The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 277. Deeper Yet Into The Weeds | Pageau & Vervaeke

Episode Date: August 9, 2022

This was the first time that Jonathan Pagaeu, John Vervaeke, and Jordan Peterson all sat down together in person. Recorded in Dr. Peterson’s home, and prominently featuring many of Kwakwakaʼwakw carver Charles Joseph’s incredible statues and carvings, this recording may require a few complete watchthroughs. The conversation was created to intentionally dive deep into the areas of systems of perception and their impacts on our abilities to prioritize, the nature of YHWH (Judeo-Christian God), and the exploration of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. This conversation is only the beginning of many more conversations to have between these three and on these topics. Please comment any insights that you have derived from this video, my team will be paying close attention to the progress on these ideas.Jonathan Pageau is a symbolic thinker, YouTuber, and class carver of orthodox icons. Jordan and Jonathan have an ongoing dialogue surrounding Judeo-Christian narrative, reality, and symbolism among many other topics.John Vervaeke is an Assistant Professor in Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Toronto. His work constructs a bridge between science and spirituality in order to understand the experience of meaningfulness and the cultivation of wisdom so as to afford awakening from the meaning crisis.If you want to hear the rest of my conversation, please go to https://www.dailywire.com/watch and become a member today. Thanks. This episode is sponsored by Elysium health. Visit: http://explorematter.com/jordan Check out Jonathan Pageau’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtCTSf3UwRU14nYWr_xm-dQhttps://thesymbolicworld.com(speaking)https://pageaucarvings.com(carving)https://orthodoxartsjournal.org(writing) Watch more from John Vervaeke: https://www.youtube.com/user/johnvervaeke —Links— Jordan Peterson Commencement Address: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvHjhtM8D7w&t=368s&ab_channel=HillsdaleCollegeImprimis subscribe: https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/free-lifetime-subscription-to-imprimis/Online Course sign up: online.hillsdale.eduFour Pillars: Educating for America (Imprimis): https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/four-pillars-educating-america/Faith and Reason are Mutually Reinforcing (Imprimis): https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/faith-reason-mutually-reinforcing/Civil Rights in American History Online Course: https://online.hillsdale.edu/landing/civil-rights-in-american-historyTheology 101: The Western Theological Tradition Online Course: https://online.hillsdale.edu/landing/theology-101Introduction to Western Philosophy Online Course: https://online.hillsdale.edu/landing/introduction-to-western-philosophyIntroduction to Aristotle’s Ethics: How to Lead a Good Life Online Course: https://online.hillsdale.edu/landing/aristotles-ethicsConstitution 101 Online Course: www.hillsdale.edu/con101Winston Churchill and Statesmanship: https://online.hillsdale.edu/landing/winston-churchill-and-statesmanship // SIGN UP FOR DAILY WIRE+ //www.dailywireplus.com // SUPPORT THIS CHANNEL // Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/jordanbpeterson.co...Donations: https://jordanbpeterson.com/donate // COURSES // Discovering Personality: https://jordanbpeterson.com/personalitySelf Authoring Suite: https://selfauthoring.comUnderstand Myself (personality test): https://understandmyself.com // BOOKS // Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life: https://jordanbpeterson.com/Beyond-Order12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos: https://jordanbpeterson.com/12-rules-...Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief: https://jordanbpeterson.com/maps-of-m... // LINKS // Website: https://jordanbpeterson.comEvents: https://jordanbpeterson.com/eventsBlog: https://jordanbpeterson.com/blogPodcast: https://jordanbpeterson.com/podcast // SOCIAL // Twitter: https://twitter.com/jordanbpetersonInstagram: https://instagram.com/jordan.b.petersonFacebook: https://facebook.com/drjordanpetersonTelegram: https://t.me/DrJordanPetersonAll socials: https://linktr.ee/drjordanbpeterson

So hello, everyone. I'm pleased here, pleased today to have with me, Jonathan Pazo and John Verveiki, people that most of you, many of you, not all of you, will be familiar with. I've been working on a new book entitled We Who Ressel with God, and it's been influenced by Jonathan's ideas and John's ideas. And I developed an argument in part as a consequence of the public lectures I've been doing for the last three months trying to push my ideas farther. And I put forward a set of propositions that I'm basing one of the book chapters on. I wrote it as an outline. And then I think it's solid.

I've been testing it when I've been speaking at universities as well to diverse audiences of specialists to see if they'll object to it, because I think it's actually quite radical. And I sent this group of propositions or this list of propositions to Jonathan and John a month ago about, and we've been going back and forth. And I thought, I heard Jonathan was coming to town to do a talk with John and I thought,

hey, that's a good opportunity. We could get together and walk through these propositions because I'd like to see if they're solid because if they're solid, well, that's good. And if they're not, I'd like to find out. And so we're going to do this a little different. This is going to be a little different than many of the conversations I've had because it'll have a bit more structure. And I want to read the propositions. There's, I think, about 15 of them. And I want Jonathan

and John to comment on them to tell me where they agreed to tell me where they disagree, tell me what they don't understand. And to see if I can, well, learn something as a consequence. That's kind of the hope. And so it will start with this first proposition. To see the world, we must, must prioritize our perceptions. So, John, I'll ask you both that first, because that's a particular, I believe, a particular focus of yours. I don first because that's a particular, I believe a particular focus of years. I don't think that's an exaggeration. No, it's not. That's the core of my work. And so the main way I would respond to this is I would say, I think the work that's coming out from artificial intelligence and the work that's coming out from artificial intelligence and the work that's coming out from attention

lines up with this very well. I don't have any significant disagreement with that proposition And the most part of it is well Because I so the most I took well, let me tell you how I took the best yeah, and I took it as what's called constitutive necessity I took it to be if you're going to be a cognitive agent, then you must do this. I didn't take it to be a metaphysical necessity. I took it to be that kind of constitutive necessity. Yeah. I think it's useful to start with what you describe as constituent necessities before you move into the realm of metaphysical necessity. Exactly. I think

that's a good way to argue. You should, right? And so I think, and I'm not gonna recapitulate all these arguments, but a lot of work, I think, zero's in on the idea that the core of what makes us intelligent and the thing that we're finding difficult to give to machines, to make them artificially general intelligence is a process I call relevance realization, which is exactly, I think, lines up with this very well.

The amount of information available to you in the world is astronomically vast. All the things you could pay attention to. The amount of information in your long-term memory, especially if you think of all the ways it could be combined is also astronomically vast. The number of options of potential lines of behavior. I can move this finger, this finger, I can move them, I can live like you, the ways I can move. That's combinatorial explosion. All of it. And then, right, and then you can also consider, you know, all of the options of different potential worlds, you might want to consider trying

to produce or moving into, right. And so the point is in many different dimensions, we face combinatorial explosion. And what you can't do, and that's where it lines up with the most, because we're finite beings, it's finite resources and finite time, you can't check all of that information. So you can't go and say, no, that's not relevant, that's not relevant, that memory's not relevant.

That will take the rest of the history of the universe. Right, so we don't know how we do it in fact because of that in part. Well, I mean, I think there's getting some clues towards it, but we can talk about that later. Okay, right. So the must and the prioritization on the perception side you're fine with. It has to be, it has to be. But here's the tricky thing, which is the fact that we can't check it means, and this sounds almost like it's encoin, is the prioritization is odd when you say it sort of like pre-bafitia. Yeah. Because it means we intelligently ignore most of the information. Right. So the prioritization, the one I want to put in.

Yeah, that's a good quotacility. So you're saying that you don't want to misinterpret the necessity for prioritization as are as something like the necessity or our ability to make a numbered list of exactly number of possibilities that lay out in front of us, because that's actually impossible. Right. So that isn't how we do it. However we do it, isn't that? Exactly.

So if you're okay with that reading, and it sounds like you are, prioritization doesn't mean what we normally mean by prioritization, where we set things out, explicit and focal, and then choose what we need. Right. It's implicit. It's implicit in itself, organizing and our ability to think and it's not unconscious. Yes, emerges out of it. We can influence it top down, but because it is an absolute requirement for our cognition, I would argue that our ability to do anything that we do consciously is ultimately dependent

on it and it closes it. Okay, fine. so that's good. Do you want to think? What I did ask of that? The only thing that I would add is, you have to phrase it in a certain way. There's no, you have to have a sentence. But there's a sentence in which perception,

when we say we must prioritize our perceptions, I think the best way to understand it is that perception is already prioritization, is in order to perceive that that's a real hierarchy in itself. Perception is in and of itself an act of implicit prioritization. To use a word implicit would be a good idea, so to avoid the idea that we are consciously doing it, but that in order to even perceive the world, there already has to be a given hierarchy that is making you

able to focus on anything. Because, yeah, well, we would be lost in a way, as you know, a sea of infinite details. Okay. So, I think that's a good quote of so. And so, we could also make a little technical case here quickly. So part of the problem that John referred to is that, in some sense, it's the problem of the finite confronting the infinite. And so, in some sense, it's the problem of the finite confronting the infinite.

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

That's the fovea. The fovea is a very small part of your retina, and it's a very high resolution part. So each cell in the fovea is connected at the level of the primary visual cortex to 10,000 cells, and then each of those have 10,000 connections. And so if your whole vision was foveal in its resolution, you'd have to have a skull like an alien to contain that much brain. So that's that real indication of that finitude, right, is that you do have limited cognitive resources and limited means practically and physically limited, but it also means metabolically limited. The cost of running your brain is already extremely high.

And so you're going to shepherd your available attentional resources because they are finite and they're finite in no small part because they are technically metabolicallyically, costly. That all seems okay. So I would add one thing to that, which is I would put an emphasis on how this process has to be self-organizing, because we want to avoid a phrenial problem, which UNI both now shows up in psychology, which is to posit the internal homoculus that actually doesn't explain the problem, but just shifts it. The central executive is an example of this, et cetera.

So we don't want to say that there's someone that's doing the prioritization because that's someone is just as mysterious, right? And it's facing the very problem that we're trying to explain. So the process has to be dynamic, so far. Well, one of the ways I've realized how that problem works is in an attempt to solve the mind-body problem because you can't solve the mind-body problem. But you can say, let's say you want to explore an idea

and you decide to do that by writing an essay. So then you sit down in front of the computer, which is not an idea. It's actually that you're sitting. And then you move your fingers on the keyboard. And so there's a hierarchy of transformation from mind, which might be the abstract intent to body. And so the spirit hits the body in the finger movements. And then the spirit disappears in some sense under the finger movements, because you can move your fingers voluntarily, but you have no idea what muscles you're moving to do that.

And you can't control the cells or anything like that. Oh, I did that with my students in the lecture this morning. I was talking about this very fact that I said, put up your finger. Okay, bend your finger. What do you do to bend your finger? Right. Exactly. Exactly.

So interesting. It's so interesting that you have that level of consciousness at that level of detail, which is pretty detailed, but no more than that. Yes. Yes. So that's a mystery, man. That localization of consciousness between the body and part of the spirit, there's like a, there's like a, what would you call it?

There's a bandwidth. There's a bandwidth of resolution for consciousness. And why that band, see, the social psychologist who studied language, sort of caught into this, because one of the things they realized was that short words, first of all, short words tend to be old words. So because as language develops, words that are used a lot get more efficient. But the short words also map extraordinarily well onto the self-evident level of perception. And so, for example, a short word is cat, because a cat presents itself for some reason

to our perception, the species cat doesn't. And the fur of the cat in some sense doesn't, it's the cat. Yes. And you can see that primary object level recognition is basically level. Basic level. That's level to level.

Yes, yes, yes. And so you see that with babies because they get doggie pretty damn fast. And that's because the language maps on to the primary domain of perception, that basic level perception quite nicely. And that is associated with something like the natural bandwidth of consciousness. Yeah, I would say that that lines up with. If you rushes explanation, you're getting the best trade-off between differences between category and similarities within categories.

Right, and then the question is, what does best trade off me? Exactly, and that's, and for me, that's what, that would, that'd be a little bit of, I guess a nuance I'd wanna put onto the prioritization, because the prioritization sounds very, but sort of like an imposition, whereas I think what we're talking about

is something more like what Marlton Hauntieanti talked about when he talked about optimal gripping. Right. So what's the correct, you know, distance to look at this? Well, it depends. Because if I zoom in, I lose the gestalt. If I zoom out, I lose the detail. It depends on what you want to do. Exactly. Well, that's it. That's why I'm kind of attracted to pragmatism. It's like, well, to some degree, our theories of truth need to be embedded in the practicalities of action. And so, is that a grippable object that I can drink from? Well, I want my perception to match that problem. Yeah, but it doesn't, I think that if you understand that the prioritization, the thing that you have heaven and earth, I'm going to use

our medical categories, but so you have heaven and earth and that it's the way in which heaven meets earth is a it's a mutual relationship right and we always see it as a relationship of lovers you could say but it's not the the prioritization isn't just about an imposition from above but it's about the manner in which that which is above let's say the the hierarchy is able to encounter the potential on which it's- We were talking about that last night. So Jonathan made this funny joke last night. We were talking about Sam Harris.

And Sam Harris has this line of argumentation where, and he used this on me, where I interpreted a biblical story, and then he interpreted a recipe. Yes, that's true. And he said, well, look at all the interpretations. And that is a problem of- Semiotic drift. Yes. Well, And that is a problem of semiotic drift.

Yes. Well, it's also a problem of this horizon of infinite possibility. There are multiple interpretive schemes. Yes. So Jonathan said he'd like to do a video where he shows that a recipe is actually necessarily embedded inside of mythological framework. And we started to talk about that because imagine, well, the recipe implies that you need to make an edible meal, that you want to make an edible meal, that you want to

make an edible meal, that you're going to serve it to family and friends, that that's part of a kind of communion, that you think that's a good thing, that's worth spending time on, that serves your family and friends, that's maybe nested in something like an ethic of service to the community. Like, there's a whole network of purpose. I would add more to that. There's all kinds of implicit assumptions that I can capture in a sequence of propositions, procedural skills that are not completely

capturable in words, and that those procedures and skills can also map on to the particular virtues and skill that people are bringing to it. Like, most things can't be solved by a recipe. Right. Right. And yet, so a recipe is a significant cognitive cultural achievement. And we don't recognize like, and we tend to over generalize the things we think for

which we can provide recipes. This is one of them. Right. That's an algorithm issue. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And so there's lots. So even in the recipe itself, you will notice that the win, which we name things and the win,

which we order things will be related to a normal prioritization, hierarchy prioritization. But if you're making chicken, you'll have the chicken, and then you'll have the spices, and you'll understand that these elements that I'm adding are spices, and that they're, let's say, something like a marginalia that I'm adding are spices, and that they're, let's say, something like a marginality that I'm adding to the central meal.

It's actually the very, it's like it's the pattern of a church, actually, where you have a movement towards the central identity that we understand, and then we have the way in which it's complemented to other things. And so, even the actual recipe itself is like a little micro- And also, the judgment you use is like, well, how much spice? Well, the answer is, what like, well, how much spice? Well, the answer is, well, what function is this spice going to serve? And you say, well, I want to add a little zest and interest to my cooking.

