Speaker 1: Why do things exist? We have swallowed wholesale this idea
Speaker 1: that everything can be reduced to scientific explanations. I just
Speaker 1: don't think that's true.
Speaker 2: What is the most dangerous idea people believe without questioning?
Speaker 1: There are very few things that people can be certain of.
Speaker 1: Pay attention when you are convinced that you know why
Speaker 1: you're doing something.
Speaker 2: What is a good life?
Speaker 1: I would ask what they mean by good?
Speaker 2: What do you think people are most afraid to admit.
Speaker 1: About life that it comes to an end?
Speaker 2: Alex O'Connor, Welcome, Tom purpose Jay, nice to meet. It's
Speaker 2: nice to meet you, May I've been looking forward to
Speaker 2: me and you for a long long time. I've been
Speaker 2: a consumer and fan of your content, thoroughly enjoy watching you,
Speaker 2: whether it's debate, conversation, very very intriguing stuff. I wanted
Speaker 2: to start by asking you. I hope you've never been
Speaker 2: asked before. I don't think I saw this, but what's
Speaker 2: a childhood memory that you have that you feel defines
Speaker 2: who you are today?
Speaker 1: My childhood is a bit unusual given the line of
Speaker 1: work I found myself in. I grew up just sort
Speaker 1: of south of Oxford City Center, a place called Blackbird
Speaker 1: Lee's When I think of my childhood, what I remember
Speaker 1: is like acting up at school in secondary school, kind
Speaker 1: of not showing up for class. I used to skateboard,
Speaker 1: and I used to sort of wear jeans and the
Speaker 1: wrong shoes and have arguments with the teachers, that kind
Speaker 1: of petty stuff. I used to like playing music, so
Speaker 1: i'd like skip class to be in the school recording studio,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And you know, somebody asked me recently.
Speaker 1: I was doing a talk with some school kids, and
Speaker 1: one of them asked, like, do you think your upbringing
Speaker 1: has affected your worldview? And that's a difficult question to
Speaker 1: answer because we never know for sure that someone asks
Speaker 1: like why are you an atheist? There's one sense in
Speaker 1: which you could say because I don't believe that the
Speaker 1: contingency argument is sound. And there's another in which you
Speaker 1: could say because my parents got divorced to when I
Speaker 1: was eight, you know what I mean, And those can
Speaker 1: kind of be both true, and so it's difficult to
Speaker 1: sort of psychologize. But I was thinking, like, yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: the fact that I had this slightly sort of acting
Speaker 1: out rebellious attitude that meant that when I came across
Speaker 1: the New Atheist movement, something about the debate, something about
Speaker 1: the theater attracted me to it because I had that
Speaker 1: kind of attitude as a child. My memory would be
Speaker 1: kind of like walking into school at like midday wearing
Speaker 1: the wrong uniform and having somebody kind of say, you know,
Speaker 1: you really should be wearing black shoes, and me just saying, oh,
Speaker 1: I sort it out tomorrow, and that kind of just
Speaker 1: being the kind of childhood I had, which is maybe
Speaker 1: not what people would expect, given how much I care
Speaker 1: about being a bit more like studious these days, and
Speaker 1: how I'm kind of associated with like academics. I'm not
Speaker 1: an academic myself, but I speak to them all the time,
Speaker 1: and I've got a university degree in this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I find that's also kind of like helpful for people
Speaker 1: to hear sometimes, because a lot of people listen to
Speaker 1: my stuff who are really interested in like philosophy or
Speaker 1: theology or whatever it is, but they don't like school,
Speaker 1: they don't do so well at school and not interested.
Speaker 1: And I kind of want to say that's that's okay,
Speaker 1: like don't flunk out, like do the best you can,
Speaker 1: but don't take school or your your sort of desire
Speaker 1: to be in school or academia as a proxy for
Speaker 1: your desire to learn about the world.
Speaker 2: You know. So it sounds like there was a bit
Speaker 2: of a rebellious, anti establishment pushing back version of you.
Speaker 2: But maybe not.
Speaker 1: Everyone wants to say that, right, Everyone WANs to sort
Speaker 1: of be what I was, such a I was a
Speaker 1: rebellious child and I used to sort of win debates
Speaker 1: with my teachers, so like, yeah, but you know, nothing
Speaker 1: super profound, just like your kind of slightly annoying kid.
Speaker 2: But you were still great at school because you went
Speaker 2: to Oxford as well, so you would have got good
Speaker 2: grades eventually. Right.
Speaker 1: The first time I did what we call A levels
Speaker 1: in the UK, which is like the last two years
Speaker 1: of high school. I did further maths, maths and physics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's all hard subjects.
Speaker 1: And I did critical thinking as aside sort of, and
Speaker 1: I got three US, which is like if you go
Speaker 1: like abcd f U sounds for unmarked, it means it's
Speaker 1: so low that it doesn't even register. I actually overslept
Speaker 1: one of the exams and I got a phone call
Speaker 1: from my mum to waking me up, being like you like,
Speaker 1: I've just had a call from the school and the
Speaker 1: disappointment and of it was horrifying, you know, but I
Speaker 1: just I just didn't care. It was really only in
Speaker 1: like the last year I had to go back and
Speaker 1: redo a levels because you have to stay in education
Speaker 1: until you're eighteen in the UK, and I thought, you
Speaker 1: know what, why not, let's give this a crack. So
Speaker 1: I got ABC doing humanity subjects. I remember I had
Speaker 1: some friends who still have, these friends who wanted to
Speaker 1: go to Oxford for the longest time, you know, since
Speaker 1: they were young, and they worked really hard at school,
Speaker 1: and I would sometimes joke, you know, about how I
Speaker 1: was going to go to Oxford too, and then they
Speaker 1: would laugh, and I'm like, Okay, I am joking, But
Speaker 1: why is that so funny? Why is that so funny?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: And I kind of I got a bit motivated by
Speaker 1: these these friends of mine, seeing that like ambition and
Speaker 1: drive kind of helped me and becoming their friends. It
Speaker 1: was just a good influence in that in that very
Speaker 1: crucial period of like sort of motivating me to get
Speaker 1: the grades which allowed me to go to Oxford. But
Speaker 1: then again, like you know, if you're if you're flunking
Speaker 1: out school right now, if you're doing your exams and
Speaker 1: you think it's like the end of the world, retake
Speaker 1: these exams. It's not the end of the world. And
Speaker 1: if you don't get into your dream university, there are
Speaker 1: all kinds of reasons why I might have preferred to
Speaker 1: have gone to a different university. It's just nice to
Speaker 1: know that there are options. I think young people, everything's
Speaker 1: so serious when it comes to like exams, and they
Speaker 1: aren't you know, take them seriously. It's better if you
Speaker 1: do well, sure, but it's not the end of the
Speaker 1: world if you don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you could take them again. Yeah. Talk to
Speaker 2: me about that flipping mindset, though, because getting a you
Speaker 2: not turning up to an exam and then turning it
Speaker 2: around and being able to go this is important. Talk
Speaker 2: to me about that shift though, because I think at
Speaker 2: that age we do play such a heavy weight on
Speaker 2: these things, not showing up, not turning up, failing, feeling
Speaker 2: like it's not working out, but then being able to
Speaker 2: flip it around within a short period of time. It
Speaker 2: was such a long time ago, and you can't fully
Speaker 2: say this is exactly what I was doing. But talk
Speaker 2: to me about at least what it feels like when
Speaker 2: you reflect back and go why you felt I'm going
Speaker 2: to change my mindset around this.
Speaker 1: I think it was because I knew that I could
Speaker 1: do more. I knew that I could pass the exam.
Speaker 1: I knew that I could do philosophy and critical thinking
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. Just sort of flunking out school
Speaker 1: in that way. For me, it was a very intentional thing.
Speaker 1: I'm not interested in this. I want to be a
Speaker 1: rock star or a professional skateboarder or something like that instead.
Speaker 1: But I kind of got the feeling that people like
Speaker 1: didn't believe me. You know, they thought that the reason
Speaker 1: why I'm failing is because I'm not you know, I
Speaker 1: don't have the goods. I can't do this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just that. It wasn't like I just
Speaker 1: thought I need to prove a point now. But when
Speaker 1: I suddenly got this idea in my head that it
Speaker 1: would be fun to go to university, it would be cool,
Speaker 1: and I started admiring new atheist figures like Richard Dawkins
Speaker 1: and Christopher Hitchins, both of whom studied at Oxford, and
Speaker 1: I'd also started making YouTube videos. This was the other thing, right,
Speaker 1: I'm like seventeen when I start making videos online, at
Speaker 1: least the videos I make today, and they were these
Speaker 1: kind of edgy new atheists type videos, and like they
Speaker 1: started doing quite well relative for the time. And I
Speaker 1: think there was also this feeling of like, if I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be on the internet talking about, you know, God
Speaker 1: and religion and debating people and stuff, I'd better prove
Speaker 1: that I know one I'm talking about it. It feels it
Speaker 1: weird to be doing that. And then like failing school. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I kind of knew that I could do it.
Speaker 1: I thought that it might be useful, and so I
Speaker 1: just sort of decided to give it another go. And
Speaker 1: it was very much a case of being like, yeah, see,
Speaker 1: I can do this. I just didn't want to before,
Speaker 1: and I kind of regret that I didn't. But then
Speaker 1: having said that, if I'd have done further maths and physics,
Speaker 1: who knows what I'd be doing now, and I'd still
Speaker 1: be interested in philosophy. But I think that it was
Speaker 1: definitely a good thing that it went the other way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate you addressing some things about how young
Speaker 2: people are feeling today about college or not going or
Speaker 2: university of whether attending. When you think about it from
Speaker 2: that perspective, you said you knew you had the goods.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of young people today feel they
Speaker 2: don't have the goods. They don't actually feel confident in
Speaker 2: their ability academically at school or even otherwise. What do
Speaker 2: you say to them? What do you think about for
Speaker 2: someone who's looking at that, going, yeah, I didn't even
Speaker 2: know what I would do. I don't know what i'd study.
Speaker 2: I don't really know myself. You got interested in atheism early,
Speaker 2: you were making content, you were almost this this self
Speaker 2: started it seems ten years ago, which again was pretty
Speaker 2: revolutionary for someone your age, because there's not that many
Speaker 2: people that got started that early. What would you say
Speaker 2: to someone right now who's saying, Alex, you know, I'd
Speaker 2: love to do something like you or my own thing,
Speaker 2: but I actually don't know what I'm good at. I
Speaker 2: don't don't know what my strengths are.
Speaker 1: I think it's really rare to know what you want
Speaker 1: to do at any age. Essentially a lot of like
Speaker 1: people fall into what they do, but certainly at that age,
Speaker 1: and I think that you kind of have to either
Speaker 1: take a guess and realize that you can always change
Speaker 1: your mind or you can do it later. You're going
Speaker 1: to be good at something. There's gonna be something you're
Speaker 1: good at, and it might be something which isn't traditionally
Speaker 1: recognized as a form of intelligence. I mean, intelligence is
Speaker 1: a difficult thing to define, but it's probably something like
Speaker 1: the ability to perform particular tasks. Its ability to like
Speaker 1: perform tasks with a particular goal in mind. That's why
Speaker 1: we call AI artificial intelligence. Even though it might not
Speaker 1: be conscious or a person or anything. The intelligence is
Speaker 1: the ability to perform tasks and there's something you can do.
Speaker 1: People who are music talented, it's a very particular kind
Speaker 1: of genius. They might have absolutely no idea what the
Speaker 1: quadratic equation is, but they can just intuit musical feeling
Speaker 1: in a way that other people just couldn't even comprehend.
Speaker 1: There might be skills that you didn't even know were skills.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're like really good at architecture and your school
Speaker 1: just doesn't do our and it would take a long
Speaker 1: time for you to realize that that's the thing you're into.
Speaker 1: It took me a long time to realize architecture was
Speaker 1: even like a subject that existed that.
Speaker 2: People study, you know what I mean. Yeah, I love
Speaker 2: that point.
Speaker 1: There's going to be something you're good at. And if
Speaker 1: you're being told that you're not good at something, it
Speaker 1: may be that you're not putting enough effort in and
Speaker 1: that you're slacking, in which case try a bit harder.
Speaker 1: But if you feel like you are, you're doing your best,
Speaker 1: you're trying as hard as you can, and people keep
Speaker 1: telling you you need to try harder, it's probably just
Speaker 1: that they're not recognizing the things that you're good at that.
Speaker 1: We have no idea why some people are good at
Speaker 1: things and others not. It could be social, it could
Speaker 1: be genetic, it could be anything. Who knows all that
Speaker 1: matters that right now you're good at some things and
Speaker 1: bad at others. I think the best advice anyone can
Speaker 1: get on that regard. In that regard is to figure
Speaker 1: out as quickly as possible what you're good at. That's
Speaker 1: the most important thing. What are you good at and
Speaker 1: what do you enjoy doing and try to try to
Speaker 1: pursue that, and then realize that you don't have to look.
Speaker 1: You don't have to go to university, even if you
Speaker 1: want to be a physicist or a mathematician. Eventually you'll
Speaker 1: probably have to, but you don't have to do it now.
Speaker 1: You can take some time out, you can think, is
Speaker 1: this really what I want to be doing. You can
Speaker 1: go and travel the world and whatnot. If you really
Speaker 1: want to go down the academic route. It's there are
Speaker 1: always options available for you, and there are so many now.
Speaker 1: You can do them online, you can do them virtually,
Speaker 1: you can do them part time. There's always something available
Speaker 1: for you. It's so obvious to someone who's an adult,
Speaker 1: someone who's like currently working in a cafe and doesn't
Speaker 1: really know what they want to do with themselves. It's
Speaker 1: not going to console them to say, hey, man, you
Speaker 1: don't need to worry about academia. I didn't even think
Speaker 1: of that. But when you're a kid, academia is like
Speaker 1: the only thing unless maybe you're like a particularly talented
Speaker 1: like football or school, and then maybe but even then,
Speaker 1: maybe your school doesn't encourage that kind of thing, and
Speaker 1: you will be told that the most important thing in
Speaker 1: your life are your exams. Don't get me wrong, those
Speaker 1: exams are important, like nail. Then it will help you
Speaker 1: in the long run. But the idea that that is
Speaker 1: kind of what life's about is obviously insane, and I
Speaker 1: think kids like no that, but they haven't felt it,
Speaker 1: they haven't internalized it. I speak to a lot of
Speaker 1: school kids, and they've heard this kind of stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: don't let exams rule your life and stuff. But some
Speaker 1: of them I think hearing that I literally did just
Speaker 1: completely fail and then change my mind and turned it around,
Speaker 1: and it sort of relaxes them a little bit. It's
Speaker 1: no guarantee that you're going to be able to turn
Speaker 1: it around and go to Oxford, right, It's obviously not
Speaker 1: the case. I feel very lucky in that regard, but
Speaker 1: like there are options.
