Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - Rebecca Goldstein on Gödels' incompleteness, Sam Harris' Landscape, and debate with Jordan Peterson

Episode Date: July 14, 2020

Rebecca Goldstein is an American philosopher, novelist and public intellectual. She holds a Ph.D. in philosophy of science from Princeton University and is sometimes grouped with novelists such as Richard Powers and Alan Lightman, who create fiction that is knowledgeable of, and sympathetic toward, science.* * *I'm producing an imminent documentary Better Left Unsaid http://betterleftunsaidfilm.com on the topic of "when does the left go too far?" Visit that site if you'd like to contribute to getting the film distributed (in 2020) and seeing more conversations like this.

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checkout. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash theories, all lowercase. That's shopify.com slash theories. I don't think we all want the same things. I think there are many people who want their group, their tribe, however they define it, to win at all costs. And they will sacrifice the truth entirely to get what they want. And no, I don't think we all want. I think without the taming respect for the truth,

yeah, that's what it descends to. This next guest needs no introduction. It is the always charming, lovely, edifying Rebecca Goldstein. And in this conversation, we talk about Gödel's incompleteness theorem, its relationship to truth, as well as the laws of physics, potentially. We also talk about her views on Sam Harris's moral landscape. How does she justify her morality, given that she's an atheist and doesn't particularly like notions of transcendence or God. And last, we talk about something she's never revealed before, which is her thoughts, feelings, conceptualizations of that debate that she had with Jordan Peterson. Enjoy.

I'm here with Rebecca Goldstein and we're going to talk all about Gertl's theorem, incompleteness theorem, as well as progress, rationality, and the enlightenment. Okay, Rebecca, thanks for coming on. My pleasure. So tell me what does your day-to-day schedule schedule look like? How are you productive? I feel very unproductive, actually. You mean as of late or most of the time? Maybe 2016 when some politics have become too interesting and I waste an awful lot of time. too interesting and I waste an awful lot of time, you know, politics, I'm reading up on politics and doing whatever I can. So I sometimes wonder whether when historians, intellectual historians look back on this period, whether they're going to see a dip in productivity, just because of, you know, how well consuming politics can get. So anyway, when I am productive, I am productive because I become obsessed. And so I, you know, when I'm working on a problem, time just flies, you know, and I, you know, I get right to work and I can work for 18 hours

straight. In fact, I've, when I was writing the book on Goodles and completeness theorems in particular, I, you know, I kind of ruined my back because the day would just fly by and I hadn't moved from my desk seat for most of it is do you write with a pen and paper? Do you write with your laptop? I'm getting into the details. Yeah, I write with a laptop, you know, that was a slow process. I was very late to doing that. I thought I needed to do, I do diagrams and all of this sort of thing when I'm mapping out ideas. The structure of an argument is always extremely important to me. And you write the diagrams on the laptop or with a pen and paper? Yeah, that's what I do with pen and paper. But then the actual sentences are always composed on a laptop. And, you know, it's terrific for someone like me because I revise and I revise

and revise. I revise each sentence. I don't like write a whole book and then go back to revising, which I do anyway. But I go sentence by sentence and you know sentences can be rewritten seven eight times and yeah so a laptop do you find that most of your work is reading or actual writing i remember i was talking to pinker and he said something like 80% of his time is spent reading. Yeah, he reads a lot. I read much less. I, you know, for my work, because he is, he's a great cattle. You know, he takes from this person, from that person,

and then he puts it together in something that's greater than the sum of its parts. I think that's one of his tremendous talents. But I'm different. I sort of attack problems usually on my own. I mean, there usually are more amenable problems. So for me, it's thinking more than writing I spend a very long time thinking and walking around I walk around the house you know and I walk outside and I walk you know so uh our our our processes are very different I know this is gonna sound like I'm getting so much of the details but do you tell Pinker or anyone who else is around to not talk to you when you're walking and thinking? For example, for me, when I think I look like I'm angry. So my wife always wants to ask if I'm okay. And I have to tell her, I have to bark at her and tell her like, don't please, if I'm, if I look like I'm angry,

I'm likely just thinking. So when this light is, I have a light. When this light is on, just don't talk. Try your best to not talk to me. Don't even look at me. Because if she looks at me, I sound so tyrannical. But if she looks at me, I feel bad. So I have to be like, please ignore me. So what are your rules?

I don't know that I've ever explicitly laid them out, but people can tell and they're respectful. So I have also from a former marriage two children. And they, you know, so they were little children when their mother was thinking. when their mother was thinking. And I remember once I was, you know, cooking dinner and one of my daughters had a little friend over and a little friend asked me something. And my daughter said, don't bother her. She's thinking.

And the friend said, she's cooking. And my daughter said, trust me, she's thinking. So that's when I knew that they could read my expression and they were extremely respectful of it so I've been lucky okay let's get into girdles and completeness theorems if you don't mind why don't you explain to the audience just a brief overview of what they are yeah so that so that yes, as you say, there are, it's in the plural, there are two of them. And what they have to do with are the limitations of formal systems. And formal systems, which are very, very important in logic and in mathematics, are rule-governed systems for proving things, are kind of proof mechanisms in which everything that you can do in the formal system is defined by a rule.

defined by a rule. Recursive rules are extremely important in formal systems. And these are rules that you can apply to something, and then you can apply that rule to the result that you got in applying the rule ever and ever and ever. So for example, we can generate the integers that way, just keep adding one to the results you got before and you'll have another integer. So this is a way you can define the integers. Completely rule burned. Just one second. The cat.

It grows right after you said, this is how you define the integers algorithmically. Yes. So this is how, you know, that formal systems, they have rules, mechanical procedures, algorithms. twined concepts and um and they were very very important um in mathematics particularly mathematics because of the discovery of the paradoxes of set theory which showed us that our intuitions in mathematics were not trustworthy you can derive certain paradoxes. And so the idea was, okay, we're just, we're going to reduce mathematics to formal systems, to just these mechanical rules that will eliminate our reliance on intuitions on what seems to us to be true, and just have these mindless rules that you don't even have to think about

meaning, the kind of thing that can be programmed into a computer. And actually, from these notions of formal system, especially as it was refined after Gettl, we did get computers, actually. So that this is, anyway, so the incompleteness of theorems are about the limitations of formal systems. This is not a way to solve, it turns out, the paradoxes of set theory. It's impossible. What you want from a formal system is that everything you prove in it is true, for sure. You also want that everything that is true can be proved. And that's what the first incompleteness theorem tells you cannot be true for arithmetic. Everything that we can prove in

a formal system of arithmetic is true, but not everything that's true can be proved in a formal system. And then you can try to add an axiom to that formal system so that, you know, you can capture the thing you couldn't prove in the previous one. Well, you can form, you can derive other propositions that won't be provable in that system and on and on infinitum. So that's the first incompleteness theorem. There are true propositions about the integers that can't be proved in any formal system. And so, and then the second incompleteness theorem is also kind of devastating because the one thing you really, really want from your formal system is that it be consistent. That is that you can't prove a contradiction in it.

You can't prove for some proposition P that both P and not P is true. And of course that would be contradictions are false so that would negate you know the first thing which is that everything you prove in a formal system is true but it's much more serious than that because technically in in uh formal logic from a contradiction anything follows so you you can prove absolutely anything. I can prove that one equals three. I can prove anything in an inconsistent system. So the fact that when you're using a formal system, you cannot itself prove its consistency is kind of devastating. Let me restate that.

