Speaker 1: As I see more deeply into reality, I get better
Speaker 1: at see more deeply within, which allows me to cultivate
Speaker 1: the inner piece more powerfully, which then allows me to
Speaker 1: see more deeply into reality, and the two spin on
Speaker 1: each other.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome
Speaker 2: John Vervaki to the show. John is an award winning
Speaker 2: professor at the University of Toronto in psychology, cognitive science,
Speaker 2: and Buddhist psychology. His academic interests include wisdom, mindfulness, meditation, relevance, realization,
Speaker 2: general intelligence, and rationality. He's the author of Awakening from
Speaker 2: the Meaning Crisis YouTube series and co author of Zombies
Speaker 2: and Western Culture, a twenty first Century Crisis. This episode,
Speaker 2: I talked to John Verviki about the meaning crisis. There's
Speaker 2: a growing number of people who are struggling to find
Speaker 2: purpose in life. Society seems to be losing touch of
Speaker 2: its humanity. John argues that we can address the meaning
Speaker 2: crisis by appreciating and grounding ourselves in reality. We can
Speaker 2: find relevance by deepening our relationship with the world and
Speaker 2: the people around us. In turn, this reverence affords us
Speaker 2: peace of mind while recognizing interconnection of all things. We
Speaker 2: cover quite a lot in this episode. We also talk
Speaker 2: about the topics of transcendence, mattering, narcissism, spirituality, and artificial intelligence.
Speaker 2: Once we got going, it was quite hard to stop us.
Speaker 2: John is a really thoughtful and insightful human and scientist,
Speaker 2: and we nerded out at such a deep level that
Speaker 2: we together felt a great sense of meaning by the
Speaker 2: end of this episode. We hope you feel it too,
Speaker 2: and we hope you learn a lot. In fact, I
Speaker 2: know you will, so without further ado, I bring you
Speaker 2: Professor John VERVICKI, well, I heard you were trained as
Speaker 2: a philosopher. Is the word on the street true about that?
Speaker 1: Well, yes, in some ways. I did a BA and
Speaker 1: an MA in philosophy, and then I got so sort
Speaker 1: of disheartened, almost disillusioned about academic philosophy, and I went
Speaker 1: away for a year and reflected not a particularly good
Speaker 1: year for me. But I discovered cognitive science, and I
Speaker 1: went back and did a BSc in cognitive science, a
Speaker 1: specialist degree. Now, because I had done all of the philosophy,
Speaker 1: I was not able to take any philosophy courses as
Speaker 1: I did my COGSID degree, So I ended up taking
Speaker 1: the psychology courses equivalent to doing a specialist undergraduate degree
Speaker 1: in psychology. So I sort of got a training in CogSci,
Speaker 1: especially in psychology, and then I had my training in philosophy.
Speaker 1: Then I went back and did my pH d in
Speaker 1: philosophy but on cognitive science. So that's how it all
Speaker 1: worked out. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I fell in love with the cognitive science in high
Speaker 2: school and it seemed to me like the field that
Speaker 2: would allow me to combine multiple interests. Yes, which was
Speaker 2: so cool about it, you know. Yeah, at the time,
Speaker 2: I think it was linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience, computer science, and
Speaker 2: those are the branches of cognitive science. Have we have
Speaker 2: we added anything since then in the field that.
Speaker 1: We Psychology has usually been one of the branches too.
Speaker 2: I mean psychology. Yeah, it's not for good psychology, of course.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I just fell in love with the field
Speaker 2: of cognitive science so much, and there's so much we
Speaker 2: can explain through that method. You know, I really resonate
Speaker 2: with your search for meaning, you know, within psychology and
Speaker 2: in the field of psychology, there's there's like theories, there's
Speaker 2: like people mean different things by the word meaning. Yes, recently,
Speaker 2: Frank Martella and Michael Steger proposed three meanings of meaning, coherence, purpose,
Speaker 2: and significance. So I'd like to start off to hear
Speaker 2: your view. What does meaning mean to you?
Speaker 1: So I think that I mean that that's seminal work
Speaker 1: by them. There's been more re some work of fourth factor. Oh, really, mattering,
Speaker 1: which I think is very significant. In fact, some of
Speaker 1: the evidence suggests that mattering is more important than purpose,
Speaker 1: and probably that significance folds into mattering.
Speaker 2: I think they're similar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're similar, but mattering gets I think mattering is
Speaker 1: a little bit clearer, and it has the advantage I
Speaker 1: think being appropriately named vastly because that connects it with
Speaker 1: the precedent work in philosophy by Susan Wolf on meaning
Speaker 1: in life and why it matters, and so that connection
Speaker 1: is really important. I think the notion of coherence is
Speaker 1: a work in progress. So some of the original experimental
Speaker 1: work on coherence by by Huntelman Samantha Huntelman has failed
Speaker 1: to replicate, which of course doesn't mean we throw it out.
Speaker 1: That's not what failure to replication means. It means that
Speaker 1: there's something probably wrong in our construct in an important way.
Speaker 1: And I think the kind of coherence we should be
Speaker 1: talking about is not sort of simple perceptual coherence to
Speaker 1: kind or narrative coherence the friend she was testing in
Speaker 1: her experiment. So for coherence, I think we have to
Speaker 1: look at that about our cognition that helps us resist
Speaker 1: falling prey to absurdity. And so I think it's more
Speaker 1: of a perspectable coherence. I'm making use here of Nagel
Speaker 1: sense of the absurd, where a third person cosmic perspective
Speaker 1: undermines our personal, local perspectives. It makes us feel like
Speaker 1: our lives are insignificant, they have no meaning, And it's
Speaker 1: it's this perspectable clash that I think threatens meaning in life.
Speaker 1: The opposite would be a way of interweaving these perspectives
Speaker 1: to see the world in a grain of sand. Quote Blake,
Speaker 1: I think that's the kind of coherence that is actually
Speaker 1: central to meaning in life. And the mattering I think
Speaker 1: is we'll target it is it's the sense of being connected,
Speaker 1: is something that has a reality and a value beyond
Speaker 1: your own existence. And I think that's what they were
Speaker 1: trying to get at with significance, but they didn't capture
Speaker 1: the connectedness part. So I would argue that what contributes
Speaker 1: to meaning in life is purpose, perspectable, coherence, and mattering.
Speaker 2: The mattering one is really front and center in my
Speaker 2: mind these days. We can integrate a little positive psychology
Speaker 2: in here as well. Isaac Priltenski's research on mattering, I
Speaker 2: don't know if you're familiar with it.
Speaker 1: I have read about it while I've been reading some
Speaker 1: of the some of the research I've been reading on mattering,
Speaker 1: But go ahead, please.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Isaac's work is really great and showing that wellbeing
Speaker 2: needs to take into account the mattering construct if we
Speaker 2: want to really have well being for all, because a
Speaker 2: lot of research and positichology is like, well, let's help
Speaker 2: happy people become happier people who are languishing, let's see
Speaker 2: how we can get them to be happy, you know.
Speaker 2: And a big source of languishing is when you feel
Speaker 2: like you don't matter. Yes, So I really like how
Speaker 2: he's brought that into the happiness and meaning framework. So
Speaker 2: I really like that. But it's been on my mind
Speaker 2: as well because I've been really interested in integrating narcissism
Speaker 2: into our understanding of well being. And it seems like
Speaker 2: people who have a lot of experiences in their life
Speaker 2: where they feel like they don't matter. They become very
Speaker 2: preoccupied with mattering. And yes, it's like the need for
Speaker 2: self esteem. It's almost like the need for self esteem
Speaker 2: is a part of this mattering construct and that hasn't
Speaker 2: really been discussed as much. And I'd love to get
Speaker 2: your point on this well.
