https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=eqoYk3BgeF4
Welcome everyone to another episode of the cognitive science show. This is episode 8 of transcendent naturalism And of course who else would I be here with but Greg Enriquez My ongoing partner and all of the various versions of the cognitive science show and we are also welcoming back Brendan Graham Dempsey who gave us an excellent Presentation of the way he’s stitching my work and Greg work Greg’s work and his work together To address a lot of the issues surrounding the proposal of Transcendent naturalism, so I’m gonna turn things over to Greg and then he’ll welcome Brendan And then we’re just gonna let Brendan tell us where we’re gonna be going here, and then we’ll do our usual schtick So welcome Greg. Yeah, so I what I thought What I was really excited about last time and then why we’re excited at Brendan here Was like the way you laid the groundwork Brendan for sort of the evolution of energy complexification Bridging into Bobby Assyrians work and really given us sort of this picture Which certainly is this idea that we’re grappling with that There’s a layered ontology and you I thought you’d give a lot of richness to that in setting the stage for what that was And then of course our argument is that we’re conforming bringing our own Cognitive epistemic grip to that and actually as we think of sort of a deep ontological continuity of a rich blundell talks about We’re seeing that conformity between sort of the ontological layerings and our epistemic organization and I thought you did a really nice job of Giving us your version of that in a way that’s very congruent But also filled in some really key points and then we were trailing just as the series is about trailing that into our current State and thinking about where we are in relationship to our worldviews what’s happened with modernity How do we decide what is sacred what is available to us through transcendence strong transcendence? What kinds of things do we need to do to bridge from the wisdom traditions of the past to identify the kind of? Icons we talked about the little elephant Sun God kaleidoscope. I how do we orient? What does that mean without becoming very confused or losing sense, which is somewhat inevitable? How does that intersect with the times that we’re in and that’s where I felt like we sort of brought us up to And we were gonna then take off from here for the second episode Yeah, great. Thanks. Yeah, that’s that sets it up pretty well. Yeah, so I felt like we we were starting to move into Sort of the space of what do we do with this? What does it mean for our current moment? What does it mean for? Not just sort of in like a temporal kind of chronological sense But also in this sort of chirotic moment sense of like, you know, how do we respond to the moment with any of this? And in that sense, I think is actually really crucial because it’s sort of like what adaptive insight About the world does this way of thinking even offer us that can give us a more optimal grip that can actually help us You know continue solving these problems that we’re facing which are now at a very, you know existential level so yeah, and and and I think I think John was also Asking and intuiting that this is bridges into some of these conversations that have been Being explored by folks around a sort of reconstructive religious project of rethinking religion in the sacred Re-symbolizing it and sort of developing a language and a grammar for sort of a new worldview So I’ll try to kind of pick up where we were and then see if I can kind of bridge that into that domain because I think it’s that’s really kind of where we’re at with this and So, yeah so just summarizing briefly some of the stuff that we talked about last time in the sense of John talking about the leveled ontology and Then bringing that into a utah framework and looking at that leveled ontology through the lens of you know novel systems of information processing and and then tying that information processing to forms of meaning making and adaptive strategies in response of entities to their environments Now I kind of then zoomed in on the On the culture plane of that if we’re looking at matter life mine and culture progression We’ve got kind of different learning processes that are showing up in this informational Processing as information becomes more complex and its richness Increases and structural complexity increases. There’s more energy So all these things are deeply tied together and I tried to bring in the work of Bobby Azarian as Greg mentioned Who does a beautiful job in his book the romance of reality that kind of frames this cosmic Complexification process as a learning process And so that’s what I’m trying to plug into Greg work Greg’s work and John’s work about seeing this happening unfolding through the stack as a sort of progressive learning through Complexification process and so then we have sort of structural learning at the matter level genetic learning at the life level cognitive learning at the mind level and symbolic learning at the at the culture person level and that’s where we get into the whole realm of the sacred I think as we tend to conceive of it as anyway as sort of a symbolically mediated concept or set of praxis or Beliefs etc And that’s a lot where my work is focusing is trying to track that progression through sort of the historical record and looking at the Complexification and the deepening sense of the sacred through time as a learning process And then this is of course kind of the key aspect because the sacred then is what is both calling us Well, it’s both what sort of deposits into the our kind of collective representations versions of you know successful meaning adaptations basically like when we are successfully processing that information about our environment and Have produced some kind of adaptive strategy in a individual collective way That gets enshrined you could say in kind of the cultural Collective representations and I’m using this term collective representations. That’s sort of a sociological term That means like it’s not just right individuals having ideas It’s also the roles that individuals play in sort of downloading the ideas from their culture Which Greg’s works talk Greg’s work talks about very well with the justification systems idea But and this is then becomes key to what I think we’ll be getting in now getting into now is that individuals also shape those collective representations There’s a dialectical sort of nonlinear process in which we’re sort of forming ourselves and our ego Structures by means of these kind of culturally received conceptions And we are also agents in the world who are shaping them so this is where I think that the religious reconstruction project is fits in because And we talked a little bit about this last time In the sense of what the learning process is sort of doing as People bump up against sort of the limits of their world model, right? They’re mental map of reality, right and that is sort of the occasion for learning, right? We develop our learning capacities through what PSA would, you know call assimilation and accommodation We’re developing new schemas in order to assimilate our experiences to those But when our assimilation is not able to do that then we are kind of confronted we’re bump bumping up against our environment the objective reality of our environment in a way that we need to accommodate to and Then that’s where learning occurs I want to come back to that because it’s also really crucial for thinking about the importance of awe and wonder And Jonathan Haidt and that sure I forget the last name of the other author did a great paper on this Basically framing awe as a psychological response to vastness that forces us to Accommodate more of reality and basically move past Yes, thank you. Thank you. Yeah so so all of this helps frame I think this this way of thinking about the sacred as a learning process and to just to finish that thought I was making earlier that the sacred both Sort of enshrines in deposited cultural representations are our past successes at doing this but it also kind of then serves as the as the assimilation template or the schema by means of which we interpret reality to To sense or intuit those things that might