Yeah, you can go outside of the system, like, for example, giving a model for the system that will show that it is consistent. So it's not that we're... But one of the things that you can prove within a formal system is the consistency of that system itself. That's the second incompleteness theorem. I'm sorry. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So I'll make a synopsis just for people who are listening in math. You have a statement, like, let's say that even plus even equals another even number. So you

take two even numbers that equals How do you know that that's true for all even numbers you have a proof? It's almost like the way that I like to explain it to people It's like Sherlock Holmes you have the dead body and then you want to say who killed and then you go step by step there's well their shoes here and the shoes can only belong to a man because of so-and-so and And the dog didn't bark because they know that so on so on so so he's okay great So now we've gotten step by step deductively. We've gotten to the conclusion. Therefore, this conclusion is true. Okay. Now the question is, does the reverse hold? Okay. Well, if something is true, can you always prove that it's true? For mathematicians for a while, it was like, what does it mean for something to be true and not proved? Okay. But then Gödel said, there are some truths inside a formal system. You fix a formal system.

There are some things that we can see from the outside that it has to be true, but we can also see from the way that it's constructed that you can't prove it within the system. Okay. So that's the first one. The second one is also that you can't prove in your own system, the consistency of your own system, otherwise you become inconsistent. Consistency just means like, Rebecca, you just said, you can't prove A and not A at the same time. Yes. Okay. Yes. So that is, so this is- Why does that matter? Why does that matter to people? Like, that just sounds so esoteric to most people who are listening.

esoteric to most people who are listening yes it does sound very esoteric well it was as i said you know um we had always depended on these sort of on these intuitions like if you if you have a predicate you know um forming a predicate you can form the set of all things that satisfy that predicate so the predicate of like being an American president, you know, there are how many people? 45, right? 45 people who, for whom that is true. I think, I think Trump is 45th president. Anyway. According to some people. Yeah. So, you know, and so there's that set that satisfies. Well, now that just seems, you know, intuitive for every predicate. You can form the set of things satisfying that predicate. And set theory depended on that.

Well, consider the following set. The set of all sets that aren't members of themselves. So is there such a set? Turns out there can't be such a set because a set of all sets that aren't members of themselves, if it's a member of itself, then it's not a member of itself. And it's not a member of itself. It is a member of itself. That's a classic paradox. It's a member of itself if and only if it's not a member of itself. That was a paradox discovered by Bertrand Russell, the philosopher Bertrand Russell. There were other paradoxes, but that's a classic paradox. That still sounds like it doesn't matter. So how does this matter to someone's day-to-day life? Or does it not matter? So how does this matter to someone's day-to-day life? Or does it not matter?

Well, let's see if it matters. So it is something about mathematics. It matters in terms of, as you had sort of indicated, what makes mathematics true? Mathematics is a little mysterious because it's not empirical, right? We, you know, we, we, we, that's why mathematicians are so cheap

for a university to hire, right? They only require blackboards and chalks and erasers basically. And yeah, and there's a joke connected to that, that philosophers are even cheaper because they don't require the erasers. You can never discover you've made a mistake in philosophy. But, you know, we're as physicists and all the empirical scientists, they require laboratories and observatories and, you know, all this expensive

stuff, you know, accelerators and God knows what. So, so what is it? And that's because, you know, mathematics, you know, the information is carried inside your brain. You know, it's all here are the axioms, work out the consequences. So this is a little bit mysterious. And you always ask, well, what makes mathematics true? There are these two basic views. You know, one is that, you know, they're kind of a super sensible reality that we are somehow being able to access with our little finite minds and being able to prove all these things about, you know, many magnitudes of infinity and, you know, wow, aren't we something? Or there's the few that, look, it's just, it's like a higher form of chess.

It's just some rules. It's a game. We lay down the rules and then we see what follows, right? And so mathematics is really just this side of mindless rule following. We're surprised by the things, just as we're surprised in chess, you know, what can ensue just from these finite set of rules. But, you know, but okay. You know, if we had infinite minds,

we'd be able to see all the consequences of our rules. Gödel showed that first, there's something wrong with that first answer, right? It can't just be a matter of rule following, of mindless rule following. And he was a Platonist, and that's that view that, you know, mathematics is kind of he was a Platonist and that's that view that, you know, mathematics is kind of independently true. You know, the June, the moons of Jupiter was spinning around Jupiter before we put the telescope to our eyes. And so to mathematical truths, you know, that there's just an infinity of it. So, I mean, in that sense, it's interesting. Here's the other thing.

People have claimed very large consequences from Gödel's incompleteness theorems about both mind and matter. So, and Gödel also considered it about mind, if there were consequences. I have a little story about that, maybe I'll get to. But it was an argument that was first published by a philosopher, John Lucas, in I think 1964, arguing that Gödel's incompleteness theorems show that our minds can't be digital computers, that even in our doing mathematics, we're not doing it formally. That's how we know that these propositions that we can't prove are true, and that even our mathematical knowledge can't be programmed into a digital computer. Therefore, we are not computers. Right, right, right, right. And so that is, and Roger Penrose, the great physicist, polymath wrote two books arguing such things,

the emperor's mind and shadows of the mind, enlarging on this argument of Lucas. And so actually, so here's my little story, which is when I was a graduate student at Princeton, my then husband was at the Institute for Advanced Study and Gödel was there. Oh, wow. Yes. Your ex-husband was a physicist, am I correct? Yes, Sheldon Goldstein, a most excellent physicist. And so,

now Gödel was a famous recluse. He never, his best friend was Einstein. Now, Guero was a famous recluse. His best friend was Einstein. I mean, that predated my time. I think Dyson died in 1954. Anyway, they would only talk to each other, apparently. And once Einstein died, he really became very reclusive. And then I went to this party for newcomers at the Institute for advanced study. My husband was a newcomer.

When I walked in, a bunch of logicians came running over to me and said, he's here, he's here. Godel is here. And so sure enough, it was, I learned later, there was this brief opening when he was a little bit more gregarious. And that party just happened to coincide with it. And he was there kind of holding court. And I had, of course, read this argument. And I was wanting to ask him what he thought of it.

But I was too shy. Which argument? The John Lucas argument? Okay. Yeah, that the mind can't be a digital computer. Right, right, right. And I just kept putting it off and putting it off. And then he was gone.

And I always tell my students this. If you have a question, ask it. You can spend the rest of your life regretting. I did it. I have always regretted that I didn't ask him that question. You know, what do you think of this argument that he could have views on it? Okay, so that would be that's a big important consequence if it is a consequence. Right, right, right. Because people like Daniel Dennett would say that the mind is mechanistic. Well, I don't know if I'm, if I'm straw manning him,

but it's something akin to a computer. At least some people say, yeah, it is, it is a thing to say. We'd like to say it. And it's certainly true. So what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I am. I'm not a, I'm not a reductionist when it comes to the mind. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Is Pinker a reductionist when it comes to the mind?

We are. Perhaps he takes reductionism a little more seriously uh than i do um yeah one of my questions that i had that now i just really want to ask is one of what are the ways in which you defer from pinker ideologically and your beliefs well maybe we can uh i would say that, hmm, it depends what sphere, I think. You know, if it's political, I probably am a little more to the left. But we are... Philosophically. Philosophically.

No, I think that we're both very, very committed, as you know, to rationality. And I would say in the important ways, we're quite similar. Okay. So does this mean when you say that you're not a reductionist which by the way that's one of the major ways that girdles and completeness theorem has implications because if you think of society as being composed of brains then that's composed of biology which is chemistry which is physics which is predicated on mathematics and if... It uses... Sorry? It uses mathematics.

