Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal - Robert Lawrence Kuhn on Truth, Faith, Idealism, and God

Episode Date: May 10, 2021

YouTube link: https://youtu.be/7SodXrXFAscPatreon for conversations on Theories of Everything, Consciousness, Free Will, and God: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal Help support conversations like this via PayPal: https://bit.ly/2EOR0M4 Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/better-left-unsaid-with-curt-jaimungal/id1521758802 Pandora: https://pdora.co/33b9lfP Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs Subreddit r/TheoriesOfEverything: https://reddit.com/r/theoriesofeverythingLINKS MENTIONED: -Closer To Truth (Robert Kuhn's channel): https://www.youtube.com/user/CloserToTruth1LINK NOT MENTIONED BUT INFORMATIVE AND PERTINENT: TIMESTAMPS: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:02:41 Why is Robert doing more interviews? 00:08:19 Soon to focus on Eastern modes of "knowing" and philosophies 00:18:40 The difference between the East and West in approach to answers / truth 00:22:46 Venerating verification puts you at odds with studying consciousness 00:26:24 How Robert prepares for each interview 00:30:33 Dealing with people emailing their Theories to you 00:42:33 Defining "truth" 00:46:20 Can one get closer to truth without knowing what truth is? 00:52:30 How to improve as an interviewer 00:55:47 Factors to weigh when conducting an edifying and entertaining interview 01:00:31 Which "logic" is correct? (classical v. intuitionist v. fuzzy v. etc.) 01:12:29 Faith in logic 01:14:37 Curt doesn't buy it when people say they "don't have faith" 01:21:18 Science, physicalism, idealism, and Bernardo Kastrup 01:27:21 If neither physicalism nor idealism can be refuted then it's faith to choose one 01:33:39 Both Robert and Curt find it hard to come to conclusions 01:40:08 Questioning Robert's faith 01:44:50 Is there a difference between faith in God and faith in driving a car? 01:51:59 Bede Rundle's argument against God 01:55:38 Alvin Plantinga's argument for God 01:55:38 Alvin Plantinga's argument for God 02:04:46 Why do intelligent people disagree extensively? 02:07:46 Is Robert any "closer to truth"? 02:10:55 How to keep all the Theories one's heard in one's working memory 02:14:07 Unedited podcasts vs. polished edited clips 02:15:44 [Pandaproducts] When is the Kastrup interview coming out? 02:16:33 [Andrea S] Why is there anything and not nothing? 02:21:00 [Steve Scully] Just because "something" exists, does this preclude "nothing" from existing? 02:22:07 [PF] Thoughts on UFO's / sightings / encounters? 02:22:41 [Pandaproducts] Thoughts on life after death / NDE's? 02:27:23 Demarcation problem 02:27:36 [Abdullah Khalid] Robert's best interview? 02:27:48 Who would you interview of the past? 02:27:57 Advice for Curt for Theories of Everything?* * *I just finished (April 2021) a documentary called 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 watch it.

Robert Lawrence Coon is a veritable truth seeker and much of the modern proliferation of analytical and intellectual discourse in video form into consciousness into the origins of the universe into the relationship between both is Due to his wonderful series closer to truth It's likely that you've seen his show many times and even if you can't place his name Robert Lawrence Coon You'll likely be able to place his face. This episode is a dive into the nature of truth. So for example, how do you know if you're getting closer to it if you can't define it? As well as faith, as well as logic, as well as God. If you're new to this channel, my name is Kurt Jaimungal.

I'm interested in what are called theories of everything, which is a physics terminology. It means the unification of gravity with quantum field theory, but it also has other philosophical meanings. And so I'm trying to explore the variegated theories of everything because there are about 200 or so. If you enjoy seeing conversations like this and you would like to hear slash see more, then please do consider supporting at patreon.com slash kurtjeymungle.

The next 30 days will be quite the unconscionable slog for me because I'm interviewing Chris Langan. That comes toward the end of June. Chris Langen is the person who's been characterized as having the highest IQ in America. And he has a theory of everything called the cognitive theoretic model of the universe. That's for later in June. Later in June, as well as Rupert Spira, Daniel Schmottenberger, if I'm pronouncing his name right. In this month, May, I have Chomsky coming up.

Bernardo Kastrup and John Vervaeke are coming on again for round two of a theolocution. At the end of May, I'm also speaking to Stephen Wolfram on his theory of everything, as well as Luis Elizondo on UFOs. There's also a secret project being planned with Josje Bak, which I think you may be extremely excited for. All of this takes a tremendous, tremendous amount of work, because what I'd like to do in these podcasts is not give an overview, but instead to go deep into certain subjects, and that requires me to read their papers, and sometimes Chris Langan's, for example, is extremely oblique and opaque, at least to me, which means that studying for it is, well, it's difficult, as well as Rupert Spears is going to be quite a challenge. I try to over-prepare for virtually each topic except UFOs because UFOs is one that I'm wholly unacquainted in.

So most of the time when I'm speaking to someone on the topic of aliens or UFOs, I'm speaking as a beginner. For example, to Kevin Knuth or to Jeremy Korbel, and to a lesser extent, Avi Loeb, because that was more physics-based. We also have a PayPal if you're more interested in that, and in fact, more of the money, the percentage-wise, goes to the creator, that is me, if you donate or support using the PayPal link. That's in the description.

Thank you so much. Thank you, regardless of your decision. I hope you enjoyed this episode. You don't generally say yes to interviews. I was wondering why you said yes to this one. At least interviews not about China. We've had a change with the internet. Closer to Truth has had a spectacular year, some of it energized by, of course, the lockdown, but it's been continuing on our YouTube channel, a five-fold increase over the last year.

And we've appreciated and I've appreciated the thousands of comments that we've had for Closer to Truth. And a lot of them have asked, you know, they like my questions, but they'd like to see some of my answers. I do some commentary on our shows with interstitial commentary and an open and a close, particularly a close. But on the vast majority of our interviews, I'm just literally asking questions. So a number of, an increasing number of viewers for Closer to Truth YouTube channel have been asking for my opinion and things.

And a number of people have asked for interviews. So I've sort of changed our policy. We've had a kind of a laser focus on producing Closer to Truth. I've been doing this for 20 years, but really nonstop since 2006, when Peter Getzels joined Forces with Maze, an award-winning director, producer, very knowledgeable about science.

And since that time, it's been just a tremendous, exciting productions and then doing shows. And so all of my energies was devoted to that. and then doing shows. And so that, all of my energies was devoted to that. And when we produce a show, when we produce the interviews, they're pretty much raw interviews, much like this. They're shorter, focused on an individual question will last for seven to 10, 11 minutes.

And then it's on to the next. When we work with an individual, such as you've had Donald Hoffman or Robbie Loeb, we might have a session of 10 or 12 or 15 of those eight to 10 minute segments. And that's what we do and we post those. But then when we do our actual show, Peter and I spend an enormous amount of time

worrying about every frame and every word and to get it right. And so that's been totally consumptive. And so I wanted to devote all of my energies to producing the best thought and the best presentation for the topics that we deal with, which I'm sure we'll discuss in great detail um but as i said in the last year because closer to truth has now been using the youtube channel and has broadened itself internationally because we were on pbs television for 20 years obviously our focus was in the u.s so while when our youtube channel started was like was like 95% US audiences. And we've

been happy to see that percentage drop and drop and drop. And so now we're about 40% US, so 60% plus outside the US, with some very significant demographics in just very broadly in the world. And so all of that has contributed to kind of a rethinking. And so I, rather than just focused entirely on producing our shows, wanted to respond to the times and to our audience to really get behind the scenes and just see me as a kind of a normal person who has the same kinds of questions and interests that many of our audience does. And so that's why I'm pleased to do it. Obviously, we screen and I think the professionalism by which you and some others

have brought to questions involving science, each with its own particular orientation, which is fine. I would look and Peter and I would analyze the compatibility with what we want to do for Closer to Truth. So there is a level of sophistication and seriousness, not that we should take ourselves seriously, but that we should take our topic seriously and do it without, you know, in a very open manner. And so, you know, we've appreciated what you've done, what you've created and happy to share our experiences. Well, firstly, I thank you for the compliment suggesting that I'm even somewhat

professional and sophisticated. I wouldn't categorize myself as that. Just for the people watching, Robert's show, Closer to Truth, is the highly professional version of this show, the highly high production value. In fact,

it's better to say that my show is the low budget version of yours, because yours was out 15 years prior. So if you like theories of everything, this podcast, you're going to love closer to truth. I recommend searching closer to truth. I'm sure it's, it will come up and Robert Kuhn, if you search his name, interviews with him, as well as closer to truth will come up closer to up. Closertotruth.com. Closertotruth.com is our website and our YouTube channel. You can search for the YouTube channel, Closertotruth YouTube channel. Those are our two main vehicles, other than, of course, the PBS television show,

which is broadcast on over 200 stations in the U.S. Are you still producing Closer to Truth? in the U.S. Are you still producing Closer to Truth? Do you have ideas for future episodes? Yes, definitely. Definitely. In fact, we're very excited about this year. Of course, we've not. We've done post-production for previous productions we've had. We have a new series coming out in a couple of months. It's almost entirely produced. 13 episodes. We have 13 episodes in a season. Closer to Truth works in seasons. That doesn't mean one a year. They'll be varied. There might be one a year, might be three a year. Normally it's about one and a half or two. 13 episodes. And we've done 20, 13 episode seasons so far since our first, since the new version

of Closer to Truth began broadcasting in 2008. So we've had 20 seasons of 13 episodes each. Actually, the last one was 10 episodes. And the new one coming out, which is season 21, will focus on scientific breakthroughs. And we've shot extensively at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton and the Santa Fe Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico on complexity theory and have some just wonderful interviews. For example, Edward Witten, who we hadn't had

before, the leading string theorist uh very extensive interviews with him and just a whole number of of terrific uh people uh at the institute uh karen ullenbach robert digraph our old friend paul davies is with us v.s ramachandran uh antonio dimazio in areas of scientific len malad. We really have a terrific season, and we focus on scientific breakthroughs in physics and scientific breakthroughs in biology, and we break it into two parts. One is the concept. What is a scientific breakthrough in physics? How can you account for it? What does it mean? What kind of step function is there in understanding the concept of breakthrough? And secondly, what is the process of breakthrough? So we have one whole show on what is a breakthrough in physics, then another one, what is the process by which a

breakthrough in physics occurs? Then we do the same thing in biology. Those are two. So a number, about six of the shows in the new season will be on scientific breakthroughs. Then we have some really diverse and interesting subjects. One is on deception. So we have some of the leading theorists on the concept of deception, both in the animal kingdom and in human beings. In fact, one show is on deception and animals. One show is on deception and human beings. In fact, one show was on deception in animals, one show was on deception in human beings, and then two on music in the brain, and one on transhumanism and what does it mean in brain science. So that's our new season coming up. It'll be broadcast on PBS, I said, within a few months starting. I should mention, though, that the first two episodes in the new season are a tribute to Freeman Dyson. Freeman was one of our early contributors and

enriched our show enormously, and we very much appreciate it. And so Peter Getzels and I put together a two-part tribute working with his family. And so we have a lot of inside photos and ideas. And then most of the show, of course, is Freeman's own ideas. And one of them will deal with his views on physics, which is natural. And the other is sort of his broad approach to a lot of other things. So it's a very exciting opening to the new season on Freeman Dyson. Then going on from here, we've used the last year

to look to the future. And we have a pretty exciting backlog of production, which are fully funded by excellent foundations with whom we work, the John Templeton Foundation, the Arthur Binding Davis Foundation, the Templeton Religion Trust, Templeton World Charity Foundation. And so these series coming up, and in no order of importance, because they're all important, like which of your children are the most exciting. So don't take it like the first one I mentioned is most important, but I exciting, but we believe an important project that is run at the University of Birmingham in the UK, run by a Closer to Truth contributor and one of our closest allies and colleagues, Eugene Nagasawa, who's originally a philosopher of mind and has become

a leading philosopher of religion and really a wonderful philosopher and thinker. We worked with Eugene actually almost 10 years ago in producing a series of programs on alternative concepts of God, which were different ideas than the traditional Judeo-Christian Islam monotheism. And those were very successful programs. And Eugene has put together a vision for engaging the world because philosophy of religion really has been pretty much focused on the Judeo-Christian religion, particularly Christian philosophers. And the work that has been done since the Middle Ages in Christian philosophy is really wonderful stuff. Some people in science just make fun of these kinds of philosophies, and we can get into that. But the contribution that Christian philosophy has done over the years to thinking about, now they do it from their perspective of course, but the ways of

thinking are really wonderful and expansionary for human development, but it is still Christocentric or Judeo-Christocentric, which is what we Closer to Truth has done just out of expediency. We did reach out to try to get non-Christian thinkers, and we have in the beginning, we have Sayyid Hossein Nasser, who's arguably one of the leading Islamic philosophers in the world from Iran, Persia, tradition, and a wonderful philosopher, and we have some Buddhists and Hindus, but the skew was very much toward a Judeo-Christian. And so when Eugene had this project to really engage the whole world in this endeavor in terms of expanding the thinking in philosophy of religion, we jumped on and worked together with Eugene and the John Templeton Foundation.

