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

Episode Date: June 28, 2021

On this Season 4, Episode 34 of the Jordan Peterson Podcast, Jordan is joined by John Vervaeke, a colleague of Jordan’s. John has been an associate professor in the teaching stream at the University of Toronto since 1994. He teaches 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.Jordan and John discuss how they know each other, the last time they saw one another, Christianity, power, perspective, atheists, religion, Heidegger, and much more.Find more about John Vervaeke online on his website http://johnvervaeke.com/

Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. This is season four episode 34. My father's joined by John Verveiki, a colleague of his. John is an associate professor at the University of Toronto. 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. My father and John discuss how they know each other the last time they saw one another, Christianity, power, perspective, atheists, religion, heightager, and more. This episode is brought to you by self-authoring. 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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Use code mp to get 10% off at self-authoring.com. I hope you enjoy this episode. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Hello, everyone. I'm pleased to speak today with John Verveki, a colleague of mine. He's an associate professor in the teaching stream. He's been teaching at the University of Toronto since 1994. 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 wisdom. 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 for e for consciousness embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended models of cognition and consciousness.

In addition, he chooses a course in the Buddhism, Psychology and Mental Health program on Buddhism and cognitive science. He's director of the consciousness and wisdom studies laboratory. He is one 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 Ranjini Gash Excellence in Teaching Award. He's published articles on relevance realization,

General Intelligence, Mindfulness, Flow, flow, metaphor, and wisdom. 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 crisis in Western society. He's the author and preventive YouTube series awakening from the meaning crisis. And the meaning is what we're going to talk to John about today.

John, do you remember when we met last? I think the last time we were physically present was in 2015. We read a mind master's discussion, you and I. It's on YouTube. And we were talking about meeting in life at that time. That was the last time I think we were present together. So that would be six, six years, man. Yeah.

A lot of water under the bridge. That's for sure. Since that time. So tell us what you tell us about your current projects if you would. Oh, well, I've I've I've currently engaged in a project of, there's two projects, I just, one, I've just finished, one, I'm finishing. One was a COGSI project on consciousness,

on called Untangling the World Not. And in that, I was experimenting not only with new theoretical material, I was experimenting with a new way of presenting material. So I presented the material rather than monologically I presented it dialogically with a friend of mine, a psychologist Greg Enriqueus. And so the material was presented dialogically and which was very interesting for me because I've well hopefully we can talk a bit more about that. I've been

my core project as a project of trying to understand where deeply the process of dialogue and what it does in distributed cognition. So do you what do you think is the difference between dialogue and thought? I mean is it's thought an inner dialogue or trial log or quadrlog? 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 predominant, and the prototypical way in which you present your thought is with the treatise,

for example. And when now it's opening up to the idea that perhaps thought is more biological in nature. In fact, the idea that thought might be, even reason might be more biological nature is coming into sort of the mainstream of cognitive science Let me throw an idea you and tell me what you think of it something I've been working with we must all dive right into this It seems to me that thought has

two main components There's a revelatory component and that manifests itself most There's a revelatory component, and that manifests itself most remarkably, I would say, in flashes of insight, but those may be spread all the way out to religious revelation along a similar continuum. So, there's a revelatory element to thought, and that's the thought that in some sense springs out of the void. And I think the way that you manifest that thought is by consciously or unconsciously posing yourself a problem. And I think in some sense, it's akin to prayer, although we don't notice that. And maybe that's

because we've internalized prayer so deeply, we don't even notice we do it anymore. I mean, people have been praying for a long time, right? So you have a problem and you want a solution, you ask yourself, well, what do you think of this? And then you wait. And then at some point, sometimes when you're sleeping, sometimes when you're awake, I mean, sometimes so powerfully when you're sleeping at jerks, you awake, the answer appears and you think, well, I thought that up. But that's a strange thing to think. I mean, one of the things Jung said about thought was that most people encounter thoughts, nobody will ever find this quote, of course, because I'm sure I've modified it, but like they find a table when they walk into a room, it's just there. And then we attribute it to ourselves. But then there's the biological element

where we take a look at the thought, or there might be the biological element if you're further along in the development of your thought. You take the thought and you subject it to a critical dialogue or trial log or without, with inner avatars. So, okay, your turn, man. Yeah, that's great. So, I think that's an important note. I do a lot of work on the nature of insight. And I think the theoretical argument and the empirical evidence, I think it's converging on the idea that the insight process is, well, perhaps we'll just say the insight process makes use of cognitive machinery

that's very different from inferential machinery. And in fact, there's at times when they can even be opposed or interfere with each other. Okay, so I have a comment about that. You know that when people develop prefrontal dementia, sometimes they experience a burst of creativity. Of course. And 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. If I thought that right. Yeah, you do get, you also get similar things

if you get sort of minor damage in sort of right prefrontal, you'll also get riverberry, did some experiments where people do at that kind of damage also show increased facility within site problem. Right, so you know, I'm building this writing app right now and I'm, we're gonna launch it in about a month but I'm suggesting to people that when they write, they separate out the

editing process entirely. And so they try to rely on the non-critical revelatory process to generate ideas. And that means they can't try to write a perfect sentence to begin with. They just have to let, they have to restrict the editor and ask the revelatory system to step forward. And so what do you think about it's a kindness to prayer? I know that's kind of a radical idea. Well, it's a really radical idea. I don't think it's that radical.

Well, you're a radical, so that's why. That's why it's fun to talk to you. Well, the idea, I think it's only radical if you go in with some presupposed epistemologies and what's going on in thought. You maybe an empiricist in which you think your relationship to thought,

or any knowledge acquisition process is a purely passive receptive one, or you may be a romantic where you think that thought is literally, you hear it literally in the expression, and expression pushing out an act of imposition on the world. But what I think the phenomenon of insight does is reveal that a lot of our thinking is neither active nor passive. It's what I like to call participatory. It's the same kind of thing like participating in a conversation.

It's not just a sequence of actions and passive receptivity. There's a co-collaboration we're co-creating, we're making something together. In fact, that's one of the defining features I have for what I call theologos. I try to use the ancient book rather than the modern word. The logos. Yeah, because.

Yeah, well that's also my word I use frequently. Yeah, great. We haven't talked about why people want us to talk and the reason they want us to talk is because our ISD is dovetail to a substantial degree and also diverge interestingly. And so I guess they want us to talk so that we can think. Well, that's it. And they say that's what 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 deologos that we couldn't get to individually,

then real deologos has come into existence. And that's Phileas Sophia, the love of wisdom, as opposed to Philea Nikeya, the love of victory. And so, right, right, right, right, I didn't know those phrases. Phileus Sophia, which is the Phileus Sophia, wisdom is the feminine essence of God. Yeah, well, and also the Philea is, you know, it's itself a collaborative love. Oh, did you say Philea? Yeah. Philea. Philea. Philea and Phile, and fight, fight Leah, fight Leah Sophia.

So, fight Leah Sophia, the three loves, Nairos, Philea Agape, this is Philea and Philea is the love that is done, it is expressed and shared in community. And then Sophia, of course,

is the word for wisdom, that's where we get philosophy from. I mean, Philea, I see a nice, yeah, is the love of victory, like Nike victory. Right. And yeah, phyla, Isaiah is the love of victory, like Nike victory. And one, yeah, it's interesting because the, it's, tell me what you think of this. I think the YouTube dialogues

that we undertake are characterized by phyla, phyla, a Sophia and the YouTube dialogues conducted in the main by the, what would you call it, legacy media, our phyla, phyla, Nekia, Nekia, phylaia, Nekia. What would you call it? Legacy media or file a file a IKEA. I think people appreciate file a so fear much better. You better believe that I certainly appreciate it much better. I did I just did a I did two two of these with Bernardo Castro.

One was three hours and one was four hours. And they accepted wisdom. Is nobody's gonna listen to those. And these are extremely popular. People are willing to hang in. Precise the power. How popular? Well, I mean, they, you know, there's been, I think 20,000 views for the first one

and it's been up for like a week. And there's been like, I don't know, 8,000 views of the second one that's been up for a couple of days. And this is for a four hour video. Yeah, I mean, people came 8,000 views of the second one that's been up for a couple days. And this is for a four hour video. Yeah, I mean, people came, 10,000 people came to see Tom at our Sam Harris and I talk in Ireland. And that was primarily Philea Sophia with a hint of Philea rap. So I forgot it again. Philea.

Nike. Nike. Nike. Yes, of course. Just a Nike, the shoe. I just have to picture the shoe. Phile here. Nike, Nike, yes, of course. Just to Nike the shoe. I just have to picture the shoe. I'm not here. Yes, I'm accused of loving filia, Nike, but I don't.

I find that distasteful and I'm much more comfortable with filia, Sophia, and I hope that's evident. Well, that's very much. 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,

as I'm trying to understand what is theologos, how do we bring it about? And I'm looking, the two areas of research are, I'm of course looking back into the philosophical heritage, the whole stacratic tradition, but I'm also doing a lot of research are, of course, looking back into the philosophical heritage, the whole secratic tradition, but I'm also doing a lot of participant observation, participant experimentation, and all these emerging communities,

the circling community, the authentic relating community, philosophical insight, philosophical fellowship. I'm trying to learn how to do this, share with this with other people. It seems to me, tell me what you think of this. It seems to me do this, share with this with other people. It seems to me, tell me what you think of this. It seems to me that this, okay, so you're a participant, or a participant observer. I feel like we're tracking something,

and this must be associated with our hunting instinct, that the filial Sophia is a, because I feel like I'm tracking. So I believe this is from the Lord of the Rings with Billbow, but I could be completely wrong about this. There's a scene from the Lord of the Rings with Bilbo, but I could be completely wrong about this. There's a scene near the end of the book where he wakes 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.

And it seems to me that Phileas Ophia is associated with that, is that you feel your way to a solid, to something solid, and then you take the next step. And that manifests itself in speech. But is it mutual tracking? Is it reprogramming of the tracking circuit that we used for so long when we were dialogical hunters, like, sitting ones. I think so. I think so. Well, on the track of wisdom as a beast. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think, you know, the word to best, but he's right.

And, well, I mean, it's a main claim of most of 40 cognitive science that our hotter cognitive processes are exapted from more direct sensory motor interaction. And, you know, and you're right, Socrates talks about a willingness to follow the logo, wherever it goes. And the interesting thing when you do this is,

did you think that's any different than prayer because you could hardly say that in a more Christian way? Well, well, yeah, well, let me say something about that because when I've done the participant observation, what happens is that first people are taken aback by a kind of intimacy that is not sexual or it's a kind of immediacy that the culture doesn't currently prepare them for. So they're taken about the right, this kind of intimacy and connection. Joanne, that's exactly what I experience when people come up to the on the street and tell me that they've been watching my videos and that their life has been changed.

There's this instant immediacy that takes me back and it just it just it floors me and it really does. I get the same thing. I get and I get people when I talk to them and they've watched the series or something like that and they they've spent like 50 hours with me in their head and they they think they know me. Well, maybe they do, John. Yeah, yeah, maybe they do. They don't know them or maybe you do. You know, they're phas, so fear and it knows yours. And so it's instant, it's instant intimacy, but it's, it's very disconcerting. It is. And it's very hard for me initially, because I'm, by nature, very sort of socially phobic. Well, it doesn't get easier. But when I'm doing the practices, what happens is initially people are caught up in this intimacy.

And then what happens is, and people have various names, we're at the Wii Space, the Geist, Logo, Spirit. There's a sense of- Wherever I am between you, I'm with you. Yeah, we're two or three gathered in my name. There I am also. Right? And so there's the sense- Yeah, that's a name for it. All right. When did you put the Christian spin on this? That's a name for it, all right? When did you put the Christian spin on this?

Well, I mean, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's sections in the episodes in the series where I talk a lot about Christianity. I mean, one of the odd things that's happened to me is I did, I did an episode on agape and I've had many Christians, including Christian pastors like Paul Vanderclay said that was one of the best explanations of agape they ever heard and it was sort of something from them. So Vanderclay is following you obviously as well. They said it was odd for a non-Christian to be doing this, but well somebody had to. to be doing this. But somebody had to. Well, that's that's that's fair enough. Oh God, what a nasty bastard I am. No, no, no, no, this is fun. Yeah. But the thing I wanted to say is when you're in like I've done circling, I've been in these events 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. Yes, I've been in that situation in my therapy sessions many time. As soon as you talk about anything that's really serious, you use religious language. That's, and that means religious language is the language of extraordinary seriousness. I mean, when you talk about good and evil, and you do that in therapy, when you're talking to someone who's been touched with malevolence repeatedly, there's no alternative, then you're in this religious ground. So what does that mean? And there's 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., that's the spirit that's laid the golden thread throughout history. And we're in dialogue with that spirit and 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 parse out the triune conception exactly, you know, because you talk about this logos manifesting itself in the dialogue on Sophia. Yeah.

And logos is in there, right, dialogue. Theologues, yes. So, is the sun the love of wisdom? I mean, that makes sense to us. Is that the spirit? Well, I don't know. I think of... I think of... don't know. I think I'm either do I. I'm a trunitarian interpretation.

