180. A Conversation so Intense It Might as Well Be Psychedelic | John Vervaeke

[0] Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast.

[1] This is Season 4, Episode 34.

[2] My father's joined by John Verveke, a colleague of his.

[3] John is an associate professor at the University of Toronto.

[4] He teaches courses in the psychology department on thinking and reasoning with an emphasis on problem solving associated with creativity, cognitive development with an emphasis on the dynamic nature of development, and higher cognitive processes with an emphasis on intelligence, rationality, mindfulness, and the psychology of wisdom.

[5] My father and John discuss how they know each other the last time they saw one another, Christianity, power, perspective, atheists, religion, Heidegger, and more.

[6] This episode is brought to you by self -authoring.

[7] Self -authoring was developed by my dad over the last 30 years with help from two other PhDs at McGill and Harvard.

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[11] I do recommend writing about trauma at least a year after it's over, so you don't re -traumatize yourself all over again.

[12] The present authoring program has two modules.

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[18] I hope you enjoy this episode.

[19] Hello, everyone.

[20] I'm pleased to speak today with John Verveci, a colleague of mine.

[21] He's an associate professor in the teaching stream.

[22] He's been teaching at the University of Toronto since 1994.

[23] He currently teaches extremely popular and well -received courses in the psychology department on thinking and reasoning with an emphasis on insight problem -solving associated with creativity, cognitive development, with an emphasis on the dynamic nature of development, and higher cognitive processes with an emphasis on intelligence, rationality, mindfulness, and the psychology of wisdom.

[24] He's the director of the cognitive science program, where he also teaches courses on the introduction to cognitive science and the cognitive science of consciousness, wherein he emphasizes 4E for consciousness, embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended, models of cognition and consciousness.

[25] In addition, he chooses a course in the Buddhism, Psychology, and Mental Health Program on Buddhism and Cognitive Science.

[26] He's director of the Consciousness and Wisdom Studies Laboratory.

[27] He has won and be nominated for, several teaching awards, including the 2001 Students' Administrative Council and Association of Part -Time Undergraduate Students' Teaching Award for the Humanities, and the 2012 -2020 -Gosch Excellence in Teaching Award.

[28] He's published articles on relevance realization, general intelligence, mindfulness, flow, metaphor, and wisdom.

[29] He's the first author of the book, Zombies in Western Culture, a 21st century crisis, which integrates psychology and cognitive science to address the meaning.

[30] crisis in Western society.

[31] He's the author and preventer of the YouTube series, awakening from the meaning crisis.

[32] And the meaning, meaning is what we're going to talk to John about today.

[33] John, do you remember when we met last?

[34] I think the last time we were physically present was in 2015.

[35] We were out of mind masters discussion.

[36] You and I, it's on YouTube.

[37] And we were talking about meeting in life at that time.

[38] That was the last time.

[39] I I think we were present together.

[40] So that's been six, six years, man. A lot of water under the bridge.

[41] That's for sure.

[42] Since that time.

[43] So tell us what you, tell us about your current projects, if you would.

[44] Oh, well, I've, I've, I'm currently engaged in a project of, there's two projects.

[45] I've just, one I've just finished, one I've been finishing.

[46] One was a CogSye project on consciousness, called Untangling the World Nog.

[47] And in that, I was experimenting not only with new theoretical material, I was experimenting with a new way of presenting material.

[48] So I presented the material rather than monologically.

[49] I presented it dialogically with a friend of mine psychologist Greg Enriquez.

[50] And so the material was presented dialogically, which was very interesting for me because I've, well, hopefully we can talk a bit more about that.

[51] I've been, my core project is a project of trying to understand more deeply the process of dialogue and what it does in distributed cognition.

[52] The other thing I'm doing.

[53] So do you, what do you think is the difference between dialogue and thought?

[54] I mean, is thought an inner dialogue or trialogue or quadrilogue?

[55] Well, that's a really good question because one of the things that I think we are playing around with right now in the culture is a consideration of whether or not the monological model of thought, which has been very.

[56] predominant.

[57] And the prototypical way in which you present your thought is with the treatise, for example.

[58] And we're now opening up to the idea that perhaps thought is more dialogical in nature.

[59] In fact, the idea that thought might be, even reason might be more dialogical nature is coming into sort of the mainstream of cognitive science.

[60] Let me throw an idea at you and tell me what you think of.

[61] It's something I've been working with.

[62] We might as well dive right into this.

[63] It seems to me that thought has two main components.

[64] There's a revelatory component, and that manifests itself most remarkably, I would say, in flashes of insight, but those maybe spread all the way out to religious revelation along a similar continuum.

[65] So there's a revelatory element to thought, and that's the thought that in some sense springs out of the void.

[66] And I think the way that you manifest that thought is by consciously or unconsciously posing yourself a problem.

[67] And I think, that in some sense it's akin to prayer, although we don't notice that.

[68] And maybe that's because we've internalized prayer so deeply.

[69] We don't even notice we do it anymore.

[70] I mean, people have been praying for a long time, right?

[71] So you have a problem, you want a solution, you ask yourself, well, what do you think of this?

[72] And then you wait.

[73] And then at some point, sometimes when you're sleeping, sometimes when you're awake, I mean, sometimes so powerfully, when you're sleeping, it jerks you awake.

[74] The answer appears, and you think, well, I thought that up.

[75] But that's a strange thing to think.

[76] I mean, one of the things Jung said about thought was that most people encounter thoughts.

[77] Nobody will ever find this quote, of course, because I'm sure I've modified it.

[78] But like they find a table when they walk into a room, it's just there.

[79] And then we attribute it to ourselves.

[80] But then there's the dialogical element where we take a look at the thought, or there might be the dialogical element if you're further along in the development of your thought.

[81] You take the thought and you subject it to a critical dialogue or trialog or with inner avatars.

[82] So, okay, your turn, man. Yeah, yeah, that's great.

[83] So I think that's an important note.

[84] I do a lot of work on the nature of insight, and I think the theoretical argument and the empirical evidence, I think, is converging on the idea that the insight process is, well, perhaps I'll just say the insight process, makes use of cognitive machinery that's very different from inferential machinery.

[85] And in fact, there's at times when they can even be opposed or interfere with each other.

[86] Okay, so I have a comment about that.

[87] Yeah.

[88] You know that when people develop prefrontal dementia, sometimes they experience a burst of creativity.

[89] Of course.

[90] Yes, and it's because the editor module goes down, and that's associated, I think, with the cognitive module for thought, that's Verneke's area, rather than Broca's area.

[91] If I got that right?

[92] Yeah, you do.

[93] You also get similar things.

[94] If you get sort of minor damage in sort of right prefrontal, you'll also get River Berry did some experiments where people who have that kind of damage also show increased facility with insight problems.

[95] Right.

[96] So, you know, I'm building this writing app right now and I'm, we're going to launch it in about a month, but I'm suggesting to people that when they write, they separate out the editing process entirely.

[97] And so they try to rely on the non -critical revelatory process.

[98] to generate ideas, and that means they can't try to write a perfect sentence to begin with.

[99] They just have to restrict the editor and ask the revelatory system to step forward.

[100] And so what do you think about it's akinness to prayer?

[101] I know that's kind of a radical idea.

[102] Well, it's a really radical idea.

[103] I don't think it's that radical.

[104] Well, you're a radical, so that's why it's fun to talk to you.

[105] Well, the idea, I think it's only radical if you go in with some presupposed epistemologies of what's going on in thought.

[106] I mean, you may be an empiricist in which you think your relationship to thought or any knowledge acquisition process is a purely passive, receptive one.

[107] Or you may be in a romantic where you think that thought is literally, you hear it literally in the expression, an expression pushing out an act of imposition on the world.

[108] But what I think the phenomena of insight does is reveal that a lot of our thinking is neither active nor passive.

[109] It's what I like to call participatory.

[110] It's the same kind of thing like participating in a conversation.

[111] It's not just a sequence of actions and passive receptivity.

[112] There's a co -collaboration.

[113] We're co -creating.

[114] We're making something together.

[115] In fact, that's one of the defining features I have for what I call deologos.

[116] I try to use the ancient Greek word rather than the modern.

[117] word.

[118] The logos.

[119] Yeah, because...

[120] Yeah, well, that's also my, you know, a word I use frequently.

[121] Yeah, yep.

[122] We haven't talked about why people want us to talk.

[123] And the reason they want us to talk is because our ISD is dovetail to a substantial degree and also diverge interestingly.

[124] And so I guess they want us to talk so that we can think.

[125] Well, that's it.

[126] And see, that's what's I was going to say, that's one of the defining, I would say one of the defining, it certainly seems to be the case as a defining criteria for Socrates, that if you and I can get to places in the Diologos that we couldn't get to individually, then real Diologos has come into existence.

[127] And that's Phileia Sophia, the love of wisdom, as opposed to Philea and Ikea, the love of victory.

[128] And so...

[129] Right, right, right.

[130] I didn't know those phrases.

[131] Faya, say it again?

[132] Philea Sophia, which is the...

[133] Phileia, Philea, Sophia, sure, wisdom is the feminine essence of God.

[134] Yeah, well, and also, but the Philea is...

[135] is, you know, it's itself a collaborative love.

[136] Oh, did you say Fylia?

[137] Fylia, yeah, Fylia.

[138] Fylia and Fylaea.

[139] Fylia, Sophia.

[140] Fylaia Sophia.

[141] The three loves, Eros, Fyla, Agape.

[142] This is Fyla.

[143] And Fylaa is the love that is done, is expressed and shared in community.

[144] And then Sophia, of course, is the word for wisdom.

[145] That's where we get philosophy from.

[146] I mean, Fila, Pahlia, Nicaia is the love of victory, like Nike.

[147] victory and right and yeah it's interesting because the it's tell me what you think of this i think the youtube dialogues that we undertake our character as by filia phileia sophia and the youtube dialogues conducted in the main by the uh what would you call it legacy media are phila filea nikia nikia and i think people appreciate phileia sophia much better you you better believe I certainly appreciate it much better.

[148] I did.

[149] I just did two of these with Bernardo Castro.

[150] One was three hours and one was four hours.

[151] And their accepted wisdom is nobody's going to listen to those.

[152] And these are extremely popular.

[153] People are willing to hang in precisely because - How popular?

[154] Well, I mean, there's been, I think, 20 ,000 views for the first one, and it's been up for like a week.

[155] And there's been like, I don't know, 8 ,000 views of the first.

[156] the second one that's been up for a couple of days, and this is for a four -hour video.

[157] Yeah, I mean, people came, 10 ,000 people came to see Tom, or Sam Harris and I talk in, in Ireland, and that was primarily Filia Sophia with a hint of Filia, perhaps, I forgot it again.

[158] Nike, Nike, Nike, yes, of course.

[159] Nike, the shoe.

[160] I just have to picture the shoe, Philea, Nike.

[161] Yes, I'm accused of loving Filia Nike, but I don't.

[162] I find that distasteful, and I'm.

[163] much more comfortable with Philea, Sophia, and I hope that's evident.

[164] Well, that's very much.

[165] I mean, this sort of started with my projects, my major project right now, and this is why I'm doing these other things in this manner, is I put together an anthology for publication, and, you know, I'm doing a lot of work on it.

[166] I'm trying to understand what is Diologos, how do we bring it about?

[167] And I'm looking, the two areas of research are, I'm, of course, looking back into the philosophical heritage, the whole Socratic tradition.

[168] But I'm also doing a lot of participant observation, participant experimentation in all these emerging communities, you know, the circling community, the authentic relating community, philosophical insight, philosophical fellowship.

[169] I'm trying to learn how to do this, share with this with other people.

[170] It seems to me, tell me what you think of this.

[171] It seems to me that this, okay, so you're a participant or participant observer.

[172] I feel like we're tracking something and that this must be associated with our hunting instinct that the Filia Sophia is a I feel like I'm tracking.

[173] So I believe this is from the Lord of the Rings with Bilbo, but I could be completely wrong about this.

[174] There's a scene near the end of the book where he wakes his, makes his way across a swamp full of souls and he feels for the rocks underneath that make out the path, but he can't see them because the water is murky and so he feels the mountain.

[175] It seems to me that Phileia Sophia is associated with that, is that you feel your way to a solid, to something solid, and then you take the next step.

[176] And that manifests itself in speech, but it's, it's mute, is it, is it mutual tracking?

[177] Is it a reprogramming of the tracking circuit that we used for so long when we were dialogical hunters, like signaling to each other?