Right, right, right, that's right. But it is not itself mathematics. That's right, that's right. And if mathematics is on unsolid ground in some way, shape, or form, then that has implications for all, for definitely all of physics, and then all of what's above. Well, even that is contested. So for example, I was interviewing someone named Sabine Hossenfelder, who thinks Gödel's incompleteness theorem has nothing to say about physics. Although she said, who said that? Sabine Hossenfelder. Well, I actually agree with

her. Okay, okay. Well, she said one of the reasons is that let's say that you came up with something that cannot be proven whether or not it's, that cannot be proven to be true. You can, in physics, you can just test it. And then if it is true, because it's experimental, then if it is true, you just put that as an axiom. But my response to that would be, that would go against the parsimony of science, because if you have many of them, then you can just have a thousand axioms plus your physical theory, or 10,000 axioms, or one million. It's an in-principle argument, but regardless, regardless. Yeah, I actually think that, although I'm open on this first question of whether mind, conclusions about mind

follow from Gödel's incompleteness theorems. When it comes to matter, I actually don't think any of these metamathematical conclusions, and that's what Gödel's incompleteness theorem has to do with, has any implications for a final theory, for a theory of everything. Right. So does, in your estimation, mind come from matter? Excuse me? Does mind come from matter oh yeah this stuff is this stuff is the stuff that is doing doing it all right yes of course then where's the discrepancy why is it that girdles and completeness theorem doesn't apply to matter

but what matter eng is it applies to well what we want to know about mind is um is it is it a computer is everything that the mind is able to do in particular in doing mathematics um but all the other things that our minds do, is it, is this something that a computer could do? And there's reason to think, because of what the computers are, you know, everything that happens in a computer is computable, right? It's all working according to this to these algorithmic rules that maybe that the powers of the mind exceed that and that even the notion of truth itself

mathematical truth itself that's Tarski's undefined ability theorem, the notion of truth itself can't be formalized in a formal system. It exceeds what we can get out of a formal system. Truth is enmeshed with the notion of meaning. And that was the whole point of computability. Let's get out our intuitions about truth and about meaning. They're not entirely reliable. And they are not entirely reliable. But we can't get along without them. You know, we can't even do mathematics without them.

You know, if we confine ourselves to doing what computers can do, they're very very useful for solving many mathematical problems, but if we confined ourselves to that, we would not be able to do everything that we're able to do even in mathematics. So it really does relate because of, you know, the whole notion of what a formal system is, what a program is, what a recursion, computable, you know, algorithms, all of these tied up notions, and how truth and meaning are outside of that circle. That's what Gödel showed us. I mean, that's big stuff. That's really big stuff. And Tarski really cashed out on it with his undefinability theorem. Right. As a historical footnote, did Gödel come up with Tarski's undefinability theorem before him?

How did you know? Yes, he did. He did. He probably came up with it. He didn't bother to prove it. But yes, he came up, I think, I haven't checked dates, but I think Tarski published it in 1936, the undefinability theorem. And, you know, Gödel had published his theorems in 31. And I think he saw the, yes, I think it was around 31 that he also had seen. Right. Okay. So let's get to Tarski's undefinability theorem. Okay. Okay. So let me just, we didn't completely finish up with the other thing. So, I mean, here's what I'd say about like a theory of everything, you know, which some extremely smart people have claimed is,

has been ruled out by Gödel's incompleteness theorem. Freeman Dyson, Stephen Hawking had changed his mind about this verse. He thought it didn't, and then he thought it did. So then it is that Gödel's incompleteness theorem has ruled out a theory of everything. So let's say you have a formal system of, of, of, of physics, right? And so besides, you know, besides all the arithmetic that is formalized in there,

you also have, you know, things referring to, you know, velocity and mass and position and space-time, all of this other stuff, which, you know, go beyond mathematical concepts. I think the only thing that really follows from Gödel's incompleteness theorem is that there will be arithmetical propositions within that formal system that you will not be able to prove, that's what follows. That's what Gödel showed. But this is nothing about the completeness or lack of completeness of the physics

in this formal system. So I don't think that this metamathematics actually has this implication. So that's, anyway, that's my that's my right right just so we're clear for the audience what is freeman dyson's position on it and stephen hawking's and then why do you disagree like where's the disagreement between you and so he says i think where did this come from he hasn't written extensively on this i think in the new york review of books when okay i think when he was reviewing Brian Greene's book, he...

He as in Hawking or Dyson? The Freeman Dyson, yeah, Freeman Dyson. He said, look, Gödel's incompleteness theorem shows that there are an exhaustible number of true propositions in mathematics that can't be true and because of the that we can't show is true I'm sorry and because of this since physics uses mathematics it follows that there are an inexhaustible number of physical propositions which can't be proved true and i say you're saying that that's a leap i say that's a leap i say that's a non-sequitur actually so um yeah okay let's get to tarski we could spend the entire hour talking about this stuff it's extremely rich and extremely complicated

and I think for me always it's let's first look at the incompleteness theorem see what they're proving how they prove it the limit you know the fact that they're proving something about formal systems of arithmetic. We can't prove, you know, and so in this theory of everything, we will not be able to prove complicated views, complicated truths about the integers, but we don't need to do that anyway in doing physics. That's not the kind of math we use in physics. Right, although there's a generalization of Gödel's theorem

which implies Gödel's theorem and is easier to prove, and I think it was by Turing or Turing and Gödel. ELANA GORDON, A halting probe. JOHN WHYTE, Ph.D.: About mechanistic. No, oh, yeah, yeah, the halting. And just about any mechanized system. Now, someone named Stephen Wolfram, who's a theoretical. Now, he's.

And he was before. Right, right. He says that the base of our reality is computation. And I'm curious if that's the case, what he defines computation as and what Godel's incompleteness theorem has to say about that. That's for me to ask him. Okay. So let's get to Tarski. What is this theorem? Oh, it is really what I just said, that the notion of a arithmetical truth, again, it's about arithmetic,

right? Someone from Goethe's Incompleteness said, the notion of arithmetical truth can't be defined arithmetically. That's basically what it says, right? So again, this is quite a limit. So the notion of truth, the semantic notion of truth that is involved with meaning and all of this can't be defined syntactically. That is by these rules of what are the symbols and how you can put the symbols together and which strings of symbols can fall from other strings of symbols. That's what a formal system tells you, right? Right.

You can't get the semantic notion of arithmetical truth out of. Now, does that have in your estimation, any implications on truth in the way that people will colloquially use it, use the word truth? Like I believe that this is true or this is scientifically true or objectively true. But tarski also um wrote about semantic truth that is the thing that we can't get out of syntactic truth right it's larger than syntactic truth he also has a he he has um and this is now we're talking about philosophy of language,

we're not talking about philosophy of mathematics anymore, we're talking about meaning and truth. And so he has this classic paper on the semantic notion of truth and what he basically is proof arguing there is that you hold on it just froze after you said Tarski had a wonderful paper about the semantic notion of truth. this semantic notion can't really be defined either. You can have a big, interesting theory of truth. That truth is, it's baked into the very conditions of assertion. That when I assert anything, I'm asserting it's true. His example is the proposition snow is white is true. If and only if snow is white, it sounds so prosaic. And in some sense,

that's what he's saying. Truth is kind of, it's prosaic. And that's why, even if, you know, if you want to come up with some fancy notion of truth, I mean, even to understand your fancy,

for us to understand your fancy notion of truth, we're just going to fall back on the old prosaic notion of truth, you know, which is just baked into the very conditions of being able to speak at all, and which is, and the very conditions of language. It's why we trust each other when people say things. We know that to say, to put forth the proposition is to say it's true. I don't have to say the proposition, I'm going to stick with Trump, right? The proposition that Trump is, you know, it was

elected, let's make it, the proposition that Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 is true. All I have to say is, I don't have to say that, all I have to say is Trump lost the popular vote in 2016. I am already saying it's true. And that's more or less what, and that it's tied up with meaning and it's tied up with the very conditions of language. And you just can't have any more interest. It's a deflationary view of semantic truth.

This is very interesting because people have put forth all sorts of theories. Just a second, just a second. As far as I know, there's a couple of theories which correspond as pragmatic and deflationary. I never understood. So do you mind explaining what deflationary means? The deflationary theory of truth, there is no truth. It deflates all theories of truth. It deflates all theories of truth, it it deflates all theories of truth just because truth is too basic you can't have a theory of it it's just baked into what we do the most fundamental thing that we do with language which is to make assertions

right to make an assertion is to say that that thing that you're asserting is true and that's the most basic thing that we can say about truth. Okay. Yeah, and you don't have to talk about this correspondence to reality. You don't have to talk about its cohering with other things. You don't have to relativize.