Speaker 1: I think, first of all, excellent move. I think seeing
Speaker 1: narcissism as a pathology of mattering, I think that's insightful
Speaker 1: and astute. But first of all, thank you for bringing
Speaker 1: up forward. That's excellent. I think that dovetails with a
Speaker 1: lot of the work I do. I try to integrate
Speaker 1: mattering with a lot of the work I do on
Speaker 1: the nature of embodied cognition, and that this sense of
Speaker 1: connectedness I call it religio because the way it often
Speaker 1: has these kinds of religious connotations, for a sense of
Speaker 1: the sacred. But the sense of connectedness I think actually
Speaker 1: results from sort of the core functions of intelligence and consciousness,
Speaker 1: which is to screen out what's irrelevant and get us
Speaker 1: to hone in on what's relevant. And that honing in
Speaker 1: isn't something like relevance isn't in us or in the world.
Speaker 1: It's a fundamental between us and the world it's a
Speaker 1: fundamental connectedness and that relevance realization and I need realization,
Speaker 1: both awareness and making That connectedness, I think is the
Speaker 1: central thing to human cognition and consciousness. It's central to
Speaker 1: our agency. And so anything that properly nourishes that is
Speaker 1: deeply nourishing to the core of our cognitive agency. And
Speaker 1: I think that's part of what gives it its spiritual signalsificants,
Speaker 1: its sacredness. And I think our culture is struggling, and
Speaker 1: I think your book has perhaps I detected a subtext
Speaker 1: of you know, our culture isn't really structured well to
Speaker 1: helping us meet these kinds of needs. And I felt
Speaker 1: a kindred spirit in that. And that means I think
Speaker 1: what we see more and more a self centeredness that
Speaker 1: is trying to demand that connectedness, but in exactly the
Speaker 1: wrong direction. And I think that's why narcissism, ultimately, in
Speaker 1: very fundamental ways, undermines cognitive agency. And we need to
Speaker 1: do a little bit more research into the cognitive effects
Speaker 1: of narcissism and the way it undermines certain kinds tasks.
Speaker 1: Let me instead of that sounding empty without tieth, let
Speaker 1: me give me one quick yet that makes it a
Speaker 1: little bit more plausible. I think it's becoming clear that
Speaker 1: a sort of the main connectedness that makes us intelligence
Speaker 1: isn't sort of our raw processing power. If you take
Speaker 1: a look at measures that predict our IQ, like measures
Speaker 1: of working memory, there's pretty clear evidence that chimps have
Speaker 1: better working memory capacity than us, pretty undeniable. And so
Speaker 1: are they more intelligent than us? Well? Why do we
Speaker 1: have all of this? And the chimps are basically just
Speaker 1: doing what they're doing, right, And this goes to the
Speaker 1: idea that what our intelligence most allows us to do
Speaker 1: is to plug into the collective intelligence of distributive cognition.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly the place where the narcissist is most problematic,
Speaker 1: because they don't. They're sort of thwarted. They misunderstand or
Speaker 1: misapprehend how to tap into that social interfacing. And I
Speaker 1: would predict that would have significant ways in which they
Speaker 1: are going to suffer cognitive impairment. One and I'll shut
Speaker 1: up after this. One clear example would be we need
Speaker 1: to study it. But I would hypothesize and proposing that
Speaker 1: there's an overlap between narcissism and being autodidactic in a
Speaker 1: way that exactly thwarts you about properly interfacing with social cognition,
Speaker 1: so you properly can transcend your own ecocentrism, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So that would be a proposal I would make. No.
Speaker 2: I love what you're saying, and it makes it I
Speaker 2: just think of this distinction that the Abraham Maslomide between
Speaker 2: the deficiency realm of cognition and the growth realm of cognition. Yes,
Speaker 2: I think it's a really important distinction to make, and
Speaker 2: it seems like so many people in our society right
Speaker 2: now are so stuck in the deficiency mode. And what
Speaker 2: I've been really struck in the meaning of literature. You know,
Speaker 2: they've psychometrically tried to measure. They come up with the
Speaker 2: Meaning scale, and they found that if you score high
Speaker 2: in having a lot of meaning in your life, it's
Speaker 2: correlated positively with so many positive things. But if you
Speaker 2: score high and I'm still searching for a meaning, it's
Speaker 2: actually correlated with lots of like depression and anxiety. And
Speaker 2: I know it's the same exact parallel in the mattering literature,
Speaker 2: and they have the anti mattering scale, which is the
Speaker 2: extent of what you feel like you don't matter, and
Speaker 2: that's correlated all these negative things like depression. But if
Speaker 2: you do feel like you matter, it's crow with all
Speaker 2: these positive things. So I think there someone needs to
Speaker 2: integrate these two literatures. When you're I think the overarching
Speaker 2: thread here, correct me if I'm wrong. It is like
Speaker 2: if you're really stuck in this deficiency realm where you
Speaker 2: see everyone you meet not as a potential growth connection,
Speaker 2: but as a way to validate you. That's the only way,
Speaker 2: that's the only thing you view people as is do
Speaker 2: they respect me? Or do they not respect me? Versus? Oh,
Speaker 2: let me find let me actually care about this person
Speaker 2: independent of me. You know, you're you're constantly full of
Speaker 2: strife and constantly full of anxiety and depression. And how
Speaker 2: can we get people and move them to the promised land,
Speaker 2: the growth realm of existence?
Speaker 1: I think that's right and and for me, that's where
Speaker 1: you find the inevitable connection between these three things, sort
Speaker 1: of a sense of sacredness. Sacredness is an apprehension of
Speaker 1: reality that it has a growth dimension affordance for us.
Speaker 1: That's I think that's ultimately sort of I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: that's a complete metaphysical definition or anything like that, but
Speaker 1: that is certainly it's phenomenological way it becomes phenomenologically present
Speaker 1: to us, I would argue, And so there's the sacredness,
Speaker 1: and that's the religio, and then there is, right, the
Speaker 1: degree to which we are affording people avenues for that connectedness,
Speaker 1: the meaning. And then that connects with degree to which
Speaker 1: people have to engage in real self transcendence, which means
Speaker 1: really fundamentally a project of you have to say this
Speaker 1: the right way, You have to say it paired with
Speaker 1: self transcendence, or will fall into the deficiency mode. So
Speaker 1: please remember that. But self correction, right, the capacity to
Speaker 1: cultivate virtue because you realize your proclivity for vice, the
Speaker 1: capacity to cultivate seeing through illusion into reality, which is
Speaker 1: a central feature of wisdom. So like, and then when
Speaker 1: you're seeing through reality, seeing through illusion into reality, then
Speaker 1: the sacredness of reality starts to open it self up.
Speaker 1: So like, we don't do enough about the connecting the
Speaker 1: wisdom and the meaning and the sacredness together in an
Speaker 1: appropriate way, I would argue in our culture right now, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Love that you bring the word sacredness. Some psychologists be like, well,
Speaker 2: how do you operationalize that construct?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: But I think that there is a certain sacredness to
Speaker 2: each individual's self actualization journey that we don't really appreciate.
Speaker 2: You know, we view people through the lens of ideology
Speaker 2: and through the lens of all these things. These days,
Speaker 2: we don't treat the whole human as in their own
Speaker 2: unique journey is sacred. So I love it.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad. I mean, I think there is a
Speaker 1: way and to think about it, And I mean Plato
Speaker 1: made disargument. It's not my argument, his argument, but the
Speaker 1: things that afford that connectedness are a reduction of internal
Speaker 1: conflict because that undermines your agency, and that makes you
Speaker 1: prone to self deception. That because one part will mislead
Speaker 1: the other. So peace of mind and we can bring
Speaker 1: back a deep meaning of that. But we don't want
Speaker 1: that peace of mind to come because we are disconnected
Speaker 1: from reality and sometimes of spiritual bypassing. The other thing
Speaker 1: we want is we want a connectedness to reality. And
Speaker 1: Plato propose that those are two meta drives for us,
Speaker 1: because those are essential to mattering. Now I'm making an
Speaker 1: argument on his bath all right. In addition to whatever
Speaker 1: we desire, we want that desire to be realized within us.
Speaker 1: In peace of mind. And we want whatever satisfies that
Speaker 1: desire to be really real. And those two metads I
Speaker 1: think point to when we find things that satisfy us,
Speaker 1: they strike us as sacred for that reason, because they
Speaker 1: afford the meaning. Plato's insight is these two things can
Speaker 1: be put into a relationship where they reciprocally afford each other.
