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JP Marceau - How Christianity Solves The Meaning Crisis · Mahon McCann

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jp marceau thank you very much uh for joining me today to
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discuss this very
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important book post-production is christianity uh solution to
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the meaning crisis
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this is as i was saying before like this is the book i'd been
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waiting for somebody
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to write for quite some time so i'm really chuffed that you did
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write it and i
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highly recommend people check it out and that's that's what
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we're going to explore
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SPEAKER_02: today so yeah thanks for being here and thanks for writing the book
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SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
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SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
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SPEAKER_00: My pleasure.
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SPEAKER_00: Thanks for inviting me.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm looking forward to it.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02: So maybe to start off with, how would you define reductive materialism?
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SPEAKER_02: What is it for people that are maybe uncertain?
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: Maybe a good place to start is when it historically started.
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SPEAKER_01: I mean,
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SPEAKER_01: you can find predecessors in ancient Greece,
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SPEAKER_01: but by and large,
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SPEAKER_01: reductive materialism arose at the time of the
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SPEAKER_01: early modernity with thinkers like Galileo,
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who were starting to mathematize the external world and who had
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some success.
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SPEAKER_01: So Galileo was able to predict how certain things moved physically,
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SPEAKER_01: like balls running down inclined planes and these kinds of things.
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And this was kind of a surprise for people because if you can
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describe with math
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SPEAKER_01: what happens in the external world,
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SPEAKER_01: You don't see the qualities, the forces in mathematics themselves.
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SPEAKER_01: You just see abstract equations.
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SPEAKER_01: You don't see color and taste and emotions.
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SPEAKER_01: There's a lot that seems to be missing in mathematical equations.
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SPEAKER_01: But if you can describe the external world,
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in math,
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then what's the interplay between those abstract mathematics
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and qualities?
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SPEAKER_01: And obviously,
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Galileo was not at the point where physics could pretend to
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explain everything,
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SPEAKER_01: but he could see that this would be a philosophical problem.
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SPEAKER_01: If we start to mathematize the world,
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SPEAKER_01: what do we do with things that don't seem to be mathematizable?
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And what Galileo hypothesized was that the external world is
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just mathematical,
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no qualities.
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SPEAKER_01: So no feelings there, no emotions, no internal drive or anything.
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It's just abstract equations that are sufficient to describe
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what happens in the external world.
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And then minds have qualities and can put qualities on two
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things in the external world.
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SPEAKER_01: So this was Galileo's working hypothesis.
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SPEAKER_01: And this is where materialism comes from.
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SPEAKER_01: Galileo, the idea was the external world is reducible to mathematics.
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Another way to say it is that it's reducible to its material
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components and you
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SPEAKER_01: describe them using mathematics.
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SPEAKER_01: So ultimately, everything in the external world would be just
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Like atoms,
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people didn't know at the time what might be the smallest
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components of matter.
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SPEAKER_01: We still don't totally have a clear idea what's going on there.
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SPEAKER_01: But in principle,
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the idea was if you know the physical world in its smallest
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material constituents,
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SPEAKER_01: then you can reduce everything down to those constituents.
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You describe them with math and you explain everything in the
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external world.
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SPEAKER_01: So as I said, initially, this was scoped to just the external world.
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SPEAKER_01: It didn't include the human mind.
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SPEAKER_01: And what happened down the line,
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SPEAKER_01: as success is accumulated in material science,
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SPEAKER_01: in engineering,
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SPEAKER_01: people started to,
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SPEAKER_01: like,
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SPEAKER_01: put more and more things from their ontology into reductive materialism.
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SPEAKER_01: So people at some point wanted to put the human mind,
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SPEAKER_01: wanted to put God or evacuate God altogether.
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SPEAKER_01: So that's how the wave has gotten to us today,
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where someone who is a reductive materialist is someone who
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wants to reduce
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SPEAKER_01: everything that exists down to smallest material components.
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SPEAKER_01: And ultimately that would explain everything.
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SPEAKER_01: So another way to put it is that if you look at,
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SPEAKER_01: let's say,
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SPEAKER_01: a human person with a human mind,
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SPEAKER_01: really like the mind is just like neuroscience,
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SPEAKER_01: let's say.
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SPEAKER_01: And neuroscience really is just,
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SPEAKER_01: then it's really just chemistry and chemistry really is just physics.
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SPEAKER_01: So ultimately everything is just physics, including the human mind.
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SPEAKER_01: This is what reductive materialists claim.
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totally biology reduces chemistry chemistry reduces the physics
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and everything yeah
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and galileo interestingly like i'd heard it described almost as
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like a thought
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experiment that he was like can we just subtract the human
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totally from the world
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and just describe it entirely as just like objects but that he
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was doing it in a
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way as an experiment almost you you call the the reductionist
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materials lab leak i
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SPEAKER_02: think it is like that it was
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Initially,
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like a scientific experiment,
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like a methodology to try and learn things.
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It was never meant to be an entire account of reality and
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explain human beings and
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SPEAKER_02: everything like that.
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SPEAKER_02: Is that fair?
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's fair.
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I think Galileo would have been very surprised to see that a
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few centuries later,
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SPEAKER_01: people would try to reduce the human mind to matter.
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SPEAKER_01: That wasn't the initial hypothesis.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and his daughter was a nun as well, I found out.
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SPEAKER_02: There's a great book on it, Galileo's Daughter.
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SPEAKER_02: It's supposed to be very good.
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SPEAKER_02: But yeah, Galileo, maybe it wasn't entirely his fault.
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yeah yeah get a bad rap but um okay so that's yeah that's a
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great account i think
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of reductionist materialism and you know what are the maybe we
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can just talk about
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the flaws of that like why it seems kind of obvious in the face
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of it that humans
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don't really exist in some sense if you do that but uh like
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yeah why what are your
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favorite arguments against reductive materialism like where you
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see like the holes
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SPEAKER_02: in it
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: So we have quite a lot to choose from.
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SPEAKER_01: This wasn't the case, I'd say, 30 years ago.
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SPEAKER_01: The errors weren't as obvious.
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SPEAKER_01: But they've really accumulated in the literature now.
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SPEAKER_01: And there are many arguments that I wouldn't have time to list.
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SPEAKER_01: Some of them come from science and some of them come from philosophy.
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SPEAKER_01: And when I talk about science, it comes from different sciences, really.
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So the way that I like to classify them is that you have some
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objections that come
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SPEAKER_01: from the top and you have some objections that come from below.
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SPEAKER_01: So if you're a reductive materialist,
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SPEAKER_01: the idea is you can reduce everything,
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SPEAKER_01: including the human mind,
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SPEAKER_01: down to matter.
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SPEAKER_01: So you can sort of attack this by two ways.
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SPEAKER_01: One is you can try to see things at the level of the human mind or above
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SPEAKER_01: or really just anything that's above the lowest layers,
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and try to give an argument according to which you cannot
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really reduce this to
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SPEAKER_01: lower levels.
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SPEAKER_01: Or another approach would be to attack the lower layer,
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SPEAKER_01: what the materialists claim everything is reducible to.
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SPEAKER_01: And you show that, well, you don't even know really what that thing is.