[178] I think so.

[179] We're on the track of wisdom as a beast.

[180] Yeah, I think so.

[181] I mean, I think, you know, Lodging towards Bethlehem.

[182] Right.

[183] And, well, I mean, it's a main claim of most of 40 cognitive science that our higher cognitive processes are exacted for more, from more direct sensory motor interaction.

[184] And, you know, and you're right.

[185] Socrates talks about, you know, a willingness to follow the logos wherever it goes.

[186] And the interesting thing when you do these practices.

[187] And do you think that's any different than prayer?

[188] Because you could hardly say that in a more Christian way.

[189] Well, let me say something about that, because when I've done a participant observation, what happens is that first people are taken aback by a kind of intimacy that is not sexual or, you know, it's a kind of immediacy that the culture doesn't currently prepare them for.

[190] So they're taken about this kind of intimacy and connection.

[191] John, that's exactly what I experience when people come up to on the street and tell me that they've been watching my videos and that their life has been changed.

[192] There's this instant immediacy that takes me aback and it's, it just, it just, it floors me and it really does.

[193] I get the same thing.

[194] I get, and I get people when I talk to them and they've watched the series or something like that.

[195] And they, they've spent like 50 hours with me in their head and they, they think they know me intimately.

[196] Maybe they do, John.

[197] Yeah, maybe they do.

[198] You don't know them, or maybe you do.

[199] You know they're Filea Sophia, and it knows yours.

[200] And so it's instant intimacy, but it's very disconcerting.

[201] It is, and it's very hard for me initially, because I'm by nature, sort of socially phobic.

[202] Well, it doesn't get easier.

[203] But when I'm doing the practices, what happens is initially people are caught up in this intimacy.

[204] And then what happens is, and people have various names for it, the Wii space, the geist, logo, spirit.

[205] There's a sense of...

[206] Wherever I am between you, I'm with you.

[207] Yeah, where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am also, right?

[208] And so there's the sense...

[209] Yeah, that's a name for it, all right.

[210] There's a sense.

[211] When did you put the Christian spin on this?

[212] Well, I mean, there's a, there's, there's sections in the, there's sections in the episodes in the series where I talk a lot about Christianity.

[213] I mean, one of the odd things that's happened to me is I did an episode on Agape, and I've had many Christians, including Christian pastors, like Paul Vanderclay said.

[214] That was one of the best explanations of Agape they ever heard, and it was sort of startling from them.

[215] So Vanderclay is following you, obviously, as well.

[216] They said it was odd for a non -Christian to be doing this, but...

[217] Well, somebody had to.

[218] Well, that's fair enough.

[219] Oh, God, what a nasty bastard I am.

[220] No, no, no, no. This is fun.

[221] Yeah.

[222] But the thing I wanted to say is, like, when you're in, like, because I've done circling, I've been in these events.

[223] And when this happens, you know, you get people from all kinds of backgrounds, religious, non -religious, you know, sort of, you know, officially atheist or something like, and they start using spiritual language to describe.

[224] Yes, I've been in that situation in my.

[225] therapy sessions many times.

[226] As soon as you talk about anything that's really serious, you use religious language.

[227] That's, and that means religious language is the language of extraordinary seriousness.

[228] I mean, when you talk about good and evil, and you do that in therapy, when you're talking to someone who's being touched with malevolence repeatedly, there's no alternative.

[229] Then you're in this religious ground.

[230] I think that's right.

[231] So what does that mean?

[232] And this spirit that, this spirit that we're tracking, that's the spirit that's laid the golden thread throughout history and we're in dialogue with that spirit and that's this that's the ancestral spirit and so that ancestral spirit reaches that's the way that's the spirit that manifests itself i think is god the father that's the ancestral spirit that lays down the golden thread that's what's different than logos maybe and i don't know how to how to parse out the triune conception exactly you know because you talk about this logos manifesting itself in the in the dialogue on Sophia?

[233] Yeah.

[234] And Logos is in there, right?

[235] Dialogue.

[236] So is the Son, the love of wisdom?

[237] I mean, that makes sense, or is that the spirit?

[238] Well, I don't know.

[239] And neither do I. A Trinitarian interpretation.

[240] I do know that what happens and maybe this.

[241] What do you think of the God the Father interpretation that I just laid on you, man?

[242] Well, I mean, I mean, I've just been reading a lot about Christian Platonism.

[243] and I watched your talk with Jonathan, and I found it, I mean, you guys were talking Christianity, and fair enough, and I appreciate the earnestness and the authenticity.

[244] But there was, you know, a lot of the, to my ear, there was a lot of Platonism in there.

[245] Have you read the immortality key?

[246] No, I haven't read the other mortality key.

[247] Oh, you need to read it.

[248] I just interviewed the author.

[249] He's been tracking the use of psychedelics in the, in the, in the, in, uh, in, uh, where all the Greeks went to be enlightened, you know, the...

[250] Delphi?

[251] Yeah, yeah, in the Delphic mysteries.

[252] Exactly.

[253] Well, I was going to say that, I mean, I read a book that I would recommend, too.

[254] And he integrates that with Christianity, you know, is stressing the Greek.

[255] So I asked him and Ruck, Dr. Ruck, who's from Harvard, he wrote The Road to Aloysius.

[256] So it's the Elyssinian mysteries that I'm reaching for.

[257] He's been tracking the use of psychedelics for 2 ,000 years in Greece in the Elysinian mystery, he's making the claim that that psychedelic experience in Elusis was core to Greek culture, the bedrock of Greek philosophy.

[258] That's part of the revelatory element that we're talking about, and that all of Greek philosophy emerged as a consequence of that revelatory Elysinian experience.

[259] It could be.

[260] I mean, Cordford made a lot of good arguments about, you know, the divine men that were the precursors to, the philosophers are being influenced by Thracian shamanism.

[261] And you get figures that are right on the border.

[262] Who is that?

[263] Hornford, Cornford.

[264] Hornford.

[265] Influenced by what brand of shamanism?

[266] Hornford?

[267] Thracian shamanism.

[268] Shaman's from Thrace, which is north of Greece.

[269] And so Cornford talked about, like, because you get very weird things about Pythagoras.

[270] He did a thunderstorm ceremony where he went into a cave and was, died and came back.

[271] And of course he...

[272] How do you spell Hornford or Cornford?

[273] Hornford, C -O -R -N -F -R -D, Cornford.

[274] And he, the idea there is that the sort of soul -flight practices within shamanism are taken up into Pythagoras' notion of soul -flight.

[275] Yeah, well, I imagine the soul -flight practices are the same thing as the Elysinian mysteries, essentially.

[276] They're a continuation of the shamanic tradition into the present.

[277] Well, that's the thesis of this book anyways.

[278] What's interesting to me is that Plato represents Socrates as being able to bring about that state and people through dialogue alone.

[279] Yeah, I know what that means.

[280] Yeah.

[281] And so do you?

[282] Yeah, very much.

[283] And when I see people in these practices, what happens is they first orient on each other, then they orient on the logos.

[284] They find an intimacy with the logos.

[285] What do you mean by that?

[286] What they do is they come to find that they're not only in relationship to each other, they're in relationship to this geist or logos that's happening in the distributed cognition.

[287] Yeah, okay, so that's a very interesting way of phrasing it.

[288] So that's what I see as the spirit that's guiding the golden thread.

[289] And that's what you're praying to when you ask for a revelatory thought when you're confused.

[290] So imagine that you have, if we're, imagine we're holographic.

[291] in relationship to this distributed cognitive net, right?

[292] So the part contains some of the whole.

[293] Very much.

[294] And the whole would be this distributed spirit that you're just describing, at least as it's enacted.

[295] And so insofar as you're a holographic, minuscule, but complete in some sense, conotic, connotic representation of this spirit.

[296] You can ask it for it to bestow its wisdom on you and its operation in your unconscious produces the valetory thought.

[297] Okay, well, that is deeply converging with a lot of the CogSai that I'm bringing to it.

[298] Oh, good.

[299] Okay.

[300] So the idea here is that distributed cognition has a property, collective intelligence that is something that is not just the sum of individual intelligences, and there's increasing evidence for this.

[301] Yeah, well, you can imagine, sorry, I'm prone to do this, but you can imagine it's like reading a book.

[302] I mean, I have this distributed spirit in my head plus I have my own experience and so I'm the combination of that distributed spirit and my own well yeah that's the extended mind okay so that's probably what the sun is john in the trinitarian spirit is that combination because that's an incarnation of the spirit in a particular time and place and that's what I bring to the dialogue well that's good I let's play with that I like serious play I think that's how we go through okay well so so okay so we've got the farther as that distributed entity that stretches back in time well no you see let's play with that because let me first try something and then let's see if it maps in because you know people get into they start to realize that the presence of the collective intelligence above and beyond the presence of Tom and Sue and Ann right and then they start to enter into relationship with that but then there's a further thing that happens and this I think might point to what you're what you're okay so maybe that's the spirit that thing that's inhabiting everybody at that time right so it's akin to the son and it's akin to the father but it's it's it constitutes that distributed space.

[303] And so what I think might control, I think of it as the Neoplatonic 1 and that record one, right?

[304] And so...

[305] That's your peculiarity.

[306] Yeah, well, we'll come back to why I think that language is helpful.

[307] I'm not claiming it's exclusive.

[308] I'm not doing that.

[309] Hey, I'm not claiming it's not helpful either.

[310] So what they do is they get to a place where, and not everybody does this, because you can imagine, it depends, you know, you know.

[311] What did you just say?

[312] Not everybody does this.

[313] You want to put that on a t -shirt?

[314] What I mean is that most people...

[315] Yeah, I noticed that, John.

[316] Most people that are doing the circling, they don't...

[317] Many of them are happy just with what you might call the psychological intimacy.

[318] God, yes, no wonder.

[319] Yep, and then some people move to what you might call logos intimacy.

[320] And then some people move through that and by means of it to an intimacy of what is the fount of that.

[321] What is the ground of that?

[322] What is it about the reality that makes this kind of thing possible?

[323] They start to think of it.

[324] So they're reflecting on it.

[325] They're reflecting on it and reflecting through it.

[326] Like we're doing?

[327] Like we're doing?

[328] Is that?

[329] Yeah, very much.

[330] And you can think about this kind of move.

[331] And for me, this is where the prototypical Socratic platonic move comes, where you get the idea that the very process of intelligibility gives you is the most profound access we have to the way reality is realizing itself.

[332] And that's how people start to talk.

[333] They start to talk about reality, beyond the we space.

[334] So there's us, the we space, and then the reality.

[335] And maybe that corresponds better with the Trinity that you're looking for.

[336] Well, I think you probably lost me to some degree with that last move.

[337] So maybe I can get you to lay it out a bit more.

[338] So what people start to do is, in relationship to the way the Logos is unfolding, they start to see a pattern of how things can unfold and make sense.

[339] And then they start to see that maybe that's the pattern that is ultimately discloses reality to them.

[340] That's how they start to think.

[341] Well, that's, okay, so is that it can, this is why you're so interested in consciousness.

[342] I mean, I think maybe one of things you and I share is that we find it difficult to make a distinction between the consciousness of reality and reality itself.

[343] So I think, yeah, I mean, that's why I've coined this term transjective to try and talk.

[344] about the relationship, these kinds of relationships of participation, that they're being co -created by reality.

[345] Transjective, okay, so expound upon that?

[346] Well, I mean, the notion is ultimately derived from Tillick's idea, the symbol is that which grounds and makes possible the relationship between the subjective and the objective.

[347] It would be the kind of idea that you have in ancient epistemology, whereas instead of thinking of knowledge as representing something over there, you know, Aristotle's idea is the mind and the object that is known come into conformity.

[348] I'm using shape as a metaphor for form, where form means something more like, you know, a pleplonic form, the structural functional organization that makes it be what it is.

[349] This is the key Greek idea.

[350] That which makes it be what it is is also what makes it be knowable as it is.

[351] And so I'm not representing the cup.

[352] my mind conforms to it.

[353] It has the same form as it.

[354] And so it's not right to say that it's sort of...

[355] Well, that's what you do when you reach to pick up the cup according to Piaget.

[356] Well, yes, very much.

[357] And so in some sense, you're mimicking the cup by understanding it.

[358] You're shaping yourself to it, right?

[359] Which is difference.

[360] So, and this is the difference between a Cartesian and a theological approach to knowledge, right?

[361] Because the Cartesian approach is, I don't have to undergo transformation in fundamentally in who I am in order to know, I just have to properly organize my propositions.