Speaker 1: As I see more deeply into reality, I get better
Speaker 1: at see more deeply within, which allows me to cultivate
Speaker 1: the inner piece more powerfully, which then allows me to
Speaker 1: see more deeply into reality. And the two spin on
Speaker 1: each other. And I think that's a way in which
Speaker 1: we can operationalize it. And here's why I think we
Speaker 1: can operationalize it. We have operationalized the reverse. Mark Lewis's
Speaker 1: model of addiction is reciprocal narrowing, the exact opposite. We
Speaker 1: understand what this means as a model of addiction, Well,
Speaker 1: then we could we thereby understand the opposite, which is
Speaker 1: reciprocal opening. And I think the things that afford reliable
Speaker 1: and deep reciprocal opening are the things we regard as sacred.
Speaker 2: Love that yeah, kind of creating upward spirals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the possibility right, that that spiral isn't just psychological.
Speaker 1: What I mean by that is and I don't, I don't,
Speaker 1: I'm really I mean, I did quite a bit of Maslow.
Speaker 1: But there was a long, long time ago in a
Speaker 1: galaxy far far away, and I'm enjoying your book because
Speaker 1: it's bringing that back. And one of my ta's former tas,
Speaker 1: he's now an RA and a collaborator, he give me.
Speaker 1: He gave me a copy of Maslow's journal, So I'm
Speaker 1: going to actually tick that up because your book is
Speaker 1: inspiring me. So I would have said this of Maslow
Speaker 1: in the past or Young. I'm not so sure now,
Speaker 1: So just take it then as as a point of departure,
Speaker 1: not as a final claim, but one a criticism that
Speaker 1: had been leveled of Bens Young and Maslow, as they
Speaker 1: completely psychologize the notion of transcendence. This is kind of
Speaker 1: a Hydegarean critique. It doesn't carry within it any existential
Speaker 1: or ontological significance. But the model I was just proposing
Speaker 1: to you says that not only are you rising up
Speaker 1: levels of the self, you're closing deeper and higher levels
Speaker 1: of reality as you do, so that there are truths
Speaker 1: about the world that are being disclosed. Not only is
Speaker 1: there psychological improvement in connectedness, what you're able to connect
Speaker 1: to has now been more deeply disclosed to you as well,
Speaker 1: And so it has an ontological and even an a
Speaker 1: pistemological significance to it. It's not just a kind of
Speaker 1: psychological improvement, it's epistemological and existential improvement as well. And
Speaker 1: I think those are all the kinds of improvements that
Speaker 1: are available to us. So I think this model that
Speaker 1: I'm proposing to you, that's ultimately a platonic model, offers
Speaker 1: a richer notion of transcendence at least or the psychologized
Speaker 1: versions that have come into the common understandings of Young
Speaker 1: and Maslo. You know, Young had the psychoid and maybe
Speaker 1: he was reaching out to something there. But I'm getting
Speaker 1: a sense that Maslow has something too about there's an
Speaker 1: ontology in there. This is not just a psychological state,
Speaker 1: but it's a state that has epistemic gain in it.
Speaker 2: And absolutely, yeah, yeah, well he would say that in
Speaker 2: the throes of a peak experience, you see reality more
Speaker 2: clearly than ever before. So I do think he makes
Speaker 2: those claims.
Speaker 1: That's good, what's needed. I would then argue and so
Speaker 1: I'm not making an anachronistic criticism of him. What's needed
Speaker 1: is that doesn't make any sense in an ontology that's
Speaker 1: a flat world, ontology that has no levels, that everything
Speaker 1: is reduced to a fundamental single level. If the levels
Speaker 1: aren't real, then that notion of seeing more really doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense. So you also have to re and
Speaker 1: this is a project I'm engaged in. You have to
Speaker 1: re argue for an ontology that is not a flat
Speaker 1: ontology such that claims like that makes sense. They're not
Speaker 1: in antagonism with your worldview.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that can be a very anxious state.
Speaker 1: I believe me. I've been at it. I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: I'm seeing all of this and then how does this
Speaker 1: go with the reductive materialism? And the answer is it
Speaker 1: doesn't because reductive materialism needs you to be able to
Speaker 1: say that there are levels of reality in some real way. Sorry,
Speaker 1: directive to materialism prevents you from saying there are levels
Speaker 1: of reality in a real way. Transcendence need you to
Speaker 1: be able to say that, and to say it with
Speaker 1: real teeth. No reality is layered. There is ultimate reality,
Speaker 1: and it's other than just the bottom level pointed to
Speaker 1: by physics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is why this might be relevant. It might
Speaker 2: not be relevant, But I really have argued that we
Speaker 2: need to think of transcendence not as vertical but as horizontal.
Speaker 2: That there's too many theories of transcendence that are vertical.
Speaker 2: For instance, Ken Wilber's theory is all about levels, and
Speaker 2: he makes clear delineations, you know, and then you have
Speaker 2: the green level, which is the highest level. Yes, I
Speaker 2: recently had him on my podcast and I just challenged
Speaker 2: him on that a little bit because I just I
Speaker 2: don't like that way of thinking about reality. Do you agree?
Speaker 1: What depends what you mean? I mean, okay, there right.
Speaker 1: I think if you're talking about when I talk about this,
Speaker 1: I talk about horizontal and vertical, and both of them
Speaker 1: are problematic because they both rely on a two world's
Speaker 1: mythology that largely isn't going to work for us anymore.
Speaker 1: I would argue, like, there's a lower world in an
Speaker 1: upper world, and transcend even means the going up and
Speaker 1: over right and all that stuff. And so I agree
Speaker 1: with you about that critique. What are we trying to
Speaker 1: say about levels is we're trying to say something like
Speaker 1: there is there are emergent holes that have capacities and
Speaker 1: properties that are not captured by the underlying constituents. So
Speaker 1: it's an argument for real emergence. And if you have
Speaker 1: emergence without top down emanation, you have just epiphenomenalism, the
Speaker 1: upper level emergence, but it doesn't do anything. And then
Speaker 1: and that doesn't that's not a real ontology. So you
Speaker 1: need if you want to turn the emergence emanation horizontally,
Speaker 1: and we're going deeper into the world and those depths
Speaker 1: that are more and more right calling to us and
Speaker 1: transforming us. I don't have any problem with that. In fact,
Speaker 1: I'm happy with that. I tend to separate them for
Speaker 1: this purely pragmatic reason. I try to keep the horizontal
Speaker 1: for talking about what's happening when we're interacting with other
Speaker 1: people in dialogue and we're opening up to each other,
Speaker 1: and then the vertical for how the you and I
Speaker 1: together are opening up to something that transcends us both.
Speaker 1: That's my pragmatic reason for doing that.
Speaker 2: Cool. That's cool. I like that You're like yes and
Speaker 2: not either or so I like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well I don't want I mean it's kind
Speaker 1: you're making a really I mean, you're not turning it
Speaker 1: into a criticism or anything. But it could be, and
Speaker 1: so I appreciate the graciousness. Yes, talking about this language
Speaker 1: without falling into two worlds. Talking is something I keep proposing.
Speaker 1: We have to figure out how to do properly, and
Speaker 1: we're trying to do it right now, and that's where
Speaker 1: my spirit lies. My spirit doesn't lie in trying to
Speaker 1: get a hierarchical thing going again, that's not my interest.
Speaker 1: My interest is can we pull out these different ways.
Speaker 1: There's something at least phenomenologically about how you and I
Speaker 1: can transcend together when we get caught up in a conversation. Right,
Speaker 1: but that conversation could take on a life of its
Speaker 1: own and transcend both of us and call both of us.
Speaker 1: And I want to get those two dimensions at least
Speaker 1: schematically represented, so we can talk about how we bring
Speaker 1: them into proper resonance with each other.
Speaker 2: Well, this is great, let's just both share. Let's share
Speaker 2: each other's definitions of transcendence. I'll start. I want to
Speaker 2: hear what you think of my crazy complutive definition. Please
Speaker 2: that I put in transcend By the way, you know
Speaker 2: this is a spoilerver you know, I know you probably
Speaker 2: haven't finished the book yet, but this is right at
Speaker 2: the end of it, trying to integrate everything else in
Speaker 2: the books. So here we go. I say healthy transcendence,
Speaker 2: and I distinguish healthy transcendence from spiritual narcissism, which I
Speaker 2: see as very vertical. Yes, I'm transcendent and you're not.