I do know that what happens and maybe this... What do you think of the God the Father interpretation that I just laid on you, man? Well, I mean, I've just been reading a lot of a Christian plateenism and I watched your talk with Jonathan and I found it. I mean, you guys were talking Christianity and, apparently enough, and I appreciate the earnestness and the authenticity, but there was, you know,

a lot of the, my year, to my year, there was a lot of Platonism in there. Yeah, I'm not talking. Have you read the immortality key? No, I haven't read the immortality key. Oh, you need to read it. I just interviewed the author. He's been tracking the use of psychedelics in the,

where all the Greeks went to be enlightened, you know, the, the, Delphi? Yeah, yeah, in the Delphic mysteries, exactly. And, well, I was gonna say that, I mean, I read a book that I would recommend to. And he, and he integrates that with Christianity,

you know, is stressing the Greek. So I asked him and rock, Dr. Rock, who's from Harvard, he wrote the road to alluices, alluices. So it's the alluicinian mysteries that I'm reaching for. He's been tracking the use of psychedelics for 2,000 years in Greece and the Illusinean mysteries, making the claim that psychedelic experience in the

Illusus was core to Greek culture, the bedrock of Greek philosophy, 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 Illusinean experience. That could be. I mean, Quartford made a lot of good arguments about,

you know, the divine men that were the precursors to the philosophers being influenced by Thracian shamanism. And you get figures that are right on the border. Who, who is that? Hornford. Hornford. Hornford. Inflients by what brand of shamanism?

Hornthorche. Hornthorche is shamanism. Shaman's from Thrace, which is north of Greece. And so Cornford talked about, like, because you get very weird things about Pythagoras. He did a thunder stone ceremony where he went into a cave and was died and came back. And of course, he...

How do you spell Hornford or Cornford? Cornford, C-O-R and F-O-R-D. Cornford. And he, the idea there is that the sort of soul flight practices within shamanism are taken up into Pythagoras' notion of soul flight. Yeah, well I'd imagine the soul flight practices are the same thing is the Illusinean mysteries essentially there are continuation of the shamanic tradition into the present there's something on there yeah well that's that's that's the that's the thesis of this book anyways

what's interesting to me is you know that Psytto represents Socrates as being able to bring about that state in people through dialogue alone. And yeah, you know what that means. Yeah, so do you. Yeah, very much. And when I see people in these practices, what happens is they first, they first orient on each other, then they orient on the logos, they find an intimacy with the logos. And then what do you mean by that? Well, 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 distributive cognition. I mean, yeah, okay. So that's a very interesting way of phrasing it. So that's what I see as the spirit that's guiding the golden thread. And that's what you're praying to when you ask for a revelatory thought when you're confused. So imagine that you have, if we're, imagine we're holographic in relationship to this distributed cognitive net, right? So the part contains some of the whole. Very much. And the whole would be this distributed spirit that you're just describing at least as it's enacted.

And so in so far as you're a holographic minuscule, but complete in some sense, canotic, canotic representation of this spirit, you can ask it for it to bestow its wisdom on you. And then so operation in your unconscious produces the revelatory thought. Okay, well that is deeply converging with a lot of the cog's side that I'm bringing to it. Oh good. Okay. So the idea here is that, 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. Yeah, well, you can imagine, sorry, I'm prone to do this, but you can imagine it's like reading

a book. 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, yeah, that's the extent. Okay. So that's probably what the sun is, Johan, 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 like let's play with that. I'd like to raise play.

I think that's how we go through. Okay. Well, so, 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 the maps in because people get into, they start to realize that the presence of the collective intelligence above and beyond the presence of Tom and Sue and Anne, 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 looking at from. Okay, so maybe that's the spirit, that thing that's happening everybody at that time, right? So it's a kin to the sun and it's a kin to the father, but it constitutes that distributed space. And so when I think might, I think of it as the Neoplatonic one, and that quarter one, right? And so- That's your peculiarity.

Yeah. Well, I will come back to why I think that language is helpful. I'm not claiming it's exclusive. I'm not doing that. Hey, I'm not claiming it's not helpful either. So what they do is they get to a place where, and not everybody does this, because you can imagine, it depends, you know, what did you just say?

Not everybody does this. No, I'm not a shirt. What I mean is that most people, yeah, I don't stand, John. Most people that are doing the circling, they don't, many of them are happy just with what you might call the psychological intimacy. Then we, God, yes, no wonder.

Yep, and then some people move to what you might call logos intimacy. And then some people move through that and by means of it to an intimacy of what is the fount of that, what is the ground of that, what is it about the reality that makes this kind of thing possible. They start to think of it. So they're reflecting on it.

They're reflecting on it. Like we're doing. Like we're doing, is that, is that? Yeah, very much. And you can think about this kind of move. And for me, this is where the prototypical secratic platonic move comes where you get the idea that the very process of intelligibility gives you a is the most profound access we have to the way reality is realizing itself and that's

how people start to talk they start to talk about reality but beyond the we space so there's us the we space and then the reality and maybe the we space, and then the reality. And maybe that corresponds better with the Trinity that you're looking for. Well, I think you've probably lost me to some degree with that last move. So maybe I can give you, lay it out a bit more. 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. And then they start to see that maybe that's the pattern that is ultimately disclosed as reality to them. That's how they start to think. Well, that's okay. So is that it can this is why you're so interested in consciousness. I mean, I think maybe one of the things you and I share is that we find it difficult to make a distinction between the consciousness of reality and reality itself.

So I think, yeah, I mean, that's why I've coined this term transjective to try and talk about the relationship, these kinds of relationships of participation that they're being co-created by reality. Transjective, okay, so expound upon that. Well, I mean, the notion is ultimately, ultimately derived from Tillich's idea, the symbol is that which grounds and makes possible the relationship

between the subjective and the objective. 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. I'm using shape as a metaphor for form, where form means something more like, you know, it's an aquatic form, the structural functional organization that makes it be what it is.

This is a key Greek idea, that which makes it be what it is is also what makes it be knowable as it is. And so I'm not representing the cup. My mind conforms to it. It has the same form as it. And so it's not right to say that it sort of, well, that's what you do when you reach to pick up the cup according to PHA.

Well, yes, very much. And so in some sense, you're mimicking the cup by understanding it. You're shaping yourself to it, right? Which is difference. So, and this is the difference between a Cartesian and a theological approach to knowledge, right? 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. But if you go before daycart, right,

even reading was pursued not informatively, but transformatively. The idea was unless I go to 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. And what happens, what I'm saying is people, they feel themselves being conformed

to reality through the logos. So that's a feeling of personal transformation. And is that the feeling of, is that that same feeling of tracking? Is that the same as stumbling uphill with your cross towards the city of God? Well, that's why I asked the question. Well, let me try.

I don't know either. Okay. So, I mean, this is some metaphor that pops into my mind all the time. Yeah. We're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, for you, you said it's transformative consciousness, or I think that's what you said. And we stumble uphill with it towards what? Well, let me try.

Let me try. That's a great question. Thank you. Well, I spend a lot of time thinking it up. Well, for me, 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 insight experience? Or is that the same thing?

I think the insight experience is exactly that kind of thing in small doses. And then when you start to link them together, you can get flow experiences. And what happens in flow experiences? Yeah. And if you link them to get together too much, you're it's non-stop flow experience. And then the question is, can you tolerate it? Well, that's that's another, I mean, that's a good question. There's another question. We maybe we can get to that. I'm not sure I can tolerate it. Well, there's the possibility and this comes from my, you know, my, my experience, my decades experience as a Taoist Tai Chi player. I mean, Chixit Mahai largely talks about what you might call hot flow and, you know, the flow, the experience that the flow and you experience

when you're, there's a lot of metabolic expenditure, but you can get into the flow state when you're doing Tai Chi Tr, and you're not doing a tremendous kind of at least physiological. I may mention there's stuff going on cognitively, but you don't have that same sense of I'm going to burn out. You have this, you know, 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. 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. So like you know, Chicks at Mahayas says, you're in the flow state, you have the sense of at one minute, right? That

powerful, that's one of the defining features. That tone meant. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And you have. And so what do you think that means? Because that pulls original sin into it. What are the other way around? Or original sin made use of the idea of it, one meant that is originally a part of it. Yeah, as the as the as the antidote,

as the as the as the, yeah, as the as the stuff of the grail is atonement. But that's the city on the hill, too. It is. I mean, anyway, we're, or it's the wandering up to the city on the hill. That's the other possibility or another possibility. I mean, you've got some, I've got John Furrier's pilgrim progress going through me. I've got a gust in city of God trying to parse them. That's a tough road to hold there, John.

What I was saying is, I think, that when you're doing this, when you can get into a more of a cool flow, rather than a hot one. Teach me, teach me. Well, I'd love to. That'd be great. What I've noticed, and I see this also happening in this, when I wanted to think of what we're talking about, when we're talking about these circling practices and these deloga practices, is you're getting shared flow.

You're getting flow and distributed. Oh, definitely. Yeah. And I'm hoping that's what I'm inducing in my listeners on YouTube. And I think it happened with John with with my carver friend Jonathan Pazzo. Jonathan. Yes. Yeah. And that was a very peculiar podcast. And I thought it did that. And this one will too. Well, that's the thing. That's the thing is and

and look, it got a million and a half views like what the hell is going on. Because I think Jonathan is a Jonathan. I don't know if he'd like, I mean, I say that's in love and I have a lot of affection for Jonathan. I think Jonathan is more radical, a more radical Christian than he realizes. I think, yes, I think that, I think that might be true of you too.

And there's always the possibility that it's true of me. Well, that's funny. You're new in your logos, John. I've 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 want to receive it properly because receiving statements like that, like your receptivity matters as much as anything else.

Yeah, it's not, it gives actually a trivial compliment, John. No, it's not. And my old dough is trend on the border between chaos and order. Well, yes, right? And that's yes. But it's what I'm interested in is the possibility that, well, perhaps, maybe, maybe we could just tie it together. Maybe when people are seeing, I hope people who know me and see me in my videos know that I'm deeply respectful to religion.

So I do not mean any disrespect I'm not saying. I'm not trying to be pretentious. 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, is somebody who is trying to realize in both senses of the word that goes back to what we're talking about transjectivity. It's both something that I'm, this is Nishitani's use of realize. It's both some, in realize in both senses of the word,

something that's coming into my awareness with intelligibility and something that's being actualized in reality. I hope that I'm realizing the logos with other people. That's. Well, I think your effect on your students is evidence of that, John. But what do you think your name, by the way, just out of curiosity? My last name?

No, your first name. John, gift from God. I don't know. We don't have to go there. Well, I have to go there. Well, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, we could go there, you know, I, my middle name is Barron and it's Norwegian. And I've always been somewhat embarrassed about it.

I, I'm going to say that publicly, I probably never admitted that to anyone, but because it was parodied as burnt because that's B or NT, that's how it's spelled. And so it was an object of mockery, that's 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 barren, and my great-grandfather, after whom I am named, built a ship and sailed it to North America.

And he was a remarkable inventor. He invented a potato harvester and built it in his own shop. And he raised my father 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 Oh really? Yes, really. That really happened. So, I mean, people have been, you know, describing my name to me on YouTube comments. And so that's where I got that information. So, you know, who knows what's in a name?

Jordan Barron, Peterson. John is my favorite gospel. If that means anything. Yeah, that makes sense in the beginning was the word. Yeah, the low most. That suits you. And I guess, what do you make of this comment that the spirit of Christ is manifesting itself in you? I mean, that's something you come up and just say to someone on the street, you know,

it's like, if you take that seriously, it's how do you take it seriously? Yeah, well, then how do you maintain yourself? Well, the thing is, it's how do you take it seriously? Yeah. Well, then how do you maintain yourself? 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 sees sort of efficiently and 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. But she said to me, you know, I actually think you like the rest of

what the Western world you meet. Well, yeah. And I noticed that was coming out in your discussion with Jonathan. And there was, you know, I had tremendous empathy with you. You know what my, the most powerful takeaway for me was for my biblical series, which is what? The meaning of the word Israel, wrestling with God, we who wrestle with God,

yeah, who struggle with God. We who wrestle with God. We who struggle with God. Yeah. It's like, well, maybe that's the real Christian spirit. And that's what that phrase implies. And that's the real Jewish spirit. Yeah. Wrestling, John. It's the, why does, you know, why does,

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? And he's not every when? He's doing all the time. He partially wins, though. That's what's even more mysterious. And hurts you doing so. Yeah, I mean, that's that's that's the story. But isn't that the story? I mean, it doesn't believe. It's the wrestling with belief. And and and and it's wrestling in the way that you're wrestling.

Well, I mean, I do sparring and I often use sparring as a metaphor for the kind of... Oh, so that's the other metaphor for dialogue. Yeah, exactly. It's not just the tracking, it's the sparring. Yeah, and we have to remember, you know, that kind of sums up men's relationships. Well, played on each other, tracking and sparring. Plato means big shoulders. He was a wrestler. That's his nickname. His nickname is Plato, because he's a wrestler.

And we have to remember that the Greeks are in the gymnasium, even more than they are in the academy, right? I was watching this suit's episode last night. And the, the man are always sparring with each other verbally, you know, and they're tracking something. They're tracking victory in this series. They're phylaia. They can shift off.

And they wrestle. They wrestle when they fight. They have to go into a clinch and a fight to settle their disputes, like a physical fight. But you can shift off of that. This happened for Bernardo and I when we were doing this. We both said this. You can shift off of it. And this for Bernardo and I, when we were doing this, we both said this. You can shift off of it.