[362] But if you go before Descartes, right, even reading was pursued, not informatively, but transformatively.

[363] The idea was, unless I go through fundamental transformations, there are deep truths that will not be disclosed to me. That's a conformity theory of knowing, as opposed to a representational theory of knowing.

[364] And what happens, what I'm saying is people, they feel themselves being conformed to reality through the logos.

[365] So that's a feeling of personal transformation?

[366] It's a And is that the feeling of, is that that same feeling of tracking?

[367] Is that the same as stumbling uphill with your cross towards the city of God?

[368] Well, maybe.

[369] That's why I asked the question.

[370] Well, let me try.

[371] Let me try.

[372] I don't know either, okay.

[373] So, I mean, this is some metaphor that pops into my mind all the time.

[374] Yeah.

[375] You know, we're shouldering this burden.

[376] What is the burden?

[377] Well, for you, you said it's transformative consciousness, or I think that's what you said.

[378] And we stumble uphill with it towards what?

[379] well let me try let me try that's that's that's a great question um thank you well i spent a lot of time thinking it up well for me so so one of the things and this is this is again for me from the socratic tradition this kind of knowing that we're talking about this this kind of transformational knowing there's no clean separation from you knowing the thing and you knowing yourself that you think there's a clear separation from the inside experience or is that the same thing?

[380] I think the inside experience is exactly that kind of thing in small doses.

[381] And then when you start to link them together, you can get flow experiences and what happens in flow experiences.

[382] Yeah, and if you link them to get together too much, it's non -stop flow experience and then the question is, can you tolerate it?

[383] Well, that's another I mean, that's a good question.

[384] There's another question.

[385] Maybe we can get to that.

[386] I'm not sure I can tolerate it.

[387] Well, there's the possibility and this comes from my I, you know, my experience, my decades experience as a Taoist, Tai Chi player.

[388] I mean, Chick -Satmaa largely talks about what you might call hot flow.

[389] And, you know, the flow that you experience, the flow and you experience when you're, there's a lot of metabolic expenditure.

[390] But you can get into the flow state when you're doing Tai Chi -Tuan.

[391] And you're not doing a tremendous kind of, at least physiological.

[392] I imagine there's stuff going on cognitively, but you don't have that same sense of, I'm going to burn out.

[393] You have this difference.

[394] Well, I need some of that because I have that sense of, I must be in a hot state of flow then all the time.

[395] But the thing about the good state of flow is that it opens up the possibility for you to, you have more time to explore that participatory sense.

[396] So like, you know, Chick -Satmajah says, you're in the flow state, you have the sense of atonement, right?

[397] That powerful, that's one of the defining features.

[398] Atonement.

[399] Yeah, exactly.

[400] exactly right and you have and so what do you think that means because that pulls original sin into it what or the other way around or original sin made use of the idea of at one meant that is originally as as the as the as the as the as the as the as the stuff of the grail is atonement but that's the city on the hill too it is I mean anyway or it's the wandering up to the city on the hill that's the other possibility or another possibility?

[401] I've got John Bunyan's Pilgrim progress going through me. I've got Augustine's city of God.

[402] I'm trying to parse them.

[403] That's a tough road to hoe there, John.

[404] What I was, what I was saying is I think that when you're doing this, like when you're, when you're, when you're, when you're, when you're, when you're, when you're, when you're, when you're, when you're, when you're, when you're, when you can get into a more of a, a, a, a, a, teach me. Teach me. Well, I, I, I'd love to.

[405] That'd be great.

[406] What I've noticed, and I see this also happening in, you know, this, what I want to think of what we're talking about when we're talking about, like, these circling practices and these deloga practices is you're getting shared flow.

[407] You're getting flow in distributed definition.

[408] Yeah.

[409] Definitely.

[410] Yeah.

[411] And I'm hoping that's what I'm inducing in my listeners on YouTube.

[412] And I think it happened with John, with my Carver friend.

[413] Jonathan, yes.

[414] And that was a very peculiar podcast.

[415] And I thought, did that, and this one will too?

[416] Well, that's the thing.

[417] That's the thing.

[418] Look, and it got a million and a half views, like what the hell's going on?

[419] Because I think Jonathan is, Jonathan, I don't know if he's like, I mean, I say that's in love, and I have a lot of affection for Jonathan.

[420] I think Jonathan is a more radical Christian than he realizes.

[421] Yes, I think that, I think that might be true of you too.

[422] And there's always the possibility that it's true of me. well that's funny you're in you and your logos john i've had i've had that's funny because i've had some christians say that to me recently and i don't and i and i and i want to receive it properly because receiving statements like that like your receptivity right matters as much as anything else yeah it's not exactly a trivial compliment john no it's not and oh dallas friend on the border between chaos and order Well, yes, right?

[423] And that's, but it's, what I'm interested in is the possibility that, well, perhaps, maybe we could, this ties it together.

[424] Maybe when people are seeing, I hope, people who know me and see many of my videos know that I'm deeply respectful to religion.

[425] So I do not mean any disrespect in what I'm saying.

[426] I'm not trying to be pretentious.

[427] But people who claim to see the spirit of Christ in me, I hope what they are referring to, because that's what I aspire to.

[428] is somebody who is trying to realize in both senses of the word, that goes back to what we're talking about transjectivity.

[429] It's both something that I'm, this is Nishatani's use of realize.

[430] It's both, in both sense of the word, something that's coming into my awareness with intelligibility and something that's being actualized in reality.

[431] I hope that I'm realizing the logos with other people.

[432] That's...

[433] Well, I think your effect on your students is evidence of that, John.

[434] But...

[435] What do you think you're not?

[436] name, by the way, just out of curiosity.

[437] My last name?

[438] No, your first name.

[439] John, a gift from God.

[440] I don't know.

[441] We don't have to go there.

[442] Well, I...

[443] We could go there.

[444] You know, my middle name is Berndt, and it's Norwegian.

[445] And I've always been somewhat embarrassed about it.

[446] I'm going to say that publicly.

[447] I probably never admitted that to anyone.

[448] Because it was parodied as burnt, because that's...

[449] B -E -R -N -T, that's how it spelled, and so it was an object of mockery, but so I didn't look into it much, but it's Barent, and my great -grandfather, after whom I own name, built a ship and sailed it to North America.

[450] Wow.

[451] And he was a remarkable inventor.

[452] He invented a potato harvester and built it in his own, his own shop, and he raised my father.

[453] In any case, I had an Indian carver build my third floor, which you'll have to see sometime because it's quite spectacular and he built a totem of me and I'm standing in the arms of a bear and I didn't know that that was the meaning of my name oh really yes really that that really happened so and people have been you know describing my name to me on on YouTube comments and so that's where I got that information so you know who knows what's in a name Jordan Barrett Peterson John is my favorite gospel, if that means anything.

[454] Yeah, that makes sense.

[455] In the beginning was the word.

[456] Yeah, the logos.

[457] That suits you.

[458] And I guess...

[459] What do you make of this comment that the Spirit of Christ is manifesting itself in you?

[460] I mean, that's something you come up and just say to someone on the street.

[461] You know, it's like, if you take that seriously, it's how do you take it seriously?

[462] Yeah, well, then how do you maintain yourself?

[463] Well, the thing is, it's not just, I mean, it's people that I talk to on video, but it's also my girlfriend, you know, who is sort of officially an atheist, but she's, and she knows that I don't profess to be a Christian, because I have a very ambivalent history with Christian, Christianity.

[464] But she, she said to me, you know, I actually think you are like the rest of what the Western world you mean.

[465] Well, yeah, and I noticed that was coming out in your discussion with, with Jonathan, and there was, you know, I had tremendous empathy with you.

[466] You know what my, the most powerful takeaway for me was from my biblical series?

[467] which is what the meaning of the word Israel wrestling with God we who wrestle with God yeah who struggle with God yeah yeah it's like well maybe that's the real Christian spirit is and that's what that phrase implies and that's the real Jewish spirit yeah wrestling John it's why does what you know why is why is there that strange scene of the wrestling with the angel like why would you possibly fight with God and then you think well God isn't that what I'm doing all the time Isn't that what everybody's doing all the time?

[468] He partially wins, though.

[469] That's what's even more mysterious.

[470] And hurts you doing so.

[471] Yeah, I mean, that's...

[472] That's the story.

[473] But isn't that the story?

[474] I mean, it isn't belief.

[475] It's the wrestling with belief.

[476] And it's wrestling in the way that you're wrestling.

[477] Well, I mean, I do sparring, and I often use sparring as a metaphor for the kind of...

[478] Oh, so that's the other metaphor for dialogue.

[479] Yeah, exactly.

[480] It's not just the tracking.

[481] the sparring.

[482] Yeah.

[483] And we have to remember that, you know, that kind of sums up men's relationships.

[484] Well, Plato means, each other tracking and sparring.

[485] Plato means big shoulders.

[486] He was a wrestler.

[487] That's his nickname.

[488] His nickname is Plato because he's a wrestler.

[489] And we have to remember that the Greeks are in the gymnasium even more than there are in the academy, right?

[490] I was watching this suits episode last night.

[491] And the man are always sparring with each other verbally, you know, and they're tracking something.

[492] They're tracking victory in this series.

[493] They're file like a...

[494] And they wrestle.

[495] They wrestle when they fight.

[496] They have to go into a clinch in a fight to settle their disputes like a physical fight.

[497] But you can shift off of that.

[498] This happened, Bernardo and I when we were doing this.

[499] We both said this.

[500] You can shift off of it.

[501] And this happens when you're actually martial arts sparring, because you get into the shared flow state.

[502] You can shift off of victory to the aesthetics of the dance.

[503] There's a beauty in that that is an independent independent of victory that you can come to appreciate for its own sake.

[504] Plato talks about this.

[505] He talks about the beauty, the eros, that draws you into the, that's why he...

[506] A dance.

[507] Yeah, a dance.

[508] But it's a dance that draws you beyond yourself.

[509] Edu's education, right, to draw forth from you.

[510] So is that the battle with the adversary?

[511] Is that related to the battle?

[512] This is another very serious question, obviously.

[513] It's a question related to the book of Job.

[514] I don't know because I see parallels, you know, in Nietzsche's quote, you know, I hate Socrates.

[515] He's so close to me. I'm always fighting him, right?

[516] You can see, you can see both Nietzsche and Kirkagard wrestling with Socrates.

[517] Kirkagard said, I follow Jesus, but Socrates is my teacher?

[518] I think that I mean that was your objection at the beginning of this talk right at least to some degree because you said how influenced you were with Greece you insisted on how influenced you were by Greece I think the West is the attempt to if I had to try and summarize the West what an audacious thing to try and do see Ruck Ruck said that because I asked him why Dionysius transformed into Christ because we were answering simple questions too and he said well, Greece met Judaism.

[519] Yeah, but Judaism also met Greece.

[520] I mean, final starts theology because of the interaction with Platonic philosophy.

[521] I think Christianity is trying to integrate Agape and Logos together.

[522] That's how I try to understand its project.

[523] And whether or not the West is...

[524] Please clarify, please clarify that claim.

[525] Sure.

[526] So I think, I mean, we've talked a lot about the Greek heritage of Logos, and Logos is also central.

[527] within.

[528] Especially in the book of John.

[529] Yeah, especially in the book of John.

[530] And saying that metaphorically with regard to you as well.

[531] But also in the epistle of John is where John also said God is agape, right?

[532] And then that's the epistle of John.

[533] He makes that famous statement.

[534] And the idea is there's something, there's something about the way the Logos gathers things together so they belong together.

[535] That's the original.

[536] So that everything comes together.

[537] Everything comes together.

[538] And then there's the idea in Plato of the ascent from the cave, the anagaga.

[539] You and Jonathan talked about this.

[540] The world discloses itself to me. That transforms me. And then I can see more deeply into the world.

[541] Then that transforms me. And I do this reciprocal opening.

[542] And the thing is, that's very much.

[543] You know, you know, you know.

[544] And Agape, that's, do you define that?

[545] That's love.

[546] Yeah.

[547] Accelerating mutual disclosure is how it's even disclosed.

[548] Well, it seemed to me, well, it seemed to me that the relationship, between truth and love is that love is the something like the goal and truth is its servant it seems to me to be same because i so this is how i've worked it in my in my mind is that well i think the truth is the best servant of reality truth is the servant of reality and reality i think best manifests itself as love well one of the slogans i have in my that's why this power of claim is so abhorrent to me the claim that power is the central motivating factor for the Western endeavor is tantamount, I believe, to saying that it's the basic endeavor of the human species.

