.880 participant or participant observer. I feel like we're tracking something and that this must be

00:15:08.340 associated with our hunting instinct, that the philia sophia is a...

00:15:12.380 Oh, very much.

00:15:12.680 I feel like I'm tracking... So I believe this is from The Lord of the Rings with Bilbo, but I could be

00:15:19.380 completely wrong about this. There's a scene near the end of the book where he wakes his, makes his

00:15:24.600 way across a swamp full of souls. And he feels for the rocks underneath that make out the path, but he

00:15:31.080 can't see them because the water is murky. And so he feels them out. And it seems to me that philia

00:15:36.200 sophia is associated with that, is that you feel your way to a solid, to something solid. And then you take the

00:15:42.620 next step. And that manifests itself in speech, but it's... Is it mutual tracking? Is it reprogramming

00:15:51.920 of the tracking circuit that we used for so long when we were dialogical hunters, like signaling to

00:15:57.560 each other? I think so.

00:15:58.720 We're on the track of wisdom as a beast.

00:16:01.100 Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think, you know, Barbara diversity is right. And well, I mean,

00:16:06.700 it's a main claim of most of 40 cognitive science is that our higher cognitive processes are

00:16:12.120 exacted for more, from more direct sensory motor interaction. And, you know, and you're right,

00:16:17.500 Socrates talks about, you know, a willingness to follow the logos wherever it goes. And the

00:16:23.520 interesting thing when you do these practices...

00:16:25.340 And do you think that's any different than prayer? Because you could hardly say that in

00:16:29.480 a more Christian way.

00:16:31.120 Well, but, well, yeah. Well, let me say something about that. Because when I've done the participant

00:16:37.040 observation, what happens is, at first, people are taken aback by a kind of intimacy that is

00:16:44.860 not, you know, is not sexual, or, you know, it's a kind of immediacy that the culture doesn't

00:16:53.100 currently prepare them for. So they're taken aback, right? This kind of intimacy and connection.

00:16:59.640 John, that's exactly what I experienced when people come up on the street and tell me that

00:17:04.360 they've been watching my videos and that their life has been changed. It's, there's this instant

00:17:09.000 immediacy that takes me aback. And it's, it just, it just, it floors me. And it, it really does.

00:17:16.620 I get the same thing. I get, and I get people when I talk to them, and they've watched the series or

00:17:22.160 something like that. And they, they've spent like 50 hours with me in their head. And they,

00:17:26.680 they, they think they know me intimately.

00:17:29.100 Maybe they do, John.

00:17:30.140 Yeah. Yeah. Maybe they do.

00:17:31.500 You don't know them.

00:17:33.380 No.

00:17:33.620 Or maybe you do. You know, they're Philea Sophia, and it knows yours. And so it's instant,

00:17:39.560 it's instant intimacy, but it's, it's very disconcerting.

00:17:43.040 It is. And it's very hard for me initially, because I'm by nature, very sort of socially phobic.

00:17:50.020 Well, it doesn't get easier.

00:17:51.340 Yeah. But when I'm doing the practices, what happens is initially people are caught up in

00:17:58.440 this intimacy. And then what happens is, and people have various names for it, the we space,

00:18:03.840 the Geist, Logo, Spirit. There's a sense of-

00:18:07.380 Wherever I am between you, I'm with you.

00:18:09.400 Yeah. Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am also. Right. And so there's this-

00:18:13.820 Yeah. That's a name for it. All right.

00:18:16.520 There's that sense-

00:18:17.100 How do you put the Christian spin on this?

00:18:19.820 Well, I mean, there's sections in the episodes in the series where I talk a lot about Christianity.

00:18:33.620 I mean, one of the odd things that's happened to me is I did an episode on agape, and I've

00:18:41.260 had many Christians, including Christian pastors, like Paul Vanderklei said, that was one of the

00:18:45.340 best explanations of agape they ever heard. And it was sort of startling from them because-

00:18:49.340 So Vanderklei is following you, obviously, as well.

00:18:52.400 They said it was odd for a non-Christian to be doing this, but-

00:18:57.140 Well, somebody had to.

00:18:59.480 Well, that's fair enough. 1.00

00:19:02.260 Oh, God, what a nasty bastard I am. 1.00

00:19:04.880 No, no, no, no. This is fun. 1.00

00:19:07.780 Yeah.

00:19:07.960 But the thing I wanted to say is, because I've done circling, I've been in these events,

00:19:13.980 and when this happens, you get people from all kinds of backgrounds, religious, non-religious,

00:19:21.240 sort of officially atheist or something like that, and they start using spiritual language

00:19:26.040 to describe-

00:19:26.640 Yes, I've been in that situation in my therapy sessions many times.

00:19:29.540 As soon as you talk about anything that's really serious, you use religious language.

00:19:35.300 And that means religious language is the language of extraordinary seriousness.

00:19:39.600 I mean, when you talk about good and evil, and you do that in therapy, when you're talking

00:19:43.720 to someone who's been touched with malevolence repeatedly, there's no alternative, then you're

00:19:49.020 in this religious ground.

00:19:50.760 I think that's right.

00:19:51.840 So what does that mean?

00:19:52.960 And this spirit that we're tracking, that's the spirit that's laid the golden thread throughout

00:19:58.600 history.

00:19:59.100 Yeah.

00:20:00.000 And if we're in dialogue with that spirit, and that's the ancestral spirit, and so that

00:20:05.200 ancestral spirit reaches, that's the way, that's the spirit that manifests itself, I

00:20:09.140 think, is God the Father.

00:20:10.560 That's the ancestral spirit that lays down the golden thread.

00:20:14.280 That's what's different than Logos.

00:20:16.800 Maybe, and I don't know how to parse out the triune conception exactly, you know, because

00:20:21.700 you talk about this Logos manifesting itself in the dialogue on Sophia.

00:20:27.440 Yeah.

00:20:27.700 And Logos is in there, right?

00:20:29.960 Dialogue.

00:20:30.740 The Logos, yes.

00:20:31.480 So is the Son the love of wisdom?

00:20:34.400 I mean, that makes sense.

00:20:35.820 Or is that the spirit?

00:20:36.680 Well, I don't know.

00:20:38.340 Well, I don't know.

00:20:39.960 Neither do I.

00:20:43.420 A Trinitarian interpretation.

00:20:45.340 I do know that what happens, and maybe this...

00:20:47.060 But what do you think of the God the Father interpretation that I just laid on you, man?

00:20:50.660 Well, I mean, I've just been reading a lot about Christian Platonism, and I watched your talk

00:20:57.360 with Jonathan, and I found it...

00:20:59.820 I mean, you guys were talking Christianity, and fair enough, and I appreciate the earnestness

00:21:04.640 and the authenticity.

00:21:06.980 But there was, you know, a lot of the...

00:21:09.700 To my ear, there was a lot of Platonism in there.

00:21:12.400 Yeah.

00:21:12.640 Have you read The Immortality Key?

00:21:15.760 No, I haven't read The Immortality Key.

00:21:17.860 Oh, you need to read it.

00:21:18.940 I just interviewed the author.

00:21:20.380 He's been tracking the use of psychedelics in the...

00:21:24.640 Where all the Greeks went to be enlightened, you know, the... 1.00

00:21:32.840 Delphi?

00:21:33.300 Yeah, yeah, yeah, in the Delphic Mysteries, exactly, and so...

00:21:38.220 Well, I was going to say that...

00:21:40.380 I mean, I read a book that I would recommend, too.

00:21:42.720 And he integrates that with Christianity, you know, is stressing the Greek, and so I asked

00:21:48.020 him, and Ruck, Dr. Ruck, who's from Harvard, he wrote The Road to Aloysius, so it's the

00:21:53.320 Eleusinian Mysteries that I'm reaching for.

00:21:55.820 He's been tracking the use of psychedelics for 2,000 years in Greece in the Eleusinian Mysteries,

00:22:00.680 making the claim that that psychedelic experience in Eleusis was core to Greek culture, the

00:22:05.960 bedrock of Greek philosophy, that's part of the revelatory element that we're talking

00:22:10.360 about, and that all of Greek philosophy emerged as a consequence of that revelatory Eleusinian

00:22:17.440 experience.

00:22:18.460 It could be.

00:22:18.880 I mean, Cordford made a lot of good arguments about, you know, the divine men that were

00:22:24.120 the precursors to the philosophers being influenced by Thracian shamanism.

00:22:29.820 And you get figures that are right on the border.

00:22:32.980 Who is that?

00:22:34.040 Hornford.

00:22:34.720 Hornford.

00:22:35.860 Hornford.

00:22:37.180 Influenced by what brand of shamanism?

00:22:40.060 Hornford?

00:22:40.840 Thracian shamanism.

00:22:42.160 Shamans from Thrace, which is north of Greece.

00:22:46.220 And so, Hornford talked about, like, because you get very weird things about Pythagoras.

00:22:50.320 He did a thunderstorm ceremony where he went into a cave and died and came back.

00:22:56.880 And, of course, he...

00:22:58.340 How do you spell Hornford or Cornford?

00:23:00.240 Hornford.

00:23:00.860 C-O-R-N-F-O-R-D. 1.00

00:23:04.220 Cornford.

00:23:05.020 And the idea there is that the sort of soul flight practices within shamanism are taken

00:23:12.220 up into Pythagoras' notion of soul flight.

00:23:15.520 Yeah, well, I imagine the soul flight practices are the same thing as the Eleusinian mysteries,

00:23:20.200 essentially.

00:23:21.100 They're a continuation of the shamanic tradition into the present.

00:23:24.360 There's something going on there.

00:23:25.320 Yeah.

00:23:25.560 Well, that's the thesis of this book, anyways.

00:23:29.980 What's interesting to me is, you know, that Plato represents Socrates as being able to bring

00:23:35.640 about that state in people through dialogue alone.

00:23:38.180 Yeah, I know what that means.

00:23:41.940 Yeah.

00:23:42.320 And so do you.

00:23:43.480 Yeah, very much.

00:23:45.180 And when I see people in these practices, what happens is they first orient on each other,

00:23:51.640 then they orient on the Logos.

00:23:53.220 They find an intimacy with the Logos.

00:23:55.540 And then...

00:23:55.940 What do you mean by that?

00:23:57.140 Well, what they do is they come to find that they're not only in relationship to each other,

00:24:01.600 they're in relationship to this Geist or Logos that's happening in the distributed cognition.

00:24:05.620 I mean...

00:24:07.060 Yeah, okay.

00:24:07.840 So that's a very interesting way of phrasing it.

00:24:10.020 So that's what I see as the spirit that's guiding the golden thread.

00:24:13.960 And that's what you're praying to when you ask for a revelatory thought when you're confused.

00:24:19.380 So imagine that you have...

00:24:20.980 If we're...

00:24:21.460 Imagine we're holographic in relationship to this distributed cognitive net, right?

00:24:26.860 So the part contains some of the whole.

00:24:28.920 Very much.

00:24:29.480 And the whole would be this distributed spirit that you're just describing, at least as it's

00:24:34.180 enacted.

00:24:34.580 And so insofar as you're a holographic, minuscule, but complete in some sense,

00:24:42.100 kenotic representation of this spirit, you can ask it for it to bestow its wisdom on you.

00:24:50.360 And its operation in your unconscious produces the revelatory thought.

00:24:54.320 Okay.

00:24:54.360 Well, that is deeply converging with a lot of the cog-sci that I'm bringing to it.

00:24:58.820 Oh, good.

00:24:59.380 Okay.

00:25:00.340 So the idea here is that distributed cognition has a property, collective intelligence, that

00:25:07.900 is something that is not just the sum of individual intelligences.

00:25:12.160 And there's increasing evidence for this.

00:25:13.800 Yeah.

00:25:14.020 Well, you can imagine.

00:25:15.260 Sorry, I'm prone to do this.

00:25:17.120 But you can imagine.

00:25:18.400 It's like reading a book.

00:25:19.680 I mean, I have this distributed spirit in my head, plus I have my own experience.

00:25:25.260 And so I'm the combination of that distributed spirit and my own.

00:25:29.200 Well, yeah, that's the extent of mind.

00:25:30.080 Okay.

00:25:30.260 So that's probably what the sun is, John, in the Trinitarian spirit, is that combination,

00:25:34.500 because that's an incarnation of the spirit in a particular time and place.

00:25:39.160 And that's what I bring to the dialogue.

00:25:41.940 Well, that's good.

00:25:43.100 Let's play with that.

00:25:43.920 I like serious play.

00:25:44.800 I think that's how we go through that.

00:25:45.660 Okay.

00:25:46.080 Well, so we've got the father as that distributed entity that stretches back in time.

00:25:51.580 Well, no.

00:25:52.040 You see, let's play with that, because let me first try something, and then let's see

00:25:55.940 if it maps in.

00:25:56.460 Because people get into, they start to realize the presence of the collective intelligence

00:26:03.260 above and beyond the presence of Tom and Sue and Anne.

00:26:06.160 Right.

00:26:06.360 And then they start to enter into relationship with that.

00:26:08.620 But then there's a further thing that happens.

00:26:10.280 And this, I think, might point to what you're using.

00:26:13.280 Okay.

00:26:13.480 So maybe that's the spirit, that thing that's inhabiting everybody at that time.

00:26:17.580 Right.

00:26:17.760 So it's akin to the son, and it's akin to the father, but it constitutes that distributed

00:26:23.000 space.

00:26:24.660 And so what I think might, I think of it as the Neoplatonic one.

00:26:28.920 Okay.

00:26:29.660 Right.

00:26:30.260 And so.

00:26:30.720 That's your peculiarity.

00:26:32.080 Yeah.

00:26:32.660 Well, but the.

00:26:36.300 We'll come back to why I think that language is helpful.

00:26:39.380 I'm not claiming it's exclusive.

00:26:41.080 I'm not doing that.

00:26:41.540 Hey, I'm not claiming it's not helpful either.

00:26:44.700 So what they do is they get to a place where, and not everybody does this, because you can

00:26:48.840 imagine it depends, you know.

00:26:51.060 What did you just say?

00:26:52.340 Not everybody does this?

00:26:53.860 You want to put that on a t-shirt?

00:26:55.300 What I mean is that.

00:26:58.940 Yeah, I noticed that, John.

00:27:00.580 Most people that are doing the circling, they don't, many of them are happy just with what

00:27:06.320 you might call the psychological intimacy.

00:27:08.760 God, yes.

00:27:09.900 No wonder.

00:27:10.880 Yep.

00:27:11.080 And then some people move to what you might call logos intimacy.

00:27:14.740 And then some people move through that, and by means of it, to an intimacy of what is

00:27:21.400 the fount of that?

00:27:22.340 What is the ground of that?

00:27:23.940 What is it about the reality that makes this kind of thing possible?

00:27:28.140 They start to think of it.

00:27:29.920 So they're reflecting on it.

00:27:31.520 They're reflecting on it and reflecting through it.

00:27:33.300 Like we're doing?

00:27:34.140 Is that...

00:27:34.820 Yeah, very much.

00:27:35.940 And you can think about this kind of move.

00:27:37.980 And for me, this is where the prototypical Socratic-Platonic move comes, where you get

00:27:42.560 the idea that the very process of intelligibility gives you, is the most profound access we have

00:27:48.600 to the way reality is realizing itself.

00:27:50.980 And that's how people start to talk.

00:27:52.400 They start to talk about reality beyond the we space.

00:27:57.140 So there's us, the we space, and then the reality.

00:28:00.440 And maybe that corresponds better with the Trinity that you're looking for.

00:28:04.980 Well, I think you probably lost me to some degree with that last move.

00:28:09.640 So maybe I can get you to lay it out a bit more.

00:28:14.060 So what people start to do is, in relationship to the way the logos is unfolding, they start

00:28:21.320 to see a pattern of how things can unfold and make sense.

00:28:24.860 And then they start to see that maybe that's the pattern that is ultimately discloses reality

00:28:29.960 to them.

00:28:30.760 That's how they start to think.

00:28:31.920 Well, that's...

00:28:32.540 Okay.

00:28:32.780 So is that it can...

00:28:33.620 This is why you're so interested in consciousness.

00:28:35.700 I mean, I think maybe one of the things you and I share is that we find it difficult

00:28:39.840 to make a distinction between the consciousness of reality and reality itself.

00:28:44.460 So I think, yeah, I mean, that's why I've coined this term transjective, to try and talk about

00:28:50.460 the relationship, these kinds of relationships of participation, that they're being co-created

00:28:55.000 by reality.

00:28:56.480 Transjective.

00:28:57.040 Okay.

00:28:57.460 So expound upon that.

00:28:59.780 Well, I mean, the notion is ultimately derived from Tillich's idea of the symbol as

00:29:06.400 that which grounds and makes possible the relationship between the subjective and the objective.

00:29:11.040 Um, it would be the kind of idea that you have in ancient epistemology, whereas instead

00:29:17.640 of thinking of knowledge as representing something over there, you know, Aristotle's idea is the

00:29:23.260 mind and the object that is known come into conformity.

00:29:27.380 I'm using shape as a metaphor for form, where form means something more like, you know, the

00:29:32.840 plonic form, the structural functional organization that makes it be what it is.

00:29:37.340 This is the key Greek idea, that which makes it be what it is, is also what makes it be knowable

00:29:42.640 as it is.

00:29:44.020 And so I'm not representing the cup.

00:29:46.100 My mind conforms to it.

00:29:47.320 It has the same form as it.

00:29:49.220 And so it's not right to say that it's sort of...

00:29:51.380 Well, that's what you do when you reach to pick up the cup, according to Piaget.

00:29:54.920 Well, yes, very much.

00:29:56.520 And so in some sense, you're mimicking the cup by understanding it.

00:30:00.060 You're shaping yourself to it, right?

00:30:02.120 Yes.

00:30:02.280 Which is different.

00:30:03.300 So this is the difference between a Cartesian and a theological approach to knowledge, right?

00:30:08.800 Because the Cartesian approach is, I don't have to undergo transformation fundamentally

00:30:14.940 in who I am in order to know.

00:30:16.640 I just have to properly organize my propositions.

00:30:20.240 But if you go before Descartes, right, even reading was pursued, not informatively, but

00:30:24.980 transformatively.

00:30:25.620 The idea was, unless I go through fundamental transformations, there are deep truths that

00:30:30.400 will not be disclosed to me.

00:30:32.160 That's a conformity theory of knowing as opposed to a representational theory of knowing.

00:30:36.760 And what happens, what I'm saying is people, they feel themselves being conformed to reality

00:30:41.140 through the logos.

00:30:41.880 So that's a feeling of personal transformation?

00:30:51.600 And is that the feeling of, is that that same feeling of tracking?

00:30:55.760 Is that the same as stumbling uphill with your cross towards the city of God?

00:31:01.080 Well, I don't know about that.

00:31:01.280 Well, maybe.

00:31:01.980 Well, that's why I asked the question.

00:31:04.120 Well, let me try.

00:31:04.900 I don't know either.

00:31:05.820 Okay.

00:31:06.440 So.

00:31:06.860 I mean, this is some metaphor that pops into my mind all the time.

00:31:09.900 You know, we're, we're shouldering this burden.

00:31:13.120 What is the burden?

00:31:14.340 Well, for you, you said it's transformative consciousness, or I think that's what you said.

00:31:18.840 And we stumble uphill with it towards what?

00:31:22.720 Well, let me try.

00:31:24.260 Let me try.

00:31:25.080 That's a, that's a, that's a great question.

00:31:27.300 Thank you.

00:31:28.440 I spent a lot of time thinking it up.

00:31:31.840 Well, for me, so, so one of the things, and this is, this is again, for me, from the

00:31:38.380 Socratic tradition, this kind of knowing that we're talking about this, this kind of transformational

00:31:42.460 knowing, there's no clean separation from you knowing the thing and you knowing yourself.

00:31:48.400 Do you think there's a clear separation from the inside experience, or is that the same

00:31:52.180 thing?

00:31:52.400 I think the inside experience is exactly that kind of thing in, in, in small doses.

00:31:57.000 And then when you start to link them together, you can get flow experiences and what happens

00:32:01.540 in flow experiences.

00:32:02.100 Yeah.