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SPEAKER_01: So don't pretend like you're reducing everything down to it.
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SPEAKER_01: So those two kinds of arguments can work.
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SPEAKER_01: The one I like coming from the top is the fact...
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SPEAKER_02: Let me start with the top ones and then we'll have a look at them after.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so one that I like from the top is
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SPEAKER_01: the consensus, I would say, in cognitive science that's coming up.
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SPEAKER_01: I don't know what's the latest state of things.
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SPEAKER_01: I should ask John Travicki how he has seen things moving.
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SPEAKER_01: Early on in his career,
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SPEAKER_01: materialism was much more common in cognitive science,
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SPEAKER_01: people trying to reduce the human mind to,
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SPEAKER_01: let's say,
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SPEAKER_01: programs in computers or certain neuronal networks and so on.
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But the last time I spoke to John about it,
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he says that it's maybe 50-50.
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SPEAKER_01: Lots of people don't think that can work anymore.
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And the people who try to study the human mind or really like
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any higher system.
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SPEAKER_01: So maybe not even just the human mind,
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but could be like a complex program in a computer or
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interactions between animals
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SPEAKER_01: in a certain ecosystem.
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People who try to understand these higher level systems at the
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level of the higher system.
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are able to explain more things than the people who just try to
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reduce them to
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SPEAKER_01: lower level entities.
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SPEAKER_01: So for instance, in the case of... A good example, I think, is...
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SPEAKER_01: is the cell.
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If you try to study the biology of a cell and you try to just
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reduce what happens
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SPEAKER_01: in the cell by looking at its organelles,
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SPEAKER_01: I always mess up the name in English.
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SPEAKER_01: I think it's organelles in English.
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SPEAKER_01: But if you try to do this, you won't be able to make a lot of progress.
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SPEAKER_01: You can explain the possibilities.
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You can explain things that might happen in the cell looking at
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its lower level entities.
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SPEAKER_01: You just basically have possibilities.
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SPEAKER_01: To be able to say what possibilities will get selected,
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SPEAKER_01: you need to take the cell as a whole,
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where you have a system of interconnected organelles that will
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act as constraint on
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SPEAKER_01: the possibilities of the lower level organelles.
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So this means that,
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OK,
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you do have possibilities that come from below that you can
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predict.
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SPEAKER_01: You can predict possibilities looking at below.
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SPEAKER_01: But if you want to know what will happen,
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you need to look at what happens at the IR layer that's going
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to constrain those
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SPEAKER_01: possibilities.
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SPEAKER_01: And another example,
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SPEAKER_01: because we can see the same thing at other layers in the hierarchy,
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SPEAKER_01: one that's very close to us is when we make a decision.
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SPEAKER_01: When I need to make a decision, what I will see is that
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SPEAKER_01: suggestions will pop up.
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SPEAKER_01: I will have possibilities that come to mind.
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SPEAKER_01: I might do this thing.
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SPEAKER_01: I might do that thing.
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SPEAKER_01: I might do that other thing.
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But to me,
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as a whole,
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I will make a selection upon those possibilities,
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and I will pick one.
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SPEAKER_01: That's what I'll do.
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SPEAKER_01: So you have this emergence of possibilities from below.
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SPEAKER_01: You could say like from, and I'm totally open to the idea that,
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You could study different neural networks that suggest this
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thing or that thing.
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SPEAKER_01: There have been studies on that kind of thing.
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But that we select one thing or not,
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there's no reductive explanation for it.
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SPEAKER_01: The human person as a whole,
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SPEAKER_01: even connected with the environment,
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has a constraining effect on the possibilities that emerge in
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those smaller
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SPEAKER_01: systems.
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So that's the kind of argument I really like against
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reductionism because it comes
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SPEAKER_01: from science,
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SPEAKER_01: from cognitive science,
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SPEAKER_01: where it's becoming more and more mainstream to accept that,
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SPEAKER_01: OK,
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we will just be able to explain more things if we don't try to
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reduce everything
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SPEAKER_01: down to lower layers.
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SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah, totally.
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And I think that type of project,
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yeah,
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of using higher levels to explain lower levels.
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One argument I always liked against materialism was like,
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if you're trying to explain a TV show,
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Like trying to explain a TV show by reducing it to the wires
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and the signals,
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SPEAKER_02: the electric signals and these things.
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SPEAKER_02: It's like,
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SPEAKER_02: okay,
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SPEAKER_02: you can explain the wires and the signals,
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SPEAKER_02: but you're not going to explain the actual content of the experience,
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SPEAKER_02: which is kind of similar to the hard problem,
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SPEAKER_02: I suppose,
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SPEAKER_02: which you talk about in the book.
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SPEAKER_02: Because I really like those other two top-down arguments.
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The hard problem,
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you can't reduce phenomenal experience to neuronal activity.
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SPEAKER_02: And then the rationality argument,
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SPEAKER_02: which is that if you reduce the rational to the non-rational,
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SPEAKER_02: then you lose rationality.
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SPEAKER_02: Like if rationality is just random neuronal activity,
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then there is no rationality and you can't have a rational
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theory of rationality.
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SPEAKER_02: That's just, you know, neuronal activity.
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SPEAKER_02: I wonder, yeah, is there anything on those as well?
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SPEAKER_02: Because I think they're.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: And if you like them, we can talk about them.
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SPEAKER_01: It's funny because the art problem of consciousness is fairly recent.
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SPEAKER_01: You can't really find people being interested in that kind of stuff until
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SPEAKER_01: materialism becomes established in academia.
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SPEAKER_01: So you don't see anything like that during the Middle Ages.
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SPEAKER_01: People wondering about why we have phenomenal experiences.
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SPEAKER_01: Because if you don't have the problem of materialism,
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you're just not surprised that there are qualities in the world
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and that they can
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SPEAKER_01: be combined into complex forms or like simpler forms.
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SPEAKER_01: So anyway,
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materialism comes to a peak in like maybe the middle of the
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20th century where
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SPEAKER_01: there are like research programs where in psychology and neuroscience,
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SPEAKER_01: people are trying to reduce everything down to physics ultimately.
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SPEAKER_01: But materialism,
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This starts to break down because on one side,
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it doesn't make a lot of progress.
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SPEAKER_01: And because it doesn't make a lot of progress,
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SPEAKER_01: then at some point,
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the philosophical arguments come in and they gain more and more
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traction in the
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SPEAKER_01: sciences themselves.
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So maybe the person most responsible for this is David Chalmers
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in the 90s who
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SPEAKER_01: coined the term hard problem of consciousness.
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SPEAKER_01: And the idea there is,
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SPEAKER_01: OK,
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when people are trying to explain aspects of consciousness by
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understanding
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reducing them to smaller behavioral aspects of consciousness,
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they do make some progress.
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SPEAKER_01: So for instance,
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SPEAKER_01: people are able to explain maybe why we move certain ways,
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SPEAKER_01: why computers can learn certain things in certain ways.
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SPEAKER_01: People can explain behaviors.
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Well,
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a lot of this is not done and it might never happen because
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it's so complex.
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SPEAKER_01: But in principle, you can explain, let's say...