[549] And I think that's opposite of the truth.

[550] I think this agape is and Logos is more accurate.

[551] And so it's not just a counterclaim.

[552] It's an antithesis.

[553] Well, I'm trying to pick up on what I'm saying here.

[554] I mean, you know, I'm trying to touch on the culture wars, obviously.

[555] Well, that's for, yeah.

[556] And I mean, I think, I mean, for me, you're saying something very analogous to a critique that I've built in, awakening from the meaning crisis.

[557] Oh, let's hear it, man. Well, if I can shut up.

[558] No, it's okay.

[559] I mean, like I was going to say, one of my signatures is, you know, it's in Latin, but it translates as love is its own way of knowing.

[560] And the kind of knowing there is, like, noticing, like news, insight, realize that's the Egyptian eye.

[561] Well, yes.

[562] It's noticing.

[563] It's not thinking.

[564] It's attention.

[565] and maybe you're tying that with that revelation of the form.

[566] You're tying that to that revelation of the form and that conforming.

[567] Yeah, and that's exactly it.

[568] That's exactly it.

[569] It's, and this is very similar to the Buddhist idea of that the, what you're trying to do is shape attention and mindfulness so that you get that reciprocal opening so that your self -knowledge and the knowledge of the world become indistinguishable, become interpenetrating, like what you have when you really love, somebody in a committed long -term relationship.

[570] You're knowing of yourself and you're knowing of them become bound up because you indwell them and you internalize them and they indwell you and internalize you, right?

[571] And how much death of the old you has this involved for you?

[572] I know that's a strange question.

[573] No, it's a good question.

[574] It's a damn good question.

[575] Why?

[576] It's a good question because it brings up the idea of the fact that there's a level of knowing that deals with the process of identification itself.

[577] In both senses of the word identifying, designating something and assuming an identity.

[578] In both those senses of identification, the kind of knowing that I most care about, this participatory knowing involves identification.

[579] And therefore, if we're talking about the transformation at that level, we're talking about, that's what I mean, about when I talk about knowing yourself, I don't mean representing yourself.

[580] I mean the knowing that constitutes you as a self.

[581] And that's what's undergoing the transformation when you're engaged in participatory.

[582] When I really love my partner, right, I'm not just forming.

[583] What does it mean that you love them, do you think, if you had to express that?

[584] How would you express that?

[585] Well, I mean, it means a lot.

[586] It means that reciprocal opening I was talking about, but it means that I, I mean, it's like what Eckhart says.

[587] And again, I don't mean to be pretentious.

[588] Like, you know, he said, you have to make a space.

[589] I don't think you're going to be able to help it in this conversation.

[590] Yeah, that's true.

[591] That's fair enough.

[592] He says, you know, you have to...

[593] God forgive us.

[594] The goal of Rhineland mysticism was to this kind of receptivity.

[595] You have to make a space so that the son of God can be born within you.

[596] And again, no, not being disreligious, you know, irreligious, but for me to love my partner is to cultivate that kind of receptivity, a space in which she can be within me. And I don't mean in any purely romantic metaphorical sense.

[597] What I mean is she finds a purchase within me whereby she can, realize herself in both senses of the word realize.

[598] And she can come to trust that that space, that place of realization will always be available for her.

[599] And she can come to rely on it, a place through which she can transcend herself when she needs to.

[600] I mean, and being committed to that.

[601] And finding that inseparably bound up with my own project of trying to realize who I am, that's for me the core of what it is to love somebody.

[602] That's great.

[603] I wish you luck with it.

[604] Well, that's all we can ever wish anybody.

[605] I mean, if you're...

[606] The grace of God.

[607] Or, yeah, or that there is a life to this relationship that will eventually grow strong enough that we can come to trust in it as much as we trust in each other.

[608] And that's what I believe is happening for me. And I think there's kind of three loves involved.

[609] and they're all bound up together.

[610] There's, you know, Socratic self -love, not narcissistic self -love.

[611] There's the love of the other, and then there's the love of the relationship.

[612] But that, for me, is like a Trinity, talking about if those are separate is the mistake.

[613] You have to talk about it analytically as if they're separate, but they interpenetrate and inter -affort each other in a profound way.

[614] They become, in an important sense, indistinguishable from each other.

[615] I've been trying to develop a counterposition to the claim that our society is predicated on the expression of power and that our social relations are structured as a consequence of the expression of power and therefore by inference our prime motivation is power none of which i believe to be true i think that's an all of that's an aberration in the deepest sense and i think that what we're talking about is the true path let's say to the degree that any of us are capable of realizing that and i certainly don't claim to be um i struggle with it to my to an immense degree but I do believe that it's the proper counter position.

[616] And then that, well, so what do you think about that?

[617] I mean, is the culture war we're in that deep?

[618] I mean, is the counterclaim genuinely the adversarial position?

[619] I mean, what else would it be if it's not saying, it's basically saying that the claim is something like the driving force of Western culture, but I don't know how you distinguish that from the driving force of human culture exactly.

[620] I don't think most of the people who make that claim would say that there's something, it's hard for them to say that there's something radically different about Western culture and the world spirit, let's say, without only attributing all that is negative to Western culture.

[621] And that's, I think, very difficult to do.

[622] So if the mainstream of Western culture is the mainstream of human culture or akin to it, so akin to that shamanic tradition, for example, then the claim is that that mainstream is the desire for power and that's the opposite of what we're saying, genuinely the opposite.

[623] It's the antithesis to that, because that isn't Philo Nike, the antithesis to?

[624] Yeah, I think it is.

[625] Well, I mean, that's part of it.

[626] Is it genuinely the antithesis?

[627] I mean, so is this a claim of, is this a claim of satanic possession of the West?

[628] I mean, is the culture war that deep?

[629] Well, I don't know.

[630] I mean, the claim is that it's about, fundamentals, right?

[631] It's a fundamental critique of Western society.

[632] It means fundamental.

[633] That's why Derrida went after philogocentrism.

[634] Yeah, and I think, and there's, and Foucault does similar things.

[635] But the thing you have to remember is, you know, toward the ends of Derrida's career, right, he's reaching into neoplatonic mysticism.

[636] Negative theology is something he starts to take an interest in.

[637] And Foucault, you know, you know, technologies of the self.

[638] And he he gets very deeply interested in the work of Pierre Hadoe, right?

[639] And what is ancient philosophy and the wisdom tradition in Fialia, Sophia?

[640] And he starts to turn towards it and starts to recognize it as I'm doing it.

[641] Nothing of that.

[642] I know nothing of that.

[643] Yeah, well, that's what, so, I mean.

[644] Well, that's very interesting.

[645] And then he dies.

[646] Yeah, Foucaulte also.

[647] Foucaulte, no, Derrida, we were speaking of Derrida.

[648] I was speaking of both.

[649] I said, you see Foucault, you see Foucault, getting very interested in negative theology, in Neoplatonic mysticism, and then you see Foucault getting very interested in, you know, Stoicism and Pierre Hadoe's work on the whole Socratic tradition.

[650] So what do you make?

[651] Okay, so do you, is it reasonable for me to assume that Derrida and Foucault's thinking is at the bottom of this counterclaim that I'm discussing, which culminates in the assumption that power and is at the core of the Western endeavor, like the exercise of arbitrary power?

[652] Is that the center of the culture war, that claim?

[653] I don't, I mean, I think that's symptomatic of something that's been going on much more deeply and much longer.

[654] Fair enough, I don't know if that answers my question.

[655] But, you know, because I'm looking for a corrective or perhaps for agreement, but that's completely up to you because if it's a corrective that I need, you know, be it.

[656] I mean, have I taken this in the wrong direction, or am I seeing it clearly?

[657] I want to say something other than those.

[658] I want to say that our relationship to power as a criterion of realness should be properly acknowledged rather than be made an absolute or be set up as an antithesis.

[659] I think what's coming out, I would argue, out of 40 cognitive science is the growing claim that we don't have a single way of knowing the world.

[660] We have a propositional way that, as it says, that it's carried in proposition and results in beliefs.

[661] We have, which is not knowing that, but we have also procedural knowing.

[662] We know how to do things, and it doesn't result in beliefs that results in skills.

[663] We have perspectival knowing, which is neither about belief or skills.

[664] It's about states of consciousness and how they create situational awareness for us.

[665] And then we have this participatory knowing that we've been talking about throughout where I know not at the level of my beliefs or my skills or even my states of consciousness, but I know in terms of my traits of my character and how I've been shaped in order to fit the world in a way that seems to fundamentally matter to me. And I think each one of these has.

[666] has a deep, has a different sense of realness attached to it.

[667] I think propositional has truth, I think procedural.

[668] Our skills give us a sense of realness when they empower us.

[669] Our prospectival knowing, what's the sense of realness there?

[670] Well, we're getting a good sense of this from virtual reality work.

[671] It's a sense of presence, a sense of presence.

[672] And then what's the sense of realness for participatory knowing?

[673] And that's what we're talking about.

[674] We're talking about this, like people try to capture it with these words of, faith and connection and belonging and fittedness and at onment.

[675] And I think instead, right, I think what's happening is our culture is realizing that we have been, we have tried to reduce all the knowing Ella Descartes to purely propositional knowing.

[676] And then we're slowly realizing the inadequacy of that.

[677] I think the fact that we are tracked in ideological battle means we think we can capture all of the meaning -making machinery at the propositional level.

[678] But what four -E cognitive science is saying, no, no, human, you talk about tracking.

[679] The skill of tracking affords our conceptual abilities, but also states of consciousness afford us being in relationship to the world.

[680] You can have totally ineffable states that nevertheless seem the most real to you.

[681] And also these transformations of ourselves also carry with them a sense of realness.

[682] And I think what's happened is the West is realizing, but in a negative way, that the propositional reduction is inadequate, insufficient.

[683] And it's groping for the closest thing at hand.

[684] And the closest thing at hand is what technology makes salient to which, which is power and control.

[685] This is Heidegger's critique.

[686] But I think we have to go deeper.

[687] We have to say, no, no, there's a place for that.

[688] But your skills ultimately depend on your situational awareness.

[689] And your situational awareness, the states of consciousness you get access to, ultimately depend on your character.

[690] We have to bring back that whole rich philosophical anthropology.

[691] Why do they ultimately depend on your character?

[692] Well, that's a lot to swallow in, you know, 10 statements.

[693] I mean, I'm going to scuttle back to my power claim momentarily and then try to wrap my head around what you said.

[694] Okay.

[695] Sorry, I didn't mean to dump so much.

[696] No, no. Well, no, no, no, not at all.

[697] I mean, it might have been the answer, the proper answer.

[698] The proper answer is often that the question isn't sophisticated enough.

[699] you know, but it sort of throws the questioner because he's operating from within the space where that's the germane issue, right?

[700] So my claim was that the culture war right now is being fought over the claim that the fundamental animating tendency of Western civilization is the desire to exercise and the exercising of arbitrary power.

[701] And I believe that to be fundamentally wrong.

[702] Yes.

[703] And so I phrased it as an adversarial hypothesis as a satanic hypothesis.

[704] this essentially from a symbolic perspective that the accusation is that the West is possessed by this satanic demand for power, and that's its characteristic spirit.

[705] And I don't believe that.

[706] I believe that its characteristic spirit is Philea Sophia fundamentally, and that that is a contamination, which occurs repeatedly, which would be Philea.

[707] Nikia and IKEA.

[708] I think if we're using your language properly or perhaps we're slandering Filea Nikea.

[709] I mean, because I think part of the claim that you're making is that there's a positive aspect to Fylia, Nike, that's being damned as the mere arbitrary expression of power.

[710] Well, I do think that's something like series like suits are getting at, right?

[711] Because you have these characters in that drama who are motivated primarily by Filia in IKEA.

[712] But you see Filia Sophia emerge between them, and that's what makes them tolerable as characters.

[713] But both those things seem to be interrelated.

[714] One leads to the other.

[715] And that seems to be related to your wrestling argument in some sense and maybe to mine.

[716] Yes.

[717] So, okay, so you think that this, so is your claim, let me get this right, at least in part that, first of all, I want to know what you think of my claim about this central argument, What you're doing is saying that's a sideshow and a much deeper, that's a side show of a much deeper problem.

[718] I mean, that's quite the bloody claim, John.

[719] It's not easy for me to process.