And this happens when you're actually martial arts sparring because you get into the shared flow state. You can shift off of victory to the aesthetics of the dance. There's a beauty in that that is an independent victory, that you can come to appreciate for its own sake. Plato talks about this. He talks about the beauty, the aeros that draws you into the, that's why he, I mean, it's a dance.

Yeah, a dance, but it's a dance that draws you beyond yourself, educe education, right, to draw forth from you. And so is that the battle with the adversary? Is that related to the, this is another very serious question, obviously. It's a question related to the book of Job. I don't know because I see parallels, you know, in Nietzsche's quote, you know, I hate Socrates. He's so close to me, I'm always fighting him, right?

You can see, you can see both Nietzsche and Kerkegard wrestling with Socrates. Kerkegard said, I follow Jesus, but Socrates is my teacher. And he wrestles with Socrates all the way through. Everybody's wrestling with Socrates. I follow Jesus, but Socrates is my teacher. So is that the statement of the West? 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 insist upon how influenced you were with Greece, you insistibon 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, rock, rock said that because I asked them why Dionysus transformed into Christ because we were answering simple questions too and he said, well, Grease met Judaism. Yeah, but Judaism also met Grease. I mean, five years.

I know. It starts theology because of the interaction with with platonic philosophy. I think you, Christianity is trying to integrate agape and logos together. That's how I try to understand this project. And when I please, please're... Please clarify that claim. Sure. So I think, I mean, we've talked a lot about the Greek heritage of logos and logos is also central within,

especially in the book of John. Yeah, especially in the book of John. And saying that metaphorically with regard to you as well. But also in the epistle of John is where John also said, God is a Goppe, right? And then that's the epistle of John. He makes that famous statement. And the idea is there's something about the way

the logos gather things together so they belong together. That's the original whole thing. So that everything comes together. Everything comes together. And then there's the ideas and the way you know of the Ascent from the cave, the Anagaga, you and Jonathan talked about this.

The world discloses itself to me, that transforms me and then I can see more deeply into the world than that transforms me and I do this reciprocal opening. And the thing is that's very much of you, you know, you know, you know, that's, you define that, that's love. Yeah, mut, mut, accelerating and I got paid that's, do you define that that's love? Yeah.

Accelerating mutual disclosure is how it's even discord. Well, it seemed to me, well, it seemed to me that the relationship between truth and love is that love is the is something like the goal and truth is it's servant. It seems to me to be say because I so this is how I've worked it on 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, what are the slogans I have in my that's why this power claim is so abhorrent to me Well, the claim that power is the central Motivating factor for the Western endeavor is tandem

on. I believe to saying that it's the basic endeavor of the human species. And I think that's opposite of the truth. I think this agape is and logos is more accurate. And so it's not just a counter claim. It's an antithesis. Well, I'm trying to pick up on what you're saying here. Well, I'm trying to pick up on what you're saying here. I mean, you know, I'm trying to touch on the culture wars, obviously. Well, that's, yeah, 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 meeting crisis. That's the tear it, man. Well, shut up. No, it's okay. I mean, 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. And the kind of knowing there is, is like noticing, like news.

Great. That's the Egyptian eye. Well, yes. It's noticing. It's not thinking. It's attention. And maybe you're tying that with that revelation of the form. You're tying that to that revelation of the form and that conforming. Yeah, and that's exactly it. That's

exactly it. It's 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 you're your self-knowledge and the knowledge of knowledge of the world have become indistinguishable, become interpenetrating, like what you have when you really love somebody in a committed long-term relationship. 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? And how much how much death of the old you has this involved for you? I know, that's a strange question.

No, it's a good question. It's a damn good question. Why? 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 in both senses of the word identifying, designating something and assuming an identity. In both those senses of identification, the kind of knowing that I most care about, this participatory knowing, involves identification. 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. I mean, the knowing that constitutes you as a self, and that's what's undergoing the transformation with your engaged and participatory. When I really love my partner, right, I'm not just for me. What does it mean that you love them?

Do you think, if you have any express that? How would you express that? Well, I mean, it means a lot. It means that reciprocal opening I was talking about, but it means that I, I mean, it's like what Eckhart says. And again, I don't mean to be pretentious. Like, you know, he says, you have to make a space. I don't think you're going to be able to help it in this conversation. Yeah, that's true. That's fair enough. He says, you know, you have to go. The goal of Rhineland mysticism was to this kind of receptivity. You have to make a space so

that the Son of God can be born within you. And again, no, not being disreli- 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. What I mean is she finds a purchase within me whereby she can realize herself in both senses of the word realize. And she can come to trust that space,

that place of realization will always be available for her. And she can come to rely on it a place through which she can transcend herself when she needs to. I mean, and being committed to that. And finding that inceptorably 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. That's great. I wish you luck with it. Well, that's all we can ever wish

anybody. I mean, if you're if you're in the grace of God 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. And that's what I believe is happening for me. And I think there's kind of three loves involved and they're all bound up together. There's, you know, socratic self-love, not narcissistic self-love. There's the love of the other and then there's the love of the relationship. But that's for me as like a Trinity, talking about if those are separate is the mistake, you have to talk about it analytically as if they're separate, but they interpenetrate and interrefour each other

in a profound way. They become in an important sense indistinguishable from each other. I've been trying to develop a counter position to the claim that our society is predicated on the expression of power and that our social relations are structured as 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 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, to the degree that any of us are capable of realizing that. And I certainly don't claim to be, I struggle with it to my, to an immense degree. But I do believe that it's the proper counterposition. And then that, well, so what do you think about that? I mean, is the culture war we're in not deep?

I mean, is the counterclaimed genuinely the adversarial position? 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. 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, it's hard for them to say that there's something radically different about Western culture and the world's spirit, let's say, without only

attributing all that is negative to Western culture, and that's, I think, very difficult to do. 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. It's the antithesis to that,

because that isn't phylo-necchia, the antithesis, too. Yeah, I think it is. Well, I mean, that's part of the story. Is it, the Antithesis too. Yeah, I think it is. Well, I mean, that's part of the story. Is it genuinely the Antithesis? I mean, so is this a claim of, is this a claim of satanic possession of the West? I mean, is the culture war that deep? Well, I don't know.

I mean, the claim is that it's about fundamentals. Right, it's a fundamental critique of Western society. It means fundamental. That's why Dera da went after five logo centrist, fell logo centrism. Yeah. And I think, and there's in Foucault, there's similar things. But the thing you have, you have to remember is, you know, toward the ends of Dera da's career, right, he's reaching into Neoplatonic mysticism, negative theology,

is something he starts to take an interest in. And Foucault, you know, you know, technologies of the self. And he gets very deeply interested in the work of Pierre Hadot, right? And what is ancient philosophy in the wisdom tradition in Phileas Sophia? And he starts to turn towards it and starts to recognize it as something of that. I know nothing of that. Yeah, well, that's what, so I mean, well, that's, that's very interesting and, and he dies. Yeah, Foucault also. Foucault, no, Derrida, we were, we were speaking of Derrida.

I was speaking of both. I said you see, you see, you see, getting very interested in negative theology, Neoplatonic mysticism. And then you see, Foucault getting very interested in, you know, stoicism and, and Pierre Hadot's work on the whole secratic condition. And so what do you make? Okay, so do you, is it reasonable for me to assume

that Dareden Foucault's thinking is at the bottom of this counter claim 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? Is that the center of the culture war, like the exercise of arbitrary power. Is that the center of the culture war that claim? I don't, I mean, I think that's symptomatic of something that's been going on much more deeply

and much longer. Fair enough, I don't know if that answers my question, because I'm looking for a corrective or perhaps for agreement, but that's completely up to you because if it's a corrective then that I need, you know, so be it. I mean, if I take this in the wrong direction, or am I seeing it clearly? Um. I want to say something other than those. I want to, I want to, I want to, I want to say something other than those. I want to, I want to, I want to say that, uh, uh, that there are 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. I, I think, I, 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. We have a propositional way that, you know, as it says, that it's carried in proposition and results in beliefs, we have, which is not knowing that,

but we have also procedural knowing. We know how to do things and it doesn't result in beliefs, it results in skills. We have perspective, knowing, which is neither about belief or skills. It's about states of consciousness and how they create situational awareness for us. 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 a deep, has a different sense of realness attached to it. I think propositional has truth, I think procedural, our skills give us a sense of realness when they empower us, our perspective, knowing, what's the sense of realness there? Well, we're getting a good sense of this from virtual reality work. It's a sense of presence, a sense of presence. And then what's the sense of realness for participatory knowing? And that's what we're talking about.

We're talking about this, like, people try to capture it with these words of faith and connection and belonging and fittedness and at one minute. 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, purely propositional knowing, and then we're slowly realizing the inadequacy of that. I think the fact that we are trapped

in ideological battle means we think we can capture all of the meaning making machinery at the propositional level. But what for you cognitive science is saying, oh no, you talked about tracking, the skill of tracking affords are conceptual abilities, but also states of consciousness afford us being in relationship to the world. You can have totally ineffable states that nevertheless seem the most real to you.

And also these transformations of ourselves also carry with them a sense of realness. And I think what's happened is the West is realizing, but in a negative way, that the propositional reduction is inadequate, insufficient. And it's groping for the closest thing at hand. And the closest thing at hand is what technology makes salient to which which is power and control. This is Heidegger's critique. But I think we have to go deeper. We have to say, no, no, there's a place for that. But your skills ultimately depend on your situational awareness and your situational awareness. The states of consciousness you get access to

ultimately depend on your character. We have to bring back that whole rich philosophical anthropocrystalline. Why do they ultimately depend on your care? Well, that's a lot to swallow in, you know, 10 statements. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to scuttle back to my power claim momentarily and then try to wrap my head around what you said. Okay. Well, sorry, I didn't mean to dump so much. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, not at all. I mean, it might have been the answer, the proper answer. The proper answer is often that the question isn't sophisticated enough, you know, but it sort of throws the questioner because he's operating from within the space where that's the germane issue, right? 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.

And I believe that to be fundamentally wrong. Yes. And so I phrased it as an adversarial hypothesis, as a satanic hypothesis, 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. And I don't believe that. I believe that its characteristic spirit is phileia, Sophia, fundamentally, and that that is a contamination which occurs repeatedly, which would be phileia. Like you.

Nikiya. Nikiya, I think if we're using your language properly, or perhaps we're slandering Philea, and IKEA, I mean, because I think part of the claim that you're making is that there's a positive aspect of Philea and IKEA that's being damned as the mere arbitrary expression of power. Well, I do think that's something like series like suits are getting out, right? Because you have these characters

in that drama who are motivated primarily by Phileas. So Philean Ikea, but you see Phileas Sophia merge between them. And that's what makes them tolerable as characters. And but both those things seem to be interrelated. One leads to the other. And that seems to be related to your wrestling argument in some sense and maybe to mine. Yes, and it's right. So you think that this, so is your claim, let me get this right at least in part that, please, 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 side show on a much deeper, that's a side show of a much deeper problem. I mean, that's quite the bloody claim, John. It's not easy for me to process, but yeah, well, so I'm having some trouble with that. But do you think that that invalidates my claim

or does it just render it irrelevant? No, it doesn't render it in real life. Given this discussion, okay, so is it okay if we deal with that and then move on? Sure. I mean, I guess what? Okay, am I misreading early Darada and Foucault by attributing to them the claim that it is power that they identify as the central spirit?

And am I wrong in saying that that's just a modified Marxist claim? It's a transformation of the idea of the class struggle into the domain of the sheer power. Struggle for power? I think you could make a claim that Foucault sees the deep interpenetrate of the earlier Foucault, maybe even the middle Foucault sees a deep interpenetration between power and knowledge. For dareda, I do not think that differents really is well translated by the term power. Difference is much closer to, you know, what I would call relevance realization,

the idea that the relevance of our claim can't be bound. I mean, somebody within classical cognitive science, computational science, Jerry Foder, makes a similar argument that the relevance of a proposition can't be captured within the syntax or semantics of the proposition. I mean, that's the mean thing that Derrida is on about. So that's a consequence of what we're bringing to the table.

Because the relevance is the interpenetration of the semantic because the relevance is the interpenetration of the semantic and the syntactic with the unique. 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. Right. Which means I have to know you, which means I have to embody whatever is that I speak all the possible of all the possible implications, the ones that are relevant out of all the possible.

Right. Which means I have to know you, which means I have to embody whatever is that I speak to you. Now to my claim that the character traits are at the bottom of this. Right. If you go ahead, man, if you can't, if you can't, if you don't, if we can't actually conform at the level of our character, we can't trust. Right. So that's trust. Yeah.

And so when you trust, you trust what's honest, trust what's honest. So you trust the logos, right? And what because that's honest, the driven by love, right? But I don't. And so if I trust you, that's what I trust. So my sense of that, my sense, just, yeah, I'm going to go back to something. I asked you to define love. And I'm going to define it on my terms. Now, that is the best in me serving the best in you. And I think that's the deepest pleasure. That's the deepest and

most lasting pleasure. And it is the most fundamental motivation. It's the inexhaustible source. Because if I can do that, whenever I do that, I feel that I'm being properly. And there's nothing better than that. And you can extend that to the world to situations places. Well, I think that's what you're supposed to do by accepting the proposition that God is love. I mean, it's God is love and God is logo. So those are both there. So then the question to some degree is the rank order of the two. And I would say God is truth within love. And that's the animating spirit of mankind. And that's a way different claim than the one the atheists are going after by the way. Yeah. Think about it everyone. Is truth is truth in the service of love? Not the best animating spirit of mankind when it isn't pursuing an aberration. We can all

ask yourself that question. I think that's a good question to ask. Thank you, John. What I mean is I think it re- I think it re-orients us to the fact that we can put that on a t-shirt. Is truth in the service of love a good question? I guess I see them as more, I see them as more interpenetrating. I want to make a stronger relationship between them, they're just a relationship of service. I mean, that's how about her man. Yeah, that, that, this way I like the term realization that love is a way of affording realization and the deepest knowing you have of reality is in realization.

