https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=pzndbpwJtX0
One of the things I really found striking about Tammy is like she did a very detailed picture of my daughter’s surgical wound And that’s not an easy thing to look at right because you don’t want to look at that But that also ties in with the ideas we’ve been discussing about well I think that’s the Christmas yes the ministry of the crucifix you bet right Yeah, all these images that we have the beauty of Christ wounds all these things which sounds so completely Yeah, too many people if you can understand them properly you can understand that that you have to gaze on that which most threatens So hello everyone, I’m pleased here pleased today to have with me Jonathan Pazzo and John Reveke People that most of you many of you not all of you will be familiar with I I’ve been working on a new book entitled we who wrestle with God and it’s been influenced by Jonathan’s ideas and John’s ideas and I developed an argument in part as a consequence of the public lectures I’ve been doing for the last three months trying to push my ideas farther and I I Put forward a set of propositions that I’m basing one of the book chapters on I Wrote it as an outline and then I think it’s solid I’ve been testing it when I’ve been speaking at universities as well to diverse audiences of specialists to see if they’ll object to it because I think it’s actually quite radical and I sent this group of propositions or this list of propositions to Jonathan and John a month ago about and we’ve been going back and forth and I thought I Heard Jonathan was coming to town to do a talk with John and I thought hey, that’s a good opportunity we could get together and walk through these propositions because I’d like to see if if they’re solid because If they’re solid, well, that’s good. And if they’re not I’d like to find out and so we’re gonna do this a little different This is gonna be a little different than many of the conversations I’ve had because it’ll have a bit more structure and I I want to read the propositions There’s I think about 15 of them and I want Jonathan and and John to Comment on them to Tell me where they agree to tell me where they disagree Tell me what they don’t understand and to see if I can well learn something as a consequence that’s kind of the hope and So we’ll start with this first proposition To see the world we must must prioritize our perceptions So John I’ll ask you about that first because that’s a particular I believe a particular focus of yours I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. No, it’s not that’s that’s that’s the core of my work and so the main Way I would respond to this is I would say I think the work that’s coming out from artificial intelligence and the work that’s coming out from attention Lines up with this very well I don’t have any significant disagreement with that proposition and the must part of it as well So the must I took well, let me tell you how I took the last yeah And I took it as what’s called constitutive necessity I took it to be if you are going to be a cognitive agent, then you must do this I didn’t take it to be a metaphysical necessity. I took it to be that kind of constituent. Yeah, I think it’s useful to start with What you describe as constituent necessities before you move into the realm of metaphysical exactly I think that’s a good way to argue you should all right. And so I think and I’m not gonna Recapitulate all these arguments, but a lot of work I think zeros in on the idea that the core of what makes us intelligent and The thing that we’re finding difficult to give to machines to make them artificially general intelligence is a process I call relevance realization, which is exactly I think lines up with this very well The amount of information available to you in the world is astronomically vast all the things you could pay attention to The amount of information in your long-term memory Especially if you think of all the ways it could be combined is also astronomically that the number of options of Potential lines of behavior I could move this finger this finger. I could move them. I could live like you The ways I can move that’s combinatorial explosion all of it all of it and then right and then you can also consider You know all of the options of different potential worlds You might want to consider trying to produce or moving into right? And so the point is in many different dimensions, we face combinatorial explosion and what’s What you can’t do and this is where it lines up with the must because we’re finite beings Yes, finite resources and finite time you can’t check all of that information So you can’t go and say no, that’s not relevant. That’s not relevant That memory is not relevant that will take like that’s the rest of the history of the universe, right? Right, so so we don’t know how we do it. In fact because of that in part Well, I mean, I think I think there’s getting some clues towards it, but we can talk about that later Okay, right. So the must and the prioritization on the perception side you’re fine with it has to be it has to be and But here’s the tricky thing which is The fact that we can’t check it means and this sounds almost like a Zen Cohen is the prioritization is odd When you say it sort of like prima facie. Yeah, because it means we intelligently ignore Most of the information right the prioritizing the what I want to put. Yeah, that’s a good codicilie So you’re saying that you don’t want to misinterpret the necessity for prioritization as our as something like the necessity or our ability to make a numbered list of exactly number of Possibilities that lay out in front of us because that’s actually impossible, right? So so that isn’t how we do it. However, we do it isn’t that exactly So when you when if if if you’re okay with that reading and it sounds like you are Prioritization doesn’t mean what we normally mean by prioritization where we set things out Explicit and focal and then choose right right it implicit It’s implicit and it’s self organizing and our ability to think and it’s unconscious. Yes emerges out of it We we can influence it top-down But because it is an absolute requirement for our cognition I would argue that our ability to do anything that we do consciously is ultimately dependent on it and right poses it Okay, fine. So that’s good Jonathan the only thing that I would add is You have to phrase it in a certain way. There’s no you have to have a sense But there’s a sense in with perception when we say we must prioritize our perceptions I I think the best way to understand is that perception is already prioritization is to in order to perceive that Perception is in and of itself it an act of Implicit prioritization Use it would implicit would be a good idea To avoid the idea that we are consciously doing it that in order to even perceive the world there already has to be a given hierarchy that is that is making you able to focus on anything because We would be lost in a in a wave as you know a sea of infinite details Okay, so I think that’s a good code of so and so we could also make a little technical case here quickly So part of the problem that John John referred to is that in some sense? It’s the problem of the finite confronting the infinite and so we could make a neural logical argument for that So for example when you move your eyes around or when they move around as a consequence of being directed by unconscious Structures of prioritization because that happens all the time You move your eyes around because you want to direct the high-resolution part of your visual system to whatever you’re attending to that’s the fovea and the fovea is a very small part of your retina and It’s a very high resolution part So each cell in the fovea is connected at the level of the primary visual cortex To ten thousand cells and then each of those have ten thousand connections and so if your whole vision was foveal in its In its resolution you’d have to have a skull like an alien to contain that much brain And so so so and that’s a real indication of that finitude right is that you do have Limited cognitive resources and limited means Practically and physically limited but it also means metabolically limited that the cost of running your brain is already extremely high and and so you’re gonna shepherd your available Attentional resources because they are finite and and they’re finite in no small part because they are technically metabolically Costly that all seems okay So I would add one thing to that which is I would put an emphasis on how this process has to be self-organizing Because we want to avoid For any a problem which you and I both know shows up in psychology, which is to posit the internal homunculus Yeah, that actually doesn’t explain the problem, but just shifts it the central executive is an example of this etc So we don’t we we don’t want to say that there’s someone that’s doing the prioritization because that someone is just as mysterious Right and is facing the very problem that we’re trying to explain so yeah, right the process has to be dynamic and so forth well, one of the ways I’ve Realized How that problem works is in an attempt to solve the mind-body problem because you can’t solve the mind-body problem But you can say let’s say you’re you want to Explore an idea and you decide to do that by writing an essay So then you sit down in front of the computer which is not an idea It’s actually that you’re sitting and then you move your fingers on the keyboard And so there’s a hierarchy of transformation from mind which might be the abstract intent to body and so and so that the spirit hits the body in the finger movements and then the spirit disappears in some sense Under the finger movements because you can move your fingers voluntarily But you have no idea what muscles you’re moving to do that and you can’t control the cells or anything like that Oh, I did that with my students in the lecture this morning. I was talking about This very fact that I said put up your finger Okay, bend your finger. What do you do to bend your finger? Right? That level of consciousness at that level of detail which is pretty detailed but no more than that. Yes Yes. Yeah, so that’s a mystery man that that that that localization of consciousness Between the body and part of the spirit there’s like a there’s like a what would you call it? There’s a bandwidth. There’s a bandwidth of resolution for consciousness Yeah, and why that been see the social psychologists who studied language sort of caught on to this because one of the things they realized Was that short words first of all short words tend to be old words So because as language develops words that are used a lot get more efficient But the short words also map extraordinarily well on to the self-evident level of perception and so for example a short word is cat because a Cat presents itself for some reason to our perception the species cat doesn’t and The the fur of the cat in some sense doesn’t it’s the cat. Yes, and and you can see that primary object record level recognition Basic level that’s rush. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And so you see that with babies because they get Doggie pretty damn fast and that because that’s because the language maps on to the primary domain of perception that basic level perception Quite nicely and that is associated with something like the natural bandwidth of consciousness Yeah, I would I would say that that lines up with if you rushes explanation is you know You’re getting the best trade-off between differences between category and similarities within category Right and then the question is what this best trade-off means exactly and that’s and for me that’s that’s what that would that be a little bit of I Guess a nuance I’d want to put on to the prioritization because the prioritization sounds very but sort of like an imposition Whereas I think what we’re talking about is something more like what Marlowe taught Ponte talked about when he talked about optimal gripping So what’s the correct? You know distance to look at this well It depends because if I zoom in I lose the gestalt if I zoom out I lose the detail It depends on what you want to do exactly That’s why I’m kind of attracted to pragmatism It’s like well to some degree our theories of truth need to be embedded in the practicalities of action And so is that a grippable object that I can drink from well, I want my perception to match that problem Yeah, but it doesn’t I think that it if you understand that the prioritization Let’s say that you have heaven and earth. I’m gonna use our knees mythical categories, but so you have You have heaven and earth and that It’s the way in which heaven meets earth is a is a mutual relationship, right? We always see it as a relationship of lovers you could say so it’s not the prioritization It’s in just about an imposition from above but it’s about the manner in which that which is above The the hierarchy is able to encounter the potential in which it’s we were talking about that last night So Jonathan made this funny joke last night. We were talking about Sam Harris and Sam Harris has this line of argumentation Where and he used this on me where I interpreted a biblical story and then he interpreted a recipe Yes, and he said well look at all the interpretations and that is a problem of of Semiotic drift. Yes, exactly. Well, it’s also a problem of this horizon of infinite possibility There are multiple interpretive schemes So Jonathan said he’d like to do a video where he shows that a recipe is actually necessarily embedded inside a mythological framework and we started to talk about that because imagine well the recipe implies that You need to make an edible meal that you want to make an edible meal that you’re going to serve it to family and friends That that’s part of a kind of communion that you think that’s a good thing That’s worth spending time on that serves your family and friends That’s maybe nested in something like an ethic of service to the community like there’s a whole there’s a whole network of purpose I would add more to that There’s all kinds of implicit assumptions that I can capture in a sequence of propositions procedural skills that are not completely Capturable in words and that those procedures and skills can also map on through the particular virtues and skill you know that that people are bringing to like it’s like Most things can’t be solved by a recipe and right right and yet so a recipe is a significant cognitive cultural achievement, and we don’t recognize like and and and We we we we tend to overgeneralize the things we think for which we can provide recipes This is one of them right this is an algorithm issue. Yes, exactly exactly and so there’s lots Yeah Even in the recipe itself The recipe itself you will notice that the way in which we name things in the way in which we order things will be related to a normal Prioritization hierarchy prioritization, but if you’re making chicken You’ll have the chicken and then you’ll have the spices You’ll understand that these elements that I’m adding our spices and that they’re there Let’s say something like a margin alia that I’m adding to the central meal It’s actually the very like it’s the pattern of a church actually you know where you have a movement towards the central identity that we Understand and then we have the way in which it’s complemented to other things and so even the recipe itself is like a little Cut my and also the judgment you use is like well how much spice well the answer is Well, what function is the spice going to serve and you say well? I want to add a little zest and interest to my cooking and so then you have a philosophy of zest and interest That’s associated with that because just predictable chicken isn’t good enough And maybe you want to put a little more spice on because you want to what would you say you want to? Challenge your guests a little bit in an interesting way And you’re thinking this all through and for the same reason you’d wear funny socks or a tie that has just a little bit Too much on it. You know it’s That’s actually a feature of general problem-solving like you when people are solving a problem Especially they might get the wrong frame Moderately distracting you from the central concern is an optimal way yeah So what I’m hearing both of you say is the prioritization is really a Multidimensional optimal gripping Trading up okay, well then that we can also expand on that to some degree because Multidimensional and optimal brings a lot of other concerns into it so imagine that one of the principles and and can’t can’t Move towards this with this theory of universal ethic in some sense although. I think it you know I hesitate to criticize can’t because but I Think that there’s a deeper explanation for what he observed is well. How should I treat you well? That’s a complex question, but one of the constraints is well What if we meet a hundred times? So we’re going to establish an actual relationship, so however I conduct myself in the present moment Has to be in accordance with the value hierarchy that takes into account the desirability of our mutual Interrelationship into the future and that produces a very serious series of I would say Often intrinsic constraints, so I can’t be too insulting. I can’t be too unwelcoming I have to offer you something approximating a true reciprocity for the thing not to degenerate And so and all of that and I would say that also governs how you cook for someone if you actually want to make friends So it’s like treat other people as you would like them to treat you and it’s pretty funny that that’s the intrinsic ethic in a recipe And so that’s a good that’s a that’s such a funny argument We’ll get right back to Jonathan Peugeot and John Vervecki in just a moment first We’d like to tell you about Elysium Health Founded by dr. 