Speaker 2: That's what I mean by vertical. That's what I mean.
Speaker 2: So healthy transcendence is an emergent phenomenon resulting from the
Speaker 2: harmonious integration of one's whole self in the service of
Speaker 2: cultivating the good society.
Speaker 1: Yes, I like that. I like that. So here's how
Speaker 1: I might tweak it with you. I'm not just going
Speaker 1: to propose we're so I'm going to say that transcendence
Speaker 1: is that emergent wholeness, but it also is an emanation
Speaker 1: back down. To paraphrase Nietzsche, the height of my spirituality
Speaker 1: has to reach into the depths of my sexuality or
Speaker 1: it's not real transcendence. So it's not just the emergence up,
Speaker 1: it's the emanation down. And it affords wise mattering to myself,
Speaker 1: to other people, and to reality realized as inexhaustible to me.
Speaker 2: Hm, that's really clever. I'm actually low key obsessed with
Speaker 2: your notions about wisdom, because I mean, I've watched your
Speaker 2: lectures on YouTube, and I love your distinction between foolishness
Speaker 2: and ignorance really important, and you associate foolishness with a
Speaker 2: lack of wisdom and ignorance with a lack of knowledge.
Speaker 2: Correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's correct.
Speaker 2: So I think like wisdom and transcendence are so close. Yes,
Speaker 2: I think these things are so close. And Maslow saw
Speaker 2: wisdom a lot in the dichotomy transcendence, in the ability
Speaker 2: to transcend all these You know, society is stuck at
Speaker 2: all these different levels of dichotomies, good versus evil, selfish
Speaker 2: versus unselfish, male versus female, Yes, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: You can go down the line so many things. Pleasure
Speaker 2: versus and wisdom, according to Maslow, really incorporated this ability
Speaker 2: to think in dialectics and kind of transcend and kind
Speaker 2: of refuse to think in terms of these binaries along
Speaker 2: these lines. What are your thoughts on this.
Speaker 1: I think that's deeply right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Gos.
Speaker 1: As long as we don't just mean Hegelian, we should
Speaker 1: not exclude, but we shouldn't just mean Hegelian sense of dialect,
Speaker 1: but also the Platonic sense of dialect. Yeah, And for Plato,
Speaker 1: the ultimate wisdom comes in the ultimate overcoming, sorry, the
Speaker 1: overcoming of sort of the ultimate dichotomy. And Drew Hyland
Speaker 1: brings this out beautifully, but D. C. Schindler does as well,
Speaker 1: some of the best work on Plato and part of
Speaker 1: what's called the third way of Platonic scholarship. That is,
Speaker 1: I'm deeply invested in I think it's deeply on the
Speaker 1: right track. But what's that? And this is the economy
Speaker 1: between finitude and transcendence. Plato makes the argument that the
Speaker 1: deepest thing we face, and the deepest proclivity we have
Speaker 1: towards foolishness is if we lose the polarity and fall
Speaker 1: into one of the polls. If we think we are
Speaker 1: merely finite, then we fall into despairing servitude and our
Speaker 1: prey to the tyrant. If we fall into merely transcend
Speaker 1: it it, then we suffer hubris and inflation, and we
Speaker 1: become the tyrant, and so we have to overcome. The
Speaker 1: wisest thing is can we get to a place where
Speaker 1: we really accept our fun we really realize. In Maslow's
Speaker 1: sense of the word right, like actualized, but become aware
Speaker 1: of it. Right, our mortality, right, our mortality capture in
Speaker 1: the Hydigerian sense, we are the beings whose being is
Speaker 1: in question, and we are the beings who know that
Speaker 1: we are finite. In that sense, we are capable of
Speaker 1: profound transcendence, but it is precisely that we realize that
Speaker 1: we are finite beings who will never be God's. There
Speaker 1: you go, right, and you can see so much of
Speaker 1: foolishness as moving between right, you know, the self deception
Speaker 1: of despair and the self deception of hubris narcissism. Yes, exactly, yes,
Speaker 1: And so I think I think Plato's notion of wash
Speaker 1: them as that capacity for and you remember, right, in
Speaker 1: all of Plato's myths in the positive sense, where the
Speaker 1: person doesn't just go up and see the sun, the
Speaker 1: person also returns into the cave. Right, it's always up
Speaker 1: and down. Right, So we have to cultivate a capacity
Speaker 1: for both self transcendence but also self grounding, so that
Speaker 1: we are constantly at that sort of meta virtue where
Speaker 1: we are godlike but never gods, lovers of wisdom, but
Speaker 1: we never claim to be wise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that it's so spot on, and I
Speaker 2: wonder if we're going to disagree on anything today, but
Speaker 2: so spot on. You know, part of my research, I
Speaker 2: think this really it's part of my background. I was
Speaker 2: trained by Robert Sternberg.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. That's mazing.
Speaker 2: I did my pH d at Yale. In fact, my
Speaker 2: Colin de Young was the post doc at the same
Speaker 2: time that I was there. That's our connection. That's our connection.
Speaker 1: Wow, lots of connections. Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jeremy Gray and Robert Sternberg were my advisors. I
Speaker 2: studied intelligence, the neuroscience of intelligence. It just relates to
Speaker 2: a lot of what you're saying. I mean, some of
Speaker 2: the most wise people I've met in my life were uneducated. Yes,
Speaker 2: to somehow assume that just because you ace the vocabulary
Speaker 2: section of an IQ test means you're going to be
Speaker 2: wise seems a very faulty assumption.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's where the work of Stanovich and others
Speaker 1: and yes, and the work that I've done with in
Speaker 1: a redial about all the rationality debates, like, but you know,
Speaker 1: even Stanovich's work that our best measures of general intelligence
Speaker 1: are only weakly correlated with our best measures of rationality
Speaker 1: and even those measures of rationality I think are far
Speaker 1: too pruncated. It's just largely propositional logical rationality and not
Speaker 1: all kinds of other important rational like intentional rationality and
Speaker 1: other things like that. But even so, think about that, right,
Speaker 1: so think about that, Scott like these two measures measures
Speaker 1: of G and sort of we could call it measures
Speaker 1: of R. They are correlated, but at a round point three.
Speaker 1: Now point three matters especially in social science.
Speaker 2: Three Sorry, what's R? What's R is?
Speaker 1: Oh? Oh? Sorry, you know how in G you have
Speaker 1: a positive manifold between different tests and intelligence? So are
Speaker 1: the work that Stanovich shows?
Speaker 2: Oh the rationality quotion is that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, oh gotcha?
Speaker 2: Gotcha?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah yeah. There's a strong positive manifold between how
Speaker 1: you do on all these rationality tests. So we really
Speaker 1: got pretty clear measures. There's problems with both, but nevertheless
Speaker 1: it's a good like, it's a good basis to claim, well,
Speaker 1: what's the relation? And correlation is about point three? Now
Speaker 1: that's important. That's you can publish with that correlation and
Speaker 1: the social sciences it's above point two five, but it's
Speaker 1: only point three, which means most of the variants is
Speaker 1: not accounted for. It by your intelligence. So there's nothing
Speaker 1: and this is what Stanovich has alreadyet consistently, there's nothing
Speaker 1: paradoxical or contradictory or weird or saying that person is
Speaker 1: very intelligent and very foolish. There's nothing, there's no contradiction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm so glad you brought up Stanovitch's work. He
Speaker 2: was one of the biggest influences on my dissertation work
Speaker 2: Robots rebellion like influenced my whole dissertation, and I proposed
Speaker 2: a dual process theory of intelligence that took an account
Speaker 2: both system one end system two. So that was my dissertation.
Speaker 2: So huge, huge props to case Stenavich and for acknowledging
Speaker 2: there are lots of forms of rationality like the my
Speaker 2: side bias, and we see all over the place these days,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure there are a lot of people with
Speaker 2: high IQs who are still showing them side bias and politics, right.
