277. Deeper Yet Into The Weeds | Pageau & Vervaeke

[0] So hello, everyone.

[1] I'm pleased here, pleased today, to have with me Jonathan Pazzo and John Vervakey, people that most of you, many of you, not all of you, will be familiar with.

[2] I've been working on a new book entitled We Who Wessel with God.

[3] And it's been influenced by Jonathan's ideas and John's ideas.

[4] And I developed an argument in part as a consequence of the public lectures I've been doing for the last three months, trying to push my ideas farther.

[5] And I put forward a set of propositions that I'm basing one of the book chapters on.

[6] I wrote it as an outline.

[7] And then I think it's solid.

[8] I've been testing it when I've been speaking at universities as well.

[9] to diverse audiences of specialists to see if they'll object to it because I think it's actually quite radical.

[10] And I sent this group of propositions or this list of propositions to Jonathan and John a month ago about, and we've been going back and forth.

[11] And I thought, I heard Jonathan was coming to town to do a talk with John.

[12] And I thought, hey, that's a good opportunity.

[13] We could get together and walk through these propositions because I'd like to see if they're solid.

[14] Because if they're solid, well, that's good.

[15] And if they're not, I'd like to find out.

[16] And so we're going to do this a little different.

[17] This is going to be a little different than many of the conversations I've had because it'll have a bit more structure.

[18] And I want to read the propositions.

[19] There's, I think, about 15 of them.

[20] And I want Jonathan and John to comment on them, to tell me where they agree, to tell me where they disagree, tell me what they don't understand, and to see if I can, well, learn something as a consequence.

[21] That's kind of the hope.

[22] And so we'll start with this first proposition.

[23] To see the world, we must, must prioritize our perceptions.

[24] So, John, I'll ask you about that first because that's a particular, I believe, a particular focus of yours.

[25] I don't think that's an exaggeration order.

[26] No, it's not.

[27] That's the core of my work.

[28] And so the main way I would respond to this is I would say, I think the work that's coming out from artificial intelligence and the work that's coming out from attention lines up with this very well.

[29] I don't have any significant disagreement with that proposition.

[30] And the must part of it as well?

[31] So the must, I took, well, let me tell you how I took the must.

[32] Yeah.

[33] And I took it as what's called constitutive necessity.

[34] I took it to be, if you're going to be a cognitive agent, then you must do this.

[35] I didn't take it to be a metaphysical necessity.

[36] I took it to be that kind of constituent necessity.

[37] I think it's useful to start with what you describe as constituent necessities before you move into the realm of metaphysical necessity.

[38] I think that's a good way to argue.

[39] You should all right.

[40] And so I think, and I'm not going to recapitulate all these arguments.

[41] But a lot of work, I think, zeroes in on the idea that the core of what makes us intelligent and the thing that we're finding difficult to give to machines to make them artificially general intelligence is a process I call relevance realization, which is exactly, I think, lines up with this very well.

[42] The amount of information available to you in the world is astronomically vast, all the things you could pay attention to.

[43] The amount of information in your long -term memory, especially if you think of all the ways it could be combined is also astronomically back.

[44] The number of options of potential lines of behavior, I could move this finger, this finger, I could move them, I could live, like the ways I can move.

[45] That's combinatorial explosion.

[46] All of it, all of it.

[47] And then, right, and then you can also consider, you know, all of the options of different potential worlds you might want to consider trying to produce or moving into, right?

[48] And so the point is, in many different dimensions we face culminatorial explosion and what's what you can't do, and this is where it lines up with the must, because we're finite beings, the finite resources and finite time, you can't check all of that information.

[49] So you can't go and say, no, that's not relevant, that's not relevant, that memory is not relevant.

[50] That will take the rest of the history of the universe.

[51] Right, right.

[52] So we don't know how we do it, in fact, because of that in part.

[53] Well, I mean, I think there's getting some clues towards it.

[54] But we can talk about that later, right?

[55] So the must and the prioritization on the perception side, you're fine with.

[56] It has to be.

[57] It has to be.

[58] But here's the tricky thing, which is the fact that we can't check it means, and this sounds almost like a Zen Coen, is the prioritization is odd when you say sort of like prima facie.

[59] Yeah.

[60] Because it means we intelligently ignore most of the information.

[61] So the prioritizing, what I want to put in.

[62] Yeah, that's a good codicil.

[63] So you're saying that you don't want to misinterpret the necessity for prioritization as something like the necessity or our ability to make a numbered list of the number of possibilities that lay out in front of us because that's actually impossible.

[64] Right.

[65] So that isn't how we do it.

[66] However we do it, isn't that.

[67] Exactly.

[68] So if you're okay with that reading, and it sounds like you are, prioritization doesn't mean what we normally mean by prioritization where we set things out explicit and focal and then choose between it's implicit it's implicit and it's self -organizing and our ability to think and it's unconscious yes emerges out of it we we can influence it top down but because it is an absolute requirement for our cognition I would argue that our ability to do anything that we do consciously is ultimately dependent on it and presupposes it Okay, fine.

[69] So that's good.

[70] Jonathan, do you have to add to that?

[71] The only thing that I would add is you have to phrase it in a certain way.

[72] There's no, you have to have a sentence.

[73] But there's a sense in with perception, when we say we must prioritize our perceptions.

[74] I think the best way to understand is that perception is already prioritization.

[75] In order to perceive there has to be a hierarchy in itself.

[76] Perception is in and of itself an act of implicit prioritization.

[77] And to use the word implicit would be a good idea, so to avoid the idea that we are consciously doing it, that in order to even perceive the role, there already has to be a given hierarchy that is making you able to focus on anything, because or else we would be lost in a wave, you know, a sea of infinite details.

[78] Okay, so I think that's a good codicil.

[79] And so we could also make a little technical case here quickly.

[80] So part of the problem that John referred to is that in some sense it's the problem of the finite confronting the infinite.

[81] And so we could make a neurological argument for that.

[82] So for example, when you move your eyes around or when they move around as a consequence of being directed by unconscious structures of prioritization, because that happens all the time, you move your eyes around because you want to direct the high resolution part of your visual system to whatever you're attending to.

[83] That's the fovea.

[84] And the fovea is a very small part of your retina and it's a very high resolution part.

[85] So each cell in the phobia is connected at the level of the primary visual cortex to 10 ,000 cells.

[86] And then each of those have 10 ,000 connections.

[87] And so if your whole vision was foveal in its, in its resolution, you'd have to have a skull like an alien to contain that much brain.

[88] And so, so, so, and that's a real indication of that finitude, right, is that you do have limited cognitive resources and limited means practically and physically limited, but it also means metabolically limited.

[89] The cost of running your brain is already extremely high.

[90] And so you're going to shepherd your available attentional resources because they are finite and they're finite in no small part because they are technically, metabolically, costly.

[91] That all seems okay?

[92] So I would add one thing to that, which is I would put an emphasis on how this process has to be self -organizing, because we want to avoid a perennial problem, which you and I both know shows up in psychology, which is to posit the internal homoculus that actually doesn't explain the problem, but just shifts it.

[93] The central executive is an example of this, et cetera.

[94] So we don't want to say that there's someone that's doing the prioritization because that someone is just as mysterious.

[95] Right, and is facing the very problem that we're trying to explain.

[96] So, right, the process has to be dynamic and so forth.

[97] Well, one of the ways I've realized how that problem works is in an attempt to solve the mind -body problem, because you can't solve the mind -body problem.

[98] But you can say, let's say you want to explore an idea, and you decide to do that by writing an essay.

[99] So then you sit down in front of the computer, which is not an idea.

[100] it's actually that you're sitting.

[101] And then you move your fingers on the keyboard.

[102] And so there's a hierarchy of transformation from mind, which might be the abstract intent, to body.

[103] And so that the spirit hits the body in the finger movements.

[104] And then the spirit disappears in some sense under the finger movements because you can move your fingers voluntarily.

[105] But you have no idea what muscles you're moving to do that.

[106] And you can't control the cells or anything like that.

[107] Oh, I did that with my students in the lecture this morning.

[108] I was talking about.

[109] about this very fact that I said, put up your finger.

[110] Okay, bend your finger.

[111] What do you do to bend your finger?

[112] Right.

[113] Ben your finger.

[114] It's so interesting, it's so interesting that you have that level of consciousness at that level of detail, which is pretty detailed, but no more than that.

[115] Yes, yes.

[116] Yeah, so that's a mystery, man. That localization of consciousness between the body and part of the spirit, there's like a, what would you call it?

[117] there's a bandwidth, there's a bandwidth of resolution for consciousness and why that band.

[118] See, the social psychologists who studied language sort of caught onto this because one of the things they realized was that short words, first of all, short words tend to be old words.

[119] So because as language develops, words that are used a lot get more efficient.

[120] But the short words also map extraordinarily well onto the self -evident level of perception.

[121] And so, for example, a short word is cat.

[122] Because a cat presents itself, for some reason, to our perception.

[123] The species cat doesn't.

[124] And the fur of the cat, in some sense, doesn't.

[125] It's the cat.

[126] Yes.

[127] And you can see that primary object level recognition, I think is basic level.

[128] Basic level.

[129] That's right.

[130] I'm able to rush.

[131] Yes, yes.

[132] Yes, yes.

[133] And so you see that with babies because they get doggy pretty damn fast.

[134] And that's because the language maps on to the primary domain of perception.

[135] that basic level perception quite nicely.

[136] And that is associated with something like the natural bandwidth of consciousness.

[137] Yeah, I would say that that lines up with, if Russia's explanation is, you know, you're getting the best trade -off between differences between category and similarities within categories.

[138] Right.

[139] And then the question is what this best trade -off means.

[140] Exactly.

[141] And that's, and for me, that's what, that would be a little bit of, I guess, a nuance I'd want to put onto the prioritization, because the prioritization sounds very but sort of like an imposition, whereas I think what we're talking about is something more like what Marl Ponty talked about when he talked about optimal gripping, right?

[142] So what's the correct distance to look at this?

[143] Well, it depends.

[144] Because if I zoom in, I lose the gestalt.

[145] If I zoom out, I lose the detail.

[146] That depends on what you want to do.

[147] Exactly.

[148] Well, that's it.

[149] That's why I'm kind of attracted to pragmatism.

[150] It's like, well, to some degree, our theories of truth need to be embedded in the practicalities of action.

[151] And so, is that a grippable object that I can drink from?

[152] Well, I want my perception to match that problem.

[153] Yeah, but it doesn't, I think that it, if you understand that the prioritization, the thing that you have heaven and earth, I'm going to use, sorry, I'm going to use mythical categories, but so you have, that's why you're here.

[154] You have, you have heaven and earth and that it's the way in which heaven meets earth is a, is a mutual relationship, right?

[155] We always see it as a relationship of lovers, you could say.

[156] So it's not, the prioritization isn't just about an imposition from above, but it's about the manner in which that which is above, let's say the hierarchy is able to encounter the potential in which it's...

[157] We were talking about that last night.

[158] So Jonathan made this funny joke last night.

[159] We were talking about Sam Harris, and Sam Harris has this line of argumentation, where, and he used this on me, where I interpreted a biblical story, and then he interpreted a recipe.

[160] And he said, well, look at all the interpretations.

[161] and that is a problem of...

[162] Semiotic drift, yes.

[163] Well, it's also a problem of this horizon of infinite possibility.

[164] There are multiple interpretive schemes.

[165] So Jonathan said he'd like to do a video where he shows that a recipe is actually necessarily embedded inside a mythological framework.

[166] And we started to talk about that because imagine, well, the recipe implies that you need to make an edible meal, that you want to make an edible meal, that you're going to serve it to family and friends, that that's part of a kind of communion that you think that's a good thing that's worth spending time on that serves your family and friends that's maybe nested in something like an ethic of service to the community.

[167] Like, there's a whole network of purpose.

[168] I would add more to that.

[169] There's all kinds of implicit assumptions that I can capture in a sequence of propositions, procedural skills that are not completely captureable in words, and that those procedures and skills can also map on through the particular virtues and skill, you know, that people are bringing to it.

[170] Like, it's like, most things can't be solved by a recipe.

[171] Right.

[172] Right.

[173] And yet, so a recipe is a significant cognitive cultural achievement.

[174] And we don't recognize like, and, and we, we, we tend to overgeneralize the things we think for which we can provide recipes.

[175] This is one of the, this is part of the, this is an algorithm issue.

[176] Yes, exactly, exactly.

[177] And so there's lots.

[178] Yeah.

[179] But even in the recipe, itself, you will notice that the way in which we name things and the way in which we order things will be related to a normal prioritization, hierarchy prioritization.

[180] But if you're making chicken, you'll have the chicken, and then you'll have the spices, and you'll understand that these elements that I'm adding are spices and that they're, let's say, something like a marginalia that I'm adding to the central meal.

[181] It's actually the very, it's like it's the pattern of a church, actually, you know, where you have a movement towards the central identity that we understand.

[182] And then we have the way in which it's complemented to, other things.

[183] And so even the actual recipe itself is like a little microcos.

[184] And also the judgment you use is like, well, how much spice?

[185] Well, the answer is, well, what function is the spice going to serve?

[186] And you say, well, I want to add a little zest and interest to my cooking.

[187] And so then you have a philosophy of zest and interest that's associated with that because just predictable chicken isn't good enough.

[188] And maybe you want to put a little more spice on because you want to, what would you say?

[189] You want to challenge your guests a little bit in an interesting way.

[190] And you're thinking, this all through.

[191] For the same reason, you'd wear funny socks or a tie that has just a little bit too much on it, you know?

[192] Well, it's same thing.

[193] I mean, that's actually a future of general problem solving.

[194] Like, you, when people are solving a problem, especially if they might get the wrong frame, moderately distracting you from the central concern is an optimal way.

[195] Yeah, exactly.

[196] You need to do that.

[197] So what I'm hearing both of you say is the prioritization is really a multi -dimensional optimal gripping.

[198] That's right.

[199] That's right.

[200] we're constantly trading up.

[201] Okay.

[202] Well, then we can also expand on that to some degree because multidimensional and optimal brings a lot of other concerns into it.

[203] So imagine that one of the principles and Kant can't move towards this with his theory of universal ethic in some sense, although I think it, you know, I hesitate to criticize Kant, but I think that there's a deeper explanation for what he observed is, well, how should I treat you?

[204] Well, That's a complex question, but one of the constraints is, well, what if we meet a hundred times?

[205] So we're going to establish an actual relationship.

[206] So however I conduct myself in the present moment has to be in accordance with a value hierarchy that takes into account the desirability of our mutual interrelationship into the future.

[207] And that produces a very serious series of, I would say, often intrinsic constraints.

[208] So I can't be too insulting.

[209] I can't be too unwelcoming.

[210] I have to offer you something approximating a true reciprocity for the thing not to degenerate.

[211] And so, and all of that, and I would say that also governs how you cook for someone if you actually want to make friends.

[212] So it's like treat other people as you would like them to treat you.

[213] And it's pretty funny that that's the intrinsic ethic in a recipe.

[214] And so that's a good, that's such a funny argument.

[215] We'll get right back to Jonathan Peugeot and John Vervaki in just a moment.

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[229] Okay, so let's move to the second presupposition.

[230] To act in the world, so it's kind of a corollary of the first or something equivalent, to act in the world, we must prioritize our actions.

[231] I don't think we probably have to cover that, right?

[232] Because perception is an action already, because you have to move your eyes and orient your head.

[233] Also, gripping is an action.

[234] Yes, exactly.

[235] So I think that goes with it.

[236] Yeah, okay.

[237] So we'll leave that.

[238] Well, okay.

[239] Now, this is the next, this is a nice switch, I think.

[240] any system of priorities is a structure of values, and then I sneak something in, an ethic.

[241] So I'm kind of defining ethic as a something approximating perhaps an internally, it's like a game, it's an internally consistent hierarchy of value, but it's also, it's going to have to be iterable in the sense that we already discussed.

[242] So that's kind of what I'm defining an ethic as.

[243] And then you could also think of it as something that's embodied.

[244] So when you're watching someone on a screen in a movie, say a character, they embody an ethic.

[245] That's what makes them interesting.

[246] It's a whole structure of value and they're acting it out.

[247] And it's a system of priorities of perception and action.

[248] And that's a value structure.

[249] The reason it's a value structure is because, well, what's the difference between prioritization and value?

[250] You prioritize what you value.

[251] And so I think the difficulty I have is if you use the word ethic, because the word ethic is so charged with morality and also say the way that we're supposed to act between each other, then I think it can be a little bit misleading.

[252] Because it implies good.

[253] It seems to, well, I think good is fine.

[254] That is the good in the sense that there's also a good glass, which has no moral bearing at all.

[255] There's a good way to walk down the hall, which is not a moral question.

[256] There's a, you know, the good way to fish, but these are not ethical.

[257] Ethical.

[258] Maybe they are.

[259] Maybe, yeah, maybe.

[260] But I think that that's maybe the little place where I would wonder about.