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Yes, exactly So I think that goes with it. Yeah, okay, so so we’ll leave that well, okay now This is the next this is a nice switch I think any system of priorities Is a structure of values and then I sneak something in an ethic so I’m kind of defining ethic as a Something approximating perhaps an internally consists like a game. It’s an internally consistent Hierarchy of value, but it’s also it’s gonna have to be iterable in the sense that we already discussed So that’s kind of what I’m defining an ethic as and then you could also think of it as something that’s embodied So when you’re watching someone on a screen in a movie say a character they embody an ethic. That’s what makes them interesting it’s a whole structure of value and they’re acting it out and it’s a system of priorities of perception and action and that’s a value structure the reason it’s a value structure is because well, what’s the difference between prioritization and value You prioritize what you value and so I think the difficulty I have is if you use the word ethic because the word Ethic is so charged with morality and also today that we’re supposed to act between each other Then I think it it can be a little bit misleading because values is great. Why is good? It seems to well, I think good is fine That is the good in the sense that there’s also a good glass which has no moral bearing at all There’s a there’s a good way to walk down the hall, which is not a moral question There’s a you know, they’re good way to fish but these are not ethical Maybe they are maybe yeah But I think that that’s maybe the little place where I would wonder about yeah So that’s a terminological problem in some sense, right? Well, it is I don’t know what do you think that it seems as the word ethic seems to imply interpersonal relationships? Yeah, the word ethic has been reduced to the moral interaction ethical. Yes. Yes, whereas Typically philosophical philosophers will use the term normativity to be a much more general term for cover for the idea that there’s a governing principle for your behavior Okay, so I’ll have to make sure I clarify that when I read about this But I was also thinking about you know, common fictional tropes in in popular culture. So If you’re watching a mafia movie one of the things that’s interesting about a mafia criminal as opposed to just your ordinary criminal is That he’s not entirely chaotic, right? He abides by the mafia code. So he’s loyal to his Yeah, he’s loyal to a code so it makes him a quasi ethic actor and I would say well the mafia Character does embody an ethic and I’m kind of struggling for a word that isn’t ethic You might disagree with the other It’s because I mean I think you can actually take this a lot further than than just a mafia person I think there’s a way that you can be a good mass murderer in the sense that you can you can You have discovered the hierarchy of values things you need to value in order to become a good mass murderer and now you’re engaging in them Towards that hierarchy of values. There is like you can say like they are Columbine killers, for example, we’re doing exactly that and most of the mass shooters. There’s a contest going on Yeah, they know about each other They’re often in fact one of them one kid who was planning to do this wrote me like six months ago He had a 50 page manifesto ready and the weapons and he watched this this YouTube video discussion I did with Warren Farrell and where we touched on this issue and he decided that there was seriously something wrong with him And that he should get some help and not do this But he was in contact with one of the people who went out and shot up a high school They’d been contact online. So he was like that far away from it. Yeah, but that’s so so there is this it’s not a You can have a chaotic criminal who’s completely unpredictable, but then you don’t have much of a plot, right? He’s not an interesting character. He’s gonna get caught really fast. Well, there’s that too, right? The far more interesting ones have a they haven’t well, I’d say they have an ethic now It’s not an ethical ethic, right? so that’s why the word ethic is difficult because you could say that ultimately what you’re gonna what’s gonna happen is that there will be a Hierarchy of value systems. Yeah, it will be more related to the good in the classical sense. That is Plato. Yeah, exactly Exactly, and this is Plato’s argument that nobody willingly does evil everybody does what they conceive to be a good in some fact Yeah, you see that in Dante you see the same is whole movement He even talks about how the people in hell everybody is there because of I’m reading the Divine Comedy. That’s wonderful. Yeah, that’s great Everybody who is there is there because of love for a good even though even if they love the good too much or they’re mistaken about Let’s say the actual ultimate value of that good Everybody moves towards a good even if you’re doing something which is completely reprehensible Yeah, the proposal that sin is actually failing to love wisely. Yeah Yeah, I have I have some problem with that view Yeah, because I think I think that happens I do think that happens and I think many of the you know I’ve talked to people like my friend Greg Hurwitz who writes thrillers and he crafts pretty evil characters and we’ve talked about that a lot An evil character with an ethic so like a misplaced love is is a very interesting character But then there’s the other sorts of characters that are more Kane like because Kane I his spirit that the spirit that’s expressed in that story his He isn’t aiming at something that’s good. He’s aiming at Getting away with lying to God. He’s aiming at getting away with making Insufficient sacrifices. He’s aiming at getting away Eventually with murder it’s not a perversion of the good and I think that we underestimate the problem of evil if we assume That it’s merely a consequence of worshipping false idols say because the idol can be so it’s like I talked to you last night about The reports that Michelle Foucault rape boys in graveyards. It’s like okay He argued even formally culturally to Abolish or at least radically reduce the age of consent and a lot of intellectuals went along with him and maybe you can have a discussion About that and what the age of consent could be and maybe you can’t there’s room for differences in opinion there, but When your pedophilia involves graveyard sex Then that’s not a misplaced good like that’s that’s that’s but why not Jordan? Why isn’t that? Pleasure is a good Right, and you’re so specific You know why the graveyard like there’s something so dark I don’t think there’s I think that’s a place that’s so dark that you can’t go there without knowing that it’s dark And I do think that I really do believe and you know I’ve done my best to study the thought of people who’ve done truly reprehensible things is that there’s a level of reprehensibility where you are going there to cause the most trouble you can and I don’t see if There’s any good left in that it’s such a tiny gonna be like that I’m really gonna be the devil’s advocate here knowing that There are some that do it better than others and some who don’t do it as well Even recognizing that the good that they’re aiming towards is is not really Transcendentally their memory has to be working their problem, right? That is the day that it’s like if I yeah, so they’re still driven by a coherent spirit Well, that’s what I think the spirit of Lucifer and this and the spirit of girth is Mephistopheles that’s that’s and the spirit of Kane. That’s a description of that ethic It does you know it is it is a coherent personality and that’s why there’s so much well and Milton as well It’s it’s there’s been an attempt to delineate the ethic of evil and and it’s not merely chaotic And the reason one of the reasons why it’s important and maybe it’s hard to see that right away But one of the reasons why it’s important is I find it important to formulate it this way the way that Dante formulated it or That Plato formulated it is that if you don’t go in this direction You end up with a dualism and then they end up acting as like two opposites Whereas there’s the more platonic way of setting it up What ends up happening is that the evil always ends up just being a perversion of the good, right? It’s parasitic. It’s a pair It’s always parasitic And so what what it does is that it makes the good truly good and it makes it all pervasive and a way in which it Can actually fill up the entire? Cosmos you know that this idea that even in the depth of hell the love of God is there like you see that in a lot Of the Christian mystic that if there is no place that is okay So let me ask you about that on the grounds of Christian theology So and I’m probably gonna mangle this and so correct me well there’s an idea that in the book of Revelation that Christ is the eternal judge but that he’s also a judge who comes back at the end of days and Separates the wheat from the chaff the damned from the saved and the implication in that book is that many are called but few are chosen the judgments pretty damn harsh and most Most what most spirits are damned most people are damned and then is that eternal or is there a? Reconciliation and so I don’t know the answer to that so that the way Christian the best way This is gonna you get this is the type thing that could actually get me in trouble But it’s like the best way to formulate it I think that we’re seeing in the Orthodox tradition right now is to say that we live in the hope of a final restoration, but that we cannot universal redemption, but we cannot posit it because You like you said there are seems to be there seem to be two traditions in the Christian world There’s a tradition of final restoration which you find in Revelation as well By the way because it says the last thing to die is death itself I’d say there’s the sense of death is thrown into the fire And so the last what exactly is that referring to the dissent in which the heavenly Jerusalem descends and in body fills up the entire world so you have these images and then you also have an image of evil being completely Let’s say cast off and those two kind of exist in a Well, it’s I was thinking this about just the other day when I was thinking about making a video address to To the Islamic world as preposterous as that might sound Because one of the things you want to do when you’re talking to people is you want to distinguish between them as of intrinsic value and redeemable in some final sense just as you are and ideas that might be possessing them that have either this misplaced good element to them or this vengeful element and so You know, you don’t want to throw to use a horrible cliche You don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater and so maybe the separation of the wheat from the chaff is a spiritual discrimination that doesn’t throw out the entire being along with the Judgment you understand it fractally then I think that that makes sense Yeah If you read like for example CS Lewis is a great example of someone who and it was going in that direction was hinting at Some things he talked about how it’s a this notion that the key to hell is hell is locked from the inside Right that no matter Even like I think CS Lewis said like even in the depth of either depth of hell if Satan wanted to repent There’s well, that’s what Milton said not but that’s not it’s like it’s not happening because that’s the role that’s in the story This is the character that helped me understand this Part of the cosmos that or the part of the way that the world is laying itself out You see that in in in some of the Syrian fathers, for example said I from the Syrian He says things like that where he says as the fire in hell is the same fire that was at Pentecost the fire in hell is the love of God and it’s and it’s and it’s it’s only that to the extent that you Just as from that form. Yeah, and you hold on to your let’s say Parasitic good that is what the fire hell well, right? Well part of that is is that as you become more divorced from let’s say what constitutes a sustainable and valid good the farther You get away from that whether it’s merely by pursuing a misplaced good or it’s by conscious design the more that Elevates itself up as the harshest possible judge that will do the most damage to your current ethic and then destabilize your whole perceptions and so that’s so interesting because as you deviate Speaking spiritually as you deviate from God He becomes more Ironical in some sense to you and more judgmental and it’s also partly because this is why the Catholic idea of Confession is isn’t what’s often pilloried to you know, people laugh Well, you’re a Catholic you can sin your whole life and on your deathbed you can repent like yeah, but you have to Face the magnitude of everything you did wrong. So repentance isn’t just well, I’m sorry It’s like you’re actually sorry and if you’ve stacked up a whole lifetime of a lifetime of sins What makes you think that you’re gonna have the moral wherewithal on your deathbed to confront that without anything? Well, it’s just absolute existential terror is so it’s there’s no easy out from that. So I mean I thought the discussion was Important and what you just said Jordan is important I For I for one who would not want immortality because when I look back at the foolishness and and the vices of my past Yeah, it’s it’s hard it’s and so People who think they could just sort of sin and mouth. I don’t mouth the repentance I don’t think that’s well, they also think they can in some sense pull one over God Yeah, but or we could we’ll abide by this rule that will never use religious language weak when we can use any other kind of language But I know I know you weren’t objecting to that. I think it’s a good principle. I’m happy. I’m happy to talk about it But I don’t Well, let me say there’s there’s something underneath the religious discussion That is sort of a central concern to me at this point And I’ll invoke caught Caught right the three critiques Right the critique of pure reason practical reason judgment, right and and and Habermas makes a great point of this I’m coming to it. I’m coming to the point which is We don’t see since caught we don’t have an integrated normativity We have three autonomous spheres of normativity Around the true the epistemic the good and the beautiful and what what what can’t did and one of the problems of modernity And this is Habermas’s point is he made a very strong case for the autonomy of each beauty is so that’s partly why you Objected in the way you did when you emailed me back exactly you I was talking about an ethic that would unite and you said well It’s differentiated true beautiful and good right my response to that would be something like well Whatever God is Fundamentally ineffable so we’ll make that you’ll make that clear to begin with But I would say that one way of thinking about the way we think about God is that God is what’s? Common to the good the true and the beautiful so this gets us into the Discussion that I think is for me Sort of the deepest levels of the phenomenology and the cognition which is I mean that Jonathan would know this is the classical doctrine the classical way of putting this is the convertible of the trend The transcendentals are convertible into each other so somehow the true and the good and and the beautiful are one but not Mathematical identity this is really important It’s not right you can write and so and it you know Aquinas wrestles with this Mac I’ve been reading Maximus by the way I think you see a reflection of that in the idea the Trinity to well of course right and and and So the issue there is And I’ve been reading DC Schindler on the capital city of reason and he talks about this he gets it from Baltazar he talks about the primacy of The primacy of beauty the centrality of goodness and the ultimacy of truth that that they they are superlative but in different ways So what he means by that is there’s a primacy to beauty and and this is a classic platonic argument If you don’t have beauty all the other normativities are not available to you So why right? I I wrote a chapter in my last book on the necessity of beauty but but I don’t understand why that why prime why primary? Because what does that say about our perception that it’s primary and so right because you don’t have to think about it Is that part of it is that you apprehend it? I don’t understand a way of thinking about it is Scari wrote a really beautiful book called beauty and how it prepares us for truth and justice and the idea so let’s Let’s take let’s take something. That’s that’s very culturally relevant and I’m something I’ve been talking about So we we are we are immersed in what recur called a hermeneutics of suspicion The hermeneutics of suspicion is that appearances are always distorting distracting deceiving us from reality That’s the hermeneutics of suspicion and the moment of truth is when you reveal The hidden cabal the conspiracy right? This is the hermeneutics of suspicion and it’s you know, and and recur’s point is we got this Freud does Uncovering and that’s all the right. Here’s what’s really going to be construction is here’s what’s really exactly everywhere now Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Now. Here’s Marla party’s point about this, right? His point is but wait the hermeneutics of that the hermeneutics of suspicion is always Dependent on this if I say that’s unreal. Oh look, I do that because I say that’s real Realization is always a comparative judgment. This is his point the so the and so does he accept the notion that there is something because one of the things you see in the Postmodern types and I was looking at Richard Rorty the work the other day and he seems to buy the postmodern idea that Everything is just a network of linguistic representation and that there is no real beyond that That’s that’s Dylan’s critique of that being semilogical reductionism All you do is transfer all the markers of reality onto properties of the text and then you you prevent the text from being subject to the very Criticisms you’re making of reality. Yeah, well that that seems credible to me. Okay, so so it was pop merlot Pawnee accepts the reality of beauty Exactly. Okay. Think about what this means if the hermeneutics of suspicion is right that Appearances distract us deceive us right there has to be something under that right and beauty is when appearances disclose reality Yeah That’s the that’s what I mean, that’s what I believe that that’s the artist I mean that’s the artist take or that’s the liturgical take or it’s the yeah the beauty of an of a church or the beauty of an icon or the it’s it’s the notion that that that God or ultimate reality or however you want to phrase it is disclosing itself to us and that appears to us as the connection between That which we encounter these these patterned beings that we encounter and what they reveal to us about the other transcendentals Mm-hmm. And well when I wrote this chapter, which is my favorite chapter in both books It’s try to make one room in your house as beautiful as possible And so it’s this sort of step behind well order your room first so that it’s just not cluttered and and idiotic and and Running at counter purposes to whatever your purposes