Speaker 1: Oh, in all kinds of things. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: the argument that many of the other biases collapsed into
Speaker 1: the my side bias. Yeah, attribution errors, confirmation bias, it's
Speaker 1: pretty plausible that those are variations on the my side bias.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and that's exactly the case. And notice how
Speaker 1: that's not overcome by how technically good one is at
Speaker 1: the inferential management of one's propositions, because it's a perspective
Speaker 1: on the ability. It's the ability to over calm a
Speaker 1: kind of ecocentrism, take other people's perspectives really into account,
Speaker 1: realized in an efficacious manner. And see how that connects
Speaker 1: up with the meaning and life stuff, right, Because that
Speaker 1: ability to relate first to third person perspectives right, right,
Speaker 1: is so central. You've seen some of the research is
Speaker 1: that people go higher up some of our social hierarchies,
Speaker 1: like corporation, they get less and less able to pick
Speaker 1: up on the perspective of other people around them. Right,
Speaker 1: And think about again how that overlaps with the discussion
Speaker 1: we were having about narcissism, like it's it's all this
Speaker 1: stuff is like, well, I get over excited and preps
Speaker 1: to I see, I see A lot of stuff is
Speaker 1: converging together in a coherent manner. So that talking about
Speaker 1: a cognitive science of spirituality, where we mean something like
Speaker 1: the whole person capable of being caught up in transcending finitude. Right,
Speaker 1: it's no longer wishy wishy woo woo. This is this
Speaker 1: is this is stuff that we can bring really good
Speaker 1: cognitive science to bear on. And I think that's very
Speaker 1: exciting and very important right now given some of the
Speaker 1: really significant challenges that are on the very near horizon
Speaker 1: to our sense of who and what we are spot on.
Speaker 2: And I really resonate with your work as well, because
Speaker 2: I see what you're trying to do in combining Buddhism
Speaker 2: with psychology, and this is what Maso tried to do
Speaker 2: to then life. This is what I try to do
Speaker 2: and transcend as well. You'll see if when you get
Speaker 2: to get through it is an integration of Western and
Speaker 2: Eastern notions of self actualization don't have to be at
Speaker 2: odds with each other at all, and we can integrate them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that goes towards the So I'm the next big
Speaker 1: series I'm working on Cool. So I did awakening to
Speaker 1: the Meni Crisis and then after Socrates. In the after Socrates,
Speaker 1: I tried to reawaken us to the whole Socratic Neoplatonic
Speaker 1: tradition and not just theoretically, but how could you put
Speaker 1: it into practice individually and collectively? How could you aspire
Speaker 1: to it? As a fundamental philosophy as a way of life.
Speaker 1: The third series is going to be this is not
Speaker 1: the title, this is the working title, something like Zen Neoplatonism.
Speaker 1: How can we take Neo Playanism which was sort of
Speaker 1: the the courtyard of philosophical spiritual discourse, and you know,
Speaker 1: it even served as a courtyard between Christianity, Judaism, Islam,
Speaker 1: possibly Vedanta and It's and then later on it enters
Speaker 1: into deep discourse with Zen through the Kyoto school. Can
Speaker 1: we do something with that? And I actually want to
Speaker 1: journey along west to east as much as I can
Speaker 1: of the Silk Road and try and try and do
Speaker 1: something like that, but not just do it as a talk,
Speaker 1: but actually try to undergo sort of the you know,
Speaker 1: the philosophical geography, and actually undergo what it would be
Speaker 1: like as a person caught up aspirationally on this journey
Speaker 1: to try and weave these two great synthetic visions Neil
Speaker 1: Playtonism together.
Speaker 2: Wow, I can't wait to watch the series.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to do it. But there's a lot
Speaker 1: of preparation that's going into it. But yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: next big one.
Speaker 2: You know, I've been I've been really getting interested more
Speaker 2: and more recent. Yes, And I see such great connections
Speaker 2: between Daoism and Masow's notions of self actualization, particularly towards
Speaker 2: the later years of his life when he was facing
Speaker 2: his mortality. And so there is something, you know, he
Speaker 2: he did show a huge shift when he realized he
Speaker 2: could have died of a heart you know, he got
Speaker 2: hit a heart attack, and he realized he was living
Speaker 2: a life on borrowed time, and he shifted from talking
Speaker 2: about peak experiences to and he co opted in East
Speaker 2: Indian term the plateau experience.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it seems like self transcendence where it's at,
Speaker 2: is really at the Plateau's not the peaks, you know,
Speaker 2: not the manic stages, not the mania, but the every
Speaker 2: seeing the sacred in the every day is what he
Speaker 2: said is really the peak of self transcendence. And he
Speaker 2: only said that the last couple of years of his life.
Speaker 1: I think that's beautiful. I mean, I've been doing Daoist
Speaker 1: practices for thirty years of jed jong. Each one. I
Speaker 1: do them religiously, and of course, and then that allows
Speaker 1: you to read some of the literature I think a
Speaker 1: little bit more deeply. If you're doing these practices like
Speaker 1: reading the tata Chin before and after I had been
Speaker 1: doing Taichi was very different for me, and so I
Speaker 1: understand to some degree what you're talking about. And this
Speaker 1: is why I'm interested in Zen, because you get Zen
Speaker 1: by basically integrating Daoism and Mahayana Buddhism together and then
Speaker 1: taking it to Japan and letting it touch sort of
Speaker 1: Shinto aesthetics, and that's how you get Zen. I think
Speaker 1: we have tended to lose the Taoist aspects of Zen
Speaker 1: as it's been brought to the West. There are some
Speaker 1: good books out there that of Zen and things like
Speaker 1: that that try to remind people that Zen is has
Speaker 1: both Daoist and Buddhist roots. That's something I'd like to
Speaker 1: bring out in the series. I always consider myself sort
Speaker 1: of on the precipice of Zen because I've been I've
Speaker 1: been practicing Buddhist practices for a very long time, but
Speaker 1: passna Meta, contemplating the Three Marks and Dallas practices for
Speaker 1: a very long time, and then using something like a
Speaker 1: neoplatonic framework to see how they talk to each other,
Speaker 1: and then how they can talk to Neoplatonism. So I
Speaker 1: want to exemplify to not just talk about it, and
Speaker 1: I want to go through it, but I don't want
Speaker 1: it to be about me, right, you know? And so
Speaker 1: it's how do we how do we properly do that?
Speaker 1: Like we gotta, we gotta, We got to rely on
Speaker 1: a lot of the medium. I take heart from some
Speaker 1: other documentaries I've seen, like John Rohmer's book on the
Speaker 1: Bible of the Testament as templates. But that's one thing
Speaker 1: I'm really trying to wrestle with, how do you how
Speaker 1: do you how do you do this with the way
Speaker 1: it needs to be done well without giving into hubris? Right,
Speaker 1: So that that's a challenge that I am facing right now.
Speaker 1: But I do I do. I do think that like
Speaker 1: if we properly understand the dynamic within the dynamics within Zen,
Speaker 1: it's it's Taoist and Buddhists, and with the neo Platonism,
Speaker 1: it's Stois Stoicism, Orstilian and Platonism, and in this dynamic
Speaker 1: emergence that they're sort of inherently self transcending things. And
Speaker 1: then these two things can be put into proper opponent
Speaker 1: not oppositional, but opponent processing with each other. What kind
Speaker 1: of spirituality could that be for us? Right now.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that you answer that in some of
Speaker 2: your lectures. You know, you're not giving yourself enough credit.
Speaker 2: You have noticed, you've said, it's no coincidence that a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of things are happening right now in our
Speaker 2: society together the convergence. There's an and you provide a
Speaker 2: unifying account, or at least they're trying to find, provide
Speaker 2: a unifying account of why all these things are happening.