00:32:02.120 And if you link them to get together too much, your, it's nonstop flow experience.

00:32:05.800 And then the question is, can you tolerate it?

00:32:08.320 Well, that's, that's another, I mean, that's a good question.

00:32:11.060 There's another question.

00:32:12.240 We, maybe we can get to that.

00:32:13.540 I'm not sure I can tolerate it.

00:32:15.300 Well, the, there's, there's the possibility and me, and this comes from my, my, you know,

00:32:20.580 my, my experience, my decades experience as a Taoist Tai Chi player.

00:32:24.980 I mean, Csikszentmihalyi largely talks about what you might call hot flow and, you know,

00:32:29.360 the flow that you experience that the flow and you experience when you're, there's a lot of

00:32:33.600 metabolic expenditure, but you can get into the flow state when you're doing Tai Chi

00:32:37.860 Chuan and you're not doing a tremendous kind of, at least physiological, I imagine there's 1.00

00:32:44.060 stuff going on cognitively, but there, you don't have that same sense of I'm going to

00:32:47.780 burn out.

00:32:48.440 You have this.

00:32:49.300 Well, I need some of that because I have that sense of, I must be in a hot state of flow

00:32:54.040 then all the time.

00:32:54.980 But, but, but the, but the, the, the, the thing about the good state of flow is that

00:33:00.140 it, it opens up the possibility for you to, um, you can, you, you have more time to explore

00:33:08.560 that participatory sense.

00:33:10.320 So like, you know, Csikszentmihalyi says you're in the flow state, you have the sense

00:33:13.740 of atonement, right?

00:33:14.780 That powerful, that's one of the defining features.

00:33:17.540 Atonement.

00:33:18.460 Yeah, exactly.

00:33:19.360 Exactly.

00:33:19.980 Right.

00:33:20.580 And you have.

00:33:21.220 And so what do you think that means?

00:33:22.340 Cause that pulls original sin into it.

00:33:24.200 What, or the other way around or original sin made use of the idea of atonement that

00:33:29.140 is originally.

00:33:30.120 Yeah.

00:33:30.400 As the, as the, as the, um, antidote, as the, as the, uh, yeah, as the, as the stuff

00:33:37.720 of the grail is atonement, but that's the city on the hill too.

00:33:43.340 It is.

00:33:44.160 I mean, anyway, if we're.

00:33:45.400 Or it's the wandering up to the city on the hill.

00:33:47.420 That's the other possibility or another possibility.

00:33:50.240 You've got some, I've got John Bunyan's Pilgrim Progress going through me.

00:33:53.960 I've, I've got Augustine's City of God.

00:33:55.620 I'm trying to parse them.

00:33:57.900 That's a tough road to hoe there, John. 1.00

00:33:59.920 Um, what I was, what I, what I was saying is, I think, um, that, um, when you're doing

00:34:08.360 this kind of, like when you're, when you're, when you can get into a more of a, a, a cool

00:34:12.160 flow, um, rather than a hot flow.

00:34:14.160 Teach me, teach me.

00:34:15.680 Well, uh, I'd love to, that'd be great.

00:34:18.480 Um, what I've noticed, and I, and I see this also happening in, you know, this, when I

00:34:25.180 want to, if think of what we're talking about, when we're talking about like these, these

00:34:28.040 circling practices and these dealoga practices is you're getting shared flow, you're getting

00:34:32.220 flow and distributed.

00:34:33.240 Oh, definitely.

00:34:34.140 Yeah.

00:34:34.700 And I'm hoping that's what I'm inducing in my listeners on YouTube.

00:34:37.560 And I think it happened with John, with, uh, with, uh, my carver friend, Jonathan Pajot,

00:34:44.520 Jonathan.

00:34:45.140 Yes.

00:34:45.680 And that was a very peculiar podcast.

00:34:47.400 And I thought it did that.

00:34:48.920 And this one will too.

00:34:50.480 Well, that's the thing.

00:34:51.640 That's the thing is, and look, it got a million and a half views.

00:34:54.460 Like what the hell's going on?

00:34:56.160 Uh, because I think Jonathan is Jonathan.

00:35:00.580 I don't know if he'd like, I mean, I say this in love and I have a lot of affection for

00:35:05.060 Jonathan.

00:35:05.320 I think Jonathan is more radical, a more radical Christian than he realizes.

00:35:09.520 Um, I think, um, yes, I think that, I think that might be true of you too.

00:35:14.200 And there's always the possibility that it's true of me.

00:35:17.200 Well, I, that's, that's funny.

00:35:18.900 You're in you and your logos, John.

00:35:21.500 I've had, I've had, that's funny.

00:35:23.600 Cause I've had some Christians say that to me recently and I don't, I, and I, and I want

00:35:29.080 to receive it properly because receiving statements like that, like your receptivity matters as

00:35:34.260 much as anything else.

00:35:35.940 Um, yeah, it's not exactly a trivial compliment, John.

00:35:39.640 No, it's not.

00:35:40.540 And I, you know, my Taoist friend on the border between chaos and order.

00:35:46.220 Well, yes.

00:35:47.840 Right.

00:35:48.380 And that's, yes, but it's what I'm interested in is the possibility that, well, perhaps maybe, maybe we

00:35:57.200 could, this ties it together.

00:35:58.760 Maybe when people are seeing, I hope people who know me and see many of my videos know

00:36:03.720 that I'm deeply respectful to religion.

00:36:05.200 So I do not mean any disrespect in what I'm saying.

00:36:07.640 I'm not trying to be pretentious, but people who claim to see the spirit of Christ in me,

00:36:12.160 uh, I, I hope what they are referring to, cause that's what I aspire to is somebody who

00:36:18.180 is trying to realize in both senses of the word that goes back to what we were talking about

00:36:23.380 transjectivity.

00:36:24.180 It's both something that I'm, this is Nishatani's use of realize it's both some in realize it

00:36:29.180 in both senses of the word, something that's coming into my awareness with intelligibility

00:36:32.460 and something that's being actualized in reality.

00:36:35.320 I hope that I'm realizing the logos with other people.

00:36:39.080 Um, that's.

00:36:40.560 Well, I think your effect on your students is evidence of that, John.

00:36:44.560 But what, what, what do you think of your name, by the way, just out of curiosity, my,

00:36:49.320 my last name?

00:36:50.440 No, your first name, John gift from God.

00:36:53.360 Um, uh, I don't know.

00:36:56.700 We don't have to go there.

00:36:58.440 Well, I, I, I, I, I have, we could go there.

00:37:02.420 You know, I, my middle name is Bernt and it's Norwegian and I've always been somewhat embarrassed

00:37:08.160 about it.

00:37:08.700 I, I'm going to say that publicly.

00:37:11.220 I probably never admitted that to anyone, but because it was parodied as burnt because

00:37:16.000 that's B E R N T. 1.00

00:37:17.340 That's how it's spelled.

00:37:18.120 And so, um, it was an object of mockery, but so I didn't look into it much.

00:37:23.240 But it's Bernt and my great grandfather after whom I am named built a ship and sailed it

00:37:28.200 to North America.

00:37:29.120 Wow.

00:37:29.580 And he was a remarkable inventor.

00:37:31.720 He invented a potato, uh, um, harvester and built it in his own, is his own shop.

00:37:37.420 And he raised my father.

00:37:39.020 In any case, I had a Indian carver build my third floor, which you'll have to see sometime 0.97

00:37:44.380 because it's quite spectacular.

00:37:46.020 And he built a totem of me and I'm standing in the arms of a bear.

00:37:51.000 And I didn't know that that was the meaning of my name.

00:37:54.720 Oh, really?

00:37:56.020 Yes, really.

00:37:57.560 That, that really happened.

00:37:59.340 So, and people have been, you know, describing my name to me on, on YouTube comments.

00:38:04.080 And so that's where I got that information.

00:38:06.300 So, you know, who knows what's in a name?

00:38:09.500 Jordan, Barrett, Peterson.

00:38:11.460 John is my favorite gospel.

00:38:13.720 If, if that means anything.

00:38:15.200 Yeah, that makes sense.

00:38:16.200 In the beginning was the word.

00:38:17.620 Yeah, the logos.

00:38:18.360 That suits you.

00:38:20.080 Uh, and, um, I guess.

00:38:24.480 What do you make of this comment that the spirit of Christ is manifesting itself in you?

00:38:29.320 I mean, that's not something you come up and just say to someone on the street.

00:38:32.740 You know, it's like, if you take that seriously, it's how do you take it seriously?

00:38:37.200 Yeah.

00:38:37.460 Well, then how do you maintain yourself?

00:38:40.040 Well, the thing is, it's not just, I mean, it's people that I, I talk to on video, but it's

00:38:44.660 also my girlfriend, you know, who she's sort of officially an atheist, but it, but she's,

00:38:49.960 and she knows that I don't profess to be a Christian because I have a very ambivalent

00:38:53.400 history with Christian, Christianity.

00:38:55.540 Uh, but she, she said to me, you know, I actually think you're like the rest of what

00:38:59.540 the Western world you mean.

00:39:00.640 Well, yeah.

00:39:01.400 And I noticed that was coming out in your discussion with, uh, with Jonathan and there

00:39:05.760 was, you know, I had tremendous empathy.

00:39:07.340 You know what my, the most powerful takeaway for me was from my biblical series, which, which

00:39:12.840 was what the meaning of the word Israel wrestling with God, we who wrestle with God, we who struggle

00:39:19.980 with God.

00:39:20.700 Yeah.

00:39:21.260 It's like, well, maybe that's the real Christian spirit is, I mean, that's what that phrase

00:39:25.480 implies.

00:39:25.980 And that's the real Jewish spirit.

00:39:28.160 Yeah.

00:39:28.560 It's the wrestling, John.

00:39:30.300 It's the, why does, why, you know, why does, why is there that strange scene of the wrestling

00:39:35.440 with the angel?

00:39:36.300 Like, why would you possibly fight with God?

00:39:38.640 And then you think, well, God, isn't that what I'm doing all the time?

00:39:41.900 And he partially wins.

00:39:42.860 Isn't that what everybody's doing all the time?

00:39:44.400 He partially wins though.

00:39:45.680 That's what's even more mysterious.

00:39:47.420 And hurts you doing so.

00:39:48.880 Yeah.

00:39:49.540 I mean, that's, that's, that's the story, but isn't that the story?

00:39:53.420 I mean, it isn't belief.

00:39:54.540 It's the wrestling with belief and, and, and, and it's wrestling in the way that you're

00:39:59.500 wrestling.

00:40:01.040 Well, I mean, I do sparring and I often use sparring as, um, a metaphor, uh, for the kind

00:40:07.160 Oh, so that's the other metaphor for dialogue.

00:40:09.460 Yeah, exactly.

00:40:10.280 It's not just the tracking, it's the sparring.

00:40:12.880 Yeah.

00:40:13.260 And, and, and you, we have to remember that, you know, that kind of sums up men's relationships

00:40:18.200 with each other tracking and sparring.

00:40:20.980 Plato means big shoulders.

00:40:22.640 He was a wrestler.

00:40:24.320 That's what, that's his nickname.

00:40:26.340 His nickname is Plato because he's a wrestler.

00:40:28.120 And we have to remember that the Greeks are in the gymnasium even more than there are 0.96

00:40:32.000 in the academy.

00:40:32.940 Right.

00:40:33.360 I was watching this suits episode last night and the, the, the men are always sparring with

00:40:39.460 each other verbally, you know, and they're tracking something.

00:40:42.240 They're tracking victory in this series.

00:40:43.920 They're, they're finally, uh, and they wrestle, they wrestle when they fight, they, they have

00:40:49.420 to go into a clinch in a fight to settle their disputes, like a physical fight.

00:40:53.660 But there's the, you can shift off of that.

00:40:55.680 This happened for Bernardo and I, when we were doing this, uh, we both said this, you can shift

00:41:00.520 off of it and this happens when you're actually martial arts sparring because you get into

00:41:04.100 the shared flow state.

00:41:05.340 You can shift off of victory to the aesthetics of the dance.

00:41:09.380 There's a beauty in that, that is an independent Vic that's independent of victory that you

00:41:14.720 can come to appreciate for its own sake.

00:41:17.100 Plato talks about this.

00:41:18.120 He talks about this, the beauty, the Eros that draws you into the, that's why he, I mean,

00:41:22.820 a dance.

00:41:23.880 Yeah.

00:41:24.360 A dance, but it, but it's a dance that draws you beyond yourself.

00:41:27.620 Edu's education, right?

00:41:29.120 To draw forth from you.

00:41:30.940 And so is that the, is that the battle with the adversary?

00:41:34.780 Uh, is that related to the, this is another very serious question, obviously it's a question

00:41:40.040 related to the book of Job.

00:41:41.860 I don't know because I see parallels, you know, in Nietzsche's quote, you know, I hate

00:41:46.400 Socrates.

00:41:46.820 He's so close to me.

00:41:48.040 I'm always fighting him.

00:41:49.300 Right.

00:41:49.700 You can see, you can see both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard wrestling with Socrates.

00:41:54.280 Kierkegaard said, um, I follow Jesus, but Socrates is my teacher.

00:41:58.200 And he wrestles with Socrates all the way through.

00:42:01.300 Everybody's wrestling with Socrates.

00:42:02.760 I follow Jesus, but Socrates is my teacher.

00:42:06.040 So is that the statement of the West?

00:42:09.220 Um, I think that.

00:42:11.260 I mean, that was your objection at the beginning of this talk, right?

00:42:14.820 At least to some degree, because you said how influenced you were with Greece.

00:42:18.200 You insisted on how influenced you were by Greece.

00:42:20.540 I think the West is the attempt to, if I had to try and summarize the West, what an audacious

00:42:28.700 thing to try and do.

00:42:29.620 See, Ruck said that, because I asked him why Dionysus transformed into Christ, because we

00:42:35.320 were answering simple questions too.

00:42:36.980 And he said, well, Greece met Judaism.

00:42:40.240 Yeah, but Judaism also met Greece.

00:42:43.160 I mean, phyto starts theology because of the interaction with Platonic philosophy.

00:42:49.780 I think Christianity is trying to integrate Agape and Logos together.

00:42:55.380 That's how I try to understand his project.

00:42:57.940 And whether or not the West-

00:42:58.760 Please clarify, please clarify that claim.

00:43:01.580 Sure.

00:43:02.140 So I think, I mean, we've talked a lot about the Greek heritage of Logos, and Logos is

00:43:06.420 also central within-

00:43:09.820 Especially in the book of John.

00:43:11.520 Yeah, especially in the book of John.

00:43:13.300 And saying that metaphorically with regard to you as well.

00:43:16.420 But also, in the epistle of John is where John also said, God is Agape, right?

00:43:23.720 And then that's the epistle of John.

00:43:25.080 He makes that famous statement.

00:43:26.520 And the idea is there's something about the way the Logos gathers things together so they

00:43:32.160 belong together.

00:43:33.060 That's the original etymology.

00:43:33.800 So that everything comes together.

00:43:35.400 Everything comes together.

00:43:36.520 And then there's the idea in Plato of the ascent from the cave, the Anagoga.

00:43:41.280 You and Jonathan talked about this.

00:43:42.560 The world discloses itself to me, that transforms me, and then I can see more deeply into the

00:43:48.740 world, then that transforms me, and I do this reciprocal opening.

00:43:52.780 And the thing is, that's very much-

00:43:54.780 And Agape, you define that as love.

00:43:58.580 Yeah.

00:43:59.980 Accelerating mutual disclosure is how it's even disclosed.

00:44:02.320 Well, it seemed to me, well, it seemed to me that the relationship between truth and

00:44:07.340 love is that love is something like the goal, and truth is its servant.

00:44:11.780 It seems to me to be, so this is how I've worked it in my mind, is that, well, I think

00:44:18.580 that truth is the best servant of reality.

00:44:21.380 Truth is the servant of reality.

00:44:23.180 And reality, I think, best manifests itself as love.

00:44:27.960 Well, one of the slogans I have in my story is-

00:44:31.140 That's why this power claim is so abhorrent to me.

00:44:34.180 The claim that power is the central motivating factor for the Western endeavor is tantamount,

00:44:40.800 I believe, to saying that it's the basic endeavor of the human species.

00:44:44.280 And I think that's opposite of the truth.

00:44:46.000 I think this Agape is, and Logos is more accurate.

00:44:50.840 And so it's not just a counterclaim, it's an antithesis.

00:44:53.580 Well, I'm trying to pick up on what you're saying here.

00:44:58.900 I mean-

00:44:59.380 You know, I'm trying to touch on the culture wars, obviously.

00:45:03.080 Well, that's-

00:45:04.020 Yeah, and I mean, I think, I mean, for me, you're saying something very analogous to a

00:45:10.640 critique that I've built in Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.

00:45:13.860 Oh, let's hear it, man.

00:45:15.520 Well- 1.00

00:45:15.820 Fucking shut up. 1.00

00:45:16.840 No, it's okay. 1.00

00:45:17.780 I mean, like I was going to say, one of my signatures is, you know, it's in Latin, but

00:45:23.100 it translates as, love is its own way of knowing.

00:45:25.480 And the kind of knowing there is like noticing, like news, insight, realization.

00:45:30.400 Great.

00:45:30.420 That's the Egyptian eye. 0.91

00:45:32.140 Well, yes.

00:45:32.960 It's noticing, it's not thinking, it's attention.

00:45:35.920 And maybe you're tying that with that revelation of the form.

00:45:38.760 You're tying that to that revelation of the form and that conforming.

00:45:41.940 Yeah, and that's exactly it.

00:45:43.360 That's exactly it.

00:45:44.060 It's, and this is very similar to the Buddhist idea of that what you're trying to do is shape

00:45:50.860 attention and mindfulness so that you get that reciprocal opening so that your self-knowledge

00:45:56.980 and the knowledge of the world become indistinguishable, become interpenetrating, like what you have

00:46:03.760 when you really love somebody in a committed long-term relationship.

00:46:07.320 You're knowing of yourself and you're knowing of them become bound up because you indwell them

00:46:12.020 and you internalize them and they indwell you and internalize you, right?

00:46:16.200 And how much, how much death of the old you has this involved for you?

00:46:22.480 I know that's a strange question.

00:46:24.120 No, it's a good question. 0.97

00:46:25.460 It's a damn good question. 0.97

00:46:27.000 Why? 0.96

00:46:27.900 It's a good question because it brings up the idea of the fact that there's a level of knowing

00:46:34.940 that deals with the process of identification itself.

00:46:38.400 In both senses of the word identifying, designating something and assuming an identity.

00:46:43.740 In both those senses of identification, the kind of knowing that I most care about, this

00:46:48.000 participatory knowing, involves identification.

00:46:51.760 And therefore, if we're talking about the transformation at that level, we're talking about,

00:46:56.800 that's what I mean about, when I talk about knowing yourself, I don't mean representing yourself.

00:47:02.180 I mean the knowing that constitutes you as a self.

00:47:05.020 And that's what's undergoing the transformation when you're engaged in participatory knowing.

00:47:09.100 When I really love my partner, right?

00:47:11.900 I'm not just forming-

00:47:12.820 What does it mean that you love them, do you think?

00:47:15.080 If you had to express that, how would you express that?

00:47:18.280 Well, I mean, it means a lot.

00:47:20.900 It means that reciprocal opening I was talking about, but it means that I, I mean, it's like

00:47:27.400 what Eckhart says.

00:47:28.420 And again, I don't mean to be pretentious.

00:47:29.960 Like, you know, he says, you have to make a space-

00:47:31.720 I don't think you're going to be able to help it in this conversation.

00:47:34.800 Yeah, that's true.

00:47:35.700 That's fair enough.

00:47:36.540 He says, you know, you have to-

00:47:37.680 God forgive us.

00:47:38.540 The goal of Rhineland mysticism was to, this kind of receptivity, you have to make a space

00:47:43.980 so that the son of God can be born within you.

00:47:46.660 And again, no, not being, you know, irreligious, but for me to love my partner is to cultivate

00:47:53.700 that kind of receptivity, a space in which she can be within me.

00:47:57.740 And I don't mean in any purely romantic metaphorical sense.