I'm sorry, I don't wanna get bogged down in truth like Sam Harris and Peterson, but it sounds like what you, I only study correspondence, coherence, a minor amount, pragmatism, a minor amount, and deflationary, I know almost nothing about, but it sounded like when you were explaining a view, which is snow is white, and it's true if snow is white, or that particular snow is white. That sounds like a correspondence because you have a phrase and then you correspond to the external world. Is that not?

That sounds like a correspondence because you have a phrase and then you correspond to the external world. Is that not? Well, I mean, it's kind of like correspondence, but you don't have to reify. I just don't know. So please, forgive my ignorance. Yeah, you don't have to reify states of affairs, you know, that a proposition is true if and only if there's a state of affair that corresponds to it. if there's a state of affair that corresponds to it. It's really just pointing to, in a kind of Wittgensteinian way, what is it that we do in the most fundamental language game that we play, which is to make assertions so that we can share information with one another.

I mean, this is the very roots, the genealogy of language. Why did language develop among the species of apes? You know, it's because some people are in a better position of knowing certain facts than others. And we develop language so we can pool our, you know, pool our knowledge, basically. it sort of just comes right out of the very conditions in which the genealogical conditions in which language evolved. And it is that, you know, a proposition is true. To assert that this proposition is true is to assert the proposition itself.

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Right, right. The most interesting thing you can say about truth. Now, the postmodernists would disagree with that. So I'm curious, what do you feel like is correct generally about their sentiments? And where do you disagree and why? So I guess postmodernism is one of those terms that links together an awful lot, right? And so there is postmodernism in literature, for example, and I'm very, I like it. I find it interesting. You like it because it's interesting or you like it because you believe what it's

saying is true? No, I don't think, so here's I think maybe in general what we mean by this term postmodernism wherever we apply it, in intellectual domains where I think it's worthless, or in artistic domains where I think, no, you can get some interesting art out of it, right? I think in general what postmodernism is about is, is about is, you know, there are certain conventions that govern these various domains. And postmodernism, and generally, they're invisible. You know, you do the domain and you don't think about the conventions that you're employing in doing this thing. So for example, you know, when a novelist tells a story, you know, she's making it up

and there are all sorts of conventions that pull in the readers and make the readers think to live this reality in the way that you have to live it in order for the novel to work. Well, what if, you know, the novelist calls attention

to the fact that this is, that she is making this all up by putting herself into the story and so calling, you know, calling attention to the conventions. And that can be cool. That can, you know, that can be cool. What you're referring to is self-reflexivity. Yeah, exactly. But that's not all that postmodernism is. The philosophical postmodernism is summed up with skepticism and grand narratives. So in doing intellectual work, there are certain conventions of truth, right?

I think Tarski, that's part of what Tarski is talking about there. And what if we, you know, call attention to those conventions themselves, showing up their conventionality and therefore giving reason to doubt? I mean, the same thing is true wherever we call attention to the conventions. One does it to, you know, call attention to the fact that these are conventional, and we, and therefore open to doubt, you know, what would it be like to doubt them? What would be like to produce art that, you know, doesn't play by those conventions? Well, what would it be like to produce intellectual work that doesn't play by the conventions of, say, truth and meaning and all

of these things. And there, I think, because of what Tarski is saying about truth, you end up with a nonsense. To assert is to assert that what you're saying is true. To put forth a theory that calls into doubt the conventions of truth that are baked into the conventions of assertion is nonsense. I'm going to have to believe what you're saying about truth using the old prosaic notion of truth. And so you end up with paradox, right? Okay. On this form of- Is this something like,

I have a movie called Better Left Unsaid, which is about when does the left go too far? And I'm not saying that because I'm right wing or center or alt-right. It's just because people like Pinker, who considers himself to be on the left, also see that there's an extreme left and they want to delineate themselves. So it's pretty much about delineation. In it, I found that Habermas, who's a social constructionist, which is extremely interesting. I thought he would just agree with the postmodernists. He critiqued the postmodernists by saying, you can't have these true statements. I mean, these two statements, which is, well, you have two different truths.

Truth sub one is, truth is what? I forgot it, but whatever. It's the truth exists. And then truth sub two is truth is whatever i say yeah that's right that's the social constructionist theory of truth but truth sub two depends on truth sub one so it's essentially saying there is no truth but that statement itself is a truthful statement at least you're asserting it is that what you're saying yeah more or less yeah yeah absolutely yeah yeah i mean if you um if these things are just making and this is again i think this is the hashing out what if they said this what if they put an asterisk there is no truth except this one

well what reason would i why why would i ever do that? So, and I'm sure, so there is, I mean, there is no truth except this one. I mean, that there is no truth except this one. And I'm sure you can generate other statements from that, you know, that would also have to be true there i mean there's there's no way that you could restrict that to simply that i see i see i see now what about the power play that comes hand in hand with well yeah so i mean you know it's also groups reign for dominance So without truth, look, we are no angels, this species of ours. We've got better angels. We are no angels, right?

And we need something to rein us in. And I think it's one of our saving graces that we basically do recognize truth. We recognize, almost everybody recognizes that contradictions can't be true. I mean, thank goodness this is true, because this is part of the way that we've made progress. I think this is one of the things that we would like to talk about how we've made progress, but you know, a lot of where we, we, we're self-serving creatures where we're, we're, we're serving of our kin of our, of our tribe and all of these things, all of this is part of what we bring to the game, right? How have we made any progress? Well, part of it is that, you know,

when people show us implications of our various beliefs and show that they lead to contradictions, which is what Habermas, and I would say about this theory of truth, right, needs to contradictions. Most people, you know, the species of apes understands that contradictions can't be true. And you go back and you look at your premises and you see where the contradiction is arising and you give up something.

And we've, a lot of progress has been made in this way You know or I mean science itself, you know, your your your theory makes a prediction the prediction is falsified Now go back. What's wrong with my theory? I mean all of this scientific progress moral progress political All of this scientific progress, moral progress, political progress. Right. All of this has been made because we recognize fundamentally something about truth, right?

Right, right. Without that to rein us in, it's raw power. It's my group gaining dominance against your group this is this is the very opposite of progress right this is a world of you know so without a shared notion of truth it's conflict with it it's nothing but power and you know when you know that theory of truth that should not according to tarski that i take very seriously should not exist right according to this post-modern theory of truth they come right out and say it and say yeah without truth it's one power it's one dominant group you know against the other. Tarski said that? No, that's

where you end up if you don't be serious. I see, I see. See, some people that I was talking to say that what we need in this culture is more dialogue, but dialogue is predicated on a shared notion of truth. Because if you don't have that, then how do you know that you're making progress in the dialogue? What's the point of talking to someone? Exactly. Exactly. I mean, dialogue is so important because some of our most efficacious or operative presumptions are invisible to us. They're so deep down in us that they're quite invisible to us. to us. They're so deep down in us that they're quite invisible to us. And often, yes, we've gotten them from our group, from our culture and all of these things. So it's extremely important

to talk to people who may not share those presumptions because they're coming from maybe different circumstances. I can't tell you how the dialogue has changed since I entered philosophy and was always the only woman in the room. Okay. Only woman. And now how it has changed because certain presumptions just weren't apparent to people until... For example?

just weren't apparent to people until... For example? That there was something, I think it's really changed. There were certain ethical dilemmas that arise within families and who do you owe your allegiance to that have been really strengthened by women entering into, into the conversation because women, you know, are often pulled in very many directions and have,

you know, family obligations or feel family obligations in a way sometimes men don't, right? For probably good evolutionary reasons. That's a politically incorrect thing to say. Okay, so. Anyway, so but it's changed the dialogue. So speaking about progress, are you of the mind that we all pretty much want the same thing, we just disagree on how to get there and what we need to do is use rationality and reason to progress forward

or just abandon what I said. I don't think we all want the same things. I think there are many people who want their group, their tribe, however they define it, to win at all costs and they will sacrifice the truth entirely to to uh to get what they want um and no i don't think we all want i think without the taming respect for the truth yeah that's what it descends to. But I think that an awful lot of, no, I really don't, I don't, I think that there are still many, many people who, see, for me, ideology means, I don't, you know, to me, the word ideology is something negative.