actually Complexify our world model, right? And then you can begin to track this process in In cultural history and yeah when you do that and you kind of take these ideas about awe and you bring it into the work of say like Like Rudolph Otto talking about the holy or the numinous experience, right or even in the anthropological literature about mana That there’s a sense and then we can watch this sort of a process unfold through history now at the present moment Which is what we’re getting at here. I think what’s interesting then is to appreciate that right now. We’re facing We bumped up against the limits of our world model essentially, right? We’re we’re at the edge of chaos And things are breaking down and unless we can undergo this kind of worldview phase shift We are going to see a probable regression into a more chaotic state of complexity, right it either we’re either going to yet take it assimilate or let’s say Develop a world model that we can take in an even more complex sense of reality through or things are going to fall apart and this happens at an individually and collectively sort of You know nonlinear way these things are feeding back into each other. So Then I think the key here is to appreciate the roles that individuals can play when culture has sort of reached its limits and and that is something that we have to then take up the task of Individually of saying alright, how do I explore this domain of the sacred? You know, what are my intuitions? What are my sensitivities to the transcendent and begin to then basically? Give voice to those to to write them down to externalize them to objectify them to put them back into culture So that we can collectively bring these kind of new symbolizations together Ideally in sort of a new networked way that allows for new collective Representations of the sacred of the god concept of the divine And so for me, this is where we start engaging in ideas like personal myth-making Which might initially sound kind of almost new-age II and it’s kind of like oh We’re just gonna make up our own stories and that’s not really what I mean by this I mean that there’s something that goes on in the individual religious spiritual experience That we can’t get at a certain point from our collective representations if they’re no longer kind of Serving us for where we need to be and moving forward and so we’re sort of thrust back upon the individual to Have the responsibility of exploring that uncharted territory and here, you know You can bring in the work of of Jordan Peterson and talking about this sort of heroic Heroes journey aspect of going from the known world into the unknown and coming back with new things So I guess yeah, I’ll stop there and try to bring in some more reflections to this But that’s where this starts to go for me And you know, we can kind of unpack this and see what this looks like But that I feel like is the where we wind up getting to with this learning model of transcendence in the sacred in our current situation That’s great I’m having very strong John Collins as I’m listening this and what I mean by that is, you know meaning in life In relationship to our realization on the edge of what we know and and leaning into that And I have you know, sort of this I this image of we have an island of knowledge that we’re in So we’re always in the possibility of the infinite, but we’re gathering You know and I just this image of like, okay Well, we can center ourselves in some sort of conservative center of what will be known all the way down Pre us, you know down that would be sort of like all the way down to standard theory of elementary particle physics one level or all the way down into our experience of being and then expanding out into the possibility and finding the edge of relevance realization Where our task is to connect to that and connect in that and finding meaning in that Process and although you weren’t using those words That’s was that was the imagery that I was having in relationship to that in a pretty profound way And then the issue is individually and collectively. What is that event horizon? Where are we in relationship to that? Process and how do we feel our way into that and how do we point to that as something? Had we cultivate that can we see that for the chirotic nature of our moment? So anyway, I was struck by that Image in John’s frame that really aligns enormously with what you’re saying as far as I’m concerned Yeah, I’d like to pick up on that and add to that and then How you respond? Brendan so yeah, I think Leo and I published way back in 2013 in the before times that the Piagetian assimilation and accommodation maps very well on to the integration and differentiation process as a relevant realization except Piaget didn’t have a an explanation. It was a description and Equalibration is actually he’s looking for something like, you know opponent processing that results in an optimal grip on the environment So I think that translation that Greg is pointing to with his imagery. I think it’s I yeah, I totally agree I think that’s bang on there’s a second note which Greg Greg’s beautiful image I think connotes Which is a Reconceptualization of the sacred not as the perfect or complete but as an inexhaustible fount of intelligibility that simultaneously always shines in and always withdraws from our grasp because relevance realization is incompletable and The world contains radical uncertainty not just unfound risk or something like the uncalculated risk Yeah, and so I think that and then there’s a third thing and then I’ll shut up which is I would like to bring in Beyond collective representation and this if I goes back to Durkheim But there’s been an ongoing discussion between Jonathan pageau and I about this about and and the work I’ve published with Dan Schiappi the three Rover articles about collective agency and collective agency That can solve problems by using collective intelligence and I put to you two prominent examples that dominate modernity Science no one individual does science and democracy. No one individual does democracy They are collective systems for enhancing the relevance realization of distributed cognition in order to solve problems That can’t be solved even by just by simple summation of individuals and it seems to me that the religion also captured Those and even try to at times represent them the church, right? The company of Saints just to pick Christian examples symbolic examples So I agree that there’s collective representations But if we pick up on this new notion of the sacred bound up with relevance realization I think collective agency and you know, and of course I I’m introducing this term very carefully and you know, and I have differences with Jonathan around this but there’s a lot of negotiation and also With Paul, but there’s something like, you know a sense of spirit again, just like there’s that about us It’s a telekin notion that is not just any of our parts or any combination but the emergent whole that’s our spirit It’s mind bodies, you know all that sort of stuff It’s our capacity for self-transcendence in that way and then there are something like, you know spirits and again, I know that this This is a dangerous term and I’m not totally happy with it I prefer hyper agents, but of course part of spirituality was wrestling with these Like these these collective agents that often, you know empowered and manipulated Collective representations propaganda is an obvious ease evil example, you know toward they there’s a power there right and we know this kind of thing and and so Is there also a place? For in this layered ontology a Wrist, you know a reciprocal reconstruction I’m not saying we adopt a supernaturalistic or magical frameworks when we talked about spirits But you know, we’ve kept it in some things and we talk about, you know, the team spirit and stuff like that, right? There’s so in that sense. Is there also a way to bring back the religious invocation of Spirits, I mean if we’re talking about spirituality It seems like we should at least bump into that topic in some fashion and we can we do that in a way I think we can that is completely reconcilable with an enriching of transcendent naturalism So that would be my my so just like yes definitely relevance realization Definitely a new conception of the