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SPEAKER_01: being awake,
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SPEAKER_01: moving,
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SPEAKER_01: like some of the things we attribute to consciousness,
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SPEAKER_01: the fact that we're awake and not sleeping,
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SPEAKER_01: the fact that we react to certain stimuli,
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SPEAKER_01: but not others.
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SPEAKER_01: There are certain aspects of consciousness that,
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SPEAKER_01: okay,
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SPEAKER_01: maybe we can reduce them to the behaviors of simpler systems.
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SPEAKER_01: But...
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What seems completely intractable from that strategy is
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explaining why we have
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SPEAKER_01: koelia,
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SPEAKER_01: why we have phenomenal experiences,
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SPEAKER_01: why it feels like something to stub your toe against something,
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SPEAKER_01: to see a certain color,
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SPEAKER_01: all those things.
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And there's a few thought experiments that became popular to
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illustrate the problem.
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SPEAKER_01: By the way, you don't have to
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fully agree with what people suggest in those kinds of thought
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experiments,
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SPEAKER_01: the goal is just to see that you're reaching a contradiction there.
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SPEAKER_01: You will need to rethink what you're doing.
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SPEAKER_01: So a famous one is the inverted collar thought experiment.
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It's originally from Shoemaker,
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but Chalmers uses it along with a few others.
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SPEAKER_01: But I quite like it because it makes the problem fairly clear.
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Imagine a vision scientist named Mary who spends all of her
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life in a black and white room.
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SPEAKER_01: So she never gets to actually see the color red, for instance.
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SPEAKER_01: But she's a vision scientist,
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and she spends all of her life learning all there's to know
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about the physics,
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SPEAKER_01: the biology,
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SPEAKER_01: the neuroscience of vision.
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So she can explain really well that if she goes outside of her
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black and white room
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SPEAKER_01: and she sees a red apple,
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SPEAKER_01: Certain photons will hit her eyes.
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SPEAKER_01: They will have this wavelength.
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SPEAKER_01: They will trigger this and this process in her brain.
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SPEAKER_01: And it's going to make her say, this is red.
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SPEAKER_01: I'm surprised.
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Maybe in theory,
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she could even predict how she will react to seeing this and so
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on.
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SPEAKER_01: But still,
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she will learn something that she didn't know before when she
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experiences the color red.
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SPEAKER_01: Even if she knew materially everything that would happen,
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SPEAKER_01: psychologically everything that would happen,
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she doesn't really know the color red until she has the
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experience of the color
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SPEAKER_01: red.
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SPEAKER_01: And the point there is that,
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SPEAKER_01: okay,
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SPEAKER_01: there is such a thing as phenomenal knowledge,
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SPEAKER_01: knowledge of...
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experiences of qualities that escapes what their materialist
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reductions can say
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about it because if all of knowledge could be reduced to
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material physical
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knowledge then mary would have had this even before she left
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her black and white
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room but she doesn't so that shows that there is a flaw in the
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materialist thinking
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SPEAKER_01: you need to like
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broaden your theory of the world to encompass things that don't
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currently fit in there.
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SPEAKER_01: So that's one kind of argument.
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SPEAKER_01: There are other thought experiments that do the same kind of thing.
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And then the other argument you mentioned is the irreducibility
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of rationality.
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SPEAKER_01: This is funny because this one is not recent at all.
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SPEAKER_02: As I said, the art problem... It goes back to Plato, doesn't it?
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah, at least Plato.
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SPEAKER_01: People might have made it before, but at least to Plato.
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SPEAKER_01: So like 2,500 years.
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SPEAKER_01: Whereas the art problem is very recent.
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SPEAKER_01: The problem of the irreducibility of consciousness is very well known.
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You can see in Plato's dialogues very often what happens is
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someone tries to reduce
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SPEAKER_01: something,
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SPEAKER_01: not just rationality,
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SPEAKER_01: it could also be goodness or love,
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but people try to reduce something fairly high in the hierarchy
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to something very
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SPEAKER_01: low.
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SPEAKER_01: And what Plato does is always just tangle people up into their own words.
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When you do this and show that they are always somewhere
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presupposing what they're
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SPEAKER_01: trying to reduce.
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SPEAKER_01: So for rationality, this is true.
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SPEAKER_01: The most common way people try to reduce rationality these days is
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SPEAKER_01: try to reduce it to neuroscience.
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SPEAKER_01: And down the line, neuroscience would reduce to physics.
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SPEAKER_01: But if you do this, you're going to have a big problem.
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SPEAKER_01: OK, so why would neuroscience yield rational agents?
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SPEAKER_01: Why would evolutionary biology, let's say, yield
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SPEAKER_01: agents that can actually reach truth rather than just survival.
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SPEAKER_01: Where's the alignment coming from?
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SPEAKER_01: Another way to put it too,
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SPEAKER_01: which is the way that I refer to in the book,
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SPEAKER_01: comes from John Ravicki and his colleague,
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SPEAKER_01: I think Dan Schiappe.
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SPEAKER_01: The way they put it is that it's in terms of relevance realization.
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SPEAKER_01: If you think you can give a theory that reduces rationality to something,
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SPEAKER_01: You have a problem because in the idea of theory,
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SPEAKER_01: you need someone rational to apply the theory.
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SPEAKER_01: You can take a much simpler theory.
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SPEAKER_01: Before we get to a theory that would reduce rationality,
17:28
just take Newton's laws and you try to explain the interactions
17:33
between physical
17:33
SPEAKER_01: bodies using Newton's laws.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: Let's say a ball rolling down an inclined plane.
17:39
SPEAKER_01: You try to just explain this with Newton's laws.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: Irrational human can do this pretty easily.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: There's a differential equation.
17:46
SPEAKER_01: You know the slope and so on.
17:47
SPEAKER_01: You'll be able to predict things.
17:49
SPEAKER_01: But you are actually doing a lot of things as a rational agent in there.
17:55
SPEAKER_01: You are ignoring, let's say, friction, ignoring the wind.
17:57
You're presupposing that no one will come and block the ball
18:01
when it's rolling down.
18:02
There's a whole bunch of things that you're ignoring or rather
18:07
that you're cutting off.
18:08
SPEAKER_01: A way to put it is that we're
18:10
SPEAKER_01: We're doing relevance realization.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: We're only focusing on what's relevant for the application of the theory.
18:16
SPEAKER_01: But this is not something that you can reduce easily.
18:22
SPEAKER_01: This is something that a rational agent is really doing.
18:26
SPEAKER_01: So it means that if you try to reduce rationality to a theory,
18:30
SPEAKER_01: if you try to have a theory of rationality,
18:33
SPEAKER_01: you're not really going to do it.
18:35
You're going to need the rational agent to apply that theory,
18:38
to make that theory intelligible.
18:40
So it goes back to Plato and people have made various
18:43
formulations of this
18:44
SPEAKER_01: argument,
18:45
but you need to consider rationality as something non-reducible
18:49
or otherwise your
18:50
SPEAKER_01: arguments to reduce rationality don't come from a rational place.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: So we don't need to listen to them.
18:56
SPEAKER_02: It's self-contradictory.
18:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that always that that just seems to be everywhere in this, man.
19:00
If you reduce human beings to like just this like cellular
19:04
neuronal activity or
19:05
SPEAKER_02: like consciousness is epiphenomenal.