Speaker 2: Man. I love the idea that you only discover subjects
Speaker 2: exist after you've become an adult. I felt like that
Speaker 2: with so many things. I thought I hated science because
Speaker 2: it was biology, and then learned about neuroscience later on
Speaker 2: and I was fascinated exactly. And I thought, oh, gosh,
Speaker 2: if I didn't have to learn plant biology, if it
Speaker 2: was always brain biology, I think I would have been
Speaker 2: That would have been something I would have wanted to study.
Speaker 2: And you can now that's the point, right, You can.
Speaker 1: Textiles, Yeah, but I think you can get the kernel
Speaker 1: of what you might be into because maybe you might
Speaker 1: find that you really enjoy your art classes and you
Speaker 1: know you don't want to be an artist. You know
Speaker 1: you're not gonna be the next you know, Mona or whatever,
Speaker 1: but like you enjoy it. That should be enough to
Speaker 1: maybe think, Okay, then I'll study that. And I don't
Speaker 1: know where it's going to end up. But that's the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that opens up these worlds that you
Speaker 1: didn't know existed. That will help with being able to
Speaker 1: be an architect because you will be able to draw images.
Speaker 1: It will help with doing textiles. It will help with
Speaker 1: set management. You know, you could be someone who designs
Speaker 1: sets for podcasts, a job that didn't even exist really
Speaker 1: when I was at school, and now it's a very specific,
Speaker 1: very niche thing that people are after. But the most
Speaker 1: important thing is the passion of it. It would always really
Speaker 1: upset me when a university there were people who would
Speaker 1: struggle a lot with the work and then also think,
Speaker 1: and I'm not even sure if I should be doing this.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this was the right subject. That's
Speaker 1: just that's nihilism.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: Suffering is one thing. Being aware that your suffering is
Speaker 1: kind of meaningless. That's what nihilism is, and that's what
Speaker 1: can be brought out if you study something you're not
Speaker 1: passionate about, and then it gets hard because you've got
Speaker 1: this double wham of the meaninglessness plus the difficulty.
Speaker 2: But so many of us are stuck exactly there.
Speaker 1: You know, if someone studies theology or philosophy, it's famously
Speaker 1: a very unemployable job. What are you going to do
Speaker 1: except be a priest or a YouTuber. I can deal
Speaker 1: with the fact that, like, what's this all for? Is
Speaker 1: this going anywhere? Is this going to get me a job?
Speaker 1: Because I've got this passion for it, because I just
Speaker 1: love it for its own sake. Maybe you're studying to
Speaker 1: be a doctor. You're doing medicine, and maybe you're not
Speaker 1: super passionate about it. A lot of people are, but
Speaker 1: maybe you're not. But you think to yourself, well, I
Speaker 1: know where this is going. I'm going to be a doctor.
Speaker 1: I'm going to save lives, I'm going to make a
Speaker 1: lot of money. I'm going to provide to my children.
Speaker 1: And that allows you to deal with the fact that
Speaker 1: you're not passionate about it. You need at least one
Speaker 1: of those You need the passion or the direction. If
Speaker 1: you have both, then you've hit the gold mine. If
Speaker 1: you have neither, then I think you become a bit nihilistic,
Speaker 1: at least in regards to your employment.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I've heard you say a let's say you're fascinated
Speaker 2: by history. Oh yeah, and I wanted to ask you
Speaker 2: if you could go back in time and witness something personally,
Speaker 2: what moment in history would you do using way.
Speaker 1: I'm afraid it's going to be boring in the sense
Speaker 1: that it is definitely going to be something biblical, like,
Speaker 1: there's no question about it, no.
Speaker 2: Question any time.
Speaker 1: There are certain things which it might be sort of
Speaker 1: interesting to see. I'd love to see Stonehenge getting built.
Speaker 1: I'd love to see the Pyramids be built, that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. But when I came back and said, you know,
Speaker 1: it turns out they used a Pulley system, and everyone
Speaker 1: goes like, oh cool, It's not the most refound thing
Speaker 1: in the world. For me. My line of work is
Speaker 1: so much engaged in worldview, and the worldview that I'm
Speaker 1: mostly engaged in talking about is Christianity, and some of
Speaker 1: the biggest mysteries about the Christian religion are about specifically
Speaker 1: the kind of things that Jesus actually said and did
Speaker 1: as opposed to what orthodox Christians believe he did. The
Speaker 1: resurrection is an obvious example. Stand outside the tomb of
Speaker 1: Joseph of Aarmethea and see if somebody gets up and
Speaker 1: walks out. But also the baptism. I'd love to see
Speaker 1: the baptism of Jesus because I want to know why
Speaker 1: was Jesus being baptized, Who was John the Baptist? Why
Speaker 1: did Jesus seem to be some kind I mean, historically
Speaker 1: some people think he might have been a disciple of
Speaker 1: John the bapt which Christians won't want to accept, but
Speaker 1: I'd love to know that fact. It's the moment where
Speaker 1: jesus ministry really begins, and the Gospel tell us that
Speaker 1: the heaven's open and there's this voice from heaven, and
Speaker 1: that this is where Jesus sort of picks up some
Speaker 1: of his initial disciples from as well. I would love
Speaker 1: to see what happened there, because if I showed up
Speaker 1: and John the Baptist said, behold the Lamb of God
Speaker 1: who takes away the sins of the world, and I
Speaker 1: would say, gosh, okay, Christianity's maybe got something going for it.
Speaker 1: But if he showed up and Jesus bowed down as
Speaker 1: head master. You know, then I think it would totally
Speaker 1: upset Orthodox Christianity. And I think that's like a really
Speaker 1: important question. What's the relationship between Jesus and on the Baptist.
Speaker 1: So I'd love to see them meet, eh, But it's
Speaker 1: hard to know. I mean, you've surely got an answer
Speaker 1: to this question yourself.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I find myself being fascinated by so many moments
Speaker 2: in history, and mainly it's about human decision making. So
Speaker 2: I don't know if you saw this movie recently is
Speaker 2: called Nuremberg.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it.
Speaker 2: It's all about the Nuremberg Trials in post World War two,
Speaker 2: how we make decisions on morality, how we make decisions
Speaker 2: on how we evaluate what the Germans did. And you've
Speaker 2: got Gerring, who is leading the Germans on behalf of Hitler,
Speaker 2: versus his therapist played by Ramy Malik, who's unbelievable in
Speaker 2: the movie. But I look at a moment like that
Speaker 2: and I go wow, like humans had to really sit
Speaker 2: down and think about because for the first time ever,
Speaker 2: how do you truly go to court for post World
Speaker 2: War two and the actions that we're taking against the Jews,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, that's a fascinating moment to be a
Speaker 2: part of. Now, that's not that long ago. So then
Speaker 2: you go, Okay, where would those other moments in history
Speaker 2: where big decisions were made by groups of human beings
Speaker 2: after groups of human beings went through certain amount of suffering,
Speaker 2: turmoil or subjugation.
Speaker 1: And when you don't have documents, I mean, when history
Speaker 1: is recent enough, you can kind of put yourself there
Speaker 1: by reading the books, and obviously there's going to be
Speaker 1: biased and misreporting and stuff like that, and you've got
Speaker 1: to be careful. But if you go far back enough,
Speaker 1: especially into ancient history, you've got like one little shred.
Speaker 1: Some of our most well known famous historical figures from antiquity.
Speaker 1: We only know they exist from like maybe one, maybe
Speaker 1: two sources. It's like a scrap the pyrus somewhere with
Speaker 1: a name scribbled on it. And yet these people were
Speaker 1: so important. So I think it would have to be
Speaker 1: it would have to be an ancient.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yeah, going back. I would genuinely want to
Speaker 2: go back to the point at which the bug would
Speaker 2: geta has spoken, which has always been my fascination. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and my former study but being at that moment, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't want to be on the battlefield because I couldn't
Speaker 2: handle myself. I'll tell you that I felt miserably an
Speaker 2: archery or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Do you think if you went back you would find
Speaker 1: our Juna on a literal battlefield being advised by by
Speaker 1: an actual deity.
Speaker 2: I would hope. So. I mean the place Kuruchetra exists.
Speaker 2: It's believed that that is where the battle took place,
Speaker 2: and so to me, I would hope. I would definitely
Speaker 2: hope so that I would get to experience it as
Speaker 2: it's told in the way it's told as a historic piece.
Speaker 1: If you went back and you found there were no
Speaker 1: such historical event, or maybe there were a historical battle,
Speaker 1: but like the conversation that's had throughout the Bag of
Speaker 1: a Geta is a fictional one. Would that trouble you?
Speaker 1: Because for me, I'd still quite like the Bag of
Speaker 1: bat Geta. I'd find it worth reading.
Speaker 2: I think I'd find the text still fascinating. I think
Speaker 2: you'd feel slightly misled in the fact that you were
Speaker 2: told it was historical. Sure, yeah, yeah, So I think
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have an issue with what's in the book
Speaker 2: and the conversation, because I find great value in meaning
Speaker 2: in that. But I would feel misled that I'd been
Speaker 2: told this was historic and it wasn't actually historic.
Speaker 1: It's so important, like what the claim that's being made
Speaker 1: by particular religious traditions. For example, for many Christians, if
Speaker 1: it turns out that the resurrection of Jesus is not
Speaker 1: a literal event that happened in history, but instead some
Speaker 1: kind of later mythologizing, the religion falls apart. It grounds
Speaker 1: itself on a very specific historical claim. It can't just
Speaker 1: be Oh, I'm a bit annoyed that my pastor told
Speaker 1: me that this really happened, but I guess this is fine.
Speaker 1: It would be like this has completely upended everything that
Speaker 1: I believe about the universe. That's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why when you ask what h historical event would I see? Yah,
Speaker 1: the key moment in the world's most popular religion seems
Speaker 1: to be quite an important one to me. Suppose you
Speaker 1: went and found out that you know, Jesus didn't rise
Speaker 1: from the dead, or you found out that Muhammad was
Speaker 1: a false prophet, what are you gonna do, like come
Speaker 1: back to London and go right here yee hear yee.
Speaker 1: I've got to tell you guys, something d be terrible.
Speaker 1: I'd rather not know because I'd be terrified to let
Speaker 1: people know what i'd seen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and no one would believe you exactly. Yeah, or
Speaker 2: there would be a you start developing a following on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, probably, Yeah, you'd be able to create your
Speaker 2: own cult. Talk to me about what reading you have
Speaker 2: done in Eastern traditions. It sounds like you have done
Speaker 2: a bit of exploration that I probably haven't heard about
Speaker 2: it before.
Speaker 1: Basically, it's really funny. Because I talk about religion all
Speaker 1: the time, and particularly Christianity, people say things like a
Speaker 1: man you should talk about you should talk about Hinduism,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, okay, I get why you're saying. That's fair.
Speaker 1: I'd love to, but it's not quite as simple as that.
Speaker 2: Of course not. It's a really even.
Speaker 1: When it comes to like people say, well, you should
Speaker 1: you should have you should have a Hindu on your
Speaker 1: show to talk to them, and I'm like, even that,
Speaker 1: it's tricky because firstly, I prepare as hard as I
Speaker 1: can for every guess that comes with my show. I
Speaker 1: can't learn Hinduism. And even so it's not like you
Speaker 1: can just have a Hindu on the show and that
Speaker 1: become like, Oh, you've done, You've done Hinduism.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: It took me a long time, like even sort of
Speaker 1: finding my feet as to like where to start looking
Speaker 1: for interesting stuff, and my way in ultimately came through
Speaker 1: my study of consciousness. I'm fascinated by the philosophy of mind,
Speaker 1: and of course the Indian tradition has this amazing content
Speaker 1: essentially on the philosophy of mind that I hadn't really
Speaker 1: encountered before becoming convinced of some weird views about consciousness,
Speaker 1: about how it's not reducible to material and how it's
Speaker 1: not as simple as saying that brains just produce consciousness.
Speaker 1: That kind of stuff sort of led me into learning
Speaker 1: about specifically the Advita Adanta tradition. Vedanta meaning like the
Speaker 1: Vaders are part of the Hindu scriptural canon. They're like
Speaker 1: the oldest religious scriptures in the world. I think like
Speaker 1: Anta means I think it's the addendum and to means
Speaker 1: like end, so you get like end of the Vaders,
Speaker 1: meaning like the latter part of the Vaders, which collectively
Speaker 1: are known as the Apanashad and Advita meaning like a
Speaker 1: like non and diviter meaning duel. So in the philosophy
Speaker 1: of mind, I think in philosophy generally, one of the
Speaker 1: biggest questions is how many types of stuff are there?
Speaker 1: Because there's this really weird sort of division of reality
Speaker 1: where we're conscious, we have subjectivity like inner thoughts, and
Speaker 1: this mug over here doesn't. So there seems to be
Speaker 1: kind of two different kinds of things. You've basically got
Speaker 1: three options when it comes to explaining that. One is
Speaker 1: that there are just two types of things in the universe.
Speaker 1: There's mind and there's body. There's mental and there's physical,
Speaker 1: and they are just separate kinds of things, and somehow
Speaker 1: they interact with each other. Another way is to say, actually,
Speaker 1: there's only one type of stuff, and that type of
Speaker 1: stuff is the dead stuff. It's the matter the atoms.
Speaker 1: This is the most popular view in the West today.
Speaker 1: The only stuff that exists is atoms that are dead,
Speaker 1: and it's just that if you put them together in
Speaker 1: the right way, you get this thing called consciousness. But
Speaker 1: really it's kind of just a manifestation of the atoms.
Speaker 1: There's a third option, which is there is only one
Speaker 1: type of stuff, and it's the mental stuff and what
Speaker 1: we call physical what we call the physical world around
Speaker 1: us is a manifestation of mental stuff. Which sounds super
Speaker 1: hippie dippy, but that's only because we're not used to it.