[261] So that's a terminological problem.

[262] in some sense, right?

[263] Well, it is.

[264] I don't know.

[265] What do you think that it seems to, the word ethic seems to imply interpersonal relationships more.

[266] Yeah, the word ethic has been reduced to the moral interactions.

[267] Ethical.

[268] Yes, yes.

[269] Whereas typically philosophers will use the term normativity to be a much more general term for the idea that there's a governing principle for your behavior.

[270] Okay, so I'll have to make sure I clarify that when I read about this.

[271] But I was also thinking about, you know, common fictional tropes in popular culture.

[272] So if you're watching a mafia movie, one of the things that's interesting about a mafia criminal, as opposed to just your ordinary criminal, is that he's not entirely chaotic, right?

[273] He abides by the mafia code.

[274] So he's loyal to his...

[275] The certain code.

[276] Yeah, he's loyal to a code.

[277] So it makes him a quasi -ethic actor.

[278] And I would of struggling for a word that isn't ethic.

[279] You might disagree with the ethic, or that it's ethical.

[280] I think it's because, I mean, I think you can actually take this a lot further than just a mafia person.

[281] I think there's a way that you can be a good mass murderer in the sense that you can, you have discovered the hierarchy of values, things you need to value in order to become a good mass murderer, and now you're engaging in them towards that hierarchy of values.

[282] You can say, like, there are satanic hierarchy.

[283] Well, the Columbine killers, for example, were doing exactly that.

[284] And most of the mass shooters, there's a contest going on.

[285] They know about each other.

[286] They're often, in fact, one kid who was planning to do this wrote me like six months ago.

[287] He had a 50 -page manifesto ready and the weapons.

[288] And he watched this YouTube video discussion I did with Warren Farrell and where we touched on this issue.

[289] And he decided that there was seriously something wrong with him and that he should get some help and not do this.

[290] But he was in contact with one of the people who went out and shot up a high school.

[291] They had been contact online, so he was like that far away from it.

[292] Yeah, but so there is this, it's not a, you can have a chaotic criminal who's completely unpredictable, but then you don't have much of a plot, right?

[293] He's not an interesting character.

[294] He's going to get caught really fast.

[295] Well, there's that too, right?

[296] The far more interesting ones have a, they haven't, well, I'd say they have an ethic.

[297] Now it's not an ethical ethic.

[298] Right.

[299] So that's why, the word ethic is difficult because you could say that ultimately what you're going to what's going to happen is that there will be a hierarchy of value systems.

[300] Yeah.

[301] It will be more related to the good in the classical sense.

[302] This is Plato.

[303] Yeah, exactly.

[304] Exactly.

[305] Exactly.

[306] And this is Plato's argument that nobody willingly does evil.

[307] Everybody does what they conceive to be a good in some fact.

[308] Yeah.

[309] You see that in Dante, you see the same his whole movement.

[310] He even talks about how the people in hell, everybody is there because of.

[311] I'm reading the divine comedy right now.

[312] That's wonderful.

[313] Yeah, Yeah, that's great.

[314] Everybody who is there is there because of love for a good, even though, even if they love the good too much or they're mistaken about, let's say, the actual ultimate value of that good.

[315] Everybody moves towards a good, even if you're doing something which is completely reprehensible.

[316] Yeah, the proposal that CIN is actually failing to love wisely.

[317] Yeah, exactly.

[318] That's the don't.

[319] Yeah, I have some problem with that viewpoint.

[320] Because I think, I think that happens.

[321] I do think that happens.

[322] And I think many of the, you know, I've talked to people like my friend Greg Herwitz who writes thrillers and he crafts pretty evil characters and we've talked about that a lot an evil character with an ethic so like a misplaced love is a very interesting character but then there's the other sorts of characters that are more cane -like because cane his spirit that the spirit that's expressed in that story his he isn't aiming at something that's good he's aiming at getting away with lying to God, he's aiming at getting away with making insufficient sacrifices, he's aiming at getting away eventually with murder.

[323] It's not a perversion of the good.

[324] And I think that we underestimate the problem of evil if we assume that it's merely a consequence of worshipping false idols say.

[325] Because the idol can be so, it's like, I talked to you last night about the reports that Michelle Foucault rape boys in graveyards.

[326] It's like, okay, he argued even formally, culturally to abolish or at least radically reduce the age of consent.

[327] And a lot of intellectuals went along with them.

[328] And maybe you can have a discussion about that and what the age of consent could be.

[329] And maybe you can't.

[330] There's room for differences in opinion there.

[331] But when your paedophilia involves graveyard sex, then that's not a misplaced good.

[332] Like that's...

[333] But why not, Jordan?

[334] Why isn't that pleasure is a good, right?

[335] Well, it's so specific, you know, why the graveyard?

[336] Like there's something so dark, I don't think there's, I think that's a place that's so dark that you can't go there without knowing that it's dark.

[337] And I do think that I really do believe, and I, you know, I've done my best to study the thought of people who've done truly reprehensible things is that there's a level of reprehensibility where you are going there to cause the most trouble you can.

[338] And I don't see if there's any good left in that.

[339] It's such a tiny spark.

[340] I'm really going to be the devil's advocate here, knowing that there are some that do it better than others and some that don't do it as well.

[341] Even recognizing that the good that they're aiming towards is not really transcendently their good.

[342] Their memory has to be working.

[343] Their problem solving has to be working.

[344] It's like if I...

[345] Yeah, so they're still driven by a coherent spirit.

[346] Well, that's what I think, the spirit of Lucifer and the spirit of Gertes, Mephistopheles.

[347] That's, that's, and the spirit of Cain.

[348] That's a description of that ethic.

[349] It is a coherent personality.

[350] And that's why there's so much, well, and Milton as well, there's been an attempt to delineate the ethic of evil.

[351] And it's not merely chaotic.

[352] And one of the reasons why it's important, and maybe it's hard to see that right away, but one of the reasons why it's important, is I find it important to formulate it this way, the way that Dante formulated it or that Plato formulated it, is that if you don't go in this direction, you end up with a dualism, and then they end up acting as like two opposites.

[353] Whereas there's the more platonic way of setting it up, what ends up happening is that the evil always ends up just being a perversion of the good.

[354] Right.

[355] It's parasitic.

[356] It's always parasitic.

[357] And so what it does is that it makes the good, truly good, and it makes it all pervasive and a way in which it can actually fill up the entire cosmos.

[358] You know, this idea that even in the death of hell, the love of God is there.

[359] Like, you see that in a lot of the Christian mystics, that there is no place that is away from the way.

[360] So let me ask you about that on the grounds of Christian theology.

[361] So, and I'm probably going to mangle this.

[362] And so correct me, well, there's an idea that in the book of Revelation that Christ is the eternal judge, but that he's also a judge who comes back at the end of days and separates the wheat from the chaff, the damned from the saved.

[363] And the implication in that book is that many are called, but few are chosen.

[364] The judgment's pretty damn harsh.

[365] And most what?

[366] Most spirits are damned.

[367] Most people are damned.

[368] And then is that eternal or is there a reconciliation?

[369] And so I don't know the answer to that in the Christian theological sense.

[370] You could say that the best way this is going to, this is the type of thing they could actually get me in trouble, but it's like the best way to formulate it, I think, that we're seeing in the Orthodox tradition right now is to say that we live in the hope of a final restoration, but that we cannot posit.

[371] But we cannot posit it because, like you said, there are seems to be, there seem to be two traditions in the Christian world.

[372] There is a tradition of final restoration, which you find in Revelation as well, by the way, because it says the last thing to die is death itself, There's a sense of where death is thrown into the fire.

[373] And so the last, what exactly is that referring to?

[374] The sense in which the heavenly Jerusalem descends and embodies up the entire world.

[375] So you have these images.

[376] And then you also have an image of evil being completely, let's say, cast off.

[377] And those two kind of exist in a kind of uneasy.

[378] Well, I was thinking this about just the other day when I was thinking about making a video address to the Islamic world, as preposterous as that might sound.

[379] Because one of the things you want to do when you're talking to people is you want to distinguish between them as of intrinsic value and redeemable in some final sense, just as you are, and ideas that might be possessing them that have either this misplaced good element to them or this vengeful element.

[380] And so, you know, you don't want to throw, to use a horrible cliche, you don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[381] And so maybe the separation of the wheat from the chaff is a spiritual discrimination.

[382] that doesn't throw out the entire being along with the judgment.

[383] If you understand it fractally, then I think that that makes sense.

[384] If you read, like, for example, C .S. Lewis is a great example of someone who kind of was going in that direction, was hinting at some things.

[385] He talked about how this notion that the key to hell is, hell is locked from the inside.

[386] Right.

[387] No matter, even, like I think C .S. Lewis said, like, even in the depth of hell, if Satan wanted to repent, there's...

[388] Well, that's what Milton said, too.

[389] But that's not, it's like it's not happening because that's the role that's in the story.

[390] This is the character that helped me understand this part of the cosmos, or the part of the way that the world is laying itself out.

[391] And you see that in some of the Syrian fathers, for example, said that from the Syrian, he says things like that, where he says, the fire in hell is the same fire that was at Pentecost.

[392] The fire in hell is the love of God.

[393] And it's only that to the extent that you refuse to be transformed and you hold on to your, let's say, parasitic good, that is what the fire hell is doing.

[394] Right.

[395] Well, part of that is that as you become more divorced from, let's say, what constitutes a sustainable and valid good, the farther you get away from that, whether it's merely by pursuing a misplaced good or it's by conscious design, the more that elevates itself up as the harshest possible judge that will do the most damage to your current ethic and then destabilize your whole perceptions.

[396] And so that's so interesting because as you deviate, speaking spiritually, as you deviate from God, he becomes more tyrannical in some sense to you and more judgmental.

[397] And it's also partly because this is why the Catholic idea of confession isn't what's often pilloried because, you know, people laugh, well, you're a Catholic, you can sin your whole life and on your deathbed, you can repent.

[398] It's like, yeah, but you have to face the magnitude of everything you did wrong.

[399] So repentance isn't just, well, I'm sorry.

[400] It's like you're actually sorry.

[401] And if you've stacked up a whole lifetime of sins, what makes you think that you're going to have the moral wherewithal on your deathbed to confront that without anything, well, it's just absolute existential terror.

[402] So there's no easy out from that.

[403] So, sorry, we've got a whole other friend.

[404] Yeah.

[405] No, no, no. I mean, I thought the discussion was important.

[406] And what you just said, Jordan, is important.

[407] I, I, for one who would not want immortality because when I look back at the foolishness and the vices of my past, yeah, it's hard.

[408] And so people who think they could just sort of sin and mouth, I don't, mouth the repentance.

[409] I don't think that's.

[410] Well, they also think they can, in some sense, pull one over God, but or we can, we'll abide by this rule that we'll never use religious language when we can use any other kind of language.

[411] No, no, no, no. But I know I know you weren't objecting to that, but I think it's a good principle.

[412] But I'm happy, I'm happy to talk about it.

[413] But I don't, well, let me say, there's something underneath the religious discussion that is sort of a central consensus.

[414] to me at this point.

[415] And I'll invoke Kant.

[416] Kant writes the three critiques, the critique of pure reason, practical reason, judgment.

[417] And Habermost makes a great point of this.

[418] I'm coming to it.

[419] I'm coming to the point, which is we don't see, since Kant, we don't have an integrated normativity.

[420] We have three autonomous spheres of normativity around the true, the epistemic, the good and the beautiful.

[421] And what Kant did and one of the problems of modernity, and this is Habermas's point, is he made a very strong case for the autonomy of each.

[422] Beauty is beauty.

[423] So that's partly why you objected in the way you did when you emailed me back.

[424] Exactly.

[425] I was talking about an ethic that would unite and you said, well, it's differentiated true, beautiful, and good.

[426] My response to that would be something like, well, whatever God is fundamentally ineffable, so we'll make them That will make that clearer to begin with.

[427] But I would say that one way of thinking about the way we think about God is that God is what's common to the good, the true, and the beautiful.

[428] So this gets us into the discussion that I think is, for me, sort of the deepest levels of the phenomenology and the cognition, which is, I mean, Jonathan would know, this is the classical doctrine.

[429] The classical way of putting this is the convertible of the transendidels are convertible into each.

[430] other.

[431] So somehow the true and the good and the beautiful are one, but not mathematical identity.

[432] This is really important.

[433] It's not like you can, right.

[434] And so, and Aquinas wrestles with this, I'm been reading Maximus, by the way.

[435] Maximus.

[436] I think you see a reflection of that in the idea of the Trinity, too.

[437] Well, of course, right?

[438] And so the issue there is, and I've been reading D .C. Schindler on the Catholicity of Reason, and he talks about this, he gets it from Baltazar.

[439] He talks about the primacy of beauty, the centrality of goodness, and the ultimacy of truth, that they are superlative but in different ways.

[440] So what he means by that is a primacy to beauty.

[441] And this is a classic platonic argument.

[442] If you don't have beauty, all the other normativities are not available to you.

[443] Right.

[444] So why right?

[445] I wrote a chapter in my last book on The Successity of Beauty.

[446] But I don't understand why that, why, Why primary?

[447] And what does that say about our perception that it's primary?

[448] Right?

[449] Because you don't have to think about it.

[450] Is that part of it?

[451] Is that you apprehend it?

[452] I don't understand exactly.

[453] Well, a way of thinking about it is Skari wrote a really beautiful book called Beauty and how it prepares us for truth and justice.

[454] And the idea, so let's let's take something that's very culturally relevant.

[455] And something I've been talking about.

[456] So we are immersed in what Recur called a hermone addicts of suspicion.

[457] The hermeneics of suspicion is that appearances are always distorting, distracting, deceiving us from reality.

[458] That's the hermetic suspicion.

[459] And the moment of truth is when you reveal the hidden cabal, the conspiracy, right, this is the hermeneity's suspicion.

[460] And it's, you know, and Recur's point is we got this.

[461] That's what Freud does.

[462] It's the uncovering.

[463] Here's what's really going.

[464] The deconstruction is here's what's really going on.

[465] It's everywhere now.

[466] Right, exactly.

[467] Yeah, yeah.

[468] Now here's Marloponty.

[469] point about this, right?

[470] His point is, but wait, the hermeneics of that, the heronics of suspicion is always dependent on this.

[471] If I say that's unreal, oh, look, I do that because I say that's real.

[472] Realization is always a comparative judgment.

[473] This is his point.

[474] And so does he accept the notion that there is something?

[475] Because one of the things you see in the postmodern types, and I was looking at Richard Rorty work the other day, and he seems to to buy the postmodern idea that everything is just a network of linguistic representation and that there is no real beyond that.

[476] That's Dylan's critique of that being semi -logical reductionism.

[477] All you do is transfer all the markers of reality onto properties of the text.

[478] And then you prevent the text from being subject to the very criticisms you're making of reality.

[479] Yeah.

[480] Well, that seems credible to me. Okay.

[481] So it was Merleau -Ponty accepts the reality of beauty.

[482] Exactly.

[483] Because think about what this means.

[484] If the hermonex's suspicion is, right, that appearances distract us, deceive us, distort.

[485] There has to be something under that.

[486] Right.

[487] And beauty is when appearances disclose reality.

[488] Yeah.

[489] That's the, that's what, I mean, that's what.

[490] I believe that.

[491] That's the artist, I mean, that's the artist take, or that's the liturgical take, or it's the beauty of a church or the beauty of an icon, or the, it's the notion that God or ultimate reality or however you want to phrase it.

[492] is disclosing itself to us and that appears to us as the connection between that which we encounter these pattern beings that we encounter and what they reveal to us about the other transcendentals well when i wrote this chapter which is my favorite chapter in both books it's try to make one room in your house as beautiful as possible and so this sort of step behind well order your room first so that it's just not cluttered and and idiotic and and running at counter purposes to whatever your purposes are, reflection of your internal chaos, get it orderly.

[493] But that's not good enough.

[494] The next thing is see if you can make a relationship with beauty, which is really, it's really, people are afraid of that, eh?

[495] Because I've watched people try to buy art, and they're terrified of buying art. And the reason is, is because their choice puts their taste on display.

[496] And if their taste is undeveloped, then their inability to distinguish between a false appearance and the genuine reality of beauty is immediately revealed to people.

[497] So they're terrified of it.

[498] But they're also equally terrified of beauty.

[499] So let me tell you a story about this.

[500] If you don't mind, I bought some Russian impressionist paintings for my father.

[501] And I liked them a lot lot.

[502] This particular artist, the Russian impressionist style is like the French impressionist style, except it's a lot rougher.

[503] The brushstrokes are thicker.

[504] So it's lower resolution.

[505] But it's equally beautiful in terms of palette.

[506] And I have a variety of paintings.

[507] If you get some distance from them, they just snap into representations.

[508] So lovely.

[509] And so I sent my dad like eight of these paintings.

[510] And my mom took one look at them and she said, those are not coming out of the basement.

[511] And so, and my mom is a conservative person.