19:07
SPEAKER_02: It's like,
19:07
SPEAKER_02: well,
19:08
SPEAKER_02: you know,
19:08
scientists have consciousness and that's the basis of their
19:10
theorizing of their
19:11
SPEAKER_02: intelligibility.
19:12
It's like you actually hit a point where you undermine your own
19:15
theorizing.
19:16
SPEAKER_02: But then at the same time, just affirm that it's true.
19:19
SPEAKER_02: It's such a weird,
19:20
SPEAKER_02: Robert Sapolsky does this all the time,
19:22
SPEAKER_02: man,
19:22
SPEAKER_02: with his like behave book,
19:24
SPEAKER_02: which is just assumes reductive materialism,
19:27
SPEAKER_02: never argues for it.
19:28
SPEAKER_02: And then it's just like, yeah, consciousness is epiphenomenal.
19:31
SPEAKER_02: Free will doesn't exist.
19:33
And it's like,
19:33
but if that's the case,
19:34
I mean,
19:35
your argument,
19:36
making an argument is an action.
19:38
SPEAKER_02: Like it's something that you do and you have to be connected to reality.
19:41
SPEAKER_02: You have to have rationality.
19:42
SPEAKER_02: You have to have intelligibility for it to be true or false.
19:45
SPEAKER_02: So your argument actually undermines itself.
19:48
SPEAKER_02: It undermines the existence of arguments.
19:50
And I don't know how that kind of self-contradictory thing has
19:54
been allowed to go
19:55
SPEAKER_02: on for so long with so-called sensible people.
19:59
SPEAKER_02: Clearly, that undermines the whole project.
20:02
SPEAKER_02: But I don't know.
20:04
SPEAKER_02: For some reason, it's been very popular.
20:07
SPEAKER_01: I think it's just lack of classical training.
20:10
SPEAKER_01: Because if you do most of your...
20:13
like studying in the sciences,
20:15
where you implicitly tend to work with a kind of reductionism.
20:19
SPEAKER_01: At least people did for a long time.
20:20
SPEAKER_01: I think that's less and less true.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: But for a long time, people assumed a kind of reductionism.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: So when people started to venture into philosophical areas,
20:28
SPEAKER_01: they would carry forward a kind of reductionism without knowing it.
20:31
SPEAKER_01: And it would lead to those kinds of errors that you're describing.
20:34
But if those people do more philosophy,
20:37
I don't think that's going to stand.
20:39
SPEAKER_02: It's not going to happen.
20:40
SPEAKER_02: And has there been in AI,
20:42
I know you mentioned in the book of like how they train AI
20:45
models and stuff has
20:46
revealed a sense where reductionist materialism doesn't really
20:49
fly either.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: I mean, as soon as you talk about emergence, you're denying materialism.
20:57
The idea in materialism is that really like to understand
21:01
something you need.
21:04
SPEAKER_01: you just reduce it to its parts.
21:05
And there's nothing interesting that happens at the higher
21:07
layers,
21:08
really.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: It's just always a kind of illusion on the lower layer.
21:11
SPEAKER_01: But if you're an AI researcher right now,
21:17
you're building a product that feeds on tons of data and learns
21:24
in a kind of
21:25
SPEAKER_01: virtual world where,
21:26
SPEAKER_01: OK,
21:26
SPEAKER_01: you give it some input,
21:27
SPEAKER_01: and the system has an artificial brain,
21:30
SPEAKER_01: like an artificial neural network,
21:32
or some other kind of architecture that simulates a brain
21:37
that's going to transform
21:39
SPEAKER_01: the sound output in a certain response.
21:42
And based on the response,
21:44
you will reinforce or decrease the current settings.
21:52
SPEAKER_01: And then you keep exploring this way for lots and lots of iterations.
21:57
We can build systems that become pretty good,
21:59
but the way that they do it is by
22:02
SPEAKER_01: interacting actively in an environment with input and output.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: So it's the kind of little world that we're putting those machines in.
22:09
And what happens is that there are qualities that will emerge
22:13
in those systems.
22:14
SPEAKER_01: So we don't understand why,
22:15
SPEAKER_01: but at some point,
22:16
SPEAKER_01: maybe they start understanding how to speak French.
22:20
SPEAKER_01: At some point, they figure out geometry.
22:23
SPEAKER_01: So there are higher level patterns that those things start to pick up on.
22:29
SPEAKER_01: We don't totally know why.
22:31
SPEAKER_01: If we try to explain, we don't know.
22:36
It does show that this emergence of properties that are not
22:39
reducible to their
22:40
SPEAKER_01: parts,
22:41
SPEAKER_01: it's contra-materialism.
22:42
SPEAKER_01: If you were a materialist,
22:43
you would have to say that there's nothing interesting that can
22:45
really emerge from
22:47
SPEAKER_01: those things.
22:47
But the research programs that try to operate this way didn't
22:51
make a lot of progress.
22:52
The people who focus on emergence and accepting that they can't
22:55
reduce what emerges
22:56
SPEAKER_01: to something lower make a lot more progress.
22:58
SPEAKER_01: So it means that in practice, lots of people in AI research
23:03
SPEAKER_01: are becoming non-reductive naturalists at the very least,
23:08
SPEAKER_01: even if they don't explicitly acknowledge it.
23:11
SPEAKER_02: Nice, man.
23:11
SPEAKER_02: So we got three arguments there from the top down,
23:15
SPEAKER_02: the hard problem,
23:16
SPEAKER_02: the rationality argument,
23:17
SPEAKER_02: and then AI emergence,
23:20
SPEAKER_02: not reducible.
23:22
SPEAKER_02: What about the bottom up?
23:23
SPEAKER_02: you had one argument that I really enjoyed.
23:25
I always remember reading Bishop Berkeley as an undergraduate
23:28
who's an idealist.
23:29
SPEAKER_02: And he just asked that question of like, what is matter?
23:32
It's like everything,
23:33
everything can be reduced to matter,
23:34
but he's like,
23:35
but what is it?
23:36
SPEAKER_02: And like, it just starts, it starts as rabbit holes.
23:38
SPEAKER_02: Like, yeah, hang on a second.
23:40
SPEAKER_02: Is there,
23:41
is there really this bottom layer of just sand or something
23:43
that's just like
23:44
SPEAKER_02: irreducible or,
23:46
SPEAKER_02: you know,
23:46
SPEAKER_02: is there other things going on?
23:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: This really cracks in the early 20th century,
23:53
SPEAKER_01: both for practical,
23:56
SPEAKER_01: like empirical reasons and also for philosophical reasons,
23:59
SPEAKER_01: but around the same years.
24:00
SPEAKER_01: So you can see first, maybe the thing that people will,
24:06
think of initially is what happened in fundamental physics in
24:11
the quantum realm.
24:12
So we have to be careful there because people want to go too
24:15
fast,
24:15
I think,
24:15
often.
24:16
But what is widely agreed upon is that there are genuine
24:23
probabilities going on at that level.