Speaker 1: I mean the idea that people think that, you know,
Speaker 1: they're just happy to accept that if you put physical
Speaker 1: matter together in the right order, it will produce thoughts.
Speaker 1: That is as weird to me as saying that if
Speaker 1: you put thoughts together in the right order, you could
Speaker 1: produce some physical matter. It seems like it's sort of
Speaker 1: category mistake, right, But I think there's only one type
Speaker 1: of stuff. So there's this view, which in the Western
Speaker 1: tradition is called idealism, which is kind of the view
Speaker 1: that everything exists as mental stuff. Some people have said
Speaker 1: that everything is kind of an idea in the mind
Speaker 1: of God. Some people think that nothing exists except in
Speaker 1: so far as it's being perceived. It's a very sort
Speaker 1: of complicated and quite deep philosophical tradition, but it's something
Speaker 1: that the advice of Danta tradition had been banging on
Speaker 1: about for thousands of years prior to its development in
Speaker 1: the Western canon. The reason it's Vedanta is because the
Speaker 1: apanishads are like particularly interested in the idea that kind
Speaker 1: of division is a is an illusion and unity is real.
Speaker 1: And it heavily implies that consciousness, or like the soul,
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that makes you yourself is kind
Speaker 1: of one thing with everybody else's self, and that all
Speaker 1: of that consciousness is kind of the same thing as
Speaker 1: the universe, that this is great, big sort of unity
Speaker 1: of stuff. I thought that was really cool. So it's
Speaker 1: a bit of a sort of long winded way to
Speaker 1: say that. I started looking into that, and then I
Speaker 1: had Swami Sava Priorander, it's the head of the Vedanta
Speaker 1: Society of New York or whatever it's called, on my show,
Speaker 1: and we talked about Advita Fidanta. We talked about consciousness.
Speaker 1: We didn't talk about the Hindu pantheon of gods. I
Speaker 1: still don't understand how Brahman manifests in like hundreds of
Speaker 1: different deities. I still don't really get that at all.
Speaker 1: I don't know about the different traditions who see different
Speaker 1: deities as their main gods and stuff like that. I
Speaker 1: don't really understand that. But I understand the philsophy of consciousness.
Speaker 1: We were able to have a great conversation about this
Speaker 1: particular Indian tradition. But the thing about the Vita Fidanta
Speaker 1: is it's not really a religious tradition. It's a philosophical
Speaker 1: tradition that comes from India. So when I do this show, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm speaking to a Hindu, and people say, great, you're
Speaker 1: talking about Hinduism for the first time, It's like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not really, I'm talking about a philosophical school that
Speaker 1: comes from India. Yeah, which is not the same thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, the word Hindu is very unhelpful anyway, because
Speaker 1: it's what's called an excellent which is a word which
Speaker 1: is applied from the outside. People didn't call themselves Hindus.
Speaker 1: It's sort of got etymological routes with like the Indus
Speaker 1: River Valley, which is where a particular people were just
Speaker 1: doing their thing, just going about their business, and Europeans
Speaker 1: sort of label these people Hindus. But it sort of
Speaker 1: refers to the geography. Someone's saying like, have a Hindu on.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a little bit like someone saying like,
Speaker 1: have a European on. So I can get why somebody,
Speaker 1: if you'd never spoke to a European would want me
Speaker 1: to speak to a European because there is a different
Speaker 1: flavor of thought that goes on there, but it's such
Speaker 1: a rich and varied sort of culture. No, I appreciate
Speaker 1: the way you look at you can't do that. So
Speaker 1: when someone says, like you ask, you know, what's your
Speaker 1: engagement with the Indian tradition, it's sort of like somebody saying,
Speaker 1: what's your engagement in the Western philosophical canon. It's like,
Speaker 1: that's a big question. I've got to say. I'm much
Speaker 1: more specific, you know, I'm interested in this person or
Speaker 1: that personal, this school. And so for me, the stuff
Speaker 1: that I love from the Indian tradition is their views
Speaker 1: on consciousness, which I think predates the Western stuff and
Speaker 1: does it a lot more sort of intuitively.
Speaker 2: Are there a lot of new Ajathists that are also
Speaker 2: fascinated in that way? Is that common or is that
Speaker 2: quite rare?
Speaker 1: I don't think new atheists because the new atheist movement
Speaker 1: was a very it's interesting how we talk about it
Speaker 1: in the past tense now like it doesn't really exist
Speaker 1: same one. It was a very sort of prickly kind
Speaker 1: of criticism, and it's indebted to the so called Four
Speaker 1: Horsemen mostly Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchins, and Sam Harris. Daniel
Speaker 1: Dennett wasn't quite as fierce, you know, but these guys.
Speaker 1: You've got a biologist, an evolutionary biologist in Richard Dawkins,
Speaker 1: a journalist in Christopher Hitchins, a neuroscientist, although I don't
Speaker 1: know if he did anything further than his studies, Sam Harris.
Speaker 1: And then you've got the philosopher Daniel Dennett. And that
Speaker 1: is that the philosopher is the one who's like the
Speaker 1: least critical in that regard and outgoing, and although he
Speaker 1: had a lot to say about religion. The reason why
Speaker 1: these guys and other disciplines were getting involved is because,
Speaker 1: like Richard Dawkins was annoyed that Young Earth creationists were saying,
Speaker 1: you can't teach evolution in schools. Christopher Hitchins was getting
Speaker 1: annoyed that religious justifications were being used for geopolitical terrorism.
Speaker 1: That was their kind of line of attack. And so
Speaker 1: to think that they would be talking about that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, that Hitchens would be sort of standing up
Speaker 1: and complaining about the sort of the messianic undertones of
Speaker 1: the Israeli Palestine conflict and then suddenly start going. But
Speaker 1: you know, I think that Brahman and Atman are maybe
Speaker 1: the same thing. But I want to critique that idea
Speaker 1: by you know, appealing to the rival school. It just
Speaker 1: seems ridiculous to me. So so I think New atheism no,
Speaker 1: But that's because within Eastern religions you have the same
Speaker 1: kind of conflicts going on, which I don't think that
Speaker 1: West knows as much about. But also the kind of
Speaker 1: engagement I have is not about that. Like I say,
Speaker 1: I'm not interested so much in the in the deities
Speaker 1: and the gods and the sex. I'm interested in the
Speaker 1: philosophical traditions. And I don't think the New atheists were
Speaker 1: even interested in the Western philosophical traditions. They were interested
Speaker 1: in the practical reality of religion. Religion is a force
Speaker 1: for evil, Religion causes wars and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: That's all very well and good. But to me, I've
Speaker 1: always compared that to saying like it's like saying politics
Speaker 1: is bad. Yes, sure, you know, politics CAUs us wars
Speaker 1: and politics drives families of It's like, that's true, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean we should be an anarchist. Maybe we should,
Speaker 1: but doesn't guarantee it doesn't mean there isn't a correct
Speaker 1: political position, and critiquing that kind of stuff doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that you know anything about political philosophy. You might not
Speaker 1: know anything about, you know, theories of justification of the
Speaker 1: state or whatever it is that political philosophers sit around
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, and I think the same thing's
Speaker 1: going on with New atheism. They couldn't recite Thomas Aquinas's
Speaker 1: causal arguments for God if you paid them to. Richardawkins
Speaker 1: does so in The God Delusion. He sort of responds
Speaker 1: to Thomas Aquinas directly. Thomas Aquina is the most celebrated
Speaker 1: Christian metaphysician like in history, and he responds to Thomas
Speaker 1: Aquinas in about two pages. It takes more than two
Speaker 1: pages even to explain the terminology that Thomas Aquinas is using.
Speaker 1: Let alone to list, explain and then debunk. I think
Speaker 1: we have some evidence that there's just not this engagement
Speaker 1: with the philosophical tradition. I don't mean to insult these people.
Speaker 1: I like Richard. Richard's a friend of mine. I think
Speaker 1: he knows that I disagree with his philosophical musings, and
Speaker 1: he himself just admits. He says that he's just not
Speaker 1: interested in theology and philosophy. It's just not what he
Speaker 1: wants to do. He wants to do science, I think
Speaker 1: fair enough. But then maybe don't write a book with
Speaker 1: a chapter called why there almost certainly is no God?
Speaker 1: But he did it because he cared about science. He
Speaker 1: doesn't care about the colalm cosmological argument or whatever. He
Speaker 1: cares about evolution being taught in schools and that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. And so the idea that someone who cares
Speaker 1: about that and that's their way in is suddenly going
Speaker 1: to become interested in the even in philosophy in the West,
Speaker 1: is not very popular. The idea that these guys are
Speaker 1: going to engage with that, I think is untrue. And
Speaker 1: so that funnels down to the modern day. The sort
Speaker 1: of teenage atheist like me on YouTube making videos took
Speaker 1: me years before I even encountered Indian philosophy, and that
Speaker 1: only came after I sort of calmed down a bit.
Speaker 2: Everyone's almost arguing something from their very maybe narrow is
Speaker 2: the wrong word, but everyone's looking at something through their lens,
Speaker 2: and of course preaching or sharing whatever that maybe whether
Speaker 2: you're religious or whether you're an atheist, or whether you're agnostic,
Speaker 2: and it applies to everything in the same way as
Speaker 2: you could talk about entrepreneurship and someone could say, hey,
Speaker 2: if you don't how to sell, then you can't be
Speaker 2: an entrepreneur, and then someone else is over there going
Speaker 2: if you don't have to negotiate, you don't have to
Speaker 2: be an entrepreneur. It's almost impossible to get a three
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty degree view on a belief an idea,
Speaker 2: because there's so many different thoughts and ideas. How would
Speaker 2: you explain your worldview to a ten year old so
Speaker 2: that they simply understood it.
Speaker 1: I would probably wait until this child was taking an
Speaker 1: interest in such things, and I might ask them. I mean,
Speaker 1: it might be a bit young ten start talking about consciousness,
Speaker 1: but at some point I might sort of say, don't
Speaker 1: you think it's weird that you are conscious? You have
Speaker 1: thoughts and feelings, you have an inner sense of self.
Speaker 1: I'd use different words because they're ten, and this mug
Speaker 1: and this table in this chair don't. And depending what
Speaker 1: they'd say, you'd ask a further question. So if they say, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that I guess so, but that's because you know you've
Speaker 1: got a brain, And then you might start asking about
Speaker 1: what they think the brain is and how so you
Speaker 1: sort of ask questions. And in my view, I think
Speaker 1: we have just sort of swallowed wholesale this idea that
Speaker 1: everything can be reduced to scientific explanation, at least everything
Speaker 1: that is true about the universe can be scientifically explained.
Speaker 1: And I just don't think that's true. And I think
Speaker 1: it's like trivially untrue. I'm not making some profound what
Speaker 1: about love, man, you can't scientifically It's like, no, you
Speaker 1: can explain the chemicals that are firing it. I mean
Speaker 1: something a bit more specific, which is that science isn't
Speaker 1: really in the business of explaining things. I'm no longer
Speaker 1: talking to the ten year old. By the way. Science
Speaker 1: is not in the business of explaining things. It's in
Speaker 1: the business of describing things mathematically. Galileo famously says that
Speaker 1: mathematics is the language of the universe. Fair enough, But
Speaker 1: maths on its own doesn't do anything. Maths just describes
Speaker 1: all mathematical equations have an equal sign, and it describes
Speaker 1: some sort of fact about reality. It doesn't cause anything.
Speaker 1: Newton's laws of motion don't cause objects to move. They
Speaker 1: describe how objects move when they're in motion. Similarly, the
Speaker 1: example I love to give because it's so explicit his
Speaker 1: Newton's discover a discovery of gravity. What did Newton actually
Speaker 1: discover when he discovered gravity? What's the thing that he
Speaker 1: actually figured out? We had known for a very long
Speaker 1: time that objects fall to the ground, right, what's the
Speaker 1: thing that he realized? Well, Newton asked an interesting question.
Speaker 1: He looks up at the moon and he asks like, like,
Speaker 1: why isn't the Moon falling towards the Earth? And his
Speaker 1: sort of profound realization is that the Moon is falling
Speaker 1: towards the Earth all the time. It's just that if
Speaker 1: something falls towards my hand will hit my hand. But
Speaker 1: if I knock it to the side a little bit,
Speaker 1: then it will kind of do this. It will kind
Speaker 1: of miss the Earth a bit and then crash into
Speaker 1: the side. And if I knock it a little bit
Speaker 1: further to the side, it will sort of miss it
Speaker 1: even more and maybe crash into the bottom eventually. And
Speaker 1: if you knock it just the right speed to the side,
Speaker 1: it will keep falling towards the Earth, but keep missing it.
Speaker 1: And that's what we call orbit. And Newton realized that
Speaker 1: the same thing that makes objects fall to the ground,
Speaker 1: keeps the planets in circulation, which is a profound realization.
Speaker 1: And then he took to the task of mathematically describing
Speaker 1: it calculus inverse square law. So he figures out that
Speaker 1: the distance between two things, if you square that distance,
Speaker 1: that is how much weaker the force of gravity is.
Speaker 1: So something is two times further away, it's four times
Speaker 1: less attractive. And he does all of this and it's
Speaker 1: brilliant in the print, could be a mathematica. But then
Speaker 1: there remains this question like why not how do objects
Speaker 1: fall to the ground? What mathematical rules do they sort
Speaker 1: of do it by? But why do they fall to
Speaker 1: the ground? And in the Sculium, which is like an
Speaker 1: addendum to the Principia Mathematica where Newton published these findings,
Speaker 1: he answers this explicitly. You can read this online. He says,
Speaker 1: like as to what gravity actually is, as to why
Speaker 1: this stuff is happening, he writes hypothesis non fingos in Latin,
Speaker 1: it means I frame no hypothesis. He doesn't know, And
Speaker 1: he says it's also not the kind of question that
Speaker 1: science should be engaged in, because it can't answer that
Speaker 1: kind of question. In other words. Newton has described brilliantly
Speaker 1: planets orbits, objects falling to the ground. This force, which
Speaker 1: he calls gravity, and it's sort of a placeholder. It's like,
Speaker 1: the word gravity is just a word for whatever is
Speaker 1: the thing that's making this happen, But he doesn't know
Speaker 1: what's making it happen. And it's so funny to me
Speaker 1: when people like look into the past and they say,
Speaker 1: how silly are the beliefs that people used to have.
