242. Solving The Problem Of Human Perception | Cambridge

[0] Welcome to episode 242 of the JBP podcast.

[1] I'm Michaela Peterson.

[2] In November 2021, Dad and I traveled to the UK for his series of lectures at Oxford and Cambridge and a debate on eating meat that I took part in at Oxford Union.

[3] I put the debate online.

[4] One of the women I faced off with literally uttered, every hamburger is served with the side of misogyny.

[5] And I think my dad died a little inside.

[6] This podcast episode's lecture was, given at Lady Mitchell Hall at the University of Cambridge.

[7] Dad spoke about orienting reflexes, artificial intelligence, how perception narrows things from an infinite pool of possibilities, dominant hierarchies, the influence of postmodernism in neurophysiology, which was very interesting, and the relationship between imitation awe and the divine.

[8] He finished the lecture with a really thought -provoking Q &A.

[9] I hope you enjoy this podcast.

[10] What a pleasure it is to see you all.

[11] What a pleasure it is to be here.

[12] But most of all, what a pleasure it is to introduce to you this afternoon someone who has encouraged millions of people, millions of young people in particular, to probe, evaluate, ask questions that are more fundamental than any other.

[13] questions with which every one of us is confronted at some point.

[14] Questions involving meaning, identity, relationship, dignity, what it is to flourish as a person.

[15] He doesn't pretend to have all the answers.

[16] But anyone who has tried walking with him the length of King's Parade here in Cambridge in less than half an hour, will know that he seems to be asking the right questions and he seems to be reaching young minds and young hearts in ways that very few other academics in the world that I can think of come anywhere close to doing he's here in England for a couple of weeks and for most of those two weeks he's going going he has been and will continue to be here in Cambridge.

[17] We are lending him to the other place for a day or two.

[18] And as part of that visit, he has been through what have been at least up until now.

[19] I'll be frank with you, some pretty grueling and critical seminars, research seminars on his work.

[20] And he has opened himself up to criticism.

[21] He has been receptive to it.

[22] He has responded to it.

[23] in an exemplary fashion.

[24] He has also taken part in a public lecture, one last night at Gombole and Keys, hosted by Dr. Arif Ahmed, here tonight, the flagship event at the university.

[25] He'll be speaking in the Cambridge Union tomorrow, the other union on Thursday and Westminster next week.

[26] And in accepting this invitation to come to Cambridge, he has, I think, showed extraordinary graciousness towards an institution that has not been as welcoming to him in the past as it might have been.

[27] Who is our speaker?

[28] He is the Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Toronto.

[29] He is a clinical psychologist.

[30] He's the author of Maps of Meaning.

[31] the architecture of belief, 1999.

[32] He's the author, most famously perhaps, of the popular work, 12 Rules for Life in 2018, that has sold many millions of copies and has topped bestseller's lists in Brazil and Netherlands and the United States and Australia and in too many other countries to mention.

[33] And in the ruins of the multiversity, he is building a metaversity.

[34] His lectures online, these long conversations, with public commentators, religious leaders, journalists, artists, are mesmerizing millions of people a week.

[35] And in doing that, I believe he is part of a movement that is doing nothing less than widening the horizons of the humanities in the modern world.

[36] Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Jordan Peterson.

[37] Well, thank you very much for their kind welcome and all the kind words.

[38] it's been really remarkable to be here.

[39] It's such a wonderful place.

[40] And I hope you all know that.

[41] And it's so beautiful and so deep and so rich and in the best possible way.

[42] And it's been so welcoming.

[43] And it's such a privilege.

[44] It's an unbelievable privilege to have that happen.

[45] So I thank all of you and for your attendance today as well.

[46] And so we're going to try to work our way through a problem today.

[47] today.

[48] It's a problem I've been attempting to wrestle with for a very long time, and in one way or another, whether we know it or not, we're all wrestling with it.

[49] And it's the problem of perception.

[50] Five decades ago, I suppose, the problem made itself explicitly manifest at a deeper level than it ever had before, although philosophers had wrestled with this problem for a very long period of time.

[51] And part of the problem was, how much do we bring to the act of perception and imagination and thought and how much is revealed to us by what we perceive?

[52] We thought we understood that, I would say, well enough to make practical progress after the Second World War.

[53] But there were doubts that bedeviled people operating in all sorts of disciplines that became, as I said, increasingly explicit in those decades.

[54] And I think for me, the most remarkable revelation of the problem probably occurred in the world of artificial intelligence.

[55] I learned about this when I was studying models of cognitive processes that were initially generated by Russian investigators like Sokolov and Vinogradova, who were.

[56] very well -known names in the Russian neuropsychological literature, which is a very academically impressive literature.

[57] They were students of Luria, I think both Vina Gordava and Soklover studies, students of Luria, who was perhaps the greatest neuropsychologist of the last mid -part of the 20th century.

[58] They were convinced to some degree that we built internal models of the world and then compared what was going on in the world to those models.

[59] Sokolov discovered a phenomenon called the orienting reflex, which was an electrophysiological response to error detection or a response to novelty.

[60] That's another way of thinking about it.

[61] And he should have won a Nobel Prize for that, because discovering the instinctual basis of the response to novelty, that's no small thing.

[62] There's a lot of novelty in the world.

[63] And Sokolov really mapped that, in some sense, mapped that onto the body and onto the nervous system in a way that, superseded what philosophers had done before that, because it made it much more concrete and tied it down to the underlying neural architecture.

[64] So, for example, if you're walking down the road and there's a loud noise behind you, and the noises of indeterminate meaning, so perhaps a car has jumped a curb, that's a possibility.

[65] You'll go like that and stop and turn and orient towards the place in the space -time continuum, where your stereo vision has localized the noise.

[66] And you do that really without thinking.

[67] I would say it's an act that occurs outside the domain of free will.

[68] And the reason you do that is because you might die if something unexpected happens, right?

[69] Something that's outside your framework of expectation.

[70] Now, you know your framework of expectation.

[71] You're an ignorant creature.

[72] You don't know everything.

[73] You don't even know that much.

[74] and your representation of the world is actually rather shallow and low resolution.

[75] It's good enough to get you where you want to go most of the time.

[76] But sometimes it isn't, and sometimes it's error -ridden enough, given the circumstances of time and place, that the error will kill you.

[77] And so you're equipped with instinctual mechanisms that orient you towards the source of the revelation of your ignorance.

[78] And that's something very interesting to contemplate I would say physiologically and neurophysiologically, but also philosophically, and I would also say, to some degree, theologically, right, that you have an instinct that orients you to the source of your ignorance.

[79] And you better have an instinct like that, because there may be a shortage of knowledge, but there's no shortage of ignorance.

[80] And that's, you know, part of the problem of the relationship between the finite and the infinite, right?

[81] I mean, we're finite creatures.

[82] We can't know everything.

[83] We can't even know as much as we need to know.

[84] And that means in some sense we have to be able to deal with the fact that we don't know enough.

[85] And one of what Sokolov outlined, at least in part, was the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms that made this orienting reflex possible.

[86] One way you can measure it, for example, is if you put a gadget, a galvanometer on someone's finger, and you play them a sequence of tones when you play them the first tone they'll show quite a response and then the second tone lesser and after that lesser until finally it'll flatline and people thought about that as habituation but the more sophisticated cognitive scientists regarded it as the building of an internal internal model of the stimulus and all its variety of parameters interesting word stimulus will return to that and then if you play someone a different tone, after habituating them to that sequence, the electrophysiological response will reinstantiate itself, or even if you alter the spacing between the tones, the same thing will happen.

[87] And that's all part of this response to novelty and then the mapping of novel territory.

[88] This is unbelievably important this discovery, because you don't learn anything except by encountering it as novelty first.

[89] So it's fundamentally the initial processes of everything you do to learn, everything there is to learn everywhere all the time.

[90] And so like I said, he should have won a Nobel Prize, but people really didn't understand the fundamental significance of this discovery.

