https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=AfkjzhCY2GI
Welcome back everyone to episode two of Transcendent Naturalism. Last time I sort of took center stage and Greg was my dialogical educer. And so we’re going to flip now and I’m going to turn things over to Greg Enriquez and I will be his sounding board and mindfulness mirror. Lovely, lovely. Yes, John. We’ve both the combination of your leveling up talk and then the summary we did last time, I think, did an excellent job of setting this up. And so what I’ve got prepared for us today is sort of walking through the connections that you’ve laid out with the Utalk worldview. And what I think is pretty striking is, at least this is what I hope to convey, is just how rich and knitted, to use a conforming idea, that these connections are. And so this would sort of be then a stage in our transcendent naturalism, say, okay, here’s a slice from this particular vantage point that would afford us kind of a morsel, as it were, to eat off of transcendent naturalism from a worldview that’s, you know, got sort of a lot of potential richness in it. So let’s just situate then ourselves in that worldview where I’m going to say, hey, not surprisingly, I’m talking about a one world naturalism, of course, in that regard. We’re transcending the old dual world system, but we’re doing so in a way that is fundamentally different from the reductive physicalist vision of a mechanistic worldview, reducing to matter and sort of the Newtonian vision. Or one that reduces to a sort of phenomenological idealism, Kant. And of course, I talk about the enlightenment gap really as sort of a confusion between Newtonian ontology and a Kantian epistemology. And we need a new worldview in relationship to that, to bridge the gap. And I think what your structure did was lay out what that worldview, the core ingredients of what that worldview should look like. And that kind of system, when I look at it that way, it’s like, wow, that’s exactly kind of what the kind of worldview you talk sort of is flourishing around. Excellent. So one of the things that then I also want to just sort of in terms of this series, okay, I want to claim that our knowledge about the world, that our place in it is fundamentally misaligned relative to our potential for meaning in life. Okay. And of course, this is your meaning crisis message, and that we are experiencing a meaning crisis and a wisdom famine. I will argue that the basic structure of what we see can be characterized as a chaotic, fragmented pluralism. Okay, that means our knowledge systems are broken. What guides the arc of education from kindergarten to doctoral training? Not much. Yeah, okay. Not much. But it, and Maya, you talk about saying it doesn’t have to be that fragmented. There’s a lot more available intersections, integrations between various knowledge strands in a way that affords us capacity to make sense out of the whole than we currently operate from. I also would argue that with capitalism, it generated an egoic instrumentalism, okay, whereby we’re basically in the doing mode to have, to use from, okay, and this is creating a consumerist basic religion philosophy and religion here just means like, hey, what’s important? How do I get a job? How do I get money? How do I get status? It’s egoic, it’s instrumental, it’s acquisitive at the level of acquisition and consumptive. Okay. And I believe that that basic structure is damaging to our soul. Fundamentally, the unified theory points to our relational structure as needing both social influence at the instrumental level, like, hey, can I move you around, and the felt sense of being seen, known, and valued by important others. Okay. I believe that the relational world that we are generating, epidemic of loneliness, is not affording the kind of communal felt sense of relational value. I believe it is disconnecting us from nature, and I do believe that it is not situating us with wisdom in the current context that we find ourselves at this point in the 21st century. Right, right, right. So these are all basic, like, hey, our system is giving us a weak egoic instrumentalism or the chaotic fragmented pluralism that orients us towards consumption at a time when we actually need to fundamentally transform from that operating system to something that’s more transcendent in its orientation. And by transcendent here, I’ll simply mean we got to get beyond the I need, I egoically need more control. We have to transcend that as being the fundamental thing that grinds us, grounds us, and in fact there’s a lot of capacity to get much better right relation of our knowledge into wisdom systems. And in fact, I would argue we need to, because not only is there the meaning in mental health crises, there’s the existential crisis. I heard you I think have in a conversation with Steve March about reflecting on respond, if memory serves, and there’s a lot of recognition that there’s a meaning at mental health on the one hand certainly as my primary focus then this existential crises of technology of the global environmental crises that we face, and these things are intimately intertwined from a Utah perspective. Yes, yeah, yes. Yeah. So, for me what I want to say is hey when we talk about a transcendent naturalism we got to, we’re talking about a nest and a needed worldview that reframes re grips the grammar of our being in the world being in relation to each other being in nature and being in relationship to technology. Good, good. So that’s, that’s the, the structure, Utah comes along and says hey a coherent integrated pluralism is plausible. Okay. And the reason it can do that is it’s grounded in a plausible and comprehensive and somewhat conservative view of the natural sciences. Physics as you’re leveling up start claim, natural sciences are real. They afford us real knowledge about the world, physics, chemistry and biology, teacher shit about the world. They teach us they create a knowledge conforming to an epistemology on an ontology connection that has some sort of genuine grip about the world, and we need any comprehensive theory needs both framing about what that matter is, and then what are the physicists, we need a theory of both matter and physicists knowing about matter. Right, yes, to be in right relation. So we need a theory of physics and physicists. Okay, so that’s a good perspective and a reductive materialism cannot do that. Yes, I agree. Reductive materialism cannot do that. You talk flows us from a coherent picture of the physical sciences at the level of matter into the biological sciences, and it gives us this idea that there’s a jump in dimension. Consistent with either what I heard you say in relationship to core to the ontology is information. Yes. Yes. And you talk is basically saying that actually at the first point of information is essentially you can think about the Big Bang as a differentiating informational structure. Yes. And then I’m going to think about life as processing difference to make predictive power, so that it engages in work effort that maintains itself organization. Right, right, right, right. Yes. So we have difference, and then difference that makes a difference on a semantic structure. Right, and that then the organization of that difference on difference is going to be an epistemic organizing structure on an ontic, and it’s going to grip it in a transjective way. Excellent. Okay. So that’s what that’s what you talk is ultimately saying in relationship to this, and it’s then going to frame that evolving complexified structure. It says also ultimately that we are in because of the way it defines the nature of information, the nature of information processing communication networks. It also tells us that we’re at a chaotic moment in the world, precisely because we have laid down a digital network that can crawl and remember and connect us all. And now through