sacred that falls out of that and then what do we say about collective agency? In this fashion and so Go ahead drop in just a little quick thing and then maybe so I interviewed Howard Bloom a little while ago On you talking with Greg And you know, he’s got a model the universe research similar to knowledge and what he’s really tracking then is sort of Sinking up of system. So his intuition fundamentally is about and he always rails against entropy He’s like, ah, that’s all and I think maybe overshoot some of that But nonetheless his focus is on the sinking up and and I bring him up because he made an unbelievable impact on the music industry if I was consistently capable of identifying Michael J you know you look at his history and he you know accidentally launches the 60s Why am I bringing him up because when I asked him I said, well, what did you do? He was like I honed in on the individuals that were capable of raising the spirit And you think he used that word the spirit of the audience like like there was some Individuals that had the capacity and he would watch them I think he mentioned John Cougar mellow camp. I might get it wrong, but whatever But he there was like a couple of artists that would go out and they would become the epicenter Yes of the collective Resonance and in fact, they would be so spent afterwards someone would get depressed or just be so exhausted But they would become this felt resonance through the music through the performance that would create a collective Geist a collective friend that collective that wasn’t propositional, but it was harmonious at multiple levels So I’ll just throw that in there in relationship to something that he saw that I think you know is Certainly in the ballpark of what a lot of people will be talking about in terms of pointing to this phenomena Yeah, so this is this is really rich So let me because there’s a so much here and I really want to try to work with this and hopefully not lose any Of the balls that were thrown up in the air because they all are very directly related So I guess the way the way I’d look at that is sort of okay Let’s start with the collective agency aspect and and spirit and I think that this is where some of these learning Models learning framing of this complexification becomes really important because it allows it allows us to make a really meaningful distinction so If you look at the kind of Piagetian and the post-Piagetian, you know hierarchical complexity models That’s that kind of a model and and what we’ve been talking about sort of based on assimilation and accommodation one way of understanding some forms of spirit are basically as as highly assimilatory Interpretations of reality. So what I mean by that right is we come into the world You know, basically the The constructivist epistemology of a Piaget says okay, it’s not a platonic world of knowledge in which we have You know There are perfect forms that we like can form ourselves to perfectly nor is this sort of a Kantian world that we can form Reality to our minds. It’s sort of both right and so by assimilating well by by accommodating Reality I can create schemas that then I use to assimilate to new information and this is the opponent processing That’s going back and forth and as I do that, it’s this bootstrapping process, right? So what’s interesting about that though is that we come into the world with some very simple assimilatory schemas, right like sucking and crying Uh, they’re just they’re just kind of built in and from that we kind of work up basically into abstract thought and philosophy and etc because we’re able to Use these schemas that we have in order to make more sense of the world more of reality gets disclosed to us As we assimilate them into our into our schemas and then find that they don’t fully work So then we have to accommodate them and this process goes forward and forward, right? So you learn that okay, I can’t figure out exactly what this thing is if I just keep putting it into my mouth I’ve got to do some other things here and make better sense of the world. Um, this is sort of the basic way now How’s this all related to spirits? Well because of this process what we show up with in the world is largely subjective uh ways of of of relating to things we we we uh, Our first major experiences are with other human beings and in social environments And so we are basically our schemas are are very Person-centric they’re very social emotional Uh focused, um, and so what the result is of that is that it it becomes rather Difficult and only with labor do we begin to see that not everything actually is person-like We have to accommodate more to the world and see oh actually, you know This thing doesn’t behave like like my family and it doesn’t have to do with you know Emotions and feelings and that sort of thing. This is just an inert stone, right? and this process is is is what kind of in pietian terms is is what you’re tracking when you’re moving from sort of the uh, you know kind of pre-operational stage into the formal operational stage and you’re able to make sort of mechanistic causal, uh, you know connections in the world rather than sort of pre-causal subjectivist ones, right now what’s really important about this is that this is uh This can be a way that we can bullshit ourselves I guess and and and be wrong about the reality that’s being disclosed to us if we are assimilating it to us And we are not properly accommodating to it, right? So if I look at the world and I see a rock and I say oh, but the rock is mad at me there’s a spirit in it, then I have Uh, I have basically projected something interior onto the rock that a more Complete or I shouldn’t say complete because to john’s point i’ll talk about this in a second This is an infinitely receding thing we need to talk about that But a greater disclosure of reality would see that oh that that intentional aspect of that rock is actually something in me Not in it and I can learn to you know in union terms withdraw the projection and all that, right? Now now pijé calls that animism, uh And and we can see similarities in animistic ways of thinking and world views and ways of talking about spirits as anima, right? Um now the distinction that this all allows us to draw though is that I would say That’s one form of talking about spirits, which I feel like largely modernity disabused us of right and it disenchanted us of all of those kinds of spirits but there are these other things that you’re talking about these hyper agents and these hyper objects and these things that are more complex than our assimilatory schemas that we need to accommodate to that behave in ways that might have characteristics that are well, if not person-like, let’s say then uh reflective of certain kinds of capacities or And and this gets into issues of collective, you know intelligence and and how these things show up and I mean Durkheim talked about collective effervescence and things like that There are things that happen when we all come together And either to make sense of things or even just to experience that don’t happen individually in isolation So there are these emergent phenomena that arise from more complex things and we might Very reasonably be able to frame those in spiritual terms But that’s the key right? This isn’t just a kind of neo-animistic thing where we say, oh, well, you know We’ll put spirits in the rocks again What we’re what we’re gesturing towards is that there are and probably have been for a long time that also, you know Ancients were picking up on as well And this is why it becomes kind of hard to disentangle the two right when you read ancient sources Are you picking up on something pre-rational or trans-rational? This is sort of the key idea here So anyway, this learning framework allows us to disentangle those two things in a very helpful way I think and be able to say okay. Yeah, maybe we can let go some of the more assimilatory animistic framings of spirits but it gestures towards a broader Complexifying universe where there are phenomena that exist that it might make sense to think of those things as entities In in various kinds of ways and here, you know We get into potential danger zones and slippage and all sorts of things So we have to be careful But you know, I think I think there’s a broad kind of