That's what I, if I had to say it to you. Okay, so it seems to me, okay, so I'll make an appendage to my claim. Right. The reality that is most justifiable is brought about by the action of truth in the service of love. Yeah, but I guess what I'm saying is I see truth. I think you're using it and I've heard you use truth as something beyond a correspondence between the semantic content of a proposition reality.

I've heard you talk about it. Yes. Right, right, and we even use that when we use the phrase. Yes, it seems to incorporate some of those other dimensions that you've been talking about. Exactly, exactly. Okay, well, man, so fill me in. Well, that's what I'm trying to get at.

I'm trying to get at. I'm trying to get at that power is a way of, you know, when when your shot is true, your skill has been effective and you're going to hit the mark, right? But, but, but, but presence is also a way in which things are are true to form, right? And then care, but 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. So if you will allow me to expand what you mean by true to cover all of those dimensions. Be trove to the world in that you extend the same courtesy to the world that you described extending to your partner? Exactly. I think the answer to nihilism isn't some propositional answer. This is what I get from this attempt. Yeah, right. It's to relearn, and I mean it's deeply, in the Buddhist sense of

sati, to remember what it is to fall in love with reality, to fall in love with being. And if that's what you're saying is the thing that what Sam Harris is striving for in his spirituality. Well, I'm it's not a it's not a throwaway answer. It's like what's he up to exactly? I mean, his own he's he isn't he on a Sophia. I find me a Sophia adventure? I think everybody is, how can I put this? Everybody lives from the non-propositional kinds of knowing emphasized by Plato, and that's what all of the scholastic research is pointing to now. Socrates was trying to point people to the non-propositional

knowing, the procedural, the prospectible, the participatory. 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. Well, you should, maybe you could expound on those a bit more for us and clarify a bit more. 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. I think that's an equally nihilistic claim. That's my point. The claim is nihilistic or my claim about that is nihilistic. 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. It is constituted the wrong way. It's like framing a problem the wrong way so that you know, you not get the insight needed to get to the solution of the problem. So I think of it as a fundamental misframing.

That's what I'm trying to say. That's why I'm hesitant to say either yes or no to it because I believe that it is mis-framed because I don't think it would be taking us in such a pathological direction. The whole argument, if it wasn't mis-framed. And so for me, this dovetails with the increasing crescendo within four E cognitive science about embodiment and embedded and extended and enacted cognition is most right. You see this as a subset argument of one of those elements. Yes.

But like I said, I'm really having a hard time. I know what you mean, but 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. Let's go into those three modes of alternate cognition a little bit more deeply. Okay, so I mean, so the first distinction, of course, is was classically made by Rao, 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 book. 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. 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 of God. Yes. And that's what always strikes. That's why I never answer that question. Yes.

Because I think that's the wrong framing of the question. Exactly. So I can't answer it. Exactly. Okay. Well, may man, you're helping me out here. So because you're differentiating, you're helping me differentiate my sense of the non-propositional space.

And I mean, I know some of this because I know that knowing what and knowing how circuitry is separate. Yes. And I've known that since I wrote maps of meaning. And I know the inside circuitry is separate. Now, you know, that's since I wrote maps of meaning. And I know the insight circuitry is separate. And, you know, that's what I've been getting out 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. We're following the logos. We're following the logo.

We've got a lot of logo. Oh, God, I hope so. Yeah. I hope so, John, because it's certainly the only justification for my existence. Red skull and all. I think there are many reasons to justify your existence, my friend. Yeah, well, I think that's an inadequate self-appraisal. Oh, thank you, John's been a growing consensus from the failure of computational cognition or even behaviorist to we can't reduce conscious why failure John because what we what we've noticed is that to be something that's explocatable in terms of the logical relations between proposition. It's not propositional. Very good. Very good. So you think we've actually found that out, and that's the failure. Does that mean the failure of AI? Is it presently constituted? It depends. It depends, because what's happening in AI is that AI is moving off sort of propositions. Yeah, the idea that AI is moving off sort of proposition.

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 it embodied auto poetic dynamical system and that thinking isn't in the head, it's the way the the embodied brain is dynamically coupled to the world in an ongoing evolution of your sensory motor, right? The meaning hence the justification for freedom of speech, you might say. Well, and also also the freedom of action, freedom of action, and also, you know, a freedom for people to explore different ways in which they inhabit their body. I think that's also an important thing. So I did want to get back though. So if you if you if there's a growing plausibility,

so much so that for example Bernardo Castro and I take him seriously, I don't agree with him, but Bernardo is a sharp guy. He he proposes a kind of absolute ideal. Who is that? I don't know him. Bernardo Castro. So Bernardo is so convinced and he's a very sharp guy that the arguments of trying to reduce consciousness computationally, etc. I failed that he is willing to right advocate for an eye. Don't disagree with him on this, but he make a plausible case that reality, you know, absolute idealism, that consciousness is the ultimate reality. And whether or not that's the case, all I'm trying, I'm making a weaker claim on the basis of that. 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. So to go back to the four kinds of knowing, you've already acknowledged the propositional. Yeah, so, sorry, I wanna, Jeff, one more thing here that's relevant to what you just said. If you don't mind. I don't mind at all. Well, you know, I think the atheist critique of religion

is a critique at a propositional level. I've made this a similar point, Jordan. I've made the point that they're not paying attention to. 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? 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. So I make a distinction and lines up with this.

I think that religion is not primarily about knowledge. I think it's primarily about wisdom. Because wisdom is about that fundamental It's about embodying it. It's about embodying it. It's about establishing a relationship with it. Yes It's about worshipping it. It's about taking it into your identity That's the worship I think well I think you Jonathan described worship as celebration So it's a celebration of and reverence, while reverence for sure, but the celebration part is what 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. But that's worship. But we, but we've locked well, maybe is, maybe this is to your point about worship. We've lost the depth of celebration. We have reduced. Yeah, you see it in black gospel music, don't you? And then it runs into rock and roll from there.

But and then you get the, you get stadiums full of people experiencing it without noticing what they're doing. I mean, I felt that spirit when I went to a Leonard Kohn show when he stood up and everyone clapped and, you know, he sings, Hallelujah. Or is it the apocalypse? I think that's the song. He's got a couple, him and Johnny Cash in his later years, got a couple of songs that

put you in that space right away. But I agree. I think that's, that is, that is a version of celebration, but the problem with that is, right? Is it's been too located in the, it's ontological locus is entertainment. Yes, you're right, exactly, John, entertainment.

It's like, no, it's enthusiasm. Yes, and fios, to be possessed by the God, and that's what I was trying to get at, right? In some way, we don't even notice when it happens. That's what a stadium is too, when you cheer when someone puts the soccer goal through the net. Of course it is. And hey, look at that man's aim. Yeah. Couldn't we all aim like that? And wouldn't that be wonderful? Yes. And we'll do the wave to that. And don't we notice that we're worshiping God? No, because we've killed our religion by presuming it was a set of axiomatic set of presuppositions and listening to the 18th,

19th century rationalist atheists. Well, what we've done. Right, right. Is we have confused modernities understanding of religion with the phenomena, which is, I think, a fundamental mistake. No, with our blind critique of the phenomenon, which is, I think, a fundamental mistake. No, with our blind critique of the phenomenon, 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. Yeah, yeah, I like your reformulation. I think that's a better set. Thank you. So to go back, if consciousness and this kind, so there is a knowing that is dependent on your state

of consciousness. There's a knowing through consciousness. And that's what I call perspective annoying for what consciousness does. Is it foreground some things, backgrounds others, makes things some things salient? So it's doing, if you'll allow me a term I'd point, it's doing salience landscaping for a term I'd coin it's doing

salience landscaping for you. And what that does is that does that drawing things to your attention. Yes, drawing your attention always also does that. So is that part of that because you kind of you kind of choose where your attention goes. You choose and you're afraid or you participate in it. You participate in attention.

That's what I that's what I was saying. You don't just attend and you don't just receive. You participate. There's both, you know, and they use these metaphors without, you know, I think fully unpacking them, you know, there's the top down in the bottom. Do you think that it is that a part, is that participatory attention akin to the dance

between revelation and criticism. Is it revelation and biological evaluation that constitutes the participatory or element of attention? Well, I think what it's doing is it's, well, I'll speak more of the theological language. It's realizing, so there's attention, right, is doing something like prioritization, relevance realization, in the dialogue between imagination where we stop thinking of imagination as just images, useless images in our head. I want to use it the way Corbana uses it,

imaginal, and this is what's coming out in Fistens predictive processing. Imagination is it permeates your perception. It's permitting your, it's right to say that I was much a lot of you said we live to dream. Well, but the thing that there's, there's something true about that. But I want to, I want to, I want to caveat it because people will say it's all in hallucination. No, no, no, it's not. No, it's not most of the most of the But it did that's weird. Yeah, most of the predictions are accurate. Yes, exactly. Yeah, can't be just a dream exactly Exactly. So you've got you've got imagination if you'll allow me the spatial language coming down and out. Right, that's right. And if it covers it, covers what's out there,

and we see the imagination, but it pertains to the reality. Yes, there has to be a, remember we saw the reality. So what we're doing is continually adjusting the imagination to the reality. Yes, the theologos. And the prioritization is the way of adjusting.

So we see the map, we don't see the territory, but we also see the, is that right? We see the map, we don't see the territory, but we also see the errors in the map. Right, but we can, yeah. But we can, yeah. But we don't see the territory, but we also see the, is that right? We see the map. We don't see the territory, but we also see the errors in the map. Right. We see the map and the errors in the map, but we don't see the territory. Yeah, but the, the, the, the, the, the, where the territory pushes its nose through. And what them, what those errors do is they can't, if, if we're properly receptive to the way the errors are deforming the map, they can turn it into a globe and a globe is still not the thing, but it's then better than a map. And so that there's a receptivity that's also important.

Yeah, well then, you know, and it is definitely the case that in so far as our map is accurate, which means it's being generated as a consequence of a rectification of our previous errors is that it is an aduquate representation of the external of the of reality. It's an adequate representation of reality, which means we have molded ourselves to reality. See, this is also why I think John that I think that men and women select each other for manifestation of the logos. I mean, I'm talking, well, because I said this was a deep critique, you know, yeah, yeah, he goes all the way to the well, what? Okay, so we'll look at this.

So men organize themselves into groups. And they, they take the, the quarterback out of the stadium on their shoulders. And they say, by doing so, cheerleaders, here's your chosen mate. And the cheerleaders jump up in the air with their legs spread and say, hooray, bring him to me. And that's the isn't that the dialogue between men and women down the ages. And you might say, well, why would men vote for the stallion when they're not the stallion? And the answer is, well, it's better to be a follower of the stallion if you can't be the stallion than to not be at all. And I mean that in the deepest evolutionary sense as well,

or have I got something wrong? Well, I... Because when I said this is the fundamental animating spirit, I really meant it. 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. It's random.

It might be random, random variation on the option side, but that doesn't mean it's random variation on the selection side, obviously. And so then the question is, what are you selected for? I imagine your wife is pretty fond of you when you manifest that, well, yes, I have a wife too. And I can understand her displeasure with my multiple shortcomings and justified displeasure. I might say, but I'm sure that she's happy when you do manifest that part of you that you said you wanted to manifest. But I get, I mean, I get, maybe I don't get you.

I see what I see is you're mapping the receptivity and the selection on to sort of masculine and feminine, maybe sort of Yin and Yang in a Taoist thing. But if I was to respond as a Taoist, I would say, but can't I have that relationship also with you? Does it have to be But can't I have that relationship also with you? Does it have to be necessarily embodied in a sexual difference? I mean, I know, I think it's also embodied in that. In that it goes all the way to the bottom, wherever you look.

Well, wouldn't that suggest then that something like the Dallas notion of you being yang there before is a more fundamental representation of the reality precisely because it applies to other cases. Well, more fundamental than what? So the idea of masculine and feminine. I mean, I understand. That's certainly possible.

Yeah, certainly possible. I mean, I think reality is know, I think reality is the battle of good and evil against the background of chaos and order. So the cast and order would map quite referee. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, please. I was just saying, I can see that in sort of that that's a very doubt. The reason is the order is the map that you're describing, right? Because in so far as it's in cordons with reality, it's a map that enables us when we apply it to get what we desire. Of course. 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.

But that's just the map is motivated. Well, that's good. The predictive processing is changing. The predictive processing model is changing. In fact, the idea that we're even talking about something inferential working with Bayes' proposition is largely now more abundant. Prison himself, and Andy Clarke, and somebody,

one of my former students that I'm collaborating with Mark Miller and also with Brad Anderson. It's like no, the work of Michael Anderson, the embodied understanding of predictive processing is now the dominant model in which affect relevant motivation. Relevanceization is not cold calculation. It's okay. So look, it's motivation and affect, let's say, eh? But that's a hierarchical structure. And in that hierarchical structure, there's a central organizing spirit, a spirit that drives towards unity. And because it's predicated on the very idea of the attention of attentional focus itself, right? What do you hold in the highest esteem? That's what directs your attention, right?