Speaker 1: They used to believe in like animism, they used to
Speaker 1: believe in spirits. They used to believe that, you know,
Speaker 1: angels were pushing around planets and stuff. But no, No, since
Speaker 1: the scientific revolution, we're much more intelligent because we explain
Speaker 1: things in terms of.
Speaker 2: Forces.
Speaker 1: Forces. I think about that word for a minute, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. We're still used to hearing it,
Speaker 1: but that's it. And if you ask a science is
Speaker 1: what a force is, they'll either have to tell you
Speaker 1: that a force is just a mathematical description of regularities
Speaker 1: that we've observed, or they'll have to say unjustifiably, well,
Speaker 1: it's the thing that makes things fall to the ground,
Speaker 1: But what is it? You don't know that, you don't
Speaker 1: know why that's happening now. To be clear, some people
Speaker 1: will say, okay, fair enough with Newton. I pick Newton
Speaker 1: because he says it explicitly. This isn't an insult to science.
Speaker 1: It's not insulting to say that it's not really interested
Speaker 1: in the why question, it's interested in how questions. Some
Speaker 1: people think the why question just shouldn't exist. That's fine
Speaker 1: to say, But science itself is definitely in the business
Speaker 1: of describing. Scientists will happily tell you that anything which
Speaker 1: is true about physics can be described mathematically. But if
Speaker 1: you think about what maths is, it's equations. They don't
Speaker 1: do anything. Stephen Hawking at the end of A Brief
Speaker 1: History of Time quite famously, I wish I could recite
Speaker 1: it from memory. It's so beautiful. He writes about how
Speaker 1: he hopes that maybe one day our basic scientific theories
Speaker 1: will condense into one great, big theory of everything, that
Speaker 1: there'll be one beautiful equation that sort of governs everything
Speaker 1: about the universe. But he says, we'll still be left
Speaker 1: with the question of what breathes fire into the equations.
Speaker 1: Equations don't make things move. They describe how things move
Speaker 1: when they're in motion. Right so we're left with this great,
Speaker 1: big explanatory gap. If people are in any doubt about this.
Speaker 1: There's a wonderful clip of Richard Feinneman. There's a BBC
Speaker 1: interview asking him about magnets. He says, you know, when
Speaker 1: I push two magnets together, they repel each other. Like,
Speaker 1: what's going on there? And Fireman's like, well, you know
Speaker 1: the magnets are repelling each other and he goes, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: but you know, what's what's what's happening there? And Fimon's like,
Speaker 1: what do you mean? What's happening there? And this is
Speaker 1: the sort of moment of confusion, and the interviewer says,
Speaker 1: I've got to say I think this is a reasonable question,
Speaker 1: and by me goes, oh, no, it's a very reasonable question.
Speaker 1: But what do you mean? Because if you ask a
Speaker 1: question like why, well it depends on your level of explanation,
Speaker 1: like why is Aunt Marie in the hospital? But because
Speaker 1: she slipped and fell on the ice. For most people
Speaker 1: that would satisfy, But if you were like an alien
Speaker 1: who didn't know anything, you'd need to know why slipping
Speaker 1: on ice sends you to a hospital, So you'd have
Speaker 1: to explain that, and then you'd have to explain, like
Speaker 1: why is ice slippery? Well, because when you step on ice,
Speaker 1: it evaporates the top level, which turns into water. No,
Speaker 1: she's we're just describing what's happening. Okay, so why does
Speaker 1: that happen? Well, now we're talking about the molecular composition
Speaker 1: of water, and it's in its sort of chemical interactions.
Speaker 1: But why does that happen?
Speaker 2: If?
Speaker 1: Fimon's just basically pointing out that if you ask the
Speaker 1: why question, you are sent into this regress down into
Speaker 1: the most fundamental questions of reality. And in fact, Fimon
Speaker 1: then says, and if you want to know why Marie
Speaker 1: fell over, you'd have to know about gravity. Why does
Speaker 1: gravity work? And that's where we just were a second ago. Right,
Speaker 1: this thing gravity, which science will describe but never like
Speaker 1: explain why it's occurring, And Fiming sort of comes back
Speaker 1: to magnets and says, so for now, you know, it
Speaker 1: will have to be enough just to say that they
Speaker 1: are repelling each other. And that's fair enough. But I
Speaker 1: think that's what's going on. Science describes, like physics is
Speaker 1: the description of and the theory of physical matter and
Speaker 1: its relations. It therefore presupposes the existence of matter and
Speaker 1: its relations. One of the foundational questions I don't think
Speaker 1: science will answer is where that physical matter came from?
Speaker 1: Like it seems plausible, we say, look at the progress
Speaker 1: we've made. We used to think that we couldn't explain
Speaker 1: biological complexity, but now we have. We used to think
Speaker 1: that we couldn't explain why objects fall, but now we have.
Speaker 1: I want to point out at firstly what we've actually
Speaker 1: done is describe those processes. But also I think as
Speaker 1: a categorical difference between explaining some kind of physical interaction
Speaker 1: at a deeper level and explaining the origin of physical
Speaker 1: matter and its interactions. I don't think you will mathematically
Speaker 1: describe the origin of the stuff which the mathematical descriptions
Speaker 1: apply to. Given what I've just said about how what
Speaker 1: scientific laws are are observations of stuff that happens in
Speaker 1: the US and then mathematically describing how they regularly like occur.
Speaker 1: I've sometimes compared this It's a bit of a crude analogy,
Speaker 1: but it gets across the point to discovering a book
Speaker 1: of Shakespeare's sonnets. If we came across a book of
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's sonnets and we didn't know what they were, then
Speaker 1: we might start studying them. And suppose that you were really,
Speaker 1: really smart, and you said, okay, well, I've noticed that
Speaker 1: each of these letters comes in two kinds, as a
Speaker 1: big one and a small one, and whenever there's a
Speaker 1: new line, they use the big one as interesting. And
Speaker 1: you call that the law of capitalization. And then you
Speaker 1: notice that there are all of these little symbols unlike
Speaker 1: the letters, little dots and squiggles, and you realize that
Speaker 1: they show up in predictable ways, and you call that
Speaker 1: the law of punctuation. And you're able to predict. If
Speaker 1: you're really clever, you might notice that if you say
Speaker 1: it out loud, it follows a particular rhythm. Done dun
Speaker 1: dunda dunda done. And you call that the law of
Speaker 1: iambic pentameter. Because you're get really clever now, and you
Speaker 1: can predict that if I turn over the page, I'm
Speaker 1: going to see something that follows these rules. What you're discovering,
Speaker 1: of course, are the laws of literacy. And then suppose
Speaker 1: I came along after all of that and said, okay,
Speaker 1: so where do you think the book came from? And
Speaker 1: you said, well, we don't know yet, but look at
Speaker 1: all the progress we're making with the laws that we've discovered.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that one day these laws of literacy will
Speaker 1: explain where the book came from. You'd be making a
Speaker 1: category error. And I think the physicist does the same
Speaker 1: thing in saying that physics will one day explain the
Speaker 1: origin of physical matter, because physics is the study of
Speaker 1: physical matter and therefore presupposes its existence. A question like
Speaker 1: that I don't think can be answered by science. I'm
Speaker 1: really not talking to.
Speaker 2: The ten year old anymore. Your ten year old is
Speaker 2: going to be really OK dad.
Speaker 1: Can I just can I get to bed now? But
Speaker 1: like the reason I bring that up, it's to say,
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember I was, I was kind of
Speaker 1: talking about consciousness, and it's all like related because people
Speaker 1: have a similar view of consciousness. I think that science
Speaker 1: will wan day explain what consciousness is.
Speaker 2: And you're trying to encourage your child to ask ask
Speaker 2: questions that I guess are maybe not comprehensively answered simply
Speaker 2: by science.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And also, so I want to be very clear here,
Speaker 1: lots of people will use this line of thought to
Speaker 1: try to sort of smuggle God in as like the
Speaker 1: they'll say, okay, so science can't explain it, so God
Speaker 1: must do so. That is categorically not what I'm doing here, right.
Speaker 1: All I'm saying is that the lexicon of science cannot
Speaker 1: describe the origin of the universe and the nature of consciousness.
Speaker 1: Those are the two things I think that science definitely
Speaker 1: can't describe. That is not to say, therefore God there
Speaker 1: might be some kind of what we might call naturalistic explanation.
Speaker 1: It's just not one that can be mathematized and therefore
Speaker 1: not sort of appropriate to use the lexicon of science
Speaker 1: to describe. That's fine, no problem with that. Of course,
Speaker 1: we still have this question. We still want to know
Speaker 1: why is there something rather than nothing? What is the
Speaker 1: nature of consciousness? But I want to be very clear
Speaker 1: that this isn't some kind of underhanded way to motivated
Speaker 1: reasoning to leave rooms for God. It's just to say
Speaker 1: that when people have this sort of confidence that the
Speaker 1: scientific method will explain everything, because it's made to progress
Speaker 1: in the past. Notice the precise nature of the progress
Speaker 1: it's made. It's explained things, but only at a sort
Speaker 1: of deeper level of resolution. It has described the mechanism
Speaker 1: take natural selection brilliantly, like Darwin figures out the mechanism
Speaker 1: by which organisms like diversify and become complex. And that's great,
Speaker 1: but it is a description. It's a description of what happens.
Speaker 1: And if you, as Finemann says, if you really do
Speaker 1: keep following that why question, you'll get down to some
Speaker 1: quite foundational questions, which it's less controversial to say science
Speaker 1: will not be able to explain.
Speaker 2: When you put it that way and you look at
Speaker 2: both sides, it seems to be more of a human
Speaker 2: mind's desire for certainty and completeness in thought, which is
Speaker 2: why we end up on either side of the spectrum
Speaker 2: without the ability to navigate the messy middle right. Specifically,
Speaker 2: in this case, it's almost like I either have to
Speaker 2: believe everything this book says is absolutely correct without any
Speaker 2: openness for questioning, door or reflection, or I have to
Speaker 2: believe this book that I learned that this textbook at school.
Speaker 2: Everything it says must be correct without any reflection, thought,
Speaker 2: or need for debate. And so it's almost like, how
Speaker 2: do we get to a point where the human mind
Speaker 2: we allow it to have the ability to question our
Speaker 2: worldview and thoughts without losing all sense of certainty instability,
Speaker 2: Because it seems as humans. When people watch a debate,
Speaker 2: nine out of ten times people are just watching it
Speaker 2: to confirm their bias. Sure, so they're already on one side.
Speaker 2: You're going to watch the debate and you're going to go, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know what, I'm fully with Alex. You know, we
Speaker 2: don't know if God exists, but we definitely know science
Speaker 2: can't answer all the questions, or on the other side,
Speaker 2: something's like, well, I'm from that religion, and that religious
Speaker 2: person is obviously spot on. So even when we watch
Speaker 2: a debate, we don't really ever come away from it going,
Speaker 2: you know what, I just couldn't believe that he said that,
Speaker 2: because we're just going there to confirm our beliefs. So
Speaker 2: I guess my question is, would you even encourage people
Speaker 2: to live in the messy middle of not being certain
Speaker 2: about their ideas? Does that create a better human I
Speaker 2: think that's where they do live, you think, so? I mean,
Speaker 2: there are very few things that people can be certain
Speaker 2: of in the sense of I would argue that most
Speaker 2: of the people you debate with, or most religious or
Speaker 2: scientific people in the world, at least in the form
Speaker 2: of how they live, are trying to live based on
Speaker 2: their belief.
Speaker 1: They have a very strong confidence, ye confidence meaning with
Speaker 1: face certainty on fe day in the Latina. I think
Speaker 1: if you speak to most of those people, they will
Speaker 1: at least ostensibly say, but I'm open to having my
Speaker 1: mind change, particularly scientists. I mean, the whole thing about
Speaker 1: science is that it's open for correction. Like, no scientist
Speaker 1: believes that we've completed science. Yeah, of course scientists are
Speaker 1: very much like one day they hope that Einstein will
Speaker 1: be proved completely wrong because it's exciting and it would
Speaker 1: like sharpen what we understand about the universe, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. And so like, I don't think anybody
Speaker 1: has that kind of confidence that they've got it all correct.
Speaker 1: But I think there is a confidence in the method,
Speaker 1: and fair enough have a confidence in the scientific method
Speaker 1: because it's great. And again, I love science. I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to insult it or anything. I'm just saying very
Speaker 1: precise about what it's doing and what it's not. And
Speaker 1: I think we could avoid a lot of needless debate.
Speaker 1: Have we understand exactly the parameters of each of our disciplines,
Speaker 1: disciplines like interact and emerge and stuff. But like, if
Speaker 1: you're talking about mathematical models, there are things that mathematical
Speaker 1: models just can't do. And if you're talking about like
Speaker 1: thought experiments and philosophy, there are things that thought experiments
Speaker 1: can't do. They cannot provide empirical proof of various phenomena.
Speaker 1: They can't provide scientific evidence for the Big Bang, that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. But likewise, I think that the scientific
Speaker 1: method can't describe certain foundational aspects of reality, and then said,
Speaker 1: presuppose them. I would, of course encourage people to recognize
Speaker 1: there's like lots of room to maneuver here, and I
Speaker 1: think that's one of the things that I'm trying to do.
Speaker 1: And like it kind of splits people, like especially when
Speaker 1: I talk about either consciousness or I talk about the
Speaker 1: nature of science. It splits people kind of three responses
Speaker 1: to the science stuff. Some people go, that's a load
Speaker 1: of nonsense. Of course, science explains things, and then I
Speaker 1: have to spend a bit of time really drilling down
Speaker 1: what they mean by explaining in the Fineman sense. Other
Speaker 1: people say, this is really interesting, Yeah cool, I'd never
Speaker 1: thought about it that way. That's great, that's exciting. And
Speaker 1: some people sort of say, yeah, science doesn't explain in
Speaker 1: that sense, Like description is the same thing. They just
Speaker 1: sort of say, it's like trivially true. It's not a
Speaker 1: very profound observation, but it has sort of some profound implications.
Speaker 1: If it is true that science only describes, then as
Speaker 1: long as you have an explanatory question left, it's one
Speaker 1: that science is not going to be able to answer.
Speaker 1: So I've sort of encourage people to at least explore
Speaker 1: that thought. It's totally fine to have confidence in your conclusions,
Speaker 1: but like, recognize it's about the method. It's this optimism
Speaker 1: about the progress of science because of what it's done
Speaker 1: in the past, which is great, but you have to
Speaker 1: be very precise about exactly what it's done in the
Speaker 1: past and what it might therefore mimic in the future.