are reflection of your internal chaos get it orderly, but that’s not good enough The next thing is see if you can make a relationship with beauty, which is really it’s it’s really people are afraid of that a because I’ve watched people try to buy art and they’re terrified of buying art and the reason is is because their choice puts their taste on display and if their taste is undeveloped then their inability to distinguish between a false appearance and The genuine reality of beauty is immediately revealed to people so they’re terrified of it But they’re also equally terrified of beauty. So let me tell you a story about this if you don’t mind I I bought some Russian impressionist paintings for my father and I liked them a lot. I this particular artist The Russian impressionist style is like the French impersonist style except it’s a lot rougher the brushstrokes are Thicker so it’s lower resolution But it’s equally beautiful in terms of palette and I have a variety of paintings if you get some distance from them They just snap into Representation is so lovely and so I sent my dad like eight of these paintings and my mom took one look at them And she said those are not coming out of the basement And so and my mom is is a conservative person. So she’s not high in openness she’s not that interested in ideas and She’s not and her aesthetic sense isn’t sophisticated now My mother has a lot of lovely attributes But but and my dad and her differ in that and so I he loved these paintings and then he made these frames for them and then he brought one up and my mom tolerated that and then he brought another one up and then she tolerated that and then like all eight of them eventually Made it upstairs and then a few years later I was there and she told me how much she loved the paintings but it really they really set her off and I think it was partly because well, if you’re Imagine you have you’re comfortable in your canonical perceptions of objects in some sense And then the impressionist come along and say, you know You could look at that whole landscape as if it was nothing but the interplay of color and that’s we forget how radical that is I mean those paintings caused riots in Paris when they were first showed impressionist paintings And that’s what my mother was reacting to it’s like, oh my god. There’s a whole different way of looking at the world I don’t want to see that and it’s an invitation to That which is beyond the triviality of your perceptions, let’s say But it’s to think that there’s nothing about that that’s worth being frightened of or challenging You don’t understand conservatives if you don’t see that so but in terms of in terms of Judy one of the things that also that especially now you can one of the the problems or the The way the beauty can kind of overwhelm us is that we feel as if if we give ourselves We we’re afraid of the the suspicion the hermeneutics of suspicion We’re afraid that if we we see reality discloses itself to us and we can see the connection between That which is appearing to me and some Something behind it then I’m afraid that if I jump if I make that leap then I’ll be betrayed You know that or that it will write that it won’t turn out Sometimes it’s not like so there are there is it is possible to to be tricked by By appearance and this gets you to to Hans, you know saving beauty his critique of what you see going on right now Is he he argues if you read ancient texts if you read Plotinus one of the features They’ll say about beauty is it striking and disturbing and disrupting. Mm-hmm, right? I want to come back to that about the the transformative aspect of truth But but right the transformative theory of truth But and Han talks about know what we’ve done Right and he talks about in other books too is we’ve reduced we try to reduce the beautiful to the smooth Which is the the ease at which we can consume something like the smooth out Yeah, cover of a car exactly right one pixel resolution. Yes. Yes, and and and and because Because what that does is it gives you and I’ll use this word deliberately the veneer of unity Yeah, but while protecting you from the whole that suspicion. Yeah, right you see that So what we do is and then he says in pornography is the primary example of that because what you do is you remove all threat all mystery all otherness of from the person so there’s no way they can strike you or disturb you there’s no Right. Yes, exactly. And the and so pornography is an example of the smooth completely overtaking the beautiful and being misunderstood as beautiful But if that’s if you if you gentlemen are in agreement with that what that means That’s my answer to why the primacy of beauty because if you do not get that ability To and I want to use this word and we’re in front. Sorry, please go ahead then I’ll ask Yeah, I want to say through the way I’m saying like through my glasses Beyond and by means of if we can’t properly get a moment where we can see through appearance into reality We are locked Into solipsism and skepticism. You need a primary and if you do it if you do it rather than it is Called to you then you are trapped But you need you need something that calls you from beyond appearances So that you can properly align appearances to reality and you realize that’s why the primacy is that the ontological Calling you out of epistemology. I Would argue that that’s Plato’s argument for what how the beauty so when you say, okay, so I’ve thought thought a lot about the relationship between love and truth and I think love is primary and the truth is the handmaiden of Love in some sense, but but so there’s a primacy there I would say the primacy of love but you’re making an argument for the primacy of beauty and so are they contradictory? No, no, no, no, no, not at all because Plato’s view of love and you have to be careful because Plato is taking the Greek notion of Eros and he’s trying to bend it And I think he’s trying to bend it towards what the Christians are gonna eventually talk about in Agape, right? Okay, so take that as a caveat on what I’m saying, but nevertheless what’s going on, right is Plato says no No, no, what love is is that you are called to beauty Let me let me let me just try and show you give me a sec because there’s a connection. Yeah, okay So a lot this will sound like where’s he took out of left field, but like truth rationality Most of the cognitive biases. In fact, there’s a growing argument that a lot of the cognitive biases confirmation bias But a lot of them are actually versions aspects of the my side bias Ego-centrism I won’t make that argument here. I think it’s a good argument But let’s say even if it’s only partially true. This is an important point and Spinoza got this right this orientation Self-relevance how things are relevant to me Right that sort of fundamental ego centrism a fundamental way in which you’re prioritizing Your perception on the world, right? You can’t reason your way out of that but Nosa the most logical of the philosopher says no No, the only thing that will invert the arrow of relevance is love This is Murdoch’s point. Love is when you recognize something other than yourself is real, right? Okay, so so let’s okay let me ask you about that because I’ve been thinking about the idea of being selfish Yes, you know while psychopaths are selfish, but they also betray themselves Yes, because psychopaths don’t learn from experience and they doom their future selves Yeah, and so I kind of wonder if that love that re lifts you out of This self orientation what it does in some sense is that it’s the way you see the world if you see Beyond this narrow selfishness because I don’t really think there’s any difference technically in me In me taking care of the multitude of future selves that I will become and me treating you properly I totally agree. I think your relationship to your future self is ultimately an agapic relationship And I think that’s the only way you can deal with a lot of empirical research. Okay, so you do you do yes Oh, why the empirical research because I think the empirical research shows that I mentioned it in the Cambridge talk that I sent you the right what if you do this This is one instance among many experiments you go into a bunch of Academics at a university the people who are supposed to be the best at taking data and processing it you present them with all The evidence that they should start saving for their retirement right now, right and they won’t do it You come back six months later. They will they will they you ask them at the time Is this argument a solid argument great evidence? Yeah, come back to the point Great evidence come back six months have they changed not at all the behaviors behavioral therapists know that perfectly well, right? Yeah, but so if you but if you do the following you say I want you to Imagine your future self as a family member that you love and care about right, right. They will start to save and More importantly the vividness of that imagery predicts how well that’s so cool Look, you know this this program that we worked on future authoring programs Well, it’s predicated on the idea of developing a love for your future self So so it’s an exercise is it’s a real sense. It’s like here and it’s the ethic that’s underneath it although this wasn’t particularly conscious in my mind when I built it was Knock and the door will open. It’s like, okay Let’s play a game you get to have What you want and need but the rule is first of all you have to accept it and second of all you have to specify It and so but let’s just play it as a game Yeah, if you could if you could envision a future that would justify your suffering That’s a really good way of thinking about it justify your suffering What would that entail and then people and then I make it practical? It’s like well, what do you want for an intimate relationship? How do you want to treat your family members? What sort of job or career like I break it into seven practicalities You know to nail it down to the ground and I do believe that see one of the things we found we thought well What predicts whether or not this works because it really works We dropped the dropout rate of young men at Mohawk College 50% It should it should what it did Yes, and it had the biggest effect on those who were doing the worst which is not very common for psychological interventions But one the only thing we could find Content wise that predicted how well it would work was number of words written And so my sense was well that just was an index a rough index of how much thought they put into it and how vividly And then it would be did they treat their future self with some love like genuinely and then did they differentiate that so it wasn’t Just an abstract mountaintop conceptualization so but let’s add one wrinkle that brings the beauty thing back because you go back and ask them Why didn’t you pay attention to your future self? Before well sometimes people don’t think they could they have no idea that that’s even a possibility that’s I don’t deny that Yeah, but overwhelmingly people said I don’t want to look at that person because that’s me old and ugly They know they’re afraid of it. Yeah, and it’s an aesthetic judgment It’s an aesthetic judgment and what you have to do is get them to reform it But what if that’s an old it’s a shallow aesthetic judge. Yes, that’s right exactly my wife She she she does portraits and one of the things that’s really interesting about my wife’s art is she will look at She’s like Goya although, you know, yes Goya obviously but one of the things I really found striking about Tammy is like she did a very detailed picture of my Daughter’s surgical wound and that’s not an easy thing to look at right because you don’t want to look at that but that also ties in with the ideas we’ve been discussing about the fact that so in the story of Exodus when God Tells Moses how to stop the Israelites from being bitten by poisonous snakes he insists that they have to look at what’s poisoning them and Well, I think that’s the question is yes the mystery of the crucifix you met right? Yeah, all these images that we have like the beauty of Christ wounds all these things which sounds so completely Pathological yeah to many people if you can understand them properly you can understand that that you have to gaze on that which most threatens You yeah, there’s a right there’s a verse and then then you say well this inadequacy of vulnerability characterizes old age That’s a terror in that. Yeah, and so people won’t go there, right? But you what you do is you replace the shallow aesthetic. Mm-hmm, right? Don’t let the appearances Right, right distract you right let the experiences disclose What if that was an old family member right? All right, look through and see that those appearances. Yeah are that’s somebody who’s been there right that you care about someone Exactly and so you beautify them so you love them and the love and the beauty they reinforce each other So for me to answer your question, right? The the you’re saying the primacy of love and I think you ultimately mean a Gopik love. Mm-hmm that and beauty if you’re incapable of Turning the arrow of relevance and saying I want that to exist rather than I want that to exist for me. Mm-hmm Right That’s what beauty does and that’s also the central move. I would argue in love Okay, so do we do we want to detour into the true and it’s beautiful true and beautiful true and the good the good Do you have something equally revealing to say about the good and the true? Yeah, I do Okay Well, let’s let’s let’s let’s go there and then we’ll continue through this because I thought that was really useful Well, and I would like this if I would request that we return back to that whatever this discourse whatever I love following the logos. That’s the that I Aspire to be like soccer like a true Christian Like a true follower of Socrates, right? Right, and but I’m hoping that in this in this deal logos If we if we get into the depths of the true the good and the beautiful that we can address my criticism of you Yep, which is I’m making a criticism on behalf of the of the Enlightenment and cost. Yes. Yes, which is the fracturing of the normativities into three autonomous spheres. Yeah, and this argument if it’s gonna go forward needs something that would Yeah, I see. I see You bet. Yeah, is that okay with you? Yeah Okay, so for me The the thing I want to say first about about the good is There’s two readings to make about about this And one is and this is what the Enlightenment did we can redo and Jonathan’s already challenged this but we can reduce the ethical We can sort we can reduce the good to the ethical good so that when we’re talking about goodness We’re asking how moral a person is in that standard modern meaning, right? now the what Plato argues is that is actually a derivative form of goodness. Mm-hmm. It’s kind of an algorithmic form It’s kind of an algorithmic form But so here’s the central sort of at least I would argue now, of course They’re gonna be ten thousand Platonists will disagree with everything I say because Plato’s been around so long, right? But I think I could make a good case and I think this lines up with the best book I’ve ever read on Plato DC Schindler’s Plato’s critique of impure reason the best book hands down my whole life DC Schindler’s astonishing, but here’s here’s a proposal right We and you can you can see date cart wrestling with this in the Enlightenment and sort of failing we need Intelligibility to be wedded to reality right the structures of intelligibility have to be Not identical to because that’s impossible you try idealism that fails I’m sorry that was too fast for some people, but I’ll just let that go. But so we The map has to correspond to the territory correspond. It has to there has to be a conformity There has to be a contact and a wedding for them together There can’t be a space between them like there is between map and territory because soon as there’s a space There’s what guarantees and what manages the space and at some point this is this is Taylor’s point You need a contact epistemology not right, right? Okay, right. So, you know, there’s nothing you can do right That will show me or give me an argument for why? Intelligibility should map should conform that way to reality because what you’ll do is right locked in right? And this is what Plato saw right? But what what Plato is basically saying is there is it’s like if I can put it this way I’ll try and put it in a way that’s more narrative It’s like there’s a perpetual promise that Intelligibility will track reality and that we find that to be inexhaustibly the case But there’s no argument we can give that will ultimately explain that because every argument presupposes it Does that track as I’m not sure why the last part of that is true? Although I agree that it’s true So and I and what’s running around in the back of my head while you’re laying that out is I think well in some sense That’s the problem that evolution solves in a technical sense So, you know, let’s say a mosquito lays a million eggs in its lifetime And so that’s a million mosquitoes whose epistemology better track ontology, but almost none of them do so they all die Yes, and so that that that mapping I think because it’s philosophically important impossible in some sense I think that the process of evolution is actually what solves that and then our cognitive architecture emerges out of that evolved base And so it’s taken 3.5 billion years to produce the solutions that we have to mapping Intelligibility on to I totally agree with you about this. I So let me agree and then tell you why I think it was deeper. Yeah, okay So just very quickly the the I think relevance realization basically does that same thing that evolution does it has this It’s a self-organizing system in which you would introduce variation and then selection your attention is doing it right now There’s a there’s a drive to open up mind wander very and right and what you’re doing is constantly evolving your fitness your optimal gripping So I’m word some end which is the dialogue of the conversation. Yes. Yeah, and whatever that’s embedded in exactly. Yeah, right Yeah, okay, you’re doing this Yeah, and there’s a space of associations beside what you’re doing But you know what I’m saying is evolution actually presupposes an ontology in which that will work Right, right, right. So that’s right. Okay, right. Okay, so that you should have something to say But we talked about we’ve talked about that before like when we when we did that thing on Genesis You talk about how it’s this idea of a psychic