And so then you have a philosophy of zest and interest that's associated with that because just predictable chicken isn't good enough. And maybe you want to put a little more spice on because you want to, what would you say you want to challenge your guests a little bit in an interesting way and you're thinking this all through. But the same reason you'd wear funny socks or tie that has just a little bit too much on it, you know. Well, that's actually a future of general problem solving.

Like when people are solving a problem, especially if they might get the wrong frame, moderately distracting you from the central concern is an optimal way to do that. So what I'm hearing both of you say is the prioritization is really a multi-dimensional optimal gripping. That's right. We're concentrating on. Okay.

Well, then we can also expand on that to some degree because multi-dimensional and optimal brings a lot of other concerns into it. So imagine that one of the principles and Kant moved towards this with his theory of universal ethic in some sense, although I think it, you know, has a state to criticize Kant, but I think that there's a deeper explanation for what he observes is, well, how should I treat you? Well, that's a complex question, but one of the constraints is, well, what if we meet a hundred times?

So we're going to establish an actual relationship. So however I conduct myself in the present moment has to be in accordance with a value hierarchy that takes into account the has to be in accordance with a value hierarchy that takes into account the desirability of our mutual interrelationship into the future. And that produces a very serious series of, I would say, often intrinsic constraints. So I can't be too insulting. I can't be too unwelcoming. I have to offer you something approximating a true reciprocity for the thing not to degenerate. And so, and all of that. And I would say that also governs how you cook for someone if you actually want to make friends. So it's like treat other people as you would like them to treat you. And it's pretty funny that that's the intrinsic ethic in

recipe. And so that's a good that's a that's such a funny argument. We'll get right back to Jonathan Peugeot and John Vervache in just a moment. First, we'd like to tell you about Elysium Health. Founded by Dr. Leonard Garante, a renowned MIT researcher and 30-year student of the Science of Aging, Elysium Health is on a mission to translate critical scientific advancements in aging research into accessible health products and technologies. Their flagship product basis replenishes

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Many matter customers have reported improvements in memory and cognition. Go to explorematter.com slash Jordan, and enter code JBP10 at checkout to save 10% off matter-prepaid subscriptions, as well as other Elysium health supplements. Okay, so let's move to the second presupposition to act in the world. So it's kind of a coralie or the first or something equivalent to act in the world. We must prioritize our actions. I don't think we probably have to cover that, right? Because perception is an action already. Yes, you have to move your eyes and your head and also a gripping is an action already, because you have to move your eyes and orient your head. And also a grip in is an action. Yes, exactly.

So I think that goes with it. Yeah, okay, so we'll leave that. Okay, now this is the next, this is a nice switch, I think. Any system of priorities is a structure of values, and then I sneak something in, an ethic. So I'm kind of defining ethic as a,

something approximating perhaps an internally, it's like a game, it's an internally consistent hierarchy of value, but it's also, it's gonna have to be iterable in the sense that we already discussed. So that's kind of what I'm defining in ethic as. And then you could also think of it as something that's embodied. So when you're watching someone on a screen

in a movie, say a character, they embody an ethic. That's what makes them interesting. It's a whole structure of value and they're acting it out. And it's a system of priorities of perception and action. And that's a value structure. The reason it's a value structure is because, well, what's the difference between prioritization and value? You prioritize what you value. And so I think the difficulty I have is, it's used the word ethic

because the word ethic is so charged with morality and also to the way that we're supposed to act between each other, then I think it can be a little bit misleading because value is good. Because value is good. It seems to, well, I think good is fine. That is the good in the sense that there's also a good glass which has no moral bearing at all.

There's a good way to walk down the hall, which is not a moral question. There's a, you know, they're good way to fish, but these are not ethical. Well, maybe they are. Maybe, yeah, maybe. But I think that that's maybe the little place where I would wonder about that.

Yeah, so that's a terminological problem. In some sense, right? Well, it is. I don't know what do think, but it seems that, as the word ethic seems to imply interpersonal relationships. Yeah, the word ethic has been reduced to the moral interactions. Ethical. Yes, yes.

Whereas typically philosophers will use the term normativity to be a much more general term for cover, for the idea that there's a governing principle for your behavior. Okay, so I'll have to make sure I clarify that when I read about this, but I was also thinking about common fictional tropes in popular culture. So if you're watching a mafia movie, one of the things that's interesting about a mafia criminal, as opposed to just your ordinary criminal, is that he's not entirely chaotic. Right. He abides by the mafia code, so he's loyal to his... To say code. Yeah, he's loyal to a code, so it makes him a quasi-ethic actor. And I would say, well, the mafia character does embody an ethic. And I'm kind of struggling for a word that isn't

ethic. You might disagree with the ethic, but I'm kind of struggling for a word that isn't ethic. You might disagree with the ethic, or the ethical, but it's because, I mean, I think you can actually take this a lot further than just the mafia person. I think there's a way that you can be a good mass murderer, that in the sense that you can, you have discovered the hierarchy of values, things you need to value in order to become a good mass murderer, and now you're engaging in them towards that hierarchy of values, things you need to value in order to become a good mass murderer, and now you're engaging in them towards that hierarchy of values. You could say, like, there are safe, any hierarchies like the, you know, a Columbine killers, for example, we're doing exactly that.

And most of the mass shooters, there's a contest going on. They know about each other. They're often, in fact, one of them, one kid who was planning to do this wrote me like really six months ago. He had a 50-page manifesto ready and the weapons. And he watched this YouTube video, discussion I did with Warren Farrell, and where we touched on this issue. And he decided that there was seriously something wrong with him, and that he should get some

help and not do this. But he was in contact with one of the people who went out and shot up a high school. They had been contact online. So he was like that far away from it. Yeah, but so there is this, it's not, you can have a chaotic criminal who's completely unpredictable but then you don't have much of a plot, right?

He's not an interesting character. He's getting a cut really fast. Well, there's that too, right? The far more interesting ones have a, they haven't, well, I'd say's not an interesting character. He's getting it caught really fast. Well, there's that too, right? The far more interesting ones have a, they have it. Well, I'd say they have an ethic. Now, it's not an ethical ethic. Right, so that's why the word ethic is difficult because you could say that ultimately what you're going to,

what's going to happen is that there will be a hierarchy of value systems. Yeah. And we'll be more related to the good in the, in the classical sense. And it's Plato. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Exactly. And this is Plato's argument that nobody willingly does evil. Everybody does what they conceive to be a good in some fact.

Yeah, and Dante, you see the same is whole movement. He even talks about how the people in hell, everybody is there because of... I'm reading the Divine Comedy right now. That's wonderful. Yeah, it's great. Everybody who is there is there because of love for a good, even though even if they love the good too much or they're mistaken about, let's say, the actual ultimate value of that good, everybody moves towards a good, even if you're doing something which is completely

reprehensible. Yeah, the proposal that CN is actually failing to love wisely. Yeah, that's the don't. You see, I have some problem with that viewpoint. Because I think that happens. I do think that happens. And I think many of the, you know, I've talked to people like my friend Greg Hurwitz who writes thrillers and he crafts pretty evil characters.

And we've talked about that a lot. An evil character with an ethics. So like a misplaced love is a very interesting character. But then there's the other sorts of characters that are more cane like, because cane, his spirit, the spirit that's expressed in that story, he isn't aiming at something that's good. He's aiming at getting away with lying to God.

He's aiming at getting away with making insufficient sacrifices. He's aiming at getting away eventually with murder. It's not a perversion of the good. And I think that we underestimate the problem of evil if we assume that it's merely a consequence of worshipping false idols say, because the idol can be so, it's like I talked to you last night about the reports that Michelle Foucault raped boys in graveyards. It's like, okay, he argued even formally, culturally, to abolish or at least radically reduce the age of consent. And a lot of intellectuals went along with him. And maybe you can have a discussion about that and what the age of consent could be. And maybe you can't.

There's room for differences in opinion there. But when your pedophilia involves graveyard sex, then that's not a misplaced good. That's that's that's the way not short. Why isn't that pleasure is a good, right? And you're well, it's so specific. You know, why the graveyard? Like, there's something so dark. I don't think there's I think that's a place that's so dark that you can't go there without knowing that it's dark. And I do think that I really do believe, and I've done my best to study the thought of people who've done truly reprehensible things, is that there's a level of reprehensibility where you are going there to cause the most trouble you can. And I don't see if there's any good left in that. It's such a tiny scar.

I'm really going to be like, I'm really going to be the devil's advocate here knowing And I don't see if there's any good left in that. It's such a tiny storm. I'm really gonna be like, I'm really gonna be the devil's advocate here, knowing that there are some that do it better than others, and some that don't do it as well. Even recognizing that the good that they're aiming towards is not really transcendentally the good. Their memory has to be working,

their problem's still going. That's the point. That is like, if I, yeah, so they're still driven by a coherent spirit. Well, that's what I think the spirit of Lucifer and the spirit of Gyrtus, Mephistopheles, that's, that's, and the spirit of Cain, that's a description of that ethic. It does you know, it is, it is a coherent personality. And that's why there's so much, well, and Milton as well, it's, it's, there's been an attempt to delineate the ethic of evil. And it's not merely chaotic.

And one of the reasons why it's important, and maybe it's hard to see that right away, but one of the reasons why it's important, I find it important to formulate it this way, the way that Dante formulated it or that Plato formulated it, is that if you don't go in this direction, you end up with a dualism, and then they end up acting as like two opposites, whereas the more platonic way of setting it up, what ends up happening is that the evil always ends up just being a perversion of the good. And it's parasitic.

It's parasitic. It's always parasitic. And so what it does is that it makes the good, truly good, and it makes it all pervasive and a way in which it can actually fill up the entire cosmos. You know, that even in the death of hell, the love of God is there. Like, you see that in a lot of the Christian mystics, that there is no place that is...

Okay, so let me ask you about that on the grounds of Christian theology. So, and I'm probably going to mangle this, and so correct me. Well, there's an idea that in the book of Revelation that Christ is the eternal judge, but that he's also a judge who comes back at the end of days and separates the wheat from the chaff, the dammed from the saved, and the implication in that book is that many are called

but few are chosen. The judgment's pretty damn harsh and most most what most spirits are damned most people are damned and then is that eternal or is there a reconciliation and so I don't know the answer to that so that the Christian that you can say that the best way This is gonna you get this is the type thing that could actually get me in trouble. But like the best way to formulate it, I think that we're seeing in the Orthodox tradition right now is to say that we live in the hope of a final restoration. But that we cannot universal redemption, but we cannot posit it because

you like you said, there are seems to there are seem to be two traditions in the Christian world. There is a tradition of final restoration which you find in revelation as well by the way because it says the last thing to to die is death itself right there's the sense of death is thrown into the fire and so the last but what is actually is that referring to the the sense of which the heavenly Jerusalem descends and and by fills up the entire world. So you have these images and then you also have an image of evil being completely that take cast off and those two kind of exist in a heavenly.

Well, I was thinking this about just the other day when I was thinking about making a video address to the Islamic world as preposterous as that might sound. Because one of the things you wanna do when you're talking to people is you want to distinguish between them as of intrinsic value and redeemable in some final sense just as you are, and ideas that might be possessing them that have either this misplaced good element to them or this vengeful element. And so, you know, you don't want to throw, to use it horrible cliche,

you don't want to throw the baby out with a bath water. And so maybe the separation of the wheat from the chaff is a spiritual discrimination that doesn't throw out the entire being along with the judgment. You understand it frantically, then I think that that makes sense. If you read, like for example, CS Lewis is a great example of someone who was going in that

direction, was hinting at some things. He talked about how this notion that the key to hell is locked from the inside. No matter, even like I think CS Lewis said, even in the depth of hell, if Satan wanted to repent, there's that. Well, that's what Milton said. But that's not, it's like it's not happening because that's the role that's in the story. This is the character that helping you understand this part of the cosmos or the part of the way that the world is laying itself out.

You see that in some of the Syrian fathers, for example, said from the Syrian, he says things like that where he says, the fire in hell is the same fire that was at Pentecost. The fire in hell is the love of God. And it's only that to the extent that you resisted from that form, and you hold on to your, let's say, parasitic good, that is what the fire in hell is. Well, right. Well, part of that is that as you become more divorced from, let's say, what constitutes a sustainable and valid good, the farther you get away from that, whether it's merely by pursuing a misplaced good or it's by conscious design, the more that elevates

itself up as the harshest possible judge that will do the most damage to your current ethic and then destabilize your whole perceptions. And so that's so interesting because as you deviate speaking spiritually, as you deviate from God, he becomes more tyrannical in some sense to you and more judgmental. And it's also partly because this is why the Catholic idea of confession isn't what's often pilloried because people laugh, well, you're a Catholic, you can send your whole life and on your deathbed, you can repent. It's like, yeah, but you have to face the magnitude of everything you did wrong. So repentance isn't just, well, I'm sorry. It's like, you're actually sorry. And if you've stacked up a whole lifetime of sins, what makes you think that you're going to have the moral wherewithal on your deathbed to confront that without anything?

Well, it's just absolute existential terror. So there's no easy out from that. So. So. easy out from that. So, I mean, I thought the discussion was important and what you just said Jordan is important. I for Wendy would not want immortality because when I look back at the foolishness and the vices of my past. It's hard. And so people who think they could just sort of send in mouth, I don't mouth the repentance, I don't think that's. Well, they also think they can, in some sense,

pull one over God. But, or we can, we'll abide by this rule that we'll never use religious language week when we can use any other kind of language. No, no, no, no, I know I know you weren't objecting to that. I think it's a good principle. I'm happy I'm happy to talk about it. But I don't. Well, let me say there's there's something underneath the religious discussion that is sort of a central concern to me at this point. And I'll invoke Kant, Kant writes the three critiques, right? The critique of Pyrrhe's

and Pacti-Gurides of Judgment, right? And then and and Habermost makes a great point of this. I'm coming to I'm coming to the point, which is we don't see since Kant, we don't have an integrated normativity. We have three autonomous spheres of normativity around the true, the epistemic, the good, and the beautiful. And what Kant did, and one of the problems of modernity, and this is Habermas' point, is he made a very strong case for the autonomy of each beauty is beauty. So that's partly why you objected in the way you did when you emailed me back.

Because I was talking about an ethic that when you night and you said, well, it's differentiated, true, beautiful, and good. My response to that would be something like, well, whatever God is, fundamentally ineffable. So we'll make that clear to begin with, but I would say that one way of thinking about the way we think about God is that God is what's common to the good, the true, and the beautiful. So this gets us into the discussion that I think is for me,

sort of the deepest levels of the phenomenology and the cognition, which is, I mean, that Jonathan would know, this is the classical doctrine, the classical way of putting this is the convertible of the trend, the transcendentals are convertible into each other. So somehow, the true and the good and the beautiful are one, but not mathematical identity. This is really important. It's not right. You can, right? And so, and you know, the coinous wrestles with this Mac, I'm in reading Maximus by the way. I think you see a reflection of that in the idea of the Trinity too. Of course, right? And so the issue there is, and I've been reading DC Shindler on the capital city of Reason, and he talks about this,

he gets it from Baltazar, he talks about the primacy of beauty, the centrality of goodness, and the ultimate-sive truth that they are superlative, but in different ways. So what he means by that, there's a primacy to beauty. And this is a classic Platonic argument. If you don't have beauty, all the other normativities are not available to you. So why write? I wrote a chapter in my last book on the success of the beauty, but I don't understand why that why primary.