I think you use it somewhat differently than I do, but I, I, I try to not use the term just because it's ill-defined. Many people mean different things, but I just used it when I was speaking about you and Pinker, because I thought you might latch onto that word. Yeah. I mean, to me, it's a negative word. It's a kind of a sacred truth thing, you know, that there are certain truths that I'm just not going to

ever give up, even if they're empirically dogmatism, you know, even if they're dogmatism. Is it different than dogmatism in your in your eyes? It's different than dogmatism. It's almost the same thing as a, you know, almost a, you know, but it's a, except that it's like a theory. It's a whole cluster of interlaced groups of truths or claims of truths often, you know, politically or, you know, politically motivated. I see. I see. Yeah. Why don't we define for the audience what you see as rationality and then progress? Okay. Well, what I see of rationality is one,

tremendous respect for the truth, right? It's a sort of attitude towards the truth it is a recognition of our own fallibility i don't think you can be rational uh without uh recognizing um our weakness uh having a kind of epistemic modesty right uh and not only um recognizing this about one's species which is very very easy but about oneself and so developing critical self-critical attitudes towards one's belief and being willing to do everything you can to challenge those beliefs, which often, you know, involves talking to people who don't believe as you do. I have changed my beliefs radically in my lifetime, often at great personal cost, right? I was born into a extremely religious family, and I don't have those beliefs anymore and that is something I didn't want to differ from my family this was not a rebellion against my family and I am still

extremely close to my family but it was you know an impossibility to believe in the way that I had been taught to believe and it is you know I think that that is you know part of maybe I'll change my mind someday it's always open this is always open I've changed my mind about many many things but that was probably, you know, the deepest one, the one that cost me the most, and cost other people the most. So, yeah, I mean, so yeah, this to me, this attitude towards truth, towards our own fallibility, our own epistemic modesty, this is what I consider to be rationality. Infallibility, our own epistemic modesty.

This is what I consider to be rationality. Okay. You just said, maybe I'll change my mind about that. And that's a view that you hold for, or you hope that you hold for all your beliefs. Now, what about, see, to me that would lead to nihilism. And i would like to know why you think it doesn't or maybe you think now nihilism is salutary or at least not non-salutary but either way what about saying that what happened in the holocaust was great would you change your mind about yeah and if

someone said that and no well you hold the belief that it was horrible. And then someone said, well, aren't you willing to change your mind about anything? Are you willing to change your mind about that? I would hear their arguments. Yes. I would hear their, their arguments. And I believe I could knock them down quite easily. But yes, I would, I would engage in my, you know I would engage in a dialogue. I engage in dialogues with people who leave me. Okay. How about this? You have a self-correcting...

Let me just say one thing. As Descartes actually showed us in his first meditation. We don't have to, in being open to everything and using, you know, radical methods of doubt and all of that, we don't have to go through every belief one by one. I mean, when there are infinite number of beliefs that we have, you know, just looking out at the situation, I'm flooded with all sorts of beliefs about what things are existing right now in my vicinity and what conditions they're in. But there are, you know, there are beliefs that sort of are all joined together. So for example, so I have a view about the basis of morality, what makes

propositions true. I'm open, very, very open to people arguing with me about that. A consequence of my belief is that the Holocaust was an abomination. And so somebody would have to so fundamentally attack my view as to moral truths so fundamentally attack my view as to moral truths, as to, you know, in such a fundamental way that the Holocaust being a good thing for humanity.

Look, and you know what? You know what? If you really don't believe, if you think that all that matters is dominance, you know, of one group, and, you know, and you want to make your group as strong as possible, right? And because that's all there is, really, that's all that's left when you go do away with truth. Well, scapegoating is an extremely effective method of causing coherence in your group.

You know, when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in the 15th and 16th century wanted, having reconquered Spain from the Ottoman Empire, wanted to unify it, what did they do? They picked on the Jews, right? They expelled the Jews. This was a very effective means of unifying and giving a national identity, because a religious identity to their country. So, you know, if I would say, it's this view of, you know all there is is power and dominance and dog eat dog that's gonna lead to you know you could actually try to argue that the holocaust was a good thing right it unified the german nation right um just the way expelling the Jews and unified Spain.

So I don't think, I think taking truth so seriously that you're always willing to look at arguments against your premises and looking at the consequences of that, I don't think this leads to nihilism. Nihilism is the view that, you know, there is no truth, right? It is all power. It doesn't even lead to skepticism. In fact, it strengthens your own views. I mean, come at me with everything you've got to try to dissuade me of the things I believe. I am grateful for that. Either you're

going to show me I'm wrong, or you're going to strengthen my arguments for why I'm right. See, I'm always skeptical, because I saw it in myself, of people who say I'm willing to change my mind about virtually anything. So please let me play devil's advocate for a second. Even if you say, well, I'm willing to change my mind about, let's take a more prosaic example about littering. Okay, I'm willing to change my mind about littering. That littering is actually great.

Littering? Littering, littering, like throwing garbage on the ground. Oh, littering, okay, yes, the ground. Okay. Yes. Sorry. Okay. Okay. So whatever the example is, you have one view and then someone gives you a convincing argument and you want to change. And then, so you change your mind. That means you have an updating mechanism. Like you have some way of changing from belief A to belief B. Do you doubt that updating mechanism? And then if you were to doubt that, then that means that you change your belief based on something else.

So what is at the top? And then why don't you doubt that? Because that would just lead to an infinite regress. Do you understand what I'm saying? Or should I just... Sure. I mean, I think we use the same mechanisms. We're applying the same sort of mechanisms. It's not a different mechanism for every belief. It's the same cognitive mechanism that we're applying for all of these things. You know, we, first of all, you know, literate, littering just like the Holocaust, you know, is not, you know, what your beliefs about it are not.

That's the first time that since I'm saying littering, just like the Holocaust, you know, is not, you know, what your beliefs about it are not. That's the first time that's been said, literally, just like the Holocaust. Oh, dear. You probably hear that. That is. That's all right. That's all right. Let's get to, let's get to, okay, let's get to the Jordan Peterson. Okay. Peterson. Okay. Yeah. Right. What did you, what did you want to ask Jordan? What did you want to respond to Jordan Peterson that you didn't get to the chance to respond to him with? And what did you think about that whole debate with William Craig? Yeah. Oh, well, it surprised me very much. it surprised me very much. I don't debate people. I, I dialogue, I hate debates. You can understand,

this is my whole approach. I, I, I don't enter into these things trying to win, you know what I mean? That's what the need is and want to know what are your reasons? I want to ponder them. I want to, yeah. Yeah. And so let me rephrase that not call it a debate i know the title on the video i i believe it said debate when i watched it i felt like it was more just people conversing and asking each other questions i don't know if you thought it was a debate but it doesn't matter what did you think of it okay um so i had never heard of either of them. And it was, it was sort of when I was asked to do this thing, it was like, we want three different views on the meaning of life. And so, and so, you know, I gave a sort of secularist, naturalist view about, you know, because it's often said, and in fact was said by that other person who wasn't Peterson, whose name I can't remember. William. What was his name? William. William, yes. Said something like, yeah, that, you know, if you don't believe in God, you can't have a meaningful or moral or purposeful life, you know, and so it's a pretty awful thing to say to somebody,

actually. But yeah, so I've heard that kind of thing before. But anyway, yeah, so yeah, interested in presenting. Yeah, yeah, no, you can. I hadn't realized that the place that I was speaking at was actually a theological well that it was the University of Toronto so I was sort of very surprised by the audience. So you felt like they had a home base advantage? Oh yeah oh yeah you know and so yeah I was yeah really surprised by it. I had never heard of Jordan Peterson either. I think he was just coming into sort of notoriety because standing up for,

he wouldn't be dictated to about personal pronouns or something. Right, you're in the Kathy Newman video that exploded him. Yes, right. And it just happened. I never know about these things. I'm thinking about girls and completeness theorems or something completely unrelated. So I was just really surprised. And then, you know, as we started talking, and I was just trying to make sense what he was saying.