24:27
SPEAKER_01: So you cannot
24:29
SPEAKER_01: It's really hard to say that,
24:31
SPEAKER_01: OK,
24:31
SPEAKER_01: really,
24:32
SPEAKER_01: at the bottom layer of physics,
24:33
what you find are stable particles that you can use to predict
24:39
deterministically
24:39
SPEAKER_01: what's going to happen in the future.
24:41
SPEAKER_01: There are actually theorems,
24:43
SPEAKER_01: like Bell's inequalities,
24:44
that show that you don't really have hidden variables that we
24:50
don't know that
24:51
explain that really things are deterministic and materialistic
24:53
at the bottom layer.
24:54
You really do seem to have genuine probabilities at the bottom
24:58
layer of physics.
24:59
But that's a big problem for materialists because materialists
25:02
wanted to have
25:03
stable particles at the bottom that they could then reduce
25:07
everything to and
25:08
SPEAKER_01: deterministically.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: That was a goal.
25:10
SPEAKER_01: Because if you need to talk about probabilities that will then like,
25:16
SPEAKER_01: when the probability will be selected,
25:17
SPEAKER_01: it's going to inform what's lower.
25:18
SPEAKER_01: You're not really following the materialist program.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: So materialists were really hoping for stable particles that you could
25:25
SPEAKER_01: deterministically reduce everything to.
25:28
SPEAKER_01: But that hasn't happened.
25:29
There are people who try to defend these kinds of
25:33
interpretations of quantum
25:34
SPEAKER_01: mechanics,
25:35
SPEAKER_01: but it's pretty hard.
25:35
SPEAKER_01: It's not really mainstream at all.
25:37
SPEAKER_01: Most people,
25:37
even if they might disagree about how to interpret the
25:40
probabilistic nature of what
25:41
SPEAKER_01: happens,
25:42
SPEAKER_01: they will agree that it's probabilistic.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: But that means that that's a big problem for materialists.
25:50
And the fact that there's this argument,
25:51
too,
25:52
is a problem for the materialist.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: Ideally,
25:54
SPEAKER_01: if you want to reduce everything down to matter,
25:55
SPEAKER_01: you should be able to tell us what matter is,
25:56
SPEAKER_01: at least a little bit.
25:58
SPEAKER_01: So this is a practical argument from physical science.
26:01
SPEAKER_01: But there's also a theoretical argument coming from philosophy.
26:05
SPEAKER_01: You can see Bertrand Russell making this argument.
26:07
SPEAKER_01: Maybe if you've made it before, I'm not aware.
26:10
SPEAKER_01: But it goes back at least to Russell.
26:11
And it's pretty frequent now that people will invoke it in
26:15
philosophy of mind,
26:16
SPEAKER_01: especially penpsychists like this kind of argument.
26:18
It's that if you look at what physics actually tells us about
26:22
physical entities,
26:23
SPEAKER_01: it never tells us the nature.
26:25
SPEAKER_01: It always only tells us about behavior.
26:26
SPEAKER_01: So take an example to make it clear.
26:29
SPEAKER_01: The electron is an entity that we only know extrinsically from physics.
26:34
SPEAKER_01: We know that it follows certain equations.
26:39
SPEAKER_01: We say that it has a certain mass and a certain charge, let's say.
26:42
But even what that really means is that if you put this value
26:46
as the mass,
26:46
SPEAKER_01: this value as the charge in the equation,
26:48
SPEAKER_01: then you can predict
26:49
SPEAKER_01: a certain output.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: So even mass and charge are really placeholders in equations.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: They're not the nature of a thing.
26:55
SPEAKER_01: So physics will only ever give you the nature of things.
26:58
SPEAKER_01: Another objection that people might think of is that,
27:00
SPEAKER_01: well,
27:00
maybe we'll discover one day that electrons are really made of
27:03
particle x and
27:03
SPEAKER_01: particle y,
27:04
SPEAKER_01: and that is going to be the nature of the electron.
27:06
SPEAKER_01: But that just obviously pushes the problem back down one layer.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: You can have the same problem for x and y. What is their nature?
27:12
SPEAKER_01: Do you just describe them with equations?
27:14
SPEAKER_01: Or do they actually tell us what they are?
27:16
SPEAKER_01: So that means that
27:19
SPEAKER_01: Physics,
27:20
SPEAKER_01: in principle,
27:21
SPEAKER_01: will only ever tell you the extrinsic nature of things,
27:24
SPEAKER_01: how they behave,
27:24
SPEAKER_01: and never what they really are.
27:26
SPEAKER_01: But that's a problem for a materialist.
27:28
SPEAKER_01: Because if you wanted to reduce everything down to physics,
27:30
SPEAKER_01: let's say,
27:31
SPEAKER_01: you should tell us what physical entities are.
27:32
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, you're just like, it's wishy-washy.
27:36
SPEAKER_01: So those are the arguments coming from the bottom.
27:39
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
27:39
SPEAKER_02: OK, nice.
27:40
SPEAKER_02: So extrinsic, you mean in terms of like it only looks at behavior?
27:44
uh like observable behavior of things but that doesn't tell you
27:48
what the thing
27:48
actually is yeah like what's the intrinsic kind of like yeah
27:53
and almost yeah a
27:54
universal or a form or something to explain the kind of the
27:57
nature of the thing in
27:59
some sense like if a chair if you just reduce it to the atoms
28:02
of the chair it
28:02
doesn't tell you that it's a chair like there is this
28:05
structural functional
28:06
SPEAKER_02: organization that's required
28:08
SPEAKER_02: DC Schindler made that point to me, like you're talking about forms.
28:11
SPEAKER_02: As soon as you ask,
28:11
SPEAKER_02: what is something you're,
28:13
SPEAKER_02: you're really asking the question of what is its form?
28:16
SPEAKER_02: Like, what is that?
28:17
SPEAKER_02: And cause it, it relates to, to form and to its functionality.
28:21
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's final causality.
28:23
So I guess maybe we're already sashaying here a little bit
28:25
towards classical metaphysics.
28:28
SPEAKER_02: How would you describe the difference between classical metaphysics,
28:31
which was supposedly displaced by reductive materialism and
28:34
probably nominalism a
28:35
SPEAKER_02: bit,
28:36
SPEAKER_02: um,
28:37
How would you describe the difference between them in a sense,
28:40
if that's a question?
28:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:44
The way I like to introduce it is talking again from the top
28:49
and the bottom.
28:50
That's why I like to introduce the areas of materialism from
28:53
top down arguments and
28:54
SPEAKER_01: bottom up arguments,
28:55
SPEAKER_01: because
28:56
SPEAKER_01: Those two extremes are what classical metaphysics uses as the start.
29:00
So in classical metaphysics,
29:02
you don't try to reduce everything down to the lower layer.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: You accept that all the layers exist.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: And there will be variations on this.
29:09
SPEAKER_01: So in Plato, for instance, you seem to give more value.
29:13
SPEAKER_01: People disagree about how to interpret Plato.
29:15
SPEAKER_01: But at least for a long time, classical interpretations of Plato...
29:19
People say that Plato mostly wants to say that the highest
29:24
level is real.
29:25
SPEAKER_01: So God, the good itself, the beautiful itself, and so on is real.
29:29
And then the world is sort of created top down from this until
29:33
you get to matter.
29:34
SPEAKER_01: But there's this idea that you have different layers.