Because, and what does that say about our perception that it's primary? It's right, because you don't have to think about it. Is that part of it? Is that apprehended? I don't understand. Well, the way of thinking about it is Scari wrote a really beautiful book called Beauty and how it prepares us for truth and justice. And the idea, so let's take something that's very culturally relevant. And I've something I've been talking about. So we are immersed in what recurred called a hermitidics ofition. The hermetic subspition is that appearances are always distorting, distracting, deceiving us from reality. That's the hermetic subspition.

And the moment of truth is when you reveal the hidden cabal, the conspiracy, right, this is the hermetic subspition. And it's, you know, and and and and recurse point is we got this. That's what Freud does. He Freud and it's beyond covering. He is. So the here's what's really going in the knee construction is here's what's really exactly exactly everywhere now. Right. Right. Right. Now, yeah. Now here's Marloponti's point about this, right. His point is, but wait, the hermitidics of that, the hermitidics of suspicion is always dependent on this. If I say that's unreal, oh, look, I do that

because I say that's real. Realization is always a comparative judgment. This is his point. So does he accept the notion that there is something? Because one of the things you see in the postmodern types, and I was looking at Richard Rorty, the work the other day, and he seems to buy the postmodern idea that everything is just a network of linguistic representation and that there is no real beyond that.

That's Dylan's critique of that being semi-liological reductionism. All you do is transfer all the markers of reality onto properties of the text and then you prevent the text from being subject to the very criticisms you're making of reality. Yeah, well, that seems credible to me. Okay. So it was Paul Merlopondi, except the reality of beauty. Exactly. No, because the thing about what this means, if the hermitage suspicion is, that appearances distract us, deceive us,

the story, there has to be something under that. Right. And beauty is when appearance is disclosed reality. Right. Yeah. That's the, that's what, I mean, that's what something under that. Right, and beauty is when appearance is disclosed reality. Right. Yeah. That's the, that's what, I mean, that's what I believe that. That's the artist, I mean, that's the artist's cake or that's the liturgical take or it's the, the beauty of a church or the beauty of an icon

or the, it's the notion that, that God or ultimate reality or however you want to phrase it, is disclosing itself to us and that appears to us as the connection between that which we encounter these these pattern beings that we encounter and what they reveal to us about the other transcendentals. And when I wrote this chapter, which is my favorite chapter in both books, it's try to make one room in your house as beautiful as possible and sort of this sort of step behind while order your room first so that it's just not cluttered and idiotic and running at counter purposes to whatever your purposes are, reflection

of your internal chaos, get it orderly. But that's not good enough. The next thing is see if you can make a relationship with beauty, which is really, it's really, people are afraid of that, eh? Because I've watched people try to buy art and they're terrified of buying art. And the reason is, is because their choice puts their taste on display. And if their taste is undeveloped, then their inability to distinguish between a false appearance and the genuine reality of beauty is immediately

revealed to people. So they're terrified of it. But they're also equally reality of beauty is immediately revealed to people. So they're terrified of it, but they're also equally terrified of beauty. So let me tell you a story about this, if you don't mind. I bought some Russian impressionist paintings for my father and I liked them a lot. I, this particular artist,

the Russian impressionist style is like the French impressionist style, except it's a lot rougher. The brush strokes are thicker, so it's lower resolution, but it's equally beautiful in terms of palette. And I have a variety of paintings. If you get some distance from them, they just snap into representations so lovely. And so I sent my dad like eight of these paintings.

And my mom took one look at them and she said, those are not coming out of the basement. And so, and my mom is a conservative person. So she's not high in openness. She's not that interested in ideas. And she's not, and her aesthetic sense isn't sophisticated. Now, my mother has a lot of lovely attributes, but, but, and my dad and her differ in that. And so I, he loved these paintings. And then he made these frames for them. And so he loved these paintings and then he made these frames for them. And then he brought one up. And my mom tolerated that. And then he brought another one up and then she tolerated that. And then like all eight of them eventually made it upstairs. And then a few years later I was there and she told me how much she loved the paintings. But it really they really set her off. And I think it was partly because, well, if you're, imagine you have, you're comfortable

in your canonical perceptions of objects in some sense. And then the impressionists come along and say, you know, you could look at that whole landscape as if it was nothing but the interplay of color. And that's, we forget how radical that is. I mean, those paintings caused riots in Paris when they were first showed impressionist paintings. And that's what my mother was reacting to. It's like, oh my God, there's a whole different way of looking at the world. I don't want to see that. And it's an invitation to that which is beyond the triviality of your perceptions, let's say. But it's to think that there's nothing about that

that's worth being frightened of or challenging. You don't understand conservatives if you don't see that. So, in terms of beauty, one of the things that also that, especially now, one of the problems or the way the beauty can kind of overwhelm us is that we feel as if we give ourselves, we're afraid of the, the suspicion, the hermenex, or suspicion. We're afraid that if we see, reality discloses itself to us and we can see the connection between that,

which is appearing to me and something behind it, then I'm afraid that if I jump, if I make that leap, then I'll be betrayed, or that it will turn out to me. We will turn out to be. And sometimes it's not. Like there is, it is possible to be tricked by appearance. And this gets you to hawns, you know, saving beauty, his critique of what you see going

on right now is he, he argues, if you read ancient texts, if you read platyneus, one of the features they'll say about beauty is it's striking and disturbing and disrupting. Right? I want to come back to that about the transformative aspect of truth, but the transformative theory of truth. And Han talks about, what we've done, and he talks about in other books too, is we've reduced, we try to reduce the beautiful to the smooth, which is the ease at which we can consume something. Like the smooth, which is the ease at which we can consume something. Like the smooth, though, or cover of a car. Exactly. Or one pixel resolution.

Yes, yes. And because what that does is it gives you, and I'll use this, we're deliberately, the veneer of beauty, but while protecting you from the horrific suspicion. That's so smart. You see that? So what we do is, and then he says, and pornography is the primary example of that, because what you do is you remove all threat, all mystery, all otherness from the person. So there's no way they can strike you or disturb you.

There's no way to. Right. Yes, exactly. And so pornography is an example of the smooth, completely overtaking the beautiful and being misunderstood as the beautiful. But if that's if you if you gentlemen are agreement with that, what that means, that's my answer to why the primacy of beauty. Because if you do not get that ability to and I want to use this word in. And we can prop and prop. Sorry, please go ahead.

Then I'll ask. Yeah, I want to say through the way I'm saying, like through my glasses, beyond and by means of, if we can't properly get a moment where we can see through appearance into reality, we are locked into solipsism and skepticism. You need a primary movement. And if you do it, if you do it, rather than it is called to you, then you are trapped. You need something that calls you from beyond the appearances so that you can properly align appearances to reality, and you realize that's why the

primacy is. So is that the ontological calling you out of epistemology? I would argue that that's Plato's argument for how the beauty... Okay, so when you say, okay, so I've thought a lot about the relationship between love and truth, and I think love is primary, and the truth is the handmaiden of love in some sense. But, so there's a primacy there, I would say the primacy of love, but you're making an argument for the primacy of beauty. And so, are they contradictory? No, no, no, no, not at all because Plato's view of love. And you have to be careful because Plato is taking the Greek notion of aeros and he's trying to bend it. And I think he's trying to bend it towards what the Christians are going to eventually

talk about in agape. Right. Okay, so take that as a caveat on what I'm saying. But nevertheless, what's going on, right, is Plato says, no, no, no, what love is, is that you are called to beauty. And let me, let me, let me, let me, let me just try and show you, give me a sec, because there's a connection. Yeah.

Okay, so a lot, this will sound like, where's the other left field, but, like, truth, rationality, most of the cognitive biases, in fact, there's a growing argument that a lot of the cognitive biases, confirmation bias, a lot of them are actually versions aspects of the my side bias, egocentrism. I won't make that argument here. I think it's a good argument, but let's say even if it's only partially true, this is an important point. And Spinoza got this, right? This orientation, self relevance,

how things are relevant to me, right? That sort of fundamental egocentrism, a fundamental way in which you're prioritizing your perception on the world, right? You can't reason your way out of that. Benosa, the most logical of the philosopher, says, no, no, the only thing that will invert the arrow of relevance is love. This is Murdoch's point. Love is when you recognize something other

than yourself is real. Right. Okay, so let's, okay, let me ask you about that because I've been thinking about the idea of being selfish. Yes. You know, well, psychopaths are selfish, but they also betray themselves. Yes. Because psychopaths don't learn from experience, because they doom their future selves. Yes. And so I kind of wonder if that love that lifts you out of this self orientation, what it does in some sense is that it's the way you see the world. If you see beyond this narrow selfishness, because I don't really think there's any difference technically in me taking care of the multitude of future selves that I will become and me treating

you properly. I totally agree. Okay, I think your relationship to your future self is ultimately an agopic relationship. And I think that's the only way you can deal with a lot of empirical research. Okay, so you do. Yes, yes. Oh, oh, oh, that's why the empirical research. Because I think the empirical research shows that like like the I mentioned it in the Cambridge talk that I sent you a little. Right. What if you do this? This is one instance among many experiments.

You go into a bunch of academics at a university, the people who are supposed to be the best at taking data and processing it. You present them with all the evidence that they should start saving for their retirement right now. Right. And they won't do it. You come back six months later, they will, they will, they will, you ask them at the time, I just argument a solid argument. Great evidence.

Yeah. Come back six months. Have they changed? Not at all. Yeah. The behavior, the behavioral therapist know that perfectly well. Right. Yeah. But so if you do the following, you say, I want you to imagine your future self as a family member

that you love and care about. Right. Right. They will start to save and, more importantly, the vividness of that imagery predicts how well. Oh, that's so cool. Look, you know, this program that we worked on, Future Authoring Program, well, it's predicated on the idea of developing a love for your future self.

So it's an exercise. It's in some real sense. It's like here, and it's the ethic that's underneath it, although this wasn't particularly conscious in my mind when I built it was knock in the door will open. It's like, okay, let's play a game. You get to have what you want and need, but the rule is, first of all, you have to accept it

and second of all, you have to specify it. And so, but let's just play it as a game. If you could envision a future that would justify your suffering, that's a really good way of thinking about it, justify your suffering. What would that entail? And then people, and then I make it practical. It's like, well, what do you want for an intimate relationship? How do you want to treat your family members? What sort of job or career? Like I break it into seven practicalities, you know, to nail it down to the ground. And I do believe that, see, one of the things we found, we thought, well, what predicts

whether or not this works? Because it really works. We dropped the dropout rate of young men at Mohawk College at 50%. It should. It should. Well, it did. Yes. And it had the biggest effect on those who were doing the worst, which is not very common

for psychological interventions. But the only thing we could find content-wise that predicted how well it would work was number of words written. And so my sense was, well, that just was an index, a rough index of how much thought they put into it and how vividly, and then it would be, did they treat their future self with some love, like genuinely, and then did they differentiate that so it wasn't just an abstract mountaintop conceptualization. So let's add one raco that brings the beauty thing back.

Because you go back and ask them, why didn't you pay attention to your future self? Before. Well, sometimes people don't think they could. They have no idea that that's even a possibility. That's, I don't deny that. Yeah, but overwhelmingly, people said, I don't want to look at that person because that's me old and ugly. They make me afraid of it. Yeah, and it's an aesthetic judgment.

It's an aesthetic judgment. And what you have to do is get them to reform it. But what if that's an old? It's a shallow aesthetic judgment. Yes, that's a right. Exactly. My wife, she does portraits. And one of the things that's really interesting

about my wife's art is she will look at, she's like, goya, although you know, goya is goya obviously. But one of the things I really found striking about Tammy is she did a very detailed picture of my daughter's surgical wound. And that's not an easy thing to look at. It's right. Because you don't want to look at that. But that also ties in with the ideas. We've been discussing about the fact that so in the story of Exodus, when God tells Moses how to stop the Israelites from being bitten by poisonous snakes, he insists that they have to look at

what's poisoning them. And well, I think that's the Christian essence. The mystery of the Christian. You bet. Right. Yeah. All these images that we have like the beauty of Christ wounds, all these things which sound so completely pathological. Pathological? Yeah. So many people, if you can understand them properly, you can understand that. You have to gaze on that which most threatens you.

Yeah. There's others. And then you say, well, this inadequacy of vulnerability that characterizes old age. That's a terror in that. Yeah. And so people won't go there. Right, but what you do is you replace the shallow aesthetic. Right, don't let the appearances, right? Right, distract you.

Right, let the experiences disclose. What if that was an old family member? Right, right. It's always look through and see that those appearances are that's somebody who's been there, right? That you care about someone you love exactly and so you beautify them So you love them and the love and the beauty they reinforce each other So for me to answer your question, right?

The you're saying the primacy of love and I think you ultimately mean a topic love, right? That and beauty are if you're incapable of Right. That and beauty, if you're incapable of turning the arrow of relevance and saying, I want that to exist, rather than I want that to exist for me. Right. That's what beauty does, and that's also the central move I would argue in love. Okay. So, do we want a detour into the true and that it's beautiful true and beautiful true and the good. Do you have something equally revealing to say about the good and the true? Yeah, I do. Okay.

Well, let's go there and then we'll continue through this because I thought that was really useful. Well, and I would like this, if I, if I would request that we return back to that, whatever this discourse would, I love following the logos That's that that I I aspire to be like so I'm like a true Christian Well, but talking like a two-follower of socrates, right? Right and but I I'm hoping that in this in this deal logos if we if we get into the depths of The true the good and the beautiful that we can address the depths of the true, the good, and the beautiful, that we can address my criticism of you, which is I'm making a criticism on behalf of the enlightenment and

call, which is the fracturing of the normativities into three autonomous spheres. And this argument, if it's going to go forward, needs something that would... Yeah, I see. I see what you're doing. You bet. Is that okay with you? Yeah, that's okay. Yeah, I see. I see. I see what you're doing. You bet. Yeah. Yeah. Is that okay with you? Yeah. That's all right. Okay. So for me, the thing I want to say first about the good is there's two readings to make about about this. And one is, and this is what the Enlightenment did, we can reduce, and Jonathan's already challenged this,

but we can reduce the ethical, we can sort of, we can reduce the good to the ethical good, so that when we're talking about goodness, we're asking how moral a person is in their standard modern meeting, right? Now, the what Plato argues is that is actually a derivative form of goodness. It's kind of an algorithmic form. It's kind of an algorithmic form, but so here's the central sort of at least I would argue. Now of course there's going to be 10,000 platenous who will disagree with everything I said because Plato's been around so long, right? But I think it could make a good case and I think this lines up with the best book I've

ever read on Plato. DC Shindlers played a critique of impure reason. Best book. Hands down my whole life, DC Shindlers, Plato's critique of impure reason, the best book, hands down my whole life. DC Shindlers astonishing. But here's a proposal. Right. We, and you can see, date, cart wrestling with this in the Enlightenment and sort of failing. We need intelligibility to be wedded to reality. Right. The structures of intelligibility have to be not identical to because that's impossible. You try idealism, that failed.