[720] No, that's fair.

[721] Yeah, well, so I'm having some trouble with that.

[722] But do you think that that invalidates my claim or does it just render it irrelevant?

[723] No, it doesn't render it irrelevant?

[724] Given this discussion, okay, so is it okay if we deal with that and then move on?

[725] Sure.

[726] I mean, I guess what...

[727] Okay, am I misreading early Derrida and Foucault by attributing to them the claim that it is power that they identify as the central spirit?

[728] And am I wrong in saying that that's just a modified Marxist claim?

[729] It's a transformation of the idea of the class struggle into the domain of the sheer struggle for power?

[730] I think you could make a claim that Foucault sees the...

[731] deep interpenetrate, the earlier Foucault, maybe even the middle Foucault, sees a deep interpenetration between power and knowledge.

[732] For Derrida, I do not think the difference really is a good translation, is well translated by the term power.

[733] Difference is much closer to, you know, what I would call relevance realization, the idea that our claim, that the relevance of our claim can't be bound, I mean, somebody within classical cognitive science, computational science, Jerry Fodor, makes a similar argument that the relevance of a proposition can't be captured within the syntax or semantics of the proposition.

[734] I mean, that's the main thing that Derrida is on about.

[735] That's a consequence of what we're bringing to the table, because the relevance is the interpenetration of the semantic and the syntactic with the unique.

[736] Well, and it's also the pragmatics that goes beyond it because, I mean, this is the central claim of pragmatics that I always have to convey way more than I can say because I have to rely on you, you know, picking out all the possible, of all the possible implications, the ones that are relevant out of all the possible.

[737] Right, which means I have to know you, which means I have to embody whatever it is that I'm speaking to you.

[738] Now you're back to my claim that the character traits are at the bottom of this, right?

[739] If you go, go ahead, man. If you can't, if you can't, if you You don't have, if we can't actually conform at the level of our character, we can't.

[740] Right.

[741] So that's trust.

[742] Yeah.

[743] And so when you trust, you trust what's honest.

[744] Yeah.

[745] You trust what's honest.

[746] So you trust the logos.

[747] Right.

[748] And what you do.

[749] Because that's honesty driven by love.

[750] Right.

[751] But I don't think of trust.

[752] And so if I trust you, that my sense of, my sense, I want to go back to something.

[753] I asked you to define love.

[754] And I'm going to define it on my terms now.

[755] And that is the best in me serving the best in you.

[756] And I think that's the deepest pleasure.

[757] that's the deepest and most lasting pleasure and it is the most fundamental motivation.

[758] It's the inexhaustible source because if I can do that, whenever I do that, I feel that I'm being properly.

[759] And there's nothing better than that.

[760] And you can extend that to the world, to situations, places.

[761] Well, I think that's what you're supposed to do by accepting the proposition that God is love.

[762] I mean, it's God is love and God is logos.

[763] Those are both there.

[764] So then the question, to some degree, is the rank order of the two.

[765] And I would say, God is truth within love.

[766] And that's the animating spirit of mankind.

[767] And that's a way different claim than the one the atheists are going after, by the way.

[768] Think about it, everyone.

[769] Is truth in the service of love not the best animating spirit of mankind when it isn't pursuing an aberration?

[770] We can all ask yourself that question.

[771] I think that's a good question to ask.

[772] Thank you, what I mean is I think it re, I think it reorientes us to the fact.

[773] We can put that on a T -shirt.

[774] Is truth in the service of love a good question?

[775] I guess I see them as more, I see them as more interpenetrating.

[776] I want to make a stronger relationship between them than just a relationship of service.

[777] How about it, man. That this is why I like the term realization.

[778] that love is a way of affording realization, and the deepest knowing you have of reality is in realization.

[779] That's what I, if I had to...

[780] Okay, so it seems to me, okay, so I'll make an appendage to my claim.

[781] Right.

[782] The reality that is most justifiable is brought about by the action of truth in the service of love.

[783] Yeah, but I guess what I'm saying is I see truth.

[784] I think you're using it, and I've heard you use true as something beyond a correspondence between the semantic content of a proposition reality.

[785] I've heard you talk about, right, right?

[786] And we even use that when we use the phrase true.

[787] Yes, it seems to incorporate some of those other dimensions that you've been talking about.

[788] Exactly, exactly.

[789] Okay, well, great, Matt.

[790] So fill me in.

[791] Well, that's what I'm trying to get at.

[792] I'm trying to get at that power is a way of, you know, when your shot is true, your skill has been effective and you're going to hit the mark, right?

[793] but presence is also a way in which things are true to form, right?

[794] And then the participatory knowing is when we're like the deepest sense of true, which is related to trust and being betrothed to the world in an important way.

[795] So if you will allow me to expand what you mean by true to cover all of those dimensions.

[796] Betrothed to the world in that you extend the same courtesy to the world that you described extending to your partner?

[797] Exactly.

[798] I think the answer to nihilism isn't some propositional answer.

[799] This is what I get from Nishton.

[800] It's to relearn, and I mean this deeply, in the Buddhist sense of Sati, to remember what it is to fall in love with reality, to fall in love with being.

[801] And if that's what you're saying is the...

[802] You think that's what Sam Harris is striving for in his spirituality?

[803] Well, it's not a throwaway answer.

[804] It's like, what's he up to exactly?

[805] I mean, isn't he on a Sophia, a Phileia Sophia adventure?

[806] I think everybody is, how can I put this?

[807] Everybody lives from the, the non -propositional kinds of knowing emphasized by Plato.

[808] And that's what all of the scholastic research is pointing to now, that Socrates was trying to point people to the non -provisional knowing, the procedural, the the prospective, the participatory.

[809] I think we all have to live from that, given a lot of things I've said and a lot of things we've said.

[810] Maybe you could expound on those a bit more for us and clarify a bit more.

[811] And so you said the answer to nihilism, that isn't exactly a comment on my comment that the culture war is about a claim that the drive to power is at the core of Western being.

[812] I think that's an equally nihilistic claim.

[813] That's my point.

[814] The claim the claim is nihilistic or my claim about that is nihilistic or both.

[815] The claim that power is a fundamental reality is an attempt to assage the wounding of nihilism, but it is fundamentally mistaken in its endeavor.

[816] It will, it is, it is, it is constituted the wrong way.

[817] It's like framing a problem the wrong way so that, you know, do not get the insight needed to get to the solution of the problem.

[818] So I think of it as a fundamental misframing.

[819] That's what I'm trying to say.

[820] And that's why I'm not, that's why I'm hesitant to say either yes or no to it because I get it.

[821] Yeah.

[822] Well, I believe that, I believe that it is misframed because I don't think it would be taking us in such a pathological direction, the whole argument.

[823] Exactly.

[824] If it wasn't misframed.

[825] And so part of what I'm trying to, and for me, this dovetails with the, you know, the increasing crescendo within 4E cognitive science about embodiment and embedded and extended and enacted inactive cognition is, Right.

[826] You see this as a subset argument of one of those elements.

[827] Yes, but like I said, I'm really having a hard time.

[828] I know what you mean, and I suppose what you're trying to do with everything you do is to expound upon this, but I certainly want you to expound upon this.

[829] Let's go into those three modes of alternate cognition a little bit more deeply.

[830] Okay, so, I mean, so the first distinction, of course, was classically made by Ryle, and we even carry it in psychology when we make distinctions of our own procedural memory and things like that, which this is the distinction between propositional, knowing that something is the case, in which what you're trying to do is basically assert, you know, the truth of the semantic content of a...

[831] Right, and that's akin to the proposition that to believe in God is to accept a set of propositions about the nature of God.

[832] Yes, and that's what always strikes, that's why I'd never answer that question, because I think that's the wrong framing of the question, so I can't answer it.

[833] Exactly.

[834] Okay, well, man, you're helping me out here.

[835] So, because you're different You're helping me differentiate my sense of the non -propositional space.

[836] And, I mean, I know some of this, because I know that the knowing what and knowing how circuitry is separate.

[837] Yep.

[838] I've known that since I wrote maps of meaning.

[839] And I know the inside circuitry is separate.

[840] And, you know, that's what I've been getting at also with regards to this idea of revelation and then critical thinking, which we started all this with and never got back to, even though it's just a trivial issue.

[841] We're following the logos.

[842] We're following the logos in love.

[843] God, I hope so.

[844] I hope so, John, because it's certainly the only justification for my existence, Red Skull and all.

[845] I think there are many reasons that justify your existence, my friend.

[846] Yeah, well.

[847] I think that's an inadequate self -appraisal.

[848] Oh, thank you, John.

[849] That's vastly appreciated.

[850] So I think you would admit, and I think, you know, there's been a growing consensus from the failure of computational cognition or even behaviorist to, We can't reduce consciousness.

[851] Why failure, John?

[852] Because what we've noticed is that consciousness doesn't seem to be something that's explicatable in terms of the logical relations between proposition.

[853] It's not propositional.

[854] Very good, very good.

[855] So you think we've actually found that out, and that's the failure.

[856] Does that mean the failure of AI as it's presently constituted?

[857] It depends.

[858] It depends, because what's happening in AI is the AI is moving off a sort of position.

[859] Yeah, the idea that cognition is computation and that the mind is a formal system is being replaced with the idea that the mind is an embodied auto poetic dynamical system and that thinking isn't in the head.

[860] It's the way the embodied brain is dynamically coupled to the world in an ongoing evolution of your sensory motor, right?

[861] You mean, hence the justification for freedom of speech, you might say.

[862] Well, and also the freedom of action.

[863] Freedom of action and also, you know, a freedom for people to explore different ways in which they inhabit their body.

[864] I think that's also an important thing.

[865] So I did want to get back, though.

[866] So if there's a growing plausibility, so much so that, for example, Bernardo Castro, and I take him seriously.

[867] I don't agree with him, but Bernardo is a sharp guy.

[868] He proposes a kind of absolute idealism.

[869] Who is that?

[870] I don't know him.

[871] Bernardo Castro.

[872] Leonardo Castro.

[873] So, Bernardo is so convinced, and he's a very sharp guy, that the arguments of trying to reduce consciousness, computationally, et cetera, have failed that he is willing to advocate for, and I don't agree with him on this, but he makes a plausible case, that reality, you know, absolute idealism, that consciousness is the ultimate reality.

[874] And whether or not that's the case, all I'm making a weaker claim on the basis of that.

[875] I'm taking that as evidence that there is a growing consensus that the attempt to, you know, explain consciousness computationally or even just in terms of sort of behaviorist set of skills or something like that, I think that's failed.

[876] So to go back to the four kinds of knowing, you've already acknowledged the propositional.

[877] Sorry, I want to inject one more thing here that's relevant to what you just said, if you don't mind.

[878] I don't mind at all.

[879] Well, you know, I think the atheist critique of religion is a critique at a propositional level.

[880] I've made this similar point, Jordan.

[881] I've made the point that they're not paying attention to.

[882] I mean, when Nietzsche runs into the marketplace, he is talking to the atheists when he says, you don't know what you've done when you've killed God, right?

[883] And so to think that religion is primarily about asserting propositions for which there is no evidence is to miss all of the non -proposite.

[884] So I make a distinction, and it lines up with this.

[885] You know, I think that religion is not primarily about knowledge.

[886] I think it's primarily about wisdom, because wisdom is about that fundamental transformation.

[887] It's about embodying it.

[888] It's about establishing a relationship with it.

[889] Yes.

[890] It's about worshiping it.

[891] It's about taking it into your identity.

[892] That's the worship, I think.

[893] Well, I think it is.

[894] Jonathan described worship as celebration.

[895] So it's a celebration of and reverence, well, reverence for sure.

[896] But the celebration part is interesting because to what you celebrate is what you hold in highest esteem and to hold something in highest esteem is to pursue it in the hopes of embodying it.

[897] And that's worship.

[898] But we, yeah, but we've looked.

[899] Well, maybe this is to your point.

[900] about worship.

[901] We've lost the depth of celebration.

[902] We have reduced it.

[903] You see it in black gospel music, don't you?

[904] And then it runs into rock and roll from there.

[905] And then you get the, you get stadiums full of people experiencing it without noticing what they're doing.

[906] I mean, I felt that spirit when I went to a Leonard Cohen show when he stood up and everyone clap and, you know, he sings hallelujah or is it the apocalypse?

[907] I think that's the song.

[908] He's got a couple, him and Johnny Cash in his later years ago, got a couple of songs that put you in that space right away.

[909] But I agree.