awareness of this idea out there right eager gores and these sorts of things That are just kinds of hyper object agents. So anyway, I just wanted to say all that um, but I also want to get into this really crucial aspect of Uh the illuminating and the receding aspect of all this right which is in the elephant sun god and whatnot and I think that that’s really crucial as well because it allows us to think about this whole process as basically if you reify the the process itself as its own sacred phenomenon, uh, then we get a sense of uh, let’s call it the divine or the sacred that is basically Uh the process unfolding right and so we it doesn’t need to be a thing that there is this Uh this thing that we are totally ultimately aspiring to that will be achieved or something like that in some ultimate absolute way It’s that the absolute is the process itself of collective or I should say, um continual iterative You know recursive receding recession and illumination or something, right? And that that that is the nature of this sacred mystery of reality That is the nature of the sort of uh, you know The depths and the profundity of of the sacred mystery that whose you know Whose depths can never fully be plumbed and then you get this very uh, kind of mystical apophatic appreciation for the sacred That is the very thing that is disclosing of itself that is revealing itself through the learning process that we’re talking about um So anyway, those are a couple points I wanted oh the last thing I wanted to say briefly about that and there are other things I do want to talk about the individuals, uh, greg that you mentioned and the charisma and the and the the the raising of the spirit as well, um, but I just just want to name as well that uh, john’s question I think also gets at asking the question of of Hmm. How do I want to say like the the target to the goal the the even the continually moving target the continually receding goal but how do we think about uh, the Where the direction where the levels are are headed to if that makes sense, right? And I think that this is a really important that starts to bring up issues around like Omega and the omega points and the questions like that that are I think that can be handled in better or worse ways depending on how we make sense of them But I want to in a way that ties in with what I was just saying posit that we can think of the new god concept that we’re potentially working with here as a an Iconic stand-in for whatever that infinitely receding and illuminating thing is And we can call that something we can call it omega We can call it the elephant sun god or what have you but that orientation I think provides us something and it is a Re-symbolization and a reconceptualization of the sacred that I think can can help us get a better, uh grip on reality, uh For our moment. So anyway, there’s there’s too much there with other things there, but i’ll just i’ll i’ll stop for now So it seems to me then given what you’ve just said That the imaginal properly concerned now it takes on a central role Uh, because the imaginal is exactly that which right Um Is not uh the assimilatory projection but is the use of the image in order to sensitize us to In order to augment our ability to perceive in an accommodating fashion And the imaginal is precisely that which understands that whatever it is grasping it is nevertheless The the thing grasp is also receding from it or otherwise it wouldn’t be imaginal, right? And so that seems to indicate the imaginal taking a important role Which means not only are we pushing for a reconceptualization of what reason and meaning mean? We are also reconceptualizing. We’re trying to liberate Imagination from the way it is now sort of Generally almost by consensus conceived of that an imagination is mental pictures and it’s a kind of withdrawal from reality And and and and we’ve disconnected it from its epistemic and aspirational functions So it seems to me that would be important And then given What you you you were saying about The the the way where like you were exemplifying exactly what I was wanting to talk about What I mean by that you sort of did the reciprocal reconstruction around spirit. You just did it You just did it and we sort of done an earlier version of faith and then this is a this is a Question that I think we need to get at in order to address the question you raised about the sort of T loss that isn’t a t loss kind of thing, right? Which is And I mean this in a hegelian sense, so i’m trying to Like on whose authority do we do these reciprocal reconstructions? Right, where does where do we get? Right. So let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s let’s Let’s all agree. We’re not going to use force for violence. We’re not going to use duplicity. We’re not going to manipulate people, right? So What is it? This is kind of like I know this is like an la paul agnes keller question unless people have this vision How could we get them to? Authorize us to propose this vision such that they it you see what i’m getting at There’s this is playdo wrestled with this is the catch 22 problem of how to get people into philosophy If they’re already not deeply interested in philosophy and i’m trying to do a version of that and I think that question I i’m proposing that that question has to be addressed if we’re going to get any sense of how we answer The t loss that is not the t loss question. I don’t know how that lands with the two of you But that’s an argument I would make Uh that lands well with me, I mean And I mean, I think you’re you know, let’s go with it. Let’s stay with the theme john of that that for the two of us at least Uh enables a constructive opponent process and I think you just laid out a structural Comment about where we are. That’s very very Uh, you know, uh apropos, uh, and feels very resonant Um, so i’ll let me let me throw out a logos content Uh in the form of the fifth joint point Okay. Yes. All right So in relationship to we need to feel our way into the imaginal in a particular type of way and we need a collective awakening Uh in relation and we need to understand the underlying structure For me, I think maybe we can go a step further and we can actually say with a new grammar of understanding By what what brendan’s laying out its tree of knowledge lays out It’s like okay energy and a matter. All right, there’s a coalescing there of complexity and then there’s a You know these information processing systems. Well, what is the what what what do we do in the 20th century? We laid down Basically the interconnected digital world and then we’re generating Independent artificial intelligences and then things like chat bot are creating an active interface with our justification systems in a way That is just only going to increase through other kind of cybernetic interfaces and whatnot And so for me the issue is the fifth joint point is a what I call wise naggy, which is wise natural Artificial general intelligence. Okay So it’s we what it says is we have to figure out the bridge and john in 2014 I think you did a ted x talk that basically did this exactly you’re like it’s wisdom and technology and I would say wisdom Naturally grounded and in an extended naturalism across a wisdom stack That ever recognizes where we are on the planet and what we’re relating to and now we find a chirotic moment of unbelievable transition through a new unbelievable infinite Possibility of a whole new complex adaptive plane and we have to grab the spirit of the moment to be oriented And somehow we have to sort of collectively wake up to that and allow a collective Intelligence spirit orienting us into an imaginal possibility that you know guides us towards the back half of the 21st century in a way that is wise I want to pick up on that first brendan if I may because I think that’s a brilliant proposal It aligns with a video essay I did on uh on dealing with the advent of a gi and Also shameless plug with the book that’s coming out called mentoring the machines. It’s coming out very soon um Maybe it’s out by the time this video is out about just that but what but but there’s an argument in there specifically I mean there’s an issue about how We get the alignment and I think the answer ultimately has to be uh, like greg was saying we And it’s it has to