I'm sorry, that was too fast for some people, but I'll just let that go. But so we, we, we, the map has to correspond to the territory. More than correspond, it has to, there has to be a conformity, there has to be a contact and a wedding to them together. There can't be a space between them,

like there's between map and territory, because as soon as there's a space, there's what guarantees and what manages the space. And at some point, this is Taylor's point, you need a contact epistemology. Not. Right? Right? Right. Right. Right. So now there's nothing you can do, right? Okay, right. So now there's nothing you can do, right? That will show me or give me an argument

for why intelligibility should conform that way to reality. Because what you'll do is you get locked in, right? And this is what Plato saw. Like, but what Plato's basically saying is, there is, it's like, if I can put it this way, I'll try and put it in a way that's more narrative. It's like there's a perpetual promise that intelligibility will track reality, and that we find that to be inexhaustibly the case, but there's no argument we can give that will

ultimately explain that because every argument presupposes it. Does that track? I'm not sure why the last part of that is true Although I agree that it's true So and I and what's running around in the back of my head while you're laying that out is I think well in some sense That's the problem that evolution solves in a technical sense So you know, let's say a mosquito lays a million eggs in its lifetime And so that's a million mosquitoes has a pistomology better track ontology, but almost none of them do. So they all die. And so that mapping, I think, because

it's philosophically impossible, in some sense, I think that the process of evolution is actually what solves that. And then our cognitive architecture emerges out of that evolved base. And so it's taken 3.5 billion years to produce the solutions that we have to mapping intelligibility onto. I totally agree with you about this. So let me agree and then tell you what, I think it goes deeper. Yeah. So just very quickly, the, I think relevance realization

basically does that same thing that evolution does. It has this, it's a self-organizing system in which you would introduce variation and then selection. Your attention is doing it right now. There's a drive to open up, might wander very, and then what you're doing is constantly evolving your fit-edness, your optimal gripping. So, towards some end, which is the dialogue of the conversation. Yes, and whatever that's embedded in.

Exactly. Yeah. So you're doing this. Exactly. And there's a space of associations beside what you're doing. But what I'm saying is evolution actually presupposes an ontology in which that will work. Right. Right.

So that's what you put. Okay. Okay. So that you should have something to say. But we've talked about that before. Like when we did that thing on Genesis, and you talk about how it's this idea of a psychic projection, but the idea that let's say you, as an example, could imagine that you could psychically project patterns and onto the world means that it presupposes that the same problem. Like that means that those patterns are presupposed in the manner in which the world exists.

That didn't even be right. Right. In the historians of science, I've read, who attempt to embed the development of science in a Judeo-Christian ethic by necessity. Also, you know, giving obeisance, let's say, to the influence of the Enlightenment, say that the notion that there was a logos, there's an ontological logos as well as an epistemological logos was that precondition for the development of the scientific attitude. And I think that's true. Yes.

And I think, and that's the cornerstone of ancient epistemology. You don't ask the question, how from this, the workings of my mind, do I get to the ontology, you ask the question, well, whatever knowledge there is presupposes intelligibility, right? And then I asked, I have to ask, what must the world be like such that that intelligibility reliably exists? It's a very different orientation. That's for sure. Okay. So, but let's take it that this is at least a plausible argument. The promise that intelligibility is wedded to reality, and that we can realize it through something like relevance realization cognitively or biologically adaptivity through evolution,

right? That promise is continually made, but we can give no explanation for it, because given what we've just said, every attempt to explain it presupposes it as a fundamental thing. Okay. That seems just fine to me. The fact that the promise is inexhaustibly kept is the good. Is that the good that is referred to in Genesis when God uses the logos to derive habitable order out of chaos? Well, it says it is good.

Is that the same idea? I hope so. I mean, for me, that's what Plato means when he talks about how the good is even beyond being because the good makes possible the intelligibility of real. Okay. Well, that's kind of what I'm trying to also drive at in this system of propositions. And that's what I meant. And I hope you took it as a compliment. When I said, I think this is a neoplatonic argument you're making.

You're doing a lot of the similar moves. Okay. Now, the thing I have is, right, so that's the good. And then is there a way of, and I you know, I think Jonathan will have some important things. So that's like the a priori structure of being before there is, there's actually beings. It's like there's, it's, there's an, there's an, there's a, there's a potential intelligibility, even for the finite in relation to the infinite. Exactly. Because if, and, and what you can do is you can reject that fundamental goodness,

and I know this, I can't give you an argument to get you back into it. But if you reject that fundamental goodness, you will be, you will be, and you see Descartes wrestling with this, because he tries to, he gets sort of stuck inside the cauchoto, right? And he's trying, and he's, I think therefore I am.

Right, and he realizes, Oh, oh, I could be trapped in solar system and skepticism. And what does he do? He says, Oh, no, no. There must be a God that guarantees that the intelligibility, the clear and distinct ideas map on the reality. He realizes he needs something outside of the argument in order to guarantee that fundamental goodness that makes everything else possible. But then in what he does is he creates He realizes he needs something outside of the argument in order to guarantee that fundamental goodness that makes everything else possible. But then in what he does is he creates famously a circular argument for that God. So he tries to make an argument for it, but he ends up presupposing the very thing he's

trying to prove. This is what I mean by our apprehension of it is not something that is produced inferentially. It is an apprehension of a fundamental goodness. And I can't give you an argument or an evidence for it. Now, I think ethical goodness is dependent on and reflective of, at times, exemplary of, that ontological of your lalami goodness.

And though do you think that that's the reason why in so many traditions, the infinite is always referred to negatively, like the whole notion of negative theology or... Oh, that's interesting. Same. Well, the idea that if you want to express that which is the source of being, you end up having it almost end, it empties itself. Yes.

It is empties itself of all characteristics while recognizing that it is at the same time the summation of all characters. Like the good ultimately is that which everything is culminating to and then it's a kind of giving away into something which is always more. And you think that's related to that a prior acceptance of the of the existence of the relationship between intelligence and and being. Well, that it's that this thing that guarantees that is being pointed at to by these processes. I think so. I've been thinking about, I don't know,

I can take you on this experiment that I've talked about. This idea that identity is kinetic, that identity always kind of empties itself into more. So, you always use the example of an object, like you have a cup and then you have you have I saw certain level you have different aspects of the cup. Yeah, so in order for it to reach its good all these elements in order for them to reach its good They have to kind of they have to give themselves into something which cannot be found at the level of their elements Oh, so so what you end up having is you have hierarchies of beings that are moving towards that

identity, but as they reach their highest point, they actually empty themselves into the higher identity. Then you move up and then you end up with something that is beyond being ultimately. Okay, so let me try something to you because that might start to sew the good and the true and the beautiful together. I've been doing a lot on marrying Marloponti with Plato and John Ruez and other people are doing this. So I will. But here, like, that thing you just pointed out. So Marloponti's point is you never, you can never completely see any object. So let's just talk because the number of, right, the number of just even perceptual aspects is on which is what Caso was doing. Yeah, yeah, right. And then of course, then there's the imaginal aspects. I can also all the functions that are implicit in this, all the use, like,

right. And then so one of the things I've been arguing is that if you take a look at Play-Doh, the I-DOS originally meant the look of a thing, but he didn't mean the look. He meant something like the aspect. And here's what the like, so you have all of these aspects and they're unfolding inexhaustibly. There's a through, but they don't unfold chaotically. There is a coherent through line that runs through them, right? You get a sense of, as you said, the identity. But here's the thing, that through line is not itself an aspect. It can't be.

It can't be. Because if you, you're making a fundamental, it's an a prior necessity for it. And it runs through it. But notice how, first of all, that's starting to get us into the sense of the goodness because that's the promise being kept. The through line is the promise being kept. It's also a different notion of truth.

This is something I wanna talk about later if we get a chance. Truth is this as ala thea, as disclosure, rather than as correspondence. But notice, first of all, how that corresponds to beauty. And think about what Tammy's doing with the paintings. She's right, because she's, she's don't stop at this one aspect as the appearance, but open it up, open up all and see and fulfill the promise.

The aspects. Even in something horrible. Yes, yes. And that's dependent on your willingness to gaze, which is the story of Exodus and the Brown serpent. Well, and I would say the crucifixion as well. That's really interesting, because Han talks about we've lost the ability to linger

with things, and that's why we can no longer see the difference. You know, if chimps are in the jungle, and they come across a decent sized snake, they'll stand at a distance from it, but they will gaze at it for up to 24 hours and they have a particular cry, which is a snake rye, that's the name of the cry,

which they utter that brings other chimps. And so they hate snakes, right? It, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, you show a rubber snake to a chimp that's never seen one, he'll hit the ceiling, but then he'll look. And so they're out there gazing on the snake. right? It, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, Well, that's manifest in pile of erection in animals. Okay, but think about what awe does. awe is a kind of love. Right. And the thing's awe does, which is really interesting. It's one of the few instances where people reliably report a sense of the shrinkage of

the self that is nevertheless as a positive element to it. Yeah. Even though they're terrified, they want to follow it through. They want to go into. Well, I think that's partly. So imagine this. So imagine awe. Imagine will want to go into. Well, I think that's partly. So imagine this. So imagine awe, imagine pilot erection now. So it can't puffs up. And you know, that's the hair standing up in the back here. Yeah. Oh, it's the same instinct. It is. Yeah. I'm doing work on this

with a student of mine right now and how we've exapted the pilot erection into aesthetic experience. Okay. So imagine this now. Now you're out and you look at the night sky and it's awe-inspiring. And so there's also a call to imitate there. Yeah. And so you see the image of Mary, for example, with her foot on the serpent and her head in the stars. Well, she's looking at the stars and she's, so that's the cosmic realm. It's the infinite.

And now she's awe-struck by that vision. And then she, in order to adapt to that vision of the infinite, you have to imitate that which instills the awa, and that's represented by her foot on the serpent. Oh, that's cool. Yes, that's for sure. That's where you know, there's literally hundreds of Renaissance images of that Mary had in the stars, foot on the serpent.

And I've been thinking through this awa issue, and it has this interesting association with beauty. But you can imagine that when a cat dances sideways and pilot reacts, it's trying to look larger. It's trying to look as if it can overcome the predator. Well, that's what all does to us, is that when we historically, evolutionarily, what we did when we felt awe in the face of a predator is we felt compelled to imitate the predator

So that we could become ferocious enough to overcome the predator And so that's that call to an expanded being that you would associate for example with development of the shadow It's like when you look at something brutal You know that really terrifies you it has to call that brutal, you know, that really terrifies you. It has to call that capacity for predatory behavior out of that monstrous capacity. Now, it should be integrated into the kind of ethic that we're describing, but you're not good if you're harmless. It's way more than that. And that awe in the face of what's catastrophic is a call to be more than the catastrophic thing, which certainly makes you monstrous in a sense. Well, that's not really interesting, because it also produces increased seeking of others, which makes sense, because one of the ways we can make ourselves

band together. Band together. Then that seems to get exalted into, I don't have to be big, but I can connect or participate in something. Right, right. And then you get reverence as opposed to just raw awe. What's really interesting, just to supplement your argument,

and this is where I'm doing it, it's on you, Tim. If you, they have a device now that will actually cause people to have chills, the chills up and down the spine, the run-hold water up and down in the right way. What you do, and what you can do is you can really enhance people's aesthetic experience. But even more basically, you get people to listen to the same passage of music,

and you put one group of people in a slightly cooler room, they will have a more powerful aesthetic experience. Because it facilitates pyloriorexia. Exactly. That's so cool. Yeah, I was so thrilled about this notion of pilot erection being associated with the instinct to imitate, you know, to put those two things together. It's like, well, what do you do in the face of the predator?

Well, one is run away. The other is become superordinate to the predator. And then you might say, well, what's the worst possible predator, which I think is part of the Judeo-Christian narrative, because we're trying to spec because the snake in the garden is Satan. It's like, well, what's the worst possible predator, which I think is part of the Judeo-Christian narrative, because we're trying to spest, because the snake in the garden is Satan. It's like, well, what's the worst predator? It's not the snake. Bad as snakes are. It's like a super snake. It's a meta-snake. It's the sum total of everything that threatens you. And so that calls you to be more than that, whatever that is. I don't know a lot about the biology, but do animals experience this highly erection

with, let's say, a member of their own species that is bigger or more dominating? Sure. Yes, they do. Sure. And we also have some preliminary, and it's not the graphics, we have to be careful with it, that they do something that looks like, aw, you'll get them monkey. You've got the snake thing, but there's also a video of a mycock monkey. And it's co-zoned onto a precipice, which is a little bit dangerous,

to watch a sunrise, not doing anything, just sits there. Well, you know monkeys will look longer if you show them photos of their troop. They gaze longer at the high status individuals as well. Yes. And if they are encountering a high status individual who could take them out in some sense, but not merely as an expression of power, as the primatologists insist, then they do show pylorection in response to the threat from the superior, but they're also fascinated by it. And you can imagine that part of that fascination is the locking of their attention onto what

they could become, right? Because that's what at least at least that interests me more in the sense of beauty. It is the sense of shrinking in front of something in the sense, feeling that you're smaller than that and then this desire to move into it or to... Contact imitation as a kind of internalization, a kind of being wedding yourself to someone.

Yeah, and to form a worship, a kind of being wedding yourself to someone in a professional way. And to form a worship, primary form of worship, right? Because you, you worship what you, you imitate what you worship. They're the same thing. So okay, well that was fun. So shall we move to the next one? I think so.

I'm getting a sense of how the true, the good, and the beautiful could be potentially integrated. Because I think that's a necessary requirement for this argument and notice how we are moving outside of we didn't talk about true We can talk about that later at the point. We're moving outside of sort of standard ways of talking about At least goodness and beauty here And I think there's similar ways of doing it a truth that could actually get us back to something that Yeah, well, it's nice to to put the biological twist on it too. I'd wanted to run one thing before we move on, which is that the way that I tend to think about it, in terms of...