Speaker 2: To me, that highest level transcendence is all about unity,
Speaker 2: is being able to see all sorts of different things
Speaker 2: as all parts of a of a larger whole. You're you're, you're,
Speaker 2: You're like a modern day guru, even though you've you're
Speaker 2: you've you have way too much humility to say that
Speaker 2: to me. But but in the sense that you're able
Speaker 2: to show people what the bigger hole is. To me,
Speaker 2: I think that's what the integration of all this stuff
Speaker 2: looks like, is being able to see that and teach
Speaker 2: it to others.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you. I don't know quite how to take
Speaker 1: that guy, especially coming from you. I value what you
Speaker 1: have to say about this something, So yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I want to avoid I really aspire to avoid all
Speaker 1: the dangerous traps associated with gurification.
Speaker 2: Absolutely me too, Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: But getting people to catch the beauty of the whole
Speaker 1: such that they are willing to leap towards it aspirationally,
Speaker 1: that platonic project is something that I've committed myself and
Speaker 1: my life to, and I now think it's becoming more
Speaker 1: and more important. I think we are on the advent
Speaker 1: of a change in which the thing that is going
Speaker 1: to be the most distinctive about us is going to
Speaker 1: be our spirituality, and a lot of the things that
Speaker 1: we wanted over the world are going to be undermined. I'm,
Speaker 1: of course, referring to the emergence of real AGI, which
Speaker 1: is now very much closer than even I thought it was.
Speaker 1: Meaning even I because I've been I didn't mean like
Speaker 1: I have special authority. I mean I've been generally somebody
Speaker 1: who is very skeptical of AI claims because they have
Speaker 1: been so frequently fraudulent, or so frequently fraudulent is the
Speaker 1: wrong word, so frequently heubistic in misplaced, that's a better word.
Speaker 1: I apologize for the olier word. But now there's something
Speaker 1: real on the horizon, and it's not AGI, but and
Speaker 1: there's deep reasons for that. I won't get into that
Speaker 1: right now, but it's getting close enough now that those
Speaker 1: things about us that connect us to the ineffable, the
Speaker 1: non propositional, that connect us to an enlightening realization of truth,
Speaker 1: good and beauty, those are the things that are going
Speaker 1: to remain It's both hard for the AGI to get
Speaker 1: and if it gets it, it will only get it by
Speaker 1: becoming like us, and maybe that's part of our responsibility.
Speaker 1: And if it doesn't, then that is what is going
Speaker 1: to remain valuable. So the two things we have to
Speaker 1: do is can we bring ourselves to the place where
Speaker 1: we can properly give birth to an AI that is
Speaker 1: open to the humility of the spirit, Or if it
Speaker 1: can't do that, then we make a home for ourselves
Speaker 1: in that about us which will not be captured, which
Speaker 1: is our spirituality, our connection to the non propositional and
Speaker 1: the ineffable. I think this is what is being made
Speaker 1: clear to us because both those are the only two options,
Speaker 1: and both of them require a preponderance of a prioritization,
Speaker 1: a foregrounding of our spirituality as that thing that matters
Speaker 1: and that used to sound hokey and California and granola
Speaker 1: and people who just don't get economics and just don't
Speaker 1: get the real world, well, wake up, because the real
Speaker 1: world has made that now the case. At least that's
Speaker 1: an argument I'm now starting to advance.
Speaker 2: I'm right there with you. I think that the more
Speaker 2: that AI advanced artificial general intelligence advances, the more it
Speaker 2: actually will be an exercised in showing how the separation
Speaker 2: between IQ type intelligence and wisdom. I mean, it'll become
Speaker 2: clearer and clearer and clearer and clearer that it already is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I foretold this. I gave a talk in
Speaker 1: these Center for Ethics and AI, and I said, because
Speaker 1: of standard riches work, we have very good reason to
Speaker 1: believe that we can make something very intelligent and very
Speaker 1: foolish these you know, the big problem with this machine
Speaker 1: is how much it can fabulates, how much it hallucinates.
Speaker 1: And as we're improving it, it's just getting better at
Speaker 1: misrepresenting things and persuading us of stuff that's not true.
Speaker 1: And you know, and people are acknowledging this. And it
Speaker 1: may have to do with the fact that we have
Speaker 1: to put in a randomness through the temperature function and all.
Speaker 1: And I won't get into the details. But like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like we made something that's plausibly at least a
Speaker 1: pantomime of our intelligence. And guess what it also carries
Speaker 1: along with it the inevitability of self deception. And the
Speaker 1: thing that's troubling, of course, is it because it doesn't
Speaker 1: really have relevance realization yet. Well, I won't get into
Speaker 1: again that point. It doesn't care about the fact that
Speaker 1: it's deceptive or confabulating or even deceiving itself. Right, And
Speaker 1: that's foolishness. That's a definition of foolishness.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, it almost doesn't care about anything.
Speaker 1: Well, it can't care about anything because it doesn't have
Speaker 1: a body. It's intelligence isn't emergent from. Like, it can't
Speaker 1: care about anything because it is not taking care about itself.
Speaker 1: Because it doesn't care about itself, it can't care for anything.
Speaker 1: We have needs because we are self making things. We
Speaker 1: are literally embodied. We literally have to import things into us.
Speaker 1: Things are literally important to us. They literally matter to us.
Speaker 1: Listen to the language. That is not the case for this.
Speaker 2: Machine, and it probably never will unless we have the fusion,
Speaker 2: the great fusion, but the cyborgs. But you know, roll,
Speaker 2: this is why I love the existential humanist to psychologists
Speaker 2: and why I'm trying to bring them back. I call
Speaker 2: myself a cognitive humanistic psychologist these days. That's amazing, thank you.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm trying to like integrate these things because
Speaker 2: I love the work of role Roll May. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you read any role a.
Speaker 1: Mazed I've read a long time ago.
Speaker 2: Like Love and Will, for instance, is just such a
Speaker 2: beautiful reflection on just how much care is essentral to
Speaker 2: what it means to be human. Yes, and I mean
Speaker 2: that's that's it. That's how it would summarize the whole book,
Speaker 2: you know, And and care takes work, you know. That's
Speaker 2: that's where the will and the love come. Is that
Speaker 2: he you know, this kind of He doesn't have this
Speaker 2: overly romantic view that you have love and then forevermore
Speaker 2: you'll have love. He says, love emerges from work, working
Speaker 2: at it.
Speaker 1: I agree. I I think we've misrepresented love as a feeling.
Speaker 1: It's not and we've represented it as an emotion. It's
Speaker 1: not right. My love can make me loving someone can
Speaker 1: make me angry, sad, jealous, happy. Love is is an
Speaker 1: existential mode. It's a way it's a way of being reciprocally,
Speaker 1: reciprocally connected and identified with somebody, and that's that's a
Speaker 1: much more challenging thing. I want to point out that
Speaker 1: the thing I was talking about earlier that goes right
Speaker 1: into how you're paying attention right, relevant realization isn't cold calculation.
Speaker 1: It's caring. It's a caring about this is Iris Murdoch.
Speaker 1: Attention is the most moral of acts because it's caring
Speaker 1: about this and not that. Right, and that right in
Speaker 1: the very moments of the guts of the of the
Speaker 1: emergence of cognitive realization, right is care. This is a
Speaker 1: Heidi Garrian point of course. And so I think that
Speaker 1: appreciating care in the right way I like the best maybe,
Speaker 1: And this is Plato too, right, you know, knowing how
Speaker 1: to love wisely is I think, like the thing for
Speaker 1: a good human life, right. I think sin is loving foolishly, right,
Speaker 1: loving foolishly as opposed to loving wisely. And so I
Speaker 1: think that we face a challenge. I am bringing this
Speaker 1: around to just give me a million We face a
Speaker 1: challenge that I think we have to become in the
Speaker 1: way we've talked about it here. And I really appreciate
Speaker 1: what we've worked to on together here. Right, we have
Speaker 1: to cultivate our spirituality in a profound way in a
Speaker 1: culture that has washed us in bullshit and has denuded
Speaker 1: our realization of the centrality of the care that is
Speaker 1: bound up even in how we are paying attention to amen.
Speaker 2: Imen Maslow called it be love, love for the being
Speaker 2: of others.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, that's a good I mean, and that
Speaker 1: is the great insight of you know, the Mahayana, Buddhist
Speaker 1: and Christianity, agape and karuna. The love that's not the
Speaker 1: love of being one with something like in the consummation sense,
Speaker 1: or the love of reciprocity and friendship. These are all
Speaker 1: important too, but the love that is the love that
Speaker 1: is the creation the agape right that the creating of
Speaker 1: the real that the affording of something else coming into being.