come from this but here’s here’s a proposal I hear greg Now, I don’t know if you made this but if you didn’t I want you to have made it which is the the the the proposals That properly predictively prepare us For this so we can enter into right relationship Wisely with this kairos are the proposals that should have authority now That’s what I heard heard you saying in answer to my is am I reading you correctly? of course Thank you because I think that’s exactly right. It’s interesting because when I was it was when I was in the the chino conference, uh Paul vanoclay made a similar argument that this the this little corner of the internet should be the place The commons not the market not the state but the commons from which we try to Deal with the kairos of the advent of a gi and those two things I think are deeply Related proposals, I think that’s right. I think I’m in fact, i’m very satisfied. I’m sorry brendan I know you want to answer but i’m very satisfied with that as a proposal I think at the I think that’s a general principle now that I think about it greg. I think this is brilliant insight In the moment of in kairos what gets authority is that which can reliably wisely? Put you in right relationship to navigate through the kairos. That’s That’s where you look for and I think that’s That’s the right answer greg. Thank you. I think that’s the right answer Yeah, let me so a couple things I would also add to that I guess i’ll talk about that. I’ll speak to the authority aspect first, right? Which is um, Which I think is is the the most immediate kernel that we’re we’re grappling with here I would say you mentioned earlier democracy and science as you sort of collectively um a collective agency Uh, yeah only science can only science can discover and track global warming. No one individual can do it only democracy can organize Collective active action problems and distributed labor across a nation state with different regions of demography Etc, etc Yeah Well, i’d want to posit or suggest that there is a a kind of intrinsic authority that Um I’ll i’ll try this and then we’ll see where it goes a kind of intrinsic authority that that uh emerges As reality discloses itself, which is I don’t want to say self-justificatory but um, i’ll give you an example, right? I mean we When we when we talk about the production of scientific knowledge Uh, and and someone presents a paper and they make a claim about reality We don’t You know stand to our feet and yell who gave you the authority to say this about reality, right? Uh, because it’s a different uh, authorization going on there that it’s not I disagree. I disagree we do Right. We we fundamentally do we require them to have fit into a tradition of precedence and provenance And we require them to be trying to make sense in a plausible manner, which means taking into account alternative Positions potential confounds that are coming from the alternative theories proposed by other people Yeah, so I I do think but I do think they’re like there’s a lot of stuff they have to do Uh in order to have the authority to make the pronouncement Do you think that they? Successfully wind up justifying their pronouncements or do you feel like even uh, I think philosophy science level We haven’t really come up with a good answer for that Well, no, I think you’re right, but I but so Here’s what I think i’m seeing and I and I think i’m agreeing with you But I wanted to make sure that I don’t think it’s an either or I think it’s an and Yeah, because I think you’re invoking onto normativity that you know, we have this meta desire that whatever is bringing us Holy a coherence agency is also real and when we encounter the really real we transform ourselves I think the sense that real is simultaneously an ontological and a normative Thing and thing isn’t the right word But I don’t have the right word And so I think when we get a sense of coming into contact with something more real more intelligibility It has that kind of authority, but I don’t think that comes At us atomically. I think it always comes woven within right all this right? Yeah, yeah this other stuff No, thank you So you did a much better job saying that than I was trying to do which is basically that and I think that what? I’m trying to get at is that that to me seems Like the authority that that for me Makes sense in those situations right and what could ground a kind of reconstructive effort like we’re talking about because we’re literally talking about enshrining that process So there’s an intrinsic aspect in which we are affirming the very thing that would give us the authority to justify ourselves Doing anything like this and it’s because of the architecture of meaning making and the normativity And the values that are kind of again intrinsically caught up in entities more successively Successfully trying to navigate their environments by processing information and gaining a more full and rich disclosure of reality um, so so for me I I I see that as being part of the Justification is is wrapped up with with its own Okay, so we could put that we could put greg’s and that proposal given the way you’ve allowed me to qualify it then i’m i’m back in agreement with it, and then we could say it’s it’s like it’s like uh, uh, uh, uh Well, it’s almost like I was going to say like piagetting assimilation accommodation, but anyways, I mean we could say that That which has authority Right. There’s a perennial aspect to it, which is the perennial aspect. Is it you know, it increases intelligibility and puts us under onto normativity But there’s also a pertinent Aspect to it, which is yes, but it should be putting us in contact with onto normativity in a way that is deeply Relevant to the kairos we’re in yeah, and then you could put the two together in that fashion Yeah, and I guess what I would posit too that’s really important about this I think one that this does kind of break down into at least two really important aspects to this question one is is is uh, Kind of philosophical justification, uh, the other is sort of just the strategic like what would work so like well I might totally assent to your notion that Uh in moments of kairos then you know, it should be the wisdom that blah blah blah blah everything You said that sounds great But if other people don’t hold that then it doesn’t have a strategic success, right? So one of the things that um, I think Is related to both of these aspects though Is that when we appreciate that there is a leveled ontology when we appreciate that then there are also different levels of epistemic relationship to Reality, right then we need to fold those into uh Whatever justifications we’re going to be thinking about certainly at a strategic level, right? And so so for example, I mean what we’re talking about here, I think does naturally i’ll just use that word Uh disclose itself as you kind of Dig deeper into that, you know that edge of chaos and you start moving right? It starts to disclose itself and you’re like so i’m i’m satisfied with the justification of that coming through But what I think then needs to happen and this is actually part of this kind of maybe a really important part of this Coming back in and grounding these ideas in the culture and whatnot Is being able to translate this idea into the different logics that exist through the learning process, right? so for example, um, you know And and I think this is something that both greg and I are really engaged in is the mythopoeic Expressions of of the of the different sort of uh, you know Logoi that we’re working with which the logo are basically the same but the myths are different um, and and that itself has justification when we think about this whole element of this being Iconographic and and it’s not about the the symbol is just the symbol and all this sort of a thing But but yeah, just to just really quickly finish. No, no, no, it’s great. So like yeah So like so if you frame what we’re talking about not in terms of recursive emergence and relevance realization, etc, etc But in something in a language more mythic like God is waking up Uh, or the self in the universe or coming into communion or there’s a there’s a love story Uh underway between the mind and and and the universe or reality or what have you right in the in the imaginal framing of of of