[512] So she's not high in openness.

[513] She's not that interested in ideas.

[514] And she's not, and her aesthetic sense isn't sophisticated.

[515] Now, my mother has a lot of lovely attributes, and my dad and her differ in that.

[516] And so he loved these paintings, and then he made these frames for them.

[517] And then he brought one up, and my mom tolerated that.

[518] And then he brought another one up, and then she tolerated that.

[519] And then, like, all eight of them eventually made it upstairs.

[520] And then a few years later, I was there, and she told me how much she loved the paintings.

[521] But it really, they really set her off.

[522] And I think it was partly because, well, if you're magic, you have, you're comfortable in your canonical perceptions of objects in some sense.

[523] And then the impressionist come along and say, you know, you could look at that whole landscape as if it was nothing but the interplay of color.

[524] And that's, we forget how radical that is.

[525] I mean, those paintings caused riots in Paris when they were first shown impressionist paintings.

[526] And that's what my mother was reacting to.

[527] It's like, oh my God, there's a whole different way of looking at the world.

[528] I don't want to see that.

[529] And it's an invitation to that which is beyond the triviality of your perceptions, let's say, but it's to think that there's nothing about that that's worth being frightened of or challenging.

[530] You don't understand conservatives if you don't see that.

[531] But in terms of beauty, one of the things that also that, especially now, you can, one of the problems or the way the beauty can kind of overwhelm us is that we feel as if if we give ourselves, we're afraid of the suspicion, the hermonex of suspicion.

[532] We're afraid that if we see, we reality discloses itself to us and we can see the connection between that which is appearing to me and some something behind it, then I'm afraid that if I jump, if I make that leap, then I'll be betrayed or all that or that it will.

[533] Right, that it will turn out to be real or well.

[534] And sometimes it's not.

[535] Like there are, there is, it is possible to be tricked by by appearance of it.

[536] And this gets you to Hans, you know, saving beauty, his critique of what you see.

[537] going on right now, is he argues, if you read ancient texts, if you read Plotinus, one of the features they'll say about beauty is it's striking and disturbing and disrupting.

[538] Right?

[539] I want to come back to that about the transformative aspect of truth, but, right, the transformative theory of truth.

[540] But, and Hahn talks about, no, what we've done, right, and he talks about it in other books too, is we've reduced, we try to reduce the beautiful to the smooth, which is the ease at which we can consume some.

[541] something.

[542] Like the smooth outer cover of a car.

[543] Exactly.

[544] One pixel resolution.

[545] Yes, yes.

[546] And because, because what that does is it gives you, and I'll use this with deliberately, the veneer of beauty, but while protecting you from the hormonics as a suspicion.

[547] Yeah.

[548] Right?

[549] You see that?

[550] So what we do is, and then he says in pornography is the primary example of that, because what you do is you remove all threat, all mystery, all otherness from the person.

[551] So there's no way they can strike you or disturb you.

[552] Or reject you.

[553] Right.

[554] Yes, exactly.

[555] And so pornography is an example of the smooth, completely overtaking the beautiful and being misunderstood as the beautiful.

[556] But if you gentlemen are in agreement with it, what that means, that's my answer to why the primacy of beauty.

[557] Because if you do not get that ability to, and I want to use this word in two sentences.

[558] Sorry, please go ahead, then I'll ask.

[559] Yeah, I want to say through the way I'm saying, like, through my glasses, beyond and by means of, if we can't properly get a moment where we can see through appearance into reality, we are locked into solipsism and skepticism.

[560] You need a primary movement.

[561] And if you do it, if you do it rather than it is called to you, then you are trapped.

[562] You need something that calls you from beyond the appearance.

[563] so that you can properly align appearances to reality, and you realize that's why the primacy is that the ontological calling you out of epistemology?

[564] I would argue that that's Plato's argument for how the beauty, how beauty works.

[565] So when you say, okay, so I've thought a lot about the relationship between love and truth, and I think love is primary, and the truth is the handmaiden of love in some sense.

[566] But, but so there's a primacy there.

[567] I would say the primacy of love, but you're making an argument for the primacy of beauty.

[568] And so are they contradictory arguments?

[569] No, no, no, no, not at all, because Plato's view of love, and you have to be careful because Plato is taking the Greek notion of Eros, and he's trying to bend it.

[570] And I think he's trying to bend it towards what the Christians are going to eventually talk about in Agape.

[571] Right, right.

[572] So take that as a caveat on what I'm saying.

[573] But nevertheless, what's going on, right, is Plato says, no, no, no, what love is is that you are called to beauty.

[574] And let me, let me, let me just try and show you, give me a sec, because there's a connection.

[575] Okay.

[576] So a lot, this will sound like, where's he talking out of left field, but like truth, rationality, most of the cognitive biases, in fact, there's a growing argument that a lot of the cognitive biases, confirmation bias, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, a lot of them are actually versions, aspects of the my side bias, egocentrism.

[577] I won't make that argument here.

[578] I think it's a good argument.

[579] But let's say, even if it's only partially true, this is an important point.

[580] And Spinoza got this, right?

[581] This orientation, self -relevance, how things are relevant to me, right?

[582] That sort of fundamental egocentrism, a fundamental way in which you're prioritizing your perception on the world, right?

[583] You can't reason your way out of that.

[584] Benoza, the most logical of the philosopher, says, no, no, the only thing that will invert the arrow of relevance is love.

[585] This is Murdoch's point.

[586] Love is when you recognize something other than yourself is real.

[587] Right.

[588] Okay, so let's, okay, let me ask you about that because I've been thinking about the idea of being selfish.

[589] Yes.

[590] You know, well, psychopaths are selfish, but they also betray themselves.

[591] Yes.

[592] Because psychopaths don't learn from experience, and they doom their future selves.

[593] And so I kind of wonder if that love that lifts you out of this self -orientation, what it does in some sense is that it's the way you see the world if you see beyond this narrow selfishness.

[594] Because I don't really think there's any difference technically in me taking care of the multitude of future selves that I will become and me treating you properly.

[595] I totally agree.

[596] I think your relationship to your future self is ultimately an agopic relationship.

[597] And I think that's the only way you can deal with a lot of empirical research.

[598] Okay.

[599] You do.

[600] You do.

[601] Yes.

[602] Oh, why the empirical research?

[603] Because I think the empirical research shows that, like I mentioned it in the Cambridge talk that I sent you a little link to, right?

[604] If you do this, this is one instance among many experiments, you go into a bunch of academics at a university, the people who are supposed to be the best at taking data and processing it, you present them with all the evidence that they should start saving for their retirement right now.

[605] Right.

[606] And they won't do it.

[607] You come back six months later, you ask them at the time, is this argument, a solid, solid argument, great evidence.

[608] Come back since months.

[609] Have they changed?

[610] Not at all.

[611] Yeah.

[612] The behavioral therapists know that perfectly well.

[613] Right.

[614] But so if you do the following, you say, I want you to imagine your future self as a family member that you love and care of them.

[615] Right.

[616] Right.

[617] They will start to save and, more importantly, the vividness of that imagery predicts how well.

[618] Well, that's so cool.

[619] Look, you know, this program that we worked on future authoring program.

[620] Well, it's predicated on the idea of developing a love for your future self.

[621] So it's an exercise.

[622] It's a real sense.

[623] It's like here.

[624] And it's the ethic that's underneath it, although this wasn't particularly conscious in my mind when I built it, was knock and the door will open.

[625] It's like, okay, let's play a game.

[626] You get to have what you want and need.

[627] But the rule is, first of all, you have to accept it.

[628] And second of all, you have to specify it.

[629] And so, but let's just play it as a game.

[630] If you could, if you could envision a future that would justify your suffering, that's a really good way of thinking about it, justify your suffering.

[631] What would that entail?

[632] And then people, and then I make it practical.

[633] It's like, well, what do you want for an intimate relationship?

[634] How do you want to treat your family members?

[635] What sort of job or career?

[636] Like I break it into seven practicalities, you know, to nail it down to the ground.

[637] And I do believe that, see, one of the things we found, we thought, well, what predicts whether or not this works.

[638] Because it really works.

[639] We dropped the dropout rate of young men at Mohawk College, 50%.

[640] It should.

[641] It should work.

[642] Well, it did.

[643] Yes.

[644] And it had the biggest effect on those who were doing the worst, which is not very common for psychological interventions.

[645] But one, the only thing we could find content -wise that predicted how well it would work was number of words written.

[646] And so my sense was, well, that just was an index, a rough index of how much thought they put into it and how vividly and then it would be did they treat their future self with some love like genuinely and then did they differentiate that so it wasn't just an abstract mountaintop conceptualization so but let's add one wrinkle that brings the beauty thing back because you go back and ask them why didn't you pay attention to your future self before well sometimes people don't think they could they have no idea that that's even a possibility that's I don't deny that.

[647] But overwhelmingly, people said, I don't want to look at that person because that's me old and ugly.

[648] They're afraid of it.

[649] Yeah.

[650] And it's an aesthetic judgment.

[651] It's an aesthetic judgment.

[652] And what you have to do is get them to reform it.

[653] But what if that's an old thing?

[654] It's a shallow aesthetic judgment.

[655] Yes.

[656] That's right.

[657] My wife, she does portraits.

[658] And one of the things that's really interesting about my wife's art is she will look at, she's like goya, although you know, Goya is Goya, obviously.

[659] But one of the things I really found striking about Tammy is, like, she did a very detailed picture of my daughter's surgical wound.

[660] And that's not an easy thing to look at, right?

[661] Because you don't want to look at that.

[662] But that also ties in with the ideas we've been discussing about the fact that, so in the story of Exodus, when God tells Moses how to stop the Israelites from being bitten by poisonous snakes, he insists that they have to look at what's poisoning them.

[663] And, well, Well, I think that's the crucifixion message essentially.

[664] The mystery of the crucifixion ultimately.

[665] All these images that we have, like the beauty of Christ's wounds, all these things which sounds so completely pathological.

[666] Yeah, to many people, if you can understand them properly, you can understand that that's...

[667] You have to gaze on that, which most threatens you.

[668] Yeah, there's a verse.

[669] And then you say, well, this inadequacy of vulnerability that characterizes old age, that's a terror in that.

[670] Yeah.

[671] And so people won't go there.

[672] Right.

[673] But what you do is you replace the shallow.

[674] aesthetic, right?

[675] Don't let the appearances, right, distract you.

[676] Right.

[677] Let the appearances disclose.

[678] What if that was an old family member who has always looked through and see that those appearances are, that's somebody who's been there, right, that you care about.

[679] Someone you love.

[680] Exactly.

[681] And so you beautify them, so you love them.

[682] And the love and the beauty, they reinforce each other.

[683] So for me, to answer your question, right, you're saying the primacy of love, and I think you ultimately mean agopic love, right?

[684] That and beauty, if you're incapable of turning the arrow of relevance and saying, I want that to exist rather than I want that to exist for me, right?

[685] That's what beauty does.

[686] And that's also the central move, I would argue, in love.

[687] Okay.

[688] So do we want to detour into the true and it's beautiful, true, and beautiful, true, and the good?

[689] The good.

[690] Do you have something equally revealing to say about the good and the true.

[691] Yeah, I do.

[692] Okay, well, let's let's let's go there and then we'll continue through this because I thought that was really useful.

[693] Well, and I would like this, if I would request that we return back to that whatever this discourse, whatever, I love following the logos.

[694] That's that, that, that I, I aspire to be like Socrates.

[695] Like a true Christian.

[696] Well, but it's both like a two follower of Socrates too, right?

[697] Fair enough.

[698] Fair enough.

[699] Right.

[700] And, and But I'm hoping that in this diologos, if we get into the depths of the true, the good, and the beautiful, that we can address my criticism of you, which is I'm making a criticism on behalf of the Enlightenment and cause, which is the fracturing of the normativities into three autonomous spheres.

[701] And this argument, if it's going to go forward, needs something that would...

[702] Yeah, I see.

[703] I see what you're doing.

[704] You bet.

[705] I can put it down.

[706] Is that okay with you?

[707] Yeah, that's fine.

[708] Yeah.

[709] Right.

[710] Okay.

[711] So for me, the thing I want to say, first about the good is there's two readings to make about this.

[712] And one is, and this is what the Enlightenment did, we can reduce, and Jonathan's already challenged this, but we can reduce the ethical, we can, sorry, we can reduce the good to the ethical good.

[713] So that when we're talking about goodness, we're asking how moral a person is in the standard modern meaning, right?

[714] Now, what Plato argues is that is actually a derivative form of goodness.

[715] It's kind of an algorithmic form.

[716] It's kind of an algorithmic form.

[717] So here's the central sort of, at least I would argue.

[718] Now, of course, there's going to be 10 ,000 Platonists will disagree with everything I would say because Plato's been around so long, right?

[719] But I think I could make a good case, and I think this lines up with the best book I've ever read on Plato, D .C. Schindler's, Plato's Critique of Impure Reason, the best book.

[720] Hands down my whole life.

[721] D .C. Schindler is astonishing.

[722] But here's a proposal, right?

[723] We, and you can see Descartes wrestling with this in the Enlightenment and sort of failing.

[724] We need intelligibility to be wedded to reality.

[725] Right.

[726] The structures of intelligibility have to be not identical to because that's impossible.

[727] You try idealism and that failed.

[728] I'm sorry, that was too fast for some people, but I'll just let that go.

[729] But so we, we, the map has to correspond to the territory.

[730] More than correspond.

[731] It has to, there has to be a conformity.

[732] There has to be a contact and a wedding for them together.

[733] There can't be a space between them, like there is between map and territory, because as soon as there's a space, there's what guarantees and what manages the space.

[734] And at some point, this is, this is Taylor's point.

[735] You need a contact epistemology.

[736] Not right, right, right.

[737] So, now there's nothing you can do, right, that will show me. or give me an argument for why intelligibility should conform that way to reality.

[738] Because what you'll do is you get locked in, right?

[739] And this is what Plato saw, right?

[740] But what Plato's basically saying is there is, it's like, if I can put it this way, I'll try and put it in a way that's more narrative.

[741] It's like there's a perpetual promise that intelligibility will track reality, and that we find that to be inexhaustibly the case.

[742] But there's no argument we can give that will alter.

[743] ultimately explain that because every argument presupposes it.

[744] Does that track as...

[745] I'm not sure why the last part of that is true, although I agree that it's true.

[746] So, and I, and what's running around in the back of my head while you're laying that out is I think, well, in some sense, that's the problem that evolution solves in a technical sense.

[747] So, you know, let's say a mosquito lays a million eggs in its lifetime.

[748] And so that's a million mosquitoes whose epistemology better track ontology.

[749] But almost none of them do.

[750] So they all die.

[751] Yes.

[752] And so that mapping, I think, because it's philosophically impossible in some sense, I think that the process of evolution is actually what solves that.

[753] And then our cognitive architecture emerges out of that evolved base.

[754] And so it's taken 3 .5 billion years to produce the solutions that we have to mapping intelligibility onto.

[755] I totally agree with you about this.

[756] So let me agree and then tell you why I think it goes deeper.

[757] Yeah.

[758] So just very quickly, I think relevance realization basically does that same thing that evolution does.

[759] It has this, it's a self -organizing system in which you would introduce variation and then selection.

[760] Your attention's doing it right now.

[761] There's a drive to open up, mind wander vary, and then there's, and what you're doing is constantly evolving your fittedness, your optimal gripping.

[762] Towards some end, which is the dialogue of the conversation.

[763] Yes.

[764] And whatever that's embedded in.

[765] Exactly.

[766] Yeah.

[767] Right.

[768] Yeah.

[769] Okay.

[770] So you're doing this.

[771] Exactly.

[772] And there's a space of associations beside what you're doing.

[773] But what I'm saying is evolution actually presupposes an ontology in which that will work.

[774] Right.

[775] Right.

[776] Right.

[777] Right.

[778] So that's the deeper point.

[779] Okay.

[780] Right.

[781] Okay.

[782] So that you should have something to say about that.

[783] But we've talked about that before.

[784] Like when we did that thing on Genesis, and you talk about how it's this idea of a psychic projection.

[785] But the idea that, let's say, you don't.

[786] for example, could imagine that you could psychically project patterns and onto the world means that it presupposes that the same problem.

[787] That means that those patterns are presupposed in the manner in which the world exists for that to even be possible.

[788] And the historians of science I've read who attempt to embed the development of science in a Judeo -Christian ethic by necessity, also giving obeisance, let's say, to the influence of the Enlightenment, say that the notion that there was a logos, there's an ontological logos as well as an epistemological logos, was that precondition for the development of the scientific attitude.

[789] And I think that's true.

[790] Yes.

[791] And I think, and that's the cornerstone of ancient epistemology.

[792] You don't ask the question, how from this, the workings of my mind to I get to the ontology, you ask the question, well, whatever knowledge there is presupposes intelligibility, right?

[793] And then I have to ask, What must the world be like such that that intelligibility reliably exists?