[910] I think that's, that is, that is a version of, of celebration.

[911] But the problem with that is, right, is it's been too located in the, it's on, it's ontological locus is entertainment.

[912] Yes, you're right.

[913] Exactly, John.

[914] Entertainment.

[915] It's like, no, it's enthusiasm.

[916] Yes, and fios to be possessed by the God.

[917] And that's what I was trying to get at, right?

[918] In some celebration.

[919] We don't even notice when it happens.

[920] That's what a stadium is, too, when you cheer when someone puts the soccer goal through the net.

[921] Of course it is.

[922] Hey, look at that man's aim.

[923] Couldn't we all aim like that?

[924] And wouldn't that be wonderful?

[925] Yes.

[926] And we'll do the wave to that.

[927] And don't we notice that we're worshiping God?

[928] No, because we've killed our religion by presuming it was a set of axiomatic set of presuppositions and listening to the 19th century rationalist atheists.

[929] Well, what we've done is we have confused modernity's understanding of religion with the phenomena, which is, I think, a fundamental mistake.

[930] No, with our blind critique of the phenomenon.

[931] Because first of all, we have to make the phenomenon trivial and then critique it without noticing things like the spirit in black gospel music and taking that seriously.

[932] Yeah, yeah.

[933] I like your reformulation.

[934] I think that's better set.

[935] Thank you.

[936] So to go back, if consciousness and this kind, so there is, there's a knowing that is, right, dependent on your state of consciousness.

[937] There's a knowing through consciousness.

[938] And that's what I call prospectival knowing for what consciousness does.

[939] Is it foreground some things, backgrounds others, makes things something salient?

[940] So it's doing, if you'll allow me a term I've coined, it's doing salience landscaping for you.

[941] And what that does is.

[942] Yes, that does that draw.

[943] drawing things to your attention?

[944] Yes, drawing things to...

[945] But your attention also does that.

[946] So is that part of that?

[947] Because you kind of choose where your attention goes.

[948] You choose it.

[949] But sort of, right?

[950] Or you follow it.

[951] You participate in it.

[952] You participate in attention.

[953] That's what I...

[954] That's what I was saying.

[955] You don't just attend and you don't just receive.

[956] You participate.

[957] There's both, you know, and they use these metaphors without, you know, I think, fully unpacking them.

[958] You know, there's the top down and bottom of aspects.

[959] Do you think that it, is that a part...

[960] Is that participatory attention?

[961] attention akin to the dance between revelation and criticism.

[962] So is it revelation and dialogical evaluation that constitutes the participatory or element of attention?

[963] Well, I think what it's doing is it's, well, I'll speak more of the theological language.

[964] It's realizing, so there's attention, right, is doing something like prioritization, Relevance realization, right, in the dialogue between imagination, where we stop thinking of imagination as just images, useless images in our head.

[965] I want to use it the way Corbin uses it, imaginable.

[966] And this is what's coming out in Fristin's predictive processing.

[967] Imagination is it permeates your perception.

[968] It's permitting your perception.

[969] It's right to say that I'm as much imagining.

[970] That's why Jung said we lived a dream.

[971] Well, but, but the thing, and there's, there's something true about that, but, but I, I want to, I want to, I want to caveat it because people will say it's all in hallucination.

[972] No, no, no, it's not.

[973] No, it's not.

[974] Most of the, most of the, but that's weird.

[975] Yeah.

[976] Most of the predictions are accurate.

[977] Yes, right.

[978] Exactly.

[979] So, yeah, it can't be just a dream.

[980] Exactly.

[981] Exactly.

[982] So you've got, you've got imagination if you'll allow me the spatial language coming down and out.

[983] Right, that's right.

[984] And it covers it.

[985] what's out there.

[986] And we see the imagination, but it pertains to the reality.

[987] Yes.

[988] There has to be there.

[989] Remember we talked about it?

[990] So what we're doing is continually adjusting the imagination to the reality.

[991] Yes, that's the diologos.

[992] And the prioritization is the way of adjusting.

[993] So we see the map.

[994] We don't see the territory, but we also see the, is that right?

[995] We see the map.

[996] We don't see the errors in the map.

[997] Right.

[998] We see the map and the errors in the map, but we don't see the territory.

[999] Yeah, but the errors are where the territory pushes its nose through.

[1000] And what them, what those errors do is they can't, if we're properly receptive to the way the errors are deforming the map, they can turn it into a globe.

[1001] And a globe is still not the thing, but it's damn better than a map.

[1002] And so that, there's a receptivity that's also important.

[1003] Yeah, well, and it is definitely the case that insofar as our map is accurate, which means it's been generated as a consequence of a rectification of our previous errors, is that it is an adequate representation of the external of reality.

[1004] It's an adequate representation of reality, which means we have molded ourselves to reality.

[1005] See, this is also why I think, John, that the, I think that men and women select each other for manifestation of the logos.

[1006] I mean, I'm talking, well, because I said this was a deep critique, you know.

[1007] Yeah, yeah, keep going.

[1008] Keep going.

[1009] It goes all the way to the, well, what, okay, so look at this.

[1010] So men organize themselves into groups.

[1011] And they, they take the, the quarterback out of the stadium on their shoulders.

[1012] And they say, by doing so, cheerleaders, here's your chosen mate.

[1013] And the cheerleaders jump up in the air with their leg spread and say, hooray, bring him to me. And that's the, isn't that the dialogue between men and women down the ages?

[1014] And you might say, well, why would men vote for the stallion when they're not the stallion?

[1015] And the answer is, well, it's better to be a follower of the stallion.

[1016] if you can't be the stallion, then to not be at all.

[1017] And I mean that in the deepest evolutionary sense as well.

[1018] Or have I got something wrong?

[1019] Because when I said this is the fundamental animating spirit, I really meant it.

[1020] And so then if men and women are choosing each other for manifestation of the logos, then that's the spirit that drives the evolution of consciousness.

[1021] It's random, it might be random variation, on the option side, but that doesn't mean it's random variation on the selection side, obviously.

[1022] And so then the question is, well, what are you selected for?

[1023] I imagine your wife is pretty fond of you when you manifest that.

[1024] Well, yes, I have a wife too and understand her displeasure with my multiple shortcomings and justified displeasure, I might say.

[1025] But I'm sure that she's happy when you do manifest that part of you that you said you wanted to manifest.

[1026] But I get, I mean, I get, maybe I don't get you.

[1027] I mean, I see, what I see is you're mapping the receptivity and the selection onto sort of masculine and feminine, maybe sort of yin and yang in a Taoist thing.

[1028] But if I was to respond as a Taoist, I would say, but can't I have that relationship also with you?

[1029] Does it have to be necessarily embodied in a sexual difference.

[1030] No, but I think it's also embodied in that, in that it's that it goes all the way to the bottom wherever you look.

[1031] Well, wouldn't that suggest then that something like the Taoist notion of Yunnan Yang therefore is a more fundamental representation of the reality, precisely because it applies to more cases?

[1032] Well, more fundamental than what?

[1033] The idea of masculine and feminine.

[1034] I mean, I understand.

[1035] That's certainly possible.

[1036] That's certainly possible.

[1037] I mean, I think, you know, I think reality is the battle of good and evil against a background of chaos and order.

[1038] So the chaos and order would map quite readily.

[1039] Sorry, go ahead, please.

[1040] I was just saying I can see that in sort of that's a very doubt.

[1041] The reason I'm saying there's the order is the map that you're describing, right?

[1042] Because in so far as it's in cordon.

[1043] concordance with reality, it's a map that enables us when we apply it to get what we desire.

[1044] Of course.

[1045] Okay, and then disorder emerges when that prediction, it isn't just a prediction because it's predicated on desire, which is where the cognitive scientists went wrong, because it's not just expectation, it's desire.

[1046] But that's changing.

[1047] The map is motivated.

[1048] Well, that's good, be good because that was a fundamental problem.

[1049] The predictive processing model is changing.

[1050] In fact, the idea that we're even talking about something inferential working with Bayes' proposition is largely now Moribund.

[1051] Pristin himself and Andy Clark and somebody, one of my former students that I'm collaborating with Mark Miller and also with Brad Anderson.

[1052] It's like, no, the work of Michael Anderson, the embodied understanding of predictive processing is now the dominant model in which affect.

[1053] Like, look, relevance realization is not cold calculation.

[1054] Okay, so look, it's motivation and affect, let's say, eh?

[1055] But that's a hierarchical structure.

[1056] And in that hierarchical structure, there's a central organizing spirit, a spirit that drives towards unity.

[1057] And because it's predicated on the very idea of the attentional focus itself, right?

[1058] What do you hold in the highest esteem?

[1059] That's what directs your attention, right?

[1060] What you hold in the highest esteem directs your attention?

[1061] What you care about.

[1062] So how is that not a religious claim?

[1063] How can that not be a religious claim if the claim is also embodied?

[1064] You see what I mean?

[1065] I do think.

[1066] Because maybe there's one more step past motivation.

[1067] It's personality, right?

[1068] Because motivation manifests itself in personality.

[1069] Yes.

[1070] That's the next step for the cognitive scientists, if they haven't got there yet.

[1071] I mean, I knew that motivation and emotion was the step past pure expectation.

[1072] because, well, in Jeffrey Gray's work, which is brilliant, Neuropsychology of Anxiety, is a great book.

[1073] But he assumes that the map predicts expectation and that we're sort of cold cognitive expectors, right?

[1074] Prediction machines.

[1075] But we're not.

[1076] We don't predict what's going to happen.

[1077] We work to make what we want to happen happen.

[1078] But that's not the same thing.

[1079] But that's the change that's happening, Jordan.

[1080] They're shifting off a prediction as the primary metaphor into anticipation.

[1081] Okay.

[1082] Okay, so how, and is the shift gone to the point where it's personalities manifesting themselves within us that determine our direction?

[1083] Yes.

[1084] Okay, great.

[1085] Not quite what you would call, you know, explicit personality theory, but the notion that this is the term that's used, and of course, it is fraught with millennia with, you know, issues of contention.

[1086] but the idea of the discussion around the self, what the self is as an organizing principle.

[1087] It's a personality.

[1088] It's a personality.

[1089] Obviously, personality theory and cognitive theory have to be united.

[1090] I mean, they're major domains, right?

[1091] Yeah, I'm trying to get a paper published that tries to integrate them.

[1092] And the bridging point is actually in attention because what's come out in predictive processing is what's called precision waiting.

[1093] What you have to do is you have to get, you have to privilege you because you can't model everything.

[1094] thing.

[1095] They hit combinatorial explosion.

[1096] Right.

[1097] You have to privilege...

[1098] That's chaos.

[1099] Right.

[1100] You have to privilege certain...

[1101] You have to privilege certain predictions.

[1102] We can come back later why anticipation is a much better word.

[1103] And that's what attention is.

[1104] And that's where the relevant...

[1105] Yes.

[1106] I'm writing a paper.

[1107] Okay.

[1108] So Pajot's point would be the basis of worship is what directs attention.

[1109] And I think that's ultimately right.

[1110] I mean, I...

[1111] Well, Jesus, that's a hell of a thing to say, you know, because especially if the, because Because it is the case that the apex of your attention, you know, has this drive towards unity and that it's based in personality.

[1112] I mean, these are claims that are very much tantamount to religious claims as far as I can see.

[1113] Well, okay.

[1114] Then, you know, I have a sequence of arguments, a sequence of episodes in my series where I lay out an argument, step by step, trying to build the experience of sacredness and its reference.

[1115] it's the sacred, but trying to build the experience of sacredness out of the way in which attention and relevance realization and participatory knowing and prospectival knowing are all seeking to bind us to ourselves, the self, to each other, and to the world.

[1116] And the sacred is that which most, you know, most powerfully, truthfully and presently and belongingly achieves that for us.

[1117] Right, great.

[1118] Well said, John.

[1119] Hooray.

[1120] Where do you put awe and admiration in that?

[1121] So think about this, admiration is the instinct to emulate.

[1122] Okay, so then we look for the most emulatable.

[1123] That's the ultimate spirit.

[1124] And I think Gerard is right, that that always carries with it the dark side of memetic envy and covetousness, and that those two are always playing off against each other.

[1125] Because we think we can possess it by ill God means.

[1126] Yes.

[1127] That's the story of Cain.

[1128] Yes, yes.

[1129] And of course that's carried with us because the story of human history is the battle between Abel and Cain, which is also why I asked you about this fundamental cultural crisis that's tearing us apart.