this architecture that we’re speaking to which is translatable and and emotional and grounded and embodied in a way that is That is also then therefore more robust and can speak to the whole level of sort of the epistemic stack which is really another term for where I should say is manifested in terms of of um, Of society of the collective that we live in right? I mean there there’s a a plurality of different modes of engaging reality in all these different ways and if we’re if we are Justifiably speaking with authority because it’s a disclosure of reality I think one of the the impetuses is to translate that into language that is communicable Uh down the stack does that make sense? And then I think this yeah, I want to grab this all of this then that That was another good point. So i’m hearing this right? Right, we we need the imaginal That can home us in the perennial onto normativity That can orient us towards the horizon of the kairos and that can commune across different levels Of the ontology and the ep and the epistamine is that is that what i’m getting right? That yes, that’s very good. That’s very good Now it does open up a An issue which I think you specifically john might might have problems with because I know you’ve often struggled with the issue of equivocation In religious language, right? Yes is thomas equinus’s god the same as you know, sunday school Yeah, but my argument against paul when he says, you know christianity does this and I said But does christianity really do this or does it just equivocate right? All right Yeah and I feel like we might have to be open to or maybe even celebratory of the power of equivocation to be Acting as this translating Uh mechanism if that makes sense, right if we’re able yeah, I have a couple I have a counter proposal to you Which is a theoretical alternative to equivocation Which is something that you know, which I learned and I exemplify but I learned it from nishatani Which is not equivocation but double entendre a double meaning Like how I use realization Yeah, right. That’s that That instead of equivocation But of course, that’s just one move but we could find things that are multi-layered In that that kind of capacity and of course words typically logos to use a classical example Is exactly that logo. It’s not an equivocation They people aren’t equivocating they are trying to evoke all of these different possible meanings because they’re not antithetical to each other They’re all in concert together. So when john is saying, you know in the beginning was the was the logos He’s trying to invoke me. Yeah, all of this. He’s not equivocating See and I think and to me that reminds me what young right until i talk about how how symbols are actually They’re not equivocal. They’re condensed They’re and I think that’s what they were trying to get at. So that’s what I would offer as a counter proposal Yeah, and the last thing i’ll say before I want to get greg in here too is is that a a multi-layered reality Requires a multi-layered not just map of that reality but a symbolic Articulation of that reality so that the sacred is multi-layered and it demands to be expressed in multi-layered Form and so I think that that’s what we’re getting at here Is that what language what imaginal language could do that could work through all those different layers? I think that that sort of Helps clarify in some ways the the task. There’s one thing before greg replies, which is yes But I think we can do that without having to license equivocation because licensing equivocation Opens us up to all kinds of bullshit and self-deception Right, so I think there’s a way around that too. Yeah, so now i’ll be quiet I mean i’m soaking this in this is beautiful, uh, and so and and I I think for me the for me the issue is one of translation, but I will certainly say Uh john the double entendre. I mean the When I found out the meta modern, uh sensibility sincere irony, okay? Uh, it was when I that’s what that’s what I was called to to me It’s a cartoon and a garden and a theory of knowledge for the 21st. I mean what the it’s actually all those things Depending on how you hold that, you know in a particular sort of way So there is a the multifaceted double entendre Meaning and I think but brendan’s point and this is a real struggle like I have Learning my system is not easy, you know, and then people get it wrong and they’re like when you got wrong What do you mean by justification? Well, I got to get in there and be very clear if it’s going to generalize reliability and validity and at the same time We have to figure out ways So to me one of our tasks folks is is at the core of this issue of like what is the right resonant frequency to wake up? The zeitgeist with the right line that affords the capacity to gather The the numbers of individuals across the spectrum of interest attention culture functioning, etc That wake up with the resonance at the right time And that’s a to me that’s part of the kairos of the moment because I I think there are issues of fundamental time I will say I get a lot of mileage Going energy matter life mind culture digital Instead of mind matter versus mine, right? Like we can really I would say we can at one level of logos I think we can wake up with an enormous amount of uh clarity and say well going from culture to digital Everyone can see that. I mean there’s a you can really grab that So what are the right framings across a wide variety of different rituals? participatory knowledge Uh, you know Justificatory knowledge, etc That that does this job of double entendre what to afford lots of different meanings to be held together But has the crisp enough logos all the way down that holds a reliable and general truth claim I think those are just brilliant and powerful Reflections and I think that this is what this is all about. There’s a trans international Fundamentally about asking these kinds of questions and groping toward them. So it’s very exciting I also think that um we need to be comfortable also with the reality that um more complex formulations or articulations of the real Uh will I don’t want to say be untranslatable But we have to be comfortable with where those translations break down as well, right? I mean, there’s a whole way in which um, we learn Models that get us the next that next level, right? And then we throw that away and we get the next one from there and we need these intermediaries, right? If you think of like bohr’s model of the atom, it’s like, oh, that’s great. By the way That’s not how an atom works at all, right? But that’s still what you learn This is like the the the ladder that we throw away of wittgenstein and all that right? It’s it’s so we need to build that into our appreciation for this as well and not um there there’s a A way in which we have to accept that whatever will be particularly the most For the time being let’s say the most complex framing of something Uh, yeah, that might just be require jargon and rather heady Conceptual ideas and that shouldn’t necessarily speak against it as long as that’s also able to find resonance further down at multiple other layers of expression Uh, so that it’s not just sitting up in the cloud somewhere as as this you know Sort of idea and then that that is I think a both a philosophical and a kind of strategic consideration that we would have to think about Absolutely So, uh I think I i’m This whole answer like like I said, you know the onto normative perennial Home and the chirodic, you know prospective Calling and then then they’re getting the the communal resonance um um as the the Basis of authority and we I mean we reciprocally recognize with all of these polls pulling on us Um, and we and we respect those who are being pulled by them, um, I think that’s a really good answer, um so I’m wondering then Unless you want to go somewhere but or do you want me to frame a question? Well, I have a thought but i’m also you know, necessarily very interested in what that question would be I’ll just throw this out of there and then we can do your thought first. That’s great. Yeah, just my thought is um, Uh, I guess to use myself as an example of where the translation works in my life And I think this also addresses a little bit of some of that aporia that we that we And approached the last time and the potential