We have it fully funded. So our first program in this regard is actually going to be an online conference, which will occur in June as a conference. And then thereafter, we will have about 20 interviews, maybe more panel discussions, keynotes that will deal with the global philosophy of religion. And we will deal with obviously Islam and Hinduism,

but we're going to go broader than that. We wanted to do a Sikhism, we are doing Sikhism and African religions. So we have a very broad diversity of ideas. So Global Philosophy of Religion is one project for the future. Next year, we'll be in Birmingham live for our typical Closer to Truth productions, very, very high quality. Shows will take a year or so to get out on PBS and then YouTube. It's a long process that we have, but we love it and we're dedicated to it. Other series coming up are Philosophy of Biology, which will be our first foray into biology in a very serious way. And it will become a new category for Closer to Truth.

Right now, Closer to Truth classically has three big categories. for closer to truth right now close to the truth classically as three big categories cosmos which deals with cosmology astronomy physics mathematics consciousness which deals with brain mind diverse intelligence is a little bit ESP once in a while alien intelligence is personally and intelligences as in UFO aliens or just extraterrestrial life, what would they be like? No, astrobiology, basically, and thinking about what the nature of alien intelligence is. We deal with how does personal identity be maintained? Free will has been a major topic. That's our consciousness. And then our meaning category really is philosophy

of religion. And it herefore has been somewhat, as I said, Judeo-Christian centric. And so what we're looking to do is expand that category meaning. And now with philosophy of biology, which is one of our biggest grants and one of our biggest productions contemplated, that'll become a new category of Closer to Truth called Life, which we will develop in the future. Other series coming up are a continuing work on art seeking understanding. And we have a wonderful opportunity with the Arthur Binding Davis Foundation in terms of Eastern traditions, which will focus on Buddhism and Chinese philosophy, Confucianism and Taoism, with a big focus on Buddhism, and how those religions or traditions

deal with the big questions. This is not one-on-one religion about telling about these religions. That's not our job. We're going to focus on what are the big questions that closer to truth asks that we have traditionally approached from a Judeo-Christian point of view, and how do these other traditions deal with those same questions. So we got a long future ahead of us. We just got to keep healthy. Robert, just so you know, if I ever look angry, I'm just thinking. That's my thinking face. I'm sure you're familiar with it. Good, good, good. I don't mind anger. What I mind is passivity. Whatever I do is fine, but no, I like anger. Get angry at me. Tell me what I'm talking about. All right. You mentioned that one of the reasons you stayed or steered clear from Eastern

traditions before was expediency. I'm also wondering if it's also due to the level of unfamiliarity that we in the West, we grow up with. So for example, if a Western philosopher thinks that the jump from analytic philosophy to continental is huge, try continental slash analytic to Eastern philosophy. It's a completely different base. It's almost meditative and experiential and requires special knowledge, insights that you glean that you can't necessarily share. So is that another reason why? Or is it purely expediency? I think, well, expediency is not a term I would use because going in, we wanted to do it. We wanted to get first class philosophers, but in our limited production, because we weren't using internet where we could interview anybody anytime, we were doing, and we do it close to

very high production value videos and television that are the equivalent, as we say, of Toyota commercials. And so we like to get crews, Peter Goetz, directors of photography and cameramen, between their Toyota commercials, where they're paid at rates, where they're off time, they'd love Closer to Truth, so they do it at scale. And so we can afford it, but still very expensive. And we have crews of, you know, 13, 15 people, three cameras, dollies, jibs. I mean, it's a big effort. And so the only way we can do that efficiently is to sort of gang tape.

Within a week, we do 15 because people are gathered at a conference. And the kinds of conferences that we've had, because they've been limited, have been Western-oriented. Now, a lot have been physics. We work very closely with an organization called FQXI, Foundation Questions Institute, which deals with sort of over the horizon physics and cosmology with some of the leading cosmologists and quantum physicists, looking at the foundations of quantum mechanics, looking at new ideas in cosmology. And so that's what we have done. And it's just that in none of those venues that we've had would Eastern philosophers at a first grade level come up. Now, you bring up a very important point in terms of the experiential aspect of Eastern philosophy, because we have a kind of an operating framework on Closer to Truth that experiential work is something that we can refer to, but it's not our core.

Because you can't share it? Because you can't share it? fair comment within the thing, but to then adjudicate between large numbers of people in particularly Eastern traditions, but also in Western traditions who have experiential understanding, and that's part of their core, we have determined that's not within closer to truth's orbit to deal with in detail. And so that's probably an unintended skew why we have not pursued Eastern religions as much as we should, because in Eastern religions, there is more of that experiential internal dimension. But that excuse is no longer acceptable to us. Yeah, I was also thinking, if you're mentioning that there's a lack of third

party verification, the same could be said about consciousness, but you have a whole series on that. For example, you can't tell if I'm conscious, I can't tell if you're conscious. Sure, sure. And we deal with that very, very extensively as a very important part of the consciousness approach. Look, everybody has a bias. My PhD is in neuroscience. You can see some stuff on the background, remind myself of my early days in neuroscience. So that's a particular skew that I've had in terms of a worldview. It's a scientific worldview. It's a neuroscience worldview. At least that was the germinating aspect of my kind of thinking. So we have, as I said, recognized from the beginning the importance of Eastern thinking. And we have had right from the beginning, like Hussain Nasser,

who was one of our first interviewees in 2007, I think. But we've not taken it further. This year, with the expansion of Closer to Truth globally, we've recognized that this is an issue. So we have made, Peter and I have made a focus to put our future approach in to reach out. And again, our audiences are now broader so that they're pushing us as well, as rightly they should. When we get criticized in feedback or YouTube comments that you should deal with Eastern religion, What we now say is, you know, we've done a little bit, but you're right. You know, that's a missing dimension that we have, and we're going to fill it. And we're, you know, very pleased coincidentally that Yuchin Nagasawa has put together this remarkable Global Philosophy of Religion project, which is, you know, very broad, setting a three-year project. It has

three specific content areas. The first is on the existence and nature of deities. And that was the first of the three big areas. And that's what our first conference, online conference, will be. It was supposed to be in person, but we've now transferred it online. It was supposed to be in person, but we've now transferred it online. The second conference will be on death and immortality. So that will deal with consciousness kinds of issues. And the third will be on problem of evil, suffering in the world, those kinds of things. So those are the three categories to take a global philosophy of religion.

And we're doing the first online. The second we'll do in person. And hopefully we can do something with the third as well. And that will really broaden Closer to Truth where it should go. So thanks to Eugene and John Templeton Foundation for their project. And Eugene's project is much broader than just these conferences. They have research projects, It's much broader than just these conferences. They have research projects. They're going to do books. It's a big effort to create really a new field of global philosophy of religion and reaching out to, as I've said, African philosophy, Sikhism, Shintoism. We have the leading Shinto philosopher.

Eugene's going to have to translate on the phone. But we didn't want to sub-optimize by getting a philosopher who speaks fluent English. We wanted to get the best philosopher. Right, right, right, right, right. And so in Fasciatoism, the individual doesn't speak English. And so usually we'll translate. He promises me not to put any of his own ideas in, but to translate honestly. Robert, how do you and Peter, besides, let's say, technical logistics, how do you prepare for each interview? The way we do Closer to Truth normally, and then I'll describe the last year where we were doing

it online, is that we have to have a generally minimum of five days and maximum probably of seven in which we will go to a location. For example, we've done with FQXI, we did it in Vieques in Puerto Rico, we did it in Iceland, we did it in, Iceland was on cosmology, Vieques when we did FQXI was in information theory, and in Banff, Canada, which was the last one we did, was on physics of the observer and the physics of what happens. Basically, it's the foundations of quantum mechanics. So let me just describe that in Banff.

In Banff, they had, I don't know, 80 or so physicists who came to this event. And we picked about 15, 17, 15, who we shot within this five, six day period. We did some on location. That's quite a hectic schedule, man. Congrats. It's very hard and it doesn't happen easily. It's like boot camp. It's a very intense uh seven eight days the navy has something called hell week that sounds like hell seven no it's it's

it's really i mean it sounds like hell and look and if you looked at our faces and our attention you'd think we were we were miserable but this is this is what we love. This is our life. It is terrific. And so we'll know in advance six months that there's that plan. And then Peter and his team will start working with individuals who we've targeted and make a schedule. In general, we'll do three people a day. Sometimes if they're very long, we'll do two. Occasionally, if they're shorter, we might do four a day. And these days are 14-, 16-hour days, especially for the crews. It takes them an hour and a half to set up.

It takes at least an hour to break down the set. And in between, we probably have 10 hours of actual shooting time. Now, what I do, when I know those 15 individuals I'm going to have, I will have at least a good solid two months of prior preparation where I will ask each of the individuals with whom we're interviewing to send me their papers. And I will go through those papers and kind of structure it in my own mind

how we see the shows approximately because everything, we want to get as much material in the production as possible. And then later in the post-production, we decide what makes the best shows. But we have the raw material for our actual interviews.

And then prior to each interview, I'll send an outline of topics to the individual and say, this is what we're talking, not specific questions, but rather, here are the topics we'll be dealing with. Did I leave out anything? Something you want to discuss that I haven't mentioned? And we get that. And then I have that outline. And so I have to go into each interview feeling, I should put it this way, fooling myself to think I know almost as much as that person does about his or her topic. And if I have that, then the conversation is more natural. natural. And that I, so I prepare very much for each of these interviews. And that's, again, a part of the fun for me is really learning and understanding, and then trying to relate what how that person thinks and the ideas to the big questions of Closer to Truth.

Because that's our core, we have this, these big sets of big questions, and we want to understand those questions, which are questions, you know, all humanity has. And we want to understand that from diverse perspectives. Do you get people emailing you their variegated theories of everything on consciousness or physics? And how do you deal with that? Do you welcome it, for example? physics? And how do you deal with that? Do you welcome it, for example? That's a very good question. And I really appreciate when people write to us in general. I mean, it's much appreciated. I read everything that comes in directly into closer to truth.com. And I certainly skim through the large majority of the comments on YouTube. There are obviously so many now. And I've tried to respond to many of the ones that come in directly. And over time, there have been an increasing number of people who have their own theories. And I'm, you know, polite in many, many times. I, you know, I can't accurately adjudicate some very sophisticated aspect of quantum physics, but, you know, the fact is, is that if there are examples in history where

people have made radical breakthroughs, which, as we all know, in general relativity and quantum theory, but, you know, it's not that frequent. So many of the ideas we get in the physics area and the consciousness area are on the extreme. I try to skim all of them, you know, never knowing when something... And even when ideas are, I wouldn't say crackpot i'd say fringe or radical it sometimes shows you a different kind of way of thinking um and and that to me is very helpful to to understand different ways of thinking sometimes there are interesting insights that uh that that people have uh But I can't... Do you have an example of an interesting insight

off the top of your head? Yeah, I would say there's one individual, I don't want to mention too many names, who has shown with some rather bizarre comparisons between number theory and quantum physics, but in his work showed the high level of importance of chaos theory in understanding deeper reality, that chaos theory is more fundamental than it may seem on the surface, although it is.