When we talked about the idea of the through line, I think that's the eye-dose. I think that's what the form is in Plato. It isn't what Aristotle thought it was. It isn't just a specificity, right? Of necessary and sufficient conditions. So would you feel comfortable with the notion that it's the manner in which the multiplicity is gathered? It's the logos. Right. And so it actually gathers multiplicity. Don't listen to my words. Listen to the logos that gathers them together. All things are one, right? Heraclitus. Well, so then what we would presume provisionally is that the

thing that unites the truth, the good, the beautiful, is the logos. Now, we shouldn't make the presumption of knowing that we understand what that logo is. We've got some hints about what it is, but we can't characterize it entirely. Is that a reasonable proposition in your estimation? I think so. I think, especially if we're careful to do what you did before, which is we have a

dipolar way of invoking the logos. The logos is both the gathering, the throughlining, if I can put it that way, but it is also the ontological reality that affords that happening. It's the fact that I can't exhaust it, no matter how far I push it. So whatever through line I have is at most a signification or a symbol of the fact that it's inexhaustible. Did that make sense? What I'm trying to say? What do you know I'm not trying to understand that the through line is the the significant

that inexhaustible in the manner in which it points up or in the manner in which it inexhaustible like this or an exhaustible. The manner in which it's the fact that that intelligibility between between representation and actuality remains regardless of how far you push. Yeah, okay. So that would sort of be like the notion that the universe is logical, between representation and actuality remains regardless of how far you push. That would sort of be like the notion that the universe is logical, local space, essentially. And that we're not going to run out of that. But it's not going to be logical in the modern sense of a complete system,

even though Godot tells you to. You can't reduce it to an algorithm. Exactly. So this is what I mean by saying, I don't think of the form as like a standard Aristotelian essence, at least how it's been taught. Yeah. To me, which is a set of necessary insufficient conditions, like the logo. There's no becoming in that. Is there, there's just being? Well, because becoming implies transformation of something that's algorithmic, but in a, but in a manner that's's not that doesn't escape from the logos.

And I mean, I think that's how reality constitutes itself. And that's probably that's part of the solution to the scandal of induction. It's like, no, you can't predict with 100% certainty what's going to happen next, but what will happen next despite its unpredictability, like the next note in a symphony is still predictable. Exactly. This is what I mean about the good. The reason why Hume couldn't deal with the problem of reduction is it requires the apprehension of the good, which is the promise that this is not going to be logical identity, but nevertheless

it is going to be inexhaustibly coherent. It's going to remain beautiful. And in that sense, it's always going to be something to win. So it's not reducible to an algorithm, but that doesn't mean, where you said it, that doesn't mean it's not habitable, doesn't mean it's not good, it doesn't mean it's not coherent. Exactly. And in example, the music, which John Rousen used, the music quality of intelligibilityibility as I think the best way to think about it. What you just do.

I think that's actually, I actually think that's why we like music. Yes. Because I think that music is actually the most representational art form. Because for a variety of reasons, first of all, we don't see objects, we see patterns and we interpret some patterns as objects.

So patterns are primary, then we're looking for the harmonious interplay of patterns, and then it's not strictly a causal relationship because the music is governed by principles, but it's not formally predictable. Otherwise, it gets boring. Exactly, right? So you see that, I think most particularly,

I've experienced that most particularly with Bach's Brandenburg Concertes, which have this amazing continual unfolding that's so logical. It almost appears mathematical and yet it's unpredictable and you don't know where it's going to go. And it goes there and you think, man, that's just, that's just right. So, Dan, so you could say that, you could say that about pretty much everything that exists.

That is, that, I like the glass because it's just easy. So, so the, the idea is that there is a through line in this glass. And but the through line goes through potentiality, which is indefinite. It is I can encounter million glasses in my life and they will all be different. Not just like the realm of musical possibility. Exactly. But they all end up being predictable to certain extent. Once I grasp it, like when I see the glass, I recognize it, but I couldn't have predicted

that this is the glass that would exist There's a there's a kind of potentiality which Which is maintained within the identity of the glass, but it's not it's inexhaustible right and when you see that When you apprehend that and this is Scari's point this is Being struck by beauty you see the tree and it's somehow it's like every other tree you've seen and yet It's not it reminds you of the idus it's somehow it's like every other tree you've seen and yet it's not. It reminds you of the idols. It reminds you of just what you said.

And I think that that's love too. Like in love in the sense that I've often said love is the capacity for unity and multiplicity to exist. That's what love is. That is that I recognize something of you that we have in common, but I also recognize you're completely separate from me. Those both had to coexist for love to be real. It has to be separation. Well, that's to give the devil is do. I would say that's the kernel of good, the diversity types are pushing. We need to recognize the utility of multiplicity. It's fair enough. The problem with that, a problem with that is, well, yeah, but where's the unity here?

Where's the unity? It's all diversity. It can't be all diversity because then all we do, we're in conflict. And we tend to have a, we tend to be, the modern world has ten-stores radical, they tend to want to radical change unity to uniformity and then have this kind of crazy exploded multiplicity. Whereas the real, this kind of natural relationship between, between otherness is exactly this both recognizing what we have in common and at the same time being kind of fascinated and attracted to that which we have. Well, you think about the reason this conversation works is because we have grounds for commonality in our understanding, but that would be sterile without the multiplicity,

because we would just run over the same territory. And so, you know, we hope we aim towards the same thing enough so that we can communicate, but I wouldn't like it at all. If you didn't, each of you didn't bring something to bear on the discussion that I'm incapable of bringing to bear on it. So the last thing I want to bring up is of course I mean people are going to say I'm Jesus muggling but there's that's that's the that's the the reason one of the reasons or why we can understand that in Christianity, the Trinity is seen as the infinite. Is the image of the infinite that we have is a contradictory possibility

of absolute unity and absolute multiplicity. And so we just throw those two up at the same time and we say, the infinite is absolutely multiple and absolutely one. And you cannot, without contradiction and you cannot totally, that you can't reconcile that completely, because that is ultimately,

it's a problem which practically appears everywhere, anyways, because everything is always, everything in the world has something in common with everything else. You know, if it's just being itself, but it also necessarily must be different for the difference to. There's strong benefits.

There's good one argument. Every object is infinitely similar and in. Right. And right, which is a restatement of the problem of perception itself. Yes. Like, well, you've seen a glass. Yes, but you haven't seen this glass. Well, how much difference is there is?

Well, there's an infinite number of differences as it turns out. All right. So this is a, this is a so this is quite a switch here, and I think this is a radical proposition. Maybe not, because once you hear it, you think, well, yes, and then you think, well, that's self-evidence, like, yeah, well, not so quick here. The description of a structure of values or an ethic subject to the quotasils that we've already added, or set of priorities is a narrative. So the description of a system of perceptual prioritizations and actions is a narrative. What do you think? The description, that could also be representation in image. It

wouldn't have to be a verbal description. Im A majestic or verbal description. That is what we regard as a narrative. So this is what I wanted to again challenge you on. And it sort of overlaps with the discussion we've having about the true and the good and the beautiful because I think there are three, three different dimensions by which we organize intelligibility. So there's the narrative. The example I use is video games. And there's a reason why people are doing the virtual Exodus. They're preferring video games over the real world because of the dimensions that are found in video games. So one is a narrative and a narrative they belong to.

Clearly, that's one of the things. So total agreement that there's two other features that are deeply meaningful to them, not semantic, but meaning in life meaningful. Right. One is a normal logical order. There's a set of rules that they understand that makes a sense of that world, so that they can move around in that world with confidence. Because if they have a narrative, but it doesn't, it is an undergirded by an unknown reflection in the video game of the same through line and mapping of intelligibility on to ontology within the, that's what I think the nomological way.

But it's a simpler world. Yes. So they can establish that first. Exactly. So you're saying, okay, so it's a slightly different argument, perhaps, because I said, well, a narrative is a description of an ethic. And you say there's more than, there's more ways that the world needs to be apprehended than the purely narrative.

And I think that's fine. But does that bear on the argument that the description of an ethic is a narrative? No, because we also describe other ways in which we prioritize our perceptions in things that aren't narratives that are normal logical. That's what we call a scientific theory. The theory of evolution is not a narrative. It's a description of the way things unfold or it's like Newton's laws. Newton's laws are not narrative in any fashion.

Do you think, okay, so let me push back on that. Fair enough, fair enough. And then you can say, well, a set of mathematical axioms and the operations that are derived from the axioms is also not a narrative. But so, and fair enough. So then I would say,

and this will get us into discussion about science later, is the intelligibility and the attraction of those non-narrative descriptions of the world dependent on their being nested inside a narrative. And so here's where I'm going to answer you back. I'm going to say they mutually, they reciprocally require each other, just like what we were doing with the truth. Okay, so that then okay fine. So is that the same thing as narrative in the scientific description mutually requiring each other? Right, but you can't reduce the one to the either to the you can't reduce the

nomological to the narrative or the narrative to the nomological. That's why that's why I was trying to get at three dimensions, almost like a Cartesian graph with three dimensions. Right? Okay, you can't reduce if I remember. Right. Well, because I suppose if you do that too, you run into the postmodern trap, which is that there's nothing but the narrative intelligibility. There's nothing but the narrative. There has to. Yes. And there also has to be something. There has to be a space within which we can compare narratives, move between narratives and learn narratives, right? And there has to be something that allows us to override narrative bias. You know the research on narrative bias. It's powerful. It's one of our most powerful bias. There has to be something that allows us to override narrative bias. You know the research on narrative bias? It's powerful. It's one of our most powerful bias.

There has to be something that can kick us out of the narrative bias. But I think the way that I would phrase it is myself is that the reason why we tend to think, or like even the way that I presented, is that the priority of narrative is because narrative is the embodied manner in which we engage with a structural value. It is the way that we engage in a structural value. So because we see a disc and usually it has a narrative that embodied patterns and description of the embodied pattern, I think that it, I think that it, I don't know if it's a story

if you acted out. I don't know if it's a story until it's a representation of a pattern of action. Because otherwise it's more like a pattern of behavior. So, for example, imagine you watched wolves interactive. You could say, well, it's as if they're following the following narrative rules, but they're not because they don't have, it's not narrative, it's a pattern in their behavior, right? But for the same reason that it's the through line, like for the same reason that you can't see the glass

from the elements of the glass, it doesn't mean that the glassness, like the identity of the glass has a causal relationship to its element, it's just not a causal, it's not a mechanical causal relationship, it's a causal of identity, it's it. And so the narrative or let's say the pattern of behavior is causal from above, you could say, because it's that the way in which you recognize that

the behavior is a pattern in the first place. I want to push back on you. This is one of the areas where we kind of don't totally agree. But that's good. Well, this is a real mystery, this problem, because it is the relationship between science and the narrative of meaning. It's a relationship between ontology and epistemology or between description and value. I mean, so it's no wonder that this is causing, you know, a little bit of trouble. I want to throw in one more dimension, which is, right, which is, you could also level up in a game. There's a way, there's a dimension

that's not a narrative, it's an act of self-transcendence, right? I call that a matter of identity that you can scale. That has to be. That's a quidditch, by the way. That's what rolling represented with quidditch, because there's a game and a meta-game. If you win the meta-game, you also win the game. Right. But not vice versa, which is very, it's so smart. So sorry. You do this, Troy, and you'll just throw out these observations that are like, I really want to know.

What's even worse than that? I don't know what they think, I want to do that. I think the footage players are chasing is the round case of alchemy that contains all the potential of the world. Right. And it's also the spirit of Mercury.

And like, it's like, I don't know how she did that. It's just beyond belief that she managed that. I don't know, I really don't know how she did that. I believe in that. It's like if you get, if the way to understand it, like in terms of a glass would be like, once you grasp the logos, this is the same maximum as way of speaking to,

once you grasp the logos, then you are able to, you've captured all the rules and everything else. And once you understand what a glass is, then you don't have to, you've captured all the rules and everything else. And once you understand what a glass is, then you don't have to, you can recognize every glass in the entire world. It's like it's such a massive power. You overcome the entire game through getting this one thing, which is like, which is often the image as a seed

or as a golden ball or as something sparkling, which is, which we represent in the world, but it's ultimately pointing above it. Well, that's perhaps that's a reflected in the insistence that Adam is to name all the animals, right? In the story of Adam and Eve, because that's obviously kept in the narrative for a reason. And it has to do with the power that naming and subdoing in the sense that you've described, which is the also simultaneous imposition of a hierarchy of categorization that goes along with naming,

that gives you a grip on the world, and that grip is associated with the moral necessity and requirement in that story. It's for me that nomological dimension is the naming dimension. That's what science does, broadly construed. And that's different from telling a story. Naming things is different from telling a story. So, but ultimately, this is where this is where I kind of come back. I get into the world. We're not going to go too far. I did this because we've been through this from the past.

We'll down this path before. But so ultimately, because we are not disembodied beings, like this is so science, this type of non-myological order is taken from a position where I am, as I see the non-myological order, I have to climb the ladder. And so, especially most narratives always have a sense of, this is Moses on the mountain again. Yes, yes.

But there's also, that's why the narrative is always this. Like, almost all narratives are that. You notice the difference. And once you notice the distance, and when you notice the distance, then you have to reestablish a connection with which you're distant. Because you don't need an ethic unless you notice the difference. You just, I mean, you don't need it. At least you don't need an explicit ethic.

You don't have to spend the time. Why not unless you notice the difference? Because you don't have to tell someone how to go downstairs unless they can't do it. You don't have an explicit set of rules. They have to be an objection. There has to be a problem. So St. Paul says something like,

okay, the law is written on the human heart, which means that it doesn't mean all the laws are written extensively in every detail in the human heart. It's like, no, that is in the human heart, in that little golden ball, in that center, in that place where everything comes together, you have, contain all the potentiality. Everything that has the true line is contained in that. But now, if you notice the difference, then you have to formulate that difference, and then that becomes the laws, or just the ways of being. So I can say something at first like when you're driving a car, like there's specific laws.

And then a problem comes up. It's like, oh well, actually there's a differentiation here which we have to make or else there's a problem. So we may say ethics that's hard to say. He's getting more and more detail and more and more. So you start with the law, you end up with this, the same in Jewish tradition, you end up with this huge compendium of exceptions and like details and everything.

But ultimately, the idea is that all of that is ultimately contained in something which gathers it all together into one, into this ineffable point that transcends. I'm not sure all of this, but the space in which all the laws are being made and written, that's not a narrative space, right?

Well, let me go out with you on that for a minute. The Ten Commandments is not a story. No, I don't think that's true. You think that. I think it is a story. That's why Christ, so he, okay, that's a good entry point. That's a good entry point. The story which reveals the Ten Commandments.

Right, but the Ten Commandments aren't, But there's also a string in Commandments. Right. I believe there is a little bit. But I think you're right. But this is why we say that the Ten Commandments is embedded in a story. Without the story of the Israelites leaving Egypt, finding themselves in a desert of nothingness, having to reconnect with the transcendent, that is why the law exists. So the nomenological order is embedded in the story. You wouldn't have to...

But the reverse is also the case. Go ahead. If there isn't, if God doesn't offer us the nomenological order, there's no point for the Exodus and the story, right? That's okay. We could hypothesize that it comes up from the bottom and down from the top. No, this is in before that. Right. We're trying to talk about, like, I'm proposing that the narrative and the nomological and whatever we want to call this self-transcending dimension are irreducible to each other. They're not, neither, none of them can exist independent.

That's why I'm using the three dimensions. Yeah. Matter for. Right? They are interdependent, but they're not, they're not reducible. Neither none of them can exist independent. That's why I'm using the three dimensions. Yeah, metaphor, right? They are interdependent, but they're not reducible. So I'm resisting hypothesis. The autology is not captured inside epistemology, because epistemology cannot reach to the full extent of the multiplicity of ontology. So, okay, so now why is that relevant to what you just said?