projection but the idea that let’s say you on example could imagine that you could psychically project patterns and and onto the world means that it presupposes that The same problem I mean that those patterns are presupposed in the manner in which the world exists for that even be right in the historians of science I’ve read who an attempt to embed the development of science in a Judeo-Christian ethic by necessity also, you know giving obeisance, let’s say to the influence of the Enlightenment say that the notion that There was a logos There’s an ontological logos as well as an epistemological logos was that Precondition for the development of the scientific attitude and I think that’s true Yes, and I think and that’s the that’s the cornerstone of ancient epistemology You don’t ask the question how from this the the workings of my mind to I get to the ontology you ask the question Well, whatever knowledge there is presupposes intelligibility, right? And then I asked I have to ask what must the world be like such that that intelligibility reliably exists It’s a very different orientation. That’s for sure. Okay, so but let’s take it that this is at least a plausible argument the promise that intelligibility is wedded to Reality and there and that we can realize it through something like relevance realization cognitively or Biologically adaptivity through evolution, right? That promise is continually made but we can give no explanation for it Because given what we’ve just said every attempt to explain it presupposes it as a fundamental thing Okay, that seems just fine to me the fact that the promise is in exhaustively kept is the good Hmm is that the good that is referred to in Genesis when God uses the the logos to derive Habitable order out of chaos well says it is good. I like the same idea I hope so. I mean For me, that’s what Plato means when he talks about how the good is even beyond being Because the good makes possible the intelligibility of reality. Okay. Well, that’s kind of what I’m trying to also drive out in this Proposition and that’s what I meant that I hope you took it as a compliment when I said I think this is a neoplatonic argument you’re making You’re you’re doing a lot of the similar moves. Okay. Now the thing I have is right. So that’s the good and And and then is there a way of and I think Jonathan will have some important things. So that’s like the a priori structure of being before there is there’s actually beings It’s like there’s it’s there’s an it’s an it is a there’s a potential intelligibility Even for the finite in relation to the infinite Exactly, because if and what you can do is you can reject that fundamental goodness and I notice I can’t give you an argument To get you back into it But if you reject that fundamental goodness you will be you will be you and you you see Descartes wrestling with this because he tries to Get sort of stuck inside the cogito, right? And he’s right and and he’s we I think therefore I am right and he realizes Oh Oh, I could be trapped in solipsism and skepticism. And what does he do? He says, oh no, no There must be a God that guarantees that the intelligibility the clear and distinct ideas map onto reality He realizes he needs something outside of the argument in order to guarantee that fundamental goodness that makes everything else possible But then what he does is he creates famously a circular argument for that God And so he tries to make an argument for it, but he ends up presupposing the very thing This is what I mean by our apprehension of it is is not something that is produced in Ferentially it is an apprehension of a fund this fundamental goodness And I can’t I can’t give you an argument or an evidence or evidence for now. I think I Think ethical goodness is dependent on and reflective of at times exemplary of that Ontological of you’ll allow me goodness Don’t you think that that’s the reason why in so many traditions the infinite is always referred to negatively like the whole notion of negative Theology or oh, that’s interesting. Say more. Well the idea that that If you want to express that which is which is the source of being you end up having it almost and it empties itself Yes, it is empties itself of all characteristics While recognizing that it is at the same time this the summation of all care It’s like the good ultimately is that which everything is culminating to and then it’s a kind of giving away into something Which is always more you think that’s related to that a prior acceptance of the of the existence of the relationship between intelligence and and being well that it’s That this thing that guarantees that has the is being pointed at to by these processes. I think so I’ve been thinking about I’ve been thinking I don’t know I can take you on this this experiment that I’ve talked about This idea that that identity is kinetic that identity always kind of empties itself into more so I You always use the example of an object like you have a say yet You have a cup and then you have you have a certain level you have different aspects of the cup Yeah, so in order for it to reach its good all these elements in order for them to reach its good They have to kind of they have to give themselves into something which cannot be found at the level of their elements So so what you end up having is you have hierarchies of beings that that are moving towards that identity But as they reach their highest point they actually empty themselves into the higher identity Then you move up and then you end up with something that is beyond being ultimate Okay, so let me try something to you because that might start to sow the good and the true and the beautiful together I’ve been doing a lot on Marrying Maro Ponte with Plato and John roots and other people are doing this But here like that thing you just pointed out so Maro Ponte’s point is you never you can never completely see any object So let’s just talk because the number of right the number of just even Perceptual aspects is on which is what Casso was doing Yeah, that’s right. And then of course then there’s the imaginal aspects I can also all the functions that are implicit in this all the use like you right and then so one of the things I’ve been arguing Is that if you take a look at Plato the I DOS originally meant the look of a thing but he didn’t mean the look He meant something like the aspect and here’s here’s what the like so You have all of these aspects and they’re unfolding inexhaustibly. There’s a through but they don’t unfold chaotically There is a coherent through line that runs through them Right, you get a sense of as you said the identity, but here’s the thing that through line is not itself an aspect No, it can’t be can because if you’re making a fundamental it’s an a priori necessity right and it runs through it but notice how right first of all that’s starting to get us into the right a Sense of the goodness because that’s the promise being kept the true line is the promise being kept It’s also a different notion of truth This is something I want to talk about later if we get a chance truth as this as al-atheia as disclosure rather than as correspondence But notice first of all how that corresponds to beauty and think about what he’s doing with the paintings She’s right because she’s she’s don’t step don’t stop at this one aspect as the appearance But open it up open up all and see and fulfill the promise Yeah, the ass even in something horrible. Yes. Yes But maybe that’s dependent on your willingness to gaze which is the story of Exodus and and the bronze serpent Well, and and I would say the crucifixion as well That’s really interesting because Han talks about we’ve lost the ability to linger with things and that’s why we can no longer You know if chimps if chimps are in the jungle and they come across a decent-sized snake They’ll stand at a distance from it But they will gaze at it for up to 24 hours and they have a particular cry Which which is a snake Ra that’s the name of the cry which they utter that brings other chimps and so they hate snakes, right? Innately if you show a rubber snake to a chimp that’s never seen one he’ll hit the ceiling But then he’ll look and so they’re out there gazing on the snake It’s part of they’re fascinated by it despite the fact that it’s also simultaneously threatening. Yes And so I think that there’s increasing evidence for for something like awe. It’s awe definitely Well, that’s manifest in pilot erection and then okay But think about what our does all is a kind of love and right the things are does which is really interesting It’s one of the few Instances where people reliably report a sense of the shrinkage of the self that is nevertheless has a positive element to it Yeah, even though they’re terrified. Yeah, I want to they want to follow it through they want to go into Well, I think that’s partly so imagine this so so imagine awe Imagine pilot erection now so a cat puffs up and you know, that’s the hair standing up in the back here Yeah, what’s the same instinct it is? I’m doing work on this with a student of mine right now and and how we’ve Exapted the pile erection into a static. Yeah experience, right? Okay. So imagine this now You know, you’re out you look at the night sky and it’s it’s awe inspiring And so there’s also a call to imitate there Yeah, so you see the image of Mary for example with her foot on the serpent and her head in the stars Well, she’s looking at the stars and she’s so that’s the cosmic realm And now she’s awestruck by that vision and then she in order to adapt to that vision of the infinite you have to imitate that which instills the awe and that’s represented by her foot on the serpent Oh, that’s cool. Yes, that’s for sure. That’s what you know There’s there’s literally hundreds of Renaissance images of that Mary head in the stars foot on the serpent And I thought I’ve been thinking through this awe issue for and it has this interesting association with beauty You can imagine that when a cat dances sideways in pile erect, it’s trying to look larger It’s trying to look as if it can overcome the predator. Well, that’s what all does to us is that when we’ve historically evolutionarily what we did when we felt awe in the face of a predator is we we felt compelled to Imitate the predator so that we could become ferocious enough to overcome the predator And so that’s that call to an expanded being that you would associate for example with development of the shadow It’s like when you look at something brutal, you know that really terrifies you it has to call that Capacity for predatory behavior out of it that monstrous capacity now It should be integrated into the kind of ethic that we’re describing but you’re not good if you’re harmless It’s way more than that and that awe in the face of what’s catastrophic is a call to be More than the catastrophic thing which certainly makes you monstrous in a sense. Well, that’s not really interesting because because the I mean, it’s also It’s it also produces sort of increased seeking of others Which makes sense is one of the ways we can make ourself band together band together And then and then that seems to get exacted into right? I don’t have to be big but I can connect or participate in something right, right? And then you get reverence as opposed to just raw. Ah, what’s really interesting just to supplement your argument And this is work. I’m doing with song you Chen If you like they they have a they have a device now that will actually cause people to have chills the chills up and down There’s fine run cold water up and down in the right way What you do and what you can do is you can really enhance people’s aesthetic experience But even more basically you get people to listen like to the same passage of music and you put one group of people in a slightly cooler room They will have a more powerful aesthetic experience of them because it facilitates pilot erection. Exactly. That’s so cool Yeah I was so thrilled about this notion of pilot erection being associated with the instinct to imitate because you know to put those two things Together it’s like well, what do you do in the face of the predator? Well, one is run away The other is become super ordinate to the predator and then you might say well What’s the worst possible predator which I think is part of the Judeo-Christian narrative because we’re trying to spess because the snake in the garden Is Satan it’s like well, what’s the worst predator? It’s not the snake bad as snakes are it’s like a super snake It’s a meta snake It’s the sum total of everything that threatens you and so that calls you to be more than that whatever that is I don’t know a lot about the biology but biology, but do the animals experience this pilot erection in with let’s say Member of their own species that is bigger or more Dominating sure. Yes, they do sure and we also have some preliminary and it’s at the graphics They have to be careful with it that they they do something that looks like ah, you’ll get a monkey You’ve got the snake thing But there’s also a video like of a macaque monkey and it goes out onto a precipice Which is a little bit dangerous to watch a sunrise not doing anything. I’m just sits there Well, you know monkeys will look longer if you show them photos of of their troop They gaze longer at the high status individuals as well Yes and if they are encountering a high status individual who could take them out in some sense but not merely as an expression of Power as the primatologists insist then they do show pilot erection in response to the threat from the superior But they’re also fascinated by it and you can imagine that part of that Fascination is the locking of their attention onto what they could become right because that’s what at least at least that it interests me more in the sense of beauty right? Yes, where it is it is this sense of Shrinking in front of something in the sense feeling that you’re smaller than that and then this desire to move into it or contact imitation as a kind of internalization a kind of being wedding yourself to someone yeah, you know that’s a form of worship primary form of worship, right because you You worship what you you imitate what you worship they’re the same thing and so, okay. Well, that was fun So shall we move to the next one? I think so. I’m getting a sense of how The true the good and the beautiful could be potentially integrated Because I think that’s a necessary requirement for this argument and notice how we are moving outside of we didn’t talk about true We can talk about that later. Yeah, we’re moving outside of sort of standard ways of talking about At least goodness and beauty here and I think there’s similar ways of doing it a truth that could actually get us back to something that Yeah, what’s nice to put the biological twist on it, too I’d wanted to run one thing before we move on which is that the way that I tend to think about it in terms of When we talked about the idea of the true line, yes, I think that’s the Eidos I think that’s what the form is in Plato. Well, it isn’t it isn’t what Aristotle thought it was It isn’t just a specificity right of necessary and sufficient conditions So would you feel comfortable with the notion that it’s the manner in which the multiplicity is gathered? It’s the logos right and so it actually gathers Multiplicity don’t listen to my words listen to the logos that gathers them together. All things are one right Heraclitus Well, so then what we would presume provisionally is that the thing that unites the true the good the beautiful is the logos now We shouldn’t make the presumption of knowing that we understand what that logos is We’ve got some hints about what it is, but we can’t characterize it entirely. Is that a reasonable proposition in your estimation? I think so I think in especially if we’re careful to do what you did before which is we have We have a dipolar way of invoking the logos the logos is both the gathering Right the through lining if I can put it that way, but it is also Right, right It is also the ontological reality that affords that happening It’s it’s the fact that I can’t exhaust it right no matter how far I push it so whatever through line I have is at most a Signification or a symbol of the fact that it’s inexhaustible Did that make sense what I’m trying to say? What do you know? I’m not trying to stand that that the through line is the the significant that Inexhaustible in the manner in which it points up or in the manner in which it inexhaustible like this or an exhaustible the manner in which it’s the fact that that intelligibility between between representation and actuality Remains regardless of how far you push yeah Okay, so that would sort of be like the notion that the universe is logical Logos space essentially, but and that there’s that we’re not going to run out of that But it’s not going to be logical in the modern sense right of a complete system even though go to you can’t reduce it to an algorithm Exactly exactly. So the see this is what I mean by saying I don’t think of the form as Like a standard Aristotelian essence at least how it’s been taught Yeah to me which is a set of necessary and sufficient conditions like the low There’s no becoming in that is there there’s just being well right because becoming implies Transformation of something that’s algorithmic but in a but in a manner that’s not That doesn’t escape from the logos and I mean, I think that’s how reality constitutes itself And that’s probably that’s part of the solution to the scandal of induction It’s like no you can’t predict with a hundred percent certainty what’s going to happen next, but What will happen next despite its unpredictability like the next note in a symphony is still predictable exactly This is what I mean about the good The reason why Hume couldn’t deal with the problem of reduction is it requires the apprehension of the good Which is the promise that this is not going to be logical identity, but nevertheless it is going to be inexhaustibly coherent It’s going to remain beautiful and in there in that sense. It’s always going to be Something right to which so it’s not elder It’s not reducible to an algorithm, but that doesn’t mean what you said it that doesn’t mean it’s not habitable doesn’t mean it’s not good It doesn’t mean it’s not coherent exactly right, right And you’re an example the the music which John Roussin used the musicality of intelligibility as I think the best way to think about Yeah, I think so too. I think that’s actually I actually think that’s why we like music Yes, because I think that music is actually the most Representational art form because