despair and all these things right, which is that for me personally I find it incredibly meaningful to be engaged in this process to be a part of this process And to make sense of the world in this way so that it works at a visceral Embodied level and that I can I am very comfortable using language, uh through symbolic language but but with a deep reality to it as well that there is some process underway in which Uh reality is coming to know itself, right as as as carl sagan said that you know We are a way for the cosmos to know itself And thinking about this process as a cosmic process unfolding in the universe Um, it seems to work for me at the logos level and the mythos level in a way that i’m very comfortable making those Register leaps and so that to me speaks to something that like this is this This is something I get out of bed for uh, you know This is something that engages me, uh as a meaningful enterprise in a meaningful way to frame my own existence uh in reality, which is both A meaning in my life but it is also a framing that does give very meaning to my life because i’m able to situate this activity within an ultimate environment that goes beyond me that I am part of and uh, so I just wanted to name that too because I also didn’t want to give the impression that like Uh, you know that that yeah that that platonic issue of like oh well The philosopher kings will come up with the myths and then they’ll trickle down to the people right? It’s like no like it it needs to work at a at a embodied lived reality Uh these truths that are being disclosed about reality in some Important way and uh, I just wanted to kind of throw that into the into the room That’s a great segue for my question and thank you for sort of your kirkoguardian stance like this I know this is not an abstract system. This is I live this and I have decided for it but I mean what what you’re invoking and what we did what we got to last time was a Reconstruction of the notion of faith and of course, this is why i’m asking the question of authority because faith and authority have often been There’s certain let me put it this way certain conceptions of faith certain conceptions of authority certain conceptions of the relationship between them Have been used to denigrate And suppress reason in not in the cartesian sense But in the broader sense we’ve been talking about here and so that’s what I wanted to get I wanted to get given And I think you just did it wonderfully and I take what you just did given how we used the term last time That was your statement of faith, right? And that was your statement of faith and then that statement of faith is in relationship to a certain kind of Authority that we’ve been talking about and then I want to know okay, but where’s the third? in this model, which is You know in what what now that we’ve reconfigured those two and their relationship together What happens to the third which is the look with his logos reason in this more socratic platonic sense not the cartesian computation but this larger sense of you know overcoming foolishness Connecting deeply to what is most real Aspiring all that stuff that we’ve been talking about especially when we now made a case for the for the Indispensability, maybe even the metaphysical necessity, but at least the Indispensability of the imaginal what now happens to our conception of logos ratio, right? Like what what happens there if that’s the question I wanted to ask. Yeah, I mean for me I’ve tried to articulate this before and I don’t know if it’s exciting or disappointing to people but when people ask about spiritual practices for me, it’s learning right it’s it’s it is engaging with more of reality of accommodating myself more to what is and so Um what it does I think in that broader sense of reason is it it it’s no longer well You know, it’s dangerous to talk about exactly how people conceived these things in the past, right? But there’s a sense in which kind of ancient theology right used to be faith-seeking understanding it was almost a sense of like there was this pre-given set of kind of belief structures that then needed to find you needed to bring the reason to to kind of And I mean that’s a very complex issue, right? But but there is an element of which that that sort of affected the way People made sense of their religious landscape and I think that this kind of turns that on its head in a way that sort of sacralizes reason Sacralizes intelligibility or sacralizes. Yes, the the disclosing the the search for knowledge, right? I mean if you’re if you’re if you are an epistemic agent Situated in this tree of knowledge and you’re relating to it and and the whole thing is this profound relationship between subjects and objects engaging Transjectively each other and disclosing more of what’s going on and that being Something that seems to be built into this sort of recursive mechanics or architecture of reality and existence And so that to me is is profound and beautiful and starts to sync up and plug into various Mystical notions of the the subjective and the objective and the unification and all these sorts of things. So long story short for me um, yeah when I when I learn more when I expand my horizon when I Am forced to accommodate when i’m challenged, right? And I and I have to grapple with something that was no longer the case when my worldview collapses that is actually a Instance of a a calling forth towards a more transcendent potential, right? and that I think is a very different way of looking at these sorts of things than uh, different older conceptions of faith as sort of uh, you know Well, I don’t want to be mean to st. Paul but something, you know more that that that kind of sense of uh Faith is believed and things not you know seen and that sort of a thing, right? This is actually as things become seen they engender a deeper faith in the profound Logic of the entire process I guess and so uh that for me is is how I would think about that So is that where the the the rational is is that there is this? Accuracinality is a normative term like it tells you The idea is we have some guidance as to when we’re getting it right and when we’re getting it wrong with respect to how reality really is Kind of thing Uh, and i’m trying to use a very neutral term because of course truth is a terribly contested term uh, etc, um, and I and i’m getting a sense but i’m like What would it be like if somebody came to you and and said, you know, well Isn’t just all a religion just irrational by nature Right and uh, and yes, you’re talking about faith and authority, but like that’s exactly why I don’t go to church Right, uh, and you see what i’m trying to get at and this goes to what they’re strategic You see i’ve been doing a lot to try and argue no, no the rational and the imaginal are just Interdependent you can’t have one without the other um and and that um, and that uh rationality is about uh, uh, Ultimately about trying to conform the grammar of cognition to the grammar of reality And that’s what we’re talking about here and and faith and authority has we’ve reconstructed them are both in this Yes Sorry, it’s just no, I think this is the essence of this whole series that you’re doing How do we how do we naturalize transcendence and so that it’s no longer isn’t religion some, you know Fantastical nonsense. It’s like no whatever religion is must be the most real thing that we can conceive of right? I mean the sacred is real and I think that that’s the we’re not just We need to we need to naturalize this in order for it to be real because there’s a deep metaphysical relationship between what we’re what we’re I don’t say presupposing here because we’re we’re the Context of the series presupposes this uh metaphysical naturalism for good reason, right? But it’s not like we’re trying to necessarily hammer home some metaphysical idea that only matters because Those are the things that are real and if we can’t articulate notions of the sacred and the spiritual and the religious in terms that are real and not just that are real but that are That are like the most real, you know In any way, there’s the intimation towards the uh to further realness Uh, then yeah that then we’re then we’re not talking about And I think that one of the interesting things that’s about here too is that Why do