[91] And a very influential line of English, British neuropsychology emerged out of that because a gentleman named Jeffrey Gray, who was the most outstanding student, I would say, of Hans Isaac, who was the most cited psychologist research psychologist in the world for pretty much the last half of the 20th century Jeffrey Gray wrote an incredibly brilliant book called the Neuropsychology of Anxiety where he integrated the work the Russians had done which very few people knew about apart from Gray who read absolutely everything the Neuropsychology of Anxiety I think cited 1300 scientific deep scientific papers neurophysiological papers animal behavioral papers like hardcore psychology because there is such a thing and he actually read all those papers and he actually understood them and then he integrated that with Norbert Winer's who is one of the fathers of cybernetics and computer science he integrated that with Norbert Winer's cybernetic theory and with well a raft of of animal experimental material and laid out the neurological basis for the establishment of the orienting reflex and also for the establishment of memory itself it's a tour to force that book was written in 1982 and And psychologists have really only begun to digest the material in that book.

[92] So I read it when I was, well, back in about 1982, very soon, that was 85, I guess, very soon after it was published.

[93] It took me like six months to read it because, well, I had to learn animal physiology and neuropsychoporology and animal behavioral science and cybernetic theory and just along the way to understand what he was talking about.

[94] You know, it's a profound work of philosophy, I would say.

[95] It's probably a necessary work of modern philosophy because we're starting to understand the underlying physiological substructure of many of the processes that have been discussed in the philosophical realm forever.

[96] And so, okay, so what does this have to do with this problem?

[97] Well, back to the AI researchers.

[98] So stemming from Sokolov's work, at least in part, was the idea that there's the world, out there and it's made out of objects and they're sort of self -evident but and what we do is we build an internal model of that world and then we compute trajectories we make maps we compute trajectories we lay out plans that constitute a manipulation of that internal representation and then we act out the representation and it's kind of an empirical idea philosophically speaking and the idea is that sense data is in some sense given to us and from that sense data that given self -evident sense data we build these models and and then that's how we think and that's how we operate in the world and everyone that's kind of folk psychology everybody thinks well that's that's right that's how it is it's no no it's not right at all and that's why we don't have general -purpose robots because what happened to the AI researchers was that they tried to build machines that and built toy environments so imagine you're trying to build a basic robot at least initially You can't model the whole world, so you build toy environments that the AI system can model, and then you have it do simple things in the toy environment.

[99] You couldn't even get the machines to see the toy environments, and part of what was discovered in AI was there were no toy environments.

[100] Well, imagine even if you just have a simple environment that's made out of pyramids and columns, spheres, just simple geometric forms, while you still have the problem of variant lighting, It's like, well, is a pyramid in the morning the same as a pyramid at midday?

[101] What about five minutes past midday?

[102] Or three seconds past midday?

[103] Like, how much lighting, how much illumination change is necessary before the object isn't the same object?

[104] Well, maybe illumination doesn't have anything to do with the object.

[105] Well, that's kind of awkward because then you don't get to see it.

[106] And how is it that we manage to infer the stability of an object to cross transformations of illumination?

[107] And the answer is, we don't know.

[108] And how is it that we're able to perceive objects at all?

[109] Because the other thing that became complicated, and you see this, if you ever use a program like Photoshop, you know, you can see objects in a photo in Photoshop, and the objects appear self -evident.

[110] They have boundaries and borders, but if you zoom in, you can't tell where the boundaries are.

[111] they fade into all the other images that are behind or a head or wherever they happen to be displayed and then while the image is quite different if it's black and white and then you can highlight the colors and expand them and so there's an endless number of things you can do with the single image of anything well you think about what that means there's an endless number of things you can do with a single image of anything well how in the world is perception possible then and the answer is we didn't know.

[112] While at the same time, approximately the same time, the same problem emerged in literary criticism.

[113] And you can see why in some sense, right?

[114] If you can't perceive something even simple in some canonical manner that's self -evident, how in the world can you derive a single reliable canonical interpretation of a given text and then you could multiply the problem you say well it's bad enough for a single text or maybe a single paragraph or even a sentence because sentences are amenable to multiple interpretations and complex sentences in the beginning are susceptible to an endless number of interpretations really endless?

[115] Well, endless is a problem, right?

[116] Because to perceive something, there has to be an end.

[117] So endless is a real problem.

[118] And the cognitive psychologist met in an Aguilar who worked at MIT.

[119] They said a finite number of objects can be grouped in a near infinite number of ways.

[120] Well, you think, well, imagine your books on a bookshelf.

[121] Well, you have the books, and then you have the sequence of books.

[122] You think that's all self -evident.

[123] How are you going to arrange those books?

[124] Well, that's a problem if you've ever tried to sort of.

[125] your library and if it's a big library it's a big problem right you have to invent a very complex and sophisticated indexing system to know where the books are well books on your shelf you think well there's not come on really there's not a near infinite number of ways to arrange them what what are you talking about and that's only the axiomatic self that's the axiomatic structure of your a prior perceptions manifesting itself as self -evident fact to your ignorant mind because that claim is actually wrong So you might say, well, color, thickness, density, age.

[126] How about thickness of paper?

[127] How about the thickness of the spot exactly half an inch below the 35th page in the third chapter?

[128] And you think, well, that's a stupid way of organizing your books.

[129] And I would say, well, how do you know it's stupid?

[130] exactly and not sort of right because you can't just claim self -evidence in this situation because the self -evidence of the stupidity of that categorical structure is actually the mystery and it's the mystery that say post -modernists encountered when they were trying to specify the canonical meaning of a text just a single text a single paragraph single sentence there's a multiplicity of potential interpretations even worse there's a multiplicity of potentially valid interpretations and so how do you do anything but throw up your hands and say well there is no solution to that problem we or at least when this would be better we have no idea how we solve this problem and what would even be better would be we have no idea how we solved it in the past and say that's particularly germane when you think not even necessarily so much about the interpretation of a given text let's say the Bible to take a complex you know problem but the canon of texts itself now the canon of texts the fact that there's canon of text roughly speaking we can we have agreed in the past to some degree on the boundaries of that category although there's plenty of cognitive activity around the edges trying to decide what would fit in and what wouldn't which is exactly what happened for example when people are trying to aggregate the biblical corpus across time because the was of course a library of books what's in and what's out why is it in why is it out well the answer to how we answer that is we don't know how we answer that and there's this process of deliberation let's say that is part and parcel of the process that gives rise to the to the aggregation of a library of text into a corpus but we don't really understand the mechanism we don't understand the mechanism at all and that's actually all fine except that we don't have general purpose robots yet all although they probably are more or less around the corner in about five years, partly because the AI researchers solved this problem, and part of the way they solved it, was by embodying cognition, incarnating artificial intelligence in an embodied structure.

[131] And the first people to really propose that that was absolutely necessary.

[132] I don't necessarily know the first people, but I know that an MIT researcher named Rodney Brooks, who, by the way, invented the Roomba.

[133] Some of you may have a Roomba.

[134] And it's kind of a laughable little object.

[135] But not really, because it can sort of move around your house without falling down the stairs.

[136] And your two -year -old can't do that.

[137] So the Roomba isn't nothing, right?

[138] And Brooks was one of the first people who really recognized that to solve the problem of perception, we would have to duplicate the process of evolution in hardware.

[139] And so he started building these little machines that pretty much all.

[140] they did to begin with was scoot away from light and well eventually that became the Roomba which is a pretty useful gadget and you see variants in some sense of what he's done with self -driving cars because they're embodied systems as well right because the car is actually a body that moves from place to place and it turns out that a lot of our perceptions require embodiment and it turns out that one of the philosophical consequences implications of that is is that the way we solved the problem of perception was through 3 .5 billion years or thereabouts of evolution.

[141] And also, that there was no other way of possibly solving it.

[142] And so that's a testimony to the power of evolutionary thinking, I would say, but even more, a testimony to the power of the process of evolutionary development.

[143] And you might think that that reduces human cognition to something sterile and mechanistic, because many of the proponents of the notion of natural selection have adopted a fairly reductive materialism to account for the process of natural selection.