for a variety of reasons first of all, we don’t see objects We see patterns and we interpret some patterns as objects. So patterns are primary Then we’re looking for the harmonious interplay of patterns and then it’s not It’s not strictly a causal relationship because the music is governed by principles, but it’s not formally predictable Otherwise it gets boring. Exactly. Right. So you see that I think most particularly I’ve experienced that most particularly with Bach’s Brandenburg concertos which have this amazing Continual unfolding that’s so logical. It almost appears mathematical and yet it’s unpredictable and you don’t know where it’s gonna go And it goes there and you think man that just that’s just right So yeah, and so you could say that you could say that about pretty much everything that exists That is that I like the glass because it’s just easy So so the the idea is that there is a through line in this glass and but the through line goes through potentiality Which is indefinite it is I can encounter a million glasses in my life and they will all be different That’s like the realm of musical possibility It’s all but they all end up being predictable to certain extent once I Grasp it like when I see the glass I recognize it But I couldn’t have predicted that this is the glass that would exist There’s a there’s a kind of potentiality which which is maintained within the identity of the glass but is not it’s inexhaustible Right and when you see that when you apprehend that and this is scary point This is being struck by beauty you see the tree and it’s somehow it’s like every other tree you’ve seen and yet it’s not Reminds you of The I does it reminds you of just what you said and that’s love that I think that that’s love too Like in love in the sense that I’ve often said love is the capacity for unity and multiplicity to exist that’s what love is right that is that I I Recognize something of you that we have in common But I also recognize you’re completely separate for me That is in the both are valued those both have to coexist for love to be real it has to be Deparation well not to give the devil is due you know I would say that’s the kernel of good that the diversity types are pushing You know we need to recognize the utility of multiplicity It’s like fair enough the the problem with that a problem with that is well. Yeah, but what’s where’s the unity here? Where’s the unity? It’s all diversity. It can’t be all diversity because then all we do we’re in conflict So and we tend to have a we tend to be the modern world had tends towards radical they tend to to want to radical Change unity to uniformity and then have this kind of crazy exploded multiplicity whereas the real this kind of natural relationship between between otherness is Exactly this both recognizing what we have in common and at the same time being kind of Fascinated and attracted to that which we have well you think about the reason this conversation works is because we have grounds for commonality in our understanding But that would be sterile without the multiplicity because we would just run over the same territory And so you know we hope we aim towards the same thing enough so that we can communicate but I wouldn’t like it at all if You didn’t each of you didn’t bring something to bear on the discussion that I’m incapable of bringing to bear on it so the the last thing I want to bring up is of course, I mean people are gonna say I’m Jesus muggling, but There’s that’s that’s the that’s the the reason one of the reasons are where we can understand that in Christianity The Trinity is seen as the infinite is the image of the infinite that we have is is a contradictory possibility of Absolute unity and absolute multiplicity and so we just throw those two up at the same time and we say the infinite is Absolutely multiple and absolutely one and you cannot it without contradiction and you cannot totally That you can’t reconcile that completely because that is ultimately The it’s a problem which fractally appears everywhere anyways because everything is always Everything in the world has something in common with everything else Whether you know if it’s just being itself, but it also necessarily must be different for the difference to the strong There’s goodman argument every object is infinitely similar and if right and right which is Restatement of the problem of perception itself. Yes, like well, you’ve seen a glass. Yes, but you haven’t seen this glass Well, how much difference is there is well, there’s an infinite number of differences as it turns out All right. So this is a this is a this is quite a switch here, and I think this is a radical proposition The maybe not because once you hear it you think well, yes, and then you think well that’s self-evidence like yeah Well, not so not so quick here the description of a structure of values or an ethic Subject to the codicils that we’ve already added or set of priorities is a narrative. So the description of a system of Perceptual prioritizations and actions is a narrative What do you think the description that could be it could also be representation in image? It wouldn’t have to be a verbal Imagistic or verbal description that is what we regard as a narrative So this is what I I wanted to again challenge you on and it sort of overlaps with the discussion We’ve having about the true and the good and beautiful because I think there are Three three different dimensions by which we organize intelligibility So there’s the narrative The example I use is video games and and there’s a reason why people are doing the virtual Exodus They’re preferring video games over the real world because of the dimensions that are found in video games So one is a narrative and the narrative they belong to clearly that’s one of the things so no total agreement that there’s two other features That are deeply meaningful right to them not Demantic but meaning in life meaningful to write one is a nomological order There’s a set of rules that they understand that makes sense of that world So then they can move around in that world with confidence because if they have a narrative But it doesn’t it isn’t undergirded by an okay is that a reflection in the video game of the same through line and and Mapping of intelligibility onto ontology within the I think the nomological, but it’s a simpler world Yes, so they can establish that first exactly so you’re saying Okay, so it’s a slightly different argument perhaps because I said well a narrative is a description of an ethic and you say there’s more than There’s more ways that the world needs to be apprehended than the purely narrative Yes, and I think that’s fine But does that bear on the argument that the description of an ethic is a narrative? No, because we also describe other ways in which we prioritize our Perceptions in things that aren’t narratives that are normal logical That’s what we call a scientific theory the theory of evolution right is not it is not a narrative It’s a description of the way things unfold or let’s say say Newton’s laws Newton’s laws are not narrative in any fashion, but okay, so let me push back on that fair enough Fair enough and then you could say well a set of mathematical axioms and and the Operations that are derived from the axioms is also not a narrative But so and fair enough so then I would say and this will get us into discussion about science later Is the intelligibility and the attraction of those non narrative descriptions of the world? dependent on their being Nested inside a narrative, but see and so here’s where I’m going to answer you back I’m going to say they mutually they reciprocally require each other just like what we were doing with the true Okay, so that that then okay fine So is that the same thing as narrative in the scientific description mutually requiring each other right? But you can’t reduce the one to the either to the you can’t raise one Okay, you can’t reduce the normal logical to the narrative or the narrative to the normal logical That’s why that’s what I was trying to get at three dimensions almost like a Cartesian graph with three dimensions, right? Okay, you can’t reduce if I remove well because I suppose if you do that to you run into the postmodern trap Which is that there’s nothing but the narrative intelligibility. There’s nothing but the narrative There has to yes and there also has to be something there has to be a space within which we can compare narratives move between narratives And learn right is right and there has to be something that allows us to override narrative bias You know the research on narrative bias. It’s powerful. It’s one of our most powerful bias There has to be something that can kick us out of the narrative bias so but I think okay the way that that’s the way that I would phrase it is myself is that The reason why we tend to think or like even the way that I presented is that the priority of narrative is because Narrative is the embodied manner in which we engage with a structural value That is it’s the way that we engage in a structural value. And so because because we See a disk and usually it has a narrative that embodied pattern is a description of the embodied pattern. I Think that it I think that it’s because I don’t know if it’s a story if you act it out I don’t know if it’s a story until it’s a representation of a pattern of actions because otherwise it’s it’s more like a pattern of behavior You know like so for example, imagine you watched wolves interactive. Yeah, you could say well It’s as if they’re following the following narrative rules But they’re not because they don’t have it’s not narrative. It’s a pattern in their behavior, right? But if for the same reason that that it’s the through line Like for the same reason that you can’t see the glass from the elements of the glass It doesn’t mean that the glassness like the identity of the glass has a causal relationship to its element It’s just not a call. It’s not that a mechanical causal relationship. It’s a the causal of identity It’s it and so that the narrative or let’s say the pattern of behavior is causal from above you could say Because it’s that the way in which you recognize that the behavior is a pattern in the first place, right? Okay, I want to push back on you. I know you have to This is one of the areas where we we kind of don’t totally agree That’s good because I Well, this is a real mystery this problem because it is the relationship between science and the narrative of meaning It’s a relationship between ontology and epistemology Or between description and value. I mean, so it’s no wonder that this is causing, you know a little bit of trouble I want to throw in one more dimension, which is right, which is you can also level up in the game There’s a way in there’s a dimension. That’s not a narrative It’s an act of self-transcendence, right? I call That you can scale yes That’s a quidditch by the way That’s what rolling represented with quidditch because there’s a game in a meta game Oh, if you win the meta game, you also win the game, right? Okay, but not vice versa, which is very it’s so smart so You do this turn you’ll just throw out these observations that are like I was even worse than that Players are chasing is the round chaos of alchemy that contains all the potential of the world, right? And it’s also the spirit of mercury. I like it’s like I don’t know how she did that It’s just beyond belief that she managed that I don’t I really don’t It’s like if you get if you the way to understand it like in terms of a glass would be like once you grasp the logos This is the same maximus way of speaking to once you grasp the logos Then you you are able to you’ve captured all the rules and everything else And once you understand what a glass is, then you don’t have to you can recognize every glass in the entire world It’s like it’s such a massive power. You overcome the entire game through getting this one thing Which is like which is often image as a seed or as a golden ball or as something sparkling Which is which you represent like in the world, but is ultimately pointing above it. Well, that’s part perhaps that’s a Reflected in the insistence that Adam is to name all the animals right in in in the in the story of Adam and Eve because that’s obviously kept in the narrative for a reason and it has to do with the power that Naming and subduing in the sense that you’ve described which is the also simultaneous imposition of a hierarchy of Categorization that goes along with naming that gives you a grip on the world and that that grip is associated with the moral necessity Necessity and requirement in that story. It’s for me the nomological dimension is the naming dimension That’s what science does broadly construed and that’s different from telling a story Naming things is different from telling a story. So all but ultimately this is where this is where I kind of come back again Not go too far to this because we’ve been through this from down this path before but so ultimately because We are not disembodied beings like this is so science this type of nomological order is Taken from a position where I am as I see the nomological order I have to climb the yes the ladder and so and Climb especially most narratives always have a sense of this is Moses on the mountain again. Yes Yes But there’s also there’s that’s why the narrative is always this like almost all narratives are that it’s you notice the difference And once you notice the distance and when you notice the distance then you have to reestablish a connection with that With which you’re distant because you don’t need an ethic unless you notice the difference You just I mean you don’t need at least you don’t need an explicit ethic You don’t have to why not unless you notice the difference because you don’t have to tell someone how to go downstairs Unless they can’t do it You’re going you don’t you don’t have a you don’t have an explicit set of rules Okay, so there has to be there has to be an objection there has to be a problem So st. Paul says something like okay, the law is written on the human heart, which means that it doesn’t mean all the laws are written Extensively in every detail in the human heart It’s like no that is in the human heart in that in that little golden ball in that center in that place where everything comes together you have Contain all the potentiality everything that has the through line is contained in that But now if you notice the difference then you have to formulate that difference and then that becomes the laws Or just the ways of being so I can say something at first like When you’re driving a car like there’s specific laws and then a problem comes up. It’s like oh well Well, actually there’s a differentiation here, which we have to make or else there’s a problem, right? We mean the ethics that’s really just keeps getting more and more detail and more and more so you start with the law you end In Jewish tradition you end up with this huge compendium of exceptions and like details and everything sure, but ultimately the idea is that all of that is ultimately contained in a Something which gathers it all together into one into this ineffable Transcend I like all of this. Okay, but but the space in which all the laws are being made and written That’s not a narrative space, right? I Go after you on that for a minute the Ten Commandments is not a sticker because no, I don’t think that’s true You think that I think it is a story. That’s why Christ when Christ so he okay, that’s a good entry point That’s a good entry story which reveals the Ten Commandments, right? Okay, but there’s Minutes aren’t this aren’t I believe that yeah, there is a little bit But I think they’re you’re right But why this is why we say that the Ten Commandments is embedded in a story without the story of the Israelites leaving Leaving Egypt finding themselves in a desert of of nothingness having to reconnect with the transcendent That is why the law exists. So the nomological Order is Embedded in the story you wouldn’t have to but the reverse is also the case Go ahead. Go ahead if there isn’t if God doesn’t offer us the nomological order There’s no point for the Exodus in the story, right? Right. That’s okay We could we could hypothesize that it comes up from the bottom and down from the top No, this is this is even before that right? We’re trying to talk about like I’m proposing that the narrative and the nomological and whatever we want to call this Self-transcending dimension are irreducible to each other. They’re not neither. None of them can exist independent That’s why I’m using the three dimensions. Yeah metaphor. Yeah, right. They are interdependent, but they’re not they’re not reducible So I’m resisting I would say this the okay ontology is is not captured inside Epistemology because Epistemology cannot reach to the full extent of the multiplicity of ontology So okay. So now why is that relevant to what you just said? That’s part of the irreducibility You’re arguing I think in some sense that no matter what the story is. There’s something that’s real. That’s beyond that story Is that okay? Okay, so so let me put a couple of twists in that got it It’s that okay for you, Jonathan right now. No, I think it’s fine. Okay. Okay, so you said there’s no Story in that in the Ten Commandments right and Jonathan had one objection I have a different take on that that he may appreciate maybe maybe you too When the Pharisees so the Pharisees and the scribes are always trying to Trap Christ in the Gospels into making a heretical statement or doing something that clearly violates the law So they call them on healing on the Sabbath for example And there’s like ten stories like that where smart people who run on algorithms Try to trap him and it never works because he does the thing you described which is he just refers to a higher-order principle Or even three levels up and says like no. Yes, but one of the things that happens is the Pharisees come and say Well, here’s the decalogue which is the most important law and the trick there is no matter what he says he says the others are less important and so now he’s a heretic and and they get to take him away and he says Put God above all else and Love your neighbor as yourself it’s all of the laws are derived from that spirit and That spirit is that spirit is a story and that story is the logos and so That’s the move that I don’t like slow down. Okay. I get that’s the spirit. I totally get that Well, then the question is what is the spirit? But why is the spirit necessarily a story? Well, I don’t know why it’s necessarily a story but I know that it’s necessarily