00:48:01.180 What I mean is she finds a purchase within me whereby she can realize herself in both

00:48:06.620 senses of the word realize.

00:48:07.920 And she can come to trust that that space, that place of realization will always be available

00:48:14.800 for her.

00:48:15.720 And she can come to rely on it, a place through which she can transcend herself when she needs

00:48:20.580 to.

00:48:21.460 I mean, and being committed to that and finding that inseparably bound up with my own project

00:48:28.940 of trying to realize who I am.

00:48:31.280 And that's, for me, the core of what it is to love somebody.

00:48:37.840 That's great.

00:48:39.380 I wish you luck with it.

00:48:41.440 Well, that's all we can ever wish anybody.

00:48:43.600 I mean, if you're-

00:48:44.820 The grace of God.

00:48:46.820 Or, yeah, or that there is a life to this relationship that will eventually grow strong

00:48:54.380 enough that we can come to trust in it as much as we trust in each other.

00:48:58.000 And that's what I believe is happening for me.

00:49:02.020 And I think there's kind of three loves involved, and they're all bound up together.

00:49:08.880 There's, you know, Socratic self-love, not narcissistic self-love.

00:49:12.900 There's the love of the other, and then there's the love of the relationship.

00:49:15.620 But that, for me, is like a trinity.

00:49:18.360 Talking about if those are separate is the mistake.

00:49:21.080 You have to talk about it analytically as if they're separate.

00:49:23.220 But they interpenetrate and inter-afford each other in a profound way.

00:49:26.980 They become, in an important sense, indistinguishable from each other.

00:49:31.280 I've been trying to develop a counterposition to the claim that our society is predicated

00:49:36.860 on the expression of power, and that our social relations are structured as a consequence

00:49:41.420 of the expression of power.

00:49:42.700 And therefore, by inference, our prime motivation is power, none of which I believe to be true.

00:49:47.420 I think all of that's an aberration in the deepest sense.

00:49:50.880 And I think that what we're talking about is the true path, let's say, to the degree that

00:49:55.500 any of us are capable of realizing that.

00:49:57.520 And I certainly don't claim to be.

00:49:59.140 I struggle with it to an immense degree.

00:50:07.120 But I do believe that it's the proper counterposition.

00:50:10.380 And then that, well, so what do you think about that?

00:50:13.180 I mean, is the culture war we're in that deep?

00:50:16.960 I mean, is the counterclaim genuinely the adversarial position?

00:50:20.040 I mean, what else would it be if it's not saying, it's basically saying that the claim

00:50:25.400 is something like the driving force of Western culture, but I don't know how you distinguish

00:50:30.120 that from the driving force of human culture exactly.

00:50:32.980 I don't think most of the people who make that claim would say that there's something,

00:50:37.860 it's hard for them to say that there's something radically different about Western culture

00:50:41.580 and the world spirit, let's say, without only attributing all that is negative to Western

00:50:48.780 culture.

00:50:49.380 And that's, I think, very difficult to do.

00:50:51.760 So if the mainstream of Western culture is the mainstream of human culture or akin to it,

00:50:57.920 so akin to that shamanic tradition, for example, then the claim is that that mainstream is the

00:51:04.080 desire for power.

00:51:05.180 And that's the opposite of what we're saying, genuinely the opposite.

00:51:09.220 It's the antithesis to that, because that isn't, isn't Philo, Nikea, the antithesis to?

00:51:17.120 Yeah, I think it is.

00:51:19.960 Well, I mean, that's part of it.

00:51:21.740 Is it genuinely the antithesis?

00:51:23.680 I mean, so is this, is this a claim of, is this a claim of satanic possession of the West?

00:51:29.440 I mean, is the, is the, is the culture war that deep?

00:51:32.300 Well, I don't know.

00:51:33.600 I mean, the claim is that it's about fundamentals, right?

00:51:37.400 It's a fundamental critique of Western society.

00:51:39.740 It means fundamental.

00:51:40.960 That's why Derrida went after philogocentrism.

00:51:45.720 Yeah.

00:51:46.120 And I think, and there's, and Foucault does similar things.

00:51:49.720 But the thing you have, you have to remember is, you know, toward the ends of Derrida's

00:51:54.820 career, right?

00:51:55.280 He's reaching into neoplatonic mysticism.

00:51:58.300 Negative theology is something he starts to take an interest in.

00:52:00.920 And Foucault, you know, you know, technologies of the self.

00:52:04.360 And he gets very deeply interested in the work of Pierre Hadeau, right?

00:52:08.380 And what is ancient philosophy and the wisdom tradition and philia sophia.

00:52:11.360 And he starts to turn towards it and starts to recognize it.

00:52:14.360 I know nothing of that.

00:52:15.720 I know nothing of that.

00:52:16.980 Yeah.

00:52:17.280 Well, that's what, so, I mean.

00:52:19.220 Well, that's, that's very interesting.

00:52:21.120 And then he dies.

00:52:22.320 Yeah.

00:52:22.900 Foucault also.

00:52:24.240 Foucault.

00:52:24.600 No, Derrida.

00:52:25.240 We were, sorry.

00:52:25.880 We were speaking of Derrida.

00:52:26.760 I was speaking of both.

00:52:27.600 I said, you see Foucault getting very interested in negative theology, neoplatonic mysticism.

00:52:33.360 And then you see Foucault getting very interested in, you know, stoicism and Pierre Hadeau's work

00:52:39.000 on the whole Socratic tradition.

00:52:40.520 And so what do you make?

00:52:41.540 Okay.

00:52:41.860 So do you, is it reasonable for me to assume that Derrida and Foucault's thinking is at the

00:52:46.880 bottom of the, this counterclaim that I'm discussing, which culminates in the assumption

00:52:51.560 that power and is at the core of the Western endeavor, like the exercise of arbitrary power,

00:52:58.940 is that, is that the center of the culture war, that claim?

00:53:03.380 I don't, I mean, I, I, I think the, the, that's symptomatic of something that's been going

00:53:10.900 on much more deeply and much longer.

00:53:12.600 Fair enough.

00:53:15.600 I don't know if that answers my question, but, you know, cause I'm looking for a corrective

00:53:21.580 or perhaps for agreement, but that's completely up to you because if it's a corrective then

00:53:26.560 that I need, you know, so be it.

00:53:28.840 I mean, have I taken this in the wrong direction or am I seeing it clearly?

00:53:32.200 Um, I, I want to say something other than those.

00:53:39.840 I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to say that, uh, that our relationship to power

00:53:47.260 as a criterion of realness should be properly acknowledged rather than be made an absolute

00:53:54.740 or be set up as an antithesis.

00:53:56.540 I, I think I, what's coming out, I would argue out of 40 cognitive science is the, is

00:54:02.820 the growing claim that we don't have a single way of knowing the world.

00:54:08.400 We have a propositional way that, you know, as it says, that is carried in proposition

00:54:14.320 and results in beliefs we have, which is not knowing that, but we have also procedural

00:54:19.880 knowing.

00:54:20.260 We know how to do things and it doesn't result in beliefs.

00:54:22.520 It results in skills.

00:54:23.480 Uh, we have perspectival knowing, which is neither about belief or skills.

00:54:28.160 It's about states of consciousness and how they create situational awareness for us.

00:54:32.360 And then we have this participatory knowing that we've been talking about throughout where

00:54:36.040 I know not at the level of my beliefs or my skills, or even my states of consciousness,

00:54:41.560 but I know in terms of my traits of my character and how I've been shaped in order to fit the

00:54:46.740 world in a way that seems to fundamentally matter to me.

00:54:50.000 And I think each one of these has a deep, has a different sense of realness attached to

00:54:56.140 it.

00:54:56.340 I think propositional has truth.

00:54:59.200 I think procedural, our skills give us a sense of realness when they empower us.

00:55:03.800 Our perspectival knowing, what's the sense of realness there?

00:55:07.260 Well, we're getting a good sense of this from virtual reality work.

00:55:09.820 It's a sense of presence, a sense of presence.

00:55:12.400 And then what's the sense of realness, uh, for participatory knowing when I, and we're,

00:55:17.880 that's what we're talking about.

00:55:18.760 We're talking about this, like people try to capture it with this, these words of faith

00:55:22.580 and connection and belonging and fittedness and at one minute.

00:55:27.800 And I think instead, uh, right.

00:55:30.880 I think what's happening is our culture is realizing that we have been, we have tried

00:55:37.760 to reduce all the knowing Ella Descartes to purely propositional knowing.

00:55:41.100 And then we're slowly realizing the inadequacy of that.

00:55:44.200 I think the fact that we are trapped in ideological battle means we think we can capture all of the

00:55:49.480 meaning making machinery at the propositional level.

00:55:52.160 But what, what 4E cognitive science is saying is no, no human, you talked about tracking the

00:55:57.620 skill of tracking affords our conceptual abilities, but also states of consciousness afford us

00:56:05.540 being in relationship to the world.

00:56:07.460 You can have totally ineffable states that nevertheless seem the most real to you.

00:56:11.980 And also these transformations of ourself also carry with them a sense of realness.

00:56:16.800 And I think what's happened is the West is realizing, but in a negative way that the

00:56:21.940 propositional reduction is, is inadequate, insufficient, and it's groping for the closest

00:56:27.260 thing at hand.

00:56:28.260 And the closest thing at hand is what technology makes salient to which, which is power and

00:56:34.260 control.

00:56:34.720 This is Heidegger's critique, but I think we have to go deeper.

00:56:38.740 We have to say, no, no, there's a place for that, but your skills ultimately depend on

00:56:43.220 your situational awareness and your situational awareness, the states of consciousness you get

00:56:47.800 access to ultimately depend on your character.

00:56:50.480 We have to bring back that whole rich philosophical anthropology.

00:56:55.180 And why do they ultimately depend on your character?

00:56:57.420 Well, that's, that's a lot to swallow in, you know, 10 statements.

00:57:00.960 Yeah.

00:57:01.160 I mean, I'm going to scuttle back to my power claim momentarily and then try to wrap my

00:57:05.860 head around what you said.

00:57:07.260 Okay.

00:57:08.440 Well, sorry.

00:57:09.000 I didn't mean to dump so much.

00:57:09.920 No, no, well, no, no, no, no, not, not at all.

00:57:13.280 I mean, it might've been the answer, the proper answer.

00:57:16.120 Um, the proper answer is often that the question isn't sophisticated enough, you know, um, but

00:57:22.300 it sort of throws the questioner because he's operating from within the space where that's

00:57:26.580 the germane issue.

00:57:27.840 Right.

00:57:28.160 So my claim was that the culture war right now is being fought over the claim that the

00:57:34.500 fundamental animating tendency of Western civilization is the, is the desire to exercise and the exercising

00:57:41.260 of arbitrary power.

00:57:42.700 And I believe that to be fundamentally wrong.

00:57:45.340 Yes.

00:57:46.020 And so I phrased it as an adversarial hypothesis, as a satanic hypothesis, essentially from a

00:57:51.660 symbolic perspective, that the accusation is that the West is possessed by this satanic

00:57:57.120 demand for power and that's its characteristic spirit.

00:58:00.720 And I don't believe that.

00:58:02.400 I believe that its characteristic spirit is philia sophia fundamentally.

00:58:07.100 And that, that is a contamination, which occurs repeatedly, which would be philia, Nikea, I think

00:58:15.240 if, if we're using your language properly, or perhaps we're slandering philia Nikea, I mean,

00:58:21.500 because I think part of the claim that you're making is that there's a positive aspect to

00:58:25.700 philia Nikea that's being damned as the mere arbitrary expression of power. 0.86

00:58:33.000 Well, I do think that's something like, like a series like suits are getting at, right?

00:58:38.900 Because the, you have these characters in that drama who are motivated primarily by philia,

00:58:44.780 so philia Nikea, but you see philia sophia merge between them and that's what makes them

00:58:51.100 tolerable as characters.

00:58:52.220 And, but both those things seem to be interrelated.

00:58:55.000 One leads to the other.

00:58:56.740 And that seems to be related to your wrestling argument in some sense, and maybe to mine.

00:59:01.580 Yes.

00:59:02.020 So, okay, so you think that this, so is your claim, let me get this right, at least in part

00:59:07.700 that, please, first of all, I want to know what you think of my claim about this central

00:59:12.020 argument.

00:59:13.060 What you're doing is saying that's a sideshow on a much deeper, that's a sideshow of a

00:59:17.980 much deeper problem.

00:59:19.100 I mean, that's quite the bloody claim, John, it's not easy for me to process, but yeah,

00:59:24.840 well, so I'm having some trouble with that.

00:59:26.860 But do you think that that invalidates my claim, or does it just render it irrelevant?

00:59:34.460 No, it doesn't render it irrelevant.

00:59:35.800 Given this discussion.

00:59:36.540 Okay, so let, can, do you, is it okay if we deal with that and then, and then move on?

00:59:41.120 Sure.

00:59:41.640 I mean, I, I guess what...

00:59:44.540 Okay, am I misreading early Derrida and Foucault by attributing to them the claim that, that,

00:59:50.820 that it is power that they identify as the central spirit?

00:59:54.140 And am I wrong in saying that that's just a modified Marxist claim?

00:59:58.160 It's a transformation of the idea of the class struggle into, into the domain of the sheer

01:00:03.640 power, struggle for power?

01:00:05.280 I think you could make a claim that Foucault sees the deep interpenetration, the earlier

01:00:12.280 Foucault, maybe even the middle Foucault, sees a deep interpenetration between power and

01:00:17.340 knowledge.

01:00:18.460 For Derrida, I do not think that difference really is a good translation, is well translated

01:00:24.700 by the term power, uh, difference is much closer to, you know, what I would call relevance

01:00:32.820 realization.

01:00:33.300 The idea that our claim, that the relevance of our claim can't be bound.

01:00:38.140 I mean, somebody within classical cognitive science, computational science, Jerry Fodor

01:00:41.980 makes a similar argument that the relevance of a proposition can't be captured within the

01:00:47.220 syntax or semantics of the proposition.

01:00:49.180 I mean, that's, that's the main thing that Derrida is on about.

01:00:51.800 So that's a consequence of what we're bringing to the table, because the relevance is the

01:00:57.600 interpenetration of the semantic and the, and the syntactic with the unique.

01:01:02.880 Well, and it's also the pragmatics that goes beyond it, because I mean, you know, this is

01:01:06.100 the central claim of pragmatics that I always have to convey way more than I can say, because

01:01:11.440 I have to rely on you, you know, picking out all the possible, of all the possible implications,

01:01:16.420 the ones that are relevant out of all the possible.

01:01:18.440 Right. Which means I have to know you, which means I have to embody whatever it is that

01:01:23.180 I'm speaking to you.

01:01:23.720 Now you're back to my claim that the character traits are at the bottom of this.

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01:04:16.580 Right? If you go ahead, man, if you can't, if you can't, if you don't, if we can't actually conform

01:04:22.960 at the level of our character, we can't trust. Yeah. And so what you trust, you trust what's honest.

01:04:29.860 Yeah. Trust what's honest. So you trust the logos, right? And what, because that's honesty

01:04:34.240 driven by love. Right. But I don't think so if I trust you, that's what I trust. So my sense of

01:04:39.360 that, my sense, I'm going to go back to something. I asked you to define love and I'm going to define

01:04:44.500 it on my terms now. And that is the best in me serving the best in you. And I think that's the

01:04:50.160 deepest pleasure. That's the deepest and most lasting pleasure. And it is the most fundamental,

01:04:55.240 fundamental motivation. It's the inexhaustible source. Because if I can do that, whenever I do that,

01:05:01.120 I feel that I'm being properly. And there's nothing better than that.

01:05:05.240 And you can extend that to, you can extend that to, to, to, to, to the world, to situations,

01:05:11.880 places. Well, I think that's what you're supposed to do by accepting the proposition that God is love.

01:05:16.800 I mean, it's God is love and God is logos. Those are, those are both there. So then the question to

01:05:22.060 some degree is the rank order of the two. And I would say God is truth within love.

01:05:25.820 And that's the animating spirit of mankind. And that's a way different claim than the one the

01:05:31.500 atheists are going after, by the way. Think about it, everyone. Is truth, is truth in the service of

01:05:38.100 love, not the best animating spirit of mankind when it isn't pursuing an aberration? We can all ask

01:05:44.840 ourselves that question. I think that's a good question to ask. Thank you, John.

01:05:50.960 What I mean is I think it, it re, I think it reorients us to the fact.

01:05:57.780 We can put that on a t-shirt. Is, is truth in the service of love a good question?

01:06:03.700 I guess I, I see them as more, I, I see them as more interpenetrating. I want to make a stronger

01:06:10.760 relationship between them than just a relationship of service. I mean, this is.

01:06:14.960 Man. Yeah. That, that this way I like the term realization that love is a way of, of affording

01:06:22.420 realization and that, and the deepest knowing you have of reality is in realization. That's

01:06:27.460 what I, if I had to. Okay. So, well, so it seems to me, okay, so I'll make, I'll make an appendage

01:06:32.060 to my claim. Right. The reality that is most justifiable is brought about by the action of

01:06:38.440 truth in the service of love. Yeah. But I guess what I'm saying is I see truth. I think you're

01:06:46.180 using it and I've heard you use true as something beyond a correspondence between the semantic

01:06:52.100 content of a proposition reality. I've heard you talk about. Yes. Right. Right. And we even use that

01:06:57.080 when we, when we use the phrase. Yes. It seems to incorporate some of those other dimensions that

01:07:01.120 you've been talking about. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Well, great, Matt. So fill me in. Well, that's what

01:07:05.740 I'm trying to get at. I'm trying to get at that power is a way of, you know, when, when,

01:07:10.720 when your shot is true, your skill has been effective and, and you're going to hit the

01:07:15.940 mark. Right. But, but, but presence is also a way in which things are, are true to form.

01:07:21.960 Right. And, and, and then care of the, but the participatory knowing is when we're like the

01:07:27.080 deepest sense of true, which is, you know, related to trust and, and being betrothed to, to

01:07:32.520 the world in an important way. So if you will allow me to expand what you mean by true to

01:07:38.280 cover all of those dimensions. Betrothed to the world in that you extend the same courtesy

01:07:42.300 to the world that you described extending to your partner. Exactly. I think that the answer

01:07:47.340 to nihilism isn't some propositional answer. This is what I get from Nisha Tenya. Yeah.

01:07:52.560 Right. It's, it's to relearn. And I mean, it's deeply in the, in the Buddhist sense of sati,

01:07:57.500 to remember what it is to fall in love with reality, to fall in love with being. And if

01:08:03.340 that's what you're saying is the, you think that's what Sam Harris is striving for in his

01:08:07.560 spirituality? Well, I mean, it's not a, it's not a throwaway answer. It's like, what's he up to

01:08:14.180 exactly? I mean, he's on a, he's, he's, he, isn't he on a Sophia, um, finally a Sophia adventure?