[1130] And you said, well, that's a manifestation of deeper things.

[1131] And that's, well, that's what I ask too.

[1132] Yeah.

[1133] And I hope that what we've been doing is actually my answer to that.

[1134] Ah, I can say more about because I've been involved and I'm involved in some actual experiments on awe and the effects on cognition and some of the work.

[1135] I don't know if what we've been doing is the answer to that or the antidote to that.

[1136] To which, sorry.

[1137] Well, if the question is posed wrong, we can't really answer it, can we?

[1138] We have to provide an alternative formulation.

[1139] But that's what I think we're doing here.

[1140] Yeah, so it's an antidote rather than an answer.

[1141] And that's fine.

[1142] I know, I know.

[1143] I'm just clarifying it.

[1144] I'm, I think looking for the answer is in some sense a fundamental way of mis -framing it.

[1145] That is to, that is to give in to the problem.

[1146] Well, how do we address it then?

[1147] How do we address it, John?

[1148] Do we just by -step it and just offer the alternative?

[1149] No, no, to think about this.

[1150] Well, no, that's a genuine question, because perhaps we do just sidestep it and offer the alternative.

[1151] Yes, that's what I'm saying.

[1152] That's what I, that's, sorry, I want to be more responsible.

[1153] That's what I'm recommending.

[1154] That's what I'm recommending.

[1155] I'm recommending that we remember that meaning in life.

[1156] And this is also something I'm doing empirical work on, right?

[1157] That meaning in life is mostly bound, right, at the non -propositional level.

[1158] And it does feed into things like sacredness.

[1159] I think reverence is the proper virtue of awe.

[1160] Reverence is the virtue that helps us appropriate.

[1161] Well, reverence means it is hold in ritual, as hold as a marker or as a, as a pointer for ritual emulation.

[1162] I think it's, I think, that's embodiment.

[1163] That's, and that's the, that's the pulling in of that personality into the self.

[1164] I think that's right, but I think what awe, see, awe is really interesting because you can measure this, awe is one of the few instances where people's sense of self and egocentrism is shrunk, but they find it a positive experience, and they want it to continue.

[1165] Right.

[1166] Well, that's what we experience in relationship to our current ego when we hypothesize our ideal as well.

[1167] I think that's right, and that goes to...

[1168] I mean, those are the same things, because awe is our unconscious ideal capturing us.

[1169] Think about it.

[1170] It's the spirit within.

[1171] So imagine this.

[1172] You already admitted, so to speak, that we're, you know, kinetic representations of the central animating spirit of the ages.

[1173] And that speaks from our unconscious because it's embodied within us.

[1174] And then it finds its grip on us in awe, in admiration.

[1175] Would you say, though, so there's a question, like, would you say that it's not only the unconscious within us, but the unconscious without us?

[1176] Because I think what awe is doing is discreet.

[1177] It's the unconscious in the books behind you.

[1178] Yes, and also the unconscious in the world.

[1179] Because I think part of what we're, I think we got too locked into the notion of the sacred as perfection, completion.

[1180] This is one of my critiques of Plato, although I'm normally a lover of Plato.

[1181] And I think you can see in the mystics and in many traditions, this is a claim I can back up, but I'm just going to throw it out there, right?

[1182] right, even in Jonathan's tradition, Eastern Orthodoxy.

[1183] Is the sacred the good becoming better?

[1184] Well, the sacred is an inexhaustableness, right?

[1185] Yes, that's why I'm asking that question.

[1186] Yes.

[1187] Because when I've had visions of heaven, heaven is a place that's perfect in getting better.

[1188] Well, okay.

[1189] Well, okay, let me give you my sense, the place where I don't have visions, but the place where I experience what I'm talking about.

[1190] I wouldn't recommend them necessarily.

[1191] Yeah.

[1192] Well, I mean, we can compare altered states of consciousness another time, perhaps.

[1193] Yeah, okay.

[1194] You really like to do that, would you?

[1195] Let me just finish the point I was making.

[1196] So for me, before on to another universe, you mean?

[1197] Yeah.

[1198] See, for me, I tell people that Plato is sacred, which does not mean that I can't question him.

[1199] it does not mean that I can't disagree with them.

[1200] It means the following.

[1201] Plato transforms me. I go out and live my life for a while.

[1202] The world then changes me because of the way I've been changed.

[1203] I come back and I see things in Plato I didn't see before.

[1204] And then I go back to the world.

[1205] The thing is what I...

[1206] The Bible does that for people.

[1207] Yes.

[1208] And that's why the Bible is sacred.

[1209] And what Plato, I think, argues and what Taoism argues, and I think Christianity argues where there's also the book of nature.

[1210] There's always the two books of Revelation.

[1211] you can actually experience that with respect to nature.

[1212] I don't particularly like that term, but you can experience that with, right, where the world is sacred.

[1213] I think introverts do that in particular.

[1214] That's a hypothesis of mine.

[1215] I don't have evidence for it, but I've noticed my introverted clients need to be renewed by nature.

[1216] And it's something that seems.

[1217] So if extroversion is adaptation for the social world, in some sense, is it possible that introversion is adaptation for the natural world?

[1218] That strikes me as a plausible hypothesis.

[1219] I mean, that strikes you.

[1220] Well, all you introverts out there, you could tell me, if you're introverted, do you find sustenance in nature differentially?

[1221] Because I don't think it's true for extroverts.

[1222] They want to party and be with other people.

[1223] Yeah, but there's, sorry, when you said, all you introverts out there, I remember somebody, one of a former partners, she gave me a group.

[1224] All you introverts.

[1225] Yeah, yeah.

[1226] She gave me a poster.

[1227] She said, it was like a, you know, a propaganda poster.

[1228] You know, introverts of the world unite quietly alone in your room.

[1229] You know, John, in my classes, I used to segregate my classes into groups based on extroversion and introversion.

[1230] I'd ask them to, yes, because I had them debate, and so I put all the introverts together, and then they would debate because the most extroverted would talk, right?

[1231] But it worked wonderfully, and the students appreciate it.

[1232] So it's something, I'm humbly considering that it's something to contemplate.

[1233] It worked extremely well when I had them debate, because otherwise the introverts, You know, they're always likely to say the right thing a second later.

[1234] And so they don't get to talk because the most extroverted leaps up.

[1235] And that was almost always me, you know, the most extroverted leaps up and says the thing.

[1236] That's really helpful to me because I'm trying to understand this machinery of Diologos.

[1237] And I'm trying to understand the things that come in.

[1238] Obviously, there's a cognitive factors, there's attachment factors.

[1239] I hadn't given enough thought to personality factors.

[1240] That's good.

[1241] That's very good.

[1242] Thank you.

[1243] That's something for me. Yeah, well, I think the whole cognitive field hasn't given enough fact to personality factors because they haven't realized that motivation and affect are manifested in personality.

[1244] Well, I'm trying to respond to that.

[1245] Well, great.

[1246] I know I see that.

[1247] I'm so thrilled about it.

[1248] And I wish you, wish you every success.

[1249] And it looks like you're tromping away, man. Well, I'm trying, more specifically, I'm trying to get a paper published that tries to integrate relevance realization theory, cognitive theory, with, you know, big, five personality theory, making use of work of a shared student, Colin DeYoung.

[1250] And so, tell me how, tell me about that.

[1251] Oh, well, the idea is, you know, well, I mean, it's a long argument, but to, so receive it charitably because I'm just giving you the gist.

[1252] But the idea is, you know, Colin's idea about the metatrates of stability and plasticity, they tend to, well, I should be more cautious because I'm making a proposal theoretically.

[1253] A plausible way of understanding in that is that they map onto the metac constraints that are working with in relevance realization of efficiency and resiliency.

[1254] And so you can see in a lot of machine learning that what you're doing is trying to get the system to improve its problem -solving learning ability by constantly trading between efficiency and resiliency.

[1255] And that Is that a consequence of the fact that when machines were taught to identify penguins or birds and fish and then they were given a penguin, it blew the prediction system?

[1256] It comes, yeah, it goes way back, it goes back to Jeffrey Hinton.

[1257] Because that's where I derived the idea from the difference between polysticity and stability to begin with.

[1258] And it's in, it's in, it's in.

[1259] So you heard that, did you, I derived the idea from that, from the sources that you're citing as its corollaries.

[1260] That's, so.

[1261] Yeah, I mean, that's great.

[1262] It was from Greenberg, I think.

[1263] Greenberg, I think.

[1264] That's very convergent.

[1265] So thank you for that.

[1266] Okay.

[1267] Yeah, okay, okay.

[1268] I mean, and you might not want to know that, you know, because he was a colleague of both of ours, Jeffrey Hinton at UFT.

[1269] I mean, that basic idea, the paper I published on relevance realization in 2012 basically attributes that core idea to him in his wake, sleep algorithm for deep learning.

[1270] So long story short, and you're reinforcing it, which thank you.

[1271] I appreciate that.

[1272] There's this growing convergence between sort of what machine learning is saying about, you know, opponent processing and then, you know, what personality theory is saying about the kind of opponent processing between stability and plasticity.

[1273] And then what we're trying to do is say, right, we can take sort of embodied cognitive of science and properly integrate those together.

[1274] And then there's an additional idea, which is that personality, there might be an aspect of which it's affording not only individual cognition, but it might be, and this goes back to your classroom example, I think.

[1275] It might be also a way of affording distributed cognition, improving relevance to realize it, because you can see the various traits as moving subpopulations to emphasize stability, others to open things up.

[1276] And so personality is simultaneously helping to glue cognition together within the individual, but also glue distributed cognition together, which goes back to your point about the role of personality, right?

[1277] That would explain to some degree the existence of the niches, because imagine that there's niches, obviously, that these personalities fill because otherwise they wouldn't be useful.

[1278] Exactly.

[1279] The niches are valuable.

[1280] Your claim in some sense is that the niches are valuable because they both expand and stabilize the map.

[1281] The analogy to biological selection is intended in the work.

[1282] So you're picking up on it very.

[1283] Yeah, it has to be if you're thinking, well, it has to be if you're thinking is going to go anywhere, right?

[1284] I think so too.

[1285] I think so too.

[1286] Yeah.

[1287] Well, this is why I was interested in.

[1288] reaction to the idea that, you know, we're selecting on the basis of Logos because that's a, well, you know, you've been talking about the metaphysical status of consciousness, and that's what drove me to bring that issue up, because the issue of God, in some sense, hinges on the issue of the metaphysical significance of consciousness.

[1289] That's what it looks like to me. Do you think that's right?

[1290] I think it's right in that this way.

[1291] It depends.

[1292] I mean, I don't want to do the simple party trick of what depends what you mean by God, but what I'm saying is, I think there, I think there, I don't or real.

[1293] It depends on what you mean by real.

[1294] But when you ask questions like that, is God real?

[1295] It depends on just as much on what you think is real as what you're asking about God.

[1296] Exactly.

[1297] And here's what I will say as a claim.

[1298] I do not think we are going to solve, and I mean that in cognitive scientific terms, the problem of consciousness without addressing fundamental ontology.

[1299] I've been arguing for that in teaching that in my course.

[1300] Because that's where the consciousness field studies has got it wrong.

[1301] Consciousness isn't the fundamental mystery.

[1302] Reality is the fundamentally mystery.

[1303] And the secondary mystery is the relationship between consciousness and reality.

[1304] Because is it a primary relationship?

[1305] That's the fundamental ontological question.

[1306] And one of the offshoots of that is, well, how can you, where is the reality without consciousness?

[1307] Like, I haven't been, that's that objective world that's out there without us.

[1308] But what is it that's out there without us?

[1309] Without, forget us, consciousness.

[1310] Well, and that's what people, what people need to hear is that one of, this is an odd sentence because, but one of the most exciting areas.

[1311] It's going to be one of many, John, so like, rack them up, man. One of the exciting areas within, you know, metaphysics right now.

[1312] is the rise of what's called speculative realism.

[1313] Yeah, right.

[1314] And what's called object -oriented ontology.

[1315] And it's like object -oriented programming as a metaphor.

[1316] I won't go into it.

[1317] But the primary thing that they're on about is they say, look, if you are going to be a realist, again, I'm compressing a lot into very little.

[1318] But if you're going to be a realist, you have to admit into your metaphysics, relationships between things that do not depend for their existence on us being aware of those relationships.

[1319] So things have to be able to influence and disclose each other in a way that is dark to us.

[1320] And then what is that?

[1321] It's like dark matter, dark matter on the metaphysical.