[794] It's a very different orientation.

[795] That's for sure.

[796] Okay.

[797] So, but let's take it that this is at least a plausible argument.

[798] The promise that intelligibility is wedded to reality and that we can realize it through something like relevance realization cognitively or biologically, adaptivity through evolution, right?

[799] That promise is continually made, but we can give no expert.

[800] for it, because given what we've just said, every attempt to explain it presupposes it as a fundamental thing.

[801] Okay.

[802] That seems just fine to me. The fact that the promise is inexhaustibly kept is the good.

[803] Is that the good that is referred to in Genesis when God uses the logos to derive habitable order out of chaos and says it is good?

[804] Is that the same idea?

[805] I hope so.

[806] I mean, for me, that's what Plato means when he talks about how the good is even beyond being.

[807] Because the good makes possible the intelligibility of reality.

[808] Okay, well, that's kind of what I'm trying to also drive at in this system of propositions.

[809] And that's what I meant, and I hope you took it as a compliment.

[810] What I said, I think this is a neoplatonic argument you're making.

[811] You're doing a lot of similar moves.

[812] Okay.

[813] Now, the thing I have is, right, so that's the good.

[814] and then is there a way of, and I think Jonathan will have some important things to say.

[815] So that's like the a priori structure of being.

[816] Before there's actually beings.

[817] It's like there's a, there's a potential intelligibility even for the finite in relation to the infinite.

[818] Exactly.

[819] Because if, and what you can do is you can reject that fundamental goodness.

[820] And notice, I can't give you an argument to get you back into it.

[821] But if you reject that fundamental goodness, you will be, you will be, and you, you see Descartes wrestling with this because he tries to, he gets sort of stuck inside the Cajito, right?

[822] And he's trying, and he, I think therefore I am.

[823] Right.

[824] And he realizes, oh, oh, I could be trapped in solipsism and skepticism.

[825] And what does he do?

[826] He says, oh, no, no, there must be a God that guarantees that the intelligibility, the clear and distinct ideas map onto reality.

[827] He realizes he needs something outside of the argument in order to guarantee that fundamental goodness that makes everything else possible.

[828] But then what he does is he creates famously a circular argument for that God.

[829] And so he tries to make an argument for it, but he ends up presupposing the very thing he's trying to prove.

[830] This is what I mean by our apprehension of it is not something that is produced inferentially.

[831] It is an apprehension of this fundamental goodness.

[832] And I can't, I can't, I can't, give you an argument or an evidence or evidence for it.

[833] Now, I think ethical goodness is dependent on and reflective of, at times exemplary of, that ontological of Yolalaammy goodness.

[834] And don't you think that that's the reason why in so many traditions, the infinite is always referred to negatively, like the whole notion of negative theology or...

[835] Oh, that's interesting.

[836] Say more.

[837] Well, the idea that if you want to express that which is the source of being, you end up having it almost, it empties itself.

[838] Yes.

[839] It is empties itself of all characteristics while recognizing that it is at the same time the summation of all characters.

[840] It's like the good ultimately is that which everything is culminating to and then it's a kind of giving away into something which is always more.

[841] And you think that's related to that a prior acceptance of the existence of the relationship between intelligence and being?

[842] Well, that it's that this thing that guarantees that has.

[843] is being pointed at to by these processes?

[844] I think so.

[845] I've been thinking about, I've been thinking, I don't know, I can take you on this, this experiment that I've talked about.

[846] This idea that identity is kinetic, that identity always kind of empties itself into more.

[847] So, you always use the example of an object, like you have a, it's like, you have a cup, and then you have, you have, at a certain level, you have different aspects of the cup.

[848] So in order for it to reach its good, all these elements, in order for them to reach its good, they have to kind of, they have to give themselves into something which cannot be found at the level of their elements.

[849] Oh.

[850] And so what you end up having is you have hierarchies of beings that that are moving towards that identity, but as they reach their highest point, they actually empty themselves into the higher identity.

[851] And then you move up and then you end up with something that is beyond being ultimately.

[852] Okay.

[853] So let me try something to you because that might start to sow the good and the true and the beautiful together.

[854] I've been doing a lot on marrying Maro Ponti with Plato and John Roots and other people are doing this, so I won't.

[855] But here, like, that thing you just pointed out.

[856] So Maro Ponti's point is you can never completely see any object.

[857] So let's just talk about, because the number of, right, the number of just even perceptual aspects is unlimited.

[858] Which is what the castle was doing.

[859] And then, of course, then there's the imaginal aspects.

[860] I can also, all the functions that are implicit in this, all the use, like, shh, right?

[861] And then, so one of the things I've been arguing is, is that if you take a look at Plato, the IDOS originally meant the look of a thing, but he didn't mean the look.

[862] He meant something like the aspect.

[863] And here's what the, like, so you have all of these aspects and they're unfolding inexhaustibly.

[864] There's a through, but they don't unfold chaotically.

[865] There is a coherent through line that runs through them.

[866] Right?

[867] You get a sense of, as you said, the identity.

[868] But here's the thing.

[869] that through line is not itself an aspect.

[870] No. It can't be.

[871] Because if you're making a fundamental...

[872] It's an a prior necessity for it.

[873] And it runs through it.

[874] But notice how, right?

[875] First of all, that's starting to get us into a sense of the goodness because that's the promise being kept.

[876] The through line is the promise being kept.

[877] It's also a different notion of truth.

[878] This is something I want to talk about later if we get a chance.

[879] Truth is this as Alethea, as disclosure rather than as correspondence.

[880] But notice, first of all, how that corresponds to beauty.

[881] And think about what Tammy's doing with the paintings.

[882] She's, right?

[883] Because she's, don't step, don't stop at this one aspect as the appearance, but open it up.

[884] Open up all and see and fulfill the promise.

[885] The aspects.

[886] Even in something horrible.

[887] Yes.

[888] And maybe that's dependent on your willingness to gaze, which is the story of Exodus and the bronze serpent.

[889] Well, and I would say the crucifixion as well.

[890] That's really interesting because Han talks about we've lost the ability to linger with things.

[891] And that's why we can no longer see the beautiful.

[892] You know, if chimps are in the jungle and they come across a decent size snake, they'll stand at a distance from it, but they will gaze at it for up to 24 hours.

[893] And they have a particular cry, which is a snake ra, that's the name of the cry, which they utter that brings other chimps.

[894] And so they hate snakes, right?

[895] Innately, if you show a rubber snake to a chimp that's never seen one, he'll hit the ceiling, but then he'll look.

[896] And so they're out there gazing on the snake.

[897] It's part of, they're fascinated by it despite the fact that it's also simultaneously threatening.

[898] Yes.

[899] So I think that there's increasing evidence for something like awe.

[900] It's awe.

[901] Definitely.

[902] Well, that's manifest in pile of erection in animals.

[903] Okay, but think about what awe does.

[904] Aw is a kind of love.

[905] And all of the things awe does, which is really interesting, it's one of the few instances where people reliably report a sense of the shrinkage of the self that is, nevertheless, has a positive element to it.

[906] Even though they're terrified, they want to, they want to follow it through.

[907] They want to go into, right?

[908] Well, I think that's partly.

[909] So imagine this.

[910] So imagine awe.

[911] Imagine Pileau erection now.

[912] So a cat puffs up.

[913] And you know, that's the hair standing up in the back of your neck.

[914] Oh, it's the same instinct.

[915] It is.

[916] And I'm doing work on this with a student of mind right now and how we've exacted the pado erection into aesthetic experience.

[917] Right.

[918] Okay, so imagine this.

[919] Now, you're out, you look at the night sky, and it's awe -inspiring.

[920] So there's also a call to imitate there.

[921] So you see the image of Mary, for example, with her foot on the serpent and her head in the stars.

[922] Well, she's looking at the stars, and she's, so that's the cosmic realm, it's the infinite.

[923] And now she's awe -struck by that vision.

[924] And then she, in order to adapt to that vision of the infinite, you know, You have to imitate that which instills the awe, and that's represented by her foot on the serpent.

[925] Oh, that's cool.

[926] Yes, that's for sure.

[927] That's where, you know, there's literally hundreds of Renaissance images of that.

[928] Mary, head in the stars, foot on the serpent.

[929] And I've been thinking through this awe issue for, and it has this interesting association with beauty.

[930] But you can imagine that when a cat dances sideways in Pilo -Rex, it's trying to look larger.

[931] It's trying to look as if it can overcome the predator.

[932] Well, that's what awe does to us, is that when we've historically, evolutionarily, what we did when we felt awe in the face of a predator is we felt compelled to imitate the predator so that we could become ferocious enough to overcome the predator.

[933] And so that's that call to an expanded being that Jung would associate, for example, with development of the shadow.

[934] It's like when you look at something brutal, you know, that really terrifies you, it has to call that capacity for predatory.

[935] behavior out of that monstrous capacity.

[936] Now, it should be integrated into the kind of ethic that we're describing, but you're not good if you're harmless.

[937] It's way more than that.

[938] And that awe in the face of what's catastrophic is a call to be more than the catastrophic thing, which certainly makes you monstrous in a sense.

[939] Well, that's really interesting.

[940] Because I mean, it's also, it also produces sort of increased seeking of others, which makes sense.

[941] one of the ways we can make ourselves band together.

[942] And then, and then that seems to get exacted into, right, I don't have to be big, but I can connect or participate in something.

[943] Right.

[944] Right.

[945] And then you get reverence as opposed to just raw awe.

[946] What's really interesting just to supplement your argument, and this is work I'm doing with Song Yu Chen.

[947] If you, like, they have a, they have a device now that will actually cause people to have chills, the chills up and down the spine.

[948] You run cold water up and down in the right way.

[949] What you do, and what you can do is you can really enhance people's aesthetic experience.

[950] But even more basically, you get people to listen to the same passage of music and you put one group of people in a slightly cooler room, they will have a more powerful aesthetic experience of the music.

[951] Because it facilitates pile of erection.

[952] Exactly.

[953] That's so cool.

[954] Yeah, I was so thrilled about this notion of pilo erection being associated with the instinct to imitate.

[955] You know, to put those two things together.

[956] It's like, well, what do you do in the face of the predator?

[957] Well, one is run away.

[958] The other is become superordinate to the predator.

[959] And then you might say, well, what's the worst possible predator, which I think is part of the Judeo -Christian narrative?

[960] Because we're trying to because the snake in the garden is Satan.

[961] It's like, well, what's the worst predator?

[962] It's not the snake.

[963] Bad as snakes are.

[964] It's like a super snake.

[965] It's a metastake.

[966] It's the sum total of everything that threatens you.

[967] And so that calls you to be more than that, whatever that is.

[968] I don't know a lot about the biology, but biology, but do the animals experience this highly erection with, let's say, a member of their own species that is bigger or more dominating?

[969] Sure.

[970] Yes, they do.

[971] Sure.

[972] And we also have some preliminary, and it's at the graphics, they have to be careful with it, that they do something that looks like awe.

[973] You'll get a monkey.

[974] You've got the snake thing, but there's also a video like of a macaque monkey, and it goes out onto a precipice, which is a little bit dangerous.

[975] To watch a sunrise, not doing anything, it just sits there.

[976] Well, you know, monkeys will look longer.

[977] If you show them photos of their troop, they gaze longer at the high status individuals as well.

[978] Yes.

[979] And if they are encountering a high status individual who could take them out in some sense, but not merely as an expression of power, as the primatologists insist, then they do show pile erection in response to the threat from the superior.

[980] But they're also fascinated by it.

[981] And you can imagine that part of that fascination is the locking of their attention onto what they could become.

[982] Right, because that's what, at least that it interests me more in the sense of beauty, right?

[983] Yes.

[984] Where it is this sense of shrinking in front of something in the sense, feeling that you're smaller than that, and then this desire to move into it.

[985] Contact imitation is a kind of internalization, a kind of being wetting yourself to someone in a profound way.

[986] That's a form of worship, a primary form of worship, right?

[987] Because you worship what you, you imitate what you worship.

[988] They're the same thing.

[989] And so, okay, well, that was fun.

[990] So shall we move to the next one?

[991] I think so.

[992] I mean, I'm getting a sense of how the true, the good, and the beautiful could be potentially integrated.

[993] Because I think that's a necessary requirement for this argument.

[994] And notice how we are moving outside of, we didn't talk about true.

[995] We could talk about that later at some point.

[996] We're moving outside of sort of standard ways of talking about at least goodness and beauty here.

[997] And I think there's similar ways of doing it a truth that could actually get us back to something that...

[998] Yeah, well, it's nice to put the biological twist on it, too.

[999] I'd wanted to run one thing before we move on, which is that the way that I tend to think about it in terms of when we talked about the idea of the through line, you say you have...

[1000] I think that's the idas.

[1001] I think that's what the form is in Plato.

[1002] It isn't what Aristotle thought it was.

[1003] It isn't just a specificity of necessary and sufficient conditions.

[1004] So would you feel comfortable with the notion that it's the manner in which the multiplicity is gathered?

[1005] It's the logos.

[1006] Right.

[1007] And so it actually gathers multiplicity.

[1008] Don't listen to my words.

[1009] Listen to the logos that gathers them together.

[1010] All things are one, right?

[1011] Heraclitus.

[1012] So then what we would presume provisionally is that the thing that unites the true, the good, the beautiful is the logos.

[1013] Now, we shouldn't make the presumption of knowing that we understand what that logos is.

[1014] We've got some hints about what it is, but we can't characterize it entirely.

[1015] Is that a reasonable proposition in your estimation?

[1016] I think so.

[1017] I think especially if we're careful to do what you did before, which is we have a dipolar way of invoking the logos.

[1018] The logos is both the gathering, the throughlining, if I can put it that way, but it is also the ontological reality that affords that happening.

[1019] It's the fact that I can't exhaust it, right, no matter how far I push it.

[1020] So whatever through line I have is at most a signification or a symbol of the fact that it's inexhaustible.

[1021] Did that make sense what I'm trying to say?

[1022] No, I'm not trying to understand.

[1023] That the through line is the significant that it's inexhaustible in the manner in which it points up or in the manner in which it inexhaustible like this or inexhaustible in this?

[1024] The manner in which it's the fact that that intelligibility between representation and actuality remains regardless of how far you push it.

[1025] So that would sort of be like the notion that the universe is logical, logo space, essentially.

[1026] And that we're not going to run out of that.

[1027] But it's not going to be logical in the modern sense of a complete system, even though you can't reduce it to an algorithm.

[1028] Exactly, exactly.

[1029] So this is what I mean by saying, I don't think of the form as like, a standard Aristotelian essence, at least how it's been taught, to me, which is a set of necessary and sufficient conditions.

[1030] There's no becoming in that.

[1031] Is there, there's just being?

[1032] Because becoming implies transformation of something that's algorithmic, but in a, but in a manner that's not, that doesn't escape from the logos.

[1033] And I mean, I think that's how reality constitutes itself.

[1034] And that's probably, that's part of the solution to the scandal of induction.

[1035] It's like, no, you can't.

[1036] predict with 100 % certainty what's going to happen next.

[1037] But what will happen next despite its unpredictability, like the next note in a symphony, is still predictable.

[1038] Exactly.

[1039] This is what I mean about the good.

[1040] The reason why Hume couldn't deal with the problem of deduction is it requires the apprehension of the good, which is the promise that this is not going to be logical identity, but nevertheless it is going to be inexhaustibly coherent.

[1041] It's going to remain beautiful.

[1042] And in that sense, it's always going to be something to which you can conform.

[1043] So it's not reducible to an algorithm, but that doesn't mean, you said it, that doesn't mean it's not habitable, it doesn't mean it's not good, it doesn't mean it's not coherent.

[1044] Exactly.

[1045] And an example, the music, which John Rusen used, the musicality of intelligibility is, is I think the best way to think about it.

[1046] Yeah, I think so too.

[1047] I think that's actually, I actually think that's why we like music.

[1048] Yes.

[1049] Because I think that music is actually the most representational art form.

[1050] Because for a variety of reasons, first of all, we don't see objects, we see patterns, and we interpret some patterns as objects.

[1051] So patterns are primary.

[1052] Then we're looking for the harmonious interplay of patterns.

[1053] And then it's not strictly a causal relationship, because the music is governed by principles, but it's not formally predictable.

[1054] Otherwise, it gets boring.

[1055] Exactly.

[1056] So you see that, I think, most particularly, I've experienced that most particularly with Bach's Brandenberg concertos, which have this amazing, continual.

[1057] unfolding that's so logical it almost appears mathematical and yet it's unpredictable and you don't know where it's going to go and it goes there and you think man that's just that's just right so yeah and so you could say that you could say that about pretty much everything that exists that is that I like the glass because it's just easy so so the the idea is that there is a through line in this glass and but the through line goes through potentiality which is indefinite it is I can encounter million glasses in my life and they will all be different.

[1058] That's like the realm of musical possibility.

[1059] Exactly.

[1060] But they all end up being predictable to a certain extent once I grasp it.