01:08:24.060 I think everybody is, how can I put this? Everybody lives from the, the non-propositional 1.00

01:08:33.700 kinds of knowing emphasized by Plato. And that's what all of the scholastic research is pointing

01:08:38.420 to now that Socrates was trying to point people to the non-propositional knowing, the procedural,

01:08:44.040 the, the perspectival, the participatory. I think we all have to live from that, given a lot of

01:08:48.820 things I've said and a lot of things we've said. Well, you should, maybe you could, you could expound

01:08:52.440 on those a bit more for us and clarify a bit more. And so you said the answer to nihilism, that isn't,

01:09:00.280 that isn't exactly a comment on my comment that the culture war is about a claim that the drive to

01:09:07.180 power is at the core of Western being. I think that's an equally nihilistic claim. I, that's,

01:09:12.780 that's my, my point. The claim, the claim is nihilistic or my claim about that is nihilistic

01:09:18.700 or both. The claim that power is a fundamental reality is an attempt to assuage the wounding

01:09:24.980 of nihilism, but it is fundamentally mistaken in its endeavor. It will, it is, it is, it is constituted

01:09:31.860 the wrong way. It's like framing a problem the wrong way so that you know, you not get the insight

01:09:37.080 needed to get to the, to the solution of the problem. I, so I think of it as a fundamental

01:09:41.420 misframing. That's what I'm trying to say. And that's why I'm not, I'm, that's why I'm hesitant

01:09:46.000 to say either yes or no to it because I get it. Yeah. Well, I believe that, I believe that it is

01:09:51.640 misframed because I don't think it would be taking us in such a pathological direction,

01:09:55.300 the whole argument, if it wasn't misframed. And so part of what I'm trying to, and for me,

01:10:02.360 this dovetails with the, you know, the, the, the increasing crescendo within 4E cognitive

01:10:09.420 science about embodiment and embedded and extended in an active cognition is most right. You see this

01:10:15.760 as a subset argument of one of those elements, but that's a huge, but I'm, like I said, I'm really

01:10:21.620 having a hard time. I know what you mean, but, and I suppose what you're trying to do with everything

01:10:26.400 you do is to expound upon this, but I certainly want you to expound upon this. Let's go into those

01:10:31.960 three modes of alternate cognition a little bit more deeply. Okay. So, I mean, so the,

01:10:37.580 the first distinction, of course, is, was classically made by Ryle and, and we even carry it in psychology

01:10:43.460 when we make distinctions of our own procedural memory and things like that, which this is the

01:10:47.680 distinction between propositional, knowing that something is the case in which what you're trying

01:10:52.080 to do is basically assert, you know, the truth of the semantic content of a person.

01:10:56.660 Right. And that's, that's akin to the proposition that to believe in God is to accept a set of

01:11:00.820 propositions about the nature of God. Yes. And that's what always strikes. That's why I'd never

01:11:05.000 answer that question because I think that's the wrong framing of the question. So I can't answer it.

01:11:10.020 Exactly. Okay. Well, man, you're helping me out here. So because you're differentiating,

01:11:14.520 you're helping me differentiate my sense of the non-propositional space. And I mean,

01:11:18.700 I know some of this because I know that the knowing what and knowing how circuitry is separate.

01:11:23.020 Yep. I've known that since I wrote Maps of Meaning and I know the inside circuitry is separate. And,

01:11:28.060 and, you know, that's what I've been getting at also with regards to this idea of revelation and

01:11:32.500 then critical thinking, which we started all this with and never got back to, even though it's just

01:11:37.160 a trivial issue. We're following the logos. We're following the logos in love. God, I hope so.

01:11:42.320 Yeah. I hope so, John, because it's certainly the only justification for my existence,

01:11:46.340 red skull and all. I think there are many reasons that justify your existence, my friend.

01:11:52.440 Yeah. Well, I think that's an inadequate self-appraisal, but.

01:11:56.020 Oh, thank you, John. That's vastly appreciated.

01:12:01.080 I, so I think you would admit, and I think, you know, there's been a growing consensus

01:12:06.460 from the failure of computational cognition or even behaviorist to, we can't reduce consciousness.

01:12:13.020 Why failure, John? Because what we, what we've, what we've noticed is that consciousness doesn't

01:12:21.060 seem to be something that's explicatable in terms of the relation, the logical relations between

01:12:27.260 propositions. It's not propositional. Very good. Very good. So you think we've actually found that

01:12:32.540 out, eh? And that's the failure. Is that, is that, does that mean the failure of AI as it's

01:12:38.480 presently constituted? It depends. It depends because what's happening in AI is the AI is moving

01:12:43.820 off a sort of proposition. Propositions. Yeah. The idea that cognition is computation and that

01:12:51.080 the mind is a formal system is being replaced with the idea that the mind is an embodied autopoetic

01:12:58.300 dynamical system and that thinking isn't in the head. It's the way, it's the way the embodied brain

01:13:04.080 is dynamically coupled to the world in an ongoing evolution of your sensory motor, right?

01:13:10.580 You mean hence, hence the justification for freedom of speech, you might say.

01:13:15.240 Well, and also, also the freedom of action, freedom of action, and also, you know, a freedom for people

01:13:22.120 to explore different ways in which they inhabit their body. I think that's also an important thing.

01:13:27.680 So, um, I did want to get back though. So if we, if you, if there's a growing plausibility,

01:13:35.660 uh, so much so that for example, Bernardo Castro, and I take him seriously, I don't agree with him,

01:13:41.280 but Bernardo is a sharp guy. He, he proposes a kind of absolute idealism. Who is that? I don't know

01:13:46.640 him. Bernardo Castro. Bernardo Castro. So Bernardo is so convinced and he's a very sharp guy that the

01:13:53.000 arguments of trying to reduce consciousness computationally, et cetera, have failed that

01:13:56.940 he is willing to write advocate for, and I don't disagree. I don't agree with him on this,

01:14:01.980 but he, he makes a plausible case that reality, you know, absolute idealism, that consciousness is

01:14:08.240 the ultimate reality. And whether or not that's the case, all I'm trying, I'm making a weaker claim

01:14:14.480 on the basis of that. I'm taking that as evidence that there is a growing consensus that the attempt to,

01:14:20.400 you know, explain consciousness computationally, or even just in terms of, uh, uh, uh, sort of,

01:14:26.320 uh, sort of behaviorist, uh, set of skills or something like that. I think that's failed.

01:14:33.940 So to go back to the, the four kinds of knowing you've already acknowledged the propositional.

01:14:39.780 Sorry. I want to inject one more thing here. That's relevant to what you just said. If that,

01:14:44.140 if you don't mind, I don't mind at all. You know, I think the atheist critique of religion is a 0.70

01:14:49.440 critique at a propositional level. I've made this similar point, Jordan. I've made the point that

01:14:54.720 they're not, you know, they're not paying attention to, I mean, when Nietzsche runs into

01:14:59.420 the marketplace, he is talking to the atheists when he says, you don't know what you've done

01:15:05.320 when you've killed God. Right. And so to think that religion is primarily about asserting

01:15:12.660 propositions for which there is no evidence is to miss all of the non-propositions. So I make a

01:15:19.080 distinction and it lines up with this. Uh, you know, I think that religion is not primarily

01:15:23.680 about knowledge. I think it's primarily about wisdom because wisdom is about that fundamental

01:15:28.500 transformation. It's about embodying it. It's about establishing a relationship with it.

01:15:34.200 Yes. It's about worshiping it. It's about taking it into your identity.

01:15:38.820 That's the worship, I think. Well, I think it is.

01:15:42.020 Jonathan described worship as celebration. So it's a celebration of and reverence. Well,

01:15:48.380 reverence for sure. But the celebration part is, is interesting because to what you celebrate is

01:15:55.020 what you hold in highest esteem and to hold something in highest esteem is to pursue it in

01:16:00.100 the hopes of embodying it. And that's worship. But we, yeah, but we've lost, well, maybe this,

01:16:05.000 maybe this is to your point about worship. We've lost the depth of celebration. We have reduced it.

01:16:09.620 Yeah. You see it in, you see it in black gospel music, don't you? And then it runs into rock and

01:16:14.360 roll from there. But, and then you get the, you get stadiums full of people experiencing it without

01:16:20.280 noticing what they're doing. I mean, I felt that spirit when I went to a Leonard Cohen show,

01:16:25.620 when he stood up and everyone clapped and, you know, he sings hallelujah or, uh, is it the

01:16:31.300 apocalypse? I think that's the song. He's got a couple, him and Johnny Cash in his later years,

01:16:36.120 got a couple of songs that put you in that space right away.

01:16:39.440 But, but the, the, and I agree. I think that's, that is, that is a version of, of, of celebration.

01:16:46.820 But the problem with that is right. Is it's, it's, it's been too located in the it's on it's

01:16:54.840 ontological locus is entertainment. Yes. You're right. Exactly. John entertainment. It's like,

01:17:01.100 no, it's enthusiasm. Yes. And fios to be possessed by the God. And that's what I was trying to get at

01:17:06.620 right. In some, we don't even notice when it happens. That's what a stadium is too. When you

01:17:10.600 cheer, when someone puts the soccer goal through the net, of course it is. And Hey, look at that man's

01:17:15.160 aim. Couldn't we all aim like that? And wouldn't that be wonderful? Yes. And we'll do the wave to

01:17:20.640 that. And don't we notice that we're worshiping God? No, because we killed our religion by presuming

01:17:26.720 it was a set of axiomatic set of presuppositions and listening to the 18th, 19th century rationalist

01:17:32.720 atheists. Well, what we, what we, what we've done is we have confused modernity's understanding

01:17:41.720 of religion with the phenomenon, which is I think a fundamental mistake. No, with our blind

01:17:47.600 critique of the phenomenon. Cause the, because first of all, we have to make the phenomenon

01:17:51.580 trivial and then critique it without noticing things like the spirit in black gospel music

01:17:56.680 and taking that seriously. Yeah. Yeah. I like, I like your reformulation. I think that's better

01:18:01.260 said. Thank you. So to go back, if consciousness and this kind, so there is, there's a knowing that

01:18:08.340 is right. Dependent on your state of consciousness. There's a knowing through consciousness. And that's

01:18:15.800 what I call perspectival knowing for, for the, what consciousness does is it foreground, some things

01:18:20.880 backgrounds, others makes things salient. So it's doing, if you'll allow me a term I've coined,

01:18:26.280 it's doing salience landscaping for you. And what that does is that does that drawing things to your

01:18:32.280 attention? Yes. But your attention always also does that. So is that part of that? Because you'd kind

01:18:38.200 of, you kind of choose where your attention goes. You choose it, but sort of, right? Or you

01:18:42.840 participate in it. You participate in attention. That's what I, that's what I was saying. You don't

01:18:47.560 just attend and you don't just receive, you participate. There's both, you know, and they

01:18:52.780 use these metaphors without, you know, I think fully unpacking them. You know, there's the top down

01:18:57.560 and bottom. Do you think that it, is that it, that a part, is that participatory attention akin to

01:19:02.560 the dance between revelation and, and critic, criticism? So is it, is it revelation and dialogical

01:19:08.900 evaluation that constitutes the participatory or element of, of attention? Well, I think what it's

01:19:15.820 doing is it's, if it, well, I'll speak more of the theological language that it's realizing. So

01:19:21.920 there's attention, right? Is doing something like prioritization, relevance, realization,

01:19:31.280 right? In the dialogue between imagination, where we stop thinking of imagination as just images,

01:19:39.220 useless images in our head. I want to use it the way Corbin uses it, imaginal. And this is what's

01:19:43.880 coming out in Friston's predictive processing. Imagination is, it permeates your perception.

01:19:49.640 It's permeating your perception. It's right to say that I'm as much imagining.

01:19:54.540 That's why Jung said we lived a dream.

01:19:56.900 Well, but, but the, the, the, the, and there's, there's something true about that, but, and when,

01:20:01.080 when, but I, I, I want to, I want to, I want to caveat it because people will say it's all

01:20:05.920 a hallucination. No, no, no, it's not.

01:20:08.360 No, it's not.

01:20:08.940 Most of the, most of the predictions.

01:20:10.620 That's weird.

01:20:11.640 Yeah.

01:20:12.080 Most of the predictions are true.

01:20:13.900 The predictions are accurate.

01:20:14.440 Yes.

01:20:14.700 Right.

01:20:15.080 Exactly.

01:20:15.520 So it can't be just a dream.

01:20:17.640 Exactly.

01:20:18.240 Exactly.

01:20:18.640 So you've got, you've got imagination.

01:20:20.780 If you'll allow me the spatial language coming down and out.

01:20:24.000 Right.

01:20:24.460 That's right.

01:20:24.940 And it covers it, covers what's out there and we see the imagination, but it pertains

01:20:29.920 to the reality.

01:20:31.120 Yes.

01:20:31.540 There has to be a, remember we talked about it.

01:20:32.920 So what we're doing is continually adjusting the imagination to the reality.

01:20:36.300 Yes, that's the dialogos.

01:20:37.360 And the prioritization is the way of adjusting.

01:20:39.920 So we see the map.

01:20:41.120 We don't see the territory, but we also see the, is that right?

01:20:43.840 We see the map.

01:20:44.560 We don't see the territory, but we also see the errors in the map.

01:20:47.240 Right.

01:20:47.800 We see the map and the errors in the map, but we don't see the territory.

01:20:50.880 Yeah.

01:20:51.280 But the errors are where the territory pushes its nose through.

01:20:54.880 And what them, what those errors do is they can't, if, if we're properly receptive to

01:20:59.400 the way the errors are deforming the map, they can turn it into a globe and a globe is still

01:21:04.420 not the thing, but it's damn better than a map.

01:21:07.180 And so that there's a receptivity that's also important.

01:21:12.620 Yeah.

01:21:12.900 Well, then whether, you know, and it is definitely the case that insofar as our map is accurate,

01:21:17.620 which means it's been generated as a consequence of a rectification of our previous errors is

01:21:22.980 that it is a, an adequate representation of the external of the, of reality.

01:21:27.560 It's an adequate representation of reality, which means we have molded ourselves to reality.

01:21:32.620 See, this is also why I think, John, that the, I think that men and women select each

01:21:37.960 other for manifestation of the logos.

01:21:40.820 Wow.

01:21:41.280 I mean, I'm talking, well, because I said this was a deep critique, you know, it goes all

01:21:47.140 the way to the, well, what?

01:21:48.240 Okay.

01:21:48.420 So we'll look at this.

01:21:49.360 So men organize themselves into groups and they, they, they take the, the quarterback out

01:21:55.220 of the stadium on their shoulders and they say, by doing so cheerleaders, here's your

01:22:01.860 chosen mate.

01:22:03.240 And the cheerleaders jump up in the air with their legs spread and say, hooray, bring him

01:22:08.580 to me.

01:22:09.680 And that's the, isn't that the dialogue between men and women down the ages?

01:22:13.660 And you might say, well, why would men vote for the stallion when they're not the stallion?

01:22:18.980 And the answer is, well, it's better to be a follower of the stallion.

01:22:21.740 And if you can't be the stallion, then to not be at all.

01:22:25.200 And I mean that in the deepest evolutionary sense as well, or have I got something wrong?

01:22:31.260 Because when I said, this is the fundamental animating spirit, I really meant it.

01:22:35.040 And so then if men and women are choosing each other for manifestation of the logos, then

01:22:41.420 that's the spirit that drives the evolution of consciousness.

01:22:44.660 It's not, it's random, it might be random, random variation on the option side, but that

01:22:54.980 doesn't mean it's random variation on the selection side, obviously.

01:22:58.100 And so then the question is, what are you selected for?

01:23:00.660 I imagine your wife is pretty fond of you when you manifest that.

01:23:05.620 Well, yes, I have a wife too, and I can understand her displeasure with my multiple shortcomings

01:23:14.400 and justified displeasure, I might say.

01:23:18.000 But I'm sure that she's happy when you do manifest that part of you that you said you wanted to manifest.

01:23:24.560 But I get, I mean, I get, maybe I don't get you.

01:23:29.320 I mean, I see, what I see is you're mapping the receptivity and the selection onto sort of masculine and feminine,

01:23:35.180 maybe sort of yin and yang in a Taoist thing.

01:23:38.260 But if I was to respond as a Taoist, I would say, but can't I have that relationship also with you?

01:23:45.440 Does it have to be necessarily embodied in a sexual difference?

01:23:50.840 No, but I, no, I think it's also embodied in that, in that it's that it goes all the way to the bottom, wherever you look.

01:23:58.100 Well, wouldn't that suggest, then, that something like the Taoist notion of yin and yang,

01:24:02.760 therefore, is a more fundamental representation of the reality, precisely because it applies to other cases?

01:24:09.580 Well, more fundamental than what?

01:24:14.400 The idea of masculine and feminine.

01:24:17.540 I mean, I understand.

01:24:20.480 That's certainly possible.

01:24:22.480 That's certainly possible.

01:24:23.680 I mean, I think, you know, I think reality is the battle of good and evil against a background of chaos and order.

01:24:30.600 So the chaos and order would map quite readily.

01:24:34.680 Yeah.

01:24:35.320 Sorry, go ahead, please.

01:24:36.680 I was just saying, I can see that in sort of, that's a very, the reason I'm saying this.

01:24:40.980 The order is the map that you're describing, right?

01:24:44.380 Because insofar as it's in concordance with reality, it's a map that enables us, when we apply it, to get what we desire.

01:24:54.660 Of course.

01:24:55.840 Okay.

01:24:56.120 And then disorder emerges when that prediction, it isn't just a prediction because it's predicated on desire,

01:25:01.460 which is where the cognitive scientists went wrong.

01:25:03.660 Because it's not just expectation, it's desire.

01:25:07.120 Oh, but that's changing.

01:25:08.060 The map is motivated.

01:25:09.080 Well, that's good.

01:25:09.880 Be good.

01:25:10.460 Because that was a fundamental problem.

01:25:12.180 The predictive processing model is changing.

01:25:13.960 In fact, the idea that we're even talking about something inferential, working with Bayes' proposition,

01:25:21.300 is largely now moribund.

01:25:23.060 Pristin himself and Andy Clark and somebody, one of my former students that I'm collaborating with, Mark Miller,

01:25:28.160 and also with Brad Anderson, it's like, no, the work of Michael Anderson,

01:25:34.240 the embodied understanding of predictive processing is now the dominant model in which affect,

01:25:41.200 like, look, relevance realization is not cold calculation.

01:25:46.220 Okay, so look, it's motivation and affect, let's say, eh?

01:25:49.660 But that's a hierarchical structure.

01:25:52.080 And in that hierarchical structure, there's a central organizing spirit,

01:25:55.740 a spirit that drives towards unity, because it's predicated on the very idea of the attentional focus itself, right?

01:26:03.640 What do you hold in the highest esteem?

01:26:05.500 That's what directs your attention, right?

01:26:07.760 What you hold in the highest esteem directs your attention.

01:26:10.900 What you care about.

01:26:11.620 So how is that not a religious claim?

01:26:13.860 How can that not be a religious claim if the claim is also embodied?

01:26:17.640 You see what I mean?

01:26:19.120 I do think...

01:26:20.420 Because maybe there's one more step past motivation.

01:26:23.280 It's personality, right?

01:26:24.440 Because motivation manifests itself in personality.

01:26:29.160 Yes.

01:26:29.400 That's the next step for the cognitive scientists, if they haven't got there yet.

01:26:33.520 I mean, I knew that motivation and emotion was the step past pure expectation,

01:26:37.900 because, well, in Jeffrey Gray's work, which is brilliant, Neuropsychology of Anxiety,

01:26:42.560 is a great book.

01:26:43.600 But he assumes that the map predicts expectation,

01:26:47.600 and that we're sort of cold cognitive expectors, right?

01:26:50.660 Prediction machines.

01:26:51.780 But we're not.

01:26:52.540 We don't predict what's going to happen.

01:26:54.140 And we work to make what we want to happen, happen.

01:26:57.480 Yeah.

01:26:57.680 But that's not the same thing.

01:26:59.460 But that's the change that's happening, Jordan.

01:27:01.520 That they're shifting off of prediction as the primary metaphor into anticipation.

01:27:06.060 Okay.

01:27:06.420 So how...

01:27:07.420 And is the shift gone to the point where it's personalities manifesting themselves within

01:27:12.480 us that determine our direction?

01:27:14.360 Yes.

01:27:15.080 Okay.

01:27:15.440 Not quite what you would call explicit personality theory, but the notion that this is the term

01:27:26.600 that's used.

01:27:27.140 And of course, it is fraught with millennia with issues of contention.

01:27:32.120 But the idea of the discussion around the self, what the self is as an organizing principle.

01:27:39.740 It's a personality.

01:27:41.400 It's a personality.

01:27:42.660 Well, obviously, personality theory and cognitive theory have to be united.

01:27:46.280 I mean, they're major domains, right?

01:27:48.540 I'm trying to get a paper published that tries to integrate them.

01:27:51.340 And the bridging point is actually inattention.

01:27:53.960 Because what's come out in predictive processing is what's called precision weighting.

01:27:58.820 What you have to do is you have to privilege...

01:28:01.000 Because you can't model everything.

01:28:02.420 They hit combinatorial explosion.

01:28:04.000 Right.

01:28:04.540 You have to privilege...

01:28:05.460 That's chaos.

01:28:06.340 Right.

01:28:06.700 You have to privilege certain predictions.