chat, talk to us and interface. Right. So the 21st century is seen before our technologies were not really engaged in us in a complex adaptive dynamic interface, cops and roads, important as they were, did not feedback when we started writing, created memory graded literacy graded computation graded internet graded artificial intelligence and now creating artificial intelligent interface systems that are essentially interfacing, they operate very differently to do but they’re basically justification systems with these chat bot things right you frame hey chat bot be my justifier and ask this question and frame it this way. So we are now on the cusp of an information interface structure with the digital, and that from a Utah perspective that’s going to create a whole nother complex adaptive plane. If we’re lucky, the level because it’s going to create so much flux and difference, we’re going to see whether or not it’s like we maintain it the existential risks or maybe as it grows it’s going to create so much confusion, chaos and have vulnerabilities that it may not evolve in an ideal way. Okay, so this is the fifth joint point. And this is super important in the sense that it basically says, I know a lot of people are experiencing an existential crisis, we could flip that around and say we need all hands on deck. Right. If for example let’s say we were getting attacked by aliens, I would guess, very quickly, if the right with the right psychology, we can come together as a collective human show this over and over again. If we could figure out a way to wake people up and say hey, each of us is a garden fractal each of us has our own particular role to play, and collectively, the meaning structures is exactly that that is how we will find meaning in life, and it is super important that we all participate with this basic framing and understanding that some level, we’re participants in this very chaotic moment. We have to wake people up to a religio calling that recognizes that and creates a collective identity. That’s what I’m hopeful for at the level of what would be a framing. Yeah, me too. I’ve. I think you watched, I did a video essay on AI, and it’s scientific and philosophical and spiritual significance and just to put a punctuation mark on that got news today that Jeffrey Hinton resigned from Google, because he wants to be able to speak freely about the, well, dire situation he sees that we are in. He says that part of him even regrets that he did this work. That’s so, yeah, the godfather of all of this is saying, I think there’s important concern. I think I take the people who are trying to be dismissive or pretend it’s not going to make a difference. I think they’re, they’re, they’re largely mistaken in their efforts. I won’t repeat the arguments I made for that video essay, I’ll put the link to check it out. And it’s getting a lot of you’re getting all that’s a really popular video. Yes, good reason you make a lot of important points. And the basic graphic tree of knowledge graphic just tells you essentially why it’s a whole nother information process of communication network that we’re now directly interfacing with where it’s creating a Jason possible space that is unbelievably huge. So, unbelievably huge, which means it can evolve in all sorts of different domains, we better get some good emanating constraints on it. And we better figure out the, you know that this thing. We don’t know what’s going to happen you I think you made a good point in that it was like, you know, I mean, it’s going to predict this, but we can, we should be able to try to frame it in relationship to insight about what is actually happening. Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly it. Yeah, I recommend trying to reasonably foresee the thresholds that have to be implemented for certain qualitative gains on the AI and those are points where we can decide to make certain decisions. Like I said, I don’t want to repeat that. Yeah, no, but the point of it is is that we can, I would argue that we can have we have a very clear grammar, energy matter life mine culture, and now we are bridging a digital. And that fundamentally is that should be our grammar not mind in versus matter subjective versus no it’s an energy matter like mine culture that is tipping into a new space. I think that’s very well said. I did note in the essay that a lot of the people that are in the midst of this are invoking a neoplatonic ontology without realizing it. And I don’t think that’s happenstance either. But Greg I’m very excited about how you’ve laid this out is very clear admirably clear very comprehensive, concise and tight, that being rigid, like, well done. Okay, so yeah so let’s let’s then put this a little bit then in the, in the meaning making structure like how do if we’re talking about a religion that’s not a religion, how do we actually frame that I’ll offer some thoughts brief thoughts about there and then I’ll come back to your talk and then I’ll jump from your talk into summarizing that and then show that the three meta arguments that you make in your talk are remarkably aligned with the basic thrust of what you talk is trying to do. Yeah, so, so at the level of kind of like, hey, how do we make sense out of the world, you talk can be framed as an agnostic atheistic synthetism. Okay, and so it’s agnostic in the sense that I’m not a fundamentalist or core foundationalist that says oh I know what the truth is. I’m a scientist. I, you know, the truth of you know there’s an observable universe I’m going to make the best plausible abductive reason argument, and whatever’s on the outside of that, you know, is for me, open to all sorts of mystical faith based interpretations but I’m not going to make strong ontopistemological arguments that are outside the origin and ultimately I think you’re always going to get yourself sort of at the edge of what you can conceivably know, you know, and that’s sort of the agnostic position. So it’s really just defined against a foundationalism or fundamentalism. Right, right, right. It’s atheistic in the sense that it doesn’t take as ontologically real the second supernatural dimension and the personal nature of God as caring in the way we would that’s basically interpreted as a more or less a projection. Okay. But it’s synthetic in the sense that I believe in the concept of God. Okay. I told that to a nun she’s like that sounds a little wordy, and I was like, well it is an important word to stick in there. And what I mean by that is a couple of different things. First, there’s the generic comment. Hey people believe in God and that has real world consequences as any leveling up ontology would say that it would. And we should attend to that. All right. And I believe that our relationship to the universe kind of like an Espinoza sense of God as nature, and the potentiality to be oriented toward the good God as divine. The ultimate good, the true good beautiful transcendentals, those kinds of notions are crucial for us for our mythos our sense of participation in the story of who we are, and how we organize what ought to be. And that’s what I mean by a synthesis like, unlike the new atheists who just think it’s an unbelievably immature concept that has no value. I’m like, actually, I think it’s fundamental as as an epistemological metaphorical, and in many ways I believe actually has genuine ontological implications for it in the sense of how we are organizing, say the complexification of the universe, and how we organize value and relationship to the universe. Sure. Well, keep going I mean, you know that this part interests me immensely so I’m worried about derailing things right now we can come back to this. Yeah, so that’s that’s basically and ultimately you talk fundamentally can be summarized about cultivating wisdom energy wisdom is then finding yourself in right relation to say a divine double conception