[1061] Like when I see the glass, I recognize it, but I couldn't have predicted that this is the glass that would exist.

[1062] There's a kind of potentiality which is maintained within the identity of the glass, but it's inexhaustible.

[1063] Right.

[1064] And when you see that, when you apprehend that, and this is Scari's point, this is being struck by beauty.

[1065] You see the tree and somehow it's like every other tree you've seen, and yet it's not.

[1066] It reminds you of the idas.

[1067] It reminds you of just what you said.

[1068] And I think that that's love too.

[1069] Like in love in the sense that I've often said love is the capacity for unity and multiplicity to exist.

[1070] That's what love is, right?

[1071] That is that I recognize something of you that we have in common, but I also recognize you're completely separate from me. And that is the love.

[1072] are valued.

[1073] Those both had to coexist for love to be real.

[1074] It has to be separation.

[1075] Well, that to give the devil is due, you know, I would say that's the kernel of good that the diversity types are pushing.

[1076] You know, we need to recognize the utility of multiplicity.

[1077] It's like, fair enough.

[1078] The problem with that, a problem with that is, well, yeah, but what's, where's the unity here?

[1079] Where's the unity?

[1080] It's all diversity.

[1081] It can't be all diversity because then all we do, we're in conflict.

[1082] And we tend to have a, we tend to be, the modern world tends towards radical.

[1083] They tend to want to radical change unity to uniformity and then have this kind of crazy exploded multiplicity, whereas the real, this kind of natural relationship between otherness is exactly this, both recognizing what we have in common and at the same time being kind of fascinated and attracted to that which we have.

[1084] Well, you think about the reason this conversation works is because we have grounds for commonality in our understanding.

[1085] But that would be sterile without the multiplicity because we would just run over the same territory.

[1086] And so, you know, we hope we aim towards the same thing enough so that we can communicate.

[1087] But I wouldn't like it at all if you didn't, each of you didn't bring something to bear on the discussion that I'm incapable of bringing to bear on it.

[1088] So the last thing I want to bring up is, of course, I mean, people are going to say I'm Jesus muggling, but there's, That's one of the reasons are where we can understand that in Christianity, the Trinity is seen as the infinite, is the image of the infinite that we have is a contradictory possibility of absolute unity and absolute multiplicity.

[1089] And so we just throw those two up at the same time.

[1090] And we say, the infinite is absolutely multiple and absolutely one.

[1091] And you cannot without contradiction and you cannot totally, that you can't recognize, you can't recognize.

[1092] that completely because that is ultimately the, it's a problem which fractally appears everywhere anyways, because everything is always, everything in the world has something in common with everything else, whether it, you know, if it's just being itself.

[1093] But it also necessarily must be different for the difference to benefit.

[1094] There's a good one argument.

[1095] Every object is infinitely similar and infinitely similar.

[1096] Right.

[1097] And right, which is a restatement of the problem of perception itself.

[1098] Yes.

[1099] Like, well, you've seen a glass, yes, but you haven't seen.

[1100] this glass.

[1101] Well, how much differences there is?

[1102] Well, there's an infinite number of differences, as it turns out.

[1103] All right.

[1104] So this is a, this is a, this is quite a switch here.

[1105] And I think this is a radical proposition.

[1106] Maybe not.

[1107] Because once you hear it, you think, well, yes.

[1108] And then you think, well, that's self -evidence.

[1109] Like, yeah, well, not so, not so quick here.

[1110] The description of a structure of values, or an ethic, subject to the codicils that we've already added, or set of priorities is a narrative.

[1111] So the description of a system of perceptual prioritizations and actions is a narrative.

[1112] What do you think?

[1113] That could be, it could also be representation in image.

[1114] It wouldn't have to be a verbal description.

[1115] Imagistic or verbal description.

[1116] That is what we regard as a narrative.

[1117] So this is what I wanted to, again, challenge you on.

[1118] It sort of overlaps with the discussion we've having about the true and the good and the beautiful, because I think there are three different dimensions by which we organize intelligibility.

[1119] So there's a narrative.

[1120] The example I use is video games, and there's a reason why people are doing the virtual exodus.

[1121] They're preferring video games over the real world because of the dimensions that are found in video games.

[1122] So one is a narrative, and the narrative they belong to, clearly, that's one of the things.

[1123] So a total agreement of that.

[1124] There's two other features that are deeply meaningful to them, not semantic, but meaning in life meaningful.

[1125] Right.

[1126] One is a nomological order.

[1127] There's a set of rules that they understand that makes sense of that world so that they can move around in that world with confidence because if they have a narrative, but it doesn't, it isn't undergirded by an...

[1128] Okay, is that a reflection in the video game of the same through line and, and map?

[1129] of intelligibility onto ontology within the...

[1130] That's what I think the nomological order.

[1131] But it's a simpler world.

[1132] Yes.

[1133] So they can establish that first.

[1134] Exactly.

[1135] So you're saying, okay, so it's a slightly different argument, perhaps, because I said, well, a narrative is a description of an ethic.

[1136] And you say there's more than, there's more ways that the world needs to be apprehended than the purely narrative.

[1137] And I think that's fine.

[1138] But does that bear on the argument that the description of an ethic is a narrative?

[1139] No, because we also describe other ways in which we prioritize our perceptions in things that aren't narratives that are nomological.

[1140] That's what we call a scientific theory.

[1141] The theory of evolution, right, is not a narrative.

[1142] It's a description of the way things unfold.

[1143] Or let's say Newton's laws.

[1144] Newton's laws are not narrative in any fashion.

[1145] Do you think, okay, so let me push back on that.

[1146] Fair enough.

[1147] Fair enough.

[1148] And then you could say, well, a set of mathematical axioms and the, operations that are derived from the axioms is also not a narrative, but so, and fair enough, so then I would say, and this will get us into discussion about science later, is the intelligibility and the attraction of those non -narrative descriptions of the world dependent on their being nested inside a narrative?

[1149] But see, and so here's where I'm going to answer you back, I'm going to say they mutually, they reciprocally require each other, just like what we were doing with the true, okay okay so that that then okay fine so so is that the same thing as narrative and the scientific description mutually requiring each other right but you can't reduce the one to the either to the you can't reduce the nomological to the narrative or the narrative to the nomological that's why that's what i was trying to get at three dimensions almost like a cartesian graph with three dimensions right okay you can't reduce if i remove well because i suppose if you do that too you run into the postmodern trap which is that there's nothing but the narrative intelligibility there's nothing but the narrative.

[1150] There has to, yes, and there also has to be something.

[1151] There has to be a space within which we can compare narratives, move between narratives, and learn narratives, right?

[1152] And there has to be something that allows us to override narrative bias.

[1153] You know the research on narrative bias.

[1154] It's powerful.

[1155] It's one of our most powerful bias.

[1156] There has to be something that can kick us out of the narrative bias.

[1157] But I think the way that, the way that I would phrase it is myself, is that the reason why we tend to think, or like, even the way that I presented is that the priority of narrative is because narrative is the embodied manner in which we engage with a structural value.

[1158] It is, it's the way that we engage in a structural value.

[1159] And so because we see a dis, and usually it has a narrative that embodied pattern is a description of the embodied pattern.

[1160] I think that it, I think that it's.

[1161] Because I don't know if it's a story if you acted out.

[1162] I don't know if it's a story until it's a representation of a pattern of action.

[1163] Because otherwise, it's more like a pattern of behavior, you know.

[1164] So, for example, imagine you watched wolves interactive.

[1165] Yeah.

[1166] You could say, well, it's as if they're following the following narrative rules.

[1167] But they're not because they don't have, it's not narrative.

[1168] It's a pattern in their behavior.

[1169] Right.

[1170] But for the same reason that it's the through line.

[1171] Like, for the same reason that you can't see the glass from the elements of the glass.

[1172] It doesn't mean that the glassness, like the identity of the glass has a causal relationship to its element.

[1173] It's just not a call, it's not a mechanical causal relationship.

[1174] It's a, the causal of identity.

[1175] It's a, and so the narrative, or let's say the pattern of behavior is causal from above, you could say, because it's that the way in which you recognize that the behavior is a pattern in the first place.

[1176] Right.

[1177] Okay.

[1178] I want to push back on the right.

[1179] No, you have to.

[1180] This is one of the areas where we, we kind of don't totally agree.

[1181] But that's good.

[1182] Because I, well, this is a real mystery, this problem, because it is the relationship between science and the narrative of meaning.

[1183] It's a relationship between ontology and epistemology or between description and value.

[1184] I mean, so it's no wonder that this is causing, you know, a little bit of trouble.

[1185] I want to throw in one more dimension, which is, right, which is you can also level up in the game.

[1186] There's a way, there's a dimension that's not a narrative.

[1187] It's an act of self -transcendence, right?

[1188] I call it.

[1189] There's a clear hierarchy that you can scale in the game.

[1190] That has to be.

[1191] That's Quidditch, by the way.

[1192] That's what Rowling represented with Quidditch because there's a game and a meta game.

[1193] If you win the metagame, you also win the game.

[1194] Right.

[1195] But not vice versa, which is very, so smart.

[1196] So, sorry.

[1197] You do this, Jordan.

[1198] You'll just throw all these observations that are like, I really want to.

[1199] Well, it's even worse than that.

[1200] The thing that the Quiddish players are chasing is the round chaos of alchemy that contains all the potential of the world.

[1201] Right.

[1202] And it's also the spirit of mercury.

[1203] Like, it's like, I don't know how she did that.

[1204] It's just beyond belief that she managed that.

[1205] I really don't know how she did that.

[1206] It's like if you get, the way to understand it like in terms of a glass would be like, once you grasp the logos, this is a St. Maximus way of speaking too.

[1207] Once you grasp the logos, then you are able to, you've captured all the rules and everything else.

[1208] And once you understand what a glass is, then you don't have to, you can recognize every glass in the entire world.

[1209] It's like, it's such a massive power.

[1210] You've overcome the entire game through getting this one thing, which is like, which is often imaged as a seed or as a golden ball or as something sparkling which is, which you represent in the world, but is ultimately pointing above it.

[1211] Well, that's perhaps that's reflected in the insistence that Adam is to name all the animals, right, in the story of Adam and Eve, because that's obviously kept in the narrative for a reason, and it has to do with the power that naming and subduing in the sense that you've described, which is the also simultaneous imposition of a hierarchy of categorization that goes along with naming, that gives you a grip on the world, and that that grip is associated with a moral necessity and requirement in that story.

[1212] It's for me, the nomological dimension is the naming dimension.

[1213] That's what science does, broadly construed.

[1214] And that's different from telling a story.

[1215] Naming things is different from telling a story.

[1216] But ultimately, this is where I kind of come back again to the conscience.

[1217] We don't take the order to be there.

[1218] We have to not go too far into this because we've been through this down this path before.

[1219] But so ultimately, because we are not disembodied beings.

[1220] Like this is, so science, this type of nominalogical order is taken from a position where I am, as I see the nomological order, I have to climb the ladder.

[1221] And so, and climb, especially most narratives always have a sense of.

[1222] This is Moses on the mountain again.

[1223] Yes.

[1224] Yes.

[1225] But there's also, there's, that's why the narrative is.

[1226] always this.

[1227] Like almost all narratives are that.

[1228] You notice the difference.

[1229] And once you, you notice the distance.

[1230] And when you notice the distance, then you have to reestablish a connection with that with which you're distant.

[1231] Because you don't need an ethic unless you notice the difference.

[1232] You just, I mean, you don't need, at least you don't need an explicit ethic.

[1233] You don't have to spell it out.

[1234] Why?

[1235] Why not unless you notice the difference?

[1236] Because you don't have to tell someone how to go downstairs unless they can't do it.

[1237] You're going, you don't have a, You don't have an explicit set of rules.

[1238] Okay, so there has to be an objection.

[1239] There has to be a problem.

[1240] So St. Paul says something like, okay, the law is written on the human heart, which means that it doesn't mean all the laws are written extensively in every detail in the human heart.

[1241] It's like, no, that is in the human heart, in that little golden ball, in that center, in that place where everything comes together, you have contained all the potentiality.

[1242] Everything that has the through line is contained in that.

[1243] But now if you notice the difference, then you have to formulate that difference and then that becomes the laws or just the ways of being.

[1244] So I can say something at first like when you're driving a car like there's specific laws and then a problem comes up.

[1245] It's like, oh, well, actually there's a differentiation here which we have to make or else there's a problem.

[1246] Right, which creates the ethic that's currently...

[1247] And it just keeps getting more and more detail and more and more.

[1248] So you start with the law, you end up with like this, say, in Jewish tradition, you end up with this huge compendium of exceptions and like details and everything.

[1249] Sure.

[1250] But ultimately the idea is that all of that is ultimately contained in something which gathers it all together into one, into this ineffable point that transcends.

[1251] I like all of this, but the space in which all the laws are being made and written, that's not a narrative space, right?

[1252] Well, let me go after you on that for a minute.

[1253] The Take Amendments is not a story.

[1254] Because, no, I don't think that's true.

[1255] I think it is a story.

[1256] That's why Christ, when Christ, so he, okay, that's a good entry point.

[1257] That's a good answer.

[1258] But there's a story which reveals the Ten Commandments.

[1259] Right.

[1260] Okay, but there's also a story in it.

[1261] The Ten Commandments aren't, I believe there, yeah, there is a little bit.

[1262] But I think you're right.

[1263] But this is why we say that the Ten Commandments is embedded in a story.

[1264] Without the story of the Israelites leaving Egypt, finding themselves in a desert of nothingness, having to reconnect with the transcendent, that is why the law exists.

[1265] So the nomological order is embedded in, the story, you wouldn't have to...

[1266] But the reverse is also the case.

[1267] Go ahead, go ahead.

[1268] If there isn't, if God doesn't offer us the nomological order, there's no point for the exodus in the story, right?

[1269] That's okay.

[1270] We could hypothesize that it comes up from the bottom and down from the top.

[1271] You know, this is even before that.

[1272] Right.

[1273] We're trying to talk about, like, I'm proposing that the narrative and the nomological and whatever we want to call this self -transcending dimension are irreducible to each other.

[1274] They're not, neither, none of them can exist independent.

[1275] That's why I'm using the three dimensions metaphor.

[1276] Yeah.

[1277] They are interdependent, but they're not, they're not reducible.

[1278] So I'm resisting.

[1279] I would say that the, okay, autology is, is not captured inside epistemology, because epistemology cannot reach to the full extent of the multiplicity of ontology.

[1280] So, okay, so now why is that relevant to what you just said?

[1281] That's part of the irreducibility.

[1282] You're arguing, I think, in some sense, that no matter what the story is, there's something that's real that's beyond that story.

[1283] Okay, okay.

[1284] So let me put a couple of twists in that.

[1285] Got it.

[1286] Is that okay for you, Jonathan, right now?

[1287] No, I think it's fine.

[1288] We'll keep going on.

[1289] Okay, so you said there's no story in the Ten Commandments, right?

[1290] And Jonathan had one objection.

[1291] I have a different take on that that he may appreciate, maybe you too.

[1292] When the Pharisees, so the Pharisees and the scribes are always trying to trap Christ in the Gospels into making a heretical statement or doing something that clearly violates the law.

[1293] So they call them on Healing on the Sabbath, for example.

[1294] And there's like 10 stories like that where smart people who run on algorithms try to trap them.

[1295] And it never works because he does the thing you described, which is he just refers to a higher order principle or even three levels up and says, like, no. Yes.

[1296] But one of the things that happens is the Pharisees come and say, well, here's the decalogue, which is the most important law?

[1297] And the trick there is, no matter what he says, he says the others are less important, and so now he's a heretic and they get to take him away.

[1298] And he says, put God above all else and love your neighbor as yourself.

[1299] It's all of the laws are derived from that spirit, and that spirit is a story, and that story is the logos.

[1300] and so that's the move that I don't I slow it down George okay I get that's the spirit I totally get that well then the question is what is the spirit but why is the spirit necessarily a story well I don't know why it's necessarily a story but I know that it's necessarily a story in that context because the spirit that Christ is referring to that unites the decalogue is the logos and the whole biblical corpus the narrative that stem that spans the the entire biblical corpus, is the account of the elaboration of that spirit across time and its embodied incarnation.

[1301] And that presents itself as a story.

[1302] And so, and I think the reason for that is that it just, okay, so, so, I mean, I get, I get, I understand your point.

[1303] I understand the point that you're making now.

[1304] And so.

[1305] I'm actually understanding your point better than I've ever understood it before.

[1306] Well, you're talking about that, that which transcends the current narrative and that has to be there.

[1307] There's no reality.

[1308] So, okay, let's, let's leave that for a moment.

[1309] I just want to maybe one more thing because I think it's important.

[1310] Sorry.

[1311] No, no, that's fine.

[1312] I think we're at a key moment.

[1313] So we are.

[1314] So one of the things that we've been discussing and this has been coming back over and over is that.