a story in that context because the spirit that Christ is referring to that unites the Decalogue is the logos and the whole biblical corpus the narrative that stem that spans the entire biblical corpus is the account of the elaboration of that spirit across time and its embodied incarnation and that presents itself as a story and So and I think the reason for that is that it just Okay, so so I mean I get I get I understand your point. I understand the point that you’re making now and so I’m actually understanding your point better than I’ve ever just did it before Well, you’re talking about that that which transcends the current narrative and that has to be there. There’s no reality. So Okay, let’s let’s leave that for a moment No, no, that’s fine. I think we’re at a key moment So one of the things that that we’ve been discussing and this has been coming back over and over is that So let’s say that we understand that there is a certain type of equivalence and two functions for a Nomological order like a hierarchy that’s presented. Yeah, you know like just a series of categories which are related in embedded structure Right and I see science committed to that. Okay, and that this also coexists for sure in Scripture We’re that’s what we’re seeing is like it actually it coexists together You have the story of these like the Bible then you have these theories of laws, which is actually not just and it’s Right, so you have all these laws and so but one of the things that you’ve said several times is that you you want to You feel like the solution to the meaning crisis. Yes, does it need Narrative or that narrative shouldn’t be part of the solution. And so I think that if those two are Both have their function, let’s say why is it that you want to remove one and keep the other? No, okay, that’s an excellent question. This is something Sam Harris struggles with No, I’m dead serious about that. I’m dead serious about that. So Let me answer this really carefully and tell me we’re getting too far afield from the main discussion Okay So I’m gonna depend on both of you Yeah My argument is the nomological order that one of the problems in the meeting crisis is the nomological order that we have is no longer in any way relatable to or wet can be wedded to a narrative because the nomological order we have right is that there it it it so what used to bridge between the Nomological order and the narrative order is teleology. The teleology says the nomological order is ordered But it’s ordered in this way and the teleology has this structure and then narrative says oh I can Glum on to I can I can conform to a teleological order because stories are inherently teleological But they’re different from just a teleology just telling the teleology isn’t a story But stories can attach to teleology. Is that why is why is describing a teleology not a story? Because you could describe it You could describe the cup but then the problem is as well Can you describe the top cup in the absence of a narrative and I mean I think part of the argument I’m trying to make in this so this is our key disagreement in some sense is I don’t think you can okay And so well, let’s be really careful because we might we might also be engaged in semantic drift Mm-hmm. So I I’m trying to limit like we can trivialize what we mean by narrative Then we need a great action of a series of events as a narrative. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. No, no I don’t want to do that. I get your point. No, no, we don’t want to we don’t want to widen the word So much that the argument though, but I would I would actually object to that because any Descriptions of events that I can conceive as being one is has to have some kind of narrative structure otherwise, we have the other we have we have the same problem of Multiplicity and and and and combinatorial if I can recognize that events connect together that opens up That means that you would you have to not metaphoric. I actually know I agree with that but not but for well, let me challenge it But and I’m not speaking metaphorically here because if I speaking metaphorically, we’re just go off in another thing That means that music has a narrative Because it has a melody you’re saying a melody is a narrative and that strikes me as a very Improper thing to say that okay. That’s a tough one man. Yeah, because Then you have to start to wrestle with well, what do you mean by music? Because you could say that the the sequence of the notes in and of itself May not have a narrative although I’m not certain of that but you could say that because but then the question is When you’re listening to the music and it has the effect that you regard as music on you How much of that effect including the aesthetic is a consequence of a narrative? So I would say well when you say music how sure are you that what you’re saying is? That’s nothing but the relationship of the notes to one another. I agree. That’s a good point Because there’s no embodiment in that right right and there’s a sense in which music is neither subjective or objective right like beauty Yes, yes, it has to have something that is at least analogous to narrative because in order for you to recognize and it’s funny because the moderns tried to go away from yeah, you understand moderns really tried to Break it but there was in in any traditional society There are tropes of music which helped you understand when something’s beginning when something’s ending and then you can map them onto narrative Directly because that’s what happens Slide you because you say oh I’m gonna send you a narrative to melody Then I’ll say here’s a logical argument and there’s a progression and a through line from the premises to the conclusion. Is that a narrative? Well, that’s a tough one right because because the the fact that you selected out those those okay Here’s something I’ve been thinking about. I’m gonna take a slight detour but go right back to the point So I Thought about this more when I was talking to Richard Dawkins because I think Dawkins is a good faith player And I think he believes he’s a real scientist and he believes that the truth will set you free which scientists have to believe to be Scientists because they cannot be scientists if they’re not pursuing the truth is sacred to absolutely absolutely He won’t show admit that but it is okay So so I was thinking about the scientific endeavor and I read I thought a lot about this when I was reading you’s work on Because you attempted to situate the development of science in this alchemical fantasy and it’s very interesting piece of work So he believes that there was this immense Motivated narrative that provided the historical precondition in the realm of unconscious fantasy for the flourishing of science. So it’s Amazing argument in any case Thinking about that. I thought well, there’s a set of facts and that’s kind of the argument you’re making there’s a set of facts independent of the narrative and That’s kind of the scientific viewpoint There’s a set of facts independent of the narrative and even more importantly we should identify the set of facts That’s maximally independent of any narrative because why should your facts prevail and we want a universal set of facts and Fine. Look what we’ve got with that. But then I think wait a second when you’re Practically engaged in the processes of science the sort of things that you tried to lay out Is it not the case that you’re always engaged within a System of practice and perception that’s defined by at least an implicit if then statement and so I would say if This is your aim then that’s the set of relevant and true fact conditional implications Yeah, well, so so if you’re a medical researcher, it’s like well, here’s here’s what the cancer cell is doing Well, what do you mean doing because it’s doing an infinite number of things Oh, well if we want to understand the cancer cell so that we can eradicate cancer Then this is what the cancer cell is doing now It’s also doing something that’s independent of that narrative But the weird thing about that is that it’s doing such a plethora of things Independent of that narrative that you drown in the complexity, of course So so then so then we have a problem here, right? Is that you they have the facts of the cancer cell which are multiplicitous Then you have the set of relevant facts which hopefully are still facts But those aren’t derivable without the narrative that we should save lives that saving lives is good that we can pay careful Attention to the horrors of disease in the attempt to ameliorate suffering All of that framework seems to be a precondition for the abstraction of the relevant facts I agree with everything you said. Okay, what I disagreed with was the identity statement you slipped in which is okay The ethic is a narrative. That’s exactly what’s in dispute here The dispute isn’t that we don’t need these normative structures. I’m not disputing that at all What I’m what I’m disputing is that they’re all reducible to the narrative effort Right. Well, that’s also why I wanted to get to the last I think that I’m closer to you than ever because In the sense that because I need to work it out but because I I see that in like let’s say that there is a Clear distinction in the story like in the story there is a story and then there’s the laws and they’re related but they’re different And so I need to think about how they’re why they’re right. Well, one of the why they have to There’s an interesting weirdness there That’s also associated with the scientific enterprise because one of the things you’re trying to do Imagine if you impose a strict narrative that there’s a very limited set of facts that make themselves manifest Well what you want to do scientifically is say well Let’s abstract out the set of relevant facts in a manner that’s relevant to a multitude of redemptive narrative simultaneously Okay, so let me pick up on that So let me try and using what we’ve just said specify the difference how I would put it I think what science does is it picks up on normal logical relations, which are supposed to be as you say causal invariance for the universe Right force equals mass times acceleration. We’ll forget Einstein right across narratives, right? Right a narrative is not about causal laws a narrative is about an ear Irrepeatable causal pathway when I ask why did Napoleon lose at Waterloo? I don’t give you a law I give you a narrative. I give you a Narratives are this event leads to this event. It’s a through line like you said But it’s a through line that explains the specific occurrence of specific events It’s exactly the opposite of my mind of what science does science is trying to explain the universality That is not captured in the specifics of a specific causal pathway. That’s why I can’t see okay So then okay, so imagine this imagine this you have this so there’s this notion in the Old Testament There’s a sequence of stories So it’s an aggregation of stories and there’s an idea that the meta narrative of Christ is implicit in that set of narratives Yes, and so then I have this idea well and you talked about this as well Said imagine you take any random sample of narratives Comprehensive random sample of narratives and you attempt to extract out the common story It’s gonna be an image of something like Christ You could even say that that’s what Christ is in some sense so and we can argue about that, but it’s a it’s it’s like saying that the hero narrative is archetypal is the same idea if you Have 25 narratives and you see what makes them interesting adventure stories. It’s the hero archetype So the reason why you can recognize it as a through line in the first place is because it has a pattern But that’s my point My point is just like the through line of all the aspects is not an aspect The through line of all the stories is not itself a story. Yeah, but that see I’m not so sure that’s that is definitely What we’re arguing about and I’m not I’m not saying I know this there may be a distinction between a story and the pattern of all stories and Maybe that’s something we can think about too because in my work in maps of meaning I called just the narrative a story But the the story that unites all narratives is a meta story it’s and Piaget caught on to this too in some sense because He started to try to find out what kids regarded as true and then by the end of his career He said well what we really want to know if we’re studying truth isn’t the nature of any contingent truths So any representations within a system narrative or otherwise But the process we need to specify the process by which all truths come to be as the ultimate truth And then I would say that the meta narrative that constitutes Christ from the symbolic perspective is the story of the process by which What would we say the it’s the story. It’s certainly the story of the process by which narratives transform It’s not exactly a story because it’s a meta story It’s but it’s a problem of it’s the problem of this kind of apophatic move is kinetic reality Which is true also of the nomological order as well I told is the origin of the nomological order is not a nomological order exactly the same way that the origin of a narrative is not a narrative is not a detailed narrative or say the pattern patterns all move into the manner in which they transcend themselves and ultimately give up to this Like this this negative space or negative reality I think the nomological and the narrative and what this self transcending dimension they all converge, right? So imagine imagine that’s not to say they’re identical No, of course, they’re not because that’s why they can write right right And I I think if they were so obviously identical we wouldn’t have a conflict between science and religion Which we apparently have so so it’s an important distinction So imagine you have this set of narratives are particularized and out of that you You extract a general pattern and the pattern is something akin to the process of adaptation itself Which is the manifestation of the divine word? Let’s say and its ability to call order out of chaos to get this hierarchy of narratives and there’s something at the pinnacle and so then imagine that you have a set of corresponding facts and each Specific narrative would give you a set of proximal facts But there’s an abstraction from the facts that approximates Universal scientific truths, but I would say that maybe they exist in relationship to the application of that meta narrative because isn’t it the case now I don’t know I can’t figure this out. Isn’t it the case that we abstract out? commonalities like force equals mass times acceleration Because we want to further our adaptation to the world. Yeah as simultaneously we’re exploring the intrinsic logos of Ontology, but we’ve already agreed to some degree that there’s a rep There’s a similitude between that ontology and the epistemology And so maybe as we abstract out from scientific truths towards the universal we see Not only must we simultaneously move up the abstraction level in a narrative sense You know point would be we better or will misuse the normal logical to destroy ourselves Wouldn’t that also be the case if we abstracted up the narrative without also going up the normal logic Hey, well, he he he knows are he believed that the the problem with the first millennia of Christianity was that we did exactly That was that we emphasized spiritual redemption to such a degree try to reduce Redemption itself to the spiritual then the world was still crying out because of its Ontological suffering it’s like well if we’re all redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ It’s like what’s with all the poor and diseased people and that that call for the unredeemed material? was part of what he saw as the motivational foundation for the The systematic investigation say that led to the development of medicine. Yeah. Yeah, so so there was an insufficiency There was an insufficiency Maybe it’s the insufficiency of getting lost in epistemology if it’s just a narrative. It’s just a narrative What’s not it has to refer to the world? Okay, so well That complicates things right because we’re part of what we’re stuck on here to some degree is In that ontological realm that’s outside any given narrative. There is also a logos And then the question is is that ontological logos the nature of the world itself somehow a narrative and the christian idea to answer that would be Well that I don’t know because creation is separate from god creation Is it so yeah speaking on behalf of christianity, yeah I think christianity makes the claim that the logos is ultimately a person is not a story. Yeah. Yeah, that’s very important Right the logos is not a story everything culminates into into into the into the person and person literally means Originally means hypostasis that which stands under yes. Yes. Well, it has to be a person right, right? Well, that’s why I also said though that it’s the description of a structure of values is a narrative So as an embodied ideal christ isn’t a story no, right But the description of his embodiment that’s a story and the images are a story and the reason we want the story Is because the story calls us to that to the ethic. That’s why we value the stories It’s right I would like to see the world the way you see it because you have a whole set of tools that I don’t have And so if you can tell me a story and I can enter into your world Then that is truly redemptive because the facts now array themselves in a slightly different way That might be very valuable to me if I run into one of these objects that you describe, you know I’m running an algorithm and something objects. I don’t know what to do. What would you do? Tell me what you did in the similar situation And so I don’t think the story The story isn’t the yeah god that gets so tricky The the the christian emphasis certainly is is that the embodied reality is the fundamental reality Yeah, but the story isn’t nothing that’s for sure. I’m not saying I know you’re not I know you’re not I’m saying that at all. I was trying to answer jonathan’s question, right? And we’re running into the difficulty that I see Whether or not i’m right or wrong We’re there’s a difficulty. Oh, definitely and that’s the difficulty i’m putting my finger on I’m trying to put my finger on in the meeting. Well, it’s also the difficulty that i’m trying to address with this set of propositions It’s definitely a difficulty. Okay, but we got somewhere we got somewhere in that I would say I think it was very valuable. Okay, so i’m going to skip to number five here. Every set of values