[144] And we're going to talk about that a little bit tonight too.

[145] I hope if I can manage to tie all these things together.

[146] So no perception without embodiment, that's pretty interesting that.

[147] And so I could tell you, I'll tell you a little side neuropsychological story.

[148] So, you know, we tend to think that when we see the world, well, there the world is, and then we see the world, and we see the objects, and there the objects are, but that isn't how it works, and I've tried to explain why, because there's an infinite number of ways of perceiving even the simplest of visual scenes, and then there's auditory scenes, and then there's the problem of smell, and there's the problem of touch.

[149] I mean, these are hard problems, which is why it took, you know, three billion years to solve them.

[150] there's a condition called utilization behavior it's kind of interesting neuropsychological condition and generally if it is affected right -handed people that's relevant here because of lateralization if you have left prefrontal damage you sometimes will engage in utilization behavior and what happens if you're afflicted by this neuropsychological condition is that you lose the ability to inhibit your motor response to the presentation of an object now that's worth thinking about even though it doesn't sound like it's something that's necessarily worth thinking about because what do you mean motor response to an object because we think object thought motor response but that's not how it works the object itself announces its utility in the perception and so what that means is that your eyes which map let's say patterns of arrays, that's a good way of thinking about it.

[151] They map that onto your visual system, but part of your visual system is actually your motor output system.

[152] And so when I look at, let's say, this, this bottle, you think, I think, bottle, hand, grip, drink.

[153] But seeing bottle is hand grip, and hand grip is drink.

[154] And so if you have a utilization behavior, lose the ability to inhibit the motor risk.

[155] to the object, and so if you had this condition, I put a cup in front of you, you would pick it up and drink from it.

[156] And if you walk down a hallway and there's a door open, you will go through the door.

[157] And it's not because you see the object door and think door and then think walk through and then walk through, even though that's what you think you think.

[158] It's that door is a walk through place, and if you lack an ambition, you can't stop acting out the perception.

[159] And so what that implies is that at some direct level, and this is the science, not the philosophy, you don't see objects and infer meaning.

[160] You see meaning and infer objects.

[161] And that's really something.

[162] You can think about that for like 40 years, because it looks like it's true factually.

[163] And that's a strange thing too, right?

[164] It's very strange claim to say that the facts support the notion that the primary, object of perception is meaning, not objects.

[165] And I actually think that's an interpretation, though I won't go into that tonight, that's more in keeping with evolutionary logic than the idea that you perceive objects and infer meaning.

[166] And so the stripping away of meaning metaphysically from the world of apperception that's a consequence of scientism is actually predicated on something approximating bad science.

[167] And that's become increasing.

[168] evident I would say in the neurophysiology of perception and that's an important field given that the problem of perception is the problem that has be deviled both the sciences and the humanities and also in the also engineering for that matter for the last 50 years and it has not only done that it's produced this rivening of culture that's occurred within the universities partly because of the postmodernist claim and so fundamental post -modernist claims now the first claim is that there's no canonical interpretation that's self -evidence like okay fair enough fair enough that's that might be a claim emerging from literary departments English literary departments under the influence of French continental thought let's say I don't think you can take issue with that I think it happens to be the case because the notion that there is a multiplicity of potentially valid interpretations is true what isn't true is the idea that we use power and domination to solve that problem primarily.

[169] And there's no excuse, philosophically, from leaping from a mystery that's utterly profound, which is the problem of perception, to the conclusion that some pathological, socially constructed process is therefore at the basis of the act of perception and categorization itself.

[170] I think that's, I think it's unforgivable cognitively.

[171] And it's cynical beyond belief, and it's corrosive beyond our capacity to deal with it.

[172] I mean, you think about what that claim means, is that the way you solve the...

[173] And that's like an implicit bias argument, by the way, just to make that clear as well, that you solve the problem of categorization by imposing your will to power on the world.

[174] in some zero -sum winner -take -all game of dominion and and and oppression.

[175] It's like you could not, if you tried, you could not come up with a more cynical view of the mechanism that makes order, habitable order out of chaos.

[176] And, but what's sort of delightful about that in some sense is that it's just not true.

[177] literally we could say scientifically if we take scientifically to mean literally we can say it's not true it actually turns out that even in the animal kingdom you know you might think the hierarchies that we use to orient ourselves in that's part of the strategy that we use to guarantee our survival you know we fight tooth and nail with nature red and claw to climb the hierarchies of dominance as a consequence of our will to power.

[178] It's like, no, actually, that isn't how it works.

[179] And so, we all have this image, or many of us, I would say, have an image of chimpanzee troops, let's say, our closest primate relative.

[180] We split from them in evolutionary terms about seven million years ago, something like that.

[181] You can calculate that quite accurately by looking at the mutation rate of genetic material that we share with chimps and calculate the average mutation rate and look at the propagation of mutations and the separation of them.

[182] You can get a pretty accurate estimate of the split.

[183] It's a long time ago.

[184] So we're pretty tightly related to chimpanzees.

[185] And we know that we all know that the biggest, toughest, meanest, male, oppressive chimp rules the troop.

[186] It's like, no, wrong.

[187] Franz Duol has studied dominance hierarchies, so -called dominance hierarchies.

[188] And that's an interesting issue, that that is the term that's most often used, dominance hierarchy, because you might ask, as a very intelligent student of mine once did, just exactly where did that term come from?

[189] And how much political implication was loaded in that right from the beginning?

[190] I thought about that for about five years.

[191] I thought it was an unbelievably, I mean that.

[192] I thought it was an unbelievably acute observation.

[193] He is a very acute fellow.

[194] So the brute chimpanzees, they have a pretty short tyrannical rule.

[195] And the reason for that is, I don't care how big and tough and mean and dominant and oppressive you are, two slightly less mean, oppressive, and dominant males can take you out pretty easily on a bad day.

[196] And that's a real problem.

[197] You think about that biologically.

[198] That's a non -trivial problem.

[199] And so that is exactly what happens in chimpanzee troops, is that the males who rise to a position of authority as a mere consequence of their psychopathic will to power rule very unstabely over very unstable troops and have a very short ruling period.

[200] Whereas the males that manage to, because in chimps, the fundamental hierarchy is male -dominated.

[201] It's less obvious in another set of very close primate relatives, the Bonnebogues.

[202] They're more female dominated, interestingly enough.

[203] And it isn't obvious which of those two species were more like.

[204] But I'll concentrate on the chimps now because we're talking a little bit about will to power.

[205] The males who manage to maintain a relatively stable coalition, let's say, are actually very affiliative.

[206] In fact, they groom other males more than any other males in the troop.

[207] And so they're using reciprocal altruism, at least in part, as the basis of their claim to dominion.

[208] Now, they do have preferential mating access to females.

[209] And there's some analogy in that with what happens in the human case, but it's more complicated in the human case.

[210] In any case, they also tend to spend a fair bit of time attending to the females in the troop in a positive way and to their infants.

[211] And so the more benevolent, but still physically able males, seem to establish a stable social hierarchy that's quite unlike the social hierarchy that's produced by the more psychopathic, straight, raw will to power.

[212] And, well, and here's another fact for what it's worth.

[213] If the hierarchy that we use to aggregate the canon is fundamentally predicated on oppressive power, which is the claim then why do psychopaths only constitute 3 % of the population and that's actually stable and so there are good evolutionary biology psychology models of psychopath it's emergence has been modeled quite emergence and stability has been modeled quite nicely in computer simulations and such simulations can be used as appropriate models if the psychopath prevalence falls below 1 % there's There's so few of them that people get complacent in relationship to the possibility of malevolence.

[214] And so then they can flourish a bit, right?

[215] And their prevalence can rise in the population.

[216] But if it gets up to 5%, it's like everybody wakes up, and it's not such a good day for the psychopaths when they do.

[217] And somebody has to keep the malevolent types down.