What do you hold in the highest esteem? Did directs your attention? What you care about? So how is that not a religious claim? How can that not be a religious claim if the claim is also embodied? You see what I mean? I do think.

Because maybe there's one more step past motivation, it's personality, right? Because motivation manifests itself in personality. That's the next step for the cognitive scientists, if they haven't got there yet. I mean, I knew that motivation and emotion was the step past pure expectation, because well, Jeffrey Grey's work, which is brilliant, neuropsychology of anxiety is a great book,

but he assumes that the map predicts expectation and that we're sort of cold cognitive expectors, right, prediction machines, but we're not. We don't predict what's going to happen. We work to make what we want to happen happen, but that's not the same thing. But that's the change that's happening, Jordan, that there's shifting off of prediction as the primary metaphor into anticipation. Okay, so how, and is the shift gone to the point where it's personalities manifest that they're shifting off of prediction as the primary metaphor into anticipation. We're in a situation. So how, and is the shift gone to the point

where it's personalities manifesting themselves within us that determine our direction? Yes. Not quite, 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 issues of contention, but the idea of the discussion

around the self, what the self is as an organizing principle. It's a personality. It's a personality. Well, obviously, personality theory and cognitive theory have to be united. I mean, they made your domains. Right. I'm trying to get a paper published that

tries to integrate them. And the bridging point is actually in attention because what's come out in predictive processing is what's called precision waiting. What you have to do is you have to get, you have to privilege, because you can't model everything. They hit combinatorial explosion. Right.

You have to privilege. Does chaos. Right. You have to privilege certain, you have to privilege certain predictions of when you come back later, why anticipate this is a much better word. And that's what attention is. And that's where the relative, I'm writing a paper. Okay. So back to the writing. So Pazzo's point would be the basis of worship is what directs attention. And I think that's ultimately right. I mean, I find it hard to say. That's a hell of a thing to say, you know,

because especially if the, because it, well, in the case that the apex of your attention, you know, has this drive towards unity and that it's based in personality. I mean, these are claims that are very much tantamount to religious claims. As far as I can see. Well, okay, 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, 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 perspective, or knowing are all seeking to bind us to ourselves, to each other, and to the world. And the sacred is that which most powerfully, truthfully

and presently and belongingly achieves that for us. Great, great. Well said, John, hooray. and presently and belongingly achieve that for us. Great. Well said, John. Hurray. Where do you put awe and admiration in that? So think about this admiration is the instinct to emulate. OK, so then we look for the most emulatable. That's the ultimate spirit.

And I think Gerard is right that that always carries with it the dark side of Mamedic envy and covetousness and that those two are always playing off against each other. Because because we think we can possess it by by Elgot means. Yes, that's the story of Kane. Yes. Yes. 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. And I mean, was that a manifestation?

Well, that's a manifestation of deeper things. And that's, well, that's what I ask, too. Yeah, and I hope that what we've been doing is actually my answer to that. All 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. I don't know what we've been doing is the answer to that or the antidote to that. To which, sir?

Well, if the question is posed wrong, we can't really answer it. Can we? We have to provide an alternative formulation. But that's what I think we're doing here. Yes. So it's an antidote rather than an answer. And that's fine. And I know. I know. I just clarifying it. I think I think looking for the answer is in some sense

a fundamental way of misframing it. That is to that is to give into the problem. Well, how do we address it then? How do we address it, John? Do we just buy Stepet and just offer the alternative? No, no, don't think about this. No one, I'm, that's a genuine question because perhaps we do just buy Side Stepet and offer the alternative.

Yes, that's what I'm saying. That's what I, that's sorry. I want to be more responsible. That's what I'm recommending. That's what I'm recommending. I'm recommending that we remember that meaning in life, and this is also something I'm doing empirical work on, right? That meaning in life is mostly bound, right, at the non-propositional level, and it does feed into things like sacredness. I think reverence is the proper virtue of all. Reference is the

virtue that helps us appropriate all. Well, parents mean it as hold as hold in ritual and as hold as a marker or as a as a pointer for ritual emulation. I think it's I think that's embodiment. That's and that's the that's the pulling in of that personality into the self.

I think that's right. But I think what all see all is really interesting because all because you can measure this. Are is one of the few instances where people sense of self and egocentrism is shrunk, but they find it a positive experience, and they want it to continue. Right. Well, that's how what we experience in relationship to our current ego when we hypothesize our ideal as well. I think that's right and that goes to... I mean, those are the same things because all is the ideal,

all is our unconscious ideal capturing us. Think about it, it's the spirit within. So imagine this, you already admitted, so to speak, that we're, you know, akinotic representations of the central animating spirit of the ages. And that speaks from our unconscious because it's embodied within us. And then it finds its, it finds its grip on us in, in awe, in admiration. Would you say, though?

So does the quest like, would you say that it's not only the unconscious within us, but the unconscious without us because I think what all is is just the unconscious in the books behind you. Yes, and also the unconscious in the world, because I think part of what what we're I think I think we got too locked into the notious the notion of the sacred as perfection, completion. This is one of my critiques of Plato, although I'm normally a lover of Plato. 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? Even in even in Jonathan's tradition, Eastern Orthodoxy, it's the sacred, a good becoming better. Well, the sacred is an inexhaustibleness, right? And yes, that's why I'm asking that question. Yes, yes. Because when I've had visions of heaven, heaven is a place that's perfect in getting better.

Well, okay, 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. I wouldn't recommend them necessarily. Yeah, well, I mean, we can compare all three states of consciousness in other time, perhaps. Oh, yeah, okay.

By the way, I'd really like to do that with you. Yeah. Let me just finish the point I was making. So for me, before on to another universe, you mean? Yeah. See, for me, I tell people that Plato is sacred,

which does not mean that I cannot, that I can't question him. It does not mean that I can disagree with him. It means the following. Plato transforms me. I go on and live my life for a while. The world then changes me because of the way I've been changed. I come back and I see things in Plato. I didn't see before. And then I get while, the world then changes me because of the way I've been changed. I come back and I see things in Plato I didn't see before. And then I get back to the world. The thing is,

I, what I, the Bible does that for people. Yes, and that's why the Bible is sacred. And, and, and what Plato, I think argues and, and what Taoism argues, and I think Christianity argues, where there's also the book of nature, There's always the two books of revelation. You can actually experience that with respect to nature. I don't particularly like that term, but you can experience that with right where the world. I think introverts do that in particular. I that's a hypothesis of mine. I don't have evidence for it, but I've noticed my introverted clients need to be renewed by nature.

And that it and it's something that seems so if extroversion is adaptation for the social world, is it in some sense? Is it possible that introversion is adaptation for the natural world? That strikes me as a plausible hypothesis. I mean, that's right. Well, you introverts out there, you could tell me if you're introverted, do you find sustenance in nature? Differentially, because I don't think it's true for extroverts. They want a party and be with other people. Yeah, but there's that. Sorry when you said all you introverts out there,

I remember somebody, a former partner, she gave me a group. All you introverts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's just a game of poster, she said. It was like a, you know, a propaganda poster, you know, introverts of the world unite quietly alone in your room. Right. You know, John, in my classes, I used to segregate my, my, my classes into groups based on extroversion and introversion.

I asked them to, yes, because I had them debate. And so I put all the introverts together. And then they would debate because the, the most extroverted would talk, right? But it worked wonderfully. And the students appreciate it. So it's something I'm humbly considering that it's something to contemplate. It worked extremely well when I had them debate

because otherwise the introverts, you know, they're always likely to say the right thing a second later. And so they don't get to talk because the most extroverted leaps up, and that was almost always me. You know, the most extroverted leaps up and says the thing. That's, that's really helpful to me because I'm trying to understand this machinery of

theologos and I'm trying to understand the things that come in. Obviously, there's a cognitive factors, there's attachment factors. I hadn't given enough thought to personality factors. That's, that's, that's good. That's very good. Thank you. That's something. Yeah. Well, I think the whole cognitive field hasn't given enough thought to personality factors

because they haven't realized that motivation and affect are manifested in personality. Well, I'm trying to get those wrong. Because they said goals, right? Well, great. I know. I see that. I'm so thrilled about it. And I wish you every success. And it looks like you're tromping away, man.

So, well, I'm trying, and more specifically, I'm trying to get a paper published that tries to integrate relevance realization theory, cognitive theory with big, five personality theory, making use of work of our shared student, Colin DeYoung. And so, you're supposed to tell me how, tell me about that. Oh, well, the idea is, you know, well, I mean, it's a long argument, but to, so receive it

charitable because I'm just giving you the gist, but the idea is, you know, Collins idea about the meditrates of stability and plasticity, they tend to, well, I should be more cautious because I'm making a proposal theoretically. A plausible way of understanding in that is that they map on to the the the medical strengths that are working with and relevance realization of efficiency and resiliency. And so you can see in a lot of machine learning that what you're doing is trying to get them the system to improve its problem solving learning ability by constantly trading between efficiency and resiliency.

And that tends to, you tends to push towards stability. Is that a consequence of the fact that when machines were taught to identify penguins or birds in fish and then they were given a penguin, it blew the prediction system? It comes, yeah, it goes way back, it goes back to Jeffrey Hinton. Because that's where I derived the idea from the difference between polystis, deans, stability to begin with. And it's in, it's in, it's in. So you heard that, did you, I derived the idea from that, from the sources that you're citing as it's corollaries. That's so. Yeah, I mean, that's great. It was from Greenberg, I think, Greenberg, I think. That's, that's very convergent. So thank you for that. Okay. Greenberg, I think. That's very convergence. So thank you.

Okay. Yeah, okay. Okay. And you, you might not want to know that, you know, because he was a colleague of both of ours, Jeffrey Hinton at U of T. I mean, that basic idea, the paper I published on relevance realization in 2012 basically attributes that core idea to him and his wake sleep algorithm for deep learning. So, long story short, is there's, and you're reinforcing it, which, thank you, I appreciate that. There's this growing convergence between sort of what machine learning is saying about, you know, opponent processing. And then, you know, the, what personality theory is saying about the kind of opponent processing between stability and plasticity. And so the, and then what we're trying to do is say,

right, there's a there, we can take it sort of embodied cognitive science and properly integrate those together. And then there's a there's an additional idea, which is that personality, there's might be an aspect of which it's affording not only individual cognition, but it might be an aspect of which it's affording not only individual cognition, but it might be a, and this is, this goes back to your classroom example, I think. It might be also a way of affording, distributed cognition, improving relevance, realize it, because you can see the various traits as moving subpopulations to emphasize stability, others to open things up.

And so what personality is simultaneously helping to glue cognition together within the individual, but also glue distributed cognition together, which goes back to your point, but the role of person interested. That would explain to some degree the existence of the niches of the, because imagine that there's niches obviously that these personalities fill, because otherwise they wouldn't be useful. And the niches are valuable,

your claim in some sense is that the niches are valuable because they both expand and stabilize the map. That the analogy, biological selection is intended in the work. So you're picking up on it very well, it has to be, if you're thinking, well, it has to be, if you're thinking it's gonna go anywhere, right? It's, I think so too.

Yeah. Well, this is why I was interested in your reaction to the idea that, you know, we're selecting on the basis of logos because that's, 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. That's what it looks like to me. That's right. Do you think that's right? I think it's right in that this way. It depends I I mean, I don't want to do this simple party trick

of what depends what you mean by God, but what I'm saying here. I think there, I don't think. Or real, it depends on what you mean by real. But when you ask questions like that is God real. It depends on just as much on what you think is real as what you're asking about God. Exactly. And here's the, here's the, here's what I will say as a claim.

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. I've been arguing for that in my life. Yeah, that's my point. Because that's where the consciousness field studies has got it wrong.

Consciousness isn't the fundamental mystery. Reality is the fundamental mystery. And the secondary mystery is the relationship between consciousness and reality. Because is it a primary relationship? That's the fundamental ontological question. And one of the offshoots of that is, well, how can you, where is the reality without consciousness?

Like, I haven't been, that's that objective world that's out there without us. But what is it that's out there without us? Without, forget us, consciousness. Well, and that's what people need to hear is that, this is an odd sentence because, yeah, but one of the most exciting areas. It's going to be one of many, John, so like rock him up, man.

One of the exciting areas within, you know, metaphysics right now is the rise of what's called psychotic realism. Yeah, right. And what's called object oriented ontology. And it's like object oriented programming as a metaphor. I won't go into it. But the primary thing that they're on about is they say, look, if you are going to be a realist, again, I'm compressing a lot into very little, but if you're going to be a realist,

you have to admit into your metaphysics, relationships between things that do not depend for their existence on us being aware of those relationships. So, things have to be able to influence and disclose each other in a way that is dark to us. And then what's that? It's like dark matter, dark matter

on the metaphysical way. Yeah, exactly. And what does that mean? Well, what, it's interesting. It means to some degree that you can pick up the orbit of the Earth using Foucault's pendulum. Yeah, it means that. You know what I mean?

What I mean, it means that because somehow the all is embedded in the singular. And you see that with Foucault's pendulum? Sorry, yeah, I was playing between, I was just, there was two reference in my mind, there was the historical thing, and then there was the book, right? And I said, okay.