That's part of the irreducibility. You're arguing, I think, in some sense that no matter what the story is, there's something that's real that's beyond that story. He's like, okay, okay. So, so let me put a couple of twists in that. Got it. It's okay for you, Jonathan. I think it's fine. We'll get going. Okay. So you said there's no story in that 10 commandments, right? And Jonathan had one objection. I have a different take on that that he may appreciate, maybe you too. When the Pharisees, so the Pharisees and the scribes

are always trying to trap Christ in the Gospels into making a heretical statement, or doing something that clearly violates the law. So they call them on healing on the Sabbath, for example. And there's like 10 stories like that where smart people who run on algorithms try to trap them. And it never works because he does the thing you described which is he just refers to a higher order principle or even three level stoppage says like no. Yes. But one of the things that happens is the Pharisees come and say, well, here's the deck of log,

which is the most important law. And the trick there is, no matter what he says, he says the others are less important. And so now he's a heretic and they get to take him away. And he says, put God above all else and love your, as yourself. It's all of the laws are derived from that spirit and that spirit is, that spirit is a story

and that story is the logos. And so that's the move that I don't, I don't, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I get that's the spirit. I totally get that. Well,, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, is the logos, and the whole biblical corpus, the narrative that spans the entire biblical corpus, is the account of the elaboration of that spirit across time, and it's embodied in carnation. And that presents itself as a story. And so, and I think the reason for that is that it just, okay, so, I mean, I get, I understand

your point. I understand the point that you're making now. And so, I'm actually understanding your point better than I've ever suggested before. Because you're talking about that, that which transcends the current narrative and that has to be there. There's no reality. So, okay, let's, let's leave that for a moment. I just want to give you one more thing because I think it's important. Sorry. No, no, that's fine. I think we're at a key moment. So we are so one of the things that that we've been discussing and this has been coming back over and over is that So let's say that we all understand that there is a certain type of equivalence and two functions for a nomenological order like a hierarchy that's presented Yeah, you know like just a series of categories which are related in embedded structure, right? And I see science committed to that's presented, you know, like just a series of categories which are related

in embedded structure, right? And I see science committed to that. Okay. And that this also co-exist. For sure in scripture, that's what we're seeing. It actually co-exist together. You have the story of the Israelites and Bible and then you have these theories of laws which is actually not just N, it's all right.

A lot, a lot of laws, right? So you have all these laws. And so, but one of the things that you've said several times is that you feel like the solution to the meaning crisis doesn't need narrative, or that narrative shouldn't be part of the solution. And so I think that if those two are both have their function, let's say, why is it that you want to remove one and keep the other? Oh, okay, that's an excellent question.

This is something Sam Harris struggles with. No, I'm dead serious about that. I'm dead serious about that. So, let me answer this really carefully. And tell me if we're getting too far afield from the main discussion, okay? So I'm gonna depend on both of you. My argument is the nomological order

that one of the problems in the meeting crisis is the nomological order that we have is no longer in any way relatable to or can be wedded to a narrative. Because the nomological order we have, right, is that there, it, it, it, to what used to bridge between the nomological order

and the narrative order is teleology. The teleology says the nomological order and the narrative order is teleology. The teleology says the nomological order is ordered, but it's ordered in this way, and the teleology has this structure. And then narrative says, oh, I can glum onto. I can conform to a teleological order because stories are inherently teleological. But they're different from just a teleology, just telling a teleology isn't a story, but stories can attach to teleology. Is that?

Why is describing a teleology not a story? Because you could describe the, I think you could describe the cop, but then the problem is, is well, can you describe the cop in the absence of a narrative? And I mean, I think part of the argument I'm trying to make in this. So this is our key disagreement in some sense is I don't think you can. Okay.

And so, well, let's be really careful because we might, we might also be engaged in, in semantic drift. So I'm trying to limit, like, we can trivialize what we mean by narrative. And we, they need a description of a series of events as a narrative. Okay. Yeah, yeah. No, no, I don't want to do that. I get your point.

No, no, we don't want to widen the word so much that the argument is. We didn't mean it though, but I wouldn't have it. No, no, I would actually object to that because any descriptions of events that I can conceive as being one is has to have some kind of narrative structure. Otherwise, we have the probability of, we have the pro-Revolutionary.

We have the same problem of multiplicity and common determinants. If I can recognize that events connect together, that means that you would not metaphorically actually know I agree with that. But not but for a different way. No, let me challenge it. I'm not speaking metaphorically here because if I'm speaking metaphorically we're just golfing another thing that means that music has a narrative Because it has a melody you say the melody is a narrative and that strikes me as a very improper thing to say that okay, that's a tough one man. Yeah, yeah because

Then you have to start to wrestle with what do you mean by music? Because you could say that the the sequence of the notes in and of itself may not have a narrative, although I'm not certain of that, but you could say that, because... But then the question is, when you're listening to the music, and it has the effect that you regard as music on you, how much of that effect, including the aesthetic, is a consequence of a narrative. So I would say, well, when you say music, how sure are you that what you're saying is that's nothing but the relationship of the notes to one another. I agree. That's a good point. Because there's no embodiment in that, right? Right. And there's a sense in which music is

neither subjective or objective, but rather like beauty. Yes, yes. It has to have something that is at least analogous to narrative, because in order for you to recognize, and it's funny because the modernists tried to go away from that. Yeah, understand. Modernists really tried to break it, but there was in any traditional society, there are tropes of music which help you understand when something's beginning, when something's pending. And then you can map them onto narrative very directly because that's what happens. Okay, then move the narrative aside.

That's why it's a slide you because you say, I'm going to understand narrative to merit, to melody. And I'll say, here's a logical argument and there's a progression and a through line from the premises that are concluded. Is that a narrative? Mm-hmm. Well, that's a tough one, right? Because the fact that you selected out those, those, okay, here's something I've been thinking about. I'm going to take a slight detour,

but go right back to the point. So I thought about this more when I was talking to Richard Dawkins, because I think Dawkins is a good faith player, and I think he believes, he's a real scientist, and he believes that the truth will set you free, which scientists have to believe to be scientists, because they cannot be scientists if they're not pursuing the truth. The truth is sacred to the dog. Absolutely, absolutely. You won't admit that, but it is. Okay, so I was thinking about the scientific endeavor and I thought a lot about this when I was reading Jung's work on alchemy because Jung attempted to situate the development of science in this alchemical fantasy and it's very interesting piece of work. So he believes that there was this immense motivated narrative that provided the historical precondition in the realm of unconscious fantasy

for the flourishing of science. So it's an amazing argument. In any case, thinking about that, I thought, well, there's a set of facts, and that's kind of the argument you're making. There's a set of facts independent set of facts, and that's kind of the argument you're making. There's a set of facts independent of the narrative, and that's kind of the scientific viewpoint. There's a set of facts independent of the narrative, and even more importantly, we should identify the set of facts that's maximally independent of any narrative because why should your facts prevail? And we want a universal set of facts.

And fine, look what we've got with that. But then I think, wait a second, when you're practically engaged in the processes of science, the sort of things that Coon tried to lay out, is it not the case that you're always engaged within a system of practice and perception that's defined by at least an implicit if then statement? And so I would say, that's defined by at least an implicit if-then statement. And so I would say, if this is your aim, then that's the set of relevant and true facts. Conditional implications. Well, yeah. Well, so if you're a medical researcher, it's like, well, here's what the cancer cell is doing. What do you mean doing? Because it's doing an infinite number of things.

Oh, well, if we want to understand the cancer cell so that we can eradicate cancer, then this is what the cancer cell is doing. Now, it's also doing something that's independent of that narrative, but the weird thing about that is that it's doing such a plethora of things independent of that narrative that you drown in the complexity. Of course.

So then we have a problem here, right? Is that they have the facts of the cancer cell, which are multiplicitous, then you have the set of relevant facts, which hopefully are still facts, but those aren't derivable without the narrative that we should save lives, that saving lives is good, that we can pay careful attention to the horrors of disease

and in the attempt to ameliorate suffering. All of that framework seems to be a precondition for the abstraction of the relevant facts. I agree with everything you said. Okay. What I disagreed with was the identity statement you slipped in, which is the ethic is a narrative. That's exactly what's in dispute here.

The dispute isn't that we don't need these normative structures. I'm not disputing that at all. What I'm disputing is that they're all reducible to the narrative. That's right. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Right. Well, that's also why I want to get to the last I mean, I think that I'm going closer to you than ever because Oh wow. This is wonderful. In a sense that because I need to work it out. But because I I see that in like let's say that there is a clear distinction in the story like in the story, there is a story, and then there's the laws, and they're related, but they're different.

And so, I need to think about how they're, why they're related. Well, one of the things that they have to be related is, there's an interesting weirdness there that's also associated with the scientific enterprise, because one of the things you're trying to do, imagine if you impose a strict narrative, that there's a very limited set of facts that make themselves manifest. One of the things you're trying to do, imagine if you impose a strict narrative that there's a very limited set of facts that make themselves manifest. Well, what you wanna do scientifically is say, well, let's abstract out a set of relevant facts

in a manner that's relevant to a multitude of redemptive narrative simultaneously. Okay, so let me pick up on that. So let me try and using what we've just said specify the difference, how I would put it. I think what science does is it picks up on nomological relations, which are supposed to be, as you say, causal invariance for the universe.

Right? Four sequels, myastimes acceleration. We'll forget Einstein everywhere. Across narratives. Right, right. A narrative is not about causal laws. A narrative is about an irrepeatable causal pathway. When I ask, why did Napoleon lose at Waterloo? narrative is about an irrepeatable causal pathway.

When I ask, why did Napoleon lose at Waterloo? I don't give you a law. I give you a narrative. I give you a narrative. Narratives are, this event leads to this event. It's a through line, like you said. But it's a through line that explains the specific occurrence of specific events. It's exactly the opposite of my mind,

of what science does. Science is trying to explain the universality that is not captured in the specifics of a specific causal pathway. That's why I can't see. Okay, so imagine this. Imagine this. So there's this notion in the Old Testament. There's a sequence of stories. So it's an aggregation of stories. And there's an idea that the meta-narrative of Christ is implicit in that set of narratives. And so then I have this idea. Well, and Jung talked about this as well said, imagine you take any random sample of narratives, comprehensive random sample of narratives, and you attempt to extract out the common story, it's going to be an image of something like Christ. You could even say that that's what Christ is in some sense.

And we can argue about that. But it is like saying that the hero narrative is archetypal. It's the same idea. If you have 25 narratives and you see what makes them interesting adventure stories, it's the hero archetype. So the reason why you can recognize it as a through line in the first place is because it has a pattern. But that's by point.

My point is, just like the through line of all the aspects is not an aspect. The through line of all the stories is not itself a story. Yeah, but see, I'm not so sure. That is definitely what we're arguing about. And I'm not saying I know this. There may be a distinction between ask story and the pattern of all stories.

And maybe that's something we can think about too, because in my work in maps of meaning, I called just a narrative, a story, but the story that unites all narratives is a meta story. And Piaget caught on to this too in some sense, because he started to try to find out what kids regarded as true. And then by the end of his career, he said, well, what we really want to know if we're studying truth isn't the nature of any contingent truths. So any representations within a system narrative for otherwise. But the process, we need to specify the process by which all truths

come to be as the ultimate truth. And then I would say that the meta-narrative that constitutes Christ from the symbolic perspective is the story of the process by which, what would we say? It's certainly the story of the process by which narratives transform. It's not exactly a story, because it's a meta-story, but it's the problem of this kind of apophatic move, it's kinetic reality, which is true also of the nomenological order as well. I told you. The origin of the nomenological order is not a nomenological order.

Exactly. In the same way that the origin of a narrative is not a detail narrative or say, the pattern patterns all move into the manner in which they transcend themselves and ultimately give up to this nomenological, like this negative space, negative reality. And I think the nomenological and the narrative and what this self-transcending dimension, they all converge. Right. No, that's absolutely brilliant.

Okay, so imagine, imagine that. That's not to say they're identical. No, of course they're not. Because that's why they converge. Right, right, right. And I, I think if they were so obviously identical, we wouldn't have a conflict between science and religion, which we apparently have. So, it's an important distinction.

So imagine you have this set of narratives that are particularized, and out of that, you extract a general pattern, and the pattern is something akin to the process of adaptation itself, which is the manifestation of the divine word, let's say, and its ability to call order out of chaos, to get this hierarchy of narratives, and there's something at the pinnacle. And so then imagine that you have a set of corresponding facts and each specific narrative would give you a set of proximal facts, but there's an abstraction from the facts that approximates universal scientific truths.

But I would say that maybe they exist in relationship to the application of that meta-narrative because isn't it the case, now I don't know, I can't figure this out. Isn't it the case that we abstract out commonalities, like force equals mass times acceleration? Because we want to further add adaptation to the world. As simultaneously, we're exploring the intrinsic logos of ontology. But we've already agreed to some degree that there's a, there's a similitude between that ontology and the epistemology.

And so maybe as we abstract out from scientific truths towards the universal, we, not only must we simultaneously move up the abstraction level in a narrative sense, Jung's point would be we better or we'll misuse the nomenological to destroy ourselves. Wouldn't that also be the case if we abstracted up the narrative without also going up the nomological? Hey, well, he believed that the problem with the first

millennia of Christianity was that we did exactly that. Was that we emphasized spiritual redemption to such a degree, try to reduce redemption itself to the spiritual, then the world was still crying out because of its ontological suffering. It's like, well, if we're all redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ, it's like, what's with all the poor and diseased people? And that call for the unredeemed material was part of what he saw as the motivational foundation for the the systematic investigation, say that led to the development of medicine. Yeah, so there was an insufficiency, there was an insufficiency, maybe it's the insufficiency of getting lost in epistemology, if it's just a narrative, it's just a narrative, well, it's not, it has to refer

to the world. Okay, so well, that complicates things, right? Because part of what we're stuck on here, to some degree, is in that ontological realm that's outside any given narrative, there is also a logos. And then the question is, is that ontological logos, the nature of the world itself, somehow a narrative, and the Christian idea to answer,

that would be, well, I don't know, because creation is separate and go ahead. But the creation is not. But the creation is not speaking on behalf of Christian. I think Christianity makes the claim that the logos is ultimately a person. A person. It's not a story. Yeah.

That's very important. Right. The logo is not a story. Every person culminates into the person the into the person and person literally means originally means hypostasis that which stands under. Yes, yes, what has to be a person, right? Right. But that's why I also said though that it's the description of a structure of values is a narrative. So as an embodied ideal, Christ isn't a story. No, right. But the description of his embodiment, that's a story. And the images are a story. No. Right, but the description of his embodiment, that's a story.

And the images are a story. And the reason we want the story is because the story calls us to the ethic. That's why we value the stories. It's right, I would like to see the world the way you see it, because you have a whole set of tools that I don't have. And so if you can tell me a story and I can enter into your world, then that is truly redemptive, because the facts now array themselves in a slightly different way. That might be very valuable to me if I run into one of these objects that you described.