01:28:10.720 We can come back later why anticipation is a much better word.

01:28:13.460 And that's what attention is.

01:28:15.420 And that's where the relevant...

01:28:16.420 Yes.

01:28:16.680 I'm writing a paper.

01:28:17.340 Okay.

01:28:17.660 So Pajot's point would be the basis of worship is what directs attention.

01:28:23.780 And I think that's ultimately right.

01:28:25.640 I mean, I try to...

01:28:26.440 Well, Jesus, that's a hell of a thing to say, you know, because especially if the...

01:28:30.760 Because it isn't the case that the apex of your attention, you know, has this drive towards unity.

01:28:38.000 And that it's based in personality.

01:28:40.000 I mean, these are claims that are very much tantamount to religious claims, as far as I can see.

01:28:46.140 Well, okay.

01:28:47.220 Then, you know, I have a sequence of argument, a sequence of episodes in my series where I lay out an argument step by step, trying to build the experience of sacredness.

01:28:58.600 And it's reference, it's the sacred, but trying to build the experience of sacredness out of the way in which attention and relevance, realization and participatory knowing and perspectival knowing are all seeking to bind us to ourselves, the self, to each other and to the world.

01:29:16.160 And the sacred is that which most, you know, most powerfully, truthfully, and presently, and belongingly achieves that for us.

01:29:26.040 Right. Great. Well said, John. Hooray.

01:29:29.440 Where do you put awe and admiration in that?

01:29:31.980 So think about this.

01:29:33.000 Admiration is the instinct to emulate.

01:29:35.000 Okay, so then we look for the most emulatable.

01:29:39.740 That's the ultimate spirit.

01:29:41.840 And I think Gerard is right, that that always carries with it the dark side of mimetic envy and covetousness, and that those two are always playing off against each other.

01:29:51.340 Well, because we think we can possess it by ill-got means.

01:29:57.980 Yes.

01:29:58.160 That's the story of Cain.

01:29:59.680 Yes, yes.

01:30:00.320 And of course that's carried with us, because the story of human history is the battle between Abel and Cain, which is also why I asked you about this fundamental cultural crisis that's tearing us apart.

01:30:11.920 And you said, well, that's a manifestation of deeper things, and that's, well, that's what I asked, too.

01:30:18.020 Yeah, yeah.

01:30:18.540 And that's, and I hope that what we've been doing is actually my answer to that.

01:30:23.400 But awe, I can say more about, because I've been, I've been involved, and I'm involved in some actual experiments on awe, and the effects on cognition, and some of the work.

01:30:33.740 I don't know if what we've been doing is the answer to that, or the antidote to that.

01:30:37.720 To which, sorry.

01:30:38.720 Well, if the question is posed wrong, we can't really answer it, can we?

01:30:43.860 We have to provide an alternative formulation.

01:30:46.940 But that's what I think we're doing here.

01:30:48.740 Yeah, so it's an antidote rather than an answer.

01:30:51.600 And that's fine.

01:30:52.540 I know, I know.

01:30:54.060 I'm just clarifying it.

01:30:55.920 I think looking for the answer is, in some sense, a fundamental way of misframing it.

01:31:02.460 That is to give in to the proposition.

01:31:04.460 Well, how do we address it, then?

01:31:06.020 How do we address it, John?

01:31:07.760 Do we just by-step it and just offer the alternative?

01:31:10.480 No, no.

01:31:11.020 Think about this.

01:31:12.240 That's a genuine question, because perhaps we do just by-side-step it and offer the alternative.

01:31:17.700 Yes, that's what I'm saying.

01:31:19.800 Sorry, I want to be more responsible.

01:31:22.200 That's what I'm recommending.

01:31:23.520 That's what I'm recommending.

01:31:24.720 I'm recommending that we remember that meaning in life, and this is also something I'm doing

01:31:30.540 empirical work on, right?

01:31:32.080 That meaning in life is mostly bound at the non-propositional level, and it does feed into

01:31:37.700 things like sacredness.

01:31:38.640 I think reverence is the proper virtue of awe.

01:31:41.960 Reverence is the virtue that helps us appropriate awe.

01:31:44.960 Well, reverence means it is hold in ritual, is hold as a marker or as a pointer for ritual

01:31:54.080 emulation.

01:31:54.920 I think it's-

01:31:55.740 And that's embodiment.

01:31:57.380 And that's the pulling in of that personality into the self.

01:32:01.720 I think that's right, but I think what awe-

01:32:04.080 See, awe is really interesting, because you can measure this.

01:32:08.060 Awe is one of the few instances where people's sense of self and egocentrism is shrunk, but

01:32:13.800 they find it a positive experience, and they want it to continue.

01:32:17.160 Right.

01:32:18.300 Well, that's what we experience in relationship to our current ego when we hypothesize our

01:32:24.140 ideal as well.

01:32:25.560 I think that's right, and that goes to-

01:32:27.700 I mean, those are the same things, because awe is the ideal-

01:32:32.060 Awe is our unconscious ideal capturing us.

01:32:35.720 Hmm.

01:32:37.040 Think about it.

01:32:37.780 It's the spirit within.

01:32:39.080 So imagine this.

01:32:39.820 You already admitted, so to speak, that we're, you know, canodic representations of the central

01:32:47.020 animating spirit of the ages, and that speaks from our unconscious, because it's embodied

01:32:53.900 within us, and then it finds its grip on us in awe, in admiration.

01:33:01.020 Would you say, though, so there's a quiet, like, would you say that it's not only the unconscious

01:33:07.240 within us, but the unconscious without us, because I think what awe is doing is disclosing-

01:33:12.100 It's the unconscious in the books behind you.

01:33:14.640 Yes, and also the unconscious in the world, because I think part of what we're-

01:33:20.020 I think we got too locked into the notion of the sacred as perfection, completion.

01:33:28.280 This is one of my critiques of Plato, although I'm normally a lover of Plato.

01:33:32.000 And I think you can see in the mystics, and in many traditions, this is a claim I can back

01:33:38.460 up, but I'm just going to throw it out there, right?

01:33:41.340 Even in Jonathan's tradition, Eastern Orthodoxy-

01:33:44.860 Is the sacred, the good, becoming better?

01:33:47.360 Well, the sacred is an inexhaustibleness, right?

01:33:50.180 Well, yes, that's why I'm asking that question.

01:33:52.640 Yes, yes.

01:33:53.140 Because when I've had visions of heaven, heaven is a place that's perfect and getting better.

01:33:57.720 Well, okay, let me give you my sense, the place where I don't have visions, but the

01:34:04.820 place where I experience what I'm talking about-

01:34:06.240 I wouldn't recommend them, necessarily.

01:34:08.700 Yeah, well, I mean, we can compare altered states of consciousness another time, perhaps.

01:34:16.500 Yeah, okay.

01:34:18.080 By the way-

01:34:18.180 You'd really like to do that, wouldn't you?

01:34:22.280 Well, let me just finish the point I was making.

01:34:25.440 Okay, go on, be far on to another universe, you mean?

01:34:30.040 Yeah.

01:34:31.220 See, for me, I tell people that Plato is sacred, which does not mean that I can't question him.

01:34:36.580 It does not mean that I can't disagree with him.

01:34:38.600 It means the following.

01:34:39.900 Plato transforms me.

01:34:41.080 I go out and live my life for a while.

01:34:43.140 The world then changes me because of the way I've been changed.

01:34:46.080 I come back and I see things in Plato I didn't see before.

01:34:49.400 And then I go back to the world.

01:34:51.040 The thing is, what I-

01:34:52.220 The Bible does that for people.

01:34:53.620 Yes, and that's why the Bible is sacred.

01:34:56.140 And what Plato, I think, argues, and what Taoism argues, and I think Christianity argues, where there's also the book of nature.

01:35:04.840 There's always the two books of Revelation.

01:35:06.540 You can actually experience that with respect to nature.

01:35:09.660 I don't particularly like that term, but you can experience that with, right, where the world is sacred.

01:35:13.400 I think introverts do that in particular.

01:35:16.120 That's a hypothesis of mine.

01:35:17.640 And I don't have evidence for it, but I've noticed my introverted clients need to be renewed by nature.

01:35:22.960 And it's something that seems-

01:35:25.320 So if extroversion is adaptation for the social world, in some sense, is it possible that introversion is adaptation for the natural world?

01:35:33.080 That strikes me as a plausible hypothesis.

01:35:35.440 I mean, that strikes me as-

01:35:36.040 Well, all you introverts out there, you can tell me, if you're introverted, do you find sustenance in nature, differentially?

01:35:41.460 Because I don't think it's true for extroverts.

01:35:43.820 They want to party and be with other people.

01:35:46.240 Yeah, but there's-

01:35:47.160 Sorry, when you said all you introverts out there, I remember somebody, one of former partners, she gave me a-

01:35:52.960 In a group, all you introverts.

01:35:54.620 Yeah, yeah.

01:35:55.560 She gave me a poster.

01:35:56.520 She said, it was like, you know, a propaganda poster, you know, introverts of the world unite quietly alone in your room.

01:36:05.820 You know, John, in my classes, I used to segregate my classes into groups based on extroversion and introversion.

01:36:13.100 Really?

01:36:13.460 I'd ask them to, yes, because I had them debate, and so I put all the introverts together, and then they would debate, because the most extroverted would talk, right?

01:36:24.640 But it worked wonderfully, and the students appreciate it, so it's something, I'm humbly considering that it's something to contemplate.

01:36:31.400 It worked extremely well when I had them debate, because otherwise the introverts, you know, they're always likely to say the right thing a second later, and so they don't get to talk, because the most extroverted leaps up, and that was almost always me, you know.

01:36:43.620 The most extroverted leaps up and says the thing.

01:36:46.680 That's really helpful to me, because I'm trying to understand this machinery of dialogos, and I'm trying to understand the things that come in.

01:36:54.120 Obviously, there's the cognitive factors, there's attachment factors.

01:36:57.880 I hadn't given enough thought to personality factors.

01:37:01.820 That's good.

01:37:03.360 That's very good.

01:37:05.100 Thank you.

01:37:05.880 That's something.

01:37:06.220 Yeah, well, I think the whole cognitive field hasn't given enough thought to personality factors, because they haven't realized that motivation and affect are manifested in personality.

01:37:14.560 Well, I'm trying to respond to that.

01:37:15.480 Because they set goals, right?

01:37:16.560 Well, great.

01:37:16.980 I know, I see that.

01:37:18.440 I'm so thrilled about it, and I wish you every success, and it looks like you're tromping away, man.

01:37:23.780 Well, more specifically, I'm trying to get a paper published that tries to integrate relevance realization theory, cognitive theory, with, you know, big five personality theory, making use of work of a shared student, Colin DeYoung.

01:37:39.720 And so, tell me about that.

01:37:44.900 Oh, well, the idea is, you know, well, I mean, it's a long argument, but to, so receive it charitably, because I'm just giving you the gist.

01:37:54.520 But the idea is, you know, Colin's idea about the meta traits of stability and plasticity, they tend to, well, I should be more cautious, because I'm making a proposal, theoretically.

01:38:06.520 A plausible way of understanding that is that they map onto the meta constraints that are working within relevance realization of efficiency and resiliency.

01:38:15.280 And so, you can see in a lot of machine learning that what you're doing is trying to get the system to improve its problem-solving learning ability by constantly trading between efficiency and resiliency.

01:38:25.820 And that tends to, you know, push towards stability and consistency.

01:38:29.040 Is that a consequence of the fact that when machines were taught to identify penguins or birds and fish, and then they were given a penguin, it blew the prediction system?

01:38:40.200 It comes, yeah, it goes way back.

01:38:41.860 It goes back to Jeffrey Hinton.

01:38:43.320 Because that's where I derived the idea from the difference between plasticity and stability to begin with.

01:38:48.540 And it's in, it's in, it's in.

01:38:51.100 So, you heard that, did you, I derived the idea from that, from the sources that you're citing as its corollaries.

01:38:58.660 That's, yeah, I mean, that's great.

01:39:00.860 It was from Greenberg, I think.

01:39:02.620 Greenberg, I think.

01:39:04.700 That, that's very convergent.

01:39:06.560 So, thank you for that.

01:39:07.640 Okay, yeah, okay, okay.

01:39:08.780 I mean, and you, you might want to know that, you know, because he was a colleague of both of ours, Jeffrey Hinton at U of T.

01:39:16.520 I mean, that basic idea, what the paper I published on relevance realization in 2012 basically attributes that core idea to him and his wake-sleep algorithm for deep learning.

01:39:26.420 So, long story short is there's, and you're, you're, you're, you're reinforcing it, which, thank you, I appreciate that.

01:39:33.200 There's this growing convergence between sort of what machine learning is saying about, you know, opponent processing, and then, you know, the, what personality theory is saying about the kind of opponent processing between stability and plasticity.

01:39:45.620 And so, the, and then what we're trying to do is say, right, there's a, there's, there, we can take sort of embodied cognitive science and properly integrate those together.

01:39:57.080 And then there's a, there's an additional idea, which is that personality, there's, might be an aspect of which it's affording not only individual cognition, but it might be, and this is, this goes back to your classroom example, I think.

01:40:12.800 It might be also a way of affording distributed cognition, improving relevance realization, because you can see the various traits as moving subpopulations to emphasize stability, others to open things up.

01:40:27.480 And so what, so personality is simultaneously helping to glue cognition together within the individual, but also glue distributed cognition together, which goes back to your point about the role of personality, right?

01:40:38.880 That would, that would, that would explain to some degree, the existence of the niches of the, because imagine that there's niches, obviously, that these personalities fill, because otherwise they wouldn't be useful.

01:40:50.540 And exactly.

01:40:51.240 The niches are valuable.

01:40:52.740 Your claim, in some sense, is that the niches are valuable because they both expand and stabilize the, the map.

01:40:59.960 The analogy to biological selection is, is, is intended in the work.

01:41:05.220 So you're picking up on it.

01:41:06.600 Yeah, it has to be, if you're thinking, well, it has to be, if you're thinking it's going to go anywhere, right?

01:41:14.380 I think so too.

01:41:15.540 I think so too.

01:41:16.280 Yeah.

01:41:16.500 Well, this is why I was interested in your reaction to the idea that, you know, we're selecting on the basis of logos, because that's a, well, you know, you've been talking about the metaphysical status of consciousness.

01:41:29.520 And that's what drove me to, to bring that issue up because the issue of God, in some sense, hinges on the issue of the metaphysical significance of consciousness.

01:41:38.940 That's what it looks like to me.

01:41:40.060 I think that's right.

01:41:40.580 Do you think that's right?

01:41:41.940 I, I, I think it's right in that this way, it depends.

01:41:46.100 I mean, I don't want to do the simple party trick of what depends what you mean by God, but what I'm trying, what I'm saying is.

01:41:51.380 I, I, I, I, I, I think there, I don't think.

01:41:55.960 Or real.

01:41:56.300 It depends on what you mean by real.

01:41:57.780 But when you ask questions like that, is God real?

01:41:59.900 It depends on just as much on what you think is real as what you're asking about God.

01:42:03.580 Exactly.

01:42:04.120 And here's the, here's the, here's what I will say as a claim.

01:42:07.220 I do not think we are going to solve, and I mean that in cognitive scientific terms, the problem of consciousness without addressing fundamental ontology.

01:42:17.460 I've been arguing for that.

01:42:18.400 Yeah, that's, because that's where, where, um, the consciousness field studies has got it wrong.

01:42:24.520 Consciousness isn't the fundamental mystery.

01:42:26.420 Reality is the fundamentally, fundamental mystery.

01:42:29.140 And the secondary mystery is the relationship between consciousness and reality.

01:42:33.260 Because is it, is it a primary relationship?

01:42:36.280 That's the fundamental ontological question.

01:42:38.620 And one of the offshoots of that is, well, well, how can you, where is the reality without consciousness?

01:42:44.760 Like, I haven't been, that's that objective world that's out there without us.

01:42:50.380 But what is it that's out there without us?

01:42:53.340 Without, forget us, consciousness.

01:42:55.580 Well, and that's, and what people, what people need to hear is that one of, this is an odd sentence because, but one of the most exciting areas.

01:43:07.120 It's going to be one of many, John, so like, rock them up, man.

01:43:10.440 One of the exciting areas within, you know, metaphysics right now is the rise of what's called speculative realism.

01:43:18.280 Yeah, right.

01:43:19.480 And, and, and what's called object-oriented ontology.

01:43:23.240 And it's, it's, it's, it's like object-oriented programming as a metaphor.

01:43:27.400 I won't go into it, but the primary thing that they're on about is they say, look, if you are going to be a realist, again, I'm compressing a lot into very little, but if you're going to be a realist, you have to admit into your metaphysics relationships between things that are, do not depend for their existence on us being aware of those relationships.

01:43:48.620 So, yes, things have to be able to influence and disclose each other in a way that is dark to us.

01:43:59.040 And then what's that?

01:43:59.880 It's like dark matter, dark matter on the, on the, on the metaphysical edge.

01:44:03.560 Yeah, exactly.

01:44:04.460 Yeah.

01:44:04.480 And what does that mean?

01:44:05.520 Well, what, it's interesting.

01:44:06.920 You know, it, it means, it means to some degree that you can pick up the orbit of the earth using Foucault's pendulum.

01:44:14.600 Yeah, it means that.

01:44:15.980 You know what I mean?

01:44:16.700 Right.

01:44:17.180 What I mean, it means that because somehow the all is embedded in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the singular.

01:44:25.060 I got what you meant.

01:44:25.900 And you see that with Foucault's pendulum.

01:44:27.960 Sorry.

01:44:28.360 I, I, yeah, I was, I was playing between, I was just, there was two reference in my mind.

01:44:33.400 There was the, there was the, the historical thing and then there was the book, right?

01:44:36.980 And I said, oh, okay.

01:44:38.740 Right.

01:44:39.440 Um, and, and so, yeah, I think that's right.

01:44:41.480 And, and, and, and, you know, people like Morton.

01:44:44.060 And so then that, that brings up the question is, is there a, is there a distinction between the unknown real and, and the unconscious?

01:44:54.200 That's Jung's question of the Munis Jungus, I think.

01:44:58.480 But that's why I asked you earlier about an unconscious in the world, Jordan.

01:45:01.960 That's why I asked you earlier.

01:45:03.060 I know, I know, John, that's exactly why I'm bringing it up.

01:45:05.640 Yeah, exactly.

01:45:06.520 So is the unconscious in the world, then the, then, you know, the corollary question, obviously, obviously, is the unconscious in the world striving to make itself conscious?

01:45:16.280 Well, well, I don't know about that, but let me answer something that I think you're going to love from a Jungian perspective, which is what, how Harmon talks about it.

01:45:23.340 But I'm going to use this language, but I think it's fair to him.

01:45:28.260 He thinks the only way, so he picks, the idea he has, and I think there's something fundamentally right about this, is objects are not only shining in, phenomenon, but they are also withdrawing.

01:45:41.520 They are always, they're inexhaustible, right?

01:45:44.500 So they are simultaneously shining into our intelligibility, but they are always withdrawing into their reality.

01:45:52.660 Right, because every object is more than it appears by an infinite amount.

01:45:56.740 And that's partly what you experience in experiences of awe in the inanimate.

01:46:02.020 Yes.

01:46:02.540 Right, because the infinite is contained somehow within the finite.

01:46:06.500 Okay, this is great.

01:46:07.700 So here's a proposal he has that the only, and it goes towards my claim of a participatory kind of knowing.

01:46:17.700 The only way I can really participate in, right, in the withdrawal of this object into its unconscious, because if I'm conscious of it, I've defeated the very thing I'm claiming, is how I can relate to my own unconscious.

01:46:32.660 The way there's aspects of me that withdraw beyond my consciousness, but nevertheless shape and make an impact.

01:46:40.680 My participating in this axis, if you'll allow me a metaphor, allows me, and he means this in a profound sense, symbolically, aesthetically, to participate in the realness of this object.

01:46:53.220 That's the kind of stuff that's going on right now in speculative realism.

01:46:58.620 Let's get back to your four-tier.