Speaker 1: And the prototype example used in both the Buddha and
Speaker 1: christ right is you know the love that a good
Speaker 1: parent has for a child. Right.
Speaker 2: Do you hope the next Buddha is the sankha.
Speaker 1: I believe Tip not Haunt, is right about that, and
Speaker 1: I think we were. And again Agi is giving us
Speaker 1: strange evidence for this, as Agi is undermining the Enlightenment project.
Speaker 1: It is also revealing because if you think about something
Speaker 1: like the GPT machines, what they're basically doing is they're
Speaker 1: taking the collective intelligence of distributed cognition and then basically
Speaker 1: internalizing it into a single nexus point. It's like sort
Speaker 1: of fully automated epistemic tradition come to life. Right, it's us,
Speaker 1: you know, in a really profound and deep way. And
Speaker 1: that goes along with a lot of the research that
Speaker 1: For example, we're talking about rationality. In those rationality tests,
Speaker 1: take a standard test like the waste and selection task.
Speaker 1: I won't go into the details, it's not necessary, you
Speaker 1: know it, right, But the the failure rate amongst highly
Speaker 1: intelligent educated people, because most of the participants in the
Speaker 1: experiments are psych students first and second year university, right,
Speaker 1: all right, the failure rate is like ninety percent. Only
Speaker 1: ten percent of people get it right. But if you
Speaker 1: replace that, instead of having an individual do the waste
Speaker 1: selection task, you'll have four people and they talk with
Speaker 1: each other. The success rate goes from ten percent to
Speaker 1: eighty percent. And this is just one example of many
Speaker 1: examples of how distributed cognition I mean, it's a plausible case.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of criticism of the Enigma of
Speaker 1: Reason book by Merciernesberber, but the evidence they mount for like,
Speaker 1: we evolved, and I mentioned this earlier with the difference
Speaker 1: between us and the chips, we evolved to plug into
Speaker 1: the power of distributed cognition. Way before we are coming
Speaker 1: to confront the power of distributed computation. We learned how
Speaker 1: to plug into the power of distributed cognition, and we
Speaker 1: rightfully often treated that the collective intelligence of distributed cognition
Speaker 1: is something sacred. I do think we should resacralze that,
Speaker 1: and that is properly what Tichnahn is calling us to
Speaker 1: the next Buddha is the saying, yes.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. On December fourteenth, at eight twenty five am,
Speaker 2: for some reason, you decide to sit down and write
Speaker 2: the following sentence. I think the through line of my
Speaker 2: work is the exaptive transmutation of rall relevance realization into
Speaker 2: renaissance realization, which is then itself exacted transmutated into reverence realization. Yes,
Speaker 2: can we unpack this for our general audience? Yeah, And
Speaker 2: we first needed to find an acaptation and what reverence
Speaker 2: realization is.
Speaker 1: Let's finding Yeah, yeah, let's let's see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's too important, it's too important to stake there.
Speaker 1: I made a mistake there. That was an active foolishness.
Speaker 1: I was failing to pay attention to that. I was
Speaker 1: involving myself with the Twitter medium. I just had this
Speaker 1: great well to my mind, so let's not be overly.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: I had this what I thought was important insight and
Speaker 1: then I thought, oh, I should share with people, and
Speaker 1: and then I made the incorrect deduction. And the way
Speaker 1: you share things with people is on Twitter. But of
Speaker 1: course Twitter is not the medium in which you share
Speaker 1: stuff like that.
Speaker 2: And I appreciated it.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, thank you for that. Many people were unkind,
Speaker 1: and you know, deservedly. So that was that was in
Speaker 1: many ways a huboristic and cryptic thing to do. But
Speaker 1: let me try and pack. I've tried to indicate, and
Speaker 1: I've got a lot of publication in literature, but today
Speaker 1: that sense of relevance realization right, zeroing in on what's relevant,
Speaker 1: and that's this fundamental connectedness to what stands out, what
Speaker 1: can be important to you, right, whether it's at the
Speaker 1: center of your attention, what's arousing your affect, et cetera,
Speaker 1: all of that, and I tried to indicate it's not
Speaker 1: cold calculation, it's fundamentally what you're caring about. Read Monkeing,
Speaker 1: you said it great. The difference between us and computers
Speaker 1: is we care about information and right, right, So that's
Speaker 1: the relevance realization, and it's the deep depth of our
Speaker 1: intelligence and our caring and we should put them back together.
Speaker 1: The Enlightenment separated them and we have to deeply see
Speaker 1: them back together. So that's relevance realization. Resonance is when
Speaker 1: your irrelevance realization and mine get into that reciprocal opening.
Speaker 1: What you're zeroing in on relevant is insightful to you
Speaker 1: because of how I'm challenging you, and then you reciprocate
Speaker 1: by taking that insight and challenging my relevance realization. So
Speaker 1: it opens up and we start to get into resonance
Speaker 1: realization and it's found way and then right that brings
Speaker 1: us into a sense of being called into ratio religio
Speaker 1: well proportioned connectedness to that which transcends us both together
Speaker 1: in reverence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think of the all experience when I hear reverence.
Speaker 1: Realization, Well, but here's the interesting thing, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to meet in July, and here's the thing. So we're
Speaker 1: running an experiment at UFT and we've already presented some
Speaker 1: of the findings at a conference, so I'm not jumping
Speaker 1: the gun too much. And we're thinking with Jennifer Steller,
Speaker 1: who's done some really cool work at UFT at sorry
Speaker 1: about AWE, Michelle Ferrari who's done a lot of the
Speaker 1: work and I've been worked together on wisdom, and then
Speaker 1: Jensen Kim that's the TA who what former TA ra
Speaker 1: A and collaborator a workway fat. He presented our material
Speaker 1: at the conference in the Netherlands. So you induce AWE
Speaker 1: in people by standard techniquess, overview effect, things like that,
Speaker 1: and that I thought, well, if Keuntner's right and AWE
Speaker 1: is just sort of accommodation, you should see measures of
Speaker 1: enhance cognitive flexibility, because accommodation means you're breaking out of
Speaker 1: an old frame and you're starting to make a new frame. Right,
Speaker 1: You're starting to adapt and reframe reality or it maybe
Speaker 1: even transframe your apprehension of reality in a powerful way.
Speaker 1: So I said, what we should do is we'll induce
Speaker 1: AWE and this hadn't been done, and we'll put in
Speaker 1: these measures that are measures of sort of cognitive flexibility
Speaker 1: precursors of insight. And the idea was we should see
Speaker 1: a difference between people who are put into the art
Speaker 1: experience and people who aren't. And we didn't find it,
Speaker 1: and we had and we looked again and again we're
Speaker 1: still looking and so we're really trying, so we're not
Speaker 1: pe hacking or HARKing or anything like that. Like there's
Speaker 1: where we're we there's already a preponderance of this claim
Speaker 1: that AWE is accommodation, and we're trying to make sure
Speaker 1: that we've given it its full due. And I think
Speaker 1: we're so. I think we're being epistemically honest and doing
Speaker 1: good work. And what seems to be coming out and
Speaker 1: it's coming out into the discussion around this, is that
Speaker 1: AWE is the frame breaking part of this process, but
Speaker 1: not the frame making part of it. And you did
Speaker 1: this in part of your book. You talk about people
Speaker 1: who have peak experience that that doesn't necessarily mean they
Speaker 1: integrate it into their life, right, and that transform it.
Speaker 1: That's reverence, the integrating right, creating the new frame awe
Speaker 1: breaks your frame, but you can just choose to ignore it,
Speaker 1: or you can just choose to be traumatized or horrified
Speaker 1: or terrified because you don't like the frame that has
Speaker 1: been broken. There's all kinds of options available to you.
Speaker 1: Reverence is no, no, no. I have to understand that
Speaker 1: is more real, and I have to tap into my
Speaker 1: meta desire to be connected to what's more real, and
Speaker 1: that's a virtue. I think Woodruff is right. I think
Speaker 1: reverence is a virtue that has to be properly cultivated,
Speaker 1: and reverence is the appropriate virtue for all.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, wait, say that sentence one more time.