Speaker 1: And answering foundational metaphysical questions about the nature of matter,
Speaker 1: why it exists in the first place, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I just don't think it's an appropriate tool, and people
Speaker 1: will be thinking in their heads, but hold on, what
Speaker 1: about Like you know, there are theories that what about
Speaker 1: like string theory, what about the I'm telling you that
Speaker 1: if you investigate these closely enough, you will realize that
Speaker 1: these are proposed descriptions of the nature of reality. They
Speaker 1: proposed descriptions of what's going on, they don't answer the
Speaker 1: why question. I think you're left with two options. One
Speaker 1: is to say the why question is bogus. Some people
Speaker 1: think that, and that's fair. Richard Dawkins has said, like,
Speaker 1: if you ask you a question like what is the
Speaker 1: color of jealousy? It makes grammatical sense, but it's a
Speaker 1: meaningless question. And the why question might be the same,
Speaker 1: why do things exist? If that's the case, so maybe
Speaker 1: there is no why, Maybe there are only descriptions. In
Speaker 1: that case, I would slightly alter my thesis to say
Speaker 1: everything is that. Maybe philosophy is description.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: When a Christian says that God is a trinity, they're
Speaker 1: just describing the nature of God, right. They're not explaining
Speaker 1: why he's a trinity, fair enough, but they would not
Speaker 1: do so in mathematical like language. You can't run the
Speaker 1: ontological argument for God's existence as a series of mathematical equations.
Speaker 1: It's just a different kind of language that's being used.
Speaker 1: I would just say that the scientific language will not
Speaker 1: describe the things which some other philosophical languages can describe.
Speaker 1: And that's not a problem. That's great. It's actually not
Speaker 1: that profound. Yeah, so many scientists are like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean you can call it like functionalism or descriptivism about science.
Speaker 1: That what's going on as we're just describing reality. And
Speaker 1: that's great and it's really useful, but I encourage people
Speaker 1: to just like reflect on what that means and what
Speaker 1: it should do to their confidence that science will answer
Speaker 1: these foundational questions.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I started talking about the origin of the universe because
Speaker 1: it's helpful when thinking about like Newton and Einstein to
Speaker 1: get across what I'm saying about science. But really, when
Speaker 1: you ask about what my worldview is, the reason I
Speaker 1: would bring that up is to talk about consciousness and
Speaker 1: in a similar way say that science will not explain,
Speaker 1: or at least will not tell us the nature of consciousness.
Speaker 1: For me, consciousness is the most foundational mystery. It's probably
Speaker 1: the foundational fact of reality. It's the kind of thing
Speaker 1: which science can't approach because science science sort of describes
Speaker 1: relations between things. Science uses the languge mathematics. It's like
Speaker 1: quantifying consciousness is a quality, there's qualitative, not the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that science can talk about. I did a
Speaker 1: panel not long ago that was hosted by Brian Cox.
Speaker 1: It was with some neuroscientists, one of whom was Anal Seth,
Speaker 1: a good friend of mine, and the other two whose
Speaker 1: names I forgotten. I'd only met them that one time,
Speaker 1: and they invited me because it was the show called
Speaker 1: A Question of Science, and they did all of these
Speaker 1: episodes and different scientific topics, and they did one on consciousness,
Speaker 1: and I think they wanted somebody who wasn't I guess
Speaker 1: like a neurosciencet. They want like a philosophical perspective. And
Speaker 1: I remember thinking, Okay, sure, I'll do this. I'm very
Speaker 1: grateful to be here if you really think that I'm
Speaker 1: an appropriate person. And I thought, well, what I can
Speaker 1: do is I can come along and I can talk
Speaker 1: about some philosophical perspectives. I can talk about pan psychism,
Speaker 1: I can talk about other traditions and stuff. And I
Speaker 1: remember before we started, Brian sort of looked at the
Speaker 1: questions that had been submitted by the audience and was
Speaker 1: kind of wanting to get rid of some of them
Speaker 1: because he was like, well, you know this stuff about
Speaker 1: like pan psychism and whatnot. I don't think we should
Speaker 1: really be spending any time on this kind of nonsense.
Speaker 1: And I was there. It was really awkward for me
Speaker 1: because I suddenly had to be like, oh, that's actually
Speaker 1: kind of what I'm what I'm here to do. We
Speaker 1: had this sort of slightly awkward conversation where I was
Speaker 1: a bit like, well, you know, I'm probably gonna mention it,
Speaker 1: and he's like, yeah, yeah, I mean good to at
Speaker 1: least you know, hear the view. I said, kind of
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. And then the show started, and look,
Speaker 1: I love these guys, you know, and they're obviously geniuses.
Speaker 1: And I know nothing about neuroscxs well not nothing, but
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not a neuroscientist, but it struck me.
Speaker 1: If you watch the first bit of this, the first
Speaker 1: question is what do we think? Consciousness is very difficult
Speaker 1: thing to define. I think it's impossible to precisely define.
Speaker 1: But a famous definition was given by Thomas Nagil in
Speaker 1: the seventies. To be conscious means there's something it is
Speaker 1: like to be you. There is something it is like
Speaker 1: to be this thing. Therefore it's conscious. It's like an
Speaker 1: inward sense of subjectivity. And we went round the panel
Speaker 1: and everyone agreed. Everyone was like, yeah, yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: great definition. I agree with that. That's fair enough. And
Speaker 1: the first question came, can we see consciousness in the brain?
Speaker 1: Great question, and one by one each of the neurosciences
Speaker 1: said some really interesting things, but I felt just hadn't
Speaker 1: answered the question. Ann I'll actually said at one point,
Speaker 1: you know, we can kind of put this question of
Speaker 1: like consciousness like to the to the side or on
Speaker 1: the shelf or something like that, and we can talk
Speaker 1: about like the brain activity that's going on when the
Speaker 1: conscious experience happens. And there was someone else who was
Speaker 1: talking about how when people have like hallucinations, it's like
Speaker 1: although to them they feel as real as actual site,
Speaker 1: different brain activity is happening when they think they see
Speaker 1: something when they do that's really intes it. That's great,
Speaker 1: This is all really interesting stuff about neuroscience. But it
Speaker 1: got around to me and I turned to the question
Speaker 1: and I was like, I think the answer is no.
Speaker 1: And I think what we've we've just heard has kind
Speaker 1: of proved that because what you're doing is you're talking
Speaker 1: about brain chemistry, you're talking about neurons, you're talking about
Speaker 1: the neural correlates of consciousness. You're not talking about consciousness itself.
Speaker 1: And I remember sitting there thinking like this is sort
Speaker 1: of quite strange to me because a lot of the
Speaker 1: sort of running threads throughout this one. I said, but like,
Speaker 1: what about the nature of what consciousness actually is? What
Speaker 1: about the explanation of like why we're conscious? There's sometimes
Speaker 1: this feeling of like, well, that's not really really a
Speaker 1: legitimate question. Yeah, it's enough to just describe the neural correlers.
Speaker 1: It's enough to just subscribe the brain activity. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's fair enough if that's what you think. If you
Speaker 1: don't think that's an interesting question, then fine, But then
Speaker 1: why are we here at an event called what is consciousness?
Speaker 1: It would sort of be like if we were at
Speaker 1: an event that was like talking about like football, and
Speaker 1: somebody asked about why the offside rull exists, and somebody
Speaker 1: started talking about how like, well, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: bit like in basketball where this how or is a
Speaker 1: bit like in cricket, or it's a bit like And
Speaker 1: then I said, but hold on, like I want to
Speaker 1: talk about like actually football. People might think I'm being
Speaker 1: a little unfair. I'd encouragem to just watch it themselves,
Speaker 1: like I don't mean to disparage these people, as I say,
Speaker 1: they are geniuses and they do very important work. But
Speaker 1: I think it's quite clear to me that when we're
Speaker 1: talking about what consciousness is not talking about the same thing.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the experience. I'm talking about the redness
Speaker 1: of ret I'm talking about like the feeling of cold
Speaker 1: on your skin. I'm not talking about a neuron firing.
Speaker 1: And I don't think those are the same things. So
Speaker 1: that the common view amongst materialists is that experiences are
Speaker 1: just the same thing as brain activity. And I understand
Speaker 1: that thought, but they can't literally be the same thing.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you why. There's a law it's called Leibnitz's law,
Speaker 1: which says that if two things are identical, they share
Speaker 1: precisely the same properties. If X and Y are identical,
Speaker 1: that is, they are the same thing, then all of
Speaker 1: the properties of X are shared. By Why, you can't
Speaker 1: say that two things are the same And I don't
Speaker 1: mean the same kind of thing, I mean literally the
Speaker 1: same thing. But one of them is red and one
Speaker 1: of them is blue, or one of them is five
Speaker 1: sided and one of them is two sided. That would
Speaker 1: mean that they're different things. Even spatial location, they have
Speaker 1: all the same properties, except this one's in China and
Speaker 1: this one's in France. That means they're not identical. Let's
Speaker 1: think about the content of your mental experience, right you
Speaker 1: can imagine triangle in your head. I'm told that the
Speaker 1: triangle that I can literally see in my head right
Speaker 1: now is the same thing, the same thing as some
Speaker 1: neurons firing. I don't think so, because they don't have
Speaker 1: the same properties. The triangle has three sides. As a
Speaker 1: fact about the triangle in my head, the neurons firing
Speaker 1: that correlate with my experience of that triangle don't have
Speaker 1: three sides, meaning that you've got two sort of things
Speaker 1: with different sets of properties, meaning they can't literally be identical.
Speaker 1: Maybe one causes the other, maybe one emerges from the other.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's fine. We're not saying anything too crazy at
Speaker 1: the moment, but the idea that they are literally the
Speaker 1: same thing, I think just doesn't make much sense.
Speaker 2: With everything you just mentioned. How do you then explain
Speaker 2: what is a good life to a ten year old?
Speaker 1: I think one of the reasons why I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: a child at the moment is because I don't know
Speaker 1: how to answer that question.
Speaker 2: I love that answer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a very serious question. If you don't have
Speaker 1: an idea of what makes the good life, then it's
Speaker 1: going to be very difficult to raise a child. I
Speaker 1: mean people say that when you choose your life partner,
Speaker 1: who's going to be the other parent to your child,
Speaker 1: So the mother or father of your child, depending on
Speaker 1: who you are, one of the most important things is
Speaker 1: that you're aligned on like core values and stuff. Why
Speaker 1: because when it comes to raising children, you'll have to
Speaker 1: have the same idea of what a good life is. Right,
Speaker 1: So in the same way, why you might not want
Speaker 1: to get married and have children with someone with whom
Speaker 1: you haven't aligned your fundamental values. I almost sort of
Speaker 1: am not married to myself in that way because there's
Speaker 1: too much internal conflict. I sort of I disagree with
Speaker 1: myself too much to have a good answer to that question.
Speaker 1: But also I'm not confident that I ever will. And
Speaker 1: so I think what people typically say is either they
Speaker 1: have a particular worldview and they say, well, the good
Speaker 1: life is to do what God commands. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of fair enough as well, because that still leaves room
Speaker 1: for the kid to go and work out who is
Speaker 1: God and what does God command? Right, It's actually quite broad,
Speaker 1: But I think if I were forced to say something,
Speaker 1: I would ask what they mean by good. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if this is the kid asking me,
Speaker 1: but the word good is a difficult thing to unpack.
Speaker 1: You know, there's morally good, or there's good in the
Speaker 1: sense that this is a good table because it holds
Speaker 1: things up, And some people think that's the same thing.
Speaker 1: But I think there are probably indicators of a good
Speaker 1: life that include like contentment and calm and lack of
Speaker 1: stress and that kind of stuff, confidence in the decisions
Speaker 1: that you've made. But I find it very difficult question
Speaker 1: to answer.
Speaker 2: Do you find that the way you think about life
Speaker 2: and the world stops you from living practically or can?
Speaker 2: Or how do you balance the two? How do you
Speaker 2: allow yourself to be someone who Because that's what I
Speaker 2: was trying to get at earlier, is that when you
Speaker 2: have even somewhat of a false can in your belief
Speaker 2: whatever that may be, life somewhat is easier to live
Speaker 2: because you just get on with it. And I consider
Speaker 2: myself to be someone who's who lives more in the
Speaker 2: middle and thinks things through too. But I realized that
Speaker 2: that comes with a lot of uncertainty in the sense
Speaker 2: that you could totally have one toe spin moment in
Speaker 2: your life because you're like, oh, well, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: I kind of believe that's true, and that's kind of
Speaker 2: not now. I prefer living like that because I think
Speaker 2: it leads to new learning and curiosity and change in transformation,
Speaker 2: which I think are actually better than just pretending to
Speaker 2: agree with something. But I guess where does your philosophy
Speaker 2: fail you in practical life.
Speaker 1: I think that most people don't live strictly according to
Speaker 1: philosophical principles. I think they develop philosophical principles based on
Speaker 1: how they live, agree like that like that, and I
Speaker 1: think that the best. So Wickenstein in his tract Artists,
Speaker 1: which is like a sort of very sort of mathematical
Speaker 1: quite short word, has this introduction and the first words
Speaker 1: he writes are, this book may only be of use
Speaker 1: to people who already agree with its contents. And I
Speaker 1: think that's so fair enough. This might seem like a
Speaker 1: weird thing to say in response to your question, but like,
Speaker 1: I don't think people just read like a philosophy and
Speaker 1: become convinced by it. I think they hear somebody put
Speaker 1: something they already kind of think in the right words
Speaker 1: and they.
Speaker 2: Go, yes, hey, I like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's what I think, which is why I
Speaker 1: think people are sometimes a little bit confused. If they
Speaker 1: want to get into philosophy, they look up the hundred
Speaker 1: best philosophers and they think, okay, let's go and learn
Speaker 1: about it, and just out of the blue it says, oh,
Speaker 1: you should go and read like Jean Paul Sartre. So okay,
Speaker 1: So they pick it up and they read it and
Speaker 1: they're like, I don't really get this, you know, Oh,
Speaker 1: this doesn't make much sense to me. Now they read
Speaker 1: Spinosa and they're like, what's he talking about? I don't
Speaker 1: it's a bit mathsy. I don't really understand, right, And
Speaker 1: it's because that's not how philosophy is supposed to be done.