Right, and so yeah, I think that's right. And people like Morton. So then that brings up the question, is there a distinction between the unknown real and the unconscious? That's the only question of the munis yundas, I think. But that's why I asked you a little bit. That's not right, that's in the world.

Jordan, that's why I asked you a little bit. But I know, Joe, I know that's exactly why I'm bringing it up. Yeah, exactly. So is the unconscious in the know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know.

I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know.

I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know talks about it. I'm gonna use this language, but I think it's fair to him.

He thinks the only way, so he picked 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. They are always inexhaustible, right? They're, so they are simultaneously shining- they're inexhaustible, right? They're, they're, so they are simultaneously shining into our intelligibility, but they are always withdrawing into their reality. They're

right. Right, because every object is more than it appears by an infinite amount. Exactly. And that's partly what new experience and experiences of awe in the inanimate. Yes. Right. Because the infinite is contained somehow within the finite. Okay, this is great. So here's a proposal he has that the only, the, and it's, it goes towards my, my claim of a participatory kind of knowing the only way I can really participate in, right, in the withdrawal of this object into its unconscious. Because if I'm conscious of it, I've defeated the very thing I'm claiming is how I can relate to my own unconscious.

The way there's aspects of me that withdraw beyond my consciousness, but nevertheless shape and make an impact. 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.

That's the kind of stuff that's going on right now in speculative realism. Let's get back to your foreteer. I have to digest that in ways that I'm not going to be conscious of. I don't know how to follow that with the appropriate question. Well, it's the depth within that allows you to appreciate the depth without... It makes me think of the Psalms. I mean, it's diverse, you know, the deep calling to the deep.

And that's not you calling, right? That's what I mean about the transjectivity. Yes, well, that's also the that's also akin to the metaphor of rescuing the father from the underworld because we're constantly doing that. So the father is in the inner underworld always as a consequence of our reflection of the external social and natural world. Ah, so you're I didn't see that in when you've, you've talked about the before. You're seeing a deep kind of resonance between those where each discloses the other. But you saw it, I'm just pointing out my vision of it, I suppose. Yeah, I'm wondering if that's the analogous vision.

I think, yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. I think, you know, and it's yeah, we're rescuing as we're rescuing. It's the discordant. See, it's interesting because it's the discordant between the map and the reality that drives the seeking of the father within, right? Because you see what I mean, because when your desire does not manifest itself and you despair, you call to the father within to reveal himself. And so that's the rescuing of the father from the dragon of chaos. 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 a gist. Yeah. There's another t-shirt. Yeah. But that's the same idea as Kenosis. Yeah, I know the emptying.

And I'm deeply interested in the relationship between Kenosis and Hennosis. Because I don't know Hennosis. Oh, Hennosis is the sort of thing. It's horrifying and great to talk to someone who knows a whole bunch of things. I don't know at all. Oh, thank you, Jordan.

That's quite the compliment coming from someone like you. Hennosis is the hand one. 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 the one within you becomes one with the one without until there is only the one. It's ultimate at one minute. only the one. It's ultimate at one minute. And also it has the sense of atonement because it's the ultimate healing of that which is most excessively distressing to us, which is are being separated from the ground of reality within and the ground of reality without and also separating those. Yes, that is what is most excessively distressing to us. You agree with that. Yes.

So that's why I titled my next book, the title that I am titleing it, which is we who wrestle with God, because that's our fundamental problem, is that dissociation. I believe that's the case. So that calls something forth for me now, the wrestling. But that means that, okay, please, please go ahead with that. What I was going to say is, you know, we're talking about this byvalence of how reality presences it to itself. This is Heidegger's big thing, right?

And there's a sense in which it shines. It shines into our intelligence. It shines forth. But it also withdraws, right? It draws into, it shines with its suchness and it withdraws into its moorness. And wrestling is like that if you think about it, because wrestling I'm making contact, but I'm also being so proud. Think about the two the two the two phenomenologies of realness. One is when things are confirmed and oh, it's real because look at how it all fits

together. Right. Right. And the other is all oh, when he says, I didn't know that. I didn't know that. That surprises me. That's right. That's right. That is the two things that are the most real. Isn't that something? Yeah.

And wrestling, wrestling is both of those. And notice it's a conformity metaphor too, right? You have to come into conformity, literally form yourself to the body of your opponent, right? And you're right. So there's the shining, but there's also the realness because they're shocking you from beyond. I hadn't picked that up on the wrestling metaphor. The wrestling metaphor is actually pointing to it, it brings together, right? The two ways in which reality grabs us, the confirming from within and the start and then

the surprising from without. So that's why we're spoken to in parables, isn't it? I think so. 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. I mean, I took, I did, you know, taking apart Genesis like that was really revelatory to me because, but I, my differed from the atheist because I text I approached the text with reverence and ignorance and humility believing that I was nothing in comparison to what it contained. You thought that there were truths available through transformation not just

through information. Well, what are we stupid? Are we stupid? Is it what we were guided by this book for so many thousands of years and preserved it is because we're stupid. Yeah, I don't think so. Yeah, I mean, that means there's something I don't know about it. It's poor. We're all stupid. Either stupid, which is highly probable or we're all stupid, which is not so highly probable. I think, well, I mean, as I've said, I think one of my deepest criticisms of the new atheists is precisely the fact. I think I have a lot of criticisms of theism too because of the way it has bound itself. I mean current theism, it has bound itself to a Cartesian conception of modernity and reality. And that's why- Going to that, going to that. Well, I want to talk to you about dogman spirit a bit.

Let's leave that. Go into what you just said. Okay. So I'm going to put it. I'm going to say thing I could put a pin in it because we're still trying to do the four p's of knowing. But, but, but the new atheist lose the, the, the, the three other p's and they lose, they, they, they, they, they, they, they look for scientific knowledge in the Bible, not paying attention to how it cultivates wisdom. And the fact, right? And not knowing that there's any difference between exactly acknowledging wisdom. This is what I talked about with Stephen Fry recently, because Stephen, who's aligned 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. Exactly. You know, I'm also going to say a few positive things about dogma. Dogma is the map. I think dogma is, you know, in signal detection theory, I think dogma is the in it. The inescapable need to set the criterion.

At some point, you can't like, yes, in signal detection theory, you have to set the criterion. And all you do to set the criterion, this sounds like Pascal, is you assess the relevance of the risks, because if you all gather more information, but then you have to set the criterion for that. Yes, yes, again, and again, and at some point, that's right. That's right. But you can.

So the criterion, the criterion we're talking about is the worship of that ultimate spirit. Well, and that's the setting of the criteria. And there's a dogma, there's an element in which dogma serves that. So we can't just, because Fry says, well, I like the spirit, but not the dogma. It's like, no, because you know, because you have to make a decision. That's your point. Okay, that's right. And in every act, there's a decision. So in every act, there's a worship of the dogma because you set the criterion. Right, but you set the criterion, but that's not the same thing as making the connection.

Don't forget that credo is later, and I say should always be in service to religio, religio, which means to bind. That's that connectedness we've been talking about throughout. 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. And when Crito goes from giving your heart

to I assert, we stop making creed, we stop conceiving of credo in a way that sees it intrigally in service of religio. And that's a part of my critique of what's happening. Okay, so that seems to lean wisely into the four areas that you were going to discuss. Well, yeah, so I went back to, we had propositional and then of the non propositional, we have procedural, then we have perspective on 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 it as sort of a Gibsonian way of talking about it. The knowing that creates affordances that makes all the other knowings possible, right? There's a way in which biology and culture and my online cognition shaped me and shaped the world so that they fit each other. I mean, this is geared to even notion of what culture is. It's simultaneously models the world to me and models me to the world.

That's the participatory level. I use a metaphor from geared, Chris and I do in our work, of the agent-oriented relationship, which is like your forum for action, right? That what participatory knowing does is, it gets you to assume, student, like it's a process of co-identification, the stoics talk about, I assume an identity

as I'm assigning identities to things, such that affordances between me and it emerge. I'm a grasper, that's grass bubble, that's an affordance, and therefore I can come into relationship with the cup. That's the level of participatory knowing, and that grounds everything else because without the affordances,

you can't get any of the other kinds of knowing going. You can't get a grip. Yes, you can't get Marlopontes, all optimal grip. So here's what I would say. The participatory knowing gives you a field of affordances. The perspective of knowing making certain affordances salient to you, perspectivally. That gives you a situational awareness.

The situational awareness tells you which skills from your procedural knowing you should bring to bear. And then once those skills are in action, you are getting the right kind of causal interaction with the world for your propositional evidence. I don't think that you realize how much you pack into those statements. Maybe you do.

I mean, I know you thought about... I know you know you thought about each of them for years, but, you know, there's a lot... It's like the cup metaphor you use. There's a lot lurking behind the, there, there's a lot, it's like the cup metaphor you use. There's a lot lurking behind the scenes there. And you, you hit your listener without when you lay out that. So I'm going to ask you to do that again, if you would. And I'm going to listen to it again.

I'm happy to do so. And I, I, I know that my person, I mean, if I don't understand that there are probably a few other people who don't. I think that's a poor listening. That's a fair assumption. And I do not want my and fios to undermine my attempts at logos. So we'll put it that way. So the participatory knowing, you know, we participate in affordances. It generates a field of affordances for us. Okay, so let me stop you there. Okay, so my value structure determines what field of

affordances manifests itself to me. Depend, so tell me what more about it, would you mean by value structure? Because if you mean... Well, value is value is the determinant of my attentional resources. I'm going to attend to that, which I believe is most valuable. And so I have a value hierarchy lurking in the background. That's in that deep unconscious, let's say. But that value hierarchy should be predicated on the manifestation of the highest spirit. So what I should want to afford itself to me are those affordances that afford me the

opportunity to pursue the path of the highest spirit. If I'm oriented properly, if I'm worshipping properly, yes or no, sorry, it's not a command. We are ultimately, because there's a difference there. I mean, so like, I probably mean both failing to distinguish between them, but I mean in the ideal, but that would be the ideal that I would be, what would you say, inclined to pursue if I were conscious of its existence? So I would say, let me see if I can, let me see if I can map this because this is interesting because I'm using the, I'm using the term affordance because it's become one of the central terms with the understanding.

I understand. Yeah. Well, that didn't know that either. That means that, Yeah. Well, that didn't know that either. That means that that why? Because that work was shelved for, I mean, I became enamored of it when I encountered it, but that work was in some sense shelved for a very long time. Well, there's a personal reason and there's a collectivies. And the personal reason is I was lucky to study and enter into collaboration with one of Gibson's great protege's John Kennedy. of Gibson's great protege, John Kennedy. And so that's how I learned to appreciate this. The field as a whole, because of the notion that, you know, cognition is not in your head, it's between you and the world. That cries out for the notion of affordance, right?

It cries out for it. And so it's how it's influenced now. Yes. Or increase, I mean, it had it's influenced to begin with. What an influence. It's now a central construct within 4-E cognitive science, central construct. Now the idea, now the idea, and I think this lines up with you,

but let's see, because the idea is, like, I don't have to be conscious, right, of the affordance relationship between me and the cup. That's given by me having a particular kind of body, the cup having a particular kind of location. Now, but what you're saying here. You're conscious of it. You're only conscious of enough to make use of it.

You're only conscious of it. What's necessary in order for you to make use of it? If that didn't work, you'd have to become conscious of more of it. Right, but okay, I'm trying to get some, maybe. I'm worried that we're talking across purposes. What I need to say is, right, there is, there is, a constitutive, I'm gonna use your term,

there's a constitutive value of adactivity and that my affordances arise for me precisely because of the kind of adaptive agent I am. So for example, do you use Gibson's... Do you want to be or want to be... Right, or want to be... Not sure it's what I am, or if it's my... I'm not sure if I'm directed by who I am or I'm directed by my ideal.

I think I'm directed by my ideal because it's in the space of desire. That's the thing. Yeah, but... but, but, because, John, are your affordances affording you are the affording who you could be? But I want to say both. Right? I, I, I, I don't, I, I, don't, I, I, I, I, I, I want to be, because I want to be able to say that both is sufficiently radical. Well, I think that's, we'll have to talk about it. I mean, we are, we are investigating the claim in some sense that the world calls you to become. Yes, so the ideal is implicit in the affordance.

But I would also put the Hightigarian thing on it, my Gaza and my way of being in the world also calls things forth from the world. Yes. Those are not graspable to a fly, right? That's a lot of important. That's a, that's an agent arena relationship doesn't exist for the, no matter what the fly wishes or wants, that's not going to be the case.

I want to say that there are things that are the case for me that are can stick that play a constitutive role in the affordances that are available to me. That's what I- that's what I want to emphasis. Yes, well that's the dog my element as well. Perhaps. That's the element of structure. It's the element of- of setting the criterion. It's the element of what already is. And it's respect for that. But it's also the element of, you know, that the world is also shaped independently of me sometimes by culture, sometimes by technology, but sometimes by nature itself, such that I can make a purchase on the world.

I want to resist the romantic notion that the world is a blank slate that I simply express myself upon. The world has its own structure that constrains and puts demands on me. So sometimes we work with that. Like if this was revealed in our errors. Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. And if this cup didn't have what Spinoza would call

its canadas, its structure, its resistance to force, I couldn't use it to hold up the hold water and Etc that's what I meant So let's say that a participatory knowing generates the affordances and we've got some variation on that that we're playing around with But then what I would say is the perspective of knowing makes them salient to me So this is graspable right now to me and I foreground it. I size it up It be I salient's landscape around it. It's present to me. So this is graspable right now to me, and I foreground it. I size it up. I salient landscape around it.