of who you could possibly be and what we can possibly be, and then you’re metabolizing your core energy as a concept of work effort across time and doing so, so that you are in right relationship to what is as energy and what ought to be as wisdom, and then for the task then embodied for nieces Sophia task is to Sophia understand the business and for nieces to embody the ought to be structure. So that’s and that’s the two bees on the tree of life and that’s what this is a calling then to understand what is and to live wisely in the embodied way of being. So, that’s what that’s the structure of what you talks trying to offer at the level of kind of like hey, you know, where are we what are we trying to do. So, what I want to basically say is well what kind of worldview does you talk afford and then this gets back to john’s brilliant leveling up argument. Okay. So john basically john. You did you for baking brilliant analysis, you know, so what john did is he took us through three core arguments powerful big broad arguments, and what that set the stage was was to transcend the inadequate onto epistemology of physical reductivism and the enlightenment gap, and to afford us the core structure that would enable us a much more coherent capacity to make sense out of our knowing and being relation. Okay. So the first argument that he made was that the real, there are levels in nature that emerge and emanate, and that these levels have real ontological stats. Yep. Okay. All right. So that’s the first thing. What I’m going to do then is I’m going to then take that and show, I can put some frame on that through the tree of knowledge and periodic table of behavior. So I’m going to basically say it’s totally. And let’s add some richness to that category system of the levels. I think that’s totally right. I didn’t I, mine was very much a structural argument and not only about what the content of these levels are, etc. Because I was trying to get a core argument done. Yeah, right. Absolutely, which is absolutely. That was the right approach we need. We need that I’ll make a comment about that the second core argument that john made working on off of pick stock and others was that there is a new platonic framing conforming framing for being and knowing that that grammar of being and the grammar of knowing must be put together. And that is what affords you access to intelligible reality. Yep. Okay. Which is fundamentally then different from a subject that’s creating some independent representational space of some determined Yes. Okay. So it’s a no it’s actually the subject is embedded in the world and the subject is relating to the world. Okay. And we need a theory of cognition and a theory of reality that actually are at some level are going to have a conforming gram. Right. And then the final piece that john emphasizes that the distinction which pops pretty strongly from the enlightenment that splits our epistemology into objective science telling us about the world versus a subjective phenomenology is not an adequate epistemology. Okay. Clearly we need concepts that place subject and object in polar relationship to each other across dynamic time, and that’s the transjective vantage point. That’s right. That’s right. Okay. Okay. So, what I consider john to have done is an exercise and with the critical realist philosopher Roy bash guard called philosophical under laboring. Okay. The under laboring of the philosophers to come on and say what are the concepts and categories that you’re bringing to bear what are your fundamental assumptions, what has come before, and what works and what doesn’t. So, I’ll say you laid out the core structure of the grammar and assumptions that’s exactly the philosophical under laboring. Okay. And I’ll point out with a note to Roy bash guard somebody I respect as a philosopher, he developed his critical realism in ways that have direct parallel. So, he’s a clear leveling up argument, the stratification of nature was crucial. It’s a particular kind of you can’t reduce your ontology to epistemology argues caught says does that and that you must trend. So, he’s a critical justificatory social construction of nowhere frame at some level, cognitive into socially constructed know where at some level that situates that nowhere in the world that’s the critical realism. Okay, that he places in there so all of that, I just want to note his framing of critical realism, and you’re under laboring actually afford a tremendous amount of overlap on your advice I do have a book by bash girl I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I will. I find him to be powerful, especially as well throughout his career does a lot of interest in the middle the critical realism arguments very good. Okay, so there’s the backdrop. Now what I want to do is I want to then really show the sinking. Okay, so, and this is basically a way to then say hey, gone lays the ground. There’s you talk that affords a particular worldview. Now let’s see that connection interfacing. Okay. And if I can maybe let me share screen here shift into you already did. Okay. You already knew that was coming. I confess I was doing that and folks that are, you know, the, but anyway that is my style. Okay. So now let’s talk about the meta argument number one, which there are levels of emergence and emanation I’m going to take the argument what you said and say yes. Now what I want to do is I want to say let’s see if we can put some framing on it. And I want to do the leveling up with the tree of knowledge and PTB. Yeah, so the first basic thing is of course the classic tree of knowledge. What is this a depiction of, well, it is a depiction of the emergence and emanation of complexification. Yes. Okay, that’s what it is. So what it does is it captures the basic structure. Now, in relationship to the levels argument, what I’m going to argue is that actually embedded in this, and then popping into the periodic table is actually at least three different kinds of leveling up processes that give rise to new properties and emerging and emanating way that have different features to them. The first is that they’re aggregates. Okay, the aggregate feature of emergence is there one car doesn’t have traffic, many cars have traffic. One modern molecule doesn’t have fluidity, many water molecules produce fluidity. So one of the most classic and basic weak forms of emergence is that groups of things get together, and then they engage in pattern holes across those groups, okay, as a function of their aggregate that then have different kinds of properties, it’s one of the simplest and most basic forms. Okay, yep. There’s also however, a specific kind of leveling process, and this is what Tyler Volk identifies in his excellent book forks to culture. So Tyler Volk realizes and makes the cases that not all emergencies of different kinds of things that are complex are the same as the kind of leveling up integration what he ends up calling combo Genesis that results in the part whole relation that goes from works to culture. So for example, okay, there is a difference between a particle to an atom, which is part of the integrative leveling up process. Okay, because we consist of particles and then atoms. So it’s different than a galaxy. A gal we don’t live inside it we live inside of a galaxy’s galaxies don’t live inside of us. Okay. And he identifies the argument that there are different kinds of integrative levels that are specific to us and result in a part whole integrative leveling up process that we should track and make separate from general aggregate patterns. Okay, and he calls that process combo Genesis. All right. And the final thing that he notes that then is very prominent in the tree of knowledge is that when he zooms back he’s like, in addition to these levels there really seem his initial argument was there’s three to three different realms of entities like