And so that's an example. The mechanisms by which this individual describes some relations with number theory and quantum physics, I don't buy, and maybe I'm not qualified to analyze, but as a result of going through it and seeing the sophistication of thinking, it allows you to see, perhaps, see things that you haven't seen before. So when anybody sends something in, I look at it. I look at everyone. I may not look at it for long, but I do look at everyone.

And on occasion, I will comment. There is a danger in commenting because if you comment, then you're going to get, you know, 10 times as much back. And then now what do you do? So, you know, the the exigencies of life require that I can't be in detailed communication with dozens of people on sophisticated topics. I just can't. You know, I have to do some family stuff, too, for grandkids and whatever. And it takes quite a bit of time to go through almost anyone's work in detail, even if it's non-academic and fluffy. It may take an entire day. Yeah, and I can't do that. I think I've gotten over the years, having done, I don't know, 400 interviews and have

read papers by so many people in so many ways, at least in the areas that I'm familiar with. You know, I'm not putting public policy, health care in my list of expertise, but in the areas that I'm familiar with. You know, I'm not putting public policy, healthcare in my list of expertise. But in the areas that I have focused on, on Closer to Truth, I am very, very familiar with the scope of the field and in some depth. And so I can pretty quickly scan a paper in our categories very quickly and get a sense of what the point is and then go further as it may be. I've had two, three experiences in the last year where individuals were presenting ideas that were not my traditional way of thinking and very sophisticated.

And I engage with these people and consider them now colleagues. So out of the hundreds and hundreds, there are three, and maybe there'd be another one if I think hard, but there are three. And curiously, maybe not curiously, all three present from an Eastern point of view.

Two are from India and the third is from the Netherlands. But he's presenting about the concept of zero from an Indian point of view. He's very sophisticated. He's not a professional philosopher, but he's he's as good as one. sophisticated. He's not a professional philosopher, but he's as good as one. And the two from India, one is a quantum physicist who has very strong ideas about Vedanta. The other is an artist in the Tamil tradition who has written books on art and understanding art from a philosophical point of view. He was trained as a computer scientist, so he's very knowledgeable about science.

He's an artist, and he has written these books in Tamil about art and understanding. And from each of these, I have engaged in serious communication and have learned a good deal. Were there any interviews that you felt particularly underprepared for? I would say my early interviews with some superstars, I was, I don't know if I would say underprepared, I would say I was nervous and kind of awed

by the potential of the experience. I can drop names, but people on the physics side, Steven Weinberg, Frank Wilczek, Alan Guth, Andre Linde, these are people who I greatly respected and met many others in that category as well, just mentioning a few, and intimidated by their work and going in and wanting to do a good job on the philosophy side. Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinger, Peter Van Inwagen, just to name a few, very sophisticated philosophers. I've loved philosophy. I studied philosophy, but I'm not a professional philosopher, nor am I a professional physicist, obviously.

And so these I have felt intimidated going in, but in the process, perhaps overprepared, but still felt intimidated. And I got the greatest compliment from one. I won't mention who said it, but one of the names I just mentioned told me after the interview, he said he felt like he had gone through a second set of PhD prelims, which are when the professors ask you these hard questions about all the things that you do to get you to the stage where you then do your thesis. So you're supposed to know the field at that point. So when he said that, that kind of made me feel good. But I should tell you that there's not a single interview that I do that I don't feel apprehensive going in because you never know enough. And, you know, I'm thinking with,

you know, several levels at the same time. I want to engage the individual. I really want to understand it personally myself. And then I want to make sure our audience sort of gets it too. And it doesn't go over their head. And I explain terms that are terms of art if and the apprehension to really get it right. And that's a good thing because, you know, this is what I love doing. I love learning. Genesis of Closer to Truth is that I want to learn. It's just not like I know the answer and I'm going to tell people. I don't know.

I want to experience this and show my anxieties and uncertainties along with everything else. One thing I do want to emphasize, and maybe now just a good point to describe it, when many people write to us, they say, I really enjoy watching Closer to the Truth. And the first thing and then they ask whatever they want. I said, the first thing I have to tell you is that it's not closer to the truth. It is closer to truth. And this is an extremely important distinction. In fact, when the show was first named, which I can tell you that story if you're interested, the show was first named, which I can tell you that story if you're interested.

The suggestion was it was in a, the original name of the show going back 20 years, before 20 years, was called Mind Quest. And the subtitle was The Closest You'll Get to Truth. And the PBS president at PBS station in Orange County, at that time KOCE, now PBS SoCal, that time Mel Rogers, said he didn't, you know, he's going to give the show a shot, but he hated that title, Mind Quest. And he said, what is it about? And I said, the subtitle is The Closest You'll Get to Truth. And he said, that's it. The closest you'll get to the truth. I said, no, no, we can't say the truth. Take out the and that's the name closer to truth. So thanks to Mel, who therefore became the godfather of closer to truth. It is it is that. So closer to truth, it's a progressive.

And when we write it, we capitalize the to T.O. because we want to emphasize that it's a process and it's not the truth coming out at the end because we know the answer. No, it's a process we all work through together by getting some of the best thinking and testing one against the other and seeking diversity. We recognize we need diversity. And in today's world, that's even more important than we're striving to do that. But in our view, the most important thing is diversity of ideas and ideas that are both sophisticated and coherent. You can have a lot of diverse ideas that are incoherent. That's easy to do. And, you know, maybe we have to make that judgment. But we love diversity in ideas. And that's what we have always strived to do. And now we're working

to have more diversity in externalities as well. Okay, you use the word coherence. Now I'm wondering, do you subscribe to a coherence theory of truth, or a correspondence or deflationary? subscribe to a coherence theory of truth or a correspondence or a deflationary. And when you say closer to truth, you have to be prioritizing one because they conflict with one another. And if what you're saying is we put these intellectuals in the ring and let them hammer it out, well, then is it just social convention? Which one emerges as the consensus? How are you defining truth? Okay, so that's a very broad and important question. And the first way that I would approach it is to divide the ways of thinking about the word truth. There is the philosophy category, the correspondence theory, the various theories of truth. You need truth makers to make a truth. There's philosophical approaches to it. There's ways that we use truth in common usage. And then there's a way that we

use truth in the common media today. And all of those kind of get mixed up together. And so that's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is you can't just define truth without seeking the context for what it is. So many people will say argument is truth relative. If you're in one set of circumstances, it's one thing, and if you're in another set of circumstances, it's another thing. Or if you have a different perspective on life, death, universe, God, whatever, you'll have different kinds of truths, and they're all sort of able to exist together in some meta-truth dimensional sense. The way we look at truth is that we deal on closer to truth with the kinds of questions that should, I can't say absolutely does, but I would feel very strongly that there is a truth to the questions we ask on Closer to Truth, the large majority in cosmos, consciousness for sure, and potentially

on meaning as well. And I'd go out on a limb and say, yes, so when all of the topics that are closer to truth deals with, there may be exceptions, that there really is an ultimate truth that is singular and absolute and non-relative. Now, do I expect to ever know that? No. Do I expect to make progress in understanding what those mean? I think the answer is yes, because we're able to ask the kinds of questions and see the diversity of smart, sophisticated, coherent thinking on these topics, even if they disagree radically on what that answer is, on what that question is really asking. So I would then take your question about what is truth and limit it to how we deal with truth on Closer to Truth, because we deal with the kinds of

questions that should, and I believe do, have an ultimate answer, even if it is not possible, even not possible in principle, to get to that truth. But the kinds of truths that we seek do have absolute answers. And those are the kinds of questions we want to ask that have to do with, you know, big, big fundamental questions. When you say absolute answers, to me, there's still quite a few theories of truth that that could qualify for. So perhaps Tarski's or a realist, not an anti-realist, not a pragmatic, those are more relative, but then there's correspondence and coherence, which could be seen as subsets of an absolute like how so how do you know when you're getting closer to the truth or closer to truth if here's what i'm wondering one has an arrow

and one wants to point it to a bullseye but if one doesn't know where the bullseye is then how does one know if one is getting closer and where to aim uh i i think you you know that by the um it's it's almost the difference between operant conditioning and Pavlovian conditioning. Operant conditioning, you're just selecting from the universe of potential behaviors. see the target, if you see the target as clearly as you've said, as a bow and arrow to a target, then you're imposing on the nature of truth your own biases. And we're not doing that. What we want to do is use a diversity of individuals who we have, we believe, doesn't mean we've got everyone or we're perfect by any means, but to bring diverse, smart, coherent thinking to these kinds of questions and to broaden the the category of people that we work with. And again, we're wanting to do that with,

you know, Eastern traditions and global philosophy of religion, we need to broaden our universe of people addressing those kinds of questions. in cosmos is, you know, what are, what is the ultimate, um, bedrock, um, uh, uh, undergirding of, uh, of the physical world? Is it quantum mechanics? Is it string theory? Is it something deeper below that? You know, what is it, uh, in consciousness, uh, to ask a very bimodal, digital yes-no answer, does consciousness require anything beyond what we now call the physical explanation, whether it's at the neuronal level, the synaptic level, the intracellular level, or the quantum level. All of that is physical. Can consciousness be entirely explained, and we can discuss what that means, entirely explained in the physical world? That's a yes or no answer. Does God, as we've traditionally called God, a being that created the universe, that is, whose existence essence, and all of those things,

however you define the characteristics, which we could also talk about if you like, does that being existent exist? That's a yes or no answer. Now, what the characteristics of it is a different one. But on those questions, so it doesn't really matter is the word God correspond to a being who has those characteristics. That is a helpful approach to understand what you mean by truth. I agree with that. But at the end of the day, the kinds of questions we ask do have a deep, absolute answer, which... Or you're hoping it has a deep, absolute answer. No, no. I would say there is a deep answer. Now, I may not know it. I may not even be able to describe it. But however you deal with those questions,

does God exist or does consciousness require anything beyond the physical, however you define it in some vague way, whatever, if that's right, then that's the ultimate truth. So there is an ultimate truth on how to describe these questions or how to give an answer to these questions. I do not hope to achieve that. I think I have come to understand and I hope our viewers who have taken the journey with us during these years that Peter and I have greatly enjoyed appreciate these questions more than they have I know I do and I thank you know the audiences that made possible and foundations that have supported us as well as my own little foundation to give us that opportunity but the you know I call it we we luxuriate in the questions and in that process get a feel for the kind of ambience that answers would have on either direction.

And so, you know, if God exists or if God doesn't exist, if consciousness is entirely physical, or if there's something beyond the physical? You know, are there alien intelligences in the universe, or no alien intelligences in the universe? Whatever these questions are that have answers, we believe that we have enriched the understanding, not only of what the importance of the category, but also what it would mean if either side of the answer were true. So we want to show what either side is. One of the great joys that I've had in Closer to Truth is to see Closer to Truth being recommended by both theist and atheistic websites. And people saying, you know, they may do a little bit on the other side, but, you know, there's some really good stuff there. That's a great compliment, especially because both of those communities tend to be ardently against what they're not.

So if you're an atheist, you dislike intensely when people talk about or entertain theism and vice versa. How do you improve as an interviewer, Robert? Do you rewatch the episodes? Obviously, you do when you're editing. Are you taking notes? Are you looking at your mannerisms? Are you thinking, well, what are you thinking? That's a great question. And I think I have a personal deficit in not doing that. I don't like to do that. And part of the reason it's not that I am upset that I make mistakes. So in our raw interviews, Peter and I, you know, leave in my mistakes because we want to make it organic. In the shows, we'll make it. We have very tight time. So we are very specific on how we we edit in order to tell a story. But in the raw interviews, we let everything in. I guess psychologically, I like to look to the future. I guess psychologically, I like to look to the future.