[1315] So let's say that we understand that there is a certain type of equivalence and two functions for anomological order, like a hierarchy that's presented, you know, like just a series of categories which are related in embedded structure, right?

[1316] And I see science committed to that, okay?

[1317] And that this also coexists.

[1318] For sure, in scripture, that's what we're seeing.

[1319] It's like, it coexists together.

[1320] It's like, you have the story of the Israelites and the Bible, and then you have these theories of laws, which is actually not just 10.

[1321] It's a lot, a lot of laws, right?

[1322] So you have all these laws.

[1323] And so, but one of the things that you've said several times is that you want to, you feel like the solution to the meaning crisis.

[1324] Yes.

[1325] Does it need narrative?

[1326] or that narrative shouldn't be part of the solution.

[1327] And so I think that if those two are both have their function, let's say, why is it that you want to remove one and keep the other?

[1328] Oh, okay, that's an excellent question.

[1329] This is something Sam Harris struggles with, too, by the way.

[1330] No, I'm dead serious about that.

[1331] I'm dead serious about that.

[1332] So let me answer this really carefully and tell me if we're getting too far afield from the main discussion, okay?

[1333] I'm going to depend on both of you.

[1334] My argument is the nomological order that one of the problems in the meaning crisis is the nomological order that we have is no longer in any way relatable to or can be wedded to a narrative because the nomological order we have, right, is that there, it, it, to what used to bridge between the nomological order and the narrative order is teleology.

[1335] So teleology says the nomological order is ordered, but it's ordered in this way.

[1336] and the teleology has this structure.

[1337] And then narrative says, oh, I can glum on to, I can conform to a teleological order because stories are inherently teleological.

[1338] But they're different from just a teleology.

[1339] Just telling a teleology isn't a story, but stories can attach to teleology.

[1340] Why is describing a teleology not a story?

[1341] Because you could describe the, you could describe the cop, but then the problem is, well, can you describe the top top in the absence of a narrative?

[1342] And, I mean, I think part of the argument I'm trying to make in this, so this is our key disagreement in some sense is I don't think you can.

[1343] Okay.

[1344] Well, let's be really careful because we might also be engaged in semantic drift.

[1345] So I'm trying to limit, like we can trivialize what we mean by narrative.

[1346] They mean, they need a description of a series of events as a narrative.

[1347] Okay.

[1348] Yeah, yeah, no, no, I don't want to do that.

[1349] I get your point.

[1350] No, no, we don't want to, we don't want to widen the words so much that the argument becomes...

[1351] Wait a minute, though, but...

[1352] Wait a minute, no, no, I would actually object to that because any descriptions of events that I can conceive as being one has to have some kind of narrative structure.

[1353] Otherwise, we have the problem of the infinite perception.

[1354] Yeah, right, right.

[1355] Right.

[1356] If I can recognize that events connect together, that opens up, that means that you would, you have to, not metaphorically...

[1357] I actually know, I agree with that.

[1358] But not, but, well, let me challenge it, though.

[1359] But, and I'm not speaking metaphorically here, because if I'm speaking metaphorically, we're just go off in another thing.

[1360] That means that music has a narrative, because it has a melody.

[1361] You're saying a melody is a narrative, and that strikes me as a very improper thing to say.

[1362] That, okay, that's a tough one, man. Yeah, yeah.

[1363] Because then you have to start to wrestle with, well, what do you mean by music?

[1364] Because you could say that the, the sequence of the notes in and of itself, may not have a narrative, although I'm not certain of that, but you could say that because, but then the question is, when you're listening to the music and it has the effect that you regard as music on you, how much of that effect, including the aesthetic, is a consequence of a narrative.

[1365] So I would say, well, when you say music, how sure are you that what you're saying is that's nothing but the relationship of the notes to one another?

[1366] I agree.

[1367] That's a good point.

[1368] Because there's no embodiment in that, right?

[1369] Right.

[1370] And there's a sense in which music is neither subjective or objective.

[1371] Right, like beauty.

[1372] Yes, yes.

[1373] It has to have something that is at least analogous to narrative.

[1374] Because in order for you to recognize, and it's funny because the moderns tried to go away from that.

[1375] You can understand.

[1376] Modern really tried to break it.

[1377] But there was, in any traditional society, there are tropes of music, which help you understand when something's beginning, when something's ending.

[1378] And you can map them on to narrative very directly because that's what happens.

[1379] Okay, but then I'm going to slide you because if you give me the, you say, oh, I'm going to send narrative to merit, the melody, then I'll say, here's a logical argument and there's a progression and a through line from the premises to the conclusion.

[1380] Is that a narrative?

[1381] Well, that's a tough one, right?

[1382] Because the fact that you selected out those, okay, here's something I've been thinking about, I'm going to take a slight detour, but go right back to the point.

[1383] So I thought about this more when I was talking to Richard Dawkins.

[1384] Because I think Dawkins is a good faith player, and I think he believes, he's a real scientist, and he believes that the truth will set you free, which scientists have to believe to be scientists.

[1385] Because they cannot be scientists if they're not pursuing the truth.

[1386] The truth is sacred to Dawkins.

[1387] Absolutely.

[1388] You won't admit that, but it is.

[1389] Okay.

[1390] So I was thinking about the scientific endeavor.

[1391] And I thought a lot about this when I was reading Jung's work on alchemy, because Jung attempted to situate the development of science in this alchemical fantasy.

[1392] And it's a very interesting piece of work.

[1393] So he believes that there was this immense motivated narrative that provided the historical precondition in the realm of unconscious fantasy for the flourishing of science.

[1394] So it's amazing argument.

[1395] In any case, thinking about that, I thought, well, there's a set of facts, and that's kind of the argument you're making.

[1396] There's a set of facts independent of the narrative.

[1397] And that's kind of the scientific viewpoint.

[1398] There's a set of facts independent of the narrative.

[1399] And even more importantly, we should identify the set of facts that's maximally independent of any narrative because why should your facts prevail?

[1400] And we want a universal set of facts.

[1401] And fine, look what we've got with that.

[1402] But then I think, wait a second, when you're practically engaged in the processes of science, the sort of things that Kuhn tried to lay out, is it not the case that you're always engaged within a system of practice and perception that's defined by at least an implicit if -then statement?

[1403] And And so I would say, if this is your aim, then that's the set of relevant and true facts.

[1404] Conditional implications.

[1405] Well, yeah.

[1406] Well, so if you're a medical researcher, it's like, well, here's what the cancer cell is doing.

[1407] Well, what do you mean doing?

[1408] Because it's doing an infinite number of things.

[1409] Oh, well, if we want to understand the cancer cell so that we can eradicate cancer, then this is what the cancer cell is doing.

[1410] Now, it's also doing something that's independent of that narrative.

[1411] But the weird.

[1412] thing about that is that it's doing such a plethora of things independent of that narrative that you drown in the complexity.

[1413] Of course.

[1414] So then we have a problem here, right, is that they have the facts of the cancer cell, which are multiplicitous.

[1415] Then you have the set of relevant facts, which hopefully are still facts, but those aren't derivable without the narrative that we should save lives, that saving lives is good, that we can pay careful attention to the horrors of disease in the attempt to ameliorate suffering.

[1416] All of that framework seems to be a precondition for the abstraction of the relevant facts.

[1417] I agree with everything you said.

[1418] What I disagreed with was the identity statement you slipped in, which is the ethic is a narrative.

[1419] That's exactly what's in dispute here.

[1420] The dispute isn't that we don't need these normative structures.

[1421] I'm not disputing that what I'm disputing is that they're all reducible to the narrative ethic.

[1422] That there's also a nomological ethic.

[1423] Right.

[1424] Well, that's also why I wanted to get to the last three hearts of this.

[1425] I think that I'm coming closer to you than ever because...

[1426] Oh, wow, this is wonderful.

[1427] In a sense that, because I need to work it out, but because I see that in, like, let's say, that there is a clearly distinction in the story.

[1428] Like, in the story, there is a story, and then there's the laws.

[1429] And they're related, but they're different.

[1430] And so I need to think about how they're, why they're related.

[1431] Well, one of the things...

[1432] Well, there's an interesting weirdness there that's also associated with the scientific enterprise because one of the things you're trying to do, imagine if you impose a strict narrative that there's a very limited set of facts that make themselves manifest.

[1433] Well, what you want to do scientifically is say, well, let's abstract out a set of relevant facts in a manner that's relevant to a multitude of redemptive narrative simultaneously.

[1434] Okay, so let me pick up on that.

[1435] So let me try and using what we've just said, specify the difference, how I would put it.

[1436] I think what science does is it picks up on normalogical relations, which are supposed to be, as you say, causal invariance for the universe, right?

[1437] Force equals mass time's acceleration.

[1438] We'll forget Einstein.

[1439] Right.

[1440] Across narratives.

[1441] Right, right.

[1442] A narrative is not about causal laws.

[1443] A narrative is about an irrepeatable causal pathway.

[1444] When I ask, why did Napoleon lose at Waterloo?

[1445] I don't give you a law.

[1446] I give you a narrative.

[1447] I give you a...

[1448] Narratives are, this event leads to this event.

[1449] It's a through line, like you said.

[1450] But it's a through line that explains the same.

[1451] specific occurrence of specific events.

[1452] It's exactly the opposite, in my mind, of what science does.

[1453] Science is trying to explain the universality that is not captured in the specifics of a specific causal pathway.

[1454] That's why I can't see...

[1455] Okay, so then, okay, so imagine this, imagine this.

[1456] So there's this notion in the Old Testament.

[1457] There's a sequence of stories, so it's an aggregation of stories, and there's an idea that the meta -narrative of Christ is implicit in that set of narratives.

[1458] Yes.

[1459] And so then I have this idea.

[1460] Well, and Jung talked about this as well, said, imagine you take any random sample of narratives, comprehensive random sample of narratives, and you attempt to extract out the common story, it's going to be an image of something like Christ.

[1461] You could even say that that's what Christ is in some sense.

[1462] So, and we can argue about that, but it's a, it's, it's like saying that the hero narrative is archetypal.

[1463] It's the same idea.

[1464] If you have 25 narratives and you see what makes them interesting adventure stories, it's the hero archetype.

[1465] So the reason why you can recognize it as a through line in the first place is because it has a pattern.

[1466] But that's my point.

[1467] My point is, just like the through line of all the aspects is not an aspect, the through line of all the stories is not itself a story.

[1468] Yeah, but see, I'm not so sure.

[1469] That is definitely what we're arguing about.

[1470] And I'm not saying I know this.

[1471] There may be a distinction between a story and the pattern of all stories.

[1472] And maybe that's something we can think about too.

[1473] because in my work in Maps of Meaning, I called just a narrative a story, but the story that unites all narratives is a meta story.

[1474] And Piaget cottoned onto this too in some sense because he started to try to find out what kids regarded as true.

[1475] And then by the end of his career, he said, well, what we really want to know if we're studying truth isn't the nature of any contingent truths.

[1476] So any representations within a system, narrative or otherwise.

[1477] But the process, we need to specify the process by which all truths come to be as the ultimate truth.

[1478] And then I would say that the meta -narrative that constitutes Christ from the symbolic perspective is the story of the process by which, what would we say?

[1479] It's the story, it's certainly the story of the process by which narratives transform.

[1480] It's not exactly a story because it's a meta -story.

[1481] But it's the problem of, it's the problem of this kind of apophatic move, this kinetic reality, which is true also of the nomological order as well.

[1482] It is the origin of the nomological order is not a nomological order.

[1483] Exactly.

[1484] In the same way that the origin of a narrative is not a narrative, it's not a detailed narrative per se.

[1485] The patterns all move into the manner in which they transcend themselves and ultimately give up to this epiphytic, like this negative space, a negative reality.

[1486] And I think the nomological and the narrative and what this self -transcending dimension, they all converge.

[1487] Right.

[1488] No, but I totally agree with that.

[1489] So imagine this.

[1490] That's not to say they're identical.

[1491] No, of course they're not, because that's why they can...

[1492] Right, right.

[1493] And I think if they were so obviously identical, we wouldn't have a conflict between science and religion, which we apparently have.

[1494] So it's an important distinction.

[1495] So imagine you have this set of narratives that are particularized, and out of that you extract a general pattern, and the pattern is something akin to the process of adaptation itself, which is the manifestation of the divine word, let's say, and its ability to call order out of chaos.

[1496] It's got this hierarchy of narratives, and there's something at the pinnacle.

[1497] And so then imagine that you have a set of corresponding facts, and each specific narrative would give you a set of proximal facts, but there's an abstraction from the facts that approximates universal scientific truths.

[1498] But I would say that maybe they exist in relationship to the application of that metanarrative, because isn't it the case, now I don't know, I can't figure this out, isn't it the case force equals mass times acceleration, because we want to further adaptation to the world.

[1499] And simultaneously, we're exploring the intrinsic logos of ontology, but we've already agreed to some degree that there's a similitude between that ontology and the epistemology.

[1500] And so maybe as we abstract out from scientific truth towards the universal, not only must we simultaneously move up the abstraction level in a narrative sense, Jung's point would be, we better or will misuse the nomological to destroy ourselves.

[1501] Wouldn't that also be the case if we abstracted up the narrative without also going up the nomological?

[1502] Well, he believed that the problem with the first millennia of Christianity was that we did exactly that, was that we emphasized spiritual redemption to such a degree, try to reduce redemption itself to the spiritual, then the world was still crying out because of its ontological suffering.

[1503] It's like, well, if we're all redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ, it's like, what's with all the poor and diseased people?

[1504] And that call for the unredeemed material was part of what he saw as the motivational foundation for the systematic investigation, say, that led to the development of medicine.

[1505] Yeah, yeah.

[1506] Yeah, so there was an insufficiency.

[1507] there was an insufficiency Maybe it's the insufficiency of getting lost in epistemology If it's just a narrative, it's just a narrative Well, it's not, it has to refer to the world Okay, so well, that complicates things, right?

[1508] Because part of what we're stuck on here to some degree is in that ontological realm that's outside any given narrative There is also a logos And then the question is, is that ontological logos, The nature of the world itself, somehow a narrative And the Christian idea to answer, that would be, well, that I don't know, because creation is separated from God.

[1509] Sorry, speaking on behalf of Christian.

[1510] Yeah.

[1511] I think Christianity makes the claim that the logos is ultimately a person, not a narrative.

[1512] It's not a story.

[1513] That's very important.

[1514] Right.

[1515] The logos is not a story.

[1516] Everything culminates into the person.

[1517] And person literally means, originally means hypostasis, that which stands under.

[1518] Yes.

[1519] Yes.

[1520] Well, it has to be a person, right?

[1521] Right.

[1522] Well, that's why I also said, though, that it's the description of a structure of values is a narrative.

[1523] So as an embodied ideal, Christ isn't a story.

[1524] No. Right.

[1525] But the description of his embodiment, that's a story.

[1526] And the images are a story.

[1527] And the reason we want the story is because the story calls us to the ethic.

[1528] That's why we value the stories.

[1529] I would like to see the world the way you see it.

[1530] Because you have a whole set of tools that I don't have.

[1531] And so if you can tell me a story and I can enter into you.

[1532] your world, then that is truly redemptive because the facts now arrayed themselves in a slightly different way that might be very valuable to me if I run into one of these objects that you describe.

[1533] You know, I'm running an algorithm and something objects.

[1534] I don't know what to do.

[1535] What would you do?

[1536] Tell me what you did in the similar situation.

[1537] And so I don't think the story, the story isn't the, yeah, God, that gets so tricky.

[1538] The Christian emphasis certainly is that the embodied reality is the fundamental reality.

[1539] But the story isn't nothing, that's for sure.

[1540] I'm not saying that.

[1541] I know you're not.

[1542] I know you're not.

[1543] I'm not saying that at all.

[1544] I was trying to answer Jonathan's question, right?

[1545] And when running into the difficulty that I see, whether or not I'm right or wrong, there's a difficulty here.

[1546] Oh, definitely.

[1547] And that's the difficulty I'm putting my finger on.

[1548] I'm trying to put my finger on in the meeting.

[1549] Well, it's also the difficulty that I'm trying to address with this set of propositions.

[1550] It's definitely a difficulty.

[1551] Okay, but we got somewhere in that, I would say.

[1552] I think it was very valuable.

[1553] Okay, so I'm going to skip to number five here.

[1554] Every set of values is hierarchical.

[1555] Otherwise, there's no prioritization.

[1556] I think we agree on that because we've already agreed that there has to be a prioritization.

[1557] There has to be.

[1558] That implies a hierarchy.

[1559] So the one thing I wanted to ask there, sorry, I seem to be the Diffles Advocate.

[1560] No, no. But again, let's go back to embodied living.

[1561] And this is actually something you see in narratives.

[1562] And I would also say that it's something that some of the parables of Jesus point to.

[1563] Because parables, I think McFag is.

[1564] right.

[1565] Parables are narratives that destroy themselves as narrative structures.

[1566] They're kind of like the way Coens destroy themselves as questions.