people think that and I want to posit that and this isn’t a unique observation but Because religion has been an ongoing process of the entire human uh learning process and the cultural process of of that learning and so when people think about these Uh religious ideas, they’re largely gesturing to older kind of deposited collective reals. They are you know, um Collective representations that have not been updated in light of these other things and so because of that there’s a jarring nature of oh Well, no, there’s real stuff and then there’s that old religious stuff, right? But the whole endeavor that I think is being approached here this whole broader conversation that’s happening here but also, you know in this broader space is No, no, no, those things need to be in alignment, right? We need that we need something like that old, you know Alignment between the the neo-platonic with the aristotelian science and all this stuff We need to whatever our religious conceptions are need to be in accord with uh with with what is real and so um, I think that The challenge is being able to bring in those older collective representations in a meaningful way so that we don’t lose Everyone who’s maybe still working with those and then but also be able to keep pushing that you know That that edge of of chaos and keep you know, uh expanding our world model further. So this is a part of it You have a facility for giving great answers to my questions Really probably probably uh, uh, uh owing to having watched so many of your podcasts and lectures. I’m like, okay Well, whatever but I mean that that was a very good answer Yeah, very happy. I I want to give space to greg now Well, I mean again, i’m deeply enjoying this so um, here’s i’ll share from the sort of the utah story in relationship to this and that is You know, I you know, I bought science mostly, uh, and then you know, and now looking back It’s like wait. Well science did unbelievable things with physics, but it also generated our enlightenment gap Okay, it doesn’t afford a clarity of subjective qualitative knowing Intersubjective narrative and the impact that that has it doesn’t have a theory of physicists. It’s got physics, but no theory of physicists And and as a function of that, it’s obviously inadequate in relationship to grounding Our fundamental relevance realization across all the modes of being in the world. Uh, we don’t have a conciliant picture Uh, and that’s what I feel like I backed into ultimately as I you know Uh struggled and wait, wait a minute. There’s no psychology breaks down Uh, it’s the logos of psychology breaks down and it doesn’t know how to relate to the psyche and it doesn’t really know How to relate to the stories we generated and we don’t have the right framing that puts in right relation Uh, the scientific logos of the world are subjective pathos and are collective mythos Uh, and ultimately that’s what utah does with its tree coin and garden it it says hey justify the world Through a particular Third-person Behavioral objective epistemology. That’s great that utilizes certain things is clapping with one hand in relationship by the definition It plays a particular kind of language game As many insights as it gives it also is not obviously complete But the the whole point of factoring out a qualitative unique it Characterizes your pathos as as error basically and yet from a pathic perspective my life is what’s relevant To me and we obviously need frameworks that enable us to understand what is error from one vantage point may not be From another at all and and what is their facts? There’s only facts over here And of course, that’s not true their epitemic values But it is deeply limited in telling in the whole co-construction of morality ethics aesthetics, etc It’s not well structured science that is physics in particular is not structured that way But those things are all part of the relevance realization machinery, uh, and so the question for my vantage was What how do those things dance together? Why and the argument is a a Transjective epistemology that places objective subjective Intersubjective collective in relation recognizes those as vectors recognize that they’re actually taking place over time Then we’re in a much better place, especially with an emergent synoptic integrative cognitive science psychology Vantage point that then is the meta modern spirituality We’re in a much much better place, uh to see through these vectors and see how they’re complementary rather than in conflict or or fundamentally broken in relationship to their capacity to uh dance with one another to give us a full rich picture Of both how we understand the world and live our lives Yeah, I think that that foregrounds something that’s really important which is another meaningful distinction that This broader conversation and the one we’re having here and the series is having is not uh, I think a more modern question, which is how do we Uh make religion rational maybe more in that cartesian sense, right? How do we how do we make religion? Uh, uh scientific Right and there was a whole effort to try to demythologize religion and to basically apply just scientific models Uh with with their given epistemology to that issue and that’s a smaller question and it ultimately leads to the same Errors that you’re talking about greg that you get you’ll get it. You’ll get a religion of the of the enlightenment gap that way Right, so there needs to be um, you know this broader. I think that’s why uh, Uh, you know naturalism is a nice word that helps frame the broader context in which science is operating But not with its sort of limited epistemology Um, so it is rational in the broad, you know logic intelligible You know sense but not in in in sort of a crude simplistic scientific, uh sense that loses Uh the subject That’s great, uh, that’s I like i’m very happy with this we’re moving towards the end of our time Um, first of all, I as always thank you greg. It’s just it’s fantastic To keep our work together going but especially I wanted to thank Brendan and I wanted to give both of you maybe greg person and brendan as always just uh Chance for a final word, but I just want to say one more time brendan. This has been really Just superlative just fantastic really deeply appreciative of your work. So i’ll turn things over To greg first and then he’ll pass it to you for your final word Amen. I mean, this has been a joy both both, uh rich informative, uh Uh giving me new angles, uh to frame, uh a rich, you know, I like a coherent integrated pluralism And I feel like that has been deepened, uh and and clarified I mean some of the things that I think that are you’ve laid out brendan in relationship to sort of the reconstruction of meaning of meaning and framing and as learning and framing as this sort of Unfolding and bringing john’s work and my work together and then situating that into sort of a Waking up to the chyrus of the moment I mean it is a brilliant articulation of what we’re looking for transcendent naturalism both in terms of the the core logos grounding and the implications for where we are and I think the great question for All of us, uh is you know, kind of well, what does it mean? Well both for our lives and then what what do we do? I think we’re grappling with that and I think you’re grappling and embodying that in in the way you live You know at sky meadow And and the retreats that you do and the callings that you offer folks To come together and reflect on and it’s been an honor and a pleasure Gosh, thank you for that. I thank you both for this. This was an incredible opportunity. It’s uh, clearly a topic that i’m very passionate about and engaged very deeply in and um yeah, I uh, I I both I guess I also I just want to end by Thanking you both for your work, uh, which has been you know, sort of Talking about talk about leveling up, you know You got to stand on on on shoulders to to to get there. And so, um, I appreciate so much of the clarity that both of Both of your works bring. Um, so anyway, um, yeah, there’s an ongoing conversation here I look forward to watching the rest of the series and who else you talk to um, but uh, but this was great and I really appreciate the opportunity and Um, gosh, there’s so much more that could be said, but I I i’m deeply deeply grateful Wonderful