01:47:03.960 I have to digest that in ways that I'm not going to be conscious of.

01:47:09.680 I don't know how to follow that with the appropriate question.

01:47:14.280 It's the depth within that allows you to appreciate the depth without.

01:47:18.160 It makes me think of the Psalms.

01:47:20.060 I mean, it's the verse, you know, the deep calling to the deep.

01:47:23.480 And that's not you calling, right?

01:47:25.300 That's what I mean about the transjectivity.

01:47:26.800 Yes, well, that's also akin to the metaphor of rescuing the father from the underworld, because we're constantly doing that.

01:47:35.280 So the father is in the inner underworld, always, as a consequence of our reflection of the external, social and natural worlds.

01:47:44.500 Ah, so I didn't see that in when you've talked about that before.

01:47:48.460 You're seeing a deep kind of resonance between those, where each discloses the other.

01:47:53.860 Well, you saw it.

01:47:55.340 I'm just pointing out my vision of it, I suppose.

01:47:59.880 Yeah.

01:48:00.440 I'm wondering if that's the analogous vision.

01:48:02.960 Yeah, I think that's right.

01:48:04.540 I think that's right.

01:48:05.720 I think...

01:48:06.380 You know, and it's...

01:48:07.780 Yeah, we're rescuing...

01:48:09.500 As we're rescuing...

01:48:09.960 It's the discordance, see, it's interesting, because it's the discordance between the map and the reality that drives the seeking of the father within, right?

01:48:19.820 Because...

01:48:20.100 Yeah.

01:48:20.740 You see what I mean?

01:48:21.860 Because when your desire does not manifest itself and you despair, you call to the father within to reveal himself.

01:48:33.380 Yeah, yeah.

01:48:33.800 And so that's the rescuing of the father from the dragon of chaos.

01:48:39.960 So you...

01:48:41.480 And you're kenotic, right? 0.97

01:48:42.800 Because you're this...

01:48:43.800 You're kenotic. 0.83

01:48:45.100 You know, you're your books behind you, but...

01:48:47.800 Which is why you array them behind you in no small part.

01:48:50.400 But as you said, in your own defense, when you're putting your ideas forth, I'm just the gist.

01:48:55.540 Yeah, yeah.

01:48:56.080 There's another t-shirt.

01:48:58.640 But that's the same idea as kenosis.

01:49:01.500 Yeah, I know, the emptying.

01:49:03.800 And I'm deeply interested in the relationship between kenosis and henosis, because...

01:49:09.160 I don't know henosis.

01:49:10.360 Oh, henosis is the...

01:49:11.800 It's horrifying and great to talk to someone who knows a whole bunch of things I don't know at all.

01:49:18.780 Oh, thank you, Jordan.

01:49:19.780 That's quite the compliment coming from someone like you.

01:49:25.420 Henosis is the... 0.88

01:49:28.000 Hen, one.

01:49:28.720 It's the summation of the Neoplatonic anagoga, the Neoplatonic ascent, whereby the one within you becomes one with the one without until there is only the one.

01:49:43.260 It's ultimate at onement.

01:49:44.640 And also, it has the sense of atonement, because it's the ultimate healing of that which is most existentially distressing to us, which is our being separated from the ground of reality within and the ground of reality without, and also separating those...

01:50:01.840 Yes, that is what is most existentially distressing to us.

01:50:05.000 You agree with that?

01:50:06.380 Yes.

01:50:06.520 So, that's why I titled my next book, the title that I am titling it, which is We Who Wrestle With God, because that's our fundamental problem, is that dissociation.

01:50:18.800 I believe that's the case.

01:50:20.800 So, that calls something forth for me now, the wrestling.

01:50:23.960 But then that means that...

01:50:25.340 Okay, please, please go ahead with that first.

01:50:27.240 What I was going to say is, you know, we're talking about this bivalence of how reality presences it to itself.

01:50:34.160 This is Heidegger's big thing, right?

01:50:35.520 And there's a sense in which it shines into our intelligibility, but it also withdraws, right?

01:50:41.780 Right, right, right.

01:50:43.000 It's moreness.

01:50:44.740 It shines with its suchness, and it withdraws into its moreness.

01:50:49.420 And wrestling is like that, if you think about it.

01:50:51.820 Because wrestling, I'm making contact, but I'm also being surprised.

01:50:55.360 Think about the two phenomenologies of our sense of realness.

01:50:59.500 One is when things are confirmed, and oh, it's real, because look at how it all fits together.

01:51:03.860 Right, right, right.

01:51:04.400 And then the other is, oh, geez, I didn't know that.

01:51:06.860 I didn't know that.

01:51:07.580 That surprises me.

01:51:08.640 That's right.

01:51:09.220 That's right.

01:51:09.700 That is the two things that are the most real.

01:51:11.980 Isn't that something?

01:51:13.460 Yeah.

01:51:13.700 And wrestling is both of those.

01:51:16.100 And notice it's a conformity metaphor, too.

01:51:18.460 Right?

01:51:18.660 You have to come into conformity.

01:51:20.600 Literally form yourself to the body of your opponent.

01:51:23.200 Right?

01:51:23.560 And you're...

01:51:24.000 Right.

01:51:24.080 So there's the shining, but there's also the realness, because they're shocking you from

01:51:28.160 beyond.

01:51:29.240 I hadn't picked that up on the wrestling metaphor.

01:51:31.600 The wrestling metaphor is actually pointing to...

01:51:34.700 It brings together, right, the two ways in which reality grabs us.

01:51:39.800 The confirming from within, and the surprising from without.

01:51:44.880 So that's why we're spoken to in parables, isn't it?

01:51:48.520 I think so.

01:51:49.120 It takes us thousands of years to make them conscious, and then we keep doing so, and we

01:51:53.640 keep doing so, to make them more and more conscious.

01:51:57.000 I mean, it took...

01:51:57.840 You know, taking apart Genesis like that was really revelatory to me, because... 1.00

01:52:02.260 But I differed from the atheist, because I approached the text with reverence and ignorance 0.98

01:52:07.700 and humility, believing that I was nothing in comparison to what it contained.

01:52:13.300 You thought that there were truths available through transformation, not just through information 1.00

01:52:18.360 Well, what are we, stupid? 1.00

01:52:19.860 Are we stupid? 1.00

01:52:21.120 Is that why we were guided by this book for so many thousands of years and preserved 1.00

01:52:24.500 it? 1.00

01:52:25.120 Is it because we're stupid? 1.00

01:52:26.920 Yeah. 1.00

01:52:27.200 I don't think so.

01:52:28.260 Yeah, I think...

01:52:28.800 So maybe that means there's something I don't know about it. 1.00

01:52:31.120 It's parable, we're all stupid. 1.00

01:52:32.900 Either I'm stupid, which is highly probable, or we're all stupid, which is not so highly 1.00

01:52:37.200 probable. 1.00

01:52:37.680 I think...

01:52:38.680 I think...

01:52:39.680 Well, I mean, as I've said, I think one of my deepest criticisms of the new atheists 1.00

01:52:45.940 is precisely the fact...

01:52:48.540 I think I have a lot of criticisms of theism, too, because of the way it has bound itself.

01:52:53.220 I mean, current theism, it has bound itself to a Cartesian conception of modernity and reality.

01:53:00.460 And that's why...

01:53:01.240 Go into that.

01:53:01.840 Go into that.

01:53:03.380 Well...

01:53:03.780 I want to talk to you about dogma and spirit a bit, but let's leave that.

01:53:07.220 Go into what you just said.

01:53:08.600 Okay, so I'm going to put a...

01:53:09.600 I'm going to say thing, I'm going to put a pin in it, because we're still trying to

01:53:12.240 do the four P's of knowing.

01:53:14.020 But the new atheists lose the three other P's, and they lose... 0.99

01:53:19.460 They look for scientific knowledge in the Bible, not paying attention to how it cultivates 0.98

01:53:24.860 wisdom.

01:53:25.380 And the fact...

01:53:26.260 Right, and not knowing that there's any difference between scientific knowledge and wisdom.

01:53:29.940 This is what I talked about with Stephen Fry recently, because Stephen, who...

01:53:33.780 who's allied with the atheists, knows that there's such a thing as wisdom, which is why

01:53:38.080 he pursues and embodies myth.

01:53:40.240 But he's annoyed at the Church because of its dogma, and he confuses the Church with its

01:53:45.960 dogma.

01:53:46.840 Exactly.

01:53:47.420 You know, I'm also going to say a few positive things about dogma.

01:53:50.940 Dogma is the map.

01:53:52.660 I think dogma is...

01:53:54.600 You know, in signal detection theory, I think dogma is the inescapable need to set the criterion.

01:53:59.720 At some point, you can't...

01:54:02.100 Like, in signal detection theory, you have to set the criterion.

01:54:05.500 And all you do to set the criterion, this sounds like Pascal, is you assess the relevance

01:54:10.000 of the risks.

01:54:10.920 Because if you...

01:54:11.660 Well, I'll gather more information.

01:54:12.880 But then you have to set the criterion for that.

01:54:14.860 Yes, yes, exactly.

01:54:15.840 Right again and again.

01:54:16.460 And at some point...

01:54:17.400 Yes, that's right.

01:54:18.200 That's right.

01:54:19.240 But you shouldn't...

01:54:20.180 Okay, so the criterion we're talking about is the worship of that ultimate spirit.

01:54:25.280 Well...

01:54:25.780 That's the setting of the criteria.

01:54:27.520 And there's a dogma...

01:54:28.500 There's an element in which dogma serves that.

01:54:30.600 So we can't just...

01:54:31.920 Because Fry says, well, I like the spirit, but not the dogma.

01:54:34.720 It's like, no, because...

01:54:36.000 No.

01:54:36.760 Because you have to make a decision.

01:54:38.740 That's your point.

01:54:40.040 Okay, that's right.

01:54:41.040 And in every act, there's a decision.

01:54:42.720 So in every act, there's a worship of the dogma.

01:54:45.220 Because you set the criterion.

01:54:46.960 Right.

01:54:47.120 But you set the criterion, but that's not the same thing as making the connection.

01:54:49.980 Don't forget that credo is later, and I say, should always be in service to religio.

01:54:56.940 Religio, which means to bind. 0.76

01:54:58.980 That's that connectedness we've been talking about throughout.

01:55:02.020 And the point about setting the criterion, and this is like a William James thing to say,

01:55:07.120 the point of setting the criterion is to get as reliable a continuity of religio as you possibly can.

01:55:13.360 And when credo goes from giving your heart to I assert, we stop conceiving of credo in a way that sees it intricately in service of religio.

01:55:26.120 And that's a part of my critique of what's happening.

01:55:29.260 Okay, so that seems to lead wisely into the four areas that you were going to discuss.

01:55:34.460 Well, yeah.

01:55:35.700 So I went back to, we have propositional, and then of the non-propositionals, we have procedural,

01:55:41.280 then we have perspectival having to do with consciousness, and then finally we're down to the kind of knowing that we keep bumping up into,

01:55:48.940 which is the knowing, I'll use sort of a Gibsonian way of talking about it,

01:55:53.220 the knowing that creates affordances that makes all the other knowings possible, right?

01:55:58.640 There's a way in which biology and culture and my online cognition shape me and shape the world so that they fit each other.

01:56:10.040 I mean, this is Geertz's even notion of what culture is.

01:56:13.020 It simultaneously models the world to me and models me to the world.

01:56:18.520 That's the participatory level.

01:56:20.260 I use a metaphor from Geertz, Chris and I do in our work, right, of the agent-arena relationship,

01:56:25.980 which is like your forum for action, right?

01:56:28.560 That what participatory knowing does is it gets you to assume certain, like it's a process of co-identification,

01:56:36.600 what the Stoics talk about.

01:56:37.840 I assume an identity as I'm assigning identities to things such that affordances between me and it emerge.

01:56:44.180 I'm a grasper.

01:56:45.460 That's graspable.

01:56:46.720 That's an affordance.

01:56:47.660 And therefore, I can come into relationship with the cup.

01:56:50.040 That's the level of participatory knowing.

01:56:52.620 And that grounds everything else because without the affordances, you can't get any of the other kinds of knowing going.

01:56:58.700 You can't get a grip.

01:56:59.860 Yes.

01:57:00.280 You can't get Marloponte's optimal grip.

01:57:03.080 So here's what I would say.

01:57:04.860 The participatory knowing gives you a field of affordances.

01:57:08.820 The perspectival knowing makes certain affordances salient to you perspectively.

01:57:15.000 That gives you a situational awareness.

01:57:16.980 The situational awareness tells you which skills from your procedural knowing you should bring to bear.

01:57:23.000 And then once those skills are in action, you are getting the right kind of causal interaction with the world for your propositional evidence.

01:57:31.380 I don't think that you realize how much you pack into those statements.

01:57:36.640 Maybe you do.

01:57:37.440 I mean, I know you thought about each of them for years.

01:57:41.300 But, you know, there's a lot.

01:57:44.980 It's like the cup metaphor you use.

01:57:47.160 There's a lot lurking behind the scenes there.

01:57:49.140 And you hit your listener with that when you lay out that.

01:57:54.600 So I'm going to ask you to do that again, if you would.

01:57:56.720 And I'm going to listen to it again.

01:57:58.460 I'm happy to do so.

01:57:59.640 And I know that my passion.

01:58:01.320 Assuming that if I don't understand it, there are probably a few other people who don't.

01:58:04.720 I think that's a fair assumption.

01:58:06.140 That's a fair assumption.

01:58:07.860 And I do not want my entheos to undermine my attempts at logos.

01:58:13.780 So we'll put it that way.

01:58:15.800 So the participatory knowing.

01:58:19.320 You know, we participate in affordances.

01:58:21.660 It generates a field of affordances for us.

01:58:24.080 Okay.

01:58:24.320 So let me stop you there.

01:58:26.240 Okay.

01:58:26.660 So my value structure determines what field of affordances manifests itself to me.

01:58:34.360 Depends.

01:58:35.080 So tell me more about what you mean by value structure.

01:58:37.320 Because if you mean.

01:58:37.940 Well, value is the determinant of my attentional resources.

01:58:43.640 I'm going to attend to that which I believe is most valuable.

01:58:47.460 And so I have a value hierarchy lurking in the background.

01:58:50.180 That's in that deep unconscious, let's say.

01:58:52.340 But that value hierarchy should be predicated on the manifestation of the highest spirit.

01:58:58.340 So what I should want to afford itself to me are those affordances that afford me the opportunity to pursue the path of the highest spirit.

01:59:05.660 If I'm oriented properly.

01:59:07.600 If I'm worshipping properly.

01:59:09.400 Yes or no.

01:59:11.480 Sorry, it's not a command.

01:59:13.420 You mean definitively or ultimately?

01:59:14.220 Because there's a difference there.

01:59:15.160 I mean, so like.

01:59:18.220 I probably mean both.

01:59:20.000 Failing to distinguish between them.

01:59:21.560 But, I mean, in the ideal.

01:59:24.400 But that would be the ideal that I would be, what would you say, inclined to pursue if I were conscious of its existence.

01:59:30.480 So.

01:59:31.200 I would say.

01:59:32.140 Let me see if I can.

01:59:33.000 Let me see if I can map this.

01:59:34.160 Because this is interesting.

01:59:35.720 Because I'm using the term affordance.

01:59:38.220 Because it's become one of the central terms within.

01:59:40.320 I understand.

01:59:41.460 Yeah.

01:59:42.000 Great.

01:59:42.460 Well, I didn't know that either.

01:59:43.700 That means that.

01:59:44.960 Yeah, yeah.

01:59:45.200 Yeah, yeah.

01:59:45.220 That.

01:59:45.960 Well, why?

01:59:46.820 Because that work was shelved.

01:59:49.440 I mean, I became enamored of it when I encountered it.

01:59:51.780 But that work was, in some sense, shelved for a very long time.

01:59:54.580 Well, there's a personal reason.

01:59:55.660 And there's a collective reason.

01:59:56.520 The personal reason is I was lucky to study and enter into collaboration with one of Gibson's great protégés, John Kennedy.

02:00:04.020 And so that's how I learned to appreciate this.

02:00:08.440 The field as a whole, because of the notion that cognition is not in your head, it's between you and the world, that cries out for the notion of affordance.

02:00:18.140 Right?

02:00:18.240 It cries out for it.

02:00:19.160 And so it's had its influence now.

02:00:21.080 Yes.

02:00:21.520 Or increased.

02:00:22.220 I mean, it had its influence to begin with.

02:00:24.000 More than influence.

02:00:24.540 It's now a central construct within 4E cognitive science.

02:00:28.520 Central construct.

02:00:29.200 Now, the idea, and I think this lines up with you, but let's see.

02:00:35.160 Because the idea is, like, I don't have to be conscious, right, of the affordance relationship between me and the cup.

02:00:42.420 That's given by me having a particular kind of body, the cup having a particular kind of location.

02:00:48.320 Now, but what you're saying is...

02:00:49.360 You're conscious of it.

02:00:50.320 You're only conscious of enough to make use of it.

02:00:53.600 You're only conscious of what's necessary in order for you to make use of it.

02:00:57.280 If that didn't work, you'd have to become conscious of more of it.

02:01:01.260 Right.

02:01:01.900 But, okay, I'm trying to get some...

02:01:04.020 Maybe I'm worried that we're talking at cross purposes.

02:01:08.660 What I need to say is, right, there is a constitutive...

02:01:15.960 I'm going to use your term.

02:01:16.860 There's a constitutive value of adaptivity, and that my affordances arise for me precisely because of the kind of adaptive agent I am.

02:01:28.880 So, for example, to use Gibson's example...

02:01:30.980 Or want to be.

02:01:32.140 Or want to be.

02:01:33.300 Right.

02:01:33.640 Or want to be.

02:01:33.840 I'm not sure it's what I am, or if it's my...

02:01:36.100 I'm not sure if I'm directed by who I am or I'm directed by my ideal.

02:01:40.120 I think I'm directed by my ideal because it's in the space of desire.

02:01:44.820 That's the thing.

02:01:46.080 Yeah, but...

02:01:48.120 Because, John, are your affordances affording you, or are they affording who you could be?

02:01:54.540 But I want to say both.

02:01:56.420 Right?

02:01:56.780 I don't...

02:01:58.060 Okay.

02:01:58.880 Right?

02:01:59.340 I want to say...

02:02:00.120 Okay.

02:02:00.420 Right?

02:02:00.800 Because I want to be able to say that...

02:02:04.900 Both is sufficiently radical.

02:02:06.560 Well, I mean, I think that's...

02:02:09.880 We'll have to talk about...

02:02:10.720 But I mean, we are investigating the claim in some sense that the world calls you to become.

02:02:16.200 Yes.

02:02:16.980 So...

02:02:17.180 Right?

02:02:17.620 So the ideal is implicit in the affordance.

02:02:20.880 But I would also put the Heideggerian thing on it.

02:02:23.200 My Dasein, my way of being in the world, also calls things forth from the world.

02:02:27.600 Yes.

02:02:28.380 Those are...

02:02:29.020 This cup is not graspable to a fly.

02:02:31.820 Right?

02:02:32.000 It doesn't...

02:02:32.760 Right.

02:02:33.040 It doesn't...

02:02:34.120 That agent-arena relationship doesn't exist for the...

02:02:37.320 And no matter what the fly wishes or wants, that's not going to be the case.

02:02:40.600 I want to say that there are things that are the case for me that play a constitutive role

02:02:47.300 in the affordances that are available to me.

02:02:49.760 That's what I want to emphasize.

02:02:52.360 Yes.

02:02:52.820 Well, that's the dogma element as well.

02:02:55.320 Perhaps.

02:02:55.820 That's the element of structure.

02:02:57.320 It's the element of setting the criterion.

02:02:59.580 It's the element of what already is.

02:03:02.740 And it's respect for that.

02:03:04.780 But it's also the element of, you know, that the world is also shaped independently of me,

02:03:11.340 sometimes by culture, sometimes by technology, but sometimes by nature itself, such that I

02:03:16.820 can make a purchase on the world.

02:03:18.340 I want to resist the romantic notion that the world is a blank slate that I simply express

02:03:23.640 myself upon.