is hierarchical Otherwise, there’s no prioritization. I think we agree on that because we’ve already agreed that there has to be a prioritization And there has to be that implies a hierarchy So the one thing I wanted to ask there sorry, I seem to be the the difference have to get you know, right? But is again Let’s go back to embodied living and this is actually something you see in narratives And I would also say that it’s something that some of the parables of jesus Point to because parables I think mcfag is right parables are narratives that destroy themselves as narrative structures They’re kind of like the way coans destroy themselves as questions And so what I want to say is Let’s say that there is we we seem to have like there’s the true the good and the beautiful or we have the narrative the Nomological and i’ll call it the normative in terms of betterment or something like listen, is it the case? The thing is the hierarchy stable What I mean by that is you get narratives you get stories get works of art great works of art In which it looks like they’re picking up on something that is true to our embodied experiences Sometimes we sacrifice the true for the good or the good for the beautiful or the beautiful for the true Like we seem to be making trade up. We don’t seem to have a stable what’s on top We we shift the prioritizations around there’s a lot of great art at least Proposing that so I think it’s a reasonable thing right, well, I think that’s partly a consequence of the confusion about what constitutes the unification so part of the project I have here is that i’m i’m beginning to view all the narratives that are laid out in the biblical corpus as There are snapshots of the different idea of what should be at the top. They’re like the through line Well, they’re representations of the through line. We still don’t know what the through line is so to speak, right? But there’s snapshots so I for example in in the opening lines of genesis God so we’ll say by definition god is what is at the top We’ll just start with that and i’m not going to make an ontological claim about that Just an epistemological claim god is what’s at the top of your value structure. Okay. So what? What should that be? Well, let’s say that’s a mystery. Okay, so the bible is an attempt to to Represent that mystery from a variety of different narrative perspectives. And so i’ll give you a couple of examples. So in the earliest Chapter the beginning of genesis God is the word That derives habitable the habitable order that is good out of chaos and potential. Okay, so that whatever god is that’s part of it, okay, so that’s that’s and god is a creative force and then then there’s the next thing is is that God is whatever it is that human beings are made in the image of That also provides them with a worth that transcends the merely material in some sense because god is outside creation And if man is made in the image of god, then there’s something about man. That’s valuable That’s outside of the mirror Materiality, okay, so that’s the next proposition and then Um god is rapidly that which forbids and allows so that happens in the garden and then god is That spirit that you walk with when you’re unself-conscious and not ashamed So that’s that’s the story of adam in the garden and then in noah god is that which Calls you to batten down the hatches and prepare When if you’re wise in your generations you see that chaos is coming and then in the abrahamic story God is that which calls you out of the comfort of your family into adventure and so it’s like click click Click and it who knows what the union of all those things are right because they’re they’re quite Multiplicitous very but but but I think they’re very sophisticated and you might say well is that god it’s like well Do you follow the call of adventure? Do you take your own intuition seriously when you think that the flood is coming? The answer to that generally is well you either follow that or you’re in trouble people You sure know that and is god the divine word that generates habitable order the habitable order that is good out of chaos Well, do you believe that truth has that power? so I think Okay, so these are all ways of pointing to that which might unify the disunity that you see now You can’t boil it down in some way the same way that you boil down beauty, you know It’s it’s harder to specify and I think that what the bible is attempting to do And I think this is true of religious writings of many sorts is to What is it it’s a characterization of this it’s first of all It’s an insistence that the thing at the top is a spirit, right? It’s not an idea. It’s not even like beauty It’s not an abstraction. It’s a spirit that can inhabit which is kind of the Incarnation idea so it’s it’s a spirit that you can embody or that can seize and possess you so it’s really something that’s living And and so it’s not merely an abstract idea and it’s not just a normal logical construct It’s something you enact and it’s something in principle. You might think well if you’re and this leads to the next point Any hierarchy that is not unified? Produces confusion anxiety anomie aimlessness and conflict psychological and social well, why well, it’s not unified You don’t know your priorities And if it and if it isn’t pointing to something valuable, there’s no hope because hope is to be found in The movement towards something of value So, okay. Well, sorry, that’s a lot. No, no, no, but that’s helpful So let me let me say something and it’s not really a pushback But it’s it’s sliding over here and if we can make the connection then maybe we can come to an agreement around it so right Adaptivity Adaptivity is a thing and it’s really important and it’s not an abstraction Define it. Uh, adaptivity is the uh that you are fitted to your environment in a way that allows you To successfully live long enough to reproduce right? Yeah. Okay. Okay So that’s kind of an iterated game idea too you have to live long enough to propagate totally Totally and i’m not here to defend, you know A gene version or a group selection. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that’s not that’s not what I want. Okay, so Adaptivity and you want to you want to you know, how does this how does this arise? And one of the things you can do is you can say here’s all these snapshots of adaptivity And what I can do is I can try and find The what what do they all share in common the capacity to elicit awe Well, wait a second. Wait a second. Wait a second So like the the problem is right this and this is what you see the the naturalist before darwin doing they’re trying to find The shared perfection. Yeah, and then darwin breaks the mold. He says no, no, no, no, you’re making the mistake There is no Right, right. There isn’t what there is right is some things are adaptive because they’re small some are adaptive because they’re large Some are fast some are slow some are hard some are soft some are unicellular some are multicellular Adaptivity doesn’t have but what he finds is but there’s a universal process that is right that can explain How all of these different snapshots emerge but they’re all there is there is a perfection and the perfection is being itself It’s the continuation of existence. Okay, but what you’ve just did you’ve played you’re not playing with my analogy That you’ve you’ve you said I can I can meta that and i’m not denying that you can do that jonathan I’m trying to use a method. Okay. I’m trying to use an analogy I I don’t deny that. Yeah, okay. I’m not making that claim. I’m just trying to use this as an analogy And i’m trying to say well, it’s a powerful objection because certainly the biologists do that They say well, there’s no teleology in evolution And and and I know that you object to that because you say well there has to be because you can’t even There’s no unity there in any of the organisms and you there’s certainly no way of perceiving them But they also have a point which is there’s a normal logical unity even though there’s no narrative That’s how they argue it. There is a universal process that can be understood scientifically that explains Adaptivity explained because if you get the theory of evolution you say right all the organisms should be right But then you have the problem that Every organism that survives plays out a pattern which is variation on the horizon of potentiality And so then you might say well there is a there is a directionality because if the organism can’t vary Creatively on the horizon of potentiality it can’t exist or multiply and so then so so there’s a teleology that emerges out of the necessity for survival and reproduction and so and I would say so think about sorry I I gotta get this out The abstractions you generate in your prefrontal cortex are avatars of the process of adaptation to the horizon of the future and so and so the Flowering of the human spirit in its highest sense is an embodiment of the process by which the biologists attribute The the adaptivity it’s the process that underlies adaptivity. And so maybe those things dovetail. Well, that’s what I’m gonna So there is a narrative though. No, no, that’s what I there’s what I want to challenge you You gave me a model of the logos that I would say is not narrative except for a trivial definition of narrative Which is variation and selection look Instead look, let’s put it back in the psychological. It’s like with humans. It’s the willingness to do that though So it’s not just the fact that it can can happen and does happen and that’s partly what brings in the narrative element Is you do not have to abide by that like you you that can happen to you You can you can have this creative variation and this selection in relationship to adaptivity Let’s say to keep it biological, but you can you do not have to do that And so I think it’s the struggle with that that constitutes the narrative. I want to push back on you on that Okay, because I think there’s all kinds of stuff At the relevance realization doing that variation and selection that you cannot Exercise authority over because you’re actually depends on on the right So it’s different than the level at which you have narrative access to your own being And look I think that that’s related to jonathan’s objection earlier That the law is inscribed on the human heart. It’s like yes, I agree but but Let me say if I claim that human evolution Builds a material embodiment that strives towards manifestation of the logos and then there’s an abstraction that’s fine and and that meets in the middle The fact that you can’t control the manifestations of your Prioritization structure doesn’t mean the logos isn’t built into the a priori systems that structure that perception for you I’m not denying that what i’m denying is that that logos is ultimately operating as a narrative I think the low and look at look at look at even look at even psychologically Narrative doesn’t emerge until a certain age and it is pre it depends on dia logos. It depends on dialogue It depends on joint attention. It depends on the ability to take turns in conversation You have to have all this dialogical machinery in place before narrative is possible Right by the way, I would object to that fine. That’s a perfectly reasonable objection but the problem with that is is that a lot of that scaffolded by Quasi narrative precursors. So for example, one of the things you do with a baby before it can engage in in the dialogous verb mediated semantically is you do a dance like play And the spirit of the logos is and I would say a narrative spirit is deeply embodied in that because if that isn’t taking Place within the spirit of love and play and truth then it isn’t going to give rise to the capacity later for the dialogos So that’s kind of the embedded meant in some sense of the embedded meant embedded meant Embedding there’s the word of the logos in the material Right prior to its manifestation and I do think in some sense that’s not a story, you know Because if you watch a wolf pack What they’re doing isn’t a story, but if you describe it it becomes a story. Yes, right So there is an embodied pattern. That’s not a story But I think we’re agreeing now that Okay, okay. Okay. Well there I there’s a lot of so I guess we go back to where you said the description of a structure of values That’s right. I said the description is a story now that doesn’t mean that the description doesn’t match the underlying behavioral pattern you know, I think one of the things I Sort of thought through and maps of meaning with the moses story is Well, why why those laws? So you see in the story, it’s so bloody cool before moses goes up to the mountain He spends Decades, we don’t know forever morning tonight Judging objections. So the Israelites are out in the desert There’s no structure and they fight with each other all the time and then they come to moses and say well, we’re fighting What do we do about it? And he like judges them and his father-in-law actually says to him you have to stop doing this because it is absolutely exhausting you And it isn’t until after that that so then you think what’s he doing? We’re seeing all these micro narratives, right? And then he has to discriminate between them, which means he’s turning them into a hierarchy of value because that’s what the discrimination is This is what’s right in this conflict. So conflict Hierarchy and then he’s doing that just constantly so you can imagine that within him This hierarchy of value is starting to be built Explicitly then he goes up on the mountain and it’s like bang. Oh This is What all our striving is oriented to and then he comes down the first time it doesn’t map as you said the second time It maps so the the deliverance of the message from on high has to map on to this and some of this Conflict and its agreement would emerge from biological acceptability because the people would say oh I feel as though that was just it solves the problem And so the material is in communication then with abstraction, I think I think we’re close to agreement I guess To circle back I don’t I don’t sort of deny that I don’t i’m really not denying that narrative is a powerful way for disclosing intelligibility and the logos Right. What i’m saying is is it there’s a privileging of it here that i’m okay So is it okay? So is it important? Is it important? Is the distinction that I just made between an embodied pattern and a narrative enough to Dispense with your because with your objection or is there more to it? Well, let me let me let me see Because I think that theories and poems and music things that i’m shooting as non-narrative can disclose depths of reality That I can’t disclose with a story Okay, so why is it why is it important to you or necessary to make that distinction do you think just out of curiosity why it’s important for me is that um, i’m concerned about A privileging of narrative i’ll use an inappropriate privileging of narrative will border on idolatry Right in in that we are well, that’s kind of what the postmodernists do So there’s definitely a danger there, right? If you overprivileged narrative to the point where the ontology itself What john is saying is that he’s afraid that if we embody if we embrace narrative then the solution to the meaning crisis Won’t be universal enough Is that something that’s that’s a practical implication because I I would propose to you. It’s a proposal. Okay, that Whatever is going to resolve the meaning crisis has to reintegrate science and spirituality if it does not do that Right. Well, so that’s partly also what you’re insisting on is that there is this domain of scientific knowledge that should be regarded as in some sense independent of narrative and that’s i’m still having a very much trouble with that because we still have the problem of If then right it’s like but and I don’t see how we escape escape from that But that’s where I push on back on the trivialization if if then constitutes a narrative. No, no, it doesn’t. Okay, if Constitutes a narrative if yeah if does because if has to be well if we want to cure disease if we want to So young believed that the spirit of science grew out of the alchemical fantasy And so the alchemical fantasy was we will find in material the solution to ill health death and privation Well, yeah ill health death and privation. That’s exactly it. And so young’s point was without that Impulse which he regarded as a compensation to the hyper Spiritualization that christianity imposed in the world in the first christian ion without that fantasy deeply like deeply embodied Manifesting itself out of embodied behavior and then out of image we wouldn’t have been because young said well How do you get someone to look down a microscope at an amoeba for 10 hours? Because like no animal will do that and his notion was well We had to be gripped by something of a dream of intense motivational significance and it was the dream that redemption could be found in analysis of the transformations of the material world, right, but like but The the motivating the motivating structure is not the same thing as the reference of of what i’m talking about, right? Right, right. So I might be narrative to do science But we don’t want to make the genetic fallacy that that means that everything that science is referring to is a narrative, right? Yeah, right the fact right right that that’d be like That’s like saying everything I talk about I have to speak in english So reality is made of english does bring us to the postmodern conundrum because they would insist that no all the sets of all The facts that science derives are in some simple sense a narrative, right? And then that narrative is associated with the drive to power and domination And so yeah, we do have to be careful that because we’ll fall right into that trap, right? So that that that’s what so if you say you want to comment. No, but sorry Can I say this? Ha I I I I do think that a great manner in which modern science got developed who does Is I think it is narrative that is there is On the one hand the desire to deliver and but on the other hand the desire to dominate is there, right? We’ve talked about this before with bacon and yeah, yeah, yeah, I don’t deny that Yeah, and so there is it there is and so it doesn’t take away the but the same motivation can drive people in doing Mathematics. Yeah, right. It’s the same motivation can drive people doing music So we don’t want to say that’s the essence of science or music or mathematics because then we’re doing we’re removing the important differences You’re afraid we’re collapsing everything. Yes, but I think yeah, I think that it’s mostly