I mean, because there was this whole long thing about suffering is the meaning of life and it's like i was just trying to understand what that meant and it seemed to just come down to his belief an empirical belief you know that you know terrible suffering can happen in life that's undeniable um maybe even the stronger belief, which I don't know if it's true or not. Again, it's an empirical belief that suffering, terrible suffering has to happen in life. You know, that, that, I mean, I think that's what he was meaning by saying that it was the meaning of life and that we need

something very strong to make us feel that life is nevertheless worth living. So there was that, that suffering is unavoidable, you would was saying and um that's what he meant by saying it was the meaning of life and um that uh we need something and rationality won't do thinking won't do don't overthink it i remember he said that people love to hear that um don't you know people love to hear that go with the emotions go with what you know and that's also what he was saying like there is this kind of transcendence this experience of transcendence when you feel yourself or know yourself to be something more than human human is suffering but you know you feel you know what is transcend Human is suffering, but you know, you feel, what is transcendence supposed to mean?

Something takes you beyond, you're beyond the human. And it's not an intellectual thing. It reveals itself. And these were the things I think that he was saying. That's what I was able to get out of that. I haven't read him since or listened to him since, but that's what I was able to get out of that. I haven't read him since or listened to him since, but that's, you know, what I was able to get out in the moment of what he was saying. Right. Not to be Peterson or speak for him. I think what he meant when it comes to the meaning

in life and the relationship to suffering is you can take meaning to mean either affect, so sensory data has a meaning, or implication for behavior. So this cup means something because it means, oh, there you go, because it means you can quench your thirst. And suffering is that. So suffering is a meaning of life. So when someone says there's no meaning in life, well, you do have a meaning. It's just negative.

What you're truly asking is, is there a positive meaning to offset the negative? Okay. is there a positive meaning to offset the negative? Okay, I mean, that's basically the same thing, you know, that is, oh, but the thing that I really... Disagree with? Disagree with is, look, he started out by talking about a really extreme case of suffering. Fortunately, most of us do not have to go through, you know, a child suffering in Auschwitz. I come from a family that was destroyed by that.

My Hungarian family, Hungarian Jewish family was destroyed by that. So I grew up on these stories. I lived these stories. I heard them as a family. You said you were named after children who died. Every child in my generation and next generation was named after this very large family that was wiped out. So I am very,

and I think maybe this has motivated me my entire life. How does this happen? How does this happen? How does this happen? How does this happen in a civilized culture like German culture? My family revered German culture, as so many educated Jews did. And so how can this happen? Genocide. Just one second. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. My headphones just died. So I'm going to have to take them off and listen to you from the speaker.

Speaker. Because I value your time. You're a wonderful person thank you so much great thank you thank you so much thank you so where were we okay let me just let me just ask a question I'll just make it a segue okay so you were saying you were talking about how you felt about the Peterson debate and you said, I think we just left off there. Yes. So, okay. So yeah, this conversation or whatever you want to label it. So this transcendent kind of experience that just sort of reveals itself when you feel, you know, you're, you're, you are in touch with something transcendent that makes you transcendent you know that there's you're you're you know larger than life something more

um than people who don't have this experience um this is look there's a very intoxicating feeling I'm extremely wary of it. That because, you know, I think that in fact, that that is partly, that is a mechanism that can go very wrong, morally wrong. And people who, not to put too fine a point in it, the Nazis preached just such a thing. When you were at these rallies who, not to put too fine a point in it, the Nazis preached just such a thing. When you were at these rallies and you were part of this greater,

greater than the destiny of the German people, and it was just self revealing and it was such a powerful and it says you know was such a powerful feeling it's a kind of religious feeling I mean religion has can have that as well when you feel yourself chosen by God or God is with you know it is just a sort of self revelatory feeling I mean sometimes it can be in itself lifting and you're an ubermatch you're more than human i hate anything that makes us more than human i'm very wary of it um i know it's enchantments i know it's

intoxications um i think human is enough really human is enough understanding your humanity and the humanity of everybody else and how the same we are that's a much safer way to feel and and and it is it's it's it's there's nothing grandiose, there's nothing self deceptive about it. It is, so anyway, I, all of my alarms were going off between these two people, between these two men, both of whom, no, I think Craig realized that I was one never mind I'm not going to go there but but

but it was just I don't have really sound grounds to so but you know on the one side you know somebody saying you know believe it's ideal or your life is you can't even be a moral creature you know you can have no meaning

you can't um have no purpose and um on the other side this sort of like you know self you know this transcendence that reveals itself and, and it reveals itself and the experience itself. So if somebody tries to talk you out of it or something and say, look, this is taking you in a wrong place. No, it is self-proving, self-authenticating. This, this is anti-rational and this is for me danger. So both of these people, all my alarms were going off. Ah, this is precisely, these are the things I don't believe in. And I see dangers in both of these sorts of things.

I see suffering, suffering coming from trusting your feelings of self-transcendence or danger coming from thinking here, this way is morality. Other people can't be moral, right? Which makes them less than human. So either be more than human or you're less than human. or you're less than human. Okay, I think I've said enough. I don't believe, this goes against everything I believe in. I see, I see. Now, with respect to morality,

are you more of the Sam Harris type that would say that we can derive morality from something objective or scientific or fact-based? I am more with Harris than not. That is, I believe morality is objective. Yes, I do. I don't think it is the same thing as science. I don't think that, and I'm not a utilitarian, as a matter of fact. I don't hold by that theory of morality. I think that perhaps Sam, I haven't discussed this with him. I would like to discuss it with him more,

is too hasty to go from morality has to do with human well-being to utilitarianism, right? That there are other alternatives, not where you dismiss human well-being. I think he says about Rawls, a Kantian theory that I take quite seriously, that it's separate from, it doesn't think of human wellbeing. This is not true. This is certainly not true, but it does, you know, there are other alternatives. You can think that morality is objective, that it has to do with human flourishing, flourishing of all,

and not be a utilitarian. And there are tremendous problems with utilitarianism. I do think there's a way of deriving, you know, ethics and the fundamental fact of ethics, which is the equitable distribution of mattering over all humans, which is not to say that only humans matter, but it is to say that all humans matter, right? Other things matter too. Other sentient creatures matter too. The planet matters. Works of art matter. All sorts of things matter that aren't humans, but that all humans do matter. And that's where we get into some of the problems with utilitarianism. You know, can you sacrifice an innocent if it's going

to be good for the, you know, in general, if it's going to maximize well-being for everybody, or there's some things that just can't, you know, the fundamental fact of everybody's matter in the way that we know ourselves to matter, and certainly the ones who that we love matter, then we run into certain problems with utilitarianism. But so anyway, that's basically all I would say. I think moral theory is very, very difficult. How are morals objective? How does one make an objective case for morality? Okay. There are certain fundamental, justificatory principles that we use in logic, in the rules of deduction, in empirical thinking, the rules of induction and abduction that give us the concepts of evidence, right, and deduction that gives us the concepts of proving things, you know, of a logical consequence.