[218] You know, and that's probably, possibly, possibly, we'll say, why women like men who are less agreeable than they are you know and women have to solve this very complex mating problem in relationship to men which is there are bad men they're really bad and they're a minority of the population and they tear their way through overly agreeable populations and to keep them from dominating you need good men who are also capable of being quite terrible And so that appears to be the conundrum that women face when they're choosing male partners, one of the conundrums.

[219] They want someone who's strong enough to resist what's truly terrible, but benevolent and generous enough to, and productive enough, to be productive and useful, but also agreeable and empathic enough to share.

[220] And you can see that that's a terribly tight line, right?

[221] And women are always, well, young women tend to overshoot the mark on the malevolent side.

[222] So the psychopathic Machiavellians who mimic competent male behavior, they ape it, so to speak, are differentially attractive to young and inexperienced women.

[223] Whereas women who've had some experience get better at distinguishing the psychopathic Machiavellian pretenders who often manifest a certain confidence and a certain bravado, they get good at distinguishing them from the real thing.

[224] And so it's a tricky thing for women to manage, and men can use deceptive strategies to mimic competence, which is exactly what deceptive strategies are for, obviously.

[225] And that's also a pathway to short -term mating success under some circumstances, and it's viable enough to propagate itself in the population, but it's not a good medium to long -term strategy.

[226] And the question might be, well, what is a good medium to long -term strategy?

[227] And it looks like something, well, that is the question that's actually at the bottom of this entire talk, because it's also the same question as, what is the process that gives rise to perception itself?

[228] This is an attempt to integrate across a whole variety of complex questions.

[229] So, you might ask yourself, this is where it gets difficult to tie all these things together.

[230] So, let me see how I'm going to be able to do this.

[231] Yes, there's no evidence, as far as I can tell, that the proposition, that the fundamental motivation for categorization itself is the expression of power.

[232] That seems wrong.

[233] It's not stable.

[234] So then the question is, well, what is exactly at the base of the process of perception and categorization?

[235] And so that would be really right at the basis of cognition itself, perhaps the essence of consciousness itself, and certainly the thing that acts at the interface between what is not yet known and what is going to be known, right?

[236] The active investigation that transforms what's unexpected and potentially dangerous into what's habitable, safe, competent, and secure.

[237] I saw this opera, but you didn't think I was going there.

[238] I saw this opera in New York City about three weeks ago, opera written by a dead white male of the oppressive sort, Wagner, and so he's sort of ways way up there on that list, man. And it was the opera die Meister singer, and it was really interesting.

[239] The libretto was really interesting.

[240] It really dovetailed in a strange way, with the sorts of things I happen to be writing about at that point.

[241] And I'll just run through it quickly, and hopefully that will help tie together of these strands that I've laid all over the place now.

[242] So while music does that, right, it ties things together.

[243] Great art does that, it ties things together.

[244] And so, and it's part of the process by which we make order out of chaos, right?

[245] Great art, not power, great art. And you have to be so cynical that it beggars description, and so envious of what's great, to reflexively identify that with the will to power.

[246] Really, that's what you think when you enter one of the great cathedrals or chapels that are the gracier campus?

[247] You think nothing but will to power erected that?

[248] Corrupt oppression?

[249] And if you do think that, well, what do you think of yourself then?

[250] You think you're nothing but the expression of the corrupt will to power?

[251] Or you somehow circumvented that because of your moral piety?

[252] Well, in that case, then what is it your...

[253] relying on to orient yourself in the world is something other than that will to power well if so then exactly what it is what is it while you come to university to ally yourself with the forces of great art let's say and that's so much more powerful than mere power that they're not even in the same category well back to diemeister singer so it's very interesting opera because it it it's set in Nuremberg and in Nuremberg in the opera there are these guilds of men and they're all craftsmen and so one of the heroes of the story there's two heroes and a heroine in the story he's a cobbler and he's a really good cobbler and you think well it's just a cobbler it's like it was so funny because when I went to see this opera my shoes were didn't fit I had these shoes that I hadn't really paid attention to for like three years that my feet were just killing me and I was in this opera and it emphasized the absolute moral necessity of attending to your shoes properly.

[254] And I thought, huh, isn't that synchronous, we'll say.

[255] And it certainly was, and now I have shoes that fit, although they're still, these are somewhat ugly, but they do at least fit.

[256] So I partially solved the problem.

[257] In any case, daimister singer is the master singer.

[258] And so these men that are all extremely skilled craftsmen.

[259] So there are people who have skill right at the level of the interface with the world, They get together in guilds of their own type, and then they also practice singing.

[260] And one of them, who's a skilled craftsman, because that's a prerequisite, is elected as a master singer.

[261] And so each of these guilds have master singers.

[262] And now and then they elect a new master singer, and all the master singers get together to elect a new master singer.

[263] I was thinking about this little trope I had already written down in the book I'm writing while I was watching this I you know this you see this and if you watch American sports films you know so there's a football team and after overcoming great odds the quarterback who's probably you know risen above his suffering in some manner triumphantly produces the victory and all the other football players put them up on their shoulders and lead them out of the stadium and everybody's standing up and cheering and then he has an affair with his girlfriend the top cheerleader and everyone leaves happily ever after and that's the same motif as the as the Meister singer right it's really interesting you know that the men will put that other man on their shoulders it's not that's not a good long -term mating strategy that right to elevate him above you in that sort of competition but men do that all the time interestingly enough and in de Meister singer the men in the guilds come together and a new entrant onto the potential master singer stage comes into the town and he's a knight and he's wandered through nature and he sings of nature but he's completely undisciplined he doesn't know any of the rules and so he's not a master craftsman like these craftsmen but he wants to be a master singer simultaneously one of the other leaders of the guilds offers his entire fortune and the hand of his daughter to the new master's And you think, well, that's a pretty patriarchal trope.

[264] But it's actually handled extraordinarily brilliantly, I think, within the confines of the opera, because she is the heroine of the story.

[265] And although her father is offering her one of the masters, she has the right of choice.

[266] And it's not sort of, she has the choice a little bit.

[267] It's clearly part of the opera that she has the choice.

[268] And she falls in love with this knight.

[269] It's hardly a surprise, but women are perverse like that.

[270] But the master singers, they don't know what to do with this guy because he's unbelievably gifted in terms of his talent, but he's not a master.

[271] He's not a craftsman.

[272] He hasn't gone through the disciplinary process that would mold him into someone who's thoroughly united right from the bottom of the craft to the tip of the head.

[273] And so they're thrown into disarray by this, and also by the fact that this woman her instinct drives her towards him and so they did degenerate the men's guilds degenerates into kind of an internecine squabble and it's complicated by the fact that the woman also kind of like some of the other master singers they're older they're competent and so they have a shot at her hand and so they fall into disarray under the stress of this mating competition we could say that biologically and the cold who's the paramount hero in the story who the woman loves but perhaps not as much as the knight and he's old he's like 55 so he's younger than me but he's too old you know this is a young woman and so he decides he's going to train this young night and that's pretty damn interesting you know because he thinks the moral thing to do here is to take myself out of the competition and to raise this untutored by but extraordinarily talented young man to a position of primacy to unite nature and culture simultaneously in his form and to help him attain the status of Master Singer.

[274] And his name is Johann Sachs, and Johann is John, and he's John the Baptist.

[275] And I'm not just inventing that, it's not just my patriarchal, power -driven inference, on the multiplicity of potential meanings in the text because Wagner basically says that in the libretto and a few times in case you don't catch it the first time.

[276] And so in some manner, this knight is Christ.

[277] And that's a strange thing.

[278] But, you know, you can understand it, right?

[279] It is not like it doesn't make sense in some sense because Christ is always presented as a superordinate ideal.

[280] And obviously this new master singer who unites the melody of nature and the discipline of culture is a master of his craft by divine grace because of his talent, but also now because Han Sachs, it's Han Sachs, that's Johann, that's John the Baptist, decides to train him, and so now he's a model of discipline and craft, and that's allied with natural talent, and that gives a whole new depth to his voice, because now that natural talent has been properly brought under a discipline structure, which is a reflection of the guild structure of the entire Meister Singer contest.