there’s the emergence of things that give rise to matter. So he identified life, and then culture as two additional evolutionary realms. Okay. He and I have since coordinated we’ve worked together and we have a position paper coming out in the next, a special issue of big history journal that shows that the tree of knowledge identifies of course life is the green and cultures the blue just like the tree of knowledge, but identifies the third layer of realm as animal mindedness, which carries very similar features. It’s a novel form of information processing communication network generated by what he calls propagation variation selection retention, ie, an evolutionary kind of emergent emanation constraint dynamic. Right. So now he is able to say hey there’s the levels and then there are actually four realms or planes or dimensions of existence. Okay, so you’re also now proposing that we’re at a Kairos where there’s a another realm emerging the digital. Do I understand correctly. Yeah, that’s exactly right. Right. Exactly. So the 21st century is potentially going to stick another plane of existence on this graph. Yeah, the virtual, the virtual did work. The virtual digital world. Exactly. And it’s a very weird one because we’re essentially pulling up matter, right, generating a weird non living matter and interfacing with it. Artificial intelligence, you know, fingers crossed, it goes well. Okay, so this is this shows on the tree of knowledge some it becomes clear when we put it in the periodic table of behavior, the periodic table behavior these general object field relations, well that would capture your aggregate across space time. Okay, so it’d be a galaxy would be a you know whatever cluster that we would use at the general level, then you get these primary levels that then also cut across dimensions of behavioral complexity. And then what this does is actually when Tyler Volk identified levels, you know how many he counted 12 and we did it completely independently. There’s slight minor differences in ours. But what we can see here then is what I realized is that each dimension has a primary domain organization. So, for example, the dimension of matter as particles that collect into atoms that becomes a primary hole. And then primary holes get together to create molecules. Okay, then there are parts that are genes or organelles. They cluster together in cells and then cells can aggregate you go from a jump from a prokaryotic to a eukaryotic. That is a cluster aggregate that’s a shift in complexification, and then multi cells can then grow, either in the form of things like multicellular creatures like fungi and plants, or large groups of things like collections of algae. Okay, so but what you’re seeing is cells jumping together to form groups. Then we get neural networks, sensory motor neural networks that then collect into a sensory motor loop where you get a complex active body with a brain. That’s what I call mind one and a complex active body at the Cambrian explosion. Okay, and of course there’s a you know as we’ve talked many times there’s lots of intermediate phases planaria worms basically into lobsters, more or less, okay, represents the mind one mindedness of a sensory motor creature, which then of course then forms into family groups, and then ultimately yet another kind of information unit symbol symbolic justification into mind three culture persons justifying their actions in family community nations. So when we asked well what is the leveling up process. Okay. According to the periodic table behavior what we can say is well there’s aggregates that create certain kinds of properties, then there’s a core combo Genesis property that tracks the emergence of parts into holes into groups, then across four different realms or dimensions. Cool. So, yeah, stop. Yeah, go ahead. So, I’m trying to see, let me gather my thoughts. So, a lot of people have like Evan Thompson for example to Apollo and others have argued that in life you get. You get kind of irreducible complexity because you get interdependence. Like, the parts can’t exist as the kind of parts they are independently from the living thing, but atoms can exist as atoms independently from molecules. And that’s a fundamental shift in how it’s, it’s organized and then of course when you go to that and then you get multi cellular creatures the individual cells can no longer live independent from the whole organism, you build up, you get you start to layer this, this dependency relations is that’s what I’m just trying to form a question is that’s what meant by combo Genesis it’s more than just aggregation, you get aggregation that then becomes this, this shift of into interdependence in a fundamental way. That’s absolutely true. What the key thing that Tyler Vogue is talking about with combo Genesis is the, as the title of the book suggests, he just wants to make sure that we’re attending to the difference between complexification that is part of our history within us and layers us on top of it as opposed to different other kinds of complexity. So, and then the, so that so it’s just making an important distinction that hey solar systems have some degree of complicated or complexness, but they’re not part of the journey of part whole group relations that stack our dependencies. So, the distinction is between a causal complexity and ontological complexity. Exactly. Right. Right. So he’s wanting to highlight the ontological complexification stack that goes quarks to culture. Okay. And so that’s a particular kind of leveling process now the reason it’s super important to highlight is because there are then basically semantic identity structures if we go to like Michael Levin’s work. Okay, semantic identity structures that then create part whole synergies at the level of life mind and culture, right that afford particular kinds of identifications across the stack and those those identifications are giving rise to self organizing autopoetic behaviors that are not present in matter. That’s right. That’s right. Okay. Well, that’s very good. That’s clarifying for me. So, yeah, so it’s it’s the difference between what you know Smith calls, you know, sort of horizontal and vertical causation. Exactly, exactly. Exactly that difference. Yes. Okay, I’m on board. Good. All right. So that’s the basic basic structure is the levels argument, the philosophical underlabor and super profound. There’s an emanation emergence emanation structure, there’s going to be a top down bottom up structure and by the way it’s going to go right with our cognition when we move to there, but we can then say hey there’s general aggregates. Oh, they’re stacked integrative levels across four different dimensions. And oh by the way I argue if you look at the topics and science and the fields and science, the topics and fields actually correspond quite nicely to these to this classification. Yeah, I was noticing that this gives it kind of Aristotelian systematicity that I find very very very persuasive. And, and all really if you shift what the, so you can you can follow it by the way, in terms of our current understanding from particle physics into chemistry into genes and cells multi cells and then neuro neuroscience. Things get really complicated here because the animal behaviorists. And the problem of psychology didn’t know how to frame your cognitive minded animals. Right. So they cut the term behavior from it and they should have called them minded animals. And if they call them minded animals and emphasize the property of animal behavior that’s unique relative to cells or atoms are minded behaviors we would have actually then had a very clear stack. That’s what I’m trying to correct. If we get from minded animals into say groups of animals elephants primates, and then go from groups of primates to great apes that then talk now actually And so, yes, now we can follow the behavioral