29:37
SPEAKER_01: And then in other thinkers,
29:39
SPEAKER_01: actually like Plato might be saying this too,
29:41
SPEAKER_01: like depends on the scholarship,
29:42
SPEAKER_01: but it's very clear in Christianity at least that,
29:45
SPEAKER_01: okay,
29:45
SPEAKER_01: not only the top layer is real,
29:47
SPEAKER_01: but also
29:48
SPEAKER_01: all the lower layers are real as well.
29:50
SPEAKER_01: And even in Christianity, matter itself as a kind of existence.
29:56
So the reasons why people make these kinds of moves in
30:00
classical metaphysics,
30:01
even before they knew about the issues that we talked about in
30:05
modern science were,
30:06
SPEAKER_01: okay,
30:07
SPEAKER_01: in modern science,
30:08
SPEAKER_01: we have an issue at the bottom.
30:09
SPEAKER_01: Like there seems to be probabilities there.
30:11
SPEAKER_01: And also we don't seem to be able to reduce minds,
30:14
SPEAKER_01: whether the human mind or even AI as we try to create.
30:18
SPEAKER_01: So even before I knew about those scientific kinds of arguments,
30:22
there are abstract philosophical reasons why you would want to
30:27
say that both forms
30:28
SPEAKER_01: and matter are real.
30:30
SPEAKER_01: So forms are abstract patterns.
30:33
SPEAKER_01: A very simple argument for the existence of forms is...
30:38
SPEAKER_01: mathematical forms.
30:40
SPEAKER_01: By the way, not all forms are mathematical.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: So for instance, red is a form, but it's not described mathematically.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: We have a phenomenal experience of that color.
30:51
SPEAKER_01: And it's a thing, even though it's not just math.
30:54
SPEAKER_01: But math, I think, is a good example because it's so obviously abstract.
30:59
SPEAKER_01: You can think of the Pythagorean theorem, for instance.
31:02
SPEAKER_01: This is a theorem that applies to time and space.
31:04
SPEAKER_01: It says that this kind of triangle behaves this way.
31:08
SPEAKER_01: But it's not something that depends on the existence of space and time.
31:12
SPEAKER_01: It also doesn't depend on human minds.
31:14
SPEAKER_01: It was true before humans discovered it.
31:17
And also,
31:18
the entire universe could stop existing,
31:20
and it would still be true.
31:22
SPEAKER_01: And this might not be obvious for people who haven't done
31:25
SPEAKER_01: a lot of math.
31:25
SPEAKER_01: But once you see the proof of a theorem,
31:28
SPEAKER_01: like the Pythagorean theorem,
31:29
SPEAKER_01: it becomes just obvious that,
31:31
SPEAKER_01: OK,
31:31
SPEAKER_01: it had to be this way.
31:32
SPEAKER_01: There's no possible universe where things could have been otherwise.
31:36
SPEAKER_01: You can conceive of different geometries,
31:39
SPEAKER_01: spherical geometries,
31:41
SPEAKER_01: and then the theorem is going to turn out a bit different.
31:44
SPEAKER_01: But still, for just a normal plane,
31:48
SPEAKER_01: The pathogram is just true.
31:50
SPEAKER_01: There's no way in which it could not have been true.
31:52
SPEAKER_01: So that means that the theorem is true outside of space and time.
31:56
There could have been no time,
31:57
no space,
31:57
and the theorem would still have been true.
32:00
SPEAKER_01: So it means it's not material.
32:03
SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, you have to say that the theorem exists.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: If you're not going to just deny
32:09
SPEAKER_01: we have access to reality, you do have to say that the theorem exists.
32:12
Because if you don't accept that even something as obviously
32:15
true as the pattern
32:16
SPEAKER_01: theorem exists and gives you access to the world,
32:20
SPEAKER_01: then you're just cutting yourself at the knees.
32:22
SPEAKER_01: You're never going to get knowledge about anything.
32:26
There are people who try to be anomalous about these kinds of
32:29
things and deny that
32:30
SPEAKER_01: patterns exist.
32:30
SPEAKER_01: But much like we said earlier about the
32:34
reduction of rationality not working out,
32:37
you're going to shoot yourself in the foot.
32:38
SPEAKER_01: Like if you're trying to deny the existence of patterns,
32:40
SPEAKER_01: like the Pythagorean theorem,
32:41
SPEAKER_01: but you can talk about all patterns.
32:43
SPEAKER_01: If you're going to deny that,
32:45
you're not going to be standing on anything because your
32:49
arguments have no place to
32:51
stand on if you don't believe in patterns that you use to make
32:53
your arguments.
32:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
32:54
SPEAKER_02: I mean, nominalism is a non-physical pattern.
32:57
SPEAKER_02: Like it's not, nominalism isn't a physical thing.
32:59
SPEAKER_02: It's an idea.
33:00
SPEAKER_02: Like it's not,
33:02
SPEAKER_02: It kind of undermines itself as well.
33:04
SPEAKER_02: And I thought,
33:05
SPEAKER_02: yeah,
33:05
I want to double click on that and that the Pythagorean theorem
33:08
is true outside of
33:09
SPEAKER_02: time and space.
33:10
Like that things are real that aren't within time and space
33:14
that are true because
33:16
SPEAKER_02: in the materialist world,
33:17
SPEAKER_02: if it's all reducible to physics,
33:19
SPEAKER_02: it's all within time and space and there's nothing outside of that.
33:23
SPEAKER_02: Whereas things like forms,
33:25
SPEAKER_02: even the form of,
33:26
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
33:26
SPEAKER_02: of a chair,
33:27
SPEAKER_02: like it doesn't exist in my mind or in your mind.
33:30
It exists in some sense independently and we can destroy an
33:32
individual chair and
33:33
SPEAKER_02: that form still exists.
33:35
SPEAKER_02: It's still there,
33:36
SPEAKER_02: you know,
33:38
SPEAKER_02: outside of time and space are the perfect circle,
33:40
SPEAKER_02: the perfect triangle,
33:41
SPEAKER_02: you know.
33:42
SPEAKER_02: They all exist independently of particular instantiations of those.
33:46
And actually,
33:46
we understand the particular instantiations through the
33:49
universals.
33:49
SPEAKER_02: I think that's Plato's kind of push of why the top bit is realer,
33:53
SPEAKER_02: because the top bit is the source of our intelligibility.
33:56
SPEAKER_02: of the lower bit in the Platonic conception,
33:59
SPEAKER_02: which is something that's very much missing,
34:02
SPEAKER_02: I think,
34:02
SPEAKER_02: from our current ontology that helps to explain intelligibility.
34:07
SPEAKER_02: But yeah,
34:07
so you think that's the separation from classical metaphysics
34:10
is like the loss of
34:11
SPEAKER_02: forms,
34:12
SPEAKER_02: the loss of the top,
34:13
SPEAKER_02: kind of half of that.
34:14
And even the bottom two,
34:16
really,
34:16
like a different understanding of the bottom two.
34:18
SPEAKER_01: Because if you have forms,
34:21
SPEAKER_01: you don't have to be threatened by probabilities you find at the bottom.
34:25
SPEAKER_01: It's just actually expected.