It's present to me now in the way that other affordances are not present to me. Why is that different than what we just discussed? I don't think it's different, but what I wanted to make look for was a distinction between them because I wanted

to, I mean, I think you would agree with it. I wanted there to be, you know, an unconscious level at which we know the world, in which the world and I are being co-shaped together. We talked about that before. And so I want, I, that's what I'm trying to make a place for with the participatory knowing. I want to make that it, I, that's what I'm trying to make a place for with the participatory

knowing. I want to make that it precedes us in an important way as, as sort of self-aware beings. The perspective that the room is there before you walk into it. The room is there, but also my body. I mean, this is the big thing about embodiment. It's taking the body deeply seriously as constitutive of my cognition. If I didn't, I didn't make my body, right? I participated and I can shape it. I can move it.

But it's given to you in a sense. It's given to me. Exactly. And that givenness gives, it constrains the way in which the world can be given to me. That's what I'm trying to say. And I want to make a deep, I'm for you to talk about.

That's the definition of reality. Well, I, yeah, at least the one sense we were talking about earlier, but yeah, I take a bodymit deeply seriously. And so another way of putting it is participatory knowing is knowing at the level. I think that's why the Christians emphasize the resurrection of the body. But what Jonathan said about the Christians emphasizing the body and the goodness of the world over against the nostics. I'm a little bit worried about that term, because nosticism wasn't a group of people.

It's more like a style of religiosity, like fundamentalism, but I get his point. There were certain, at least the Valentinian. Yes, well, I mean, it really struck me that valorization of the body, this Yes, well, I mean, it really struck me that valid valorization of the body, this insistence across. And this is something again, I would say that the new atheist don't appreciate it all. It's like, well, the resurrection of the body, well, what does that mean? It means profound respect for the body. It means it means attributing to the body, the value of the spirit.

But it means something psychologically, which is, which is what you're getting at. Exactly. Exactly. Your consciousness is not separate in some sense from No, that's exactly the body. Yeah. So the participatory knowing is at the level of embodiment. And then your consciousness, your state of mind

makes certain affordances salient to you. That's what situational awareness is. That's what the That's what situational awareness is. That's what the whole psychology of situational awareness is. Like, how do people pick up on the affordances that are available? How do they make them present? How do they also present themselves to it? Right? That co-presenting. And that's what you're looking, and the funny,

talk about realness. That's what you're looking for in the video game. You know, it's not very similar to that predicts that sense of presence or how real the game right? Well, you can tell that if you watch the Simpsons or or play Tetris. Tetris. Exactly. Yeah, gives

people a sense of presence. It's not based on very similar to what it is is there is they're getting into a flow state. They're they're picking up on affordances. They're making them salient. They're getting a

Dynamic flowing situational music to yes exactly and music is how we do serious play with our salience landscaping Okay, now as a casual outside So that's the Perspectival knowing once we have situational awareness what the situational awareness do Situational awareness basically tells you which skills should you bring to bear? Is swimming relevant here? Well, no. Well, how do I know my situational awareness? So that's the perspective. How do I need to read the story?

Well, yes, right. Exactly. So which skills should you bring to bear? That's the procedural known. Once you've got your skills engaged, and this is the fundamental point of the pragmatist, right? That it's also, it's your skilled activity that undergirds your propositional. Once the procedural known, yes, definitely engaged. Then understand means.

Yes, yes, exactly. So that's what I'm doing. You see, I'm trying to build it up participatory, into perspective, into procedural, into propositional. And the new atheists and modernity and all of this stuff is locked in a propositional tyranny. And it's cut us off from all of this. And cutting us off from this, cuts us off from the body,

cuts us off from the primary connection. And that propositional tyranny is that best encapsulated in the idea that there's nothing outside the text? Well, I think that's right, except you see. And so I've read Derrida deeply, except, right? And Derrida, I forget who wrote the book, Semi-Eological Reductionism.

He's open to this kind of critique. Derrida, of course, has something outside wrote the book, semi-elogical reductionism. He's open to this kind of critique. Derrida, of course, has something outside of the text, which is Differance itself. And that's the whole point. Differance can't be captured in the text. It can't be separated from the text, but so he has this doorway. And that's why he gets attracted so much to negative theology. That's why I would argue.

That's why he's doing that. Negative theology, what do you mean? So negative theology was part of Neoplatonic Christianity heavily influenced by the ineffable experiences that people have within mystical experiences, which is ultimate and it's also based on a critique of You shouldn't think of God as a thing, right? This is the no thingness of God. Not the nothingness, the no thingness. We should also talk about the confusion of those contributes to nihilism, but we'll maybe come back to that another day.

Right, so the idea of negative theology is you fundamentally, I wonder if this is like Jung's circumambulation. You fundamentally understand God by saying what God is not, but not, of course, randomly, right? What you're trying to do is. Oh, that's sort of like the God of the gaps. Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, sorry.

Oh, no, that's, don't apologize. We're friends talking. Well, I don't, I don't want to derail the conversation. So there's been, it's been like this and it's been wonderful. It feels to me like doing poetry. No, it's more that it's more of a recognition of not of the God of the gaps, but of a recognition how our categorical scheme is always inadequate. So for example, is God an object? Well, no, that's wrong. Is God a subject like the way we are? No, that's wrong, too. That's in the context. So God escapes our categorical.

It's right. God is by definition, in some sense, what escapes our categorized. Because God is supposed to be the grounding of the intelligibility that makes the categorical scheme possible. At least that's the deal. But it's also presence within the category scheme,

if it's set up properly. Right. So the point about negative, that's why it's not just the God of the gaps. The point is to see within the category scheme, if it's set up properly. Right. So, so the point about negative, that's why it's not just the God of the gaps. The point is, I see, I see, I see, I see, I see, I see, I see within the categories, that it's present within the categories, but it's not capturable within the categories. That's what you're trying to do. The category, yeah, yes, the reality supersedes the categories, which is why you're not supposed to make idols, why you're not supposed to make representations of the icons to

some in Jonathan back into the conversation one more time. You can make icons, right? And you got John Merriens' distinction between the idol and the icon. And what's the, what's the distinction? The distinction. The icon does not capture God. Right. That's exactly it. That's an artwork. So an artwork is an icon. Exactly. And a propaganda is an idol. Yes.

I would agree with both of those statements. Well, isn't that something because they're really in some sense far astray, aren't they? But they do map. And so how cool is that? So art is the icon. How cool. And propaganda is the idol. Exactly, man.

And you know, and I had these paintings in my house and they were melds of the icon and the idol. Right. Because it's all this socialist realism. I have 200 pieces of socialist realism of the icon and the idol. Because it's all this socialist realism. I have 200 pieces of socialist realism watching the icon and the idol fight with each other. And the problem is they are, and I want to get the enemology of this word, they, at a superficial level of similarity, they can easily be confused. They can easily be confused. Okay. Yes. Well, that they, and I would say they will inevitably confused in the. Be confused. Okay. Yes. Well, that they and I would say they will inevitably confused in the absence of God.

Well, and I think because propaganda, like this is something I've been working on too, John, is that you know that we we make religious the next thing on the hierarchy if we don't give to what is religious, it's proper place. And I think the new atheists are beginning to realize this. It's like, oh, look at that. We didn't eradicate the religious spirit. We can't. It just moves somewhere and it becomes pathologized by its association with that. This is Tillic's critique of ideology. I'm sorry, well, I'm of ideology because I think ideology is a form of ideology. But this is Tillich's critique of idolatry, which is, we cannot, and I think you said things

along this discussion that pointed this, we cannot abandon our ultimate concern, right? That's his way of thinking. Yes, that's right, we can't. No, we can't. So this isn't a negative discussion. This isn't a negative definition of God either, because to get back to your negative theology point, I've been concentrating in my thought recently And so this isn't a negative, this isn't a negative definition of God either because

to get back to your negative theology point, I've been concentrating in my thought recently on the positive attributes of God. And so like to drive towards unity and the motivational hierarchy, that is so neoplatonic Jordan. I mean, my gosh, that is so neoplatonic. Well, you know, we were all unconscious avatars of great philosophers. And some less unconscious than others, but it's still there. And so, but you can't do away with that drive to unity. And in some sense, you also can't critique it because when we say the good, we assume

that there's a unity between goods. I think, yeah, this is for Titus's trans-moral notion of the good. And you and Jonathan talked about the trans moral notion that there's, like he says, look, any sort of moral or aesthetic goodness is ultimately based on the goodness of being. And he says, when are we attributing being?

He says, we attribute being the more we find that there's a oneness of something. And when we understand, are we are we are bringing things so the the the knowledge is is a process of oneness and what we're doing is we're conforming to the reality which being is a process of wanting. And when those are at one, that is when the heart starts to become starts to rest from its suffering. And I think there's something fundamentally right about that. I can ask you something because I think I'm getting you.

And what I heard you saying is like, let's take the metaphor of the idol and the icon fused. And if there isn't something beyond them, you can't actually pull them apart. That's what I'm hearing you say. Yes, they collapse into one another. Yes. Look what happened with the deification of Stalin and Marx and Lenin and Mao. That's not accidental. It's inevitable.

And we have the, we have the deification of celebrities and we have the deifications of products and we have the deification of ideologies. And what I wanted to say, but just before we lose the thread of Derrida, is for Derrida, you know how we are the threat of dareda, is for dareda, you know how we are talking about how it's trans-categorical, but also present within the, that's what difference is, in least my reading of dareda. It's within the text, but it's also points to that which can't be reduced or captured in the text.

That's why I think he, that, because otherwise, like, why is he attracted to negative theology? What's going on there? What's the interest? And so you'll have to delve into the difference idea a bit more and flesh it out for me. I know it's key to deritous thought, but it's a long time since I've thought about it. And so what's your, what's the, what's the current, let's say, cultural understanding of difference? And what's your understanding? No, okay. I don't, I don't know if those two are identical. That would be, I don't think they are.

That's why I wanted you to say to both of them. I think the Eradot and Foucault are often invoked and very, very rarely read, I think. So when you're asking me about the cultural, I think that that is by and large the case. I think there's an indication of ideas or themes from them, but the hard work of wrestling with their arguments is often not done.

So I hesitate to say what the cultural, because I think I don't hear when deconstruction is invoked. I don't hear, I don't hear difference being talked about, or spoken about. I hear, I hear, and so I hear deconstruction being reduced to a kind of demolishment as opposed to what I think Dareda wanted it to be. I'm not here to defend Dareda either.

I have criticisms of Dareda, but I think if we're going to criticize Dareda, I spent, I spent years literally working with it fed Dera da either. I have criticisms of Dera da, but I think if we're going to criticize Dera da, I spent, I spent, you know, years literally working with it. This is my understanding of difference to answer your question. So the idea of difference is, and it has to go at the, it's basically like John Seryles argument that semantics is not reducible to syntax and pragmatics is not reducible to semantics. It's that whenever I'm saying anything, the way you understand it is how it differs from other things, contrast class.

So when you know this from a cycle, well, maybe it's been a while, but you know, when you ask people, what are some things that are flammable? Well, they'll say would because it contrasts with metal and stone. They won't say people, what are some things that are flammable? Well, they'll say, would, because it contrasts with metal and stone. They won't say people, right, even though people are flammable, because it doesn't belong to the contrast set, right? That's sort of standard. So, we understand something in terms of its contrast, something it differs from, but we also defer.

What we do is we go to the other thing, and we get some information that isn't in and we bring it back to often insightful reinterpret. So we're both differ differing and deferring in whenever we're understanding anything, which means we can't limit the interpretation of the text to just what is captured within the context. Yes, exactly. No, definitely, of course not. Of course not.

I mean, the text has a reader. Yeah. It's like there's, I've thought about this. There's a word. There's a phrase. There's a sentence. There's a paragraph. There's a chapter.

There's a book. There's a library. That's not the big thing. Yeah, well, that's built into you. You're the reader. You're the breeder reader bringing the consequence of multiple texts to this text, and the text is therefore the interaction between those, not multitude of texts speaking within you.

And this current text, it's a dialogue. Right, it's a dialogue. It's a dialogue. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. If it's done properly, it's a dialogue

between the universal human spirit that engages the golden thread across time and this current text. And that's philosophy. Yes, I agree. And you can tell when you're doing that because that's the meaning. That's meaning. So I think that's it. Do we agree on that, by the way? Because we're both so concerned with meaning. Is meaning the manifestation of the philosophyosophia. I think meaning in its highest form, I would say then. I would say, I understand meaning when we're not talking about sort of semantic propositional meaning. Yeah. When we talk about the meaning that goes into meaning and life and the meaning.

It's essential meaning. Yeah, yeah, that meaning. So I think the non-propositional meaning. Yes, exactly right. Right. There are no. Because meaning is all the way. When we say meaning in life, exactly right. There no. Because meaning is all for the kids. When we say meaning in life, we're using, we're using meaning as a metaphor.

We're saying there's something about, there's something like sentences that's like between me and the world, right? And I think we have to remember that that's what we're doing. Yeah, I think that meaning is, the connectedness, the dynamic affordance that allows us to optimally grip the world, and thereby affords the cultivation of wisdom. If we think of wisdom not just knowledge. Yes. Okay. Okay. So that, well, that's the driving spirit of the West, not power.