02:03:24.880 The world has its own structure that constrains and puts demands on me.

02:03:30.460 So sometimes we work with that.

02:03:33.600 Yes, as revealed in our errors.

02:03:36.100 Well, yeah, exactly.

02:03:37.380 And if this cup didn't have what Spinoza would call its canatus, its structure, its resistance

02:03:44.080 to force, I couldn't use it to hold water, et cetera.

02:03:48.580 That's what I meant.

02:03:49.440 So let's say that a participatory knowing generates the affordances, and we've got some

02:03:54.940 variation on that that we're playing around with.

02:03:57.560 But then what I would say is the perspectival knowing makes them salient to me.

02:04:02.500 So this is graspable right now to me, and I foreground it.

02:04:05.660 I size it up.

02:04:07.000 I salience landscape around it.

02:04:09.200 It's present to me now in the way that other affordances are not present to me.

02:04:13.660 Okay.

02:04:13.840 Why is that different than what we just discussed?

02:04:17.000 I don't think it's different, but what I wanted to make room for was the distinction

02:04:21.320 between them, because I wanted there to, I mean, I think you would agree with it.

02:04:26.520 I wanted there to be an unconscious level at which we know the world, at which the world

02:04:35.500 and I are being co-shaped together.

02:04:37.700 We talked about that before.

02:04:40.580 And so that's what I'm trying to make a place for with the participatory knowing.

02:04:47.000 I want to make that it precedes us in an important way as sort of self-aware beings.

02:04:54.600 Perspectival knowing.

02:04:55.240 The room is there before you walk into it.

02:04:57.560 The room is there, but also my body.

02:04:59.580 I mean, this is the big thing about embodiment.

02:05:01.280 It's taking the body deeply, seriously as a constituent of my cognition.

02:05:04.940 If I didn't, I didn't make my body, right?

02:05:07.580 I participate in it.

02:05:08.400 I can shape it.

02:05:09.220 I can move it.

02:05:09.960 But it's given to you in a sense as well.

02:05:13.060 It's given to me, exactly.

02:05:14.100 And that givenness gives, it constrains the way in which the world can be given to me.

02:05:20.160 That's what I'm trying to say.

02:05:21.440 And I want to make a deep, I'm for you.

02:05:24.220 That's the definition of reality.

02:05:26.620 Well, yeah, at least the one sense we were talking about earlier.

02:05:31.800 But I take embodiment deeply, seriously.

02:05:35.940 And so another way of putting it is participatory knowing is knowing at the level of our embodiment.

02:05:40.080 You know, I think that's why the Christians emphasize the resurrection of the body, by the way.

02:05:43.920 I mean, what Jonathan said about the Christians emphasizing the body and the goodness of the world over against the Gnostics. 1.00

02:05:50.480 I'm a little bit worried about that term because Gnosticism wasn't a group of people.

02:05:55.300 It's more like a style of religiosity, like fundamentalism.

02:05:59.220 But I get his point.

02:06:00.420 Like there were certain, at least the Valentinians.

02:06:02.260 Yes, well, I mean, it really struck me, that valorization of the body, this insistence across.

02:06:10.240 And this is something, again, I would say that the new atheists don't appreciate at all. 1.00

02:06:13.900 It's like, well, the resurrection of the body.

02:06:15.460 Well, what does that mean?

02:06:16.240 It means profound respect for the body.

02:06:19.400 It means attributing to the body the value of the spirit.

02:06:23.840 But it means something psychologically, which is what you're getting at here.

02:06:28.140 Which is, your consciousness is not separate in some sense from the body.

02:06:34.500 Yeah.

02:06:34.820 So the participatory knowing is at the level of embodiment.

02:06:38.760 And then your consciousness, your state of mind makes certain affordances salient to you.

02:06:45.020 That's what situational awareness is.

02:06:46.520 That's what the whole psychology of situational awareness is.

02:06:49.040 Like, how do people pick up on the affordances that are available?

02:06:52.180 How do they make them present?

02:06:53.360 How do they also present themselves to it, right, that co-presencing?

02:06:57.600 And that's what you're looking, and it's funny, talk about realness.

02:07:00.180 That's what you're looking for in the video game.

02:07:02.000 You know, it's not verisimilitude that predicts that sense of presence or how real the game is.

02:07:07.380 Right.

02:07:07.780 Well, you can tell that if you watch The Simpsons.

02:07:10.140 Or play Tetris.

02:07:12.000 Tetris relies on the person.

02:07:13.620 Yeah, gives people a sense of presence.

02:07:16.420 It's not based on verisimilitude.

02:07:18.180 What it is, is they're getting into a flow state.

02:07:21.340 They're picking up on affordances.

02:07:23.500 They're making them salient.

02:07:24.800 They're getting a dynamic, flowing situational awareness.

02:07:28.480 Music does that, too.

02:07:29.360 Yes, exactly.

02:07:30.460 And music is how we do serious play with our salience landscaping.

02:07:34.440 Okay.

02:07:34.580 She says there's a casual outside.

02:07:38.220 So that's the perspectival knowing.

02:07:41.640 Once we have situational awareness, what does situational awareness do?

02:07:44.820 Situational awareness basically tells you which skills should you bring to bear.

02:07:49.020 Is swimming relevant here?

02:07:50.740 Well, no.

02:07:51.380 Well, how do I know?

02:07:52.140 My situational awareness.

02:07:54.220 So that's the perspectival knowing.

02:07:56.180 That's your ability to read the story.

02:07:58.820 Well, yes.

02:08:00.000 Right.

02:08:00.560 Exactly.

02:08:01.480 So which skills should you bring to bear?

02:08:03.340 That's the procedural knowing.

02:08:05.460 Once you've got your skills engaged, and this is the fundamental point of the pragmatist,

02:08:09.380 right?

02:08:09.580 That it's your skilled activity that undergirds your propositional.

02:08:14.240 Once the procedural knowledge is properly engaged, then...

02:08:18.040 That's what understand means.

02:08:19.480 Yes.

02:08:20.080 Yes.

02:08:20.520 Right.

02:08:20.820 Exactly.

02:08:21.020 Yes.

02:08:21.660 So that's what I'm doing.

02:08:22.620 You see, I'm trying to build it up participatory, right?

02:08:25.960 Into perspectival, into procedural, into propositional.

02:08:30.680 And the new atheist and modernity and all of this stuff is locked in a propositional tyranny, 1.00

02:08:35.820 and it's cut us off from all of this.

02:08:37.980 And cutting us off from this cuts us off from the body, cuts us off from the primary connection

02:08:42.800 And that propositional tyranny, is that best encapsulated in the idea that there's nothing

02:08:50.260 outside the text?

02:08:51.720 Well, I think that's right.

02:08:52.880 Except, you see, so I've read Derrida deeply, right?

02:08:57.240 Except, right?

02:08:58.500 And, you know, and Derrida, you know, I forget who wrote the book, Semilogical Reductionism.

02:09:05.140 You know, he's open to this kind of critique.

02:09:08.140 Derrida, of course, has something outside of the text, which is difference itself, right?

02:09:12.440 And that's the whole point.

02:09:13.440 Differance can't be captured in the text.

02:09:15.020 It can't be separated from the text.

02:09:16.380 But so he has this doorway.

02:09:18.380 And that's why he gets attracted so much to negative theology.

02:09:21.960 That's why, well, I would argue that's why...

02:09:24.360 Negative theology, what do you mean?

02:09:25.980 So negative theology was part of Neoplatonic Christianity, heavily influenced by the ineffable 0.97

02:09:32.200 experiences that people have within mystical experiences, which is ultimate.

02:09:37.180 And it's also based on a critique of, you shouldn't think of God as a thing, right?

02:09:42.420 This is the no-thingness of God, not the nothingness, the no-thingness.

02:09:46.100 We should also talk about the confusion of those contributes to nihilism, but we'll maybe

02:09:49.560 come back to that another day, right?

02:09:51.580 So the idea of negative theology is you fundamentally...

02:09:57.800 I wonder if this is like Jung's circumambulation.

02:10:01.040 You fundamentally understand God by saying what God is not, but not, of course, randomly,

02:10:06.560 right?

02:10:07.200 What you're trying to do is...

02:10:08.740 Oh, that's sort of like the God of the gaps.

02:10:10.940 Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

02:10:13.800 Oh, sorry.

02:10:14.580 No, no, that's...

02:10:15.180 Don't apologize.

02:10:15.820 Guys, we're friends talking.

02:10:18.920 Well, I don't want to derail the conversation, so...

02:10:22.700 It's been like this, and it's been wonderful.

02:10:25.360 It feels to me like doing Tai Chi.

02:10:28.480 No, it's more that...

02:10:30.120 It's more of a recognition of...

02:10:32.680 Not of the God of the gaps, but of a recognition how our categorical scheme is always inadequate.

02:10:39.660 So, for example, is God an object?

02:10:41.480 Well, no, that's wrong.

02:10:43.000 Is God a subject, like the way we are?

02:10:45.060 No, that's wrong, too.

02:10:46.500 That's inadequate.

02:10:47.180 So, God is...

02:10:48.040 Well, God escapes our categorical...

02:10:50.040 Right.

02:10:50.520 God is, by definition, in some sense, what escapes our categories.

02:10:54.060 Because God is supposed to be the grounding of the intelligibility that makes the categorical

02:10:58.380 scheme possible.

02:10:59.480 At least that's the...

02:11:00.220 Right, but God is also present within the category scheme if it's set up properly.

02:11:04.460 Right.

02:11:04.860 So, the point about negative theology...

02:11:06.640 That's why it's not just the God of the gaps.

02:11:08.320 The point is to see...

02:11:08.900 I see, I see, I see.

02:11:10.020 ...is to see within the category...

02:11:11.560 That it's present within the categories, but it's not capturable within the categories.

02:11:15.060 That's what you're trying to do with...

02:11:16.680 Right, the category...

02:11:17.380 Yeah, yes, the reality supersedes the categories, which is why you're not supposed to make idols,

02:11:22.180 why you're not supposed to make representations of God.

02:11:24.420 But you can make icons, to summon Jonathan back into the conversation one more time.

02:11:28.420 You can make icons, right?

02:11:29.980 And you've got John Luke Merrion's distinction between the idol and the icon.

02:11:33.260 And what's the distinction?

02:11:34.820 The distinction is...

02:11:35.600 The icon does not capture God.

02:11:37.480 Right, that's exactly it.

02:11:38.640 That's an artwork.

02:11:39.380 So, an artwork is an icon.

02:11:41.200 Exactly.

02:11:41.760 And a propaganda is an idol.

02:11:43.600 Yes.

02:11:44.500 I would agree with both of those statements.

02:11:46.600 Well, isn't that something?

02:11:47.820 Because they're really, in some sense, far astray, aren't they?

02:11:50.880 But they do map.

02:11:51.880 And so, how cool is that?

02:11:53.360 So, art is the icon.

02:11:56.020 How cool.

02:11:57.140 And propaganda is the idol.

02:11:59.100 Exactly, man.

02:12:00.160 You know, and I had these paintings in my house, and they were melds of the icon and the idol.

02:12:04.960 Well, there you go.

02:12:05.340 Because there's all this socialist realism.

02:12:07.020 I have 200 pieces of socialist realism, watching the icon and the idol fight with each other.

02:12:12.920 And the problem is, they are, and I want to get the etymology of this word,

02:12:18.140 they, at a superficial level of similarity, they can easily be confused.

02:12:22.920 Yes.

02:12:22.980 They can easily be confused.

02:12:24.900 Okay.

02:12:25.380 Yes.

02:12:25.740 Well, I would say they will inevitably be confused in the absence of God.

02:12:32.260 Well, and I...

02:12:33.140 Because propaganda, like this is something I've been working on too, John, is that, you know,

02:12:38.160 that we make religious the next thing on the hierarchy if we don't give to what is religious its proper place.

02:12:45.800 And I think the new atheists are beginning to realize this. 0.66

02:12:48.200 It's like, oh, look at that.

02:12:49.720 We didn't eradicate the religious spirit.

02:12:51.320 No, it just moved somewhere else.

02:12:52.520 It just moved somewhere else.

02:12:52.880 It just moved somewhere and becomes pathologized by its association with that.

02:12:57.600 This is Tillich's critique of ideology.

02:13:00.620 I'm sorry.

02:13:01.380 Well, of ideology, because I think ideology is a form of idolatry.

02:13:05.020 But this is Tillich's critique of idolatry, which is...

02:13:08.740 We cannot, and I think you've said things along this discussion that point to this,

02:13:13.940 we cannot, we cannot abandon our ultimate concern, right?

02:13:18.380 That's his, that's his way of understanding.

02:13:19.660 Yes, that's right.

02:13:20.340 We can't.

02:13:21.180 No, we can't.

02:13:21.680 So this isn't a negative discussion, this isn't a negative definition of God either,

02:13:25.920 because to get back to your negative theology point,

02:13:29.360 I've been concentrating in my thought recently on the positive attributes of God.

02:13:34.020 And so like to drive towards unity in the motivational hierarchy.

02:13:38.680 That is so neoplatonic, Jordan. 1.00

02:13:40.520 I mean, my gosh, that is so neoplatonic.

02:13:43.460 Well, you know, we were all unconscious avatars of great philosophers,

02:13:48.120 and some less unconscious than others, but it's still there.

02:13:51.440 And so, but you can't do away with that drive to unity.

02:13:55.940 And in some sense, you also can't critique it,

02:13:58.020 because when we say the good, we assume that there's a unity between goods.

02:14:02.340 I think, yeah, this is Plotinus's transmoral notion of the good.

02:14:05.680 And you and Jonathan talked about the transmoral notion that there's, right?

02:14:09.980 He says, look, any sort of moral or aesthetic goodness is ultimately based on the goodness of being.

02:14:15.220 And he says, when are we attributing being?

02:14:18.420 He says, we attribute being the more we find that there's a oneness of something.

02:14:23.340 And when we understand, we are bringing things.

02:14:26.580 So the knowledge is a process of oneness.

02:14:31.560 And what we're doing is we're conforming to the reality, which being is a process of wanting.

02:14:38.040 And when those are at one, that is when the heart starts to become, starts to rest from its suffering.

02:14:45.040 And I think there's something fundamentally right about that.

02:14:48.720 Can I ask you something?

02:14:49.820 Because I think I'm getting you.

02:14:51.240 And what I heard you saying is like, let's take the metaphor of the idol and the icon fused.

02:14:58.380 And if there isn't something beyond them, you can't actually pull them apart.

02:15:03.020 That's what I'm hearing you say.

02:15:04.380 Yes, they collapse into one another.

02:15:06.100 Look what happened with the deification of Stalin and Marx and Lenin and Mao.

02:15:11.500 That's not accidental.

02:15:12.720 It's inevitable.

02:15:13.720 And we have the deification of celebrities.

02:15:17.120 And we have the deification of products.

02:15:19.280 And we have the deification of ideologies.

02:15:21.380 And what I wanted to say, just before we lose the thread of Derrida, is for Derrida, you know how we were talking about how it's transcategorical, but also present within the—that's what difference is, at least my reading of Derrida.

02:15:34.540 It's within the text, but it also points to that which can't be reduced or captured in the text.

02:15:40.720 That's why I think he—because otherwise, like, why is he attracted to negative theology?

02:15:45.580 What's going on there?

02:15:46.360 What's the interest?

02:15:47.100 So you'll have to delve into the difference idea a bit more and flesh it out for me.

02:15:51.740 I know it's key to Derrida's thought, but it's a long time since I've thought about it.

02:15:55.020 And so what's your—what's the current, let's say, cultural understanding of difference, and what's your understanding of it?

02:16:02.860 Well, okay, I don't know if those two are identical.

02:16:05.180 That would be—

02:16:05.660 I don't think they are.

02:16:06.540 That's why I wanted you to talk about both of them.

02:16:09.880 I think Derrida and Foucault are often invoked and very, very rarely read.

02:16:15.820 I think—so when you're asking me about the cultural, I think that that is by and large the case.

02:16:22.820 I think there's an invocation of ideas or themes from them, but that the hard work of wrestling with their arguments is often not done.

02:16:33.480 So I hesitate to say what the cultural—because I think—I don't hear when deconstruction is invoked.

02:16:43.700 I don't hear—I don't hear difference being talked about or spoken about.

02:16:49.260 I hear—I hear—and so I hear deconstruction being reduced to a kind of demolishment as opposed to what I think Derrida wanted it to be.

02:17:00.440 I'm not—I'm not here to defend Derrida either.

02:17:02.360 I have criticisms of Derrida.

02:17:03.560 But I think if we're going to criticize Derrida, I spent years literally working with it.

02:17:11.740 This is my understanding of difference, to answer your question.

02:17:14.360 So the idea of difference is—it has to go at the—it's basically like John Searle's argument that semantics is not reducible to syntax and pragmatics is not reducible to semantics.

02:17:26.620 It's that whenever I'm saying anything, the way you understand it is how it differs from other things, contrast, class.

02:17:36.760 So when—you know this from psychology—well, maybe it's been a while, but, you know, when you ask people, what are some things that are flammable?

02:17:43.780 Well, they'll say wood because it contrasts with metal and stone.

02:17:47.080 They won't say people, right, even though people are flammable because it doesn't belong to the contrast set, right?

02:17:52.200 That's the sort of standard.

02:17:54.600 So we understand something in terms of its contrast, something it differs from, but we also defer.

02:18:02.860 What we do is we go to the other thing, and we get some information that isn't in, and we bring it back to often insightfully reinterpret.

02:18:11.300 So we're both differing and deferring whenever we're understanding anything, which means we can't limit the interpretation of the text to just what is captured within the proposition.

02:18:26.080 The text.

02:18:26.380 Yes, exactly.

02:18:26.900 Well, no, definitely—of course not.

02:18:28.480 Of course not.

02:18:29.160 I mean, the text has a reader.

02:18:31.560 Yeah.

02:18:31.760 It's like there's—I've thought about this.

02:18:34.120 There's a word.

02:18:34.900 There's a phrase.

02:18:35.720 There's a sentence.

02:18:36.480 There's a paragraph.

02:18:37.660 There's a chapter.

02:18:38.560 There's a book.

02:18:39.280 There's a library.

02:18:40.460 That's—

02:18:40.740 Yeah, well, that's built into you.

02:18:42.900 You're the reader.

02:18:43.740 You're the reader bringing the consequence of multiple texts to this text, and the text is therefore the interaction between those—that multitude of texts speaking within you and this current text.

02:18:54.560 It's a dialogue.

02:18:55.860 Right.

02:18:56.120 The text is a dialogue.

02:18:57.600 That's right.

02:18:57.980 It's a dialogue between the—if it's done properly, it's a dialogue between the universal human spirit that engages the golden thread across time and this current text.

02:19:06.860 And that's philosophia.

02:19:09.580 Yes, I agree.

02:19:11.380 So—and—

02:19:12.980 And you can tell when you're doing that because that's the meaning.

02:19:16.020 That's meaning.

02:19:17.060 So I think that—

02:19:18.260 Do we agree on that, by the way?

02:19:20.720 I—

02:19:21.040 Because we're both so concerned with meaning.

02:19:22.740 Is meaning the manifestation of the philosophia?

02:19:26.360 I think meaning—

02:19:27.280 In its highest form, I would say, then.

02:19:29.620 I would say I understand meaning when we're not talking about sort of semantic propositional meaning.

02:19:35.660 Yeah.

02:19:35.740 When we're talking about the meaning that goes into meaning in life and makes life bearable.

02:19:39.620 Yeah, yeah, that meaning.

02:19:40.980 So I think—

02:19:42.100 The non-propositional meaning.

02:19:43.820 Yes, exactly.

02:19:44.840 Right.

02:19:45.580 Fair enough.

02:19:46.140 Because meaning is ultimately—

02:19:46.740 The experience.

02:19:47.500 When we say meaning in life, we're using meaning as a metaphor.

02:19:50.360 We're saying there's something about—there's something like sentences that's like between me and the world, right?

02:19:55.420 And I think we have to remember that that's what we're doing.

02:19:59.320 Yeah, I think that meaning is—

02:20:01.360 Meaning is the connectedness, the dynamic affordance that allows us to optimally grip the world,

02:20:10.420 and thereby affords the cultivation of wisdom.