You know, I'm running an algorithm and something objects. I don't know what to do. What would you do? Tell me what you did in the similar situation. And so I don't think the story, the story isn't the, yeah, God, that gets so tricky. The Christian emphasis certainly is that the embodied reality is the fundamental reality. Yeah, but the story isn't nothing. That's for sure. I know you're not. I know you're not. I know you're not at all. I was trying to answer Jonathan's question, right? And we're running

into the difficulty that I see. Whether or not I'm right or wrong, where there's a difficulty. Oh, definitely. And that's the difficulty I'm putting my finger on, I'm trying to put my finger on in the meeting. Well, it's also the difficulty that I'm trying to address with the center of our position. It's definitely a difficulty. Okay, but we got somewhere, we got somewhere in that, I would say. I think it was very valid. Okay, so I'm going to skip to number five here. Every set of values is hierarchical. Otherwise, there's no prioritization. I think we agree on that because we've already agreed that there has to be a prioritization and there has to be that implies a higher. So the one thing I wanted to ask there, sorry, I seem to be the the devil's advocate. You know, no, right?

But it is again, let's go back to embodied living. And then this is actually something you see in narratives. And I would also say that it's something that some of the parables of Jesus point to, because parables, I think McFag is right, parables are narratives that destroy themselves as narrative structures. They're kind of like the way co-ins destroy themselves as questions. And so what I wanna say is, let's say that there is, we seem to have like the true, the good,

the beautiful, or we have the narrative, the nomenological, and I'll call it the normative, so it's a betterment or something. Is it the case? The thing is the hierarchy stable. What I mean by that is you get narratives, you get stories, you get works of art, great works of art, in which it looks like they're picking up on something that is true to our embodied experiences. Sometimes we sacrifice the true for the good or the good for the beautiful or the beautiful

for the true. We seem to be making, we don't seem to have a stable what's on top, we shift the prioritizations around. There's a lot of great art, at least proposing that. So I think it's a reasonable thing. Great. Well, I think that's partly a consequence of great art, at least proposing that. So I think it's a reasonable thing. Great. Well, I think that's partly a consequence of the confusion about what constitutes the unification.

So part of the project I have here is that I'm beginning to view all the narratives that are laid out in the biblical corpus as their snapshots of the different idea of what should be at the top. Their likes at the through line. Yeah. Well, their representations of the through line, we still don't know what the through line. Yeah, well, they're representations of the through line. We still don't know what the through line is, so to speak, right?

But they're snapshots. So, for example, in the opening lines of Genesis, God, so we'll say, by definition, God is what is at the top. We'll just start with that. And I'm not going to make an ontological claim about that. Just an epistemological claim. God is what's at the top of your value structure. Okay, so what should that be?

Well, let's say that's a mystery. Okay, so the Bible is an attempt to represent that mystery from a variety of different narrative perspectives. And so I'll give you a couple of examples. So in the earliest chapter, the beginning of Genesis, God is the word that derives habitable order that is good out of chaos and potential. Okay, so that's whatever God is, that's part of it. Okay, so that's, and God is a creative force.

And then there's, the next thing is that God is, whatever it is that human beings are made in the image of. That also provides them with a worth that transcends the merely material in some sense, because God is outside creation. And if man is made in the image of God, then there's something about man that's valuable, that's outside of the mere materiality. Okay, so that's the next proposition. And then God is rapidly that which forbids and allows, so that happens in the garden. And then God is that spirit that you walk with when you're unself conscious and not ashamed. So that's the story of Adam in the garden. And then in Noah, God is that which calls you to batten down the hatches and prepare when if you're wise in your generations, you see that chaos is coming.

And then in the Abrahamic story, God is that which calls you out of the comfort of your family into adventure. And so it's like, who knows what the union of all those things are, right? Because they're quite multiplicitous. But, but, but I think they're very sophisticated. And you might say, well, is that God? It's like, well, do you follow the call of adventure? Do you take your own intuition seriously when you think that the flood is coming? The answer to that generally is, well, you either follow that or you're in trouble. People, you sure know that.

And he is God, the divine word that generates habitable order, the habitable order that is good out of chaos. Well, do you believe that truth has that power? So I think, okay, so these are all ways of pointing to that which might unify the disunity that you see. Now, you can't boil it down in some way, the same way that you boil down beauty. You know, it's harder to specify. And I think what the Bible is attempting to do, and I think this is true of religious writings, of many sorts, is to what is it?

It's a characterization of this. It's first of all, it's an insistence that the thing at the top is a spirit, right? It's not an idea. It's not even like beauty. It's not an abstraction. It's a spirit that can inhabit, which is kind of the incarnation idea. So it's a spirit that you can embody, or the concees and possess you. So it's really something that's living. And so it's not merely an abstract idea,

and it's not just a normal logical construct. It's something you enact. And it's something in principle, you might think, well, if your, and this leads to the next point, any hierarchy that is not unified, produces confusion, anxiety, anomy, aimlessness, and conflict, psychological and social. Well, why? Well, it's not unified. You don't know your priorities.

And if it isn't pointing to something valuable, there's no hope. Because hope is to be found in the movement towards something of value. So, okay, well, sorry, that's a lot. No, no, no, but that's helpful. So, let me say something, and it's not really a pushback, but it's sliding over here and if we can make the connection, then maybe we can come to an agreement around it. So right, adeptivity.

Adeptivity is a thing and it's really important and it's not an abstraction. I define it. Adeptivity is the that you are fitted to your environment in a way that allows you to successfully live long enough to reproduce. Yeah, okay. Okay.

So that's kind of an integrated game idea, too. You have to live long enough to propagate. Totally. Yeah. Totally. And I'm not here to defend, you know, a gene version or a group selection. Yep, yep, yep. That's not what I want to.

Yeah. Okay. So, add up to the, and you want to, you want to, you know, how does this arise? And one of the things you can do is you can say, here's all these snapshots of add up to the, and what I can do is I can try and find the, what, what do they all share in comment? The capacity to elicit awe. What we just said, that's what, wait a second.

Wait a second. So, like, the problem is, right, this, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,

wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, right, is some things are adaptive because they're small, some are adaptive because they're large, some are fast, some are slow, some are hard, some are soft, some are unicellular, some are multi-cellular, adaptivity doesn't have, but what he finds is that there's a universal process that is, right, that can explain how all of these different snapshots emerge. But there is a perfection, and the perfection is being itself. It's the continuation of existence. Okay, but what you've just did, you've played, you're not playing with my analogy.

You said, I can, I can met at that. And I'm undenying that you can do that, John, that I'm trying to use a metadone. I'm trying to use an analogy. Okay, okay, right. I don't deny that. Okay, I'm not making that claim. I'm just trying to use this as an analogy,

and I'm trying to say. Well, it's a powerful objection, because certainly the biologists do that. They say, well, there's no not making that claim. I'm just trying to use this as an analogy and I'm trying to say, well, it's a powerful objection because certainly the biologists do that. They say, well, there's no teleology and evolution. And I know that you object to that because you say, well, there has to be because you can't even, there's no unity there in any of the organisms and there's certainly no way of perceiving them. But they also have a point which is, there's a nomenological unity, even though there's no narrative. That's how they argue it. There is a universal process that can be understood scientifically

that explains adaptivity, explain, because if you get the theory of evolution, you say, right, all the organisms should be different. But then you have the problem that every organism that survives plays out a pattern, which is variation on the horizon of potentiality. And so then you might say, well, there is a, there is a directionality because if the organism can't vary creatively on the horizon of potentiality, it can't exist or multiply.

And so then, so there's a teleology that emerges out of the necessity for survival and reproduction. And so, and I would say, so think about, sorry, I just gotta get this out. I gotta get this out. Oh, sure, oh, sure. The abstractions you generate in your prefrontal cortex are avatars of the process of adaptation

to the horizon of the future. And so, and so the flowering of the human spirit in its highest sense is an embodiment of the process by which the biologist attribute the adaptivity. It's the process that allows that activity. And so maybe those things dovetail. Well, that's what I'm going to say. So the reason they're too. No, no, no, that's what I want to challenge you. You gave me a model of the logo so that I would say is not narrative except for a trivial definition of narrative, which is variation and selection. And look, instead, let's put it back in the psychological. It's like with humans, it's the willingness to do that, though.

So it's not just the fact that it can happen and does happen. And that's what partly what brings in the narrative element is you do not have to abide by that. Like that can happen to you. You can have this creative variation and this selection in relationship to adeptivity, let's say, to keep it biological. But you do not have to do that. And so I think it's the struggle with that that constitutes the narrative.

I want to put something on that. I think there's all kinds of stuff, that relevance realization, doing that variation and selection, that you cannot exercise authority over because your authority actually depends on the right. So it's different than the level at which you have narrative access to your own being. And look at that. I think that's related to Jonathan's objection earlier

that the law is inscribed on the human heart. It's like, yes, I agree, but let me say if I claim that human evolution builds a material embodiment that strives towards manifestation of the logos. And then there's an abstraction. And that meets in the middle. The fact that you can't control the manifestations of your prioritization structure doesn't mean the logos isn't built into the A-priory systems that structure that perception for you. I'm not denying that. What I'm denying is that that logos is ultimately operating as a narrative. I think the logo and look at even psychologically, narrative doesn't emerge into emerge into a certain age and it is pretty it depends on the logos it depends

on dialogue it depends on joint attention it depends on the ability to take turns in conversation you have to have all this biological machinery in place before narrative is possible right was a way I would object to that fine that's a perfectly reasonable objection but the problem with that is is that a lot of that scaffolded by quasi-near-to precursors. So for example, one of the things you do with a baby before it can engage in the dialogos mediated semantically is you do a dance-like play. And the spirit of the logos is, and I would say narrative spirit is deeply embodied in that, because if that isn't taking place within the spirit of love and play and truth, then it isn't going to give rise to the pastee later for the dialogos. So that's kind of the embeddment, in some sense, of the embeddment, embeddment, embedding. There's the word of the logos

in the material, right? Prior to its manifestation. And I do think in some sense, that's not a story, you know? Because if you watch a wolf pack, what they're doing isn't a story, but if you describe it, it becomes a story. Yes. So there's an embodied pattern that's not a story. But I think we're agreeing now, then. OK, OK, OK, well, there's a lot of, so I guess we go back to where you said

the description of a structure of that. That's right. I said, the description is a story. Now, that doesn't mean that the description doesn't match the underlying behavioral pattern. You know, I think one of the things I sort of thought through in maps of meaning with the Moses story is, well, why those laws? So you see, in the story, it's so bloody cool. Before Moses goes up to the mountain, he spends decades, we don't know, forever, morning to night, judging objections.

So the Israelites are out in the desert, there's no structure, and they fight with each other all the time, and then they come to Moses and say, well, we're fighting, Why do we deal about it? And he like judges them. And his father-in-law actually says to him, you have to stop doing this because it is absolutely exhausting you. And it isn't until after that that, so then you think, what's he doing?

We're seeing all these micro narratives, right? And then he has to discriminate between them, which means he's turning them into a hierarchy value because that's what the discrimination is. This is what's right in this conflict. So conflict, hierarchy, and then he's doing that just constantly, so you can imagine that within him, this hierarchy of value is starting to be built explicitly. Then he goes up on the mountain and it's like, bang!

Oh, this is what all our striving is oriented to. And then he comes down. The first time it doesn't map, as you said, the second time it maps. So the deliverance of the message from on high has to map onto this. And some of this conflict and its agreement would emerge from biological acceptability. Because the people would say, oh, I feel as though that was just it solves the problem and so the materials in communication then with abstraction. I think I think we're close to agreement. I guess to circle back, I don't I don't sort of deny that. I don't I'm really not denying that narrative is a powerful way for disclosing not denying that narrative is a powerful way for disclosing intelligibility and the logos,

what I'm saying is there's a privileging of it here that I know. Okay, so is it important? Is the distinction that I just made between an embodied pattern and a narrative enough to dispense with your, with your objection or is there more to it? Well, let me, let me, let me see. Because I think that theories and poems and music, things that I'm sitting as non-narrative can disclose depths of reality that I can't disclose with the story.

Okay, so why is it, why is it important to you or necessary to make that distinction? You think? It's just out of curiosity. Well, it's important for me is that I'm concerned about a privileging of narrative. I'll use biblical evidence. An inappropriate privileging of narrative. We'll border on idolatry, right?

In that we are. Well, that's kind of what the postmodernists do. So there's definitely a danger there, right? If you overprivileged narrative to the point where the ontology itself just... I did what John is saying is that he's afraid that if we embody, if we embrace narrative, then the solution to the meaning crisis won't be universal enough.

Is that something? That's something like that. So that's a practical implication because I would propose to you, it's a proposal, okay? That whatever is going to resolve the meaning crisis because I would propose to you, it's a proposal, okay, that whatever is going to resolve the meaning crisis has to reintegrate science and spirituality. If it does not do that in some of the scientists.

Well, so that's partly also what you're insisting on is that there is this domain of scientific knowledge that should be regarded as, in some sense, independent of narrative, and that's, I'm still having a very much trouble with that because we still have the problem of, if then, right? right? It's like, and I don't see how we escape, escaped from that. But, but, but that's where I push on back on the trivialization. If, if then constitutes a narrative, no, no, it doesn't. Okay. If constitutes a narrative. If constitutes a

case, because if has to be, well, if we want to cure disease, if we want to. So, Jung believed that the spirit of science grew out of the alchemical fantasy. And so, the alchemical fantasy was we will find in material the solution to ill-health, death, and privation. Well, yeah, ill-health, death, and privation. That's exactly it. And so Jung's point was without that impulse, which he regarded as a compensation to the hyper-spiritualization that Christianity imposed in the world in the first Christian ion, without that fantasy deeply, like deeply embodied, manifesting its out of embodied behavior and then out of image, we wouldn't have been because Jung said, well, how do you get someone to look down a microscope

at an amoeba for 10 hours? Cause like no animal will do that. And his notion was what we had to be gripped by something of a dream of intense motivational significance. And it was the dream that redemption could be found in analysis of the transformations of the material world. Right, but the motivating structure is not the same thing as the reference of what I'm talking about. Right, right, right.

So I mean narrative to do science, but we don't want to make the genetic fallacy, that that means that everything that science is referring to is a narrative, right? Yeah, right. To fact, right. That'd be like, that's like saying, everything I talk about, I have to speak in English. So reality is made out of English. Well, that does bring us to the postmodern conundrum because they would insist that no all the sets of, all the facts that science derives are in some simple sense, a narrative, right?

And then that narrative is associated with the drive to power and domination. And so, yeah, we do have to be careful of that because we'll fall right into that trap. Right. So that's what, so if you say, what a comment? No, but I say this. I do think that a great manner in which modern science got who does is, I think it is, narrative, that is, there is, on the one hand, a desire to deliver, but on the other hand, the desire to dominate is there, right? We can talk about this before with bacon and... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I don't deny that. Yeah. And so there is, and so it doesn't take away the... But the same motivation can drive people in doing mathematics. Yeah. Right? It's the same motivation can drive people in doing mathematics. Yeah. Right. It's the same motivation can drive people doing music. So we don't want to say that's the essence of science or music or mathematics, because then we're removing the important differences.