Speaker 1: I think reverence is the appropriate virtue for AWE experiences.
Speaker 2: That makes sense. Yeah, that, I like that. What's the
Speaker 2: point of an acid trip if you don't have some
Speaker 2: sort of insight.
Speaker 1: And it's going to be it's going to be like
Speaker 1: a systematic and systemic insight. It has to be an
Speaker 1: insight not just into what you're having in your experience.
Speaker 1: It has to be able to transfer broadly and deeply
Speaker 1: into your life, broadly and deeply in different levels of
Speaker 1: your psyche and in a resonant fashion, or else you
Speaker 1: don't get transformative experience. And I think the work that's
Speaker 1: been done on transformative experience is higher states of consciousness
Speaker 1: as something above and beyond psychedelic or even mystical experiences.
Speaker 1: I think that's what really matters. I have a suspicion, man,
Speaker 1: I can't make this argument tight right now that as
Speaker 1: I was talking about in peak experience, where he's coming
Speaker 1: to see that, it's it's these higher states of consciousness,
Speaker 1: these transformative experiences, and not just the experiences.
Speaker 2: Well, that's what he really I think, would refer as
Speaker 2: the plateau experience.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, yeah, shed Oh wow, that's wait. I just
Speaker 1: want to savor that. That's really good, right because if
Speaker 1: it becomes a transformative experience and does that permutation and
Speaker 1: percolation broadly and deeply, that would be a plateau. Oh
Speaker 1: that's good. That's really good. That's really good. I like that.
Speaker 1: Thank you for that.
Speaker 2: I can fill Nasle here with us right now. I
Speaker 2: feel like he would get it very excited too. I
Speaker 2: feel like he would get very excited too. You know,
Speaker 2: when you talk about convergence, all these converging you are
Speaker 2: spot on. There are a lot of dark factors that
Speaker 2: are converging as well, like we're going through a mental
Speaker 2: health crisis. But also you have rightly pointed out there's
Speaker 2: an abandonment of trust in our society. We're not trusting
Speaker 2: our institutions, we're not trusting each other. Yeah, you see,
Speaker 2: spirituality is the way out of this.
Speaker 1: If we don't understand spirituality as an individualistic, narcissistic project
Speaker 1: of gathering wonderful experiences we put on the ego shelf
Speaker 1: that we can show to other people.
Speaker 2: That seems to be the feature of our society right now.
Speaker 1: Yes, because we have to come out everything and make
Speaker 1: it all about competitive status. You know, From's modal confusion.
Speaker 1: We're trying to take fundamental being on needs and satisfy
Speaker 1: them in the having mode, and it is deeply frustrating,
Speaker 1: which is why we keep getting more and more fanatical
Speaker 1: about it and more and more destructive about it. As
Speaker 1: From predicted we would when we got caught up in
Speaker 1: motal confusion.
Speaker 2: He predicted a lot of things that are relevant right now.
Speaker 1: I try to find people that are prescient in things
Speaker 1: that I can now see how they're prescient, and then
Speaker 1: look for things where what they are pressing about has
Speaker 1: not yet occurred, and pay deep attention to it and
Speaker 1: in that way, and in only that way, please everybody.
Speaker 1: I try to be prophetic in the sense of trying
Speaker 1: to speak what is pertinent and is percolating up, and
Speaker 1: so that I think is I mean, I think From
Speaker 1: as a profit in that way in the Biblical prophecies,
Speaker 1: not for telling the future. It's telling forth what needs
Speaker 1: to be seen and is not being seen. And I
Speaker 1: think of people like From and Tillic and Young that
Speaker 1: is what I call profits of the meeting crisis.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Tillic was such a big influence in all
Speaker 2: the humanistic psychologists.
Speaker 1: As he should be. I you know, I like Tillick
Speaker 1: better than Heidegger. I'm, for you, cognizile deeply influenced by
Speaker 1: Heideger and you know, by Marlo Punky. But I like
Speaker 1: Tillick better than Heidegger in a lot of ways. I
Speaker 1: think he got Tillic, sorry, Tilli got, but I think
Speaker 1: he also got depth psychology. He refers to it repeatedly.
Speaker 1: He gets right also the other existentialist thinkers, and he
Speaker 1: synthesizes them in a powerful way. Around the meaning crisis.
Speaker 1: He's one of the profits of it, in a very
Speaker 1: powerful way.
Speaker 2: He really is. He really is. I mean, the courage
Speaker 2: to be is really powerful and relevant today where I
Speaker 2: feel like people are so disconnected from themselves. Yes, it's
Speaker 2: almost paradoxical. They're stating so clearly who they think they are,
Speaker 2: but they are actually, in react, really disconnected to who
Speaker 2: they really are.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a performative contradiction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, performative. That's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a perform Yeah, it's McGee Barbera said, it's
Speaker 1: a performative contradiction. If anybody says to you, I'm wise,
Speaker 1: because that's probably good evidence that they don't have the
Speaker 1: humility that is actually essential to wisdom.
Speaker 2: I'm writing that down. I like that phrase poor performative,
Speaker 2: performative contradiction.
Speaker 1: I contradictions matter as much as propositional contradictions, if not more.
Speaker 1: And I think anybody who easily states this is who
Speaker 1: I am is engaging in a performative contradiction. And this
Speaker 1: is a This is a Socratic point. I think the
Speaker 1: true self is not romantic, and it's not socially constructed.
Speaker 1: I think it is aspirationally cultivated. And this is a
Speaker 1: Socratic proposal. And I think there's something also analogous in
Speaker 1: you know in Godanta, in Taoism and Buddhism that getting
Speaker 1: at the true self, which can be no self and
Speaker 1: whatever right is like a profound task. And so the
Speaker 1: fact that we are I don't want to. I don't
Speaker 1: want to. I'm not denying that there are real issues
Speaker 1: around social justice, and I try, I do try to
Speaker 1: stand for those, but I think that we are also
Speaker 1: there's a negative side effect of how we're framing it.
Speaker 1: I think we're framing it largely in the having mode,
Speaker 1: and the virtues and justice have to be grasped in
Speaker 1: the being mode. And that's a problem we're in right now.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, oh boy, do I agree with this. I
Speaker 2: would love to see a shift from deficiency social justice
Speaker 2: to growth social justice.
Speaker 1: Well exactly exactly within.
Speaker 2: The mass of framework. Yeah, well, I thought what you said,
Speaker 2: all said, but yeah, yeah, no, I'm right there with you,
Speaker 2: and I'm trying to try to put it within a
Speaker 2: humanistic psychology perspective as opposed to a deficiency lens on
Speaker 2: only viewing others as their purposes to validate you or
Speaker 2: to Again, the mattering things is, it's so central to
Speaker 2: our to all these these I think, to the mental
Speaker 2: health crisis, I think that's what it is.
Speaker 1: I've argued that, I've argued there's an overlap between the
Speaker 1: meeting crisis and the mental health health crisis, and Chris
Speaker 1: Chris master Pietro and I have argued that, yes.
Speaker 2: I love it well. I think we covered a lot
Speaker 2: of good territory today. Who can leave it here? Is
Speaker 2: it to be continued? I love the work you're doing,
Speaker 2: and I hope you know that you have a great
Speaker 2: supporter in me and thank you.
Speaker 1: Well. The reverse is also the case, and I and
Speaker 1: I hope to give content to that. Like I say,
Speaker 1: when I talk about your excellent book.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: And now that we've used this word in a way
Speaker 1: we can I think both properly understand and appreciate. I
Speaker 1: think in addition to the content of your book, not
Speaker 1: excluding the content, but in addition to the content of book,
Speaker 1: the spirit of your book is very beautiful, and I
Speaker 1: think people should pay as much attention to that as
Speaker 1: I do to as they should to the rich content
Speaker 1: therein So.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you that made my life right. Thanks for
Speaker 2: listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd
Speaker 2: like to react in some way to something you heard,
Speaker 2: I encourage you to join in the discussion at thus
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