And also in practical reason, right, in pursuing our lives. And we cannot justify, this is a kind of Kantian argument, we cannot justify any of these justificatory principles because they are the means by which we justify in these various fields. If I try to prove logic, I'm going to have to use logic. It's going to be circular. That's where Descartes got himself into the famous Cartesian circle. David Hume, great enlightenment thinker, showed us that empirical reasoning, you know, just thinking that the universe is lawlike.

And so using certain observable things as evidence for these laws on the basis of which we make predictions, which we use in both induction and abduction, inference to the best explanation, that presumption that underlies all of this scientific reasoning cannot itself be justified because you can't justify it through deductive reasoning and you can't use empirical reasoning because empirical reasoning presumes the nomological nature you know that nature is a nature, you know, that nature is law-like, you know, that there are laws, right? So if we find an anomaly, if Newtonian physics doesn't accord with our observations, we don't say, oh, well, maybe nature is just not law-like. No, we go back

and we fix our approximation of what the laws of nature are. These, so you know in all of our reasoning, in logic, in empirical reason, we, there are certain things, look we, these are the principles that we're using and we can't pursue a coherent life without using them. Right. In practical reason as well. I cannot pursue my life without thinking, you know, that I matter,

you know, that my pain matters, you know, that if I'm so, you know, if I put my hand on a hot radiator and it hurts, I've got reason, right, to remove it.

Or I, you know, if something's going to be good for me in the future, you know, then I launch my plans and try to get there, you know, and that all of my emotions as well, you know, are all wrapped up, you know, when I feel frustrated or happy or gratified or hopeful or fearful or anything all of this is all presuming you know my life matters so you know in some sense i can step outside of my life and say yeah does it really matter um you know maybe i'll decide it doesn't and then i'm going to go into some sort of nihilistic funk because my mattering matters to me so much that even

thinking that I don't matter, you know, is going to, you know, get me into a funk, you know, because that itself is a testament to how much, you know, we all, our lives matter to us. We can't pursue them without that sort of the kind of justificatory mechanism that we use in pursuing our life so we can't coherently pursue our lives just as without logic without empirical reasoning we can't pursue our lives without feeling that we back I think you might think well what is it about me that makes me matter so much I mean it can't possibly be just that I'm just me because everybody else feels the same way about them. Well, maybe it's because, um, you know, I belong to the right people,

uh, the right country, the right, this, you talk to enough people who, um, maybe I have the right race, the right complexion, right. Um, well, you know, slowly, slowly, those ideas have been knocked down, right? That's progress, right? And, you know, basically what you come out to, look, I can't pursue my life without just the presumption that I matter. Same as everybody else, right? And so whatever mattering I do have or don't have it's equally distributed but that to me sorry it's interrupt that to me sounds more of a pragmatic

approach that is i can't pursue my life if if i don't have this as a as a grounding as a justification which i can't justify but how what does that what does What does that say about the truth? What it says is it's in the same category with logic and empirical reasoning. I can't justify logic, right? Without presuming logic, I can't justify empirical, you know, are we going to stop doing science? Are we going to stop believing in causality and evidence and law likeness? I mean, these are fundamental, you know, to what it is to pursue a coherent life. It's the best we can do. However, you did say earlier, you're willing to change your mind about anything. That means nothing is sacred, but then you have some sacred.

I'm not trying to tip you off. I'm just trying some secret. Yeah, but the very mechanisms. I'm not trying to trip you up, I'm just trying to understand. Yeah, I can't think myself outside the very mechanisms of thinking, right? If somebody can give me an alternate to logic that it wouldn't require me to use logic in order to apply this alternate logic,

which is by the way, the great lesson of Lewis Carroll's brilliant essay, What the Tortoise and the Hare Are, right? Alternate logics won't work because we have to use our logic in order to apply that new logic. If these are the very mechanisms by which Homo sapiens think, nobody is going to be able to get me to think outside them. They can get me to see, ah, I'm just, that's the basics. That's how we think. We can't pursue our lives without this. That's a kind of justification we're entitled to anything that we need just in order to to be able to pursue a coherent life at all you know that that to be able to pursue

coherent conversations language it's kind of pragmatic like i agree to some degree but i'm just playing devil's advocate. So what if someone says the skeptic, maybe even the suicidal skeptic who's like my life doesn't matter. And now you say, well, it matters because I'm, I'm self-questioning, but that's not what I mean when I say matters. I mean, it doesn't matter enough that I should go on or it doesn't matter enough that pain should be stopped from self-inflicted pain or me inflicting pain on others? Maybe, you know, it can happen that, you know, your life matters so much to you

and your own suffering matters so much to you that you, you know, decide not to continue it. You know, if life is that. And at the same time, so not mattering can be taken off the rails, but mattering too much is narcissism. And that can lead you to want to, you know, if you read the diaries of people who are serial killers, they're egotists most of the time.

Exactly. So the real thing to do, and you know, and so can this whole thing of, you know, self-transcendence and becoming an ubermensch. And, you know, I think that this can also lead you to thinking,

and has in the history, in the sad history of humanity, has often led to atrocities. This is a way of arguing that would say, look, the very mechanisms that we all have in thinking about our own lives and even in deciding sometimes to give up our lives for a cause or something, you know, that certainly happens, right? or something, you know, that certainly happens, right? This doesn't mean that this doesn't entail that one, sometimes the very reason you have to live can be a reason to die. Socrates demonstrated that to us in the very dawn of philosophy. So it's not an argument that, you know, life above all. all. But it is that none of us can matter any more than any others, just as you can't have all, you know, that this is the principles that we all have in just pursuing our lives, or sometimes in deciding that our lives should not be pursued any further. But you know, that we are invested in our life there's a wonderful um article by um tom nagel

um on um called the absurd um the philosopher tom nagel happened to have been my dissertation advisor um although i did totally different things than this um but um it's called the absurd and it's sort of about this gap you know when we when we're in our lives. We have to pursue our lives, right? I mean, we have to – our whole emotional apparatus is all giving us feedback and how well this life of mine is going. You know, sometimes lives can go pretty terribly, and people may actually even want to exit them. That's not the point. But the point is, you know, that we are, we pursue our lives. I mean, who else's life are you going to pursue, if not your own? There is a certain commitment to this life. And then when you think about,

well, what justifies it? The only thing that can justify it are the kinds of grounds that would justify everybody's life to themselves. Everybody takes their lives seriously. That's enough. That's enough. That's enough to tell you that slavery is wrong, right? Those slaves' lives mattered as much to them as my life matters to me. slaves lives mattered as much to them as my life matters to me the lives of their children mattered much to them all of it was there everything that's there when i introspect about my life that makes me know how much it matters was there for them right uh that richness and so that is you know to actually just come to terms terms with what we are just in being human. That's why I say being human is enough.

I mean, if we can really understand the full implications of that, that would be enough, right? This would be a good world, a better world. You know, it wouldn't cure coronavirus, but it tell us um how important the cure is for everybody right uh not not more important for the rich you can escape it or for you know in this country there's anyway um okay to wrap up you just use the word better which implies progress however not every culture would obviously not every culture would believe that slavery is wrong for certain types of people, even within your own race. Yeah. Does that mean that progress is incompatible with multiculturalism? Yeah. Well, if multiculturalism means means, not only, you know, different morality, different moralities, in that sense, you know,

that one doesn't accept the mattering, the equal mattering of all human beings. If that's an objective fact, which I think it is, I think that's an objective fact, you know, that just comes out of how we practically reason in our own case and then have to universalize it to others. If that's an objective fact, yeah, they're making a huge mistake. Yeah, just as the... Does that mean that we can rank order cultures in terms of which ones are more progressive? And then if so, like this is extremely, I'm not trying to put a gotcha on you, but then if so, would you say that the West has the most progressive cultures? Well, it depends what you mean by progressive. Look,

do I think that a culture that doesn't believe in genocide is morally superior to one that does believe in genocide? Yes, of course they do. I mean that's what it is to believe in the objectivity of morality. So I mean as soon as you say, you know, you commit yourself to the objectivity of morality, which I put on the, yes, which I rank with the objectivity of logic and of empirical reasoning. Yeah, of course, you're going to say that certain cultures got things terribly wrong. Yes. And slave cultures get things terribly wrong. Even if, let's just do a thought experiment in this culture that said that genocide is great.