I don't like dwelling and seeing what I've done in the past and being happy about it or feeling pride or correcting it. I always want to look to the future. So, you know, on my mind right now is the global philosophy of religion, because we have these 20 interviews coming up over the next few months. And, you know, I'm starting to prepare and learn about Hinduism and Islam at a greater depth than I've known before. And I'm really looking forward to that. And similarly, in philosophy of biology, you know, my background is from biology. My bachelor's was in human biology from Johns Hopkins. But, you know, I'm out of, not current in a lot of aspects of biology. So I've been really learning about that. My capacity as an interviewer is related to my passion for the ideas and my desire to learn in preparation for the interview and to learn during the interview. So it's not that I'm just asking, get my list out of questions.

I really want to engage with that person and understand how that person thinks about it. And once that's done, you know, I'm on to the next. I don't want to reflect back and, you know, I should have asked this, I should have asked that. You know, I mean, there are, you know, mannerisms. Sometimes I'm looking down on people and I don't mean to do that. And I need to be told to to do that Peter's very good in his directorial activity he doesn't like my hair kind of nicely combed he likes it brushed up a little bit a little bit messy to kind of reflect a kind of a kind of a scatterbrained intellectual approach to things as opposed to a more padded down look. So I'm not sure my hair is proper now. You mentioned that when you're in the interviews, you're trying

to be as engaged as you can be. And that's something that, but at the same time, you have to wear different hats because you're wondering about the audience. Maybe there are other factors that you're weighing. And that's something that I struggle with as well. And for better or worse, I err on the side of me being engaged in it and asking the questions that I'm more interested in, regardless of if they use too much jargon or technical depth, even if some audience members will find it extremely simplistic or overly complicated. And I imagine that limits the audience. and I could monetarily benefit from a larger one and then invest in it so that then later I could go back to my previous style but it's a balancing act and I'm wondering what do you weigh and how do you make that decision so marketing is one

your engagement the answering of your own questions is another. How do you navigate that process? You know, in one sense, honestly, I don't try to navigate it. I try to be as engaged as possible and have the audience come with us. And many people say that, you know, they don't understand a lot of the shows, but they love watching it anyway. And we'll watch it over and over again. We have many, many people like that. And I love that about Closer to Truth. And in fact, it's one of the highlights of Closer to Truth is to see the diversity of people who are engaged with these big questions of consciousness, life after death, how did the universe happen, why is there something rather than nothing, is there a God, all those kinds of questions. And that no externality by age, economic level, race, religion, creed, national origin, none of those factors are relevant. I'm exaggerating

maybe a little bit to their engagement with these questions. The best example that I can remember was a viewer in the early days of Closer to Truth, a woman who wrote in and said, you know, I've only had a high school education, but I love Closer to Chill, love the questions that you ask. And he said, but I have my husband and I have five sons. They think I'm nuts. You know, one drives a truck and one is a manager at a warehouse. And they think their mother is absolutely crazy to be interested in and this, this show, this obscure show. And he said, but recently, my 13 year old grandson has engaged and has loved these questions. So he and I,

my 13 year old grandson and I secretly watch Closer to Truth when my husband and my sons and his father are not around. And to me, that's a wonderful, was a wonderful story because superficially you would never say that woman and that child were closer to truth demographic focus. And so that, that to me is exciting. And so, therefore, I don't we don't try to reach a demographic. Now, as you get bigger, people force you to do that. And so I'm not saying we perfect the original concept of closer to truth is, you know, build it and see who comes. comes. I remember when, you know, Mel Rogers and KOCE, you know, more than 22 or so years ago now said, you know, maybe we can run it. And I, you know, I said to him, even if you run it at three in the morning and it's only on KOCE, I'm excited to do this because it was the passion of the ideas and the opportunity. And if people watch it and when they do, and now we have terrific numbers all over the world on Closer Truth YouTube and CloserToTruth.com, that's a great satisfaction.

But the satisfaction is not that, oh, yes, we were right. No, no. The satisfaction is that there are other people in the world who have gone through the same things that I have and have these same questions. And we're sharing it together in this global community that we're all together in. It transcends all the externalities that seem to divide us more so in today's world, that the kinds of questions that we deal with, and you deal with, Kurt, similarly, are the questions that unite us across all different, you know, breaking all different barriers. I read each of the papers that you sent me, the PDFs. Thank you for that. One sentence that stood out to me, I wrote down, it's a simple sentence. It says, to me, honestly, nothing makes sense. So then that has me thinking, well, well, one, when you said that there's absolute truth, and I'm not critiquing absolute truth, but to me that presumes classical logic.

It either is true or it isn't. And then there are various forms of classical logic. So how are you? Sorry, there's not various forms of classical logic. There are various forms of logic, intuitionist, paraconsistent, and so on. So then why did you arrive at that? And then also, well, what is it that you believe if nothing makes sense? That's something that I struggle with.

I'm also wondering, how is it that you avoid this nihilistic trap of psychologically being homeless or philosophically being homeless? I'll make those questions succinct. So number one, you're using a form of logic. Why did you choose that one? you're using a form of logic. Why did you choose that one? Okay. Let me go back to the last one because, as I said, I luxuriate in the questions. And when I said nothing makes sense, that was not about everything in the world. I mean, we turn on the faucet, the water comes out.

That makes sense. Yeah, unless you scrutinize it, then you realize. But this was specifically about, you know, what is existence? And, you know, what is existence? So you can have one theory that, you know, God is a necessary being and God created the universe. That's one theory. Another theory is that the laws, the deep laws of physics, whatever they are, are cosmogenic. Pick your choice.

There are lots of different ones. And all I'm saying is of all those different categories, none of them make sense. And obviously one is true. And, you know, that's where I start. Now, when you get into the classical bimodal logic or the tetralemma logic of Eastern traditions, you know, I can't tell you I'm an expert in the difference logic of Eastern traditions, you know, I can't tell you I'm an expert in the difference in how the tetralemma

argument of what is it, you know, P or minus P, both plus P and minus P and minus P, you know, each of those. I think my sense is that those terms are in that form of logic is being used in a blurry way.

And that, you know, at the end of the day, the kinds of questions that we ask have a digital yes-no kind of answer. Once you define what that choice is, take the question, does consciousness demand anything beyond the purely physical world? Now, you can blur that question by saying, well, what do you mean by physical? And if you have a fifth force of nature or a panpsychist point of view, or, you know, does that count as physical or not physical? Or how do you work that out? Well, that's a semantical point about what you deal. But ultimately, if that's the answer, then that answer becomes an absolute answer, however you create that answer, even in

a fuzzy manner. So to deal with the question, as I said, does God exist or a traditional God, or does consciousness demand anything beyond the physical? What does it mean, what would it mean to have a non-bimodal logic to those questions? So if consciousness is physical, it requires something beyond the physical. That's either does or doesn't.

But if you have a fourfold logic, it would say that it does and doesn't at the same time, or it does and doesn't and both are wrong. does and doesn't, and both are wrong. And that can give you an insight into the complexity of these questions. But ultimately, there has to be some kind of an answer. You can't, if we're defining the physical world, and again, you can expand your thinking of what the physical world is. That's another set of issues. But if you restrict it to the physical world, and again, you can expand your thinking of what the physical world is. That's another set of issues. But if you restrict it to the physical world, and is consciousness demanding more of that, what would it mean to say there's a

use the other two forms of logic to that question? That means it does and doesn't at the same time. It does require something non-physical and doesn't require non-physical, and both are true. If that's the case, if that's the case, it's hard to conceive, but if that's the case, if it does and doesn't at the same time, the fact that it does, I think, would skew the answer to that it does, because it's kind of a possible world analysis. This is a technique in philosophy you may be familiar with, and it asks what happens in every possible world.

Now, a possible world is an entire state of affairs. So it's not just a world like a planet or something. It's all reality. And a different possible world could be, you know, if there are 10 to the 90th particles in the universe, if one particle is in a slightly different polarization, that's a separate world. Everything else could be the same. So there's an infinite number of possible worlds. So you ask questions, is something possible, is to ask, is in any

possible world, can that exist? Now, this has been used in what's called the ontological argument for God's existence, which basically says, you know, if you can conceive of a God that is maximally everything, you know, totally omni, omnipresent, everywhere, omnipotent, omniscient, if you can, all of those things, the maximum possible God, that which there cannot be anything greater, you don't know whether that God exists, but could that kind of God exist in one possible world? Yeah, maybe I could. Maybe I'd see in a zillion infinite number of possible worlds, maybe one of them, that kind of God could exist. So when you admit that, and then you go into that possible world, in that possible world, God is all,

God is a necessary being. So if God's a necessary being in that one world, then it has to be, if it's a necessary being, God has to exist. And so you've gotten into a logical trap. I don't believe the ontological argument proves God's existence, but very smart philosophers have difficulty finding out the error in the argument that I just made, which is called the modal ontological argument for God's existence. It doesn't work, for sure. I mean, I don't believe that, but it is a tricky argument. So now what that does is it goes back to the questions we're asking in

a fourfold logic system. If you have consciousness being something that is both fully explained by the physical world and not fully explained by the physical world, which contradicts our twofold logic, classical logic, that would seem to indicate even with that fourfold logic that in one of those, one possible world, consciousness does require something beyond the physical, and therefore it would indicate that if it is true in one possible world, that it is a truism, even though it may not be in the vast majority of worlds. So, I mean, that's an argument that I would at least suggest that shows that the fourfold logic is helpful in being able to see deeply into some of these very hard questions.

And I need to learn more about that. And I look forward to doing that. And when we're dealing with global philosophy of religion and Eastern traditions and the big questions, these two big series coming up, we'll explore that. And I think that complexity of logic enables a deeper understanding of what these questions mean. But I'm still, you know, backward enough or too westernized to think that at the end of the day, it is going to alter my thinking about the fact that there is an answer to these questions within a twofold logic classical system. Okay, let's harp on this for a bit.

With the twofold logical system, you said it's obvious it's either yes or no. And then you gave a case where it's imagined consciousness both is physical and not physical, but you can develop a logical system where it's not true that consciousness is physical, but it is true that consciousness is physical and not physical. is physical and not physical. If you put the bracket behind both true and not true, but not true in the singular for the consciousness. And then you said, well, it's obviously true, but I don't, I don't necessarily see it as being obvious because, well, firstly, as a scientist, your whole point is to question what's obvious. So dispense with the word obvious when you're a scientist. And number two, if you've been emailed several theories about zero, or you're going to be interviewing Indian philosophers about zero, often they have this notion that zero is the same as infinity, and thus it's the same as all possible worlds. And thus, you can see how it can be true and not true at the same time. So I don't see it obviously being the case or not the case only. Yeah. And so I think that I think what we're

doing is enriching the understanding of aspects of reality. And that's fine. And I look to be able to to appreciate that better. But I don't think you're going to shake me off my view that at the end of the day, there is some description of reality in each of these categories that is the correct and the one that corresponds to the reality. It can be much more sophisticated or complex than I would think now. And you're describing ways maybe that's the case. But if that is the case, then that is how to define it. You mentioned in one of your articles or many of your articles that you dislike faith. Now, do you see any faith? That's probably a slightly mischaracterization.

It's not that I dislike it. Maybe I like it. It's just that I don't have it. Okay, so you don't have faith. Do you see any aspects of faith in the answer that you can't be shaken from your beliefs about whether or not there's one answer to a question yes or no once again when I'm saying there's one answer to it I'm not saying that I know what each side of those answers are now I am

saying that when we define the the structure of the answer, there is one way to define that structure, even if parts of it have uncertainty or however you want to deal with it. However you define that, there is ultimately an answer to those questions that you can phrase. The issue of faith is in a different kind of category.