Right. When it's, when it's, look, I mean, we deserve to be criticized. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that, that things are above criticism and that power doesn't play its nefarious role, because it certainly does. And so does the love of power, all of that. And it leads to terrible consequences. But we're actually trying to analyze that. And we're trying to say, look, it's, what you have to pursue wisdom. And you find it in, you find the pathway to wisdom in meaning in the manifestation of meaning as an experiential phenomenon I agree with that and I think I mean I mean a few minutes ago you sounded like there it on I don't mean that as any kind of insult now You're sounding like hightigar. I mean the question concerning technology was the whole idea that we have reduced our our relationship to the world as a relationship of power

And we think, right? Oh, that's his claim. I see. I see. I didn't understand that exactly. That's the fundamental claim. And so we, we control. Oh, that's why David Suzuki criticizes the West and Genesis, because he sees that he's

responding to that mastery as control from the power. Yes. Right rather than the dance. I think when it's done, right? It's the dance. He's Heidegger's word that the dance will be reintroduced to power, which is supposed to mix his dalleons with Naziism all that more. Yeah. Well, I think Ralkowski is warning. A warning. Yeah. If Heidegger had kept to his original reading of Plato, instead of turning and making Plato the villain, in his story of the history of nihilism, Rikolsky makes a great argument that that is what sort

of sensitizes Heidegger to the Nazis. So Heidegger basically gets plateenism. He gets it and then he inverts his interpretation. And it looks for kind of suspicious reasons that he does that. And then he recaps it. Should we go on? I also wonder too.

Should we take Heidegger's turning to Nazism as an indication of his corruption or as a dreadful warning about the dreadful attractiveness of precisely such things to the unprepared mind? Well, I mean, Heideggerakers of mine to be contend with. So that's a terrible warning for sure. And I mean, I mean, hightakers deep reading a seat.

Yeah, I mean, and you know, people have wrestled with this, uh, you know, like Rokoski, like Dereada about just like, why is hightaker end up here? And and and what like I said, I think Rokowski makes a very good argument, but it's deeply perplexing because what's happening

in Heidegger, Heidegger reads Nietzsche very deeply. And then what he sees is he sees that he wants, he wants to reconstitute fundamental ontology so that our primary relationship to being is not will to power. He wants to get outside of power framework, which is the question concerning technology and all of this stuff. And you know, my friend Johannes, Peter Hauser. Yes, and that's driving the positive side of the environmentalism movement as well, right? Let's say the desire for a dance rather than for the

impositions of power. This is this is how to go appropriating records term glazen height glazen height is this idea of a participant letting be not in the passive sense, but the way you let your partner be when you're dancing together, right? The the affording the affording and Heidegger says what we've done is we've, instead of, instead of that, we've turned everything into what he calls standing reserve. And writing was a piece. I was tempted. I see that's the standing reserve idea.

It's for the consumption of power. Yes, yes. And there are only relationship. And this is From's critique, right? The modal confusion that we are trapped in the having mode. We think of all of that. But you'd say then it would be a propositional materialism that would lead to that outcome

because if it's dead matter that we're dealing with, then that's the logical consequence of that. That's the logical moral consequence of that. What would you say? It's a stance that's supposed to be outside the moral world, right? So the objective world is dead material. What do you do with dead material?

You store it for, are you not inevitably tempted to store it for the consumption of power? Exactly, exactly. That's, you have, that's, I mean, that's the core of the hidegaring critique. And then the idea is, can we recover ways of being, ways of knowing that put us into, and this is a religious notion.

So then why did he turn to Nazi? As a meath, that's what he wanted to recover. There's a romanticism about extremist movements that the propositional world doesn't grasp. Maybe that has something to do with, but it still doesn't explain to me why he fell prey to it. So I mean, I think he and we have to remember because we're misled by the Nazi war machine to understand how much of a nature movement, Naziism was, how much a return to nature, how much the the body how much this was about getting right side of There is immense nature romanticism in the precursors to Nazism. Yes. Yes, and right and included eradication of foreign Species when they were introduced into into the natural environment And there was a nature as purity that dimension that came out of that.

Nature as purity, yeah. And that's a very complex idea. So you think Heidegger was attracted by the nature romanticism. I think he was attracted by the nature romanticism. I think he was attracted by the original, I mean, we forget this too because of the later deals that Hitler made. But, you know, and this is why

what's the later of the brown shirts? I can't remember the essay. Osly? No. No, no. I can't remember. It's he's German. And he called for a set, once the German, when the Nazis had taken power,

he called for the second revolution, the second revolution against the capitalist and against the technology. Well, Nazism, Camcineer? No, I think it's something like wrong or something like that. The head of the essay, the brown sugar.

Okay, okay, well, I guess it doesn't matter. Okay, so there's a secondary revolution. Well, okay, that's why he's assassinated in the night of long knives because we can't learn realize that if the second revolution happened, he would piss off, right? The industrialist, he would piss off the right, the technology that he needed. And so that's why that's one of the reasons for the night of the long knives when they're when they're all assassinated. And we have to remember that that's because this because the second revolution was being he was off the guy that was with the head of the essay was pushing for the second revolution right and because okay and the second revolution sorry I need to know more about that because this is something I know this is no point obviously enough about. So

if you read Heidegger there there's not only, there's a nature romanticism, but there's also an agrarian romanticism. There's that getting back for soil, and you notice the, you know, blood and soil also getting back to the soil and getting back to the earth and, and, and, and, and, and, and that's, it's so that's all a call out of the propositional, but it's a pathological call out of the proposition. Very much so. It becomes pathological. Yes.

Maybe that's because it doesn't find his proper expression in logos. Because I often think of Hitler uses his logos antithetically. He has a gift, a gift of the word, but he perverts it and subverts it to the service of power. And then these. I think that's right.

I think that if Heidegger had stayed with his original reading, which he was lecturing on all through the 20s and into the 30s, Rokoski argues, if he had stayed with that original reading of Plato, he would have stayed sensitive to the logos and the way Tillic did, like Tillic got it. Tillic is the first non-Jewish academic to be persecuted by the Nazis and he eventually

leaves because he gets it. He gets the logos. He really gets it. What does he get exactly? He gets that the attempt to separate using our language, the logos from the love of being and the capacity to love other people. And sorry, this sounds like a hallmark card, but I think we've talked enough that these words aren't just be heard trivially, that the attempt to separate, I mean, and this is what Christian does. That's when you can tell you've talked enough

when such words are not to be heard trivially anymore. Yes, that's a very good thing to say. Yeah, I like that. Tillic gets, if you try and separate love from logos, a gope from logos, that you are, you are male forming logos. And that's why that's why you have all of this sort of crypto love going on within the Nazis. And there's even the homo eroticism, which is so bizarre,

given the other aspects of the Nazi ethos, at least that's what I would argue. You can drive nature out with a pitchfork, but she always comes roaring back in. Yeah. And and and and and a Heidegger was also. I think he thought like many people that he could somehow manage this. Right. I think he, you see, one of my big critiques of,

see, Heidegger has always been attracted to sort of nebulous gravitas, right? The mystery and it's important. And that's wrapped up with his own building of his own mystique that I am the great thinker, that I know how to constantly move forward. Oh, that's interesting. So I see.

So you think he also got caught up in a kind of ego-tism that the Nazis called to? That's interesting because that's a very dangerous thing for a thinker because the first thing you should think if you're a thinker is that what you don't know is a lot more than what you know. And you almost know nothing. And so you don not want to.

Yeah, well, you know, in Jung's relations between the ego and the unconscious, he discusses that in great detail, how to not be taken over by the ideal once you're beginning to allow it to manifest itself within you, or even when it forces itself upon you to never identify with the sun. You're not the sun, you might be revolving around the sun, but you're not the sun.

Yeah, it correct. S-U-N. And so, at Plato says you can only, like in the analogy of the cave, you can only glimpse the sun, and then you're supposed to return down. Right, right, right. Right, right. The classic hero myth. Yeah, the the the the the egotism, Rokowski argues that he does some of Heidegger's letter about around the period when he's turning in his interpretation of Plato. And while he sort of he says, you know, this is no paraphrasing with considerable liberty, but Heidegger basically says, you know, I'm having trouble. I'm sort of worried because I'm really understanding Plato and there's nothing for me to say. There's nothing for me to say. And then he turns. Height of this is that.

Yes. And then he says, no, no, wait, nothing for my ego to say. Yes. Right. And then, no, no, Plato is actually the villain of the story of the history of metaphys Plato turns being in the metaphysics launches us down the the so he finds he finds a convenient demon and puts himself in as a counter position. Yeah, and I think that desensitizes him to the secratic domain. And that's that's driven by egotism. Yeah. and that's that's the hook for the Nazis. I think so and I mean and one and and And what about the inner totalitarian has to welcome the outer totalitarian. Oh, that's well said That's very well said. I like that Yes, well, that's what makes me skeptical about people who claim that

power structures human relations Is that a is that a proposition or a confession, dear sir? And you know, I had this really interesting experience, John. I was debating Slavojizjec. Yeah. And I started with a critique of the Communist Manifesto, which according to my critics only indicated my rabid ignorance of Marx. But despite that, I thought it was a central document in all of my ignorance. And I talked about its call to bloody violent revolution

and a quarter of the audience laughed and cheered. And it stopped me in my tracks for like five seconds. I thought Freud could should be here to hear the and Jung as well, to hear the Freudian slip, but to hear the collective unconscious manifest itself so clearly in the relative secrecy of the crowd. And so it is it that power structures human relations,

my dear Marxist postmodernist, so is it that that's the inner totalitarian within you, cheering the outer totalitarian on, and justifying it because if power is the fundamental motivation, then why shouldn't I use my will to power as my fundamental motivation? Or if I do use my will to power as my fundamental motivation, why shouldn't I justify that by the criticism

that that is in fact, once the blinders are off, the central human motivation, and therefore I'm entirely justified in my attempts just like all the great people throughout time. And that's what's rivting our culture apart, I believe. I think, yeah, I mean, I think the glorification of power, I would say that there just like the defecation, the defecation of power as the ultimate, as the ultimate

motivational personality. But I would say that that has a considerable history. And I think it goes back to the rise of the scientific revolution and the understanding of God. I mean, it predates a scientific revolution when you get the nominalism of Scottis and Occam, and say there are no real patterns in the world, you denude the world of logos, and then you understand yourself and God as will, as will, right? That for me, and I talked about this in the series,

that's the fundamental change. Look at how rapidly things, that look at it by the time of Shakespeare, God is just this sort of this absurd power that's on the fringes of intelligibility. And that's somebody as sensitive to cultural depth as Shakespeare, and he's getting it. He's really getting it.

It's like, what happened? And if you're a feared author, by the way, you could equally say, I've read and understood Shakespeare, what is there left for me to say? Yes. And you'd be equally wrong and equally right. Yeah, I think. So I mean, I think that there is,

there, when we talked about this around the notion of dogma, I mean, if you don't understand faith, in the way it is in the Old Testament, faith is to be coupled to God, married to God, it's more like faithfulness than it is. Yes, yes. The assertion of belief without evidence. Yes, yes, yes, definitely.

When you move to that notion of faith and we now use the word belief and we forget that it originally comes from the German believe and believe and to give your heart to something. But we now understand it as assertion and what is assertion? It is an act of will. So it's the heart, right? At the heart, even of our theology, we have the will to power. And that's why high-degers critique of the world. Rather have the will to power. And that's why Heidegger's critique of nothing. Rather than the will to humility or what Aquinas was trying to save, which is love, right, love is when the will is when the will is moved by something outside of the will or something like that. But you know, that's, that's why Heidegger's critique of Nietzsche is so profound. I mean, now to say something positive about Heidegger, right?

Because he, he's, Nietzsche says, well, you know, here's this structure of Christianity. And all Nietzsche does is invert it. And the will to power is in both. And Heidegger says, no, no, no, you're still bound to it in so far as you're just negating it. What you have to do is, right, you're still bound to it in so far as you're just negating it. What you have to do is try to get outside of it. You have to break the shared presuppositions of both sides. I say something similar with, I think that the,

I want to break free from the shared set of presupposition between the modern theists and the modern atheists. That's why I call myself a non-theist, because I think non-theism is the attempt to say the shared presuppositions are ultimately mis-framing our relationship with sacredness and we need to get beyond them. And it's not only a philosophical argument, the mystics, I would say, converge in a position that's very much like non-theism. John, I'm going to stop us there. Yeah, that's fine. That's a fine closing statement and good because I'm done.

Well, thank you very much. It's an inexhaustible conversation. And I appreciate you participating in it very much. Well, thank you for having me. And I've been a great proponent of yours, you know. I mean that, I mean that. I mean that in the sense of noting the greatness that's in you and seeing how it's manifested itself, especially in your relationship with your students and noticing that and having

admiration and respect for that. And I respect your work and you know, I disagree with it in parts, but it's always, we've always been able to do that in a way that is born with affection and respect. Well, God, it's always nice to find someone who disagrees with your work who could help correct it. Exactly. Seeing you be good. That's why I want to talk to you. I don't like being wrong. And I know you don't. No, no, no.

No doubt we're still both pretty wrong. Mostly so. If the history of science is something we should pay attention to, which we should, yes, or the history of our own life for that matter. Yeah. All right, John. Thank you very much. Shake it, yeah.

We'll talk again, man. Definitely. I would like that. I would like that very much. I would like it too. So we'll set it up.