[1567] And so what I want to say is, let's say that there is, we seem to have like there's the true, the good, and the beautiful, or we have the narrative, the nomological, and I'll call it the normative in terms of betterment or something.

[1568] Like, let's say, is it the case?

[1569] Is it the hierarchy stable?

[1570] What I mean by that is you get narratives, You get stories, you get works of art, great works of art, in which it looks like they're picking up on something that is true to our embodying experiences.

[1571] Sometimes we sacrifice the true for the good or the good for the beautiful or the beautiful for the true.

[1572] Like we seem to be making trade up.

[1573] We don't seem to have a stable what's on top.

[1574] We shift the prioritizations around.

[1575] There's a lot of great art, at least proposing that.

[1576] So I think it's a reasonable thing to consider.

[1577] Right.

[1578] Well, I think that's partly a consequence of the confusion.

[1579] about what constitutes the unification.

[1580] So part of the project I have here is that I'm beginning to view all the narratives that are laid out in the biblical corpus as there are snapshots of the different idea of what should be at the top.

[1581] They're like the through line.

[1582] Well, there are representations of the through line.

[1583] We still don't know what the through line is, so to speak, right?

[1584] But there's snapshots.

[1585] So, for example, in the opening lines of Genesis, God, so we'll say, by definition, God is what is at the top.

[1586] We'll just start with that.

[1587] And I'm not going to make an ontological claim about that.

[1588] Just an epistemological claim.

[1589] God is what's at the top of your value structure.

[1590] Okay, so what should that be?

[1591] Well, let's say that's a mystery.

[1592] Okay, so the Bible is an attempt to represent that mystery from a variety of different narrative perspectives.

[1593] And so I'll give you a couple of examples.

[1594] So in the earliest chapter, the beginning of Genesis, God is the word that derives the habitable order that is good out of chaos and potential.

[1595] Okay, so whatever God is, that's part of it.

[1596] Okay, so that's, that's, and God is a creative force.

[1597] And then there's, the next thing is, is that God is whatever it is that human beings are made in the image of.

[1598] That also provides them with a worth that transcends the merely material.

[1599] in some sense because God is outside creation and if man is made in the image of God then there's something about man that's valuable that's outside of the mere materiality okay so that's the next proposition and then God is rapidly that which forbids and allows so that happens in the garden and then God is that spirit that you walk with when you're unselfconscious and not ashamed So that's the story of Adam in the garden.

[1600] And then in Noah, God is that which calls you to batten down the hatches and prepare when, if you're wise in your generations, you see that chaos is coming.

[1601] And then in the Abrahamic story, God is that which calls you out of the comfort of your family into adventure.

[1602] And so it's like, click, click, click, click.

[1603] Who knows what the union of all those things are, right?

[1604] Because they're quite multiplicitous.

[1605] But I think they're very sophisticated.

[1606] And you might say, well, is that God?

[1607] It's like, well, do you follow the call of adventure?

[1608] Do you take your own intuition seriously when you think that the flood is coming?

[1609] The answer to that generally is, well, you either follow that or you're in trouble.

[1610] People, you sure know that.

[1611] And is God the divine word that generates habitable order, the habitable order that is good out of chaos?

[1612] Well, do you believe that truth has that power?

[1613] So I think Okay, so these are all ways of pointing to that Which might unify the disunity that you see Now, you can't boil it down in some way The same way that you boil down beauty, you know, it's harder to specify And I think what the Bible is attempting to do And I think this is true of religious writings Of many sorts is to What is it?

[1614] It's a characterization of this It's first of all, it's an incentive that the thing at the top is a spirit, right?

[1615] It's not an idea.

[1616] It's not even like beauty.

[1617] It's not an abstraction.

[1618] It's a spirit that can inhabit, which is kind of the incarnation idea.

[1619] So it's a spirit that you can embody, or they can season possess you.

[1620] So it's really something that's living.

[1621] And so it's not merely an abstract idea, and it's not just a normalogical construct.

[1622] It's something you enact.

[1623] And it's something in principle, you might think, well, if you're, and this leads to the next point, any hierarchy that is not unified produces confusion, anxiety, anomy, aimlessness, and conflict, psychological and social.

[1624] Well, why?

[1625] Well, if it's not unified, you don't know your priorities.

[1626] And if it, and if it isn't pointing to something valuable, there's no hope.

[1627] Because hope is to be found in the movement towards something of value.

[1628] So, okay, well, sorry, that's a lot.

[1629] No, no, no, but that's helpful.

[1630] So let me, let me, let me, let me, let me, say something, and it's not really a pushback, but it's sliding over here, and if we can make the connection, then maybe we can come to an agreement around it.

[1631] So, right, adaptivity.

[1632] Adaptivity is a thing, and it's really important, and it's not an abstraction.

[1633] Define it.

[1634] Adaptivity is that you are fitted to your environment in a way that allows you to successfully live long enough to reproduce.

[1635] Yeah, okay, okay.

[1636] So that's kind of an interrated game idea, too.

[1637] You have to live long enough to propagate.

[1638] Totally.

[1639] Totally.

[1640] And I'm not here to defend, you know, a gene version or a group selection.

[1641] Yep, yep, yep.

[1642] That's not what I want to.

[1643] Yeah.

[1644] Okay.

[1645] So, adaptivity.

[1646] And you want to, you want to, you know, how does this arise?

[1647] And one of the things you can do is you can say, here's all these snapshots of adaptivity.

[1648] And what I can do is I can try and find the, what do they all share in common?

[1649] The capacity to elicit awe.

[1650] Well, wait a second.

[1651] Wait, a sec. So, like, the problem is, right, this.

[1652] And this is what you see the naturalist before Darwin doing.

[1653] They're trying to find the shared perfection.

[1654] And then Darwin breaks the mold.

[1655] He says, no, no, no, no, you're making the mistake.

[1656] There is no. Right.

[1657] Right.

[1658] There isn't.

[1659] What there is, right, is some things are adaptive because they're small, some are adaptive because they're large, some are fast, some are slow, some are hard, some are Some are unicellular, some are multicellular.

[1660] Adaptivity doesn't have, but what he finds is, but there's a universal process that is, right, that can explain how all of these different snapshots emerge.

[1661] But there is, there is a perfection, and the perfection is being itself.

[1662] It's the continuation of existence.

[1663] Okay, but what you've just did, you've played, you're not playing with my analogy, you've said, I can, I can meta that.

[1664] And I'm not denying that you can do that, Jonathan.

[1665] I'm trying to use a matter.

[1666] Right, okay.

[1667] I don't deny that, okay, that I'm not making that claim.

[1668] I'm just trying to use this as an analogy and I'm trying to say.

[1669] Well, it's a powerful objection because certainly the biologists do that.

[1670] They say, well, there's no teleology in evolution.

[1671] And I know that you object to that because you say, well, there has to be because you can't even, there's no unity there in any of the organisms.

[1672] And there's certainly no way of perceiving them.

[1673] But they also have a point, which is there's a nomological unity, even though there's no narrative.

[1674] That's how they argue it.

[1675] there is a universal process that can be understood scientifically that explains adaptivity, explain, because if you get the theory of evolution, you say, right, all the organisms should be different.

[1676] But then you have the problem that every organism that survives plays out a pattern, which is variation on the horizon of potentiality.

[1677] And so then you might say, well, there is a directionality, because if the organism can't vary creatively on the horizon of potentiality, it can't exist.

[1678] or multiply.

[1679] And so then, so, so there's a teleology that emerges out of the, the necessity for survival and reproduction.

[1680] And so, and I would say, so think about, sorry, I got to, I got to get this out.

[1681] I'll set up.

[1682] I'll set up.

[1683] The abstractions you generate in your prefrontal cortex are avatars of the process of adaptation to the horizon of the future.

[1684] And so, and so the flowering of the human spirit in its highest sense is an embodiment of the, process by which the biologists attribute the adaptivity.

[1685] It's the process that underlies adaptivity.

[1686] And so maybe those things dovetail.

[1687] Well, that's what I'm going to say to.

[1688] So there is a narrative, though.

[1689] No, no, no. That's what I want to challenge you.

[1690] You gave me a model of the logos that I would say is not narrative except for a trivial definition of narrative, which is variation and selection.

[1691] Look, instead, let's put it back in the psychological.

[1692] It's like with humans, it's the willingness to do that, though.

[1693] So it's not just the fact that it can happen and does happen.

[1694] And that's partly what brings in the narrative element is you do not have to abide by that.

[1695] Like you, that can happen to you.

[1696] You can have this creative variation and this selection in relationship to adaptivity, let's say, to keep it biological.

[1697] But you can, you do not have to do that.

[1698] And so I think it's the struggle with that that constitutes the narrative.

[1699] I want to push back on you on that.

[1700] Because I think there's all kinds of stuff, that relevance realization, doing that variation and selection that you cannot exercise authority over because your authority actually depends on the, right.

[1701] So it's different than the level at which you have narrative access to your own being.

[1702] I think that that's related to Jonathan's objection earlier, that the law is inscribed on the human heart.

[1703] It's like, yes, I agree.

[1704] But let me say, if I claim that human evolution, builds a material embodiment that strives towards manifestation of the logos, and then there's an abstraction, and that meets in the middle.

[1705] The fact that you can't control all the manifestations of your prioritization structure doesn't mean the logos isn't built into the a priori systems that structure that perception for you.

[1706] I'm not denying that.

[1707] What I'm denying is that that logos is ultimately operating as a narrative.

[1708] I think the logo, and look at, look at even, look even psychologically.

[1709] Narrative doesn't emerge until a certain age.

[1710] And it is pre, it depends on dialogos.

[1711] It depends on dialogue.

[1712] It depends on joint attention.

[1713] It depends on the ability to take turns in conversation.

[1714] You have to have all this dialogical machinery in place before narrative is possible.

[1715] Right.

[1716] Well, the way I would object to that, fine, that's a perfectly reasonable objection.

[1717] But the problem with that is, is that a lot of that's scaffolded by quasi -narrative precursors.

[1718] So, for example, one of the things you do with a baby before it can engage in the dialogos verb mediated semantically is you do a dance like play.

[1719] And the spirit of the logos is, and I would say a narrative spirit is deeply embodied in that.

[1720] Because if that isn't taking place within the spirit of love and play and truth, then it isn't going to give rise to the pasty later for the dialogos.

[1721] So that's kind of the embeddement, in some sense of the embeddement, embeddement.

[1722] There's the word of the logos in the material, right, prior to its manifestation.

[1723] And I do think in some sense that's not a story, you know, because if you watch a wolf pack, what they're doing isn't a story.

[1724] But if you describe it, it becomes a story.

[1725] Yes.

[1726] Right?

[1727] So there is an embodied pattern that's not a story.

[1728] I think we're agreeing now, then.

[1729] Okay, okay, okay.

[1730] Well, there's a lot of, so I guess we go back to where you said the description of a structure of value.

[1731] right.

[1732] I said the description is a story.

[1733] Now that doesn't mean that the description doesn't match the underlying behavioral pattern.

[1734] You know, I think one of the things I sort of thought through in Maps of Meaning with the Moses story is, well, why those laws?

[1735] So you see, in the story, it's so bloody cool.

[1736] Before Moses goes up to the mountain, he spends decades, we don't know, forever, morning to night, judging objections.

[1737] So the Israelites are, in the desert there's no structure and they fight with each other all the time and then they come to moses and say well we're fighting what do we do about it and he like judges them and his father and law actually says to him you have to stop doing this because it is absolutely exhausting you and it isn't until after that that so then you think what's he doing we're seeing all these micro narratives right and then he has to discriminate between them which means he's turning them into a hierarchy value because that's what the discrimination is this is what's right in this conflict so conflict hierarchy and then he's doing that just constantly so you can imagine that within him this hierarchy of value is starting to be built explicitly then he goes up on the mountain and it's like bang oh this is what all our striving is oriented to and then he comes down the first time it doesn't map as you said the second time it maps so the the deliverance of the message from on high has to map on to this and some of this conflict and its agreement would emerge from biological acceptability because the people would say, oh, I feel as though that was just.

[1738] It solves the problem.

[1739] And so the material is in communication then with abstraction.

[1740] I think we're close to agreement.

[1741] I guess to circle back, I don't, I don't sort of deny that.

[1742] I'm really not denying that narrative is a powerful way for disclosing intelligibility and the logos.

[1743] right?

[1744] What I'm saying is, is it, there's a privileging of it here that I...

[1745] Okay, so is it important?

[1746] Is it important?

[1747] Is the distinction that I just made between an embodied pattern and a narrative enough to dispense with your objection?

[1748] Or is there more to it?

[1749] Well, let me, let me see.

[1750] Because I think that theories and poems and music, things that I'm as non -narrative can disclose depths of reality that I can't disclose with the story.

[1751] Okay, so why is it important to you or necessary to make that distinction, do you think?

[1752] Just out of curiosity.

[1753] Why it's important for me is that I'm concerned about a privileging of narrative.

[1754] An inappropriate privileging of narrative.

[1755] We'll border on idolatry, right, in that we are.

[1756] Well, that's kind of what the postmodernists do.

[1757] So there's definitely a danger there, right?

[1758] If you overprivileged narrative to the point where the ontology itself disappears.

[1759] But I think what John is saying is that he's afraid that if we embody, if we embrace a narrative, then the solution to the meaning crisis won't be universal enough.

[1760] Is that something something like that?

[1761] So that's a practical implication because I would propose to you, it's a proposal, okay, that whatever is going to resolve the meaning crisis has to reintegrate science and spirituality.

[1762] If it does not do that in some profound.

[1763] Well, so that's partly also what you're insisting on, is that there is this domain of scientific knowledge that should be regarded as, in some sense, independent of narrative.

[1764] And that's, I'm still having very much trouble with that because we still have the problem of if then, right?

[1765] It's like, and I don't see how we escape from that.

[1766] But that's where I push on back on the trivialization.

[1767] If, if then constitutes a narrative.

[1768] No, no, it doesn't.

[1769] Okay.

[1770] If constitutes a narrative.

[1771] If constitutes a narrative.

[1772] If does, because if has to be, well, if we want to.

[1773] cure disease if we want to.

[1774] So Jung believed that the spirit of science grew out of the alchemical fantasy.

[1775] And so the alchemical fantasy was we will find in material the solution to ill health, death, and privation.

[1776] Well, yeah, ill health, death, and privation.

[1777] That's exactly it.

[1778] And so Jung's point was without that impulse, which he regarded as a compensation to the hyper spiritualization that Christianity imposed in the world in the first Christian eye on, without that fantasy deeply, like deeply embodied, manifesting its out of embodied behavior and then out of image, we wouldn't have been, because Jung said, well, how do you get someone to look down a microscope at an amoeba for 10 hours?

[1779] Because like no animal will do that.

[1780] And his notion was, well, we had to be gripped by something of a dream of intense motivational significance.

[1781] And it was the dream that redemption could be found in analysis of the transformations of the material world.

[1782] Right.

[1783] But the motivating structure is not the same thing as the reference of what I'm talking about.

[1784] Right.

[1785] Right.

[1786] Right.

[1787] So I might need narrative to do science, but we don't want to make the genetic fallacy that that means that everything that science is referring to is a narrative, right?

[1788] Yeah, right, right, that'd be like, that's like saying everything I talk about, I have to speak in English, so reality is made of English.

[1789] That does bring us to the postmodern conundering because they would insist that, no, all the sets of, all the facts that science derives are in some simple sense, a narrative, right?

[1790] And then that narrative is associated with the drive to power and domination.

[1791] And so, yeah, we do have to be careful of that, because we'll fall right into that trap.

[1792] Right.

[1793] So that, that's what, so.

[1794] So, yeah, If you think...

[1795] You want a comment?

[1796] No, but I...

[1797] Can I say this?

[1798] I do think that a great manner in which modern science got developed, who does, is, I think it is, narrative.

[1799] That is, there is, on the one hand, the desire to deliver, but on the other hand, the desire to dominate is there, right?

[1800] You've talked about this before with bacon.

[1801] Yeah, yeah.

[1802] I don't deny that.

[1803] Yeah.

[1804] And so there is a...

[1805] There is, and so it doesn't take away the...

[1806] But the same motivation can drive.

[1807] people in doing mathematics.

[1808] Yeah.

[1809] Right.

[1810] It's the same motivation can drive people doing music.

[1811] So we don't want to say that's the essence of science or music or mathematics, because then we're doing, we're removing the important differences.

[1812] You're afraid we're collapsing everything.

[1813] Yes.

[1814] But I think, yeah, I think that it's mostly about, it's about hierarchy in the sense of, in the sense that because we are embodied beings that are living, that are living in the world, that are living lives, then all that we do, all that we care about is part of that reality.

[1815] And so even the nomenological order, although I think I agree with you now, it's definitely not a narrative.

[1816] Right.

[1817] But it is embedded.

[1818] That's why Jordan used the expression embedded in narrative.

[1819] Yes.

[1820] That is that it has to.