Faith is a belief in something, the evidence maybe of which you don't see. And in various religions, that is a virtue. And I see it as a virtue. And I admire people who have it. That doesn't mean I think it's either correct or that I want it. Maybe I would want it,

but I don't have it the way many people have faith. When I'm talking about my belief that there are ultimate answers to these questions, even if we can never even define what that is, I don't think that that's a, I wouldn't characterize that as faith, although it is part of my belief system. And, you know, happy to question it. I'm not coming at this from a theist's point of view or an atheist's point of view i'm just playing devil's advocate when it comes to faith i hear people say many times that they don't like belief they don't like faith now i'm not saying you didn't you said this and i apologize if i misquoted you but when people say faith, faith is actually manifold.

I think on the Stanford Encyclopedia, there's doxastic venture, non-doxastic venture, special knowledge, hope, belief, affective confidence, trust. And then when someone says they don't have faith, well, do you not have trust? Do you never have confidence? And then when someone says, well, I only trust what I have evidence for. Yeah, but you're presuming what evidence counts as. So let's say someone from the Eastern tradition would prioritize experiential knowledge, but then you, not saying you, sorry, I'm saying one may prioritize scientific verification. Okay, but you've just slipped the question because you've just, I've asked you, do you have faith? You say, I only believe what I have evidence for. Well, what counts as the evidence? And then you have an

assumption there as to what is accurate evidence. So what do you say to that? Yeah, look, I think those are all very legitimate questions. We've been dealing with that on Closer to Truth because a lot of people will ask us to interview X, Y, and Z person who are people of of experiential truths. And we're not saying we reject that. We're saying that that's just not part of the way we address these questions, but recognize that those are approaches that many people feel are not only legitimate, but are more legitimate than the quasi-analytic scientific approach that we have. I distinguish, by the way, between scientific method and the scientific way of thinking. not believe that all truths of significant nature are accessible by the scientific method, which is experiments or observation, repeatability, testing, etc. I do not think many of the questions are susceptible to that because science, the scientific method, has a physicalism foundation.

And so anything outside of physicalism would not be subject to the scientific method by definition. So none of these questions can really get at if there is something beyond the physical world through a scientific method. However, that does not free you from a scientific way of thinking. And a scientific way of thinking has to have logic built into it and has to have knowledge of the sequence of the flows of your argument. And I try to be very rigorous about putting people to that test. This particularly would be in philosophy of religion to theists and even to atheists. And forcing people, if they want to take me to a belief in God or belief in cosmic consciousness or idealism or something, or something, I want to see the progression of steps that goes from what we all know with third-party verification that we all can agree upon and to their conclusion.

And in virtually every case, there will be gaps in the logical flow because you can't go from a scientific method of understanding the world to getting something outside of what the scientific method can't access. You can't do that. That's just self-contradictory. And so all I want to do is to point out where those gaps are and how those gaps are bridged. And that's a very fair and legitimate and coherent kind of analysis, is to go from what we all can agree upon to questions about the existence of God

or the nature of consciousness or life after death or whatever as a belief. But I want to see when you're making those jumps over, that you're leaping over a logical flow. And then we point those areas out. And you're entirely justified in making those jumps. But I just want to be sure that we're all aware that they are. Because many times

people make those jumps and are not aware of it. And that, to me, is not acceptable. So, and if you want to use faith or, you know, the inner experience that you've had with your religious belief, that's fine. I just want to know where in the sequence of steps that's occurring. And then we really have a deep understanding of what that process is. And if you want to call

that faith during that time, fine, but I want to see where that's occurring. So then we're all on the same sort of logical flow, logical timeline together. But by seeming to be so scientific way of thinking or analytic philosophy, I want to be clear that I do not reject at all those who use other ways of knowing, experiential, religious, as coming to what may be true. I do not reject it. I just want to be very clear where those gaps are being leaped, leapt, and to acknowledge those and to call that faith or call that whatever, And to acknowledge those and to call that faith or call that whatever, but just to see the sequence of thinking from what we can all agree upon to what your conclusion is, which we may not agree upon, how you're going through that process.

That's what we try to do. And if we can all do that together, I think we will have better communications. Does science or the scientific method presume physicalism or give evidence for physicalism? I think the scientific method, which is the way science works, is the core way that you understand the physical world. And the two are inextricably bound together. Science is the use of the scientific method to understand the physical world. And the physical world is the substrate by which the scientific method works. And you can't go beyond that. You should not go beyond that. The only thing I, again, to repeat is that I generalize it from scientific methods, a scientific way of thinking, in order to get beyond the physical world, if there is such a thing beyond the physical world, in whatever sense, consciousness,

God, whatever, spiritual stuff, if there is, to use a scientific way of thinking, because you surely cannot use a scientific method to get there. So I would be very suspect of people who try to use a scientific method to prove things beyond the physical world. I think that's contradictory. Well, I know that you have a scheduled interview for Bernardo Kastrop. Maybe it's unconfirmed, but you're in talks with him. And he makes an extremely cogent argument that the scientific method presumes no philosophy, doesn't presume materialism, physicalism, or idealism. And what's happened was a grave error, where we think we have initially these pixels of perception, I'm seeing you right now, and you see,

you see paintings, well, you can't see the paintings behind you, if you were to look, you'd see the paintings behind you. And then we see regularities in our perception, our perceptive field. So we start with these mental states, then we see perceptive regularities, and then we start to make models about them. And then at some point, we assume that this exists as an entity in and of itself. And that posits a completely new ontological category, when one, if one is to take scientific modeling modeling seriously it uses a principle called parsimony so you want the minimal amount of assumptions and i i don't see a flaw with this argument that the minimal amount of assumptions would lead you naturally to idealism now i'm not saying i believe in idealism i'm saying that i don't see how one

can hold both parsimony and physicalism or at least parsimony and not idealism. Well, parsimony is a principle. I mean, Einstein, he has a lot of quotes. I assume this is accurate. But he said, make things as simple as possible, but not simpler. So general relativity, to some people, is extremely simple, these elegant equations, and to others it's incomprehensible. And so parsimony is great, but doesn't always work. Philosophers and, you know, quasi-scientists in antiquity, you know, assumed that there were some wheels within wheels and some platonic structures that had all the orbits. And the orbits are just not that way.

They're all based upon some basic principles, but they all have their own characteristic. So, you know, simplistic and parsimony is a very good principle, but it is not a certainty to access reality. I understand all those arguments. You know, Bernardo and we are trying to get together. Closer Truth has a difficult schedule because of ours. I told you the productions are very, very significant. But, you know, next year we hope to be, we plan to be, we will be in the UK and Bernardo will be on. So we will deal with these things in great detail and look forward to it.

But the kinds of arguments that you're posing, you know, lead very quickly to, you know, total skepticism. And, you know, I can make that argument as well, because it's the brain and the vat. I mean, anything I'm perceiving, and I'm perceiving, you know, through my brain. That's why I originally wanted to do my PhD in brain science rather than in physics or philosophy or other things I was thinking about, because I had the thought that everything comes through your brain. And so if we understand the brain, we can have a better sense of reality because that's our only way of perception. So we're never going to get around that. I mean, that's obvious. And so from that, you can have all sorts of different derivations of, you know, anti-realism is an easy argument to make because you don't really have access to any underlying reality in a

direct sense. It all has to be mediated by some sensations that we all have, and those are subject to all sorts of problems and issues that we are not aware of in our daily life, but in different kinds of trauma diseases, they become very obvious. And so any of those arguments cannot be totally refuted, because at the end of the day, anything we know is coming from our, is translated into nervous impulses through eyes and hearing and other senses. So, you know, I like those arguments. I enjoy them and discuss them. But if you take them too seriously, I mean, it really ends the conversation. Well, with Bernardo, there's nothing that he says that violates any scientific theory in the least,

because you could just take the regularities that we see in nature as the physical law. And then you mentioned, well, simple, but not any simpler. Okay, why? Because at some point, it won't work. And then my question is, well, what doesn't work about idealism? And furthermore... Sorry, so you mentioned simple but not simpler. Okay, why not simpler?

The reason is because at some point it won't work any longer. The orbits are oblong or elliptical. Okay, that means that there's a breakdown of the theory okay from what we can tell what's wrong about idealism no i'm saying what's wrong with idealism and also can physicalism be refuted and then if physicalism nor idealism can be refuted then the belief in one or the other to me seems like a faithful step which you've eschewed i think that's right right. We have had several shows on Closer to Truth where we ask

the question, is the universe theologically ambiguous? And all the people we speak to don't like that question, because to each one of them, the answer is it's not ambiguous. And obviously the theists think it's not ambiguous because God does exist, and the atheists think it is not ambiguous. But nobody liked the idea that it was ambiguous. I like the idea that it's ambiguous. Nobody else I talked to really liked it. I'm exaggerating, but making the point. What does it mean when you say the universe is ambiguous, just for the audience who is like, what the heck could that possibly... Theologically ambiguous, meaning that can data support both the existence of God and the absence of God? And the answer to me is yes. And to me, this is not a hard question

because, you know, I have a lot of very, very, very smart friends and colleagues and many we've been to, you know, closer to truth on both sides of that question. And, you know, I'm not prepared to say what those groups are, you know, really missing some very specific kind of data. And I expect when we get into global philosophy of religion and reach out to, you know, Hindu and Islamic traditions in greater depth than we ever had and Buddhism, that we'll find equally strong views. I know we will, of course, that's what we're doing. So, um, I take the view that the data from the universe, the data that's

fed into our, uh, ways of apprehension, both directly in ourselves and through our scientific process over the last, um, four or five centuries as science has developed, has amplified both sides of the argument. And so both theists and atheists have seen the results of science corroborating their fundamental ideas about how things work. So people impose their way of thinking on data. But the data itself has to have some ambiguity about it, or else that wouldn't be possible to happen.

Now, the physicalists would say that's because the other side is imposing their artificial experiential selves onto data and kind of skewing it. And the theists may say that as well, that they are imposing that they believe in God, that this inner experience they've had is both meaningful and certain in their minds. But the raw data of the universe can be interpreted in various ways. You know, I've used this different ways of interpretation to illustrate or illustrate that by taking a question, are there alien intelligences that are sentient in the way that human beings are sentient? It may be very different, but are there?

And I pose it as a two-fold matrix in terms of are there aliens, such as sentient aliens, or not? So that's one axis. The other axis is are you a theist or are you an atheist? And I want to fill in all four of those boxes.

So if you're a theist and the universe is teeming with life, you say, you know, see, God made a universe that had all this alien life. And if you're an atheist, then you see the universe teeming with life. You say, see, God didn't do anything special about Earth. Earth is just an ordinary part. There are zillions of of sentient life in the universe. So, you know, atheism is clearly right. Now, if there are no other sentient life in the universe, the theists will say, see, we earthlings and human beings on earth are a special creation of God, and therefore God exists. The atheists will say, see, the universe is wholly inhospitable to life, and it's only on this random planet that

one thing had occurred so that God can't possibly exist. So here you take a very simple case of whether there are sentient aliens or not, and interpret it from both the theist and atheist point of view, and neither will change their fundamental position no matter what the answer is. and neither will change their fundamental position no matter what the answer is. Now, if that's the case, if you give me that, then any of these other questions will fall in the same category as idealism versus physicalism versus panpsychism. And so we can do our best to really understand the nature of each of the argument to give us a richer understanding of the questions. But, you know, I have no, no, not just no, no belief, no hope that there'll be an ultimate answer, because I think that's that is given the circumstances we

have, that it's probably in principle impossible. You and I think so much alike, Robert. When it comes to sitting on the fence for many issues and citing, well, how can you be so confident about your answer, given that there are people who are extremely bright on both sides? And sometimes when I see, I'm pretty sure you get the same feeling. When you look at the comments, most of the time, they're extremely positive and sitting with ambiguity. But plenty of the time, you'll see people say, these people are obviously incorrect because God for sure exists or God for sure doesn't exist. I heard someone recently say religion lowers your IQ.