Speaker 1: People sometimes ask me, where would you recommend I start
Speaker 1: if you got any recommendations like how to get in philosophy,
Speaker 1: And my advice is always very simple, just read whatever
Speaker 1: you've heard of. And the reason for that is because
Speaker 1: if you've heard of someone, it means you've been in
Speaker 1: contexts where they have come up, right, Like if you
Speaker 1: listen to loads of Jordan Peterson, you'll have heard him
Speaker 1: talk about Nietzsche, Now you might never have read Nature,
Speaker 1: but the fact that you are so attracted to Peterson
Speaker 1: and the fact that he's so attracted to Nietzschure means
Speaker 1: it's likely if you read Nature, you're going to find
Speaker 1: something that you like in there. Right. Likewise, if you
Speaker 1: listen to Christian apologists on YouTube, you might have heard
Speaker 1: them talk about the Church Fathers or Augustin or people
Speaker 1: like this, and in which case, just read that, because
Speaker 1: there's a reason why you're attracted to the people who
Speaker 1: are attracted to those bits of content. Right, Because to
Speaker 1: some degree, you can read a philosophy and go, that's
Speaker 1: an interesting argument that makes sense, but you're not going
Speaker 1: to read it, and it sort of wash over you
Speaker 1: with this wave of conviction. I think unless you've already
Speaker 1: got one foot in that worldview, and it's just somebody
Speaker 1: has finally put into words what you were thinking this
Speaker 1: whole time. And so I think that we're very intuitive creatures,
Speaker 1: and I think that our philosophizing often.
Speaker 2: Gets in the way.
Speaker 1: I think that we according to our intuition and our
Speaker 1: emotional impulses all the time, and then we rationalize them
Speaker 1: after the fact, and then we debate about who was
Speaker 1: right and wrong, And there's so much to be said
Speaker 1: about this. For example, ethics really important branch of philosophy
Speaker 1: is what is wrong. You've got meta ethics, which is
Speaker 1: like defining what goodness is. You've got practical ethics, which
Speaker 1: is like particular case like studies. You know, what do
Speaker 1: we do in the case of abortion, euthanasia, that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. And if you look at how people do ethics,
Speaker 1: it's extremely interesting. They'll come up with a theory, say utilitarianism, right,
Speaker 1: the right thing to do is to bring about the
Speaker 1: least suffering for the least number, or the most pleasure
Speaker 1: for the most people the fewest number, I should say.
Speaker 1: And someone says, okay, that sounds good. And then how
Speaker 1: would you test that theory? Oh, you think of a scenario? Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: but hold on. What if there was a healthy person
Speaker 1: who walked into a hospital and there were five people
Speaker 1: who needed organ transplants, and you could kill that innocent
Speaker 1: person steal their organs, and most people go, no, no, no doubt,
Speaker 1: that would be wrong. Okay, then we need to go
Speaker 1: back and revise our theory. Hold on, why I thought
Speaker 1: the whole point of having an ethical theory was to
Speaker 1: tell us what right and wrong are. But now you're saying,
Speaker 1: if you don't like the conclusion, you just go back
Speaker 1: and edit the theory. What's going on there. It's because
Speaker 1: we already have intuitions about the outcome and we have
Speaker 1: certain intuitions about the input. It's not as simple as
Speaker 1: like we're going to rationally work out what the standard
Speaker 1: of ethics is and then that will tell us what
Speaker 1: to do. It's like, we're going to come up with
Speaker 1: a kind of theory that captures how we already behave,
Speaker 1: and if it doesn't capture how we already behave, then
Speaker 1: we're going to edit it slightly. And so the process
Speaker 1: of meta ethics or practical ethics coming up with these
Speaker 1: theories is in many cases actually just working out what
Speaker 1: we already believe, but doing it precisely. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: most people care about animals. They are animals, but then
Speaker 1: they pay for factory farming, okay, And you could have
Speaker 1: a discussion about this and you could say, well, actually,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not sure. So their theory might be
Speaker 1: I think you should not cause unnecessary harm, and then
Speaker 1: you say, yeah, but you're palming animals and factory farms,
Speaker 1: and they go, oh, okay, maybe then we shouldn't and
Speaker 1: they'll go and edit the theory, because what you're doing
Speaker 1: is you're precisely working out what you already believe.
Speaker 2: Well, you're protecting your worldview. You're allowed to have your versions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's not just to case. You're not just
Speaker 1: like protecting it defensively. You're just like, no, this is
Speaker 1: what I believe, and so I'm going to edit the theory.
Speaker 1: John Rules, the bolistical philosopher, had this concept of the
Speaker 1: reflective equilibrium, so he thought that what happened. You can
Speaker 1: sort of imagine this like machine right, and we have inputs,
Speaker 1: which are our theories about what's right and wrong, and
Speaker 1: those theories give us outputs. So we input a theory
Speaker 1: which sounds plausible we should minimize suffering, and it gives
Speaker 1: us an output like, well, then you should kill everyone instantly,
Speaker 1: and actually, don't, hold on, that's not quite right. So
Speaker 1: then you sort of you adapt the inca. It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: we actually need to minimize suffering without killing people. Also,
Speaker 1: you know, have some kind of pleasure, and then it
Speaker 1: puts out other outcomes and you sort of got this
Speaker 1: back and forth and the machine in the middle, like
Speaker 1: you know, mixes it all up and gives you the
Speaker 1: output and rules kind of says that the way this
Speaker 1: works is you come at it from like both sides.
Speaker 1: You've got intuitive like outcomes and you've got like intuitive
Speaker 1: theoretical suggestions, and you sort of do this back and forth,
Speaker 1: this tug of war between them until they kind of
Speaker 1: balance out a bit and you get this reflective equilibrium,
Speaker 1: and that that's what we're doing when we're coming up
Speaker 1: with theories. It is never as simple as somebody like
Speaker 1: writing a book and saying, right, I'm going to prove
Speaker 1: to you from first principles that abortion is wrong, specifically
Speaker 1: from the eighth week. That's never going to happen. Ever,
Speaker 1: They're going to rely on intuitions that you already have
Speaker 1: about people and the worth of humans and body autonomy,
Speaker 1: and they're going to convince you that way. So if
Speaker 1: you become really learned in the traditions of philosophy, that
Speaker 1: can be really interesting. But you'll notice that a lot
Speaker 1: of philosophers can talk about these big ideas with absolutely
Speaker 1: no personal investment in them. They'd be like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: like so nietzsure thought that God was dead and that
Speaker 1: this was a great tragedy, and they're sort of talking
Speaker 1: it as this historical aspect. They've got zero personal sort
Speaker 1: of in there, and so they're obviously not going to
Speaker 1: use that to like guide their life in any way,
Speaker 1: and if they did, it would just lead to confusion.
Speaker 1: There's like a skit I saw once. I think, like
Speaker 1: someone's on an airplane and they're dying, and you know,
Speaker 1: they're like, is there a doctor on board? And someone
Speaker 1: shows up and says, I'm a doctor. I'm a doctor
Speaker 1: of philosophy, and they're like, oh, well, what should we do?
Speaker 1: We need to dave this man, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, the utilitarian would say that we should take
Speaker 1: resources from other people, but then the deontologists would say
Speaker 1: that that would upset their rights, and then well, if
Speaker 1: you're a Christian, maybe we should and then they just
Speaker 1: die right because you're spaying too much time sort of
Speaker 1: going back and forth. I don't think that's how people
Speaker 1: actually behave, right, and I think there's some there's some
Speaker 1: like neurological evidence for this to do with the two
Speaker 1: hemispheres of your brain, which is another thing I'm fascinated by.
Speaker 1: I think the most significant fact, perhaps in the world,
Speaker 1: is that your brain is divided into two hemispheres.
Speaker 2: Why do you think that's the most significant fact in the.
Speaker 1: World, Because if you are essentially your brain, which okay,
Speaker 1: I don't think consciousness is the same thing as the brain,
Speaker 1: but they're clearly connected, right, And the thing that at
Speaker 1: least gives you self, I don't think it produces consciousness,
Speaker 1: just to be crystal clear, but I think self heard.
Speaker 1: The thing that gives you your unified sense of self
Speaker 1: is essentially your brain and maybe the rest of your
Speaker 1: sort of neural system. And the fact that everywhere we look,
Speaker 1: every neural system we find there's some kind of asymmetrical
Speaker 1: division in the brain. There's some evolutionarily strong reason to
Speaker 1: keep two separate hemispheres has to be super significant. That's
Speaker 1: like the nature of you, that's your nature. Your nature
Speaker 1: is fundamentally lateralized. Your two hemispheres are kind of involved
Speaker 1: in different ways of thinking. It's never quite as simple
Speaker 1: as people think. I mean, Ian Mcgilchris is the person
Speaker 1: to read on this. In culture, it's like the right
Speaker 1: brain is creative and intuitive and the left brain is
Speaker 1: mathsy and rational. It's not as simple as that mcgilchris
Speaker 1: likes to say that the two hemispheres sort of attend
Speaker 1: to the world in different ways. The left brain is
Speaker 1: about sort of manipulation and the right brain is more
Speaker 1: like big picture, and we know that this is this case.
Speaker 1: I mean Mcgilchris's theory is that the reason this occurs
Speaker 1: is because as an organism, you need to be simultaneously
Speaker 1: looking out for like prey, You need to be manipulating
Speaker 1: your environment while looking out for predators at the same time.
Speaker 1: And there's some evidence to suggest that this is the case.
Speaker 1: Birds have eyes on either side of their head or
Speaker 1: lizards which have eyes on the sides of their head
Speaker 1: are really useful because the right eye feeds the left
Speaker 1: hemisphere and the left eye feeds the right hemisphere. With us,
Speaker 1: it's complicated because they're on the front. So with animals
Speaker 1: on the side, it's much easier. And there's evidence of birds,
Speaker 1: for example, if they're like building a nest, they will
Speaker 1: favor using their right eye, even when it makes it
Speaker 1: more difficult because the left brain is engaged in the
Speaker 1: manipulation stuff. And likewise, you know, you could put a
Speaker 1: lizard in a room and put a predator and it
Speaker 1: will look at the predator where this is left eye.
Speaker 1: Even if you cover up its left eye, it will
Speaker 1: still try to look at it with the left eye right.
Speaker 1: So there's some evidence to suggest this is the case,
Speaker 1: and the same kind of thing is going on with us.
Speaker 1: We've got these two brains and they kind of do
Speaker 1: different things. And so have you ever come across split
Speaker 1: brain page? This was my favorite thing to discover ever
Speaker 1: in history. Is really famous within like brain science. I
Speaker 1: suppose the two hemispheres are connected by this tissue called
Speaker 1: the corpus colossum, this sort of bundle of tissues they
Speaker 1: used to be this treatment for extreme cases of epilepsy
Speaker 1: called a corpus calisotomy, which is where the connection is severed.
Speaker 1: Epilepsy is like an electrical storm in the brain, and
Speaker 1: so one way to try to minimize it was literally
Speaker 1: just to cut the two hemispheres at their connective tissue.
Speaker 1: And so people who've had this operation done were known
Speaker 1: as split brain patients. Because their hemispheres have been disconnected,
Speaker 1: they can still communicate slightly through other means, but their
Speaker 1: main source of communication is inhibited. If you met one
Speaker 1: of these people, you wouldn't know they're just perfectly normal.
Speaker 1: They'll speak to you like I'm speaking to you now.
Speaker 1: Everything's totally fine. But in experimental conditions you can prove
Speaker 1: some really weird things. For example, speech and language of
Speaker 1: communication is broadly speaking, governed by the front left part
Speaker 1: of your brain left hemisphere. Remember, the left hemisphere controls
Speaker 1: like the right hand side of your body and the
Speaker 1: right hemisphere controls the left hand side of your body.
Speaker 1: So with humans, because our eyes are on the front,
Speaker 1: our right visual field goes to the left brain and
Speaker 1: our left visual field goes to the right brain. So
Speaker 1: in a split brain patient, they look at a screen.
Speaker 1: You can watch this experiment on YouTube. By the way,
Speaker 1: they're looking at a screen and on the right hand
Speaker 1: side of the screen it or flash a word, so
Speaker 1: it goes to their left hemisphere and it will say umbrella,
Speaker 1: and they'll say umbrella, car, car, chair, chair. Then they'll
Speaker 1: flash a word on the left hand side of the screen,
Speaker 1: so just the right hemisphere, and it will say cowboy hat.
Speaker 1: And they'll say, I didn't see anything. I didn't see anything.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about. And then the
Speaker 1: experimenter gives them a pencil in their left hand and
Speaker 1: tells them to draw something, and they draw a cowboy
Speaker 1: hat because the right hemisphere and so the left hand
Speaker 1: can draw it. But if you ask them, they'll say
Speaker 1: that they didn't see it. Wow, because the left hemisphere,
Speaker 1: which controls speech. Broadly that's a bit of an oversimplification,
Speaker 1: but broadly speaking, didn't see it, and so they can't
Speaker 1: tell you that they saw it. So they saw it
Speaker 1: and they didn't see it at the same time. So fascinating, right.
Speaker 1: I means you've kind of got these two brains that
Speaker 1: are both doing different things. And I think the most
Speaker 1: significant experiment of this kind is where And bear in mind,
Speaker 1: these people are agreeing, and thankfully so, they've already been
Speaker 1: through a traumatic experience and now they're agreeing to do
Speaker 1: these experiments. They're waiting instructions, right, So you can flash
Speaker 1: an instruction to the right hemisphere of the brain and
Speaker 1: the instruction will say something like get up and walk
Speaker 1: over to the window. So the patient stands up and
Speaker 1: they walk over to the window, and then the instructor says,
Speaker 1: why did you just do that? And you know what
Speaker 1: they say. It would be weird enough if they said
Speaker 1: I don't know, right, but they don't they make something
Speaker 1: up and they believe it. It's called confabulation, right, Like
Speaker 1: they say something like, oh, I was getting a bit
Speaker 1: warm and I just wanted some fresh air. We know
Speaker 1: that's not why they did, but their left brain hasn
Speaker 1: convinced them that that is why they did it. Now,
Speaker 1: the reason I'm talking about all of this is because
Speaker 1: this has given rise to the idea that the left
Speaker 1: brain is the so called interpreter, that the right brain
Speaker 1: kind of intuitively does stuff and then the left brain
Speaker 1: retrospectively sort of rationalizes and justifies that behavior. In split
Speaker 1: brain patients, you can prove it experimentally, but the idea
Speaker 1: is in healthy brains you couldn't prove it, but the
Speaker 1: same thing might be going on. So you know when
Speaker 1: you see someone who like they're arguing with the taxi
Speaker 1: driver and you're like, why are you shouting at that guy?