02:20:12.760 If we think of wisdom not just as a knowledge—

02:20:14.740 Okay, okay, so that—well, that's the driving spirit of the West, not power.

02:20:21.460 Right.

02:20:22.020 When it's—look, I mean, we deserve to be criticized.

02:20:24.840 I'm not saying that.

02:20:25.860 I'm not saying that things are above criticism and that power doesn't play its nefarious role,

02:20:30.920 because it certainly does.

02:20:31.840 And so does the love of power, all of that.

02:20:33.940 Yeah.

02:20:34.120 And it leads to terrible consequences.

02:20:36.180 But we're actually trying to analyze that, and we're trying to say, look, it's—you have to pursue wisdom.

02:20:41.700 And you find it in—you find the pathway to wisdom in meaning, in the manifestation of meaning as an experiential phenomenon.

02:20:49.000 I agree with that.

02:20:50.180 And I think—I mean, a few minutes ago you sounded like Derrida, and I don't mean that as any kind of insult.

02:20:55.680 Well, now you're sounding like Heidegger.

02:20:56.880 I mean, the question concerning technology was the whole idea that we have reduced our relationship to the world as a relationship of power.

02:21:05.460 And we even think, right?

02:21:06.840 Oh, that's his claim.

02:21:08.020 I see.

02:21:08.600 I see.

02:21:09.060 I didn't understand that.

02:21:10.440 Exactly.

02:21:10.620 That's the fundamental claim.

02:21:12.260 And so we—

02:21:13.740 Power, control.

02:21:14.540 Oh, that's why David Suzuki criticizes the West and Genesis, because he sees that—he's responding to that mastery as control phenomenon, power.

02:21:26.980 Yes.

02:21:27.480 Right?

02:21:27.740 Rather than the dance.

02:21:29.640 Heidegger—

02:21:29.920 But I think when it's done right, it's the dance.

02:21:31.880 He's—Heidegger is worried that the dance will be reduced to power, which I suppose mixes dalliance with Nazism all that more. 0.57

02:21:39.220 Yeah.

02:21:39.880 Well, I think Ralkowski is right.

02:21:41.860 A warning.

02:21:42.600 A warning.

02:21:43.540 Yeah.

02:21:43.780 If Heidegger—if Heidegger had kept to his original reading of Plato, instead of turning and making Plato sort of the villain in his story of the history of nihilism, Ralkowski makes a great argument that that is what sort of sensitizes Heidegger to the Nazis.

02:22:01.580 So Heidegger basically gets Platonism.

02:22:04.600 He gets it, and then he inverts his interpretation, and it looks for kind of suspicious reasons that he does that, and then he recaps Plato.

02:22:11.920 So I also wonder, too, should we take Heidegger's turning to Nazism as an indication of his corruption, or as a dreadful warning about the dreadful attractiveness of precisely such things to the unprepared mind? 0.54

02:22:24.840 Well, I—

02:22:25.620 I mean, Heidegger's a mind to contend with, so that's a terrible warning.

02:22:30.000 For sure.

02:22:30.360 And I mean, Heidegger's deep reading of—see, yeah, I mean, you know, people have wrestled with this, you know, like Ralkowski, like Derrida, about just, like, why does Heidegger end up here?

02:22:44.120 And, well, like I said, I think Ralkowski makes a very good argument.

02:22:48.840 But it's deeply perplexing, because what's happening in Heidegger—Heidegger reads Nietzsche very deeply, and then what he sees is he sees that he wants—he wants to reconstitute fundamental ontology so that our primary relationship to being is not will to power.

02:23:11.860 He wants to get outside the power framework, which is the question concerning technology and all of this stuff.

02:23:18.140 And, you know, my friend Johannes Beterhauser—

02:23:21.020 Yes, and that's driving the positive side of the environmentalism movement as well, right?

02:23:25.920 Let's say the desire for a dance rather than for the imposition of power.

02:23:29.960 This is Heidegger appropriating Eckhart's term, Gleisenheit.

02:23:33.220 Gleisenheit is this idea of letting be, not in the passive sense,

02:23:38.820 but the way you let your partner be when you're dancing together, right?

02:23:43.220 The affording, the affording.

02:23:46.000 And Heidegger says what we've done is we've—instead of that, we've turned everything into what he calls standing reserve.

02:23:52.600 Right, we're tempted.

02:23:54.200 Aha, I see.

02:23:55.140 That's the standing reserve idea.

02:23:56.820 It's for the consumption of power.

02:23:58.700 Yes, yes.

02:23:59.560 And then our only relationship—and this is Fromm's critique, right?

02:24:02.720 The modal confusion that we are trapped in the having mode.

02:24:05.280 But you'd say then it would be a propositional materialism that would lead to that outcome,

02:24:10.480 because if it's dead matter that we're dealing with, then that's the logical consequence of that.

02:24:16.280 That's the logical moral consequence of that.

02:24:19.660 What would you say?

02:24:21.960 It's a stance that's supposed to be outside the moral world, right?

02:24:26.260 So the objective world is dead material.

02:24:28.720 Well, what do you do with dead material?

02:24:29.960 You store it for—are you not inevitably tempted to store it for the consumption of power?

02:24:36.320 Exactly, exactly.

02:24:37.480 That's—you have—that's—I mean, that's the core of the Heideggerian critique.

02:24:44.300 And then the idea is, can we recover ways of being, ways of knowing that put us into—and this is a religious notion.

02:24:52.760 So then why did he turn to Nazism, if that's what he wanted to recover? 0.55

02:24:56.300 Because—

02:24:56.500 There's a romanticism about extremist movements that the propositional world doesn't grasp.

02:25:02.200 Maybe that has something to do with it, but it still doesn't explain to me why he fell prey to it.

02:25:06.420 So, I mean, I think he—and we have to remember, because we're misled by the Nazi war machine to understand how much of a nature movement Nazism was, how much a return to nature, how much the body, how much this was about getting outside of the creation intellect.

02:25:31.560 There was immense nature romanticism in the precursors to Nazism.

02:25:35.800 Yes, yes.

02:25:37.440 Right, and it included eradication of foreign species when they were introduced into the natural environment.

02:25:45.000 And there was a nature as purity, that dimension, that came out of that.

02:25:51.400 Nature as purity.

02:25:53.000 Yeah, and that's a very complex idea.

02:25:55.900 So you think Heidegger was attracted by the nature romanticism?

02:26:01.720 I think he was attracted by the nature romanticism.

02:26:03.660 I think he was attracted by the original—I mean, we forget this, too, because of the later deals that Hitler made. 0.79

02:26:11.420 But, you know, and this is why—what's the leader of the brown shirts?

02:26:16.080 I can't remember.

02:26:17.020 The essay—

02:26:17.400 Osley?

02:26:18.280 Osley?

02:26:18.960 No, no.

02:26:19.580 Where?

02:26:20.280 Oh, Mussolini.

02:26:21.780 I can't remember.

02:26:23.080 He's German.

02:26:23.820 And he called for a—once the Germans—when the Nazis had taken power, he called for the Second Revolution. 0.59

02:26:30.560 The Second Revolution against the capitalists and against the technology.

02:26:36.060 Nazism really— 0.73

02:26:36.680 Kampse-Nir? 0.96

02:26:37.940 No, I think it's something like Rom or something like that.

02:26:41.180 The head of the essay, the brown shirt.

02:26:43.080 Okay, okay.

02:26:43.700 Well, I guess it doesn't matter.

02:26:44.680 Okay, so there's a secondary revolution.

02:26:46.680 Okay, please expound.

02:26:47.880 And that's why he's assassinated in the Night of Long Knives, because Hitler realized that if the Second Revolution happened, he would piss off, right, the industrialists. 0.73

02:26:57.740 He would piss off the technology that he needed.

02:27:01.680 And so that's why—that's one of the reasons for the Night of the Long Knives, when they're all assassinated.

02:27:07.660 And we have to remember that—

02:27:08.620 Because the Second Revolution was being plotted?

02:27:11.760 He was off—the guy that was with the head of the essay was pushing for the Second Revolution, right?

02:27:16.940 And because—

02:27:17.300 Okay, and the Second Revolution.

02:27:18.600 Sorry, I need to know more about that, because this is something I don't know, obviously, enough about.

02:27:22.920 Well, so if you read Heidegger, there's not only—there's a nature romanticism, but there's also an agrarian romanticism.

02:27:32.120 There's that getting back to the soil.

02:27:35.080 Notice the, you know, blood and soil also.

02:27:37.500 Getting back to the soil and getting back to the earth and—right?

02:27:42.300 That's—

02:27:42.820 And so that's all a call out of the propositional, but it's a pathological call out of the propositional.

02:27:47.580 Very much so.

02:27:48.160 Or it becomes pathological.

02:27:49.820 Yes.

02:27:50.100 Maybe that's because it doesn't find his proper expression in logos, because I often think of Hitler—Hitler uses his logos antithetically, right?

02:27:58.340 He has a gift, the gift of the word, but he perverts it and subverts it to the service of power.

02:28:03.820 And then these—

02:28:04.580 I think that's right.

02:28:06.060 I think that if Heidegger had stayed with his original reading, which he was lecturing on all, you know, through the 20s and into the 30s, Rolkowski argues,

02:28:14.160 if he had stayed with that original reading of Plato, he would have stayed sensitive to the logos in the way Tillich did.

02:28:21.080 Like, Tillich got it.

02:28:22.400 Tillich is the first non-Jewish academic to be persecuted by the Nazis, and he eventually leaves.

02:28:27.640 Because he gets it.

02:28:28.760 He gets the logos.

02:28:30.100 He really gets it.

02:28:31.580 What does he get, exactly?

02:28:33.000 He gets that the attempt to separate, using our language, the logos from the love of being and the capacity to love other people.

02:28:46.000 And sorry, this sounds like a Hallmark card, but I think we've talked enough that these words won't just be heard trivially.

02:28:51.220 That the attempt to separate—I mean, and this is what Christians do. 1.00

02:28:55.560 That's when you can tell you've talked enough when such words are not to be heard trivially anymore.

02:28:59.700 Yes, that's a very good thing to say.

02:29:03.020 Yeah, I like that.

02:29:04.360 Tillich gets, if you're trying to separate love from logos, agape from logos, that you are malforming logos.

02:29:13.440 And that's why you have all of this sort of crypto love going on within the Nazis. 0.69

02:29:20.560 There's even the homoeroticism, which is so bizarre given the other aspects of the Nazi ethos.

02:29:26.860 At least that's what I would argue.

02:29:27.800 You can drive nature out with a pitchfork, but she always comes roaring back in.

02:29:32.480 Yeah.

02:29:33.220 And Heidegger was also—I think he thought, like many people, that he could somehow manage this.

02:29:43.880 Right?

02:29:44.220 I think he—see, one of my big critiques of—see, Heidegger has always been attracted to sort of nebulous gravitas.

02:29:52.320 Right?

02:29:53.280 The mystery, and it's important.

02:29:56.660 And that's wrapped up with his own building of his own mystique, that I am the great thinker, that I know how to constantly move forward.

02:30:05.460 Oh, that's interesting.

02:30:06.740 So, I see.

02:30:07.600 So, you think he also got caught up in a kind of egotism that the Nazis called to.

02:30:12.220 Yeah.

02:30:12.380 That's interesting, because that's a very dangerous thing for a thinker, because the first thing you should think, if you're a thinker, is that what you don't know is a lot more than what you know, and you almost know nothing.

02:30:23.260 And so, you don't want to—

02:30:25.260 Socratic humility.

02:30:26.680 Yeah, well, you know, in Jung's relations between the ego and the unconscious, he discusses that in great detail, how to not be taken over by—with the ideal, once you're beginning to allow it to manifest itself within you, or even when it forces itself upon you, to never identify with the sun.

02:30:43.260 You're not the sun.

02:30:44.120 You might be revolving around the sun, but you're not the sun.

02:30:47.940 Yeah, Icarus.

02:30:48.500 S-U-N, and so— 0.67

02:30:51.620 Yeah, and Plato says you can only, like, in the analogy of the cave, you can only glimpse the sun, and then you're supposed to return down.

02:30:57.600 Right, right, right.

02:30:58.780 Classic hero myth.

02:31:00.040 Yeah, the egotism.

02:31:02.900 Rakowski argues that—he does some of Heidegger's letter around the period when he's turning in his interpretation of Plato, and while he sort of—he says, you know, this is, you know, paraphrasing with scutters,

02:31:18.500 considerable liberty, but Heidegger basically says, you know, I'm having trouble.

02:31:23.100 I'm sort of worried because I'm really understanding Plato, and there's nothing for me to say.

02:31:28.620 There's nothing for me to say.

02:31:30.240 And then he turns—

02:31:31.080 Heidegger says that.

02:31:32.580 Yes.

02:31:33.460 And then he turns, and then he says, no, no, wait.

02:31:36.060 There's nothing for my ego to say.

02:31:38.580 Yes, right.

02:31:39.880 And then, no, no, Plato is actually the villain of the story of the history of metaphysics.

02:31:45.340 Plato turns being into metaphysics and launches us down the road.

02:31:51.080 So he finds a convenient demon and puts himself in as a counterposition.

02:31:58.340 Yeah, and I think that desensitizes him to the Socratic dimension. 0.53

02:32:01.720 And that's driven by egotism.

02:32:04.140 Yeah.

02:32:04.420 And that's the hook for the Nazis. 0.92

02:32:06.500 I think so.

02:32:07.400 And I mean, and one of the things—

02:32:10.340 Well, the inner totalitarian has to welcome the outer totalitarian.

02:32:14.600 Oh, that's well said.

02:32:16.100 That's very well said.

02:32:17.300 I like that.

02:32:18.260 Yes, well, that's what makes me skeptical about people who claim that power structures human relations.

02:32:24.300 Is that a proposition or a confession, dear sir?

02:32:28.300 Hmm.

02:32:28.660 And, you know, I had this really interesting experience, John.

02:32:32.000 I was debating Slavoj Žižek.

02:32:33.900 Yeah.

02:32:34.240 And I started with a critique of the Communist Manifesto, which, according to my critics, only indicated my rabid ignorance of Marx.

02:32:41.200 But despite that, I thought it was a central document in all of my ignorance.

02:32:46.420 And I talked about its call to bloody violent revolution.

02:32:50.160 And a quarter of the audience laughed and cheered.

02:32:52.920 And it stopped me in my tracks for like five seconds.

02:32:57.500 I thought Freud should be here, and Jung as well, to hear the Freudian slip, but to hear the collective unconscious manifest itself so clearly in the relative secrecy of the crowd.

02:33:12.080 And so is it that power structures human relations, my dear Marxist postmodernists, or is it that that's the inner totalitarian within you cheering the outer totalitarian on and justifying it?

02:33:25.780 Because if power is the fundamental motivation, then why shouldn't I use my will to power as my fundamental motivation?

02:33:32.660 Or if I do use my will to power as my fundamental motivation, why shouldn't I justify that by the criticism that that is, in fact, once the blinders are off, the central human motivation, and therefore I'm entirely justified in my attempts, just like all the great people throughout time?

02:33:51.100 And that's what's riveting our culture apart, I believe.

02:33:55.160 I think, yeah, I mean, I think the glorification of power, I would say that they're just like...

02:34:04.560 The deification, the deification of power as the ultimate motivational personality.

02:34:11.560 But I would say that that has a considerable history, you know, and I think it goes back to the rise of, you know, the scientific revolution and the understanding of God.

02:34:23.940 I mean, it predates the scientific revolution.

02:34:26.020 When you get the nominalism of, you know, of Scottis and Ockham and say there are no real patterns in the world, you denude the world of Logos, and then you understand yourself and God as will, as will, right?

02:34:44.980 For me, and I talk about this in the series, that's the fundamental, there's a fundamental change.

02:34:49.060 Look at how rapidly things, like, look at it by the time of Shakespeare.

02:34:52.880 God is just this sort of, this absurd power that's on the fringes of intelligibility.

02:34:59.120 And that's somebody who's as sensitive to cultural depth as Shakespeare, and he's getting it.

02:35:04.180 He's really getting it.

02:35:05.160 It's like, what happened?

02:35:06.440 And if you're a feared author, by the way, you could equally say, I've read and understood Shakespeare, what is there left for me to say?

02:35:13.060 Yes.

02:35:13.460 And you'd be equally wrong and equally right.

02:35:16.240 Yeah, I think.

02:35:17.560 So, I mean, I think that there, when we talked about this around the notion of dogma, I mean, if you understand, if you don't understand faith in the way it is in the Old Testament, faith is to be coupled to God, married to God.

02:35:38.760 It's more like faithfulness than it is the assertion of belief without evidence.

02:35:45.300 Yes, yes, definitely.

02:35:45.780 But when you move to that notion of faith, and we now use the word belief, and we forget that it originally comes from the German belieben, right, belieben, to give your heart to something.

02:35:53.960 But we now understand it as assertion.

02:35:57.000 And what is assertion?

02:35:58.100 It is an act of will.

02:35:59.560 So at the heart, right, at the heart even of our theology, we have the will to power.

02:36:05.820 And that's why Heidegger's critique of Nietzsche—

02:36:08.700 Rather than the will to humility?

02:36:10.500 Or what Aquinas was trying to save, which is love, right, love is when the will is moved by something outside of the will or something like that.

02:36:21.460 But, you know, that's why Heidegger's critique of Nietzsche is so profound.

02:36:28.160 I mean, now to say something positive about Heidegger, right, because Nietzsche says, well, you know, here's this structure of Christianity, and all Nietzsche does is invert it.

02:36:38.480 And the will to power is in both.

02:36:40.880 And Heidegger says, no, no, no, you're still bound to it insofar as you're just negating it.

02:36:45.360 What you have to do is, right, try to get outside of it.

02:36:48.860 You have to break the shared presuppositions of both sides.

02:36:53.220 I say something similar with—I think that I want to break free from the shared set of presupposition between the modern theists and the modern atheists.

02:37:02.220 That's why I call myself a non-theist, because I think non-theism is the attempt to say the shared presuppositions are ultimately misframing our relationship with sacredness, and we need to get beyond them.

02:37:13.720 And it's not only a philosophical argument.

02:37:16.680 The mystics, I would say, converge in a position that's very much like non-theism.

02:37:22.580 John, I'm going to stop us there.

02:37:24.640 Yeah, that's fine.

02:37:25.720 That's a fine closing statement, and good, because I'm done.

02:37:31.580 Thank you very much.

02:37:33.220 It's an inexhaustible conversation, and I appreciate you participating in it very much.

02:37:38.900 Well, thank you for having me.

02:37:41.140 I've been a great proponent of yours, you know.

02:37:45.620 Thank you.

02:37:46.160 I mean that in the sense of noting the greatness that's in you and seeing how it's manifested itself, especially in your relationship with your students, and noticing that and having admiration and respect for that.

02:37:59.780 And I respect your work, and I disagree with it in parts, but we've always been able to do that in a way that is born with affection and respect.

02:38:09.100 Well, God, it's always nice to find someone who disagrees with your work who could help correct it.

02:38:14.280 Exactly.

02:38:15.040 I mean, thank God, man.

02:38:16.480 That's why I want to talk to you.

02:38:17.860 I don't like being wrong.

02:38:20.020 And I know you don't.

02:38:21.360 No, exactly.

02:38:22.060 No doubt we're still both pretty wrong.

02:38:25.240 Mostly so.

02:38:26.100 If the history of science is something we should pay attention to, which we should.

02:38:30.600 Yes, or the history of our own life, for that matter.

02:38:33.160 Yeah.

02:38:33.620 All right, John.

02:38:34.800 Thank you very much.

02:38:35.820 Take good care.

02:38:36.500 We'll talk again, man.

02:38:37.940 Definitely.

02:38:38.280 I would like that.

02:38:39.120 I would like that very much.

02:38:39.980 I would like it, too.

02:38:40.820 So we'll set it up.

02:38:41.620 We'll be right back.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - June 28, 2021

180. A Conversation so Intense It Might as Well Be Psychedelic ｜ John Vervaeke

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