They killed all the rest of people who thought that genocide wasn't great. And now going back to your argument about it's a human universal, now they have as a human universal, genocide is okay. And they can reason and say that, well, look, it's a human universal. This is the way our brains are built. This is objective morality. So then we have two disparate accounts on what objective... No, that's because morality does not depend on how our brains are built, right? It's not reducible. I think that Harris is wrong about this. I don't think that the neuroscience is at all relevant, and the fact that consciousness is a brain process is all relevant to this. No, they would still be wrong, even though it's, it would be an empirical fact that everybody, just every bird just flew into one of our windows. It was a big birds of hopefully it survived.

You know, even if it was a universally accepted fact that everybody believes that, yes, these the sub race, you know, once tainted our Aryan purity. And that was the worst world. They would be wrong. That was a better world. And what they did in order to get to this world of universal agreement was egregious, and it was objectively wrong. Those people mattered. Those people mattered. Their suffering mattered. Nothing will ever convince me that that is wrong. You know, that their suffering did not matter. I agree. I agree. I'm just hoping no one will say I was playing devil's advocate. But then we just found something that you said

that is immovable when you were willing to... Because I cannot think... It is immovable because it derives from the very mechanisms by which I think about my own life in order to pursue it. It derives from that.

And anything, I think, that's a way of justifying a whole lot of propositions. We do it in logic. We do it in empirical reasoning. And we do it in practical reason as well, in moral reasoning as well. And I would equate all of them. So that's a different way of going about trying to justify these things, right? There's no coherence, you know, without certain mechanisms of thinking. I can't think myself outside of them because they are what I think with.

I see. So what's next for you? Where can the audience find more about you? Well, I've written 10 books. So that's it. And they are, you know, both fiction and nonfiction. I often, in the past, have used novels for fictional ends. I think there are certain things that one can do in fiction.

Because you wrote a fictional book book that's actually how i found out about your husband who's a physicist because i saw you wrote one that deals with quantum physics and backgrounds in physics and math and so i was wondering well you know most people misuse quantum physics that's how i was like well let's see let me learn more about her well oh her husband at the time was okay great so at least he could have corrected her if she was going off the rails like Deepak Chopra. Wait, I couldn't hear that. I said, at least then, if you were saying something

that wasn't comporting with the data when it comes to quantum physics or taking the metaphor too metaphorically, like Deepak might, your husband could have served as a correction mechanism. Well, I actually studied physics as well. That was my first, um, major. Um, and so I actually come from a background in math and physics. Never thought, you know, I would, um, uh, do, uh,

something like a novel, but, um I have, I have, yeah. So I went from physics to philosophy of physics. And so, and people who do philosophy of physics usually have to know a good deal of physics. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I've always been interested in the foundations of quantum mechanics, which is, you know, philosophical, you can use this theory and know how to use this theory, and disagree tremendously on the interpretations of quantum mechanics. And I'm also always been extremely interested in the

not really contradiction, but the tension between relativity theory and quantum mechanics you know are two most successful theories robust as far as predictions are made but there is a deep tension between them and so um you know that that is very interesting you know and that is that something and yeah and the novel came out of that yes and i'm you know i'm in uh being interested in interpretations of quantum mechanics um i became very interested in david bone's interpretation of quantum mechanics very early on before you know sort of uh it caught on more in fact my ex-husband um had a lot to do with it right right right right, right. I saw that. And there's very few Bohmians out there. Yeah, he's a very strong Bohmian, and we knew David

Bohm towards the end of his life, and he was a fantastic guy. And the whole thing that happened to him, I mean, it's very dramatic. It's a novelistic kind of thing. I mean, it was sort of inspired by Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics. I mean, so, you know it's very dramatic it's a novelistic kind of thing i mean it was sort of inspired by bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics i mean so you know yeah i feel bad i feel bad

i feel bad that i implied like like the the radical left would say that i was indoctrinated by the patriarchy to suggest that that your book was correct because of your husband and not because of your own knowledge. My bad. No, it's perfectly fine. And, you know, most people who, you know, write novels, you know, don't have a background in the more technical stuff. It's too bad, right? Because I feel like, I think that they should feed off of each other

you know uh the arts and um and the technical sciences and both are extremely beautiful um and their beauty has a lot to do with structure and so i mean to me it just seems very natural so anyway yeah i sometimes write novels. Okay. Any Twitter that you want to plug? Any website? I don't have a website and I'm not on Facebook, but when I published my last book, you know, I have a book. I have a book on Spinoza. I'll put all the links to your books in the description. Yeah. But my last book was published,

and my publisher sort of begged me to get some sort of social media presence. And so I do have a Twitter feed. You just don't use it or check it often. Yeah. Okay. I'll still include it. And very, very last, you can answer this super, super briefly. It's about women in the STEM fields. We were still include it. And, and I've last very, very last, you can answer this super, super briefly.

It's about women in the STEM fields. We were talking about that. So do you feel like women are still discriminated against in the STEM fields or if they ever were, or now it's less or now it's the opposite. You know, I'm outside of the STEM fields now. But you know, I did. you know, I'm outside of the STEM fields now. But, you know, I did. I think, you know, there is in general a presumption of, there's often a presumption that women aren't, don't think as well, but, you know, and, you know, one of the, you know, men are often very interested and very motivated to impress women.

And nerdy men try to impress women with their nerdiness. I mean, I've had girls in completeness theorems explained to me by, you know, OBGYNs, right? You know, who, if they, I was once at a party and this woman introduced me to her husband who was a doctor and said, oh, you know, Rebecca's very interested in Gödel. And he starts explaining to me Gödel's incomplete theorems. And he, his knowledge had come from reading the review of my book in the New York Times book review.

That was his knowledge. And then I kept trying to say, oh yeah, that was of my book. He could not take it in that that was my book, right? He was so busy, you know, explaining it to me, you know, and of course explaining it wrong. So look, you experience these things, you know, as to me you know and of course explaining it wrong so look you experience these things you know as a woman you do um and it has to do with you know the psychology and whatever you know i will say this about you know i've been in a lot of fields as i say you

know i've been in technical fields i I was in philosophy. I managed. I guess I still am. I've been in the arts. I think STEM, now this is my own personal experience, is the best for all of these things. You know, there's always that sort of coming at you with these attitudes and all this stuff, right? You get used to this, right? And you calmly try to explain. It doesn't matter.

But here's what math and the sciences have that the arts and even philosophy doesn't have to the same extent. In math, you can prove your results, right? You've got a good proof you know they can mansplain till the cows come in it's not going to make a difference you've got a good proof for a hard theorem an elegant proof it can be checked out with the sciences we've got reality we've got reality, we've got predictions. So I'm very good friends with a cosmologist, female cosmologist, and who's went through all sorts of problems.

She wasn't tenured and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She fought it, she fought it. And then she had made some radical prediction. The evidence just came in. Thank you universe, right? That's what you have in STEM, right? You can make, you know, you've got, universe can give you data and can validate your,

and you, so it's in the arts, it's all much more subjective. And I think women have a tougher time. I mean, there are certain kinds of women's subjects. You write novels about family dynamics and blah, blah, blah, you know, that's what, you know, and you're going to do fine. But, you know, I do think that, you know, since there's really nothing like what you get in math proof or in the sciences empirical evidence to show if what your work is good or not in the arts, it's much, much harder. That's a, yeah. So as far as being a woman, it's better to be in stem that's what i said

does that this does that make sense to you thank you so much rebecca appreciate your your your generosity with your time well i appreciate your questions they're good and and they you know they were they're substantive and they're also very probing so i um um i appreciate that