Speaker 1: And they're like, because you know he didn't give me
Speaker 1: my change, and you're like, well, actually, the reason you're
Speaker 1: shouting at him is because your dog died yesterday. That's
Speaker 1: the real reason the you're shouting at him. Like, we
Speaker 1: know that this kind of thing happens all the time,
Speaker 1: but I think it happens like literally all the time.
Speaker 1: I think, like so much of our decision making, which
Speaker 1: is intuitively move throughout the world, and then our left
Speaker 1: brain interprets what we've done and rationalizes it after the fact.
Speaker 1: And I think that so much of our philosophizing is
Speaker 1: like this is very like left brain dominant, and Ian
Speaker 1: mcgilchris says that one of the problems that we face
Speaker 1: as a sort of society is that we've become too
Speaker 1: left brain dominant in our thinking. Everything is sort of
Speaker 1: hyper rationalized and discreet, sort of abstracted, and none of
Speaker 1: it is intuitive, none of it is flux, none of
Speaker 1: it is continuous. But that is the nature of reality.
Speaker 1: So Immigochus's first book was called The Master and his Emissary.
Speaker 1: The Master and his Emissary, and the idea is that
Speaker 1: the right brain does stuff and the left brain is
Speaker 1: the emissary. But there's this, there's some kind of myths
Speaker 1: or story where an emissary thinks that he can do
Speaker 1: the job of the master, so he kills the master
Speaker 1: and then ends up doing a terrible job, and he
Speaker 1: kind of thinks that's what's happened with our left brain.
Speaker 1: So the reason that I brought that up is because
Speaker 1: when you asked, like, how do you sort of navigate
Speaker 1: the world not having a certain philosophy, I think we
Speaker 1: all navigate the world extremely intuitively, and that when we
Speaker 1: come up with reasons and explanations for our behaviors, a
Speaker 1: lot of the time those are like post hoc rationalizations
Speaker 1: without us even realizing it. It also has profound implications
Speaker 1: for free will, of course, because we think you know
Speaker 1: why you performed a particular action, But is that just
Speaker 1: because your brain is convinced you that that's why you
Speaker 1: did it when it's not the real reason. And the
Speaker 1: very least, whatever the reason is, it's something that the
Speaker 1: left brain might not be able to communicate because it
Speaker 1: might be a very right brain kind of thing. But yeah,
Speaker 1: these split brain patients. I mean, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you agree. I think that it's one of the most
Speaker 1: significant facts in the world because also it might interest
Speaker 1: you if you if you're interested in the Indian traditions
Speaker 1: that we were talking about earlier, like the concept of
Speaker 1: the self right. Once you have experimental evidence that an
Speaker 1: individual self can both see something and not see it
Speaker 1: at the same time, I think that has profound implications
Speaker 1: for the idea of the unity of personhood, like how
Speaker 1: many people are there there? If you want to say
Speaker 1: there's only one person, you have to admit a literal
Speaker 1: contradiction that it is both true and false that they
Speaker 1: saw it, which you can't do. That has to be
Speaker 1: like a part of them which saw it at the
Speaker 1: very least, you have to say part of them saw
Speaker 1: it impartment in and immediately, at the very least what
Speaker 1: you've done, as you said that the self can be
Speaker 1: split into parts. That's hugely profound because if your left
Speaker 1: brain and your right brain can have inde pendant sort
Speaker 1: of centers of awareness and yet somehow are also part
Speaker 1: of this one connective thing. I think that has some
Speaker 1: profound implications to the fact that I've got a brain
Speaker 1: and you've got a brain. But there are a great
Speaker 1: many philosophical traditions who think that we're all sort of
Speaker 1: part of one great, big thing. It at least opens
Speaker 1: a door to all kinds of interesting It's sort of
Speaker 1: like when I tell people this, if they haven't heard
Speaker 1: about split brain patients, they're sort of like, what really,
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, Like this stuff is way more complicated
Speaker 1: and way more weird than I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people realize is.
Speaker 2: There anything that we can do to activate a right
Speaker 2: brain more?
Speaker 1: That's a question for Ian McGilchrist, but I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know, but I would guess that like tuning in
Speaker 1: to the way that the right brain is supposed to
Speaker 1: attend to the world and read McGilchrist on this, and
Speaker 1: just try to tune into that part of your self
Speaker 1: to try to recognize that there is a part of
Speaker 1: reality that consists in that kind of stuff that escapes
Speaker 1: the sort of hyper rationalization of left brain ways of thinking.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of that comes through, like
Speaker 1: people are said to be a bit more left brained
Speaker 1: or a bit more right brained, and in culture that
Speaker 1: tends to manifest us like if your right brain you
Speaker 1: like sort of music and art and poetry. Left handedness
Speaker 1: was associated with creativity for a long time. Although that
Speaker 1: would be a quite fun fact, I think that's actually
Speaker 1: not true. That's not connected in that way. But like,
Speaker 1: culturally we have these sort of associations, and I think
Speaker 1: that they don't give you a tool a very good
Speaker 1: picture of what's actually happening with the brain, but I
Speaker 1: think it can be a sort of good way of
Speaker 1: thinking about the kinds of practices and ways of thinking
Speaker 1: that you might want to engage with to stop being
Speaker 1: so hygh irrational, and also pay attention. When you are
Speaker 1: convinced that you know why you're doing something, just step
Speaker 1: back and really think about what might be going into it.
Speaker 1: It's literally what I said at the beginning of this
Speaker 1: conversation when I said, you know, why are you an atheist?
Speaker 1: It's because the contingency argument for God's existence is unsound,
Speaker 1: or it's because my parents divorced when I was nine.
Speaker 1: The first of those is a very left brain answer.
Speaker 1: The second of those is a very right brain answer.
Speaker 1: And so if you're having an argument with your wife,
Speaker 1: you know C. S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters, which
Speaker 1: is a wonderful little novel where there's this like demonic undersecretary,
Speaker 1: like this sort of a demonic civil service, and this
Speaker 1: demon has been tasked with a particular human who he's
Speaker 1: trying to make into an atheist. And one of the
Speaker 1: instructions that he has is like, when this person has
Speaker 1: an argument with his wife, convince him that they're arguing
Speaker 1: about the dishes when they're not really, because he's going
Speaker 1: to come home and he's going to say, you know,
Speaker 1: his wife is going to say, you didn't do the
Speaker 1: dishes today, and he's going to go, oh, for goodness sake,
Speaker 1: I've had a.
Speaker 2: Long day at work.
Speaker 1: And she's going to go, yeah, but you never do
Speaker 1: the bloody and he's going to really, you, you wanna
Speaker 1: raise your voice of me right now because I didn't
Speaker 1: do the dishes this morning. Because it's not about the dishes.
Speaker 1: She's not saying you didn't do the dishes. She's saying
Speaker 1: I feel like you don't pull you weight around the
Speaker 1: house and you don't listen to me, and I don't
Speaker 1: feel hurt.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: This is very sort of like self helpy type stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, you sit on podcasts like this and you
Speaker 1: sort of go, like you know, and like, really you
Speaker 1: need to like listen to your But like I think,
Speaker 1: very specifically, we are literally becoming convinced that, like we
Speaker 1: know why we are acting and behaving in particular ways
Speaker 1: when we're not because our left brain is rationalizing things
Speaker 1: for us. So just take a step back, think a
Speaker 1: bit more intuitively about like what's going on in a
Speaker 1: very sort of non rational, abstracted kind of way. Don't
Speaker 1: try to think about this individual case and go, okay,
Speaker 1: let's let's trace the logic just like step back and
Speaker 1: like feel for a minute, you know, like like reintegrate
Speaker 1: feeling into your life. That's that's probably a helpful starting point.
Speaker 2: Alex, thank you so much. What a joy talking to you.
Speaker 2: I feel like I've totally had my mind expanded today
Speaker 2: and stretched in so many different directions. Yeah, both both
Speaker 2: on both sides. I wanted to end with you on
Speaker 2: what we do on the show called the Final Five,
Speaker 2: but I've kind of edited it for you because I
Speaker 2: felt there are a few more questions I want to
Speaker 2: take in there, so my end up being a final ten.
Speaker 2: These questions have to be answered in one sentence, Maxim Sure, okay,
Speaker 2: and so Alex O'Connor, these are your final ten only
Speaker 2: mad for you, Brought to you by State Farm. What's
Speaker 2: the hardest question you've ever asked yourself?
Speaker 1: What is consciousness?
Speaker 2: If you're wrong about everything you believe? Which belief would
Speaker 2: hurt most?
Speaker 1: That my friends and family love me?
Speaker 2: Great answer? What do you think is the most dangerous idea?
Speaker 2: People believe without questioning.
Speaker 1: That we can have certainty about the will of the
Speaker 1: creator of the universe? And that it's engaged in the
Speaker 1: peculiarities of human affairs and human political affairs.
Speaker 2: That one sentence, that that counts. That counts. You've got
Speaker 2: it all out in one breath. That counts. What do
Speaker 2: you think people are most afraid to admit about life?
Speaker 1: That it comes to an end?
Speaker 2: I wanted to talk to you about that as a
Speaker 2: final theme. Why does death feel so unnatural? You've talked
Speaker 2: about consciousness. What have you learned about death?
Speaker 1: Well, there are a few answers to that. You said
Speaker 1: by death feels so unnatural, which is a weird way
Speaker 1: of putting it, But I think, like you think, it's
Speaker 1: a weird way for many people. Death is a part
Speaker 1: of nature. But it's interesting to hear say unnatural because
Speaker 1: there are philosophical traditions, like if you're someone who believes
Speaker 1: that life exists after death, you'll either believe that because
Speaker 1: you think that we're going to like heaven and this
Speaker 1: mortal realm is sort of a purgatory realm of sorts,
Speaker 1: or maybe you think that we're all made of consciousness
Speaker 1: and we're all going to sort of reintegrate into Brahmen.
Speaker 1: You know. Either way, that would mean that our true
Speaker 1: nature is Brahman for want of a better term, right now,
Speaker 1: and that the divided physical biological selves that we currently
Speaker 1: inhabit are not our real selves. Right This is one
Speaker 1: of the biggest teachings of advice Vedanta is that you
Speaker 1: yourself is an illusion. There is one self, the app man.
Speaker 1: It's oneself, and that utman is the same thing as Brahman.
Speaker 1: There's just one great, big thing such that the thing
Speaker 1: that comes to an end when you die is not yourself,
Speaker 1: it's or other. It's the illusion of yourself, but it's
Speaker 1: not the self. The self persists, the self is eternal.
Speaker 1: It's another sort of huge theme of the Hindu scriptures.
Speaker 1: And so to hear you describe death as unnatural, it's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting because these people would say that's because
Speaker 1: it's not natural, because your true nature is eternal. The
Speaker 1: self is eternal, and what you're calling yourself is actually unnatural,
Speaker 1: and that's the thing that will come to an end.
Speaker 1: So some people might answer that for me, like, death
Speaker 1: is terrifying, and it can be terrifying for two reasons.
Speaker 1: One is that you think it's lights off and everything
Speaker 1: comes to an end. The other is that you think
Speaker 1: there is something after death and it's.
Speaker 2: Bad, right.
Speaker 1: People are genuinely terrified of concepts of hell and divine
Speaker 1: torment for the behaviors that they engage in while they
Speaker 1: were alive. And a lot of that comes from like
Speaker 1: religious upbringings, in particular doctrines about the nature of hell,
Speaker 1: which I think are not very biblical to say the least.
Speaker 1: But there's sort of two flavor fear there on the
Speaker 1: hell stuff. It requires essentially a mess physical investigation into
Speaker 1: the nature of God and whether that God would allow
Speaker 1: such suffering for finite crimes. But with the lights off
Speaker 1: kind of thing, which I think more people are kind
Speaker 1: of freaked out by. You know, some people say, oh,
Speaker 1: but it's you know, it's like before I was born,
Speaker 1: you know, like I was I was dead for thousands
Speaker 1: of years before I was born, and it never bothered me.
Speaker 1: That helps some people because it at least makes you
Speaker 1: realize that you're not going to experience it, you know,
Speaker 1: if the lights really go off. Then Epicurus famously said,
Speaker 1: you know, like if like when is death bad, it
Speaker 1: can't be bad now because I'm not dead, and it
Speaker 1: can't be bad for me when I'm dead because there's
Speaker 1: no me. So there's no point at which it can
Speaker 1: be true. Like Epicurus kind of wants to say, if
Speaker 1: something is true, there has to be a time at
Speaker 1: which it's true. There's to be some time at which
Speaker 1: this fact is true. So if the fact is death
Speaker 1: is bad for me, my death is bad for me,
Speaker 1: when is that? Facts true? Can't be true now because
Speaker 1: I'm not dead, can't be true related because there's no
Speaker 1: meat and people hear that and they go are very clever.
Speaker 1: They don't really they doesn't really see much, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because again that's a very left, very But I'm still
Speaker 1: kind of concerned right because of my convictions about the
Speaker 1: nature of consciousness. I'm at least agnostic enough about sort
Speaker 1: of experiences, by which I mean like experiences with an apostrophe,
Speaker 1: experiences connection to physicality. I'm agnostic enough about that that
Speaker 1: I'm kind of not super worried about the death of
Speaker 1: my physical body. I have no idea what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: I do know that if I if I do die
Speaker 1: and it all just sort of huts off, then I
Speaker 1: won't be around to worry about it, And I'm only
Speaker 1: around to worry about it now. But I you know,
Speaker 1: I think about it, like everybody does, but in some
Speaker 1: way that I can't quite explain. And it's a reason
Speaker 1: why I wouldn't really talk about it except to sort
Speaker 1: of hinted it in a situation like this, is to
Speaker 1: say that these investigations into the nature of consciousness and
Speaker 1: the nature of the brain and brain and stuff, in
Speaker 1: some way I can't quite describe, just has consoled me
Speaker 1: a little bit about the fact that one day my
Speaker 1: physical brain is going to like end, you know, because
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's quite the same thing as
Speaker 1: as what I am exactly. You know, well, it is
Speaker 1: the same thing as what I am as a self,
Speaker 1: and I am worried about the self coming to an end.