[281] And suffice it to say that Sax pulls himself out of the race and decides to sacrifice himself in some sense for this young man. And the woman chooses the knight, and the knight undergoes this disciplinary regimen, and then he sings in the contest.

[282] And all the master singers now can, what would you say, live comfortably with their conscience, and they elect him to the highest position, and then Sax and the knight and the woman are celebrated.

[283] It's lovely, brilliant.

[284] And then, of course, it's set to this remarkable music, and watch all these people who spend all these years disciplining themselves in some unbelievably difficult manner to play their instruments properly and to interact with each other harmoniously, and to play while they're doing it so that it's not just rote, and to produce this magnificent stage in this ridiculous building, this ridiculously impressive building in this unbelievably impressive city, and all these people come there and devote your attention to watching this.

[285] Well, why?

[286] Why?

[287] Why indeed?

[288] Well, that Master's Singer's Spirit, that's what solves the problem of perception.

[289] It's not raw power.

[290] Right?

[291] It's not a corrupt will.

[292] It's not a satanic force.

[293] It's exactly the opposite of that.

[294] And, you know, we all know that.

[295] We all know that.

[296] Although we don't know, we know it.

[297] You know, I was in the chapel the other day here.

[298] St. which one was it?

[299] You have two remarkable chapels.

[300] Well, more than two, but two particularly remarkable chapels.

[301] Doesn't matter, really.

[302] up on the pinnacle of the chapel interior, there is a picture of Christ, and it's like a Byzantine representation.

[303] He's in a mandorla, which is a shape that Freudians can have no shortage of fun with, and he's shining forth from this background, and he's placed above the sky, right, or on the sky.

[304] And you see this even more clearly in Byzantine church architecture.

[305] So the cathedral is a cross and then at the central point of the cross.

[306] So that's the point of maximal suffering.

[307] That's what's being illustrated in the architecture.

[308] There's a dome and the dome is, well, how about it's the sky?

[309] It's not that hard to figure out.

[310] And the cathedral structure is trees.

[311] And so it's a representation of our primordial environment.

[312] This ancient forest, right, which is now recreated in stone with this dome.

[313] that's above all that's centered at the point of the cross, which is the point of maximum suffering.

[314] And you look up into the sky, the starry firmament, and what do you see reflected back down to you?

[315] You see this image of the divine word.

[316] That's what you see.

[317] You might not even know that you're seeing that.

[318] You don't know you're in a forest.

[319] You don't know you're seeing the sunlight filter through the branches.

[320] You know, our ancestral home for millions, tens of millions of years, you don't see the immense labor and effort that it took to erect that cathedral and to put that image in its highest place.

[321] At least she dressed like a lobster.

[322] So that was good, actually.

[323] And as far as protests go, relatively witty, although perhaps somewhat ill -timed.

[324] So here's a way of thinking about that.

[325] So, I've been discussing a series of images with my wife, and one of them is an image of Mary.

[326] And it's a very, it was a renaissance image that was painted by many, many people.

[327] And it's funny, I'm going to talk about the Divine Feminine after that interruption.

[328] Mary is often represented with her head surrounded by stars, and with her foot on a serpent on the world.

[329] right and so well what is that exactly that image well it's something like what is it to have your head in the stars let's say well you know when you I bought this cottage up north in northern Canada and it's very dark up there and you can go on to the dock at night and it's dark enough so you can see the Milky Way you know and it has to be pretty dark before you can see the Milky Way and it's very impressive you know what that's like if you've been out to see the night sky or Maybe you feel the same way when you see the Grand Canyon or a remarkable waterfall or some particularly beautiful scene.

[330] Or perhaps you feel that way in a cathedral or more likely you feel that way when you're listening to music that really grips you, right?

[331] And it's all the same experience, an experience of all.

[332] And it's way down low in your nervous system like the orienting reflex.

[333] It's not a cognitive response precisely.

[334] It's a precognitive emotional response that signifies significance.

[335] And you look up at the night sky, and it fills you with a sense of awe.

[336] But it doesn't just do that.

[337] You see, it activates the impulse to imitate, which is a very deep motivation in human beings.

[338] We're unbelievable mimics.

[339] We mimic each other all the time, which is why we all use the same words, let's say.

[340] We're very good at embodying other people's embodiments.

[341] It's a particular talent that human beings have, and we're so good at that that we imitate all sorts of things that aren't even human.

[342] And so then you view this expansive night sky, and a sense of awe fills you as you confront the infinite.

[343] And it calls to something inside of you that can master the infinite.

[344] And that's a form of imitation, right, to look into the darkest place, the most wide expanse possible.

[345] And to have something inside you respond that's capable.

[346] of dealing with that.

[347] That's that instinct to imitate.

[348] And that's calling the best out of you.

[349] And that's why you love doing that.

[350] And it isn't just that you love it, is that you cannot live without it.

[351] You cannot live without it.

[352] And I know so many of you, atheists or otherwise, you can't live without music.

[353] You think, well, why can you not live without music?

[354] And what is it calling to precisely?

[355] You know, that remarkable interplay of harmonious patterns.

[356] Because that's what music is, and that's what the world is.

[357] It's not objects.

[358] It's the harmonious interplay of patterns.

[359] And music reflects that, and then you warrant yourself in your embodied manner to those patterns and dance along with the world.

[360] And that revivifies you.

[361] And if you're particularly good at, well, maybe you'll also attract a mate.

[362] And you want a mate that doesn't attempt to dominate you sexually during the introductory dance, right?

[363] You want a mate who will play along with you.

[364] and match your movements to theirs, so that you can see that there's a harmonious interplay between the two of you as you meet in play, soul to soul, if you can manage it.

[365] And everyone knows that, and that capacity that's called out in the dance is the same capacity that's called out by the night sky, and it's the same thing that's represented in those Byzantine churches.

[366] you look deep enough into infinity and you find your destiny and that destiny is everything you could be and we all know that because and this is what men and women search for in each other you know if you're rejected by a woman well why is she rejecting you well maybe her judgment is often that would be very what would you say convenient for you but she's rejecting you because you are not all that you could be and maybe not even all that you need to be and so So that's a very painful rejection and it causes all sorts of tension between men and women.

[367] But, you know, women have a lot at stake in this game.

[368] And so they're looking for something, what, powerful, dominating, brutal, terrible?

[369] No. Something perhaps capable of that.

[370] But even more important, capable of mastering it, right?

[371] And capable of singing despite that.

[372] We all know that's true, and the shame that men feel when they're rejected by women, is precisely the shame that they feel at knowing deep in their heart that they have not lived up to what they are capable of being.

[373] And that harsh judgment that women lay on men, which by the way is part of our sexual evolution, because we were shaped by sexual selection, which, by the way, is the operation of consciousness on the structures of matter at the most basic possible level.

[374] Well, it's a terrible rejection, but it's a salutary rejection.

[375] And that process of differentiated choice has shaped us into what we are, that action of consciousness, wanting the best from a potential partner, and selecting at least in part on that basis.

[376] And men participate in that too, in Meister Singer Manor.

[377] Men aren't competing for dominance with each other constantly in a what, zero -sum game to achieve sexual dominance.

[378] There's an element of that, right?

[379] Because some things are a zero -sum game, but men are perfectly capable and more than willing, in fact, to aggregate themselves into skilled groups and to celebrate the elevation of the most skilled above all else.

[380] And so we see this cooperative venture between men and women over the longest run of possible time in producing some refinement of the human spirit in embodied form.

[381] And we want that from everyone.

[382] We require that from everyone.

[383] We're thrilled to the core of our soul when we encounter it in a conversation or in a course.

[384] We're in a work of art. It calls to us in that manner.

[385] We need to know this increasingly.

[386] We need to know all this consciously.

[387] We've acted it out.

[388] We've produced images to represent it.

[389] It tugs at our heartstrings.

[390] It manifests itself in our dreams and our work of art, our literary works.

[391] It's all lurking there in some sense.

[392] And it's not the satanic power of corrupt oppression, not fundamentally.

[393] That's a far weaker force than that which can overcome it.