34:27
So there's something you can see in Aristotle most clearly from
34:31
antiquity.
34:33
SPEAKER_01: Of course,
34:34
SPEAKER_01: if things change,
34:35
that means that there's a substrate underneath them that is
34:38
susceptible to change.
34:40
And the lower you go into the hierarchy,
34:42
the closer you're going to get to just pure potential.
34:46
SPEAKER_01: So like example, water can change from solid to liquid.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: That means that in the water, there's a possibility for both.
34:53
SPEAKER_01: But you can keep going lower and lower and lower.
34:55
And it's not surprising from a classical standpoint that what
34:58
you would find at the
34:59
SPEAKER_01: bottom layer of physics would be probability waves.
35:02
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, probability waves are not pure potential.
35:05
SPEAKER_01: Because if we can give statistical distributions for how they behave,
35:08
SPEAKER_01: that means they have a certain pattern.
35:10
SPEAKER_01: They follow already a certain form.
35:15
SPEAKER_01: Classically,
35:16
SPEAKER_01: there's no problem in saying that even below that,
35:18
there is pure potential that can be shaped into different
35:21
probability distributions
35:22
SPEAKER_01: that we see from fundamental physics.
35:24
And what that means is that in classical metaphysics,
35:28
you have both extremes.
35:29
SPEAKER_01: You have forms.
35:29
SPEAKER_01: You have abstract patterns like the Pythagorean theorem, like red.
35:33
SPEAKER_01: All of these forms exist outside of space and time.
35:36
SPEAKER_01: And you also have,
35:37
SPEAKER_01: in space and time,
35:38
SPEAKER_01: matter that is pure potential,
35:40
SPEAKER_01: formless,
35:41
SPEAKER_01: but susceptible of...
35:45
SPEAKER_01: being shaped by forms.
35:47
And then that means you can have all the layers of the
35:49
hierarchy we talked about
35:49
SPEAKER_01: earlier without having to collapse them into just one.
35:53
SPEAKER_01: So you can have, OK, it's fine to have like fundamental particles.
35:58
Even before that,
35:59
it's fine to have probability waves above your potential.
36:01
SPEAKER_01: And they can both exist.
36:03
SPEAKER_01: And it's fine to have also
36:06
SPEAKER_01: fundamental particles above your probability waves.
36:10
SPEAKER_01: They can exist.
36:11
SPEAKER_01: And you can go layer by layer.
36:13
And at each layer,
36:14
you add certain forms that come to structure a certain set of
36:19
potential.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: And all the layers can exist.
36:22
SPEAKER_01: And now there are disagreements in the classical tradition about how
36:26
like real,
36:28
let's say the gradations of the real happen within that
36:31
hierarchy.
36:32
SPEAKER_01: So arguably for most of the Platonic scholarship,
36:35
SPEAKER_01: you see that realness sort of decreases as you go down to matter.
36:38
SPEAKER_01: In Plato, it's maybe more equal.
36:42
And then in Christianity,
36:43
it's very clear that there is like realness at all of those
36:46
layers.
36:47
SPEAKER_01: Whereas in materialistic reductionism,
36:49
you would say that only the bottom layer is real and everything
36:51
else is just like a
36:53
SPEAKER_01: non-interesting illusion over the fundamental material layer.
36:57
SPEAKER_02: and do you think aristotle is slightly different because i i know the
37:01
interpretations of plato that it's a very uh i guess yeah that
37:05
there there's an
37:06
unreality in matter and then the reality comes from above and
37:09
it isn't it's almost
37:10
like an idealism i don't i don't i don't agree with that
37:13
interpretation myself i
37:14
think he does specify that each like the good is present in the
37:18
cave in a sense
37:19
SPEAKER_02: like it is um
37:21
that there are levels of reality,
37:24
but the levels are all real in a sense.
37:26
SPEAKER_02: I don't think they're entirely,
37:28
although I suppose the shadows and the echoes are less real
37:31
than the light of the
37:32
SPEAKER_02: good and that.
37:33
SPEAKER_02: But do you think Aristotle is different to that?
37:35
SPEAKER_02: Is Aristotle more of an empiricist in a sense?
37:37
SPEAKER_02: Does he have,
37:39
SPEAKER_02: I don't know,
37:40
because I've been thinking about this like a conflict between
37:43
Plato and Aristotle
37:44
SPEAKER_02: in some sense that emerges later probably in Christian thought,
37:47
SPEAKER_02: but do you think he has a different version than Plato?
37:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
37:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a good question.
37:51
SPEAKER_01: It's also debated in the scholarship.
37:56
SPEAKER_01: Like classically,
37:57
people would tend to stress more the reality of matter in
38:02
Aristotelian thought.
38:03
So the lower layers would be real and forms would only exist as
38:08
their instantiations in matter.
38:10
Z is the hylomorphism,
38:11
like the forms don't exist independently of the material
38:15
instantiation.
38:16
SPEAKER_02: It's like they're fused together.
38:18
SPEAKER_02: And if you took them apart, they wouldn't exist.
38:21
SPEAKER_02: Whereas for Plato, I don't think he thinks of it that way.
38:24
yeah it seems and um it's been a while since i looked like
38:29
closely enough at the
38:29
scholarship to really be helpful here but what i do remember
38:33
clearly is that the
38:34
kind of dualism i i said earlier the kind of contrast between
38:38
plato and aristotle
38:39
used to be i think pretty common for quite a few centuries but
38:42
for the past few
38:43
decades there's been a wave of scholarship that tends to stress
38:46
more the reality of
38:47
SPEAKER_01: all the layers
38:48
SPEAKER_01: in the hierarchy, both for Plato and Aristotle.
38:51
SPEAKER_01: The distinctions between Plato and Aristotle have been put into question.
38:56
SPEAKER_01: And even for later thinkers like Thomas Aquinas,
38:59
SPEAKER_01: many people have been stressing more in the last few decades the platonic
39:02
dimensions of his thought and the fact that the way he uses
39:06
Aristotle isn't the
39:07
SPEAKER_01: caricature that people made for a long time.
39:10
SPEAKER_01: So historically, I think there has been
39:13
SPEAKER_01: a view of duality between Plato and Aristotle.
39:17
But it seems,
39:18
at least in recent scholarship,
39:19
that they're closer together.
39:21
SPEAKER_01: But regardless of that,
39:23
SPEAKER_01: even I would say,
39:24
SPEAKER_01: in Christian Platonic thought,
39:27
SPEAKER_01: the reality of all the layers is pretty clear.
39:31
SPEAKER_01: I think in Dionysius,
39:32
SPEAKER_01: the Aurelplagite,
39:33
SPEAKER_01: I runs that out pretty quickly,
39:35
SPEAKER_01: like in the fourth or fifth century,
39:37
SPEAKER_01: where all the layers are real because
39:39
SPEAKER_01: love allows all of the layers to be real.
39:41
The forms give themselves down to the lower layers and the
39:45
matter emerges to
39:46
support layers above and above and above so that all of them
39:50
are real in love.
39:51
SPEAKER_01: And there's no, there's no compromise.
39:53
There's not as much the story of like difficult scholarship as
39:59
we see in Plato and
40:00
SPEAKER_01: Aristotle,
40:00
SPEAKER_01: at least in Christian thought,
40:01
SPEAKER_01: it's pretty clear that all the layers are real.