Come on. Why do you think that? What makes you think that someone else? Why do you think the other side says what they do? Do you think it's because they're unconsciously motivated by something malicious? Well, we all are to some degree, but do you but more than you? And do you think that it's because they have a paucity of the data that you have access to? There's a great quote called, there's a great quote by Cain, I believe, that in great controversy, not one side is mere folly, or only the shallowest of

mind would think that in great controversy, one side is mere folly. I tend to subscribe to that. And you seem to be doing the same as well. That's not a question. My favorite critique. Yeah, no, it's great. That's great. My favorite critique was in one show, must have been something to do with God. Within about five or ten comments on YouTube, one person said, yeah, it was good, but Kuhn is too much a promoter of theism for my taste. And then ten comments later, it was, yeah, it was a show I learned a lot, but, you know, he's an atheist and, you know, he doesn't believe in God and, you know, I'm not going to really pay attention. So it was, I mean, normally it's a different place, but here it was

in the same context, in the same show. Some people accuse me of being an atheist and some people accuse me of being a theist in a negative manner for both a critical matter and i took that as a compliment by the way you used a phrase i don't agree with i agree with everything you said except one thing i don't think i'm sitting on the fence um and i don't think you are either it's not a sitting on the fence it's a very sharp-eyed uh tough-minded approach to the to to to questions now i could be wrong, and when I'm wrong, I love to be wrong, because then I learn. But I think of what I want to do as being very tough-minded, very critical thinking, and being open-minded in a very real sense at the same time and being hopeful. I always, I often say that, you know, I,

I fear my hope is swamping my reason. And so I'm trying to be careful about that when I, when I think, but it's not sitting on the fence. It, you know, I take these questions very seriously. I have my whole life, the great opportunity to discuss with many people, join discussing with you today, Kurt. And these are questions which, you know, all human beings face at the same level. And I think that's an important thing in today's world, too, that we all share these ways of thinking, which, you know, can go a long way towards bridging ostensible gaps between people. I'm going to match your agreement slash disagreement with another disagreement slash agreement. So I would say, yes, I agree. I'm not sitting on the fence in the traditional sense of being on it. Well, I am in the sense

that I'm unable to make up my mind because as soon as I posit one position, I can almost immediately see a counter to that position. And it's difficult for me. In my mind, it's just even when I'm writing, I just see flaws, flaws, flaws, flaws with almost each side. So that's what I mean when I say on the fence. And then as for you saying that you like to be wrong, I don't think so, Robert. And I'll tell you why.

You don't want to be wrong about your wife not loving you or wrong about reason leading you, reason not leading you to truth because your whole show is based upon reason and argumentation leading to someplace that's closer to truth. So I wouldn't say globally, you care, you're excited to be wrong, unless, please tell me if I'm wrong about that. I'm not going to be wrong on specific topics. If I think a certain way and then I find out that's not correct in some sense, that to me is a learning experience. I like that. I mean, I've had from comments, you know, a greater appreciation. a greater appreciation. I've thought harder about experientially, even though we still don't deal with that on Closer to Truth, because I have no way of adjudicating, you know, which, you know, the wheat from the chaff and the huge amount in that area. That's just not what we can do.

But I do appreciate that that is a consideration that needs to be admitted. And we do that on Closer to Truth, but we don't then explore that further by testing all different experiential claims that various teachers or gurus or ministers or whomever propound. That's not what we would do. So my thinking on that, for example, has been expanded a little bit.

And we've talked before about logic, and I would have thought that the classical logic is the only way. The laws of excluded middle and all that. But because a different logical system, particularly the Eastern Tetralemma, I think that's what it's called, the four kinds of logic, it gives you a deeper insight into ways

of thinking about deep questions. So that's a learning experience. Now, how that affects you, one needs to consider it. When I say I like being wrong, I'm not saying that in a global sense, that I miss my calling and I should have believed in God or should never have dealt with questions about God. No, I don't think I'm wrong about that. But whenever there is something that I learned that was different, I mean, I look upon that as progress. Well, Robert, the reason I bring that up is

because I'm sure you see this too. I'm constantly almost unconsciously assessing people of their unconscious motivations. And when I hear people say, I'm sure you see this too, when'm constantly, almost unconsciously assessing people of their unconscious motivations. And when I hear people say, I'm sure you see this too, when they say, well, I love to be wrong. Richard Dawkins has a story about this. I wonder how much of that is marketing or trying to show one's rational intellectual proclivity by saying, well, look, I'm not guided. I'm not the Catholic church where I say, kneel down and obey and listen to whatever. I actually follow the data wherever it may lead me. Well, first of all, I don't buy that.

I don't think that's necessarily true. If the data led you to kill yourself or led you to destroy the world, would you do so? And then if it does, well, maybe you should question your own reasoning. And also when people say they don't like faith or they don't have faith or they don't have beliefs, well, I see that also as pounding their chest or at least pounding their brain in an analogous chest-thumping manner by saying, look how scientifically rational, intellectual I am. And something I think intellectuals dislike more than being irrational is appearing to be irrational. I'm questioning when people say, for example, you mentioned you don't have faith. Well, do you drive your car?

And then you may say, yes, I drive my car. Okay, do you have faith? You're not going to get into an accident. Well, my faith is based on evidence. Okay, but, okay, I know I'm speaking for you here. Sorry. Let me ask you. You say that you don't have faith.

Do you drive a car? No, but you're interpreting faith in a much broader term and i'm saying faith that is is faith in in willing to give um uh to allow kind of an inner feeling of wanting there to be a god uh and allow that to uh become your dominant belief system i you know for better or worse i would like there to be a God in the traditional sense. That would, I think, be pretty, pretty cool about the way the world works and what the potential of human beings are in terms of life after death or whatever.

But I, I'm not, I don't have the faith to make that leap between that hope and the belief so I don't have the belief and I would like to because I don't have the faith to do that you're using the word faith in a much broader term and that's not the way when I say I don't have faith

I mean faith in that very specific thing to make the leap from what I know about the world and philosophical analysis and everything to an absolute belief in God. I think I'm using that term in a very limited sense to that. We all have predispositions in our belief system. Everybody has a belief system that's founded on principles, some of which are obvious to us and many of which are not. You know, scientists who say that, you know, philosophy is dead or there is no room for philosophy, it's distorting, you know, they are practicing philosophy, they are giving a philosophy when they say that.

When I say philosophy is dead, it's no, that is a philosophy. That is a philosophy. You may think it's amateur philosophy or bad philosophy, but it is a philosophy. And so, you know, when I use the word faith, I use it in that context. But if we want to broaden the concept to how we deal with various ways of dealing with the world or with truth, you know, I would offer a different way of thinking about it. Rather than using the term faith, I'd use the term belief system. So we all have a belief system which operates in the background for whatever we're doing. If we're driving a car, we have a belief system about that.

If we're thinking about the nature of consciousness or God or life after death, we have a belief system that we bring to that discussion. So I think human belief systems is a wonderful topic for deep explanation. And that is a closer to truth theme. We deal with belief systems and how belief systems come about, both in all respects, although we have maybe a skew

towards religious belief systems and how they come about. But these are fascinating conversations. So we had one television show, you know, religion without God. You know, what does that mean? How does that develop uh that's interesting deal with yeah so so belief systems is is an exciting way of thinking about it and i would put the way i would define faith as a small subset of the broader topic of belief

systems okay help me out robert so there are belief systems. Okay, help me out, Robert. So there are belief systems about operating a computer or a vehicle, and then there are belief systems about faith in God and so on. Now, what's the difference between one? Why is it okay? Well, why is it rational to have a belief system about driving a car and being confident about one's abilities to drive a car versus irrational to have faith in a deity, let's say, or multiple deities, or whatever other religions espouse. I'm trying to find out what's the difference between those. Well, I think in the ultimate sense, there is no difference in terms of belief systems being a mechanism by which inculcated by your own personal experience, and they're inculcated by the culture from which we live. I mean, one argument against religion, and it's a strong one,

is that if you go to the Western world, you know, Christianity is 90% or whatever, and you go to India, and Hinduism is whatever the percentage is, 70%, and Islam is 30%, whatever the numbers are. And, you know, did all these people make those decisions in a rational sense? Well, of course, that's impossible. If that would occur, you'd have the entire world sort of in every country having a similar kind of percentage of people making their decisions. So we have a tremendous amount of our whole lives are built upon belief systems. I had an experience and it may sound trivial, but it was really very meaningful to me. My first granddaughter, when she was learning to walk, she had a toy that was a walker and she just was starting to walk and she wanted to get to the other side of the room and she kept pushing into a hammock or a chair and she couldn't get through the chair. She kept pushing.

She wanted to get to the other side. She couldn't get through the chair. And then she slept and she couldn't get through the chair. She kept pushing. She wanted to get to the other side. She couldn't get through the chair. Okay. And then she slipped and she slipped and she got around the chair. And it was one trial learning. The next time she came there, she knew she just went around the chair.

And so when she first saw that she wanted to get to the other side of the room, you just go straight because that's the belief system. When you go straight, you get there quicker. It doesn't matter if there's a chair in the room. You just go straight because that's the belief system. When you go straight, you get there quicker. It doesn't matter if there's a chair in the way. You just go. But she couldn't.

And then the next thing she learned was that if there are things in the way, you go around them. Even though it's longer. It's longer to go around than to go through. But if you do that, it works. So that was an example that I saw literally right there where a belief system was being developed. And it was a belief system with how to deal with things in the world. Now, that's very simplistic. But I think that analogy and that mechanism applies to lots of, you know, gets much more complicated and filters

everything that we have. And so one challenge for us when we're dealing with these very big questions of existence of God or nature of consciousness, life after death or whatever, is to challenge our own belief systems and to see what are the assumptions that our belief systems are making. And in doing this, I think we see broader opportunities and broader ways of thinking and how other smart people think. And that's what we try to do on Closer to the Truth. We try to understand how presuppositions, we don't always call it belief systems, but how presuppositions and ways of thinking lead to certain kinds of conclusions and how different people make different arguments to get there. But they're all based upon these perhaps unconscious kinds of modules that are parts of our belief system.

I think that's a good way to think about it. Our belief system have these modules in them. Marvin Minsky talked about a society of minds in his classic book. And so we have these modules, mental modules that we've had, many of which are unconscious. modules, mental modules that we've had, many of which are unconscious. And to deal with these big questions, I like to uncover what these mental modules are, which are our fundamental assumptions, and then allow people to come to their conclusions, but to see the logical process that they go through. This analogy or this story with uh your granddaughter is it okay your granddaughter going from point a to b see to me this means that there's a pragmatic definition of truth embedded

within what you said because the first model is let's go to a and b in a b line and then the second and that fails and then the second is let's go around it and then you validate the model based on the goal based on if it gets you the goal which is a pragmatic theory of truth and before you were and pragmatic theories of truth are somewhat relative so to me that goes against what you earlier said what you said earlier about there being an absolute yes or no yeah but but what i think i think we're we're we're using truth just like we use faith in different ways. Truth is one English word, five letters, and has meaning when you bring it. But there are very, very different kinds of truths.