patterns through psychology into human psychology and then cultural anthropology and human sociology. That’s what we can stack that now in the cognitive science, psychological stuff that you’re doing with our synoptic and we’re doing with synoptic integrative frames is about coherently building that bridge and getting rid of the or clarifying so much equivocation on mind and all the other and behavior and all that. I think this is, I think this is good. This is very good content to the notion of levels. So, and that’s what exactly that’s what I wanted to compliment a sort of like okay what can we, you were we’ve delineated the fundamental concept. Now let’s okay. Now let’s start some taxonomies and clarifications that we can then apply. Excellent. All right. So that’s the first argument and that shows that actually the leveling archivist embedded and can be clarified with some additional content. Okay, so that’s the first meta argument. The second meta argument. Okay, is conforming theory. Yeah. Conforming theory. And I’m going to frame this by one of you talks phrases which is you marry the coin to the tree. Ultimately you marry the coin to the tree in the garden, under God. Right. So let me frame this and then let’s see if this is is going to connect to your sense in the arguments you made for conforming, it’s going to twist it a slightly different way through the lens of Utah, but I think what we’ll be able to see is just how clearly, when we make that twist this conforming idea emerges, and why we need epistemologies that specify the framing of this conformity. Okay. So that’s what that’s what the, so the basic you talk architecture for you to send it in one word the coin. So the coin, as we talked about, is a think of that circle as each of our unique epistemological portals as our psyche. Okay, so the coin is our human identity function. Okay, and it simply represents your phenomenological view on the world, and my phenomenological view on the world as unique human identities. So that’s what it stands for. Okay. It then places that coin in relationship to the tree. The tree of knowledge then is the scientific third person objective vantage point of the world, at least as crafted by you talk. So now we have our behavioral view of the world. Okay, we can say hey the world, if we adopt the scientific view what fundamentally the scientific view was about I would argue in modern empirical natural science was hey, we need to adopt the view of an of an intersubjectively agreed upon observer that can be factored out as much as possible and watch the unfolding wave of behavior, whereby your fear trained from this vantage point you could procedurally and propositionally track the behaviors of the world, that’s what That’s what natural science is trying to do. But of course by definition, that means there’s an epistemological gap with any subjective perspective that’s an inside out view that you can’t see. Yes. Okay, so that’s just the nature of the grammar of modern empirical natural science is that it doesn’t afford a clear picture of the unique particular subject of phenomenological vantage point. Yes. So, you talk says well we just need to acknowledge that. And we and it’s good for us to have psycho technologies or epistemological technologies that place in right relation, that unique particular vantage point as a human identity in relationship to a third person behavioral vantage point. And then the question is, and what you talk about I’ll show in the next slide is that how you position yourself as a subject, and how we position the world from the tree of knowledge is actually going to create a massive conforming grammar vision. Okay. So, ultimately then the in the garden, under the concept of God then gets into the axiological commitments I’m not going to talk anything about this because it’s mostly about the conforming of how we are epistemology and our ontology can be connected. Okay, the axiological arguments are different. Alright. Okay, so that’s the so how do we think about because here’s our scientific map. So if we want to see the world and objectively as possible, we’re seeing the world as an unfolding way from energy information into material objects into living organisms into mindy creatures into culture persons. Now, I want you to situate yourself from your recursive relevance realization witness function. Okay. And I want to want you to do is then from your particular perspective. Can you experience yourself as a material object in space time. So we can then we obviously hey I’m pressing against the world in a particular way. I am a living organism, and I would argue that we can orient our valence qualia through our animal cells to get as close contact with our felt embodiment as possible. Okay. And then we can trail that through our valence qualia into our adjectival adverbial witness function, we can identify our mammal global neuronal workspace and our primate core felt sense. Do you feel seen loan and valued or not in the world. Okay. And then finally, we’re justifying. Okay, we’re engaging justificatory processes. All right, so that I would argue that we can see inside and out a particular type of energy matter like mine culture perspective. Right, right, right. And this is something you can enact is what you’re making the case for. This is not something that remains in third person propositions but you can actually participatory prospectively in acted within yourself. And that’s going to actually get us to the next final part of your argument when we get into transjective, because there’s going to be a participatory transjective interface between inside out outside in. Okay. But this right now. Yeah, yeah, but I want what you’re saying is, there is nevertheless, a sense that this is not just something we represent this is something we instantiate when you do that move you just made. Exactly. 100%. Okay. And so, basically what I want to say is that hey, there’s energy information at the level of material complexity, then there’s some kind of living bio epistemic layering on a mental psychological minded epistemic layering nervous system through a social, and then And then ultimately a particular kind of science member we had to fit the physicists in there. Okay. And we can frame physicists building systems of justification that map matter. So ultimately we have a general scientific empirical view of the natural world and an inside out view of the psyche that can be layered, both at the level of the outside leveling up process, and we can situate our recurrent relevance realization and relationship And so the gripping function between inside out outside in is quite tight, and you talk is explicitly designed to foster that interweaving. Yeah, this goes very much with pearls take on platinus about levels of being and levels of the self. And yes, yes, yes. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. So that’s that’s the kind of this move here is very cool. Sorry, I didn’t mean to talk over you but I like it gives up, it gives a possibility of, like, you know, the role that ritual could have in which gets us to remember the instantiation as something separate from just our representational functions and we can relive all of this. Exactly. Yes, this is wonderful. Exactly. Very good. All right. So the last part I want to say here is related to Marta argument three is this issue of transjectivity. Yeah, okay. Now you highlight in the transjectivity that there are a number of elements, number of concepts like Gibson’s affordances, some guy for and his recursive relevance realization, they’re really important. He theory theoretical frameworks that do not reduce themselves to the subjective or objective perspective. Yes, I’m gonna then I’m going to argue that actually I landed on this also in the meta theories that I developed in relationship to to explaining the complex causal dynamics of us as animals into primates into persons in the form of an investent behavioral investing theory in terms of influence and in forms of justification are actually transjected. Yes. So to get clear about kind of where we are in relation, I like to utilize Wilbur’s quadrants as a starting point. Yes. Okay. So here are Wilbur’s quadrants one of the things he becomes famous for is dividing our epistemological, and I emphasize I think it’s a much better epistemological than ontological frame by Wilbur, but anyway that there’s an interior and exterior and an individual or level and a collective level. And in so doing that gives us four nice categories of framing our epistemological structure. And when I look at the Utah elements, these pop fairly nicely. So for example, the holistic view of systems in general is provided nicely by the tree of knowledge. It affords you this big picture view of systems. So that’s we look at the that’s the inter objective. Exactly. Yeah. At the systemic level to systemic inter objective view. So to zoom back picture of the whole, if we then get at the individual level the periodic table behaviors like breaking it down into the object in the field. So that’s the particular particle. Right. So that’s the individual level of lensing versus the holistic systemic level. The I quad coin is about holding your unique particular subjective view. Okay. And ultimately justification systems theory, and indeed the garden itself is an invitation for a collective sense making religio that binds us together and situates us in terms of our myth making our values our collective coordination. Okay, so this intersects with the work I do on distributed cognition and dialectical logos and all that sort of thing. Exactly. And the argument fundamentally is that we are parts in the collective system of justification. So we want to recognize that, and we want to find the right resonance structures in relationship to that. Okay. But, but ultimately I find that Wilbert squadrons model are actually quite static. Yes, I’m there still there’s still still frame pictures through these epistemologies. And for me, so you have the objective inner subjective for me, the dynamic interplay is the across time consequence when we put shit in motion. And that, and that fundamentally is what the transjective is for me. Yeah, I think that’s, yeah, I like that. I think that’s right. That’s right. The transjective is the alethetic from Heidegger alethia field in that makes these connections and movements and transfers and all the different kinds of metaphors we want to use possible. I agree with that I think that’s exactly right. So I call this I quad aspect monism I quad meaning we’re going to do for. Okay, so there’s a subjective and objective and inter subjective and ultimately a transjective. These each provide epistemological aspect realizing frames on a one world. Right. And we can rotate through them dynamically with the most dynamic and inclusive being the transjective. Right, right. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. So the transjective becomes the through line of all of these other objectives that can’t be reduced to any particular aspect itself. That’s really that’s very interesting. I would argue you can sort of rotate this Wilbur thing and imagine that’s one slice in time and then create a time dimension, and it is the flow through them that is really the transjective because the transjective captures the time dimension. It’s an iterative process between agent arena. It’s a dynamic changing process. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s, yeah, it revolves and revolves and involves. Yes, that’s very good. That’s very good. Exactly. So then the last thing that I’ll say and then we can is that okay well what kind of theoretical frames does you talk bring to bear. And it brings for our person layer, it brings justifications, systems theory, justifications, systems theory provides a framework for our propositional networks, the structure and function of our propositional networks are to legitimize is an art and a collective way. Okay. And that both to explore that through question answer space and to create worldviews that constrain it. Okay. But fundamentally, what is justification justification definitely is not located just in the subject, nor in the objective world nor is it even just the diet, the static conceptualization, a trend, a justification process is going to be a transjective process. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think this is coming out in some of the work I’m doing with Dan Chiappi on brandoms updating of Pagle and this idea of right prospective and retrospective responsibility and accountability, which is of course, or justification terms. So I think that fits in very well. That’s what I meant when I was taught when I was trying to talk about how rationality binds autopolysis to accountability. Yes. Yeah, yeah, very much, very much. Yep. Yeah, yeah, very much, very much. Yep. So, justification is the when we, you know, recursive relevance realization is from my vantage point, the cognitive framing. Okay, that places the agent and relationship to the arena, which then creates the path analysis of investment. And yet again, like adaptation is not found just in the organism, not found just in the environment, but is an unfolding workflow that has consequence feeding back into the entire structure you can’t locate investment inside the organism or inside the environment, it is the dynamic interplay of work effort and consequence. So again, it is clearly framed by subjective objective interfacing across time. And, and so the behavioral investment theory frames it that way influence my felt sense of being in the world, my felt impact upon you, the impact feeding back upon you influence again is not something that is found subjectively or objectively, it is a process of unfolding between individuals. Right. So all three of the major fine you know frames that are brought to bear as the causal explanatory network. And I then argue obviously in my book I already, I can take recursive relevance realization and drop that in to each one of these friends and stitch them together and so much more detail than I ever could prior to knowing you with the level of the in a higher order grammar, right, a higher organizing grammar that enables us to see the levels outside and the levels of cognitive organization inside. And so to me what we clearly have is a leveling and forming transjective brain. Excellent. Hold your book up slower by the way. I got trained on that. So, so that’s my that’s basically the argument that says hey, the, the structure that you the under laboring structure that you elucidated is remarkably aligned with that and that’s not the kind of framing that I was attending to but so it’s a massively convergent argument to be made as far as the divergent validity argument in my opinion. That’s great. I think the complementarity I think the way you fill things in, give specific content, layout, specific processes and causal factors and structure, I think it’s, I think it’s, yeah, I’m very strongly in agreement with it. I think it’s, it’s like the levels. Yeah, like people will sometimes ask me what are the levels and I just say look at Greg’s work. Right. That’s what I do basically and they’ll say what are the differences and I’ll say well they’re not just quantitative. They’re also qualitative and look at Greg’s work. And so, yeah, I think the two, I think the two arguments actually need each other and go well together with each other. So, because, I mean, from your side, if, if you didn’t have, you didn’t have the arguments I was making, you could just be dismissed by the reductive naturalist. Right. And from my side, right, when people ask me, yeah, but what does this actually mean or point to, what can I, what does this refer to. That’s when I need what you the