about it’s about hierarchy in in the sense of In the sense that because we are embodied beings that are living that are living in the world that are living lives And all that we do all that we care about is part of that Reality and so even the nomological order, although I think I agree with you now. It’s definitely not a narrative, right? But it is embedded. That’s why jordan uses it Expression embedded in narrative. Yes, that is that it has to but isn’t the reverse the case narrative? Depends on the presupposition that there is an ordered world in which it can take place, right? But that the question is then is that logos that constitutes the order so to speak If when you represent that do you necessarily represent it as a narrative and this is a deep question I mean i’m proposing to you that the logos is that which Allows the narrative order and the nomological order to unite do what they’re doing. That’s what I’m saying, right? Okay, but that’s fine But then I might wonder does it extend does it extend to the narrative order and to the underlying? Ontological order as well. The logos is both in the story and in the logic That’s what we think about just even follow the history of the word logos and watch how it goes In these two different directions with good reason Yeah. Yeah. Well, so okay, so Then then the question so you’re objecting That the logos isn’t a story and and that’s so strange and so weird because I’m not saying that what the west is kind of split on that because in some sense If you if you think of the development of the idea of the logos from the greek and enlightenment side, the answer would be There there’s no Immediate insistence there that it’s a narrative. That’s right on the judaic christian side There’s a pronounced insistence that it’s a narrative. Yes, and our modern culture is actually a union of those two, right? I’ve just described a couple episodes of the awakening for the meaning crisis. That’s exactly the argument. I try to trace out And well and certainly the argument we’re having right now Because jonathan and I are in some sense are making a case for the logos as narrative and embody narrative Although you also point to the importance of embodiment. I’m not rejecting. I know I know I know well It’s very difficult to differentiate. Yes, right Yes and I do like the idea that there’s a hierarchy of narrative with the ideal at the top and then a hierarchy of Nomological description and that there’s a correspondence between the hierarchies because it does seem to me that And I I want to puzzle that out one of the things jung warned about he thought there was an ethos in the religious story and to some degree in the alchemical story and then when the Scientific revolution hit we blew up the nomological Yes into this massively powerful thing, but our ethic was left in the same primitive form So now we’re in danger because of that. I think I think that’s exactly right. I think one of What I talk about this in terms of propositional Tyranny and yeah algorithmic tyranny, right? Right what we’ve done is we’ve reduced The logos inappropriately to logic. I strongly resist that move too, right? So you’re okay. Okay. Okay well, I I get I get your caution because I do believe that I think that Devolving everything down to the narrative per se does put us in the postmodern trap, which is well, it’s all In some sense. Well, it’s all narrative Which is kind of what they claimed and that’s a problem because then you can dispense with the with the corrective reality Exactly. Exactly. So I I I use a stereoscopic metaphor. I think of the logos as Like as epitomized in logic as in story and then I try to look through both to a depth That’s what I try to think of as the logos. Okay, cool. Sorry. Tell me that again So, you know how I have the left and right visual field and then I look through them to depth perception. Yeah Here’s logos as logic. There’s logos as story and I try to look through them to the depth behind Yeah, yeah, that’s well that seems on the face of it quite fine. I mean i’m still in a conundrum because We already agreed that the selection of the facts and even the manifestation of the facts as perceptual objects is dependent on the imposition of a hierarchical value and so that tangles the damn narrative into it again, but so but But there’s something that’s key to the idea of parallel hierarchies that I think is is A conceptual way out of this and that’s one of the key moves in neoplatonism Exactly what you’re puzzling over. How do these things? What explains their parallel and what explains beyond the parable parallel what I was trying to do with the stereoscopic? What what explains their convergence? Okay. Okay. What if What if it is something like Let’s say I’m using the word person, but let’s use the word consciousness Okay, right or so that that that so it’s a maximus has this is why I like to maximize so much right because say maximus He has he has exactly what you’re talking about in terms of this nomal out of order. This is hierarchy of order And he has a sense in which the laboratory for that is man, right man with a capital m And so doesn’t it doesn’t it kind of one of the solutions to this? Wouldn’t be the this relevant realization that you’re talking about but the relevant realization happens Ultimately happens in in consciousness or something like consciousness or I mean I I think it happens in intelligence because we have a lot of relevance realization going on below consciousness Okay, and i’ve talked about this right? Okay. I think consciousness is a kind of intelligence for specific kinds of problems It’ll define normal novel complex. Yeah, that’s the horizon unpredictable horizon of the future, right? Right, right, right, right so But let’s say and and I think the issue is yes and and what i’m here what i’m sort of proposing is intelligibility is something like the way reality is realizing itself and relevance realization is intelligence and the good is the fact that we We trust that the the intelligence can track the intelligibility and by doing that it puts us in touch with the world That’s what I is that a is that a presupposition of faith? Is that a presupposition of the faith that was necessary before the manifestation of a real science? Yes, the willingness to act on that basis. I think if you do not okay, so i’m not going to i’m not going to deny The importance of the judaeo christian story Okay But I would also say that without plato’s argument about the good As the ongoing fulfillment of the promise that intelligibility tracks realness You can’t do science and there’s a reason why the scientific revolution is a return to plato Galileo rejects aristotle and goes to plato and says plato is right Mathematics listen to the words mathematics is the language of reality There’s no math in aristotelian science for 1200 years He turns to plato And that’s what brings in the core of why why is that a turn to plato particularly? It’s because plato like In the republic plato makes the argument that math and you he had it over the academy You can’t come into the academy unless you can do mathematics because until you do mathematics you can’t grasp The kind of intelligibility needed to get at the deepest realities of things and science So you thought that math was the cardinal example of that. Yes And all of our science is dependent on math and his attitude towards myth and narrative is right That’s heidegger’s claim about science. Yeah, is that myths and narratives are right that they are indispensable but they do not have the same degree of Revelation of the promise of the good. Okay that math does i’m not saying i’m agreeing with that isn’t that why also neoplatonism Could never land right? He could never land and become A mode of being for a society. It says it says it that’s why we’ve talked about this before a little bit where What christianity does is it provides the body? For that which was good of Of the neoplaton platonic tradition and it provides something more to be to be embodied in a in a communion of love and a communion of Well, that’s the word patient. See what what you can’t get in neoplatonism And and and although i’m not a christian. I prefer christian neoplatonism over pagan neoplatonism because Plato is striving towards the agape and christianity makes this astonishing the two identity claims Both made by john god is logos and god is agape, right and and then that’s an identity claim between logos and agape Right. It’s not to say they’re the same but it’s also the same right? And you’re gonna say the trinity and I get that right? That’s fine And I don’t object to that but the point i’m making is for me. That’s the crucial move Here’s what I say in response to that And this is what I mean when I say about neoplatonism is the interesting that you would use the word crucial On set. Yeah, no, I think it is. I think it is because I go back to my point You can’t follow the logos unless agape takes you out of egocentrism Great, right. All right. That’s right. Yeah, okay But also agape can’t unfold to you unless there’s an order and an intelligibility to it It makes no sense to say I love something. Yeah, and there’s no intelligibility to it. That doesn’t make any sense Right. Yeah, okay Now but you see the thing is and and this is what I what i’m trying to get at with my idea of the intellectual silk road Right that ne right now our culture the hermeneutics of suspicion were locked into the courtroom of debate I propose that we go back and do what we had with the silk road, which is the courtyard of discussion Neoplatonism has this terrific ability to enter into reciprocal reconstruction Reconstruction With christianity clearly it does it with islam, which is what we’re doing right now Yes, but it does it with islam and that’s how you get sufism. It does it with Science you if you take a look read john spencer’s book the eternal law If you look at what’s happening around einstein in that they’re all invoking neoplatonic or similar ideas to neoplatonism Neoplatonism at with galileo. It’s capable of entering into reciprocal Reconstruction with science with islam with christianity there seems to be evidence that it can do this with buddhism Daoism that’s what thomas plant is arguing was happening on the silk road. So I what you see is a potential defect. I see as a benefit which is it doesn’t it doesn’t land Because it’s designed to land in many different ways and allow people okay So that’s very much related to this idea of parallel hierarchy if you’re abstracting out The set of universal facts then Those facts are useful in relationship to the higher order narratives that unite narratives Well, but that’s that’s exactly which is I think that’s the claim you just made. I I think so Let me let me see So what i’m saying is that neoplatonism gets gives us a way to dispose the furniture of thought that we can come into deep dialogue and it would allow a sufi And it would allow uh, you know a christian to have deep discussion. They don’t have to agree The the silk road wasn’t dependent on one person running the silk road It was dependent on the fact that all of these civilizations found a way to deeply talk to each other Why the silk road metaphor? I’m not i’m too historically. I know what the silk road was But why why use that because the silk road binds the east and the west together? I see right. It’s like the golden thread. Yes, it’s it’s the through line between civilizations literally But not just the physical road. There is a philosophical silk road and thomas plant by the way Who is a christian argues that that was neoplatonism? So I think I think in one deep sense There’s certainly it certainly is the case that to some degree If science is a derivation of neoplatonism in the way that you described science has also been a uniting Methodology and system of apprehension because many different cultures Are willing with different degrees of ability to utilize the scientific method I agree and I would say that’s ultimately exactly for the reasons you just give gave because science has has Has sort of made implicit within itself many neoplatonic moves I mean, I think it’s interesting. I would say I mean it doesn’t bother me so much in the sense that To the extent that that which do platonism presents as true I don’t have that measure of problem when I read same maximists. I don’t even ask myself You play platonism or is this christianity and i’m not saying you should yeah What i’m what i’m saying is and when I read a sufi, I don’t ask myself that question either Like if I read ibn arabi, I would say yeah, he’s saying some pretty powerful true things You know and I can also recognize the the place to which we disagree but he says some definitely powerful things about the nature of reality Which are the they think about the imaginal without ibn arabi. You won’t get it And and if you want to turn to some very good places to Talk about agapic love read sufi read some of the sufi you want right like I I I want to so you’re you’re emphasizing this in large part because or I don’t want to put words in your mouth but because you also see See, I think that belief in the logos is a precondition for dialogue, right? Yes, but you’re making a case for In some sense, it’s not a binary definition of logos. It’s one that’s informed perhaps properly in equal parts from the tradition of Greece and the it’s dipolar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but there’s but there’s also There’s no reason to assume that there isn’t a deeper unity that That both are pointing to I mean we’ve been acting out that presupposition in some sense in the west since This is the time of the renaissance because that was Rome and greece meeting jerusalem in a real sense Rome, sorry roman athens say meeting jerusalem in a real sense, but it was true way before that. I mean one of the precursors to the renaissance is the the intellectual reality of constantinople like new platenism was just Present was present there the whole time. It just was there And so we know we don’t know much about it because the city was destroyed and everything got scattered But the the the let’s say the tradition of neoplatonism the man in which the one of the important matters in which it reached the west was was through these these christian scholars that got chased away from the city basically because it was in danger and brought the the text and the the tradition to And then there’s another and then there’s the way through spain through the arab world too. There’s sort of multiple time What i’m trying to do what i’m proposing is i’m trying to do i’m trying to do like a historical thing where i’m trying to look At all of the ways in which it’s like the glass we can get the multi-spectrality of neoplatonism by seeing all the ways it was able to Reciprocately reconstructed itself like reciprocally reconstruct with with christ with Aristotle or with christianity or with science or with islam So you’re taking snapshots of that in some sense in the same way I’m trying to do that with the notion of right at the top in the narrative sense using the biblical corpus Exactly and i’m trying to find the through line The historical through line for neoplatonism because I don’t this is maybe where jonathan and I disagree But I think we do it in at least a loving manner Well, or don’t understand each other fully it’s possible. It’s possible. But what i’m what I guess what I wanted to state is Your metagame Me participating in the dialogue is more important to me than Continuing the right relationship is more valuable to me than coming to the right conclusion Definitely, okay, definitely. So I just wanted to state. Oh, yeah. Well, that’s a good place to end. I think I mean We got a long ways through this We’ll try to figure out perhaps After we think about this for a good while what we might do to continue it because there’s a few Propositions here that I think are relevant. I just might share them with people that we didn’t get to Any hierarchy that is unified? Is made so by the dominion of a superordinate principle So something has to bring everything together And has to be at the top to unite That principle is most effectively what is common to all that is deemed of comparative relative value within the hierarchy So we talked about the commonality between the good the beautiful and true the common principle of value Must necessarily be elevated to the highest place in the hierarchy Well, that’s the abstraction of the good maybe it wouldn’t matter if it was neoplatonic or the more christian notion of the logos and then This is something that you really influenced me in relationship that bringing to the highest place is Personal subordination. So that’s above me and I serve it Imitation I want to become that faith. I believe that that principle prevails Celebration which is it’s worthy of what would you say? There’s joy in relationship to the recognition of its superordinate place Adulation a variant of that and worship which is sort of maybe A worship is what combines all of those and so those are propositions Which I would like to impact with you guys and then there’s something that’s more specifically judaic christian after that Which I won’t get into now because I think it would be a distraction so well That’s a that’s a great conversation. I’ll come to Toronto anytime for this. Yeah, that’s great. Okay. Well, I think we should we should think about Doing it again. Well, we’ll start halfway through and see if we can get to the end. I think that would be very good Yeah, well, it’s really really see a lot of what we’re doing is We’re differentiating the propositions, right? It’s like well, here’s here’s the proposition. Here’s its complexity and there’s some real utility and just In just seeing the full complexity walking through it You I mean this is also right, this is also I think a genuine active fellowship or even friendship because Um, do you the more you do that the more responsive you can make your argument to people who want to engage with it Of course, of course, that’s exactly. I mean we’re trying to get to A diverse range of tools that are grounded on something as rock solid as we can manage. Yeah, so yeah Thanks, then we don’t need a heretic of suspicion. Yeah, yeah Hey my pleasure man. I’m so glad you guys could come and that we could be together finally in person And I think the conversation was a lot more dynamic and deeper than we would have managed On zoom. Yeah, I totally agree with that. Yeah, I totally agree All right. Great. Thanks eric Thank you for all all you who are watching and and listening and more to follow on many fronts with any luck