Speaker 1: But I guess one way thinking about it as well
Speaker 1: is that, like, the thing that's scary about death is
Speaker 1: not the secession of biological function. Right, you could have
Speaker 1: a biological machine that has no consciousness. It's not worried
Speaker 1: about death. The thing that death. Really people think about
Speaker 1: death in terms of the end of life, but really
Speaker 1: death is kind of the end of consciousness. That's what
Speaker 1: people are scared about. Maybe consciousness has to manifest physically,
Speaker 1: in which case, when you die, your consciousness sort of ends,
Speaker 1: and that's a bad thing, right. What's really ending there
Speaker 1: is not your biological makeup. It's not the fact that
Speaker 1: your leg and your arm start disintegrating. It's the fact
Speaker 1: that your experience, your unified sense of self, has come
Speaker 1: to an end. And one slightly naive approach this might
Speaker 1: be to say that, like, I'm not convinced that the
Speaker 1: self exists, not just because of the sort of weird
Speaker 1: esoteric you know, Indian philosophy and stuff, but also because
Speaker 1: of the split brain stuff. I think all of this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff points to the idea that the idea
Speaker 1: of the self as we commonly understand it a bit
Speaker 1: of an illusion. And it is interesting to me that
Speaker 1: this is the same kind of truth that is discovered
Speaker 1: by ancient authors of the Apanishads. And like a modern
Speaker 1: teenager who's never read a word of Sanskrit who takes
Speaker 1: lst and they sort of have these similar I think
Speaker 1: I might have something to do with the usage of
Speaker 1: psychedelics in the in the in the formulation of the Vaders.
Speaker 1: That's a whole another subject. With soma, you know, the
Speaker 1: mysterious substance that brings all of these profound spiritual truths
Speaker 1: that are uncannily similar to the profound spiritual truths that
Speaker 1: people find today when they take psychedelic drugs. But one
Speaker 1: of the foundational things that people discover in this regard
Speaker 1: is that the self is an illusion. The self does
Speaker 1: not exist. Even Sam Harris, the New Atheist, doesn't believe
Speaker 1: in the self. And so if death is not just
Speaker 1: about biological function, it's the cessation of the self. There's
Speaker 1: something about the fact that I don't think the self
Speaker 1: exists even now that gives me some consolation, you know,
Speaker 1: if the fear is what happens when the self comes
Speaker 1: to an end, like the self never came to a beginning.
Speaker 1: So I don't even know how to answer that question.
Speaker 1: But I don't say that that's not going to help people,
Speaker 1: like it's not going to I was asked about this
Speaker 1: recently at one of these schools I was talking about
Speaker 1: is as well, like this kid sort of ask me,
Speaker 1: And I can always tell sometimes when people ask certain
Speaker 1: questions they mean different things. Like if someone says, should
Speaker 1: we be afraid of Hell? I can tell in their
Speaker 1: face they're asking that because they're interested in the philosophy.
Speaker 1: They want to hear about Epicurus, or they're asking that
Speaker 1: because they're scared of death. Somebody asked me, do you
Speaker 1: think hell is biblical? They're either asking that because they're
Speaker 1: interested in New Testament studies or because they're staying up
Speaker 1: at night and afraid of death and afraid of hell.
Speaker 1: To the person who's afraid, I find it quite difficult
Speaker 1: to approach, except to say take heart that there are
Speaker 1: philosophical schools available to you that you should look at
Speaker 1: at least first before you sort of lose your mind.
Speaker 1: By boy, if I'm not trying to help other people
Speaker 1: and I'm just telling you about myself, like yeah, it
Speaker 1: opens up as well. But I think it's funny, like
Speaker 1: I would encourage people to investigate some of the Indian
Speaker 1: philosophical traditions, not because this is kind of idea in
Speaker 1: like Western thought that there's this sort of spiritual kind
Speaker 1: of thing over there. It's this kind of like mystical
Speaker 1: thing and like, oh, there's all these profounderies. It's like, actually,
Speaker 1: they're talking about the same stuff that we're talking about.
Speaker 1: They're just doing it in a different way that might
Speaker 1: make things click a little bit. And also talking about
Speaker 1: the Indian school of philosophy is like talking about the
Speaker 1: Western canon of philosophy. The Western canon is like you
Speaker 1: know Kant or maybe John Stuart Millan people. And it's
Speaker 1: not like all Westerners are running around in accordance with
Speaker 1: those principles, right. But I do think it's uncanny that
Speaker 1: somebody will say to me, I've looked everywhere I can.
Speaker 1: I've studied philosophy, I've tried to I've looked at religious traditions,
Speaker 1: and I've prayed, and I've gone to church, and i
Speaker 1: still don't have these answers, and I'm still afraid of death.
Speaker 1: And it's like, okay, hear me out. Have you ever
Speaker 1: tried reading a word of any kind of non Western
Speaker 1: philosophical canon? And if the answer is no, I'm not
Speaker 1: promising you're gonna find it there, But I'm saying there
Speaker 1: is so much more for you to do before you
Speaker 1: can confidently have even a view I think on the
Speaker 1: nature of the self the nature of death, because most
Speaker 1: of our philosophical convictions are so culturally imbedd with it
Speaker 1: without us realizing it that if you don't step outside
Speaker 1: of that for a moment, you might just be following
Speaker 1: a thread that you are not the author of and
Speaker 1: so I'd recommend stepping outside of that. And I'm not
Speaker 1: just saying that. I think people have noticed that over
Speaker 1: the course of my recent trajectory and the things that
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. This is just something that I've done.
Speaker 1: There's a lot to say about that. I spoke to
Speaker 1: a guy called Thomas Metzinger on my show about this,
Speaker 1: and so people want to kind of really know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. When I say all that, I'd recommend
Speaker 1: they go and watch that. If you're worried about it,
Speaker 1: also just realize that you're not alone. This is like
Speaker 1: the foundational question of human existence. I think it's weird
Speaker 1: not to be worried about it. It's sort of strange
Speaker 1: to me that people aren't talking about it all the time.
Speaker 1: We also have a sort of cultural reticence to talk
Speaker 1: about death. You know, death used to be much more present,
Speaker 1: dead bodies in the street, plagues, all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: COVID sort of brought that back into sharp focus for
Speaker 1: a lot of people. But death is a bit of
Speaker 1: a taboo and we don't really like to talk about
Speaker 1: it in polite society, and I think maybe that's also
Speaker 1: part of the problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, last three one sentence.
Speaker 1: That was more than one sentence no no, by asking yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, no, no no, I knew what I was doing.
Speaker 2: I asked to do all right, last three one s.
Speaker 2: Then we asked this to every guest who's ever been
Speaker 2: on the show, what is the best advice you've ever
Speaker 2: heard or received?
Speaker 1: Enjoy it?
Speaker 2: Simple? Well like that.
Speaker 1: There have been contexts in which I've been so caught up.
Speaker 1: I remember like the first time I did a big
Speaker 1: cinema podcast shoot where I had like a whole camera
Speaker 1: crew and a big guest, and I was really excited
Speaker 1: about it, and I was like reading this guest's books,
Speaker 1: I was looking at criticism. I was like obsessive over preparing.
Speaker 1: I was so ready. And I spoke to a friend
Speaker 1: of mine who's in the same industry, and I just
Speaker 1: asked him, because he'd done this kind of stuff before,
Speaker 1: When I said, like, he's got any advice, but any
Speaker 1: last minute advice. Then he just said enjoy it. And
Speaker 1: I was like, huh, yeah, good point. We're sort of
Speaker 1: and just like not present. I think anytime anyone's about
Speaker 1: to do something important, if someone's about to like play
Speaker 1: their first gig, or they're about to do some big
Speaker 1: career move that they've been waiting for, or about to
Speaker 1: get married or something, and they're sort of so in
Speaker 1: their head about it, and they're like they're living in
Speaker 1: the future, and then suddenly they're living in the past.
Speaker 1: It's just it's, you know, it's the sort of b
Speaker 1: way your feet are, like living the present kind of thing,
Speaker 1: but specifically like enjoy it. Take a moment to look
Speaker 1: around and be like, yeah, this is this is cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that. Two more questions. We talked about
Speaker 2: this earlier. Why have you stopped saying Yes, there's many
Speaker 2: debates they're about ego. Oh that was your reason too interesting?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, if you want one sentence, that's what
Speaker 1: I would say. And it's not always about my ego,
Speaker 1: it's not always about their ego. It's either the case
Speaker 1: that you've got one person who just wants to prove
Speaker 1: a point and one person who wants to get to truth,
Speaker 1: in which case the egotistical one is going to probably
Speaker 1: trounce them and it's going to be a bit unfair.
Speaker 1: Or you've got two people who both are egotistically trying
Speaker 1: to prove a point, in which case it becomes a
Speaker 1: mess and a shouting match. If you have two people
Speaker 1: that everyone has ego everyone, but if you have two
Speaker 1: people who recognize that try to mitigate it and try
Speaker 1: to give it a backseat to having a good conversation.
Speaker 1: It's kind of just no longer a debate almost by definition.
Speaker 2: So no one wants to do that anymore.
Speaker 1: Well, people do, and I do debate sometimes, but I
Speaker 1: don't enjoy them. They're also extremely like expensive time wise,
Speaker 1: because you have to prepare. It's like preparing for an exam.
Speaker 1: You don't know what's going to come up. If they
Speaker 1: score a point that you weren't ready for, it's going
Speaker 1: to be embarrassing. And that is fun. It's sport, you know,
Speaker 1: And look, there is nothing wrong with small there's absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with it's fun, but you have to know
Speaker 1: that that's what you're doing. Debates are like boxing matches.
Speaker 1: You know, they will sometimes tell you who the better
Speaker 1: boxer is. They might not even tell you who the
Speaker 1: better boxer is. Don't tell you who box better in
Speaker 1: that match, but it won't tell you who the better
Speaker 1: boxer is overall, and it definitely won't tell you who
Speaker 1: the better fighter is. You have no idea what would
Speaker 1: happen if they met in a bar no holds barred,
Speaker 1: and they were able to use intelligence and weapons and
Speaker 1: call their friends and stuff like that. You have no
Speaker 1: idea what would happen. Similarly, somebody in a debate, it's
Speaker 1: like a sparring match. You're gonna see who's better at
Speaker 1: that particular dance, But you have no idea what would
Speaker 1: happen if you gave them a week to think about
Speaker 1: your point, consult their resources, and respond to you properly.
Speaker 1: And so I think that the sweet spot is somewhere
Speaker 1: in between those. Let's not take a week to respond,
Speaker 1: but let's not be like snapping back with quotes. But
Speaker 1: but having said that, a lot of people are quick
Speaker 1: to say, like, oh, like, I don't do debates because
Speaker 1: they're not about getting to truth, like I do debates
Speaker 1: sometimes because they're fun. They're fun and they are interesting,
Speaker 1: and you do bring up interesting points and they do
Speaker 1: become these spectacles and they do bring people into like
Speaker 1: thinking about these issues, and that's quite fun. But you
Speaker 1: have to recognize that that's what you're doing such that afterwards,
Speaker 1: if it goes really well, you go great, oh cool,
Speaker 1: fun I want. But it's like if you want a
Speaker 1: chess match or something, and oh sweet cool anyway, like
Speaker 1: let's play again sometime, you know, and you might lose
Speaker 1: next time. That's the attitude you have to have if
Speaker 1: you become convinced that you're like Magnus Carson because you
Speaker 1: want one chess match, even if you are Magnus Carson,
Speaker 1: like that only means you're good at chess, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well said fifth and final question. We asked this
Speaker 2: to every guest has ever been on the show. If
Speaker 2: if you could create one law that everyone in the
Speaker 2: world had to follow, what would it be?
Speaker 1: No playing pop music in like fancy restaurants or should
Speaker 1: they blamed in anything else something that's suitable to the environment.
Speaker 1: I've wrote a piece on this recently. It's my least
Speaker 1: favorite thing about the world is the fact that it's
Speaker 1: not just fancy restaurants. It's like you're go into like
Speaker 1: a nice cafe, or you go into even like a
Speaker 1: hotel lobby or something, and think about how much effort
Speaker 1: has been put into designing every single aspect. Which chairs
Speaker 1: have more feng shui, you know, which which wallpaper is
Speaker 1: going to sort of bring about the particular mood that
Speaker 1: we're trying, and then they just decide to just they
Speaker 1: put zero thought into the music. You know, I've left
Speaker 1: restaurants before because if you're going to a restaurant, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a big deal. You're spending money. It might be
Speaker 1: you might not be able to do that very often.
Speaker 1: And you going, maybe you're on a date or something.
Speaker 1: The air is polluted with like do a leaper. Don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, I like do a leap? I actually do,
Speaker 1: I really do, but just not there, you know, And
Speaker 1: it's become such an epidemic. It's like it's difficult to go.
Speaker 1: I can't go to Green King pubs because all of
Speaker 1: them are playing pop music. And these pubs are like
Speaker 1: the most they're beautiful, like these these Victorian like wooden
Speaker 1: like ancient. They've got these histories about them on the
Speaker 1: menus they're boasting about how like you know, there's like
Speaker 1: the I think it's called the Salisbury, which I wrote
Speaker 1: about in central London, which has this famous history. It's
Speaker 1: where someone proposed to someone or other. It's got all
Speaker 1: this stuff and you look at the images and it's
Speaker 1: this ornate, beautiful chandelier type stuff. And if I showed
Speaker 1: you the image and said, now, just what music do
Speaker 1: you imagine is playing? You know, somebody walks into a
Speaker 1: restaurant like that and says, you know what this really
Speaker 1: needs is like when I went in there, they were
Speaker 1: playing Kids by Robbi Williams and Kylie Minogue and I'm
Speaker 1: just like, seriously, you know, it really gets mose, So
Speaker 1: I would I would probably do that.
Speaker 2: That's one of my favorite answers. Alex, thank you so much,
Speaker 2: a Tree. I appreciate you way. Thanks.
Speaker 1: That's been fun.
Speaker 2: If you love this episode, you'll enjoy my interview with
Speaker 2: doctor Daniel Ahman on how to change your life by
Speaker 2: changing your brain. They don't do things until someone's mad
Speaker 2: at them to get it done. They need stress in
Speaker 2: order to get stuff done, and that just makes everybody
Speaker 2: around them stress