[394] And everything around us would be nothing but hell if that's all there was.

[395] And everything around us is not only hell.

[396] You know, for fragile and broken creatures ignorant to the core, we don't do too badly.

[397] And people are capable of a nobility, especially under the duress of suffering that's virtually miraculous, when you encounter it.

[398] And it's so heartening to see that.

[399] And you've seen it in the people that you love when they're going through terrible trials.

[400] You know, people become corrupt and embittered by their catastrophes.

[401] And it's no wonder.

[402] But certainly in the main, that's not the fundamental human response.

[403] The fundamental is, keep calm and carry on, you know.

[404] And good on you for that.

[405] And so, well, to sum up, let's say, We solve the power of perception with the divine word.

[406] That's how it is.

[407] And what does that mean?

[408] Well, it means truth.

[409] Every word, a prayer, right?

[410] Every word a groping to find a firm foundation to stand on while you make your way through life.

[411] And every time you hear a conversation of that sort or hear yourself participating in that prayerful process, orienting yourself to this highest uniting good, and using that to govern your utterance.

[412] It's bomb for the soul.

[413] Yeah, it's love that guides that.

[414] And love is the desire to work for the betterment of all things.

[415] And that's the proper orienting response we could say.

[416] And it's truth nested inside of that.

[417] And that's how it is.

[418] And that's how it should be.

[419] And that's how it may forever be.

[420] It always seems strange to ask for questions after something like that.

[421] But that's where we're at now.

[422] So am I taking questions or is there someone pointing out?

[423] Shall I do it?

[424] Hi, thank you so much.

[425] Thank you so much for this passionate, for this passionate defense of reason.

[426] For those of us who are on your side, I'm just curious, do you have any forward -looking views on where we're going?

[427] Full debate, you know, this whole, I mean, what you've been going through for the last few years, every argument you've had, Do you have any sort of mid -term to long -term view and where we're going?

[428] Or if you don't, that's fine.

[429] Well, we're going in many directions at once.

[430] And the question is, is the fundamental trajectory downhill or uphill?

[431] And I would say, that depends on you.

[432] Western society in particular.

[433] What's that?

[434] Western society.

[435] Yes, yes, no, and more globally.

[436] I mean, I worked on the UN Secretary General's report on sustainable development for about two years.

[437] years and read a very large number of texts on environmental problems and opportunities and economic development and what happened to me was that I got way more optimistic than I was before I started reading those books I mean so many things have happened in the last 40 years that are so good you just can't believe it I mean we've lifted more people out of abject poverty in the last 15 years than in the entire course of human history terms of sheer numbers of people.

[438] You know, and starvation, except for political reasons, is now pretty much absent across the world.

[439] There hasn't been any wars in the Western Hemisphere for about a decade.

[440] That's really something, you know, and no major wars plague us at the moment.

[441] That's quite something, given that there are seven billion of us, and there's only going to be nine billion, by all appearances.

[442] It's going to peak out at about nine billion, and my suspicions are in a hundred years, one of the biggest problems we'll face is that there's just not enough people and you never hear that but I really do believe it's likely to be the case and we can certainly carry 9 billion people without doing the planet undue environmental damage and people who claim otherwise I think well I think a lot of things about that but one of the things I don't think is that that's an accurate viewpoint I mean we're doing far better than we were 40 years ago feeding people and we can certainly pack in another 2 billion it turns out that if you want to control population, though I wouldn't really recommend that as an occupation, all you have to do is educate women, and that's the end of that problem.

[443] Then you also have educated women, and we know that's very annoying, but it seems to be, it seems to be, you know, it seems to be working out.

[444] It's a great predictor of general economic development.

[445] It's actually, I think, the best predictor of a society's future economic development is the attitude that they hold towards the education of women, and luckily it's in the positive direction, and so, That's very cool.

[446] And then it certainly seems to be the case that the fastest way out of a given environmental conundrum is to make absolutely poor people richer as fast as you possibly can, because then they do things like, well, they don't burn wood anymore.

[447] Maybe they burn coal, and I know coal is evil, but it's not as evil as wood.

[448] And I don't know if you know this, but 1 .6 million children die every year.

[449] because of the indoor pollution that woodburning causes.

[450] It's like if the nuclear industry had a record like that, that would be all over the newspapers, but they're just third world children after all.

[451] So, you know, the planet has too many people on it anyways.

[452] And so there's all sorts of things I see that are so radically positive that it beggars description.

[453] I mean, India and China alone have greened an area because of agricultural transformation.

[454] the size of the Amazon, and partly as a consequence of increased carbon dioxide levels, a semi -arid area, it's either the size of the Amazon or Alaska, I don't remember which, has greened in the last 15 years.

[455] And so these are things you never hear.

[456] You have to ferret them out, but as far as I can tell, if we got our act together and actually wanted it, instead of wanting to burn everything to the ground in an orgy of guilt -ridden self -destruction, And we could set up a world in 15 years where absolutely everyone had plenty to eat and where obesity would be the primary problem.

[457] It's a good problem, actually.

[458] It's like, oh no, you know, we have too much food.

[459] What are we going to do?

[460] That's a good problem.

[461] And where everyone was educated, because the cost of education is falling precipitously.

[462] And we could do that in a way that was actually beneficial to the environment, whatever that is.

[463] So I would say fundamentally, I'm optimistic.

[464] But if we want hell, we could certainly have that.

[465] And you might say, well, you don't want hell.

[466] It's like, yeah, really, eh?

[467] You might want to ask yourself that question real seriously because there's a party that would wreak vengeance on God for the catastrophic suffering of being.

[468] That's for sure.

[469] And that's that's Kane.

[470] Right.

[471] So no, I'm optimistic because I also do.

[472] don't believe that our fundamental motivations are that of a corrupt will.

[473] I think that's wrong.

[474] I think it's wrong factually, and I think it's an appalling claim philosophically, and it's a radically destructive claim ethically, demoralizing, a terribly demoralizing claim.

[475] And demoralizing enough to really hurt people.

[476] And I've seen many, many people, maybe thousands of people, maybe tens of people, maybe tens of thousands of people hurt by that claim hurt to the deep recesses of their soul but I would say like it depends depends on what you choose to do really depends on what you choose to do you know I read once I think this was an a Solzhenitzen novel although it might not have been and it's certainly not his idea it's an idea from one of the church fathers that God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere nice mathematical model of God I like it a lot, but there's something about it that's really true.

[477] You know, we interact with one another as if there's the spark of the divine within us, and you say, well, no, we don't.

[478] It's like, well, if you don't, then no one likes you.

[479] So, you know, that'll be its own punishment, because we certainly do interact with the people we value when we're acting in a manner that we regard as appropriate as if there is something about them, this of transcendent, and in some sense, eternal value.

[480] And you might say, well, you don't believe that.

[481] it's like well do you believe in natural rights because the notion of natural rights is predicated on that underlying presupposition or observation and you don't believe in natural rights well well then again where are you exactly and who are you exactly and those are questions very much worth posing and so I think that truth is more powerful than deceit by a large margin and I think love is more powerful than hate by a large margin I don't mean naive love And I'm not naive about people.

[482] I don't mean that at all.

[483] But I think it is possible for us to rise above the resentment of our suffering and to wish the best for all things.

[484] And I think we can participate in that.

[485] And you do that, well, by extending your hand to your enemy to the degree you're capable of doing that, because who needs enemies?

[486] Or maybe you do, but it'd be better not to have them, I think, even if they're convenient targets to defeat.

[487] And then truth, well, that's the handmaiden of love.

[488] And that's something everyone can practice at every moment if they desire that.

[489] And that's an adventure.

[490] You know, if you're acting deceitfully, you already specify the outcomes of your actions.

[491] And you pursue that.

[492] But the problem with that is it's predicated on the acceptance of your own authoritarian completeness.

[493] It's like, what the hell do you know about what you should have?

[494] And so what do you do instead?

[495] You just do your best to not lie and see what happens.