work you’ve done. And so they go very well together. They go very well and indeed I yes so there’s the under laboring. There’s the architecture, you know, the Neoplatonic under laboring the clarity of that neoestetlian architecture. Right. And then our theories are met at the you know, GI dynamics coupled to recursive relevance realization. And by my estimation, I’m telling you because as I’ve said many times, I enter into a conversation and now I’m my phenomenology is, oh, I am engaged in instantaneously and recursive relevance realization. Right. I mean, just, I’m just noting that my witness function is doing that. Okay. And what it is doing is it, and then you pay attention to this on your end. Are you extending that relevance for passive effort? What are you doing? Right. And then are you tracking how you are coordinating through your primate capacity to mentally represent the theory of another person’s mind, track what they’re doing in terms of how it changes on cooperative competitive relational value social influence dynamics, right, all of which is then embedded in a participatory perspectival structure. And then we’re out here justifying right our propositions, right. And to me, that’s a very, very simple, I mean, it’s elegant, rich, complex dynamic. It gives the generalizing frames to make another point you make. And it affords a huge amounts of nuance and differentiation. So it does a really nice job gripping the generalizable and then also orienting toward the specific in a way that I find to be very compelling. Yeah, I agree. This is very good. Very compelling. So I think this is a good. I don’t like it. First of all, I mean, and this is a little unfair to you and I don’t mean it. I’ve seen this argument many times like versions of this argument I’ve seen. What I mean is, this is new, but it’s a culmination of a lot of work we’ve done together, so I don’t, I don’t come up with this with what is Greg talking about. So I just want to I want to caution the viewer that we are both probably doing that to some degree with each other. And it’s very important that you look at some of the other shows in the cognitive science play cognitive client show playlist, some of the other arguments. Just so some of this stuff that might strike you as they’re acting as if this is familiar but it’s unfamiliar. And so just that general caution. But I want to just, I want to now sort of shape things towards what I think I would like us to address next time. Which is how you see this fitting into the notion of extended naturalism. And then also, how does this help afford an intellectually rationally even ultimately scientifically justifiable notion of strong transcendence. Because for me, being able to situate a strong transcendence inside a naturalism, I think it has to be extended is the core thing to making a consensus on the notion of strong transcendence. The core thing to making a conciliance between science and spirituality possible. I’m not saying I’m not saying it’s complete or exhaustive, but I think that any attempt at conciliance that can’t give us strong transcendence within naturalism is a failed attempt. So I think it’s it I think it’s at least a necessary requirement, we can talk about how sufficient it might be when we get into discussion. But what I’d like to open it up on is okay. How does what you’ve just done so very beautifully, like it’s really, really quite wonderful, Greg. Like how do how does that mesh with sort of the framing of strong transcendence and extended naturalism and then I want to do that within a discussion. So it’s a triangle discussion of sacredness. Right, right. And what does what does that mean for us? And I don’t just mean the theory. I also mean the practice. You know, there’s lots in here about ritual. There’s lots in here about transformation, aspiration, all of this. So I’d like to try and get that into the next discussion. Right. Well, that’s a beautiful framing really for our series, I think. Yes, yes. You know, you basically are like, okay, I think what we’re trying to show is that you and I together, hey, there’s a real ground here. There’s a philosophical ground. There’s a cognitive science ground is unified psychology ground. And wow, these things are they’re conforming nicely together. And that’s and it is the ground that then opens up this. So for me, one of the things that I want to say is that I want to make sure that well, and I think you agree there’s a lot of openness in this question. Right. This is hugely like, like, look, what’s happening to the digital where the world is emerging in a particular kind of way that you and I can’t predict. And there’s an openness at the same time. There’s absolutely a wisdom famine. There’s a meaning crisis and we need grammars that transform. So for me, and this is great for us to then. So for me, what do I mean by extended naturalism? Well, the extended naturalism is this idea of the genuine ontology of levels. Okay, that emerge that we need to take deeply seriously that we need to situate ourselves in relationship to that. We are not just a bunch of chemicals that we are an unfolding wave of energy information across a stack. And this conversation is real ontological mattering. Yes. So that’s the that’s a that’s a stronger argument than I think somebody like Sean Carroll might make, although I’d have to have him here. I think he’s a more on the reductive side, although he has a, you know, kind of a. I think he has a limited view of emergence and emanation, the stronger that extended view embraces causal consequence across the levels. So for me, and that’s a job. You don’t reduce justification to brain activity. Justification is operated here in an intersubjective network of propositions, and they have causal consequences. Just go to legal. Go to go to a judge. Go to a judge. It’s going to have calls. So so that to me is the extended naturalist part. It’s it’s shifts. Now, what about strong trends? Well, let me let me check in with you because this is certainly something we’ve talked about when when you feel your way into extended naturalism. What’s most alive or which most salient for you. So what I think you touched on it, but I want to explicate in foreground something, which is an extended naturalism. Part of what drives reductionism is the idea that there’s nothing behind the ontology that’s given to us by physics, chemistry and biology. And we have to derive everything from it. And then part of what I think we are both arguing is no, no, because if you do that, you can’t actually situate the scientists generating the physics or the biology or the chemistry into that world view. And so what you have to do is you have to give an ontology that not only shows what’s derivable from the natural science, but what is presupposed by the natural sciences, namely scientists and an intelligible world and real measurement. And you have the measurement problem, which leads unleveled ontology. So for me, it’s it’s to it’s to make a Neil Platonic move, which says, yes, but you are presupposing and you’re presupposing intelligence and an intelligible world. And I want to ask, what is an ontology such that those presuppositions make sense? They don’t they are claimed to be illusory, which is what is generally the case that’s made with various forms of productive naturalism. So that’s for me. And I think you’re saying that I think you’re saying, oh, absolutely. And a tree of knowledge, sort of way. There’s quantum back to bang up to know. And we actually need to frame the know we need a theory of the physicist and any framework. Yes. You know, any intelligible framework has to have that as part of it. You don’t factor. This is the great error of modern empirical natural science is that you factor out the subject of nowhere and through method. And now you through analytics and analysis as though you can get the knower out. You have to put the knower in and place the knower in relation. Yeah. I and I like that way of putting it. But what I would how I would extend it is science is not typically done by individuals. It’s done by distributed cognition. And it’s done in a world that presumably has genuine informational structures that make it intelligible to human intelligence. So you have to bring this very you have to have a very, very rich ontology. Right. 