Certainly there are pragmatic truths, and they can be very volatile. I mean, morality is an absolute or relative, and there's a huge literature and a constant battle about those kinds of things. When I'm using the word truth, and as we use it on Closer to Truth, the scope of what we're talking about as truth is extremely limited. If you look at all the questions of human life and existence and sentience, the kinds of truth that we're focusing on, on closer to truth, are a minuscule subset of all the kinds of truths that there could be. And so when I'm using the term truth, that there is an absolute truth answer to the kinds of questions we ask, even though we'll never get to it enough, I'm not here to tell you what those answers are that's for sure um that that that's

a different category so i will defend the notion that there is an absolute truth about these big questions even though we won't know that we wouldn't even know what it means that that that that we would know that i mean we we don, we wouldn't even know what a verification, how a verification could be. For example, one of our contributors, less well-known but very sophisticated, sadly he died, Bede Rundle from Oxford, who is a very strong atheist, said this, he said, if I were trying to be convinced to be a theist, which he was not,

and I went to a shrine or holy waters, and I saw a person who believed in God suddenly materialize two limbs that they didn't have. They had no arms and suddenly they had arms. And that person said, therefore God exists. I mean, suddenly, and I saw that myself and I was sure it happened. He said, I would think it more likely that it was an alien ship on the dark side of the moon, beaming special healing rays to that lady, then there is a God. And to me, that sounds ridiculous in a sense, but you think about it, that's really

profound. Because to this person, the existence of a god in the traditional way is so unlikely that even an extreme explanation that he had to explain a certain set of data, whereas everybody else, you know, could, if they saw that, which nobody has, by the way, and certainly in recent times, even no claims to that, they would look upon that as a God-driven miracle. What was that person's name? What was the person's name? B. Rundle. B. Rundle. B. Rundle. B. Rundle. B. Rundle.

B. Rundle. B. Rundle. B. Rundle. B. Rundle. B. Rundle. B. Rundle. B. Rundle. His first name is B. Rundle.

You can search him on closertotruth.com. Have interviews with him. He wrote a very interesting book called Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing, which gives one answer to that big question that I like to deal with. That's one of his works. But he was a very strong atheist and a very good thinker. Well, I find Bede Rundle's argument... Not that I agree with it. Yeah, facetious, unless he was being purposefully so, or specious at least, because... Firstly, it depends on how one defines God

and there are interdictions against that in virtually every religion, especially the Judeo-Christian and Islamic tradition. Second, so what definition of probability are you using to say that this probably isn't the case? There's a measure theoretic definition. That's the mathematical one. What he was illustrating, not facetiously, he was illustrating that we're so used to definitions of God that we think it is a definition that is acceptable within the range of probabilities. And what he's saying, he was just using it to show from his perspective on a de novo basis, just looking at things properly, that the existence of such a being is so extraordinarily unlikely.

is so extraordinarily unlikely, and that's what he was trying to convey, that it's so extraordinarily unlikely, avinitio, from first principles, if you weren't acculturated as we are. That's what he was trying to say. And it's striking, and it sounds facetious, but it was making a strong point that if we were not so acculturated from his point of view. Some people say that the belief in God is acculturated in all traditions around the world and everybody sort of believes it naturally. And it is a basic belief of human beings. This is Alvin Plantinga's famous kind of argument about,

you know, when I interviewed Al, one of our segments, we had many, many segments with Al, 30, I very appreciate that. And one of my, you know, segments, these 10-minute segments were arguments for God. And I said, Al, from your point of view, you know, these segments, these 10-minute segments were arguments for God. And I said, Al, from your point of view, you believe in God? He said, yes. I said, what do you think are the best arguments for the existence of God?

That was the segment. And he said, okay, I'm going to give you some arguments. But our first one to say is I don't think you need arguments to believe in God, and that you're fully justified, warranted, honest in your beliefs, and fully rational to believe in God without any arguments. Now, this was Al's big contribution, one of his big contributions to philosophy of religion, Christian philosophy in particular, is to say that you could have warranted belief in God without evidence and without arguments, and that the belief in God is similar to the belief in the existence of the past. Like you and I have been talking for now two hours of enjoyable time,

and, you know, did what we did in the first hour, was that real or not? Well, you and I both believe, the audience believes that what we did in the first hour really happened. But, you know, how do we know that? How do we know that for sure? Well, it's sort of a basic belief that we have. And I believe that, you know, I'm sentient in my mind. And I believe that you are as well, although you could be a philosophical robot and have nothing inside, just have a lot of stimuli and responses, that's possible. But I believe in

other minds. So Al's point of view is that if you believe in the existence of the past and you believe in the existence of other minds, you should be able to believe in God at the same level of confidence without argument. Now, one can argue that. Wait, why is that the case? Because belief in God is what Al would call a basic belief that is inculcated into human beings. In the same way that our belief in the past is and so on? In the same way that belief in the past or belief in other minds. So our concept of belief in the past, so he would say the level of belief in God that you are entirely justified in believing in God and being rational, etc., because it is so intrinsic to human sentience. That's his argument, and it's a powerful and an important one. Many people

reject it, of course, as you know, obviously, I've heard it, and I don't totally accept it. Yeah, I don't see why. I know you're not a defender of it. I don't see why it follows from the fact that you believe in the past and other minds, that you then can believe whatever intuitively comes to you. It doesn't follow from it. That's not the logic. It is the same level of significance. It doesn't follow from the past in the mind. It just says with the same confidence level that you have that there was a past, the same confidence level that you have in other minds,

you should have that same confidence level if somebody says they believe in god you don't have to subject them to proving through the cosmological argument or the ontological argument or the teleological argument or you know the fine-tuning argument any argument you don't need any of those now you may want to enjoy thinking about those and using those but you don't need any of them that was his argument i see that you don't need any of them. That was his argument, that you don't need arguments for God. Again, you can argue that, but the importance is to understand the nature of belief systems. Now, B. Rundle takes that same view exactly 180 degrees opposite. same view exactly 180 degrees opposite. That's why I brought it up. So, B. Rundle said the existence of God is so unlikely and so absurd and so ridiculous to have

this concept that if somebody is healed, that it's a real healing, it's more logical to have these aliens in a hidden spaceship having done it rather than God. And my only point is, I really like these two guys. These are, you know, I love being with them. These are, you know, I didn't know B. Rundle that well, but I enjoyed my time with him and Al Plantinger is one of the great philosophers and we had wonderful sessions together and I treasure. But here they are absolutely opposite on this point. I mean, so much so that each makes, I can't think of more extreme cases of being opposite where one, belief in God, you don't need any arguments for that. It's just as basic to human existence as acknowledging there was a past or that other

minds exist. And another person saying, no matter what would happen, no matter what evidence you could show me, doesn't matter what evidence you would show me show me doesn't matter what you evidence you would show me i will never believe that the the the cause of that evidence is a god rather than some other kind of explanation and to me uh that that to some people that would seem terrible to have two smart people so opposite i think it's wonderful. I think it's so expressive of the human condition. And these are not people who don't think about it. These are people to whom these questions are the deepest part of their lives. They've devoted their entire lives to thinking about these questions and come up with such diverse answers. But when people do that,

when they have such diversity and such sophistication thinking about topics like this, I mean, that's core closer to truth. And that's what we try to bring to our audiences. About both of those arguments, I want to tell you what occurs to me. Again, like I'm just a devil's advocate. I see flaws. So with Alvin's position, what occurs to me is monotheism is relatively new. So if you go back for even 3000 years, then would that not be an argument for polytheism rather than a belief in a God? That's what occurs to me. Okay.

So that's number one. And then for bead grundle, is that correct? Yeah. For bead grundles. Again, he's using, unless he's using the measure theoretic definition of probability which is not because that's actually you need many many many many data points like in the financial world in order to use that then he's using a folk definition when he's saying unlikely which means he's using propensity or subjective or or frequentist and so

on they're all flawed so then one and then you also depends on the Drake equation which runs the gamut from 100% certainty that extraterrestrial intelligent life exists to 10 to the minus 400 be making vast assumptions there plus you're making vast assumptions as to what constitutes God so I don't see why he could say with any certainty that it's unlikely that it's God or it's likely to be aliens. Look, you're critiquing both positions, and I think that's entirely justified. I'm just looking at each one in its own right and why these people have come to the view that they have. And as I said, I can't pick more diametrically opposite views. And that to me is fun. I mean, these are the most opposite views you can have.

One saying, you don't need any arguments for the existence of God. It is properly basic in human psyche now. You can say that going back that it was polytheistic, but people always had this sense of something beyond themselves. I see a lot of that. But there's something intrinsically basic about this, this belief on the one hand, on the other, the other hand, it's just, it's so absurd that virtually any other explanation would be better. virtually any other explanation would be better. That's just expressing two different views. Both of them can be severely critiqued, and they are, and justified.

We do that on Closer to Truth, that's fine. But to posit these two diametrically opposite views is to me a very rich data point in assessing human sentience and cognizance and dealing with these big questions. It's extremely interesting. Something that I think you would find, maybe you've thought about this quite a bit. Why is it that these, why is it that brilliant people, obviously that depends on what you call brilliant, but why is it that they disagree when they have access to the same data? And they're not, unless you want to say that they're biased. Now let's remove the bias because, well, maybe you can't remove the bias. Either way, why do you think it is that

people disagree? Like Noam Chomsky versus Peterson or Bernardo Kastrup versus virtually all of your guests? Why is it that they disagree? Is it that they have access to different data? Everybody has access to the same data. Now, each has belief systems, which are either unconscious or developed culturally or deliberately manifest in terms of their own study, as they've had. But they bring different belief systems. universe is theologically ambiguous, religiously ambiguous, because you're able to take these questions and interpret the data based upon your belief system. And I think that itself is a kind of truth, which is really important that we can agree upon. So we can agree upon the fact that smart people take the same set of externalities, data, and come to radically different conclusions about the big questions that we deal with. And so that is a truth. And that is an absolute truth. That's not a relative truth.

That's a very clear, absolute truth. That's a fact of our world. And I think that fact of our world is an important data point in understanding our world. So it sounds like we've made no progress because we've said that some people believe one thing, some people believe another. But I would disagree. I would say we have made progress, but because we see that these people have made dramatically different conclusions based on the same set of the data. And these are all smart people trained in science or trained in philosophy or trained in a logical way of thinking. And they're coming to different conclusions.

about existence that you can see, you can come to dramatically different conclusions, even though people have the same set of ways of thinking, they're all trained in the same system, and they have access to the same external data. And so this is a fact of our world, and I think an important one. And I think it's one that is not a triviality. I think it's progress to understand that. Do you feel like you've gotten any closer to truth? So my wife would say that she's a pianist, not a scientist and not dealing with these questions. She said that when we met, which was now, how many years ago?

54, 55 years ago. Oh, congrats, man. That she and I, she and I were at the same kind of level of knowledge about things. And now I've done, you know, 300 Closer to Truth shows and 4,000 interview questions. And she says, we're still at the same level of understanding these questions, even

though I've done 4,000 interviews, and she's done none. And I've thought about this for, you know, 50 years and intensely with Closer to Truth the last 20 years. And she doesn't think about these things at all. And we're both at the same level. It's a kind of truth in that in terms of coming to an answer. But I think in reality, I have a very deep appreciation for the nature of the questions. I'm more excited about them than ever. for the nature of the questions.

I'm more excited about them than ever. So it's not after talking to so many people and hearing so many theories that, you know, I'm kind of fed up and I've heard everything. No, it's the opposite. It's just, you know, it kind of luxuriating, as I've said in these questions, and appreciating the depth and the passion that people bring to them in new ways of addressing. That's why on Closer to Truth,

we will deal with the same question over and over again. For example, why is there something rather than nothing? We call it the mystery of existence. Why not nothing? What is the nature of nothing? So we've had multiple shows. People can look that up on YouTube or closertotruth.com. Just put in nothing and you'll see various shows that we've done on that many interviews means put in the actual quotation and not put in nothing you won't get anything yeah no th ing right exactly and I don't know how we could code for literally putting in nothing. And then nature of consciousness is consciousness fundamental. What is the nature?

We've done so many different ways because we have so many different people to speak on these issues. And we've not exhausted it. As you mentioned, Bernardo Castro, we look forward to discussing with him as well in terms of the thinking. So it's, you know, you ask, am I closer to truth after all this time? I would say no in terms of an absolute answer to questions, but certainly yes in terms of an appreciation of what those answers would have to consist of, what the nature of it is, what the inner structure of the question would be, what the uncertainties are. I feel that there's a very rich sense of that, and that is really getting closer to truth.

And we're so pleased to have so many viewers come along with us on this journey. Robert, with all these people you interview, are you able to keep their different theories? Now, they're extremely disparate, but are you able to keep them alive in your head such that you can allude to them or quote them when you're speaking to another interviewer? And if so, how do you do that? Do you take notes?