[496] And what happens are wonderful things, although perhaps not at the beginning when there's a lot of mess to claw through.

[497] So sorry for the lengthy answer, but it was a complicated question.

[498] Does consciousness die with the body and is meaning doomed like the universe?

[499] Well, I don't know, I would say.

[500] I mean, we don't understand consciousness.

[501] We don't really understand its place in the cosmos, let's say, I'm not qualified to answer such questions.

[502] I would say though that no one stops listening to a symphony because they know it's going to end.

[503] And so I think in some sense our proper task is to find the meaning within the finite.

[504] When I had clinical clients who were consumed with such questions, because, you know, you can pick a timeframe of evaluation that makes all your efforts futile, right?

[505] Well, the sun is going to envelop the earth.

[506] I think it's four billion years, so like get ready.

[507] It's like, well, what's the point of stopping this baby from crying when the sun is going to develop the earth and form?

[508] Well, yeah, you all laugh, right?

[509] But that laughter, you see, that's a sign of wisdom.

[510] You know, that's preposterous.

[511] Why?

[512] I mean, that's the existential question, right?

[513] It's like, well, if we're all doomed to ashes and decay, why do anything?

[514] Well, I use the baby crying for a reason.

[515] I mean, who in the world is going to use that argument to not feel?

[516] feed their baby.

[517] Well, why feed that thing?

[518] In four billion years, the sun's going to develop the earth.

[519] It's like wrong time frame, folks.

[520] And so what I would say, and I did say to my clinical clients, if you're adopting a time frame that makes what you're doing appear trivial, the problem isn't necessarily what you're doing, although it might be, and you have to ask yourself that question, because perhaps you are engaging in something that's more trivial than you should be.

[521] The problem is that your mind, which is capable of leaping across evaluative frameworks, has picked a time frame inappropriate for the task.

[522] So quit doing that.

[523] Instead, you could say, well, why don't you practice adopting the time frame that imbues your properly oriented action with the deepest possible apprehended meaning?

[524] And why would you not think that the fact that that meaning manifests itself with the proper choice of time frame, Why wouldn't you accept the fact that's indication of a valid choice?

[525] It certainly feels like it.

[526] You know what it's like.

[527] You get engaged in something.

[528] A deep conversation, a piece of music, a piece of art, something you love doing, someone you love being with.

[529] You get engaged in that.

[530] You lose your sense of temporality.

[531] And you don't pop out of it and think, oh my God, I wish I would have used a time frame that made everything irrelevant.

[532] Because of my, you know, cognitive brilliance, you think, hey, we could do that some more.

[533] Like, how about all the time?

[534] and that's that's a good goal it's like yeah how about that all the time and then you've got time right when you're engaged like that and i would say that's a profound neurophysiological signal that you're in the right place at the right time right because it's accompanied by a sense of deep well -being and that's literally an antidote suffering i i mean that literally it's with many of my clients who were suffering what we would strive to do was not so much make the happy because sometimes that was impossible they were so crippled in so many ways often physically and in pain but something meaningful I would keep them going and keep them from straying and keep them from thinking homicidal and genocidal thoughts all of that and meaning that's the antidote to suffering and the question is well how's that best to be found well that's an empirical question you have to you have to look in your own life and see where meaning glimmers and then pursue that right that's what harry potter is doing by the way when he's chasing the snitch just thought i'd let you know and you know you win the game if you catch that thing so well that's not exactly right you get a hundred points but you know it'll do so another question how about you hi thank you very much for the lecture um you talked a lot about meaning and art. What do you mean by meaning, what is meaning, and where is its source?

[535] Meaning is implication for action or for reorganization of the perceptual frames that frame action.

[536] So there.

[537] And is that the sole aim of what you, is that what you find in art and music?

[538] Yes, in complex ways.

[539] I mean, in music, you find this demand that the music lays upon you to orient yourself in relationship to this harmonious interplay of patterns.

[540] And you might say, well, why is that meaningful?

[541] Well, that's a good question.

[542] Well, it's because you're acting out something like the adaptation of your soul to the structures of reality itself.

[543] Now, it's done very abstractly because the patterns of music are not precisely the actual patterns of the world, right?

[544] They're abstractions.

[545] But it's play and represent the music.

[546] And it's art. And so you're acting out the process of optimal adaptation at a very high level when you think what people are doing imagine a Viennese waltz, you know, so you have this unbelievably well -trained orchestra.

[547] They're all emitting patterns like mad, and they're playing while they're doing that, putting little twists on the patterns so that they're little novel, a little interesting, even if you've heard the music many times.

[548] You have the conductor who's keeping all these specialized subsections operating in harmony, and then you have the couples dancing and they're trained to do that but they're cutting the rug you know in the same way they they have their moves and they're trying to impress each other and there's a mating aspect of that and they're all doing that harmoniously and it's a complete vision of a ordered society right from the subatomic realm let's say all the way up to the cosmic realm that's all taking place in the dance and people don't know that but well they do know it too you know and they know it in that they're acting it out And there isn't anything in some sense that you know more deeply or believe more deeply than that which you act out.

[549] And you're not smart enough to understand the full totality of your actions.

[550] I mean, we're not transparent to ourselves.

[551] We act out all sorts of things that are stunningly brilliant without realizing it.

[552] And it takes, in some sense, it takes often untold centuries for us to figure out what we were doing and why.

[553] and so that happens to you in your own life when you have a flash of insight into your own behavior that's why i was doing that it's like well you were doing it why didn't you know well you're complicated you're really complicated and and certainly not transparent to yourself and so i have a paper called three types of meaning you could look that up if you wanted a more like a more technical answer but the music answer by example is a good one and I think people can really relate to it because you know the only person you ever hear who says well I don't really like music is like no that's just a posture you know you like music you just want to be you know kind of interestingly different and controversial and it's really something right and it's also interesting that music has this non -propositional structure that's completely opaque to rational argumentation No, I said, I used to like to watch punk rockers, yeah, especially the ones who did mosh pit punk rock, and you know I went to a Ramon's concert once.

[554] It was quite comical.

[555] I was on the second floor.

[556] I was so loud.

[557] I couldn't like couldn't hear for three days after this concert because there's pretty little theater.

[558] We sat about 800 people and they had their stadium speakers in there.

[559] It was like sonic wall of sound and we were above this mosh pit and there was all these like nihilistic punk rockers down there smashing into each.

[560] other and throwing themselves off the stage and I thought for all this talk of nihilism there you are dancing to the harmonious patterns of life it's like you know smash the state and all of that's like that's we'll groove to that yeah it's very comical so even among the the most nile the most propositionally nihilistic they still fall in love with music it might be harsh and grading to some ears but you start where you can and you know I like the Ramon so that was fine with me so maybe yes yes to brain damage and heaps and heaps of neuroscience all seem to suggest that we are merely that consciousness is merely an app running on a biological machine the thing that without being the decider really the thing that John Hight calls the elephant and the rider yeah and how does this my question is how does this grim dark materialist view of existence square with looking for meaning imitating the divine?

[561] Well, I think the grim, dark view, and the biologically determinist view is just wrong, And so consciousness, consciousness is not merely an epithenomenon of matter, and not that we know what that would mean anyways, like, what the hell does that mean?

[562] It's something we don't understand matter.

[563] We might think we understand it, but all you have to do is familiarize yourself a little bit with quantum theory to understand that you don't understand matter at all.

[564] It's like what is that stuff?

[565] And obviously consciousness is implicit in it in some sense because here it is and we're all conscious and we have no idea how that managed itself.

[566] And then the thing about, but more specifically, I would say, you know, when Darwin wrote his great tracts on evolutionary theory, he stressed two elements of the selection process.

[567] Natural selection, fair enough.

[568] And you could make a deterministic argument for natural selection.

[569] It's not easy because, nature is really complicated and the idea that nature is selecting that's from you know from a random array of potential traits let's say although I'm not convinced that that's entirely random by the way but we won't get into that nature selects from this random array of traits and I think that capitalization on randomness in that manner is necessary to solve the complex process a problem of perception over a very long span of time but there's sexual selection now It's a scandal in scientific history, as far as I'm concerned, that for almost a hundred years after Darwin published his great works on sexual selection, biologists tended to pretty much ignore it.