100%. Yeah, no, we’re in exactly I think we’re in fundamental agreement about what that extended aspect is pointing to. And now it’s crucial. It does not frag. And the difference I want to emphasize is this gives you a lot of what two worlds mythologies tried to give you without breaking it into two worlds. Because the argument I make is just like I have any argument you make for emergence is symmetrically equal to an argument for emanation and therefore you think you did that beautifully in the talk, by the way. Yeah, that’s really nice. That’s clear articulation. I’d seen that. Yeah. Yes. Well, thank you for that. That’s good. And any argument that you would make to say all we mean by an ontology is what’s derivable, you can make a similar argument. But, well, that also depends on what we presuppose. Right. Rationality is not just inferential derivation. It’s also presupposition up towards, etc, etc. So that, that’s, for me, I’m trying to get something that gives us a lot of the yummy sweetness of two worlds mythology without committing us to any kind of two worlds mythology. Exactly. So that gives that. And then. So then we, then we have transcendent. Yeah, which is not strong emergence. Strong emergence. Yeah, is emergence in which there is no explanatory relationship between the levels. So we’re talking philosophical language, everything that’s being talked about here is recursive, weak emergence. But the point is enough differences in degree make differences in kind. So when you get enough recursive, right, weak emergence, you get a powerful new properties and processes, etc. But the so that is to write in. And we with our levels and dimensions, we say actually they’re, you know, they’re neither one of those are strong, but there’s a dimensional emergence is different than the within levels versus the. That’s what I was trying to convey that when you get enough differences in degree, you then get these differences in kind. Right. And we’re trying to distinguish that from strong emergence in which there are differences in kind, but they are, they cannot be explained in terms of weak emergence. So that just totally. And that’s why we’re bringing I mean, for me, that’s why there’s a theory there’s a frame behavioral investment theories like that’s a framework and recursive relevance realization that minded animals are emerging in their complex adaptive space is a framework for that. Exactly. So strong transcendence is therefore right. The claim that there’s something more than weak transcendence weak transcendence is the idea that transcendence is just psychological improvement, strong transcendence is no as you move between levels that has a pestamol logical and ontological, you’re actually moving between real ontological levels of the psyche that are in conformity to that really disclose different ontological levels of reality. And in fact, they’re just they’re just two sides of the same polarity. And then the idea is that it’s not just psychological improvement, it’s epistemological and ontological in the following claim that there are truths that are disclosed to us only after we undergo significant transformation. Which is the opposite of the Cartesian project and the Leibnizian calculus of I have a single machine epistemic machine, and I can run it and just run that machine no matter where I go and I’ll get all the truths that are available. And the disargument says no no there we can give teeth to the idea of spiritual truths, not by locating them in supernatural entities which doesn’t really explain it anyways, but saying no what we mean is that self transcendence brings about a disclosure of truths that are that are unavailable, unless that self transcendence is undergone existentially and by the individual. That’s the claim of strong transcendence. Totally. And would can we plug that strong also into collective like so that it stands beyond the individual into a collective cultural consciousness perhaps or whatever term we would give rise to that right. Yeah, yeah, I would, I would not use consciousness I would use something I would yeah I’d add that that’s a slip you and I would agree. I think which Dan champion I’ve made a good case for very much. All right, we agents. Lovely. So, so here john and this is then this is would be my. There’s a calling, we’re at a chaotic moment in our time where we’re struggling we’re confused, and if there’s dangers around and potentials around, you know, if we collectively grip this time this fifth joint point and engage in wise technological evolution. Right. There’s an enormous opportunity for the back half of the 21st century perhaps to be okay. Yeah, if we continue on the road of modernity consumption ignorance about the our nature’s nature itself the way we’re we’re blah blah blah, and just hunt for the gods of technology alone. I think we’re deep trouble. Yeah, I agree. I know. So, so, so what does that mean it means oh my god we’re in a chaotic moment, perhaps one of the great evolutionary moments in the history of the universe that gives a particular does this matter, is this meaningful, what are we doing today has huge consequences down. And can we collectively awaken to transform ourselves from our ego consumption into something that transcends the ego melts are unique oh I need my shit you need your ship and actually we are collectively a part of a potential transformation. If that’s not basically what spiritual is. I don’t know, you know that’s certainly a secular naturally grounded spiritual moment that calls forth. Okay, how are we going to be part of the solution through the fifth joint point into a sustainable medical chair, or are we going to be part of a system that is decompensating around us and we’re going to contribute to the detritus and the destruction. Okay, so let’s not get too deep into this, but this is great. So what I’m going to say is what came out of that is an articulation of sort of and Jordan Hall and I were talking about something similar in the series we did on governance, not exactly the same but they resonate with each other, which is like there’s, first of all, there has to be something about this transformation of what we most identify with that is bound up with being connected better to ourselves each other in reality. That’s one sense of the sacred right and then there’s the other sense. Right. So we may call this, this first one the enhanced religio. And then the second one you articulated, and I mean this in the way that Jordan and I were talking about is the prophetic sense not in the sense of telling the future, but trying to tell forth, so that people wake up to a kairos, so that they can be called properly to action I mean prophetic in that sense. Absolutely. Okay, so what we could talk about is how all of this right talks about the sacred in those two dimensions. Perfect. I think that’s, I think that’s a good place. And then I mean in that and then we’ll start having people in I think that’ll be our third one that you and I’ll just do and then we’ll start getting our guests in, and they are going to riff on this and jazz it and take it in places that we can’t foresee. Absolutely. And hopefully we can, we can just germinate germinate a lot. I wanted to thank you. Thank you my friend. This was wonderful. This was wonderful. You took the baton and you just ran the marathon really well with it. Well done. Thank you so much. You handed it very off nicely and I look forward to coming back and doing this again.