40:03
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
40:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
40:04
SPEAKER_02: And it really was coming up for me.
40:05
SPEAKER_02: There is like the,
40:07
SPEAKER_02: how that leads to a kind of anthropology of the human as between,
40:11
SPEAKER_02: you know,
40:12
SPEAKER_02: matter and form as the mediator of both in some sense,
40:15
SPEAKER_02: the mediator of like meaning and matter.
40:17
Whereas obviously for the materialist paradigm,
40:20
the human is just reduced to matter.
40:22
SPEAKER_02: We're just this kind of like, I don't know,
40:24
dirt portion without the breath of god but so in the classical
40:29
world we have this
40:29
dual reality to us that isn't some people say of plato that
40:34
they're at odds with
40:34
each other like that would be the gnostic kind of
40:37
interpretation of plato i think
40:38
like that the soul or something is at odds with the matter and
40:41
has to escape it
40:43
whereas in christian thought as i understand it's more like a
40:46
hylomorphism that the
40:47
SPEAKER_02: soul and the physical body are completely
40:50
intertwined and that as a result of the fall there is this
40:54
conflict between them
40:56
but but you have that duality in reality in the person which is
41:01
a much richer
41:02
anthropology i think than than the reductive materials account
41:05
like it's just so
41:07
much more yeah it can include a whole reality transcendence and
41:12
but yeah i don't
41:12
know what you think about that yeah especially for humans maybe
41:14
that maybe the the
41:15
SPEAKER_01: thing to say too is that well
41:18
In Christian thought,
41:19
like for Aristotle,
41:20
every physical thing is a union of matter and form.
41:24
SPEAKER_01: Not just humans, but everything.
41:25
SPEAKER_01: Even the chair, animals too.
41:27
SPEAKER_01: They have a form, and they have matter that is informed by that form.
41:32
SPEAKER_01: And that's how the thing exists.
41:36
SPEAKER_01: What is special about humans is that we
41:40
SPEAKER_01: We can connect.
41:42
SPEAKER_01: We are material-like animals,
41:43
SPEAKER_01: but we also can connect to much higher forms,
41:46
SPEAKER_01: like forms that are as high as it gets,
41:47
SPEAKER_01: really.
41:48
SPEAKER_01: You can contemplate.
41:51
SPEAKER_01: God,
41:51
you can contemplate abstract mathematics that are outside of
41:54
space and time,
41:54
SPEAKER_01: which is not something that animals could do.
41:56
So that means we can connect forms to matter that nothing else
42:00
in creation can connect.
42:02
SPEAKER_01: Even angels in Christian thought,
42:04
SPEAKER_01: they can connect to abstract forms,
42:06
SPEAKER_01: but they don't have bodies,
42:07
SPEAKER_01: so they can't connect forms to matter in the same way that we can.
42:12
SPEAKER_01: So there's something very special about humans indeed.
42:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and that's an important part of that kind of upper
42:18
dimension in a sense because that for Plato anyway obviously it
42:21
scales up to the
42:21
form of the good I generally interpret what he means the form
42:24
of the good as God
42:25
like it's it's the top of that the forms the form of forms is
42:29
is God and so the
42:32
intercessioning levels as well are those disembodied beings in
42:37
a sense that you can
42:37
have a relationality with that and I was interested in one of
42:42
your interviews you
42:43
SPEAKER_02: said something about powers and principalities that you don't
42:47
you don't just avoid a power and principality you replace it
42:50
with a higher one in
42:51
some sense like this was a big revelation for me being an
42:54
atheist like before
42:56
because obviously as an atheist you kind of have to be a
42:59
reductive materialist like
43:00
you can't have this higher level of forms because what grounds
43:03
the forms is god and
43:04
so you get you know you're gonna end up there and it was almost
43:07
like to avoid the
43:09
SPEAKER_02: pitfalls of the the negative um
43:12
powers and principalities you have to turn yourself over to the
43:15
higher ones like
43:16
you have to recognize reality in some sense which is in the
43:19
highest the highest
43:20
levels and that was like a huge i mean for me it was like
43:24
seeing another you know
43:26
as if i'd been seeing half of the world for my whole life uh
43:29
that suddenly appeared
43:33
yeah there's um i don't know if you read charles taylor uh
43:36
secular age he talks
43:37
SPEAKER_01: about it a little bit when uh
43:39
SPEAKER_01: Our ancestors were all religious.
43:41
It was unthinkable for them not to be religious because they
43:45
saw the higher
43:46
SPEAKER_01: patterns that they participated in.
43:48
SPEAKER_01: And it was obvious that if you didn't have God to house you, then...
43:55
SPEAKER_01: Then you would just be prey to other patterns.
43:58
SPEAKER_01: And that can sound abstract, but it's pretty obvious.
44:01
SPEAKER_01: If you are wrestling with a sudden sin,
44:03
SPEAKER_01: it can take something obvious,
44:04
SPEAKER_01: like maybe you have a alcoholism problem.
44:07
So this pattern of going to get liquor and then destroying
44:14
other aspects of your
44:15
SPEAKER_01: life,
44:16
SPEAKER_01: driving all of your attention to the treatment of other things,
44:18
SPEAKER_01: this pattern towards alcohol.
44:21
SPEAKER_01: is a higher pattern that you participate in.
44:23
SPEAKER_01: Many people participate in this thing.
44:25
SPEAKER_01: And so it's not just you.
44:27
SPEAKER_01: It's a pattern in the world that has an impact on lots of people.
44:30
And if you just try to get rid of your alcoholism,
44:32
it's probably not going to work.
44:33
SPEAKER_01: People will just write, OK, I'm just going to stop.
44:36
SPEAKER_01: It almost never works.
44:37
SPEAKER_01: People typically have to
44:40
SPEAKER_01: one, stop that, but also put themselves under another higher pattern.
44:44
SPEAKER_01: So maybe they go to AA, or maybe they join the church.
44:48
SPEAKER_01: They typically have to do something.
44:49
SPEAKER_01: They might have to also
44:52
leave the attachments that remind them of alcoholism and their
44:56
participation there.
44:57
SPEAKER_01: So they might have to leave some friends.
44:58
They might have to stop going to certain places that put them
45:02
back into that
45:03
SPEAKER_01: alcoholism pattern and meet other people,
45:07
SPEAKER_01: go to other places,
45:09
join programs like AA that are going to put them in a better
45:12
pattern where they
45:13
SPEAKER_01: redirect this time,
45:14
SPEAKER_01: this potential that they had that was put towards alcoholism,
45:17
SPEAKER_01: and they put that potential to another higher pattern.
45:20
SPEAKER_01: But this is true for all
45:22
the sins we can participate in,
45:25
all the ways in which we can be exploited by patterns.
45:27
SPEAKER_01: It can be something less obvious,
45:28
like maybe the way that your attention is getting taken by X or
45:32
by Facebook.
45:34
SPEAKER_01: If you want to not be prey to those in a bad way,
45:38
then you need to make sure that you participate in another
45:41
high-level pattern that
45:42
SPEAKER_01: is positive.
45:43
That