[570] It's like, yeah, no, natural selection.

[571] And that was because I think it was easier to maintain a strict determinism by concentrating on natural selection.

[572] The tricky thing about sexual selection is, how is that not conscious choice?

[573] I mean, what?

[574] You don't make a conscious choice when you select?

[575] Well, maybe you don't if you've had enough alcohol.

[576] I wouldn't, you know, recommend that as a long -term mating strategy.

[577] But you tell me that the conscious choice of women specifically, it's more complex in the case of men, because we're an easier, what would you say?

[578] We don't have as much at stake, and so we're not as choosy.

[579] Women are exceptionally choosy.

[580] And certainly, it's like a truism.

[581] among evolutionary biologists that part of the reason that we had such rapid cortical expansion is because of sexual selection it's like how is that not the action of consciousness on matter and you might say well that's only been operating since Homo sapiens because nothing was conscious before then it's like you ever see that BBC clip of the pufferfish making the Mandela oh well you could look that up his little puffer fish he's like this long he's just a puffer fish you know it doesn't have any hands which is kind of hard problem if you want to be a sculptor.

[582] He makes this sculpture that's like 20 feet across.

[583] He's this big, 20 feet across at the bottom of the ocean.

[584] And it's a perfect circle and quite complexly undulated and wavy.

[585] It's not the sort of Mandela you would see in a great cathedral, but he's just a fish, man. It's not so bad, you know?

[586] And he spends like a weak building this thing.

[587] And it's so funny watching him in the film because he goes down there and he, like maybe there's a stray piece of shell And he grabs that and he spits it out because no shells in the damn sculpture.

[588] It has to be clean.

[589] And then he pops up and he turns one eye like a bird and he looks at it.

[590] And then he goes down and waves a little sand into place.

[591] He's making these dunes that are like a foot high.

[592] And there's like 400 of them.

[593] And then you see an aerial shot of it.

[594] It's this, really, it's the size of this stage.

[595] And then the female puffer fish comes along and, you know, checks it out and sees if he's got what it takes.

[596] And if he does, the way they go.

[597] it's like it isn't obvious to me at all that that puffer fish isn't conscious and I would say say while you're anthropomorphizing it's like okay let's have that discussion so I'm pretty familiar with the animal experimental literature and the greatest animal experimentalists especially those that study motivation and emotion so they're the ones that are delving very deep into the neurophysiological apparatus they're basically rule of thumb is you anthropomorphize except when there's a reason not to I I think we share like 85 % of our genes with yeast.

[598] It's like rats, they're pretty complicated.

[599] They play, they laugh, you can tickle them.

[600] They die without love.

[601] You know, pufferfish, they make sculptures.

[602] Here's a story about spiders.

[603] This is a fun story, if you like stories about spiders.

[604] So there's these spiders and the female won't mate with the male unless the male offers her a gift.

[605] And so he has to find some dead fly or something that's particularly delicious to a female And then wrap it really nicely in the web and presents it to her And if she likes it and it's a good fly, then maybe she'll deign to mate with them But the damn spiders, it's so funny Some of them will wrap up dirt And present that It's like they tend not to get away with it But sometimes they do, so that's pretty funny But what's also funny is sometimes the female will eat the fly and leave the guy, you know, in his agitated state, let's say.

[606] It's like, you know, those behaviors, those are complex, man. And it isn't obvious to me at all that consciousness doesn't exist way down the phylogenetic chain.

[607] I mean, maybe it emerges in some form with a differentiated nervous system.

[608] We don't know.

[609] But Franz Duol, who's a great privatologist, just wrote a book called, like, are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?

[610] And the answer to that could well be no. octopuses for example man those things are smart and they can do all sorts of things we can't do you know they can transform the texture of their surface as well as the color to match an underlying rock it's like they'll clamp onto a rock and then poof they're exactly like the rock it's like that's hard and and it's hard to imagine how something like that is possible even without the intermediation of something like consciousness and I can I cannot see at all how you can be a biologist and believe in sexual selection and think that only random factors determine evolution it's like what about mate choice well yeah no no no really what about mate choice really and you might say well that's not aiming at some determined end and that's complicated and that's worthy of discussion but it's not obvious to me at all that in the human case it's not aiming at some idealized end I mean we certainly look for something approximating an ideal in a mate we want that and we want to encourage it if we don't have it to begin with unless we're you know bitter and resentful and jealous and so we are pushing towards an ideal that's at least implicit and it governs us at every level of our social interactions and so I don't think that I don't think that it is a dark reduction of consciousness to an underlying, say, ultimately real material state, and that's the final answer.

[611] I don't think that's true.

[612] And there's lots of people who aren't foolish who don't think it's true.

[613] It isn't obvious to me that Roger Penrose thinks it's true, you know, and he's no lightweight.

[614] So he thinks consciousness is irreducible in some sense.

[615] And I think the biblical idea that consciousness calls forth shit.

[616] shape from a material substrate is there's something to that.

[617] And that's certainly not an idea that's limited in religious texts to the biblical stories in Genesis.

[618] If you look at religious texts all over the world, there's always this insistence that there are two primal factors that work.

[619] One is the matrix out of which things emerges, and another is something that calls forth structure from that matrix.

[620] And it's a chicken and egg problem, you know, to use a terrible cliche, but it's an extraordinarily widespread fundamental theological idea.

[621] So I think I have to stop.

[622] I'm getting messages from people that I'm doing my best to ignore.

[623] So thank you very much for the great welcome and for attending the talk tonight.

[624] Well, Jordan, thank you so much for a terrific, exciting, perceptive talk.

[625] I'm sure we could all have discussed this all night long.

[626] but I'm afraid we shall have to wrap up now so I just want to say a few words I'm sorry my name's Araf Ahmed I'm a professor of philosophy in the university I just want to say a couple of things the first thing is just to say very briefly this event does mark I hope the close of a disgraceful chapter in the history of this university for too long we've laboured under the absurd idea that words are a form of oppression or that speech is a way of perpetuating harm.

[627] When the opposite is true, words are instruments of liberation and speech is an alternative to harm.

[628] And it was under those false ideas, as you will know, that when Jordan was invited in early 2019, the university canceled that invitation, not because of anything he said, not even because of anything he thought, but because of somebody he stood next to.

[629] Some of us have been fighting back, not just because of that, but because of the creeping regulations on our speech.

[630] And not only in the university, but especially perhaps in universities, things have been improving.

[631] We've started to win a few things.

[632] And so I was delighted when I heard in this autumn that Jordan will be coming back to Cambridge.

[633] And it represents something of a victory that he has been speaking here.

[634] So as well as being obviously a brilliant talk from which we've all learned so much, it represents, as I say, an important victory, not a final victory, because when you fight for freedom of speech, it's never, it's never a final victory, but an important victory in this battle to get back this institution, this ancient institution, which has played such a great role in the history of this country and in freedom in this country.

[635] Now, I want to thank, I want to have several thanks.

[636] First of all, to all of you, for making this such an excellent occasion, to those of you who asked such brilliant questions, And in fact, to all of you for coming, even the lobster.

[637] And I want to thank Stephen Blackwood, David Butterfield, Douglas Headley, those of us who are involved in this from the start, and for whom this does represent the culmination of months and months of work.

[638] And of course, I want to thank the speaker for visiting Cambridge, for everything you've done so far.

[639] We've had some brilliant seminars.

[640] We've had this terrific talk, the excellent talk.

[641] last night.

[642] You've really brought so much excitement to the university and really livened us up here and we've had so much fun.

[643] It's been brilliant.

[644] So we've got some presents for you.

[645] We have here an edition, first edition, of a work by someone you mentioned tonight, which is Darwin's Descent of Man. The first edition of that.

[646] But as well as mental food, you also need real food.

[647] addition, we've got an enormous slab of meat.

[648] So thank you very much for you.