You're afraid that we're collapsing everything. Yes. But I think, yeah, I think that it's mostly about hierarchy. In the sense of, in the sense that because we are embodied beings that are living that are living in the world that are living lives, then all that we do all that we care about is part of that reality. And so even the nomenological order, although I think I agree with you now, it's definitely not a narrative, but it is embedded.

That's why Jordan used the expression embedded in narrative. Yes. That is that it has to... But isn't the reverse the case? Narrative depends on the presupposition that there is an ordered world in which it can take place. Right, but the question is then, is that logos that constitutes the order, so to speak, if when you represent that, do you necessarily represent it as a narrative?

And this is a deep question. I'm proposing to you that the logos is that which allows the narrative, order, and the nomological order to unite to what they're doing. That's what I'm saying. Right. Okay, but that's fine. But then I might wonder, does it extend, does it extend to the narrative order and to the underlying ontological order as well? The logos is both in the story and in the logic. That's what we think about. Just even follow the history of the word logos and watch how it goes in these two different directions

with good reason. Yeah, yeah. Well, so, okay. So, then the question, so you're objecting that the logos isn't a story and that's so strange and so weird because I'm not saying that what the west is kind of split and that's so strange and so weird because I can say that what the West is kind of split on that because in some sense if you if you think of the development of the idea of the logos from the Greek and enlightenment side the answer would be there there's no

immediate insistence there that it's a narrative that's right but on the Judeo-Christian side there's a pronounced insistence that it's a narrative yes But on the Judeo-Christian side, there's a pronounced insistence that it's a narrative. And our modern culture is actually a union of those two, right? Just you described a couple episodes of the Awakening for the Meaning Crisis. That's exactly the argument I tried to decide. And well, and certainly the argument we're having right now because Jonathan and I are in some sense are making a case where the logo says narrative and embody narrative, although you also point to the importance of embodiment.

I'm not rejecting. I know, I know. I know. Well, it's very difficult to differentiate. Yes. Right. Yes. And I do like the idea that there's a hierarchy of narrative with the ideal at the top and then a hierarchy of normal logical description and that there's a correspondence between the hierarchies because it does seem to me me that I want to puzzle that out. One of the things Jung warned about, he thought there was an ethos in the religious story and to some degree in the alchemical story. And then when the scientific revolution hit, we blew up the nomological into this massively powerful thing, but our ethic was left in the same primitive form. So now we're in danger because of that.

I think that's exactly right. I think one of what I talk about this in terms of propositional tyranny and algorithmic tyranny. Right. What we've done is we've reduced the logos inappropriately to logic. I strongly resist that. Move to it. Right. So you're okay. Okay.

Okay. Well, I get your caution because I strongly resist that. Move to it. Right. So you're, okay, okay, okay. Well, I get, I get your caution because I do believe that devolving everything down to the narrative per se does put us in the postmodern trap, which is, well, it's all, in some sense, well, it's all narrative, which is kind of what they claimed. And that's a problem because then you can dispense with the, with the corrective reality. Exactly. Exactly. So I use a stereoscopic metaphor.

I think of the logos as epitomized in logic, as in story, and then I try to look through both to a depth. That's what I try to think of as the logos. Okay, cool. Sorry. Tell me that again. So you know how I have the left and right visual field, and then I look through them to depth perception.

Yeah. Here's Logos is logic, here's Logos is story and I try to look through them to the depth behind you. Yeah, that's well that seems on the face of it quite fine. I mean, I'm still in a conundrum because we already agreed that the selection of the facts and even the manifestation of the facts as perceptual objects is dependent on the imposition of a hierarchy of value. And so that tangles the damn narrative into it again. But so but but there's something that's key to the idea of parallel hierarchies that I think is

is a conceptual way out of this. And that's one of the key moves in Neoplatonism, exactly what you're puzzling over. How do these things, what explains their parallel, and what explains beyond the parallel, what I was trying to do with the deroscopic, what explains their convergence? Okay, so what if it is something like, let's say I'm using the word person, but let's use the word consciousness. Okay. So it's a maximum, it's has this is why I like some maximum so much right because say maxi miss he has he has exactly what you're talking about in terms of this normal out of order.

Yeah. This is hierarchy of order. And he has a sense in which the laboratory for that is man right man with a capital M. And so doesn't it, doesn't it kind of one of the solutions to this when it be the relevant realization that you're talking about, but the relevant realization happens ultimately happens in consciousness or something like consciousness or I mean, I think it happens in intelligence because we have a lot of relevance realization going on below consciousness.

Okay. I've talked about this. I think consciousness is a kind of we have a lot of relevance realization going on below consciousness. We're gonna have talked about this. Right, okay. I think consciousness is a kind of intelligence for specific kinds of problems. It'll define normal, novel, complex. Yes, yes, yes, yes. That's the horizon, unpredictable horizon in the future. Right, right, right.

So, but let's say, and I think the issue is yes. And what I'm here, what I'm sort of proposing is intelligibility is something like the way reality is realizing itself and relevance realization is intelligence. And the good is the fact that we trust that the intelligence contract the intelligibility. And by doing that, it puts us in touch with the world. That's what I was saying. Is that a, is that a presupposition of doing. Is that a presupposition of faith? Is that a presupposition of the faith

that was necessary before the manifestation of a real science? Yes. The willingness to act on that basis? I think if you do not, okay, so I'm not gonna deny the importance of the Judeo-Christian story, okay? But I would also say that without Plato's argument about the good as the ongoing fulfillment of the promise that intelligibility tracks realness, you can't do science.

And there's a reason why the scientific revolution is a return to Plato. Galileo rejects Aristotle and goes to Plato and says, Plato is right. Mathematics, listen to the words, mathematics is the language of reality. There's no math in Aristotelian science for 1200 years. He turns to Plato. And that's what brings in the core of my side. Why is that a turn to Plato particularly? Because Plato, like, and the Republic, Plato makes the argument that he had it over the academy. You can't come into the academy unless you can do mathematics, because until you do mathematics, you can't grasp the kind of intelligibility needed to get at the deepest realities of things.

And science... I'm sure you said that math was the cardinal example of that. Yes. And all of our science is dependent on mathematics. Right. And his attitude towards myth and narrative is, right, that's how he goes claim about science. Yeah. Is that myths and narratives are, right, that they are indispensable,

but they do not have the same degree of revelation of the promise of the good that math does. I'm not saying I agree with that. Isn't that why also a new Platonism could never land? Right, he could never land and become a mode of being for a society. It's as it, that's why we've talked about this before a little bit where what Christianity does is it provides the body for that which was good of the Neoplatonic tradition. And it provides something more to be embodied in a communion of love and a communion of

all other parts of our participation. See, what you can't get in Neoplatonism and although I'm not a Christian, I prefer Christian Neoplatonism over pagan Neoplatonism and and and and although I'm not a Christian I prefer Christian Neoplatonism over pagan Neoplatonism because Plato is striving towards the agape and Christianity makes this astonished the two identity claims Both made by John God is logos and God is agape right and then that's an identity claim between logos and agape Right, it's not to say they're the same, but it's also the same, right? And you're gonna say the Trinity and I get that, right? That's fine, and I don't object to that.

But the point I'm making is for me, that's the crucial move. Here's what I say in response to that. And this is what I mean when I say about meal plateonism is the core thing that you would use the word crucial. On to it. Yeah, no, I think it is. I think it is because I'd go back to my point. You can't follow the logos unless agape takes you out of egocentrism.

Great, but I thought that's right. But also agape can't unfold to you unless there's an order and an intelligibility to it. It makes no sense to say, I love something and there's no intelligibility to it. That doesn't make any sense. Right? Yeah. Okay. Now, but you see, the thing is, and this is what I'm trying to get at with my idea of

the intellectual Silk Road, right? That, right now, our culture, the hominidics of suspicion were locked into the courtroom of debate. I propose that we go back and do what we had with the Silk Road, which is the courtyard of discussion. Neal Platonism has this terrific ability to enter into reciprocal reconstruction with Christianity. Clearly, it does it with Islam. Which is what we're doing right now. Yes, but it does it with Islam, and that's how you get Sufism. It does it with science. If you take a look, read John Spencer's book, the

Eternal Law. If you look at what's happening around Einstein and that, they're all invoking Neoplatonic or similar ideas to Neoplatonism. Neoplatonism with Galileo, it's capable of entering into reciprocal reconstruction with science, with Islam, with Christianity. There seems to be evidence that it can do this with Buddhism, Taoism, that's with Thomas Plantas' argument was happening on the Silk Road. So, what you see as a potential defect, I see as a benefit, which is it doesn't land because it's designed to land in many different ways and allow people. Okay, so that's very much related to this idea of a parallel hierarchy. If you abstracting out the set of universal facts, then those facts are useful in relationship to the higher order narratives that unite narratives. But that's exactly what I think that's the claim you just made.

I think so. Let me let me see. that Neil Platonism gives us a way to dispose the furniture of thought that we can come into deep dialogue and it would allow a sufi and it would allow a Christian to have deep discussion. They don't have to agree. The Silk Road wasn't dependent on one person running the Silk Road. It was dependent on the fact that all of these civilizations found a way to deeply talk to each other. Why the Silk Road metaphor? I'm too historically, I know what the Silk Road was, but why use that? Because the Silk Road binds the east and the west together. Naturally. It's like the golden thread. Yes, it's the through line between civilization.

Literally. But not just the physical road, there is a philosophical Silk Road and Thomas Plent, by the way, who is a Christian argues argues that that was Neoplatonism. So I think in one deep sense, Neoplatonism... Well, certainly, it certainly is the case that, to some degree, if science is a derivation of Neoplatonism in the way that you described, science has also been a uniting methodology and system of apprehension. It is.

Because many different cultures are willing with different degrees of ability to utilize the scientific method. I agree. And I would say that's ultimately exactly for the reason you just gave, because science has sort of made implicit within itself many neoplatonic moves. I mean, I think it's interesting. I would say, I mean, it doesn't bother me so much

in the sense that to the extent that that which your plate is and present as true, I don't have that measure problem. When I read St. Maximus, I don't even ask myself. You'll play it in a word with this Christianity. And I'm not saying you should. Yeah. What I'm saying is, and when I read a soup, I don't ask myself that question either. Like if I read Ibn Arabi, I would say, yeah, he's saying some pretty powerful two things. You know, and I can also recognize the place to which we disagree, but he says some definitely powerful

things about the nature of reality, which are. The think about the imaginal without Ibn Arabi, you won't get it. And if you want to turn to some very good places to talk about a gothic love, read some of the soup, you want, like, I want to... So you're emphasizing this in large part,

or I don't want to put words in your mouth, but because you also see, see, I think that belief in the logos is a precondition for dialogue, right? Yes. But you're making a case for, in some sense, it's not a binary definition of logos. It's one that's informed, perhaps properly, in equal parts from the tradition of Greece and the...

It's that polar. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but there's but there's also There's no reason to assume that there isn't a deeper unity that That both are pointing to I Mean we've been acting out that presupposition in some sense in the West since since the time of the Renaissance because that was Rome and Greece meeting Jerusalem in a real sense Rome sorry Roman Athens say meeting Jerusalem in a real sense. Roman, sorry, Roman Athens, say, meeting Jerusalem in a real sense.

But it was true way before that. I mean, one of the precursors to the Renaissance is the intellectual reality of Constantinople. Like, New Platonism was just present there the whole time. It just was there. And so we know we don't know much about it because the city was destroyed and everything got scattered. But the tradition of Neoplatonism, the man in which one of the important matters in which

it reached the west was through these Christian scholars that got chased away from the city basically because it was in danger and brought the text and the tradition to the Arab world. The Arab world too. There's sort of multiple times. See, what I'm trying to do, what I'm proposing is, I'm trying to do, I'm trying to do like a historical thing, where I'm trying to look at all of the ways in which it's like the glass.

We can get the multi-espectuality of neoplatonism by seeing all the ways it was able to re-reciprocify reconstructed itself, right? Reciprocally reconstructed with a Aristotle or with Christianity or with science or with His great so you're taking snapshots of that in some sense in the same way I'm trying to do that with the notion of right at the top in a narrative sense using the biblical corpus Exactly and I'm trying to find the through line the historical through line for Neoplatanism because I don't this is Maybe we're Jonathan and I disagree, but I think we do it in a at least a loving manner

Well, or don't understand each other fully. It's possible. It's possible, but what I'm saying when I what I guess what I wanted to state is Your metagame me participating in the dialogue is more important to me than Continuing the right relationship is more valuable to me than coming to the right condition. Right, definitely. Definitely. So I just wanted to stay. Oh, yeah.

Well, that's a good place to end, I think. Okay. We've got a long ways through this. We'll try to figure out perhaps after we think about this for a good while, what we might do to continue it, because there's a few propositions here that I think are relevant. I just might share them with people that we didn't get to. Any hierarchy that is unified is made so by the dominion of a superordinate principle. So something has to bring everything together and has to be at the top, to unite.

That principle is most effectively what is common to all that is deemed of comparative or relative value within the hierarchy. So we talked about the commonality between the good, the beautiful and true. The common principle of value must necessarily be elevated to the highest place in the hierarchy. Well, that's the abstraction of the good. Maybe it wouldn't matter if it was neoplatonic or the more Christian notion of the logos. And then this is something that you really influenced me in relationship. That bringing to the highest place is personal subordination. So that's above me and I serve it. Imitation, I want to become that. Faith, I believe that that principle prevails. Celebration,

which is it's worthy of what would you say? There's joy in relationship to the recognition of its superordinate place, adulation, a variant of that, and worship, which is sort of maybe, a worship is what combines all of those. And so those are propositions, which I would like to impact with you guys. And then there's something that's more specifically Judeo-Christian after that, which I won't get into now because I think it would be a distraction. So, well, that's quite a conversation. I'll come to try on any time for this. Okay, well, I think we should think about doing it again. We'll start half way through and see if we can get to the end. I think that would be very good. Yeah, well, it's really, see a lot of what we're doing is we're differentiating the propositions, right? good. Yeah, well, it's really, really, see a lot of what we're doing is, we're differentiating the propositions, right?

It's like, well, here's the proposition. Here's its complexity, and there's some real utility and just seeing the full complexity, walking through it. You, I mean, this is also, right? This is also, I think, a genuine active fellowship or even friendship, because the more you do that, the more responsive you can make your argument to people who want to engage with it.

Of course, of course, that's exactly what I mean, we're trying to get to a diverse range of tools that are grounded on something as rock solid as we can manage. So yeah. Thanks for writing us. Thanks for the meetings of suspicion. Yeah, thanks for that. Thank you. Then we don't need to have the needs of suspicion. Yeah, that was, that was, that was a great deal.

Hey, my pleasure, man. I'm so glad you guys could come and that we can be together finally in person. And I think the conversation was a lot more dynamic and deeper than we would have managed on Zoom. I totally agree with that. I totally agree. All right. Great.

Thanks, Eric. Thank you for all you who are watching and listening and more to follow on many fronts with any luck.