[1821] But isn't the reverse the case?

[1822] Narrative depends on the presupposition that there is an ordered world in which it can take place.

[1823] Right.

[1824] But the question is then is that logos that constitutes the order, so to speak, if we when you represent that, do you necessarily represent it as a narrative?

[1825] And this is a deep question.

[1826] I mean, I'm proposing to you that the Logos is that which allows the narrative order and the nomological order to unite to what they're doing.

[1827] That's what I'm saying.

[1828] Right.

[1829] Okay, but that's fine.

[1830] But then I might wonder, does it extend to the narrative order and to the underlying ontological order as well?

[1831] The Logos is both in the story and in the logic.

[1832] Think about just even follow the history.

[1833] of the word logos and watch how it goes in these two different directions with good reason.

[1834] Yeah, yeah.

[1835] Well, so, okay, so then the question, so you're objecting that the logos isn't a story.

[1836] And that's so strange and so weird because we could say that the West is kind of split on that, because in some sense, if you think of the development of the idea of the logos from the Greek and Enlightenment side, the answer would be there, there's no immediate insistence there that it's a narrative.

[1837] But on the Judeo -Christian side, there's a pronounced insistence that it's a narrative.

[1838] Yes.

[1839] And our modern culture is actually a union of those two, right?

[1840] You just described a couple episodes of the awakening for the meaning crisis.

[1841] That's exactly the argument I try to choose out.

[1842] And well, and certainly the argument we're having right now, because Jonathan and I in some sense are making a case for the logos as narrative and embody narrative, although you also point to importance of embodiment.

[1843] I'm not rejecting that.

[1844] I know.

[1845] Well, it's very difficult to differentiate this, right?

[1846] And I do like the idea that there's a hierarchy of narrative with the ideal at the top and then a hierarchy of nomological description and that there's a correspondence between the hierarchies because it does seem to me that, and I want to puzzle that out, one of the things Jung warned about, he thought there was an ethos in the religious story and to some degree in the alchemical story.

[1847] And then when the scientific revolution hit, we blew up the nomological into this massively powerful thing.

[1848] But our ethic was left in the same primitive form.

[1849] So now we're in danger because of that.

[1850] I think that's exactly right.

[1851] I think one of, I talk about this in terms of propositional tyranny and algorithmic tyranny.

[1852] And what we've done is we've reduced the logos inappropriately to logic.

[1853] I strongly resist that move too.

[1854] So you're, okay, okay, okay.

[1855] Well, I get your caution because I do believe that devolving everything down to the narrative per se does put us in the postmodern trap, which is, well, it's all, in some sense, well, it's all narrative, which is kind of what they claimed.

[1856] And that's a problem, because then you can dispense with the corrective reality.

[1857] Exactly, exactly.

[1858] So I use a stereoscopic metaphor.

[1859] I think of the logos as like as epitomized in logic, as in sort of.

[1860] story and then I try to look through both to a depth.

[1861] That's what I try to think of as the Logos.

[1862] Sorry, tell me that again.

[1863] So you know how I have the left and right visual field and then I look through them to depth perception.

[1864] Yeah.

[1865] Here's Logos as logic.

[1866] There's logos as story and I try to look through them to the depth behind you.

[1867] Yeah, yeah.

[1868] Well, that seems on the face of it quite fine.

[1869] I mean, I'm still in a conundrum because we already agreed that the selection of the facts and even the manifestation of the facts as perceptual objects is dependent on the imposition of a hierarchy value.

[1870] And so that tangles the damn narrative into it again.

[1871] But there's something that's key to the idea of parallel hierarchies that I think is a conceptual way out of this.

[1872] And that's one of the key moves in Neoplatonism, exactly what you're puzzling over.

[1873] How do these things, what explains their parallel and what explains beyond the parable, parallel, what I was trying to do with the geroscopic.

[1874] What explains their convergence?

[1875] Okay, what if, what if it is something like, let's say I'm using the word person, but let's use the word consciousness.

[1876] Okay.

[1877] Or so that, that, that, so it's a Maximus has, this is why I like Sam Maximus so much, right?

[1878] Because say Maximus, he has, he has exactly what you're talking about in terms of this nominological order, this, this hierarchy of order.

[1879] And he has a sense in which the laboratory, for that is man, right?

[1880] Man with a capital M. And so doesn't it, doesn't it kind of one of the solutions to this, wouldn't it be this relevant realization that you're talking about?

[1881] But the relevant realization happens ultimately happens in consciousness or something like consciousness or, I mean, I think it happens in intelligence because we have a lot of relevance realization going on below consciousness.

[1882] You and I've talked about this.

[1883] Right, okay.

[1884] I think consciousness is a kind of intelligence for specific kinds of problems.

[1885] It'll define novel, novel, complexity.

[1886] That's the horizon, unpredictable horizon of the future.

[1887] Right, right, right, right.

[1888] So, but let's say, and I think the issue is, yes, and what I'm here, what I'm sort of proposing is intelligibility is something like the way reality is realizing itself, and relevance realization is intelligence, and the good is the fact that we trust that the the intelligence contract the intelligibility, and by doing that, it puts us in touch with the world.

[1889] That's what I would say.

[1890] Is that a presupposition of faith?

[1891] Is that a presupposition of the faith that was necessary before the manifestation of a real science?

[1892] Yes.

[1893] The willingness to act on that basis?

[1894] I think if you do not, okay, so I'm not going to deny the importance of the Judeo -Christian story, okay?

[1895] But I would also say that without Plato's argument about the good, as the ongoing fulfillment of the promise that intelligibility tracks realness, you can't do science.

[1896] And there's a reason why the scientific revolution is a return to Plato.

[1897] Galileo rejects Aristotle and goes to Plato and says, Plato is right, mathematics, listen to the words, mathematics is the language of reality.

[1898] There's no math in Aristotelian science for 1 ,200 years.

[1899] He turns to Plato, and that's what brings in the core of modern science.

[1900] Why is that a turn to Plato particularly?

[1901] Because Plato, like, in the Republic, Plato makes the argument that he added over the academy.

[1902] You can't come into the academy unless you can do mathematics.

[1903] Because until you do mathematics, you can't grasp the kind of intelligibility needed to get at the deepest realities of things.

[1904] And science.

[1905] So you thought that math was the cardinal example of that.

[1906] Yes.

[1907] And all of our sciences dependent on mathematics.

[1908] And his attitude towards minors.

[1909] Myth and narrative is, right, that's Heidegger's claim about science, yeah, is that myths and narratives are, right, that they are indispensable, but they do not have the same degree of revelation of the promise of the good that math does.

[1910] I'm not saying I'm agreeing with that.

[1911] Isn't that why also Neoplatonism could never land, right?

[1912] And he could never land and become a mode of being for a society.

[1913] It says that's why we've talked about this before a little bit, where what Christianity does is it provides the body for that which was good of the Neoplatonic tradition.

[1914] And it provides something more.

[1915] To be to be embodied in a communion of love and a communion of participation.

[1916] See, what you can't get in Neoplatonism and although I'm not a Christian, I prefer Christian neoplatonism over pagan neoplatanism because Plato is striving towards agape.

[1917] And Christianity makes this astonishing.

[1918] The two identity claims, both made by John, God is Logos and God is Agape, right?

[1919] And then that's an identity claim between Logos and Agape, right?

[1920] It's not to say they're the same, but it's also the same, right?

[1921] And you're going to say the Trinity, and I get that, right?

[1922] That's fine, and I don't object to that.

[1923] But the point I'm making is, for me, that's the crucial move.

[1924] Here's what I say in response to that.

[1925] And this is what I mean when I say about neoplatonism is the core.

[1926] Interesting that you would use the word crucial concept.

[1927] No, I think it is.

[1928] I think it is.

[1929] Because I go back to my point, you can't follow the logos unless Agape takes you out of egocentrism.

[1930] Great, right.

[1931] That's right.

[1932] Okay.

[1933] But also, agape can't unfold to you unless there's an order and an intelligibility to it.

[1934] It makes no sense to say, I love something.

[1935] thing.

[1936] Yeah.

[1937] And there's no intelligibility to it.

[1938] That doesn't make any sense, right?

[1939] Yeah.

[1940] Okay.

[1941] Now, but you see, the thing is, and this is what I'm trying to get at with my idea of the intellectual Silk Road, right?

[1942] Right.

[1943] Right now, our culture, the hermodyics suspicion, we're locked into the courtroom of debate.

[1944] I propose that we go back and do what we had with the Silk Road, which is the courtyard of discussion.

[1945] Neoplatonism has this terrific ability to enter into reciprocal reconstruction with Christianity.

[1946] Clearly, it does it with Islam.

[1947] Which is what we're doing right now.

[1948] Yes, but it does it with Islam, and that's how you get Sufism.

[1949] It does it with science.

[1950] If you take a look, read John Spencer's book, the Eternal Law.

[1951] If you look at what's happening around Einstein and that, they're all invoking Neoplatonic or similar ideas to Neoplatonism.

[1952] Neoplatonism with Galileo, it's capable of entering into reciprocal reconstruction with science, with Islam, with Christianity.

[1953] There seems to be evidence that it can do this with Buddhism, Taoism.

[1954] That's what Thomas Plant has argued was happening on the Silk Road.

[1955] So what you see as a potential defect, I see as a benefit, which is it doesn't land because it's designed to land in many different ways and allow people.

[1956] Okay, so that's very much related to this idea of parallel hierarchy.

[1957] If you're abstracting out the set of universal facts, then those facts are useful in relationship to the higher order narratives that unite narratives.

[1958] I think that's the claim you just made.

[1959] I think so.

[1960] Let me see.

[1961] So what I'm saying is that Neil Platonism gives us a way to dispose the furniture of thought that we can come into deep dialogue and it would allow a Sufi and it would allow a Christian to have deep discussion.

[1962] They don't have to agree.

[1963] The Silk Road wasn't dependent on one person running the Silk Road.

[1964] It was dependent on the fact that all of these civilizations found a way to deeply talk to each other.

[1965] Why the Silk Road metaphor?

[1966] I'm not, I'm too historically.

[1967] I know what the Silk Road was, but why use that?

[1968] Because the Silk Road binds the East and the West together.

[1969] I see.

[1970] It's like the golden thread.

[1971] Yes, it's the through line between civilizations, literally.

[1972] But not just the physical road.

[1973] There is a philosophical Silk Road.

[1974] And Thomas Plant, by the way, who is a Christian.

[1975] Christian argues that that was neoplatonism.

[1976] So I think in one deep sense, it certainly is the case that to some degree, if science is a derivation of neoplatonism in the way that you described, science has also been a uniting methodology and system of apprehension because many different cultures are willing with different degrees of ability to utilize the scientific method.

[1977] I agree.

[1978] And I would say that's ultimately exactly for the reasons you just gave, because science has sort of made implicit within itself many neoplatonic moves.

[1979] I mean, I think it's interesting.

[1980] I would say, I mean, it doesn't bother me so much in the sense that to the extent that that which deoplatonism presents as true, I don't have that measure of a problem.

[1981] When I read St. Maximus, I don't even ask myself.

[1982] Neoplatonism, was this Christianity?

[1983] And I'm not saying you should.

[1984] Yeah.

[1985] What I'm saying is...

[1986] And when I read a Sufi, I don't ask myself that question either.

[1987] Like, if I read Ibn Arabi, I would say, yeah, he's saying some pretty powerful true things.

[1988] You know, and I can also recognize the place to which we disagree.

[1989] But he says some definitely powerful things about the nature of reality, which are...

[1990] They think about the imaginal without Ibn Arabi.

[1991] You won't get it.

[1992] And if you want to turn to some very good places to talk about agopic love, read Suf, read some of the Sufi.

[1993] You want, like, I want to.

[1994] So you're emphasizing this in large part, or I don't want to put words in your mouth, but because you also see, see, I think that belief in the logos is a precondition for dialogue, right?

[1995] Yes.

[1996] But you're making a case for, in some sense, it's not a binary definition of logos.

[1997] It's one that's informed perhaps properly in equal parts from the, tradition of Greece and the...

[1998] It's dipolar.

[1999] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2000] But there's also, there's no reason to assume that there isn't a deeper unity that that both are pointing to.

[2001] I mean, we've been acting out that presupposition in some sense in the West since the time of the Renaissance, because that was Rome and Greece meeting Jerusalem in a real sense.

[2002] Sorry, Roman Athens say meeting Jerusalem in a real sense.

[2003] But it was true way before that.

[2004] I mean, one of the precursors to the Renaissance is the intellectual reality of Constantinople.

[2005] Like, Neoplatonism was just present, was present there the whole time.

[2006] It just was there.

[2007] And so we know, we don't know much about it because the city was destroyed and everything got scattered.

[2008] But the, let's say the tradition of Neoplatonism, the manner in which one of the important matters in which it reached the West was through these Christian scholars that got chased away from the city basically because it was in danger and brought.

[2009] brought the text and the tradition to.

[2010] And then there's another.

[2011] And then there's the one through Spain.

[2012] It comes through the Arab world too.

[2013] There's sort of multiple time.

[2014] See, what I'm trying to do, what I'm proposing is I'm trying to do, I'm trying to do like a historical thing where I'm trying to look at all of the ways in which it's like the glass, we can get the multispectuality of Neoplatonism by seeing all the ways it was able to reciprocally reconstruct itself, like reciprocally reconstruct with with Aristotle or or with Christianity or with science or with Islam.

[2015] So you're taking snapshots of that in some sense in the same way I'm trying to do that with the notion of what's at the top in the narrative sense using the biblical corpus.

[2016] Exactly.

[2017] And I'm trying to find the through line, the historical through line for Neoplatonism.

[2018] Because I don't, this is maybe where Jonathan and I disagree, but I think we do it at least a loving manner.

[2019] Well, or don't understand each other fully.

[2020] It's possible.

[2021] It's possible.

[2022] But I guess what I wanted to state is, your metagame.

[2023] Me participating in the dialogue is more important to me than continuing the right relationship is more valuable to me than coming to the right conclusion.

[2024] Right, definitely.

[2025] Okay.

[2026] So I just wanted to state that.

[2027] Well, that's a good place to end, I think.

[2028] I mean, we go to long ways through this.

[2029] We'll try to figure out perhaps, after we think about this for a good while, what we might do to continue it, because there's a few propositions here that I think are relevant.

[2030] I just might share them with people that we didn't get to.

[2031] Any hierarchy that is unified is made so by the dominion of a superordinate principle.

[2032] So something has to bring everything together and has to be at the top to unite.

[2033] That principle is most effectively what is common to all that is deemed of comparative relative value within the hierarchy.

[2034] So we talked about the commonality between the good, the beautiful and the true.

[2035] The common principle of value must necessarily be elevated to the highest place in the hierarchy.

[2036] Well, that's the abstraction of the good.

[2037] Maybe it wouldn't matter if it was Neo -Platonic or the more Christian notion of the logos.

[2038] And then this is something that you really influenced me in relationship.

[2039] That bringing to the highest place is personal subordination.

[2040] So that's above me and I serve it.

[2041] I'm imitation.

[2042] I want to become that.

[2043] Faith, I believe that that principle prevails.

[2044] Celebration, which is it's worthy of, what would you say?

[2045] There's joy in relationship to the recognition of its superordinate place, adulation, a variant of that in worship, which is sort of maybe a worship is what combines all of those.

[2046] And so those are propositions, which I would like to unpack with you guys.

[2047] And then there's something that's more specifically Judeo -Christian after that, which I won't get into now, because I think it would be a distraction.

[2048] So, well, that's a great conversation.

[2049] I'll come to Toronto any time for this.

[2050] Yeah, that's great.

[2051] Okay, well, I think we should think about doing it again.

[2052] Well, we'll start halfway through and see if we can get to the end.

[2053] I think that would be very good.

[2054] Yeah, well, it's really, really, see, a lot of what we're doing is we're differentiating the propositions, right?

[2055] It's like, well, here's, here's the proposition.

[2056] Here's its complexity.

[2057] And there's some real utility in just, in just seeing the full complexity, walking through it.

[2058] I mean, this is also, right, This is also, I think, a genuine active fellowship or even friendship, because the more you do that, the more responsive you can make your argument to people who want to engage with it.

[2059] Of course.

[2060] Of course.

[2061] That's exactly.

[2062] I mean, we're trying to get to a diverse range of tools that are grounded on something as rock solid as we can manage.

[2063] So, yeah.

[2064] Then we don't need a hermeneity of suspicion.

[2065] Yeah, exactly.

[2066] Hey, my pleasure, man. I'm so glad you guys.

[2067] come and that we could be together finally in person.

[2068] And I think the conversation was a lot more dynamic and deeper than we would have managed on Zoom.

[2069] Totally.

[2070] I totally agree with that.

[2071] I totally agree.

[2072] All right.

[2073] Great.

[2074] Thanks, Eric.

[2075] Thank you for all you who are watching and listening.

[2076] And more to follow on many fronts with any luck.