Yeah, I don't consider myself to having a spectacular memory. I am focused on each interview on that person's way of thinking, and I bring to it my own perceptions of that question. And I do it from my perspective as informed, of course, by everything else I've done. my perspective as informed, of course, by everything else I've done. But I generally don't try to trade one set of opinions against another. I won't say to one person, well, Alvin Plantinga said, or Richard Swinburne said, or Steven Weinberg said, or Michael Shermer said. I don't do that. Don't listen to anything Michael Shermer says. I do it from my own...

No, I'm just kidding. He's a friend. I do it from my own perspective, but again, as enriched and informed by all the conversations that I've had. But I try to focus on each individual to try to get the best thinking out of that person by having them, you know, some free association, some probative questions, some questions to kind

of attack or undermine their position just to get more out of them. So that's what I try to do. So each interview is done on its own, its own focus, not in terms of what other people think. When Peter Getzels and I put together the shows, then we synthesize kind of an artificial architecture where we'll take four to six, generally five people and have a series of excerpts, three, four minutes each, and then with some interstitials as we go from one to the other. So we develop a story. It's artificial and looks like it's happening chronologically, but it's not.

We develop the chronology, the apparent chronology in the show, based upon a flow of ideas and argument, as opposed to a real-world chronology, which it can't be. Peter is the editor? Peter Getzels, he's the producer director, and then he has editors working for him, which are wonderful editors. And I'm very much involved in the selection. So I work together with them on a script basis, but not the visual basis.

It's the way the show works. They do all the visuals by themselves, but I select every word, and then it has to work as a film. So it's a long and complicated process, and it's totally consumptive. When we do a show, one show, a little under 27 minutes of airtime,

it is every word, every frame is thought about, worried about, focused on. My whole world is that one show. And when it's gone, I don't think about it again. Do you rather these podcasts that are unedited, where you just put up the footage online, or do you actually enjoy the editing process? It's another expression, which was not in my DNA, and it was not part of Closer to Truth until we were forced to do it last year because of the lockdown. And so now we have three expressions of Closer to Truth. We used to have two. We had our super polished shows, which are our crown jewels, which we're most proud of that most of them are on YouTube now and closer to truth calm that they'll all be up in the next few months releasing one one a week now or several several a week and we have the

raw interviews which are these seven to twelve minute sessions of which we have over four thousand maybe five thousand by now of these segments. And those are also very highly produced. And now what we've done in the last year is we have the same things that you and I are doing here for your podcast, Theory of Everything, which is great. We've done that for Closer to Truth. So we've done, you know, 15 or so of what we're calling Closer to Truth chats. And sometimes we do it live and sometimes we, most of the time we don't. And we have a very wide variety of people. You know, we did Dan Dennett on Free Will and George Smoot, Nobel Prize winner in cosmology.

Jill Tarter on alien intelligences, Lin-Manuel Adnau just did a book on Stephen Hawking. If someone wants to know when is your correspondence with Castrop going to be? Our plan is to do the interview when we are shooting in the UK next year, which will hope to do you know 12 or so segments with Bernardo on different ways of approaching this topic it won't be it won't be the kind of interview we're doing here which is you know all straight they'll be in segments and we'll post the segments at that time and then eventually those will find their way into actual shows in which his views

will be contrasted with others. I'll link to that in the description once they're out. Just please, I'm pretty sure it'll get recommended to me. But if it doesn't, send them to me and I'll put it in the description of this. So if you're listening, watching, it's in the description. Okay, someone named, and by the way, that previous question came from Panda Products. Okay, Andrea S. asks your favorite question. Why does anything exist and how has your thinking on this changed? You know, the question of existence is the great question

of philosophy and indeed of reality. I've always said the questions, you know, does God exist? Is consciousness fundamental? How did the universe come about? What about the fundamental laws of physics, life after death? These are all super important, big questions, but I call them second level questions. The primary question is, why is there anything at all? And, you know, I had a fascination of this when I was literally a child that scared me so to think about it, and I thought it was unique. And over the years, I found many people have had that same experience, that kind of feeling of disassociation where you wonder, what if there were nothing? And it's a very scary thought. And I've had the opportunity now over the years to develop this very, very much in great detail.

We've done many shows on why is there something rather than nothing? What is nothing? Why not nothing? Mystery of Existence on CloserToTruth.com and on CloserToTruth YouTube. But I have to give credit to one of our early contributors, John Leslie,

who is a British-Canadian philosopher who developed these ideas and other ideas, developed the philosophy of cosmology as well as the philosophy of existence. And John was a great teacher of mine. I looked to him and very proud to say we did a book together as a result of Closer to Truth, which was published in 2013, called The Mystery of Existence. I was happy to be editor with him. And we picked out of all human history excerpts of the best thinkers from Plato onward to current scientists, etc., dealing with the question, why is there something rather than nothing? And it's a very big topic and an exciting one. I didn't know Plato had thoughts on that. Yes.

I mean, you could read it into it where Plato believed that the good or value was sort of a protogenitor of reality, that reality exists for the good. Interesting, interesting. So you can read back into it. Some people are very specific, like Leibniz and others, but others you could read into their thinking of why things exist. And I have on CloserToTruth.com a piece called Levels of Nothing in which I deal with nine levels of nothing. People talk about nothing. They think

they know what they mean. Why isn't there nothing? But in this piece, I show that there are nine ways that nothing can be described. So there are nine levels of nothing. And what's fun to me is the nothing that many physicists talk about, the quantum foam that takes from nothing, no space-time, no matter, energy, no nothing. And then you create a universe out of nothing, which many physicists believe happened, indeed may have happened that way. But that to me is my level five nothing. Right. Because it presumes the laws and so on. Four levels of nothing less than that in terms of what it is and let people can look that up levels of nothing on closer to truth.com or nothing. But this to me is the

most probative question and the most exciting question. You know, we know for sure there is something, you know, but why that's the case is, is a wonderful thing to delve into. case is a wonderful thing to delve into. Neutrino, a commenter I love, says, Robert, I kind of love you. He also said, well, Steve Scully says, question for Robert, just because something exists, does this necessarily preclude nothing from also existing? Yes, I think it does. Some people would argue that, and many people said this, and maybe when you have your tetralemma theory of logic, you can have nothing and something at the same time. But I, in my simplicity, would say once you admit there is something in one possible world out of an infinite number, then by my definition, there is something. And so once there is something, there can never have been nothing

in the big sense. So once you admit any kind of something in any kind of possible world in any way, you've answered the question that there is not nothing. And that's pretty much, you know, digital on off the way I think about it. That doesn't mean if you have something, it can go back to nothing. But if you have something that there will never be the case ever that there was never anything, there was always nothing. If you had something at one point, then there was something. Last two.

PJ wants to know about your thoughts on UFO sightings and counters. It seems to previously be getting laughed at, but increasingly taken more seriously. And then someone wants to know what your thoughts are on life after death. Panda Products wants to know that. So PJ, what are your thoughts on UFO experiences, sightings, encounters? Yeah, we do not deal with those kinds of questions traditionally on Closer to Truth. I would also put another category which we're asked about even more often than UFOs is near-death experiences. Right, great. Panda products. These are not categories we've dealt with a little bit, but these are the kinds of questions that lend itself to kind of factual and technical analysis.

ESP and parapsychology is another category that lend itself to these kind of factual statistics. And we don't do that. We have done with ESP and parapsychology the implications. So if parapsychology and ESP are true, and we would define what that means, real phenomena in some sense, what would that imply? What would that imply about the nature of mind or physical? That's a legitimate closer to truth area, but not to determine the statistical proofs or not proofs of that. That's not what we would do. I'd put UFOs in that same category.

I personally would be a skeptic, but I don't consider myself sufficiently knowledgeable. And I have noticed there has been more attention lately to those kinds of questions. You know, they're all multiple answers to that kind of question, much like there is to the Fermi paradox of why we don't see aliens. There are dozens and dozens of possible explanations. But, you know, I would remain a skeptic on UFOs if UFOs are deliberately, I mean, are representative of alien civilizations so far advanced. There was an article in The New Yorker about this recently, and I like the line, nobody addresses why they're so advanced that so many seem to crash

in Area 51 if they're so advanced. So I'm pretty much a skeptic on that. As far as life after death, um, I think this is a, this is a closer to truth topic. We deal with this a lot. It obviously has to deal with the nature of consciousness. And if consciousness is 100% physical, then there is no life after death. If consciousness is something beyond that, or if there is a non-physical existence, such as traditional gods or some type of spiritual realm then there is a possibility of that i've dealt with this in a paper on an article i've written on virtual immortality yeah i read that one thank you

for sending that and it's a diverse uh explanations of of consciousness from pure materialism to qualia, to dualism and ultimately idealism, where everything is consciousness or cosmic consciousness. And each of these have different implications about the nature of life after death, as well as the possibility of uploading our first-person consciousness into another medium, which what I call the techno-optimists in Silicon Valley, a lot of people assume that that is in 100% certainty. It's just a question of technology. And I would argue that's not the case. To upload your first-person consciousness is a deep philosophical question.

It's not a, I mean, it's also technological and it would take me thousands of years to be able to develop a technology, not decades or something. But even if you had the technology, you really have to discern what the nature of consciousness is before you can do that. discern what the nature of consciousness is before you can do that. So questions of life after death, questions of uploading your consciousness, and questions of AI, super AI consciousness. Those are three separate questions. Life after death, uploading your own consciousness into another medium and attaining some kind of immortality, and AI, super AI consciousness. Those are three separate questions, and I argue that they are the same question, that all three of them are based, are founded on the same question, which is the

nature of consciousness. You can't answer any of those. You can't assume that you know the answer to any of those unless you have a prior belief in a certain theory of consciousness, you can't answer any of those. You can't assume that you know the answer to any of those unless you have a prior belief in a certain theory of consciousness. Robert had to go, but luckily he was gracious enough to answer some of the questions over email. Some listeners wanted to know, what are Robert's thoughts on the demarcation problem? Robert said this, the key test is repeatability, an important probative question. The next question comes from Abdullah Khalid. Could Robert tell us about his best interview experience? Robert says, which of your children do you like best? If you picked a quote-unquote best, how would others feel? Another question viewers slash listeners asked was, who would you interview of the past if you

could? Robert says, Pascal. The next question comes from MJ McGovern. This one comes from the Theories of Everything Discord. I would be curious how Robert Kuhn splits his time between his activities. What are some of the more surprising things he's learned through his career, and if he has any advice for people who want to follow in his footsteps, like maybe Kurt? That reminded me, by the way, that I wanted to ask Robert Kuhn what advice he has for me building theories of everything as a combination of my quest to explicate theories, as well as to build a community around theories of everything, and as well as for me and the community to advance the state of theories of everything in general. Robert Kuhn said this,

Pursue your passion. Closer to truth, its ideas, has been my lifelong passion. China forcame about accidentally some 33 years ago by the capriciousness of the world as it were, and it became a grafted on passion. Both closer to truth and closer to China are based on my deep desire to learn and to share what I've learned, the process as well as the content. My advice, keep doing what you're doing. Do what works best for you. Don't try to target demographics. Let me know your progress. All the best, Robert. Okay, that was a marathon, man. That's where we leave it. Robert, thank you so much. It was a pleasure. It's still a pleasure. And it's a bit surreal, although I'm by the end of it now,

I've acclimated to it. But to see you, because when I was younger, before I even started Theories of Everything or a podcast, I would watch your videos and I found them incredibly insightful. And I'm fairly certain

much of what I think has been unconsciously and somewhat consciously to influenced by you and your soul. So thank you so much for, there's many people here in the chat that is saying that they love you and thank you as well. Great. I enjoyed being in congratulations on theory of everything.

I think it's a, it's a real contribution and we're on this journey together. That's for sure, man. Have a great one. Bye-bye.