[1322] Yeah, exactly.

[1323] And what does that mean?

[1324] Well, what, it's interesting.

[1325] You know, it means, it means to some degree that you can pick up the orbit of the earth using Foucault's pendulum.

[1326] yeah it means that you know what i mean it read what i mean it means that because somehow the all is embedded in the in the in the in the in the singular i got what you mean and do you see that with foucault's pendulum sorry yeah i i was i was playing between i was just there was two reference in my mind there was the there was the historical thing and then there was the book right and i said oh okay right um and so yeah i think that's right and and you know people like more So then that brings up the question, is there a distinction between the unknown, real and the unconscious?

[1327] That's Yon's question of the Munis Yundas, I think.

[1328] But that's why I asked you earlier about an unconscious in the world, Jordan.

[1329] That's why I asked you earlier.

[1330] I know, John, that's exactly why I'm bringing it up.

[1331] Yeah, exactly.

[1332] So is the unconscious in the world, then, you know, the corollary question, obviously, is the unconscious in the world?

[1333] striving to make itself conscious?

[1334] Well, I don't know about that, but let me answer something that I think you're going to love from a Jungian perspective, which is how Harmon talks about it.

[1335] I'm going to use this language, but I think it's fair to him.

[1336] He thinks the only way, so the idea he has, and I think there's something fundamentally right about this, is objects are not only shining in phenomenon, but they are also withdrawing.

[1337] They are always inexhaustible.

[1338] So they are simultaneously shining into our intelligibility, but they are always withdrawing into their reality.

[1339] Right, because every object is more than it appears by an infinite amount.

[1340] And that's partly what you experience and experiences of awe in the inanimate.

[1341] Yes.

[1342] Right, because the infinite is contained somehow within the finite.

[1343] Okay, this is great.

[1344] So here's a proposal he has that the only, and it's, It goes towards my claim of a participatory kind of knowing.

[1345] The only way I can really participate in the withdrawal of this object into its unconscious, because if I'm conscious of it, I've defeated the very thing I'm claiming, is how I can relate to my own unconscious, the way there's aspects of me that withdraw beyond my consciousness, but nevertheless shape and make an impact.

[1346] My participating in this axis, if you'll allow me a metaphor, allows me, and he means this in a profound sense, symbolically, aesthetically, to participate in the realness of this object.

[1347] That's the kind of stuff that's going on right now in speculative realism.

[1348] Let's get back to your four tier.

[1349] I have to digest that in ways that I'm not going to be conscious of.

[1350] I don't know how to follow that with the appropriate question.

[1351] It's the depth within that allows you to appreciate the depth without.

[1352] It makes me think of the Psalms.

[1353] I mean, it's the verse, you know, the deep calling to the deep.

[1354] And that's not you calling, right?

[1355] That's what I mean about the transjectivity.

[1356] Yes, well, that's also akin to the metaphor of rescuing the father from the underworld because we're constantly doing that.

[1357] So the father is in the inner underworld, always.

[1358] is as a consequence of our reflection of the external social and natural worlds.

[1359] Ah, so you're, I didn't see that in when you've, when you've talked about it before.

[1360] You're seeing a deep kind of resonance between those where each discloses the other.

[1361] Well, you saw it.

[1362] I'm just pointing out my vision of it, I suppose.

[1363] I'm wondering if that's the analogous vision.

[1364] I think, yeah, I think that's right.

[1365] I think that's right.

[1366] I think, you know, and it's, it's, yeah, the, we're rescuing, as we're rescuing.

[1367] It's the discordancy.

[1368] It's interesting because it's the discordance between the map and the reality that drives the seeking of the father within, right?

[1369] Because you see what I mean?

[1370] Because when, when your, when your desire does not manifest itself and you despair, you call to the father within to reveal himself.

[1371] Yeah, yeah.

[1372] And it's, and so that's, that's the rescuing of the father from the dragon of the of chaos so so you and you're canotic right because you're this you're kinetic you know you're your books behind you but which is why you array them behind you in no small part but as you said in your own defense when you're putting your ideas forth i'm just the gist yeah there's another t -shirt but that's the same idea as canosis yeah the i know the emptying um and i and i deeply interested in the relationship between Canosis and Hennosis.

[1373] I don't know Hennosis.

[1374] Oh, Hennosis is the, sort of the...

[1375] It's horrifying and great to talk to someone who knows a whole bunch of things I don't know at all.

[1376] Oh, thank you, Jordan.

[1377] That's quite the compliment coming from someone like you.

[1378] Hennosis is the, Henn, one.

[1379] It's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the summation of the neoplatonic anagogia, the neoplatonic ascent, whereby the one within you becomes one with the one without until there is only the one.

[1380] It's ultimate at one meant.

[1381] And also it has the sense of atonement because it's the ultimate healing of that which is most existentially distressing to us, which is are being separated from the ground of reality within and the ground of reality without, and also separating those.

[1382] Yes, so that is what is most existentially distrously stressing to us.

[1383] You agree with that.

[1384] So that's why I titled my next book, the title that I am titling it, which is we who wrestle with God, because that's our fundamental problem.

[1385] Is that dissociation?

[1386] I believe that's the case.

[1387] So that calls something forth for me now, the wrestling.

[1388] But then that means that, okay, please go ahead with that first.

[1389] What I was going to say is, you know, we're talking about this byvalence of how reality presence is it to itself.

[1390] this is Heidegger's big thing, right?

[1391] And there's a sense in which it shines into our intelligence.

[1392] It shines forth.

[1393] But it also withdraws, right?

[1394] Right, right, right.

[1395] It shines with its suchness and it withdraws into its mourness.

[1396] And wrestling is like that if you think about it.

[1397] Because wrestling, I'm making contact, but I'm also being surprised.

[1398] Think about the two phenomenologies of our sense of realness.

[1399] One is when things are confirmed and, oh, it's real because look at how it all fits together.

[1400] And then the other is, oh, geez, I didn't know that.

[1401] I didn't know that.

[1402] That surprises me. That's right.

[1403] That is the two things that are the most real.

[1404] Isn't that something?

[1405] Yeah.

[1406] And wrestling is both of those.

[1407] And notice it's a conformity metaphor too, right?

[1408] You have to come into conformity, literally form yourself to the body of your opponent.

[1409] And you're right.

[1410] So there's the shining, but there's also the realness because they're shocking you beyond.

[1411] I hadn't picked that up on the wrestling metaphor.

[1412] The wrestling metaphor is actually pointing.

[1413] to, it brings together, right, the two ways in which reality grabs us, the confirming from within and the surprising from without.

[1414] So that's why we're spoken to in parables, isn't it?

[1415] I think so.

[1416] It takes us thousands of years to make them conscious, and then we keep doing so, and we keep doing so, to make them more and more conscious.

[1417] I mean, it took, you know, taking apart Genesis like that was really revelatory to me, Because, but I, my differed from the atheist because I approached the text with reverence and ignorance and humility, believing that I was nothing in comparison to what it contained.

[1418] You thought that there were truths available through transformation, not just through information.

[1419] Well, what are we stupid?

[1420] Are we stupid?

[1421] Is that what we were guided by this book for so many thousands of years and preserved it?

[1422] It's because we're stupid?

[1423] Yeah.

[1424] I don't think so.

[1425] Yeah, I, I think that means there's something I don't know about it.

[1426] It's Paul.

[1427] We're all stupid, either I'm stupid, which is highly probable, or we're all stupid, which is not so highly probable.

[1428] I think, well, I mean, as I've said, I think one of my deepest criticisms of the new atheists is precisely the fact.

[1429] I think I have a lot of criticisms of theism, too, because of the way it has bound itself.

[1430] I mean, current theism, it has bound itself to a Cartesian conception of modernity and reality.

[1431] and that's why.

[1432] Go into that.

[1433] I want to talk to you about dogman's spirit a bit.

[1434] Okay, let's leave that.

[1435] Go into what you just said.

[1436] Okay, so I'm going to put a, I'm going to say, I'm going to put a pin in it, because we're still trying to do the four P's of knowing.

[1437] But the new atheists lose the three other peas, and they lose, they look for scientific knowledge in the Bible, not paying attention to how it cultivates wisdom.

[1438] And the fact.

[1439] Right, and not knowing that there's any difference between scientific knowledge and This is what I talked about with Stephen Frye recently, because Stephen, who's allied with the atheists, knows that there's such a thing as wisdom, which is why he pursues and embodies myth, but he's annoyed at the church because of its dogma, and he confuses the church with its dogma.

[1440] Exactly.

[1441] You know, I'm also going to say a few positive things about dogma.

[1442] Dogma is the map.

[1443] I think dogma is, you know, in signal detection theory, I think dogma is the in inescapable need to set the criterion.

[1444] At some point, you can't, like, in signal detection theory, you have to set the criterion.

[1445] And all you do to set the criteria, and this sounds like Pascal, is you assess the relevance of the risks, because if you, well, I'll gather more information, but then you have to set the criterion for that.

[1446] Yes, yes, exactly.

[1447] And again and again, and at some point, yes, that's right, that's right.

[1448] But you, but you, so the criterion, the criterion we're talking about is the worship of that ultimate spirit.

[1449] Well, and that's the setting of the criteria.

[1450] And there's a dogma, there's an element in which dogma serves that.

[1451] So we can't just, because Fry says, well, I like the spirit, but not the dogma.

[1452] It's like, no, because you know, because you have to make a decision.

[1453] That's your point.

[1454] Okay, that's right.

[1455] And in every act, there's a decision.

[1456] So in every act, there's a worship of the dogma, because you set the criterion.

[1457] Right, but you set the criterion, but that's not the same thing as making the connection.

[1458] Don't forget that credo is later, and I say should always be in service to religio.

[1459] Religio, which means to bind.

[1460] That's that connectedness we've been talking about throughout.

[1461] And the point about setting the criterion, and this is like a, you know, this is like a William James thing to say, the point of setting the criterion is to get as reliable a continuity of religio as you possibly can.

[1462] And when Credo goes from giving your heart to I assert, we stop making creed, we stop conceiving of credo in a way that sees it intricately in service of religio.

[1463] And that's a part of my critique of what's happening.

[1464] Okay, so that seems to lead wisely into the four areas that you were going to discuss.

[1465] Well, yeah, so I went back to, we had propositional, and then of the non -propositional, we have procedural, then we have prospectival having to do with consciousness, and then finally we're down to the kind of knowing that we keep bumping up into, which is the knowing, I'll use a sort of a gibsonian way of talking about it, the knowing that creates affordances that makes all the other knowings possible.

[1466] Right.

[1467] There's a way in which biology and culture and my online cognition shape me and shape the world so that they fit each other.

[1468] I mean, this is Geertz's even notion of what culture is.

[1469] It's simultaneously models the world to me and models me to the world.

[1470] That's the participatory level.

[1471] I use a metaphor from Geertz, Chris and I do in our work, right, of the agent arena relationship, which is like your forum for action.

[1472] Right?

[1473] That what what participatory knowing does is it gets you to assume suitant, like it's a process of co -identification, the stoics talk about.

[1474] I assume an identity as I'm assigning identities to things such that affordances between me and it emerge.

[1475] I'm a grasper.

[1476] That's graspable.

[1477] That's an affordance.

[1478] And therefore, I can come into relationship with the cup.

[1479] That's the level of participatory knowing.

[1480] And that grounds everything else because without the affordances, you can't get any of the other, kinds of knowing going.

[1481] You can't get a grip.

[1482] Yes, you can't get Marloponty's optimal grip.

[1483] So here's what I would say.

[1484] The participatory knowing gives you a field of affordances, the prospectival knowing, making certain affordances salient to you prospectively.

[1485] That gives you a situational awareness.

[1486] The situational awareness tells you which skills from your procedural knowing you should bring to bear.

[1487] And then once those skills are in action, you are getting the right kind of causal interaction with the world for your propositional evidence?

[1488] I don't think that you realize how much you pack into those statements.

[1489] Maybe you do.

[1490] I mean, I know you thought about, I know you thought about each of them for years.

[1491] But, you know, there's a lot, it's like the cup metaphor you used.

[1492] There's a lot lurking behind the scenes there.

[1493] And you hit your listener with that when you lay out that.

[1494] So I'm going to ask you to do that again, if you would.

[1495] and I'm going to listen to it again.

[1496] I'm happy to do so, and I know that my passion...

[1497] Presuming that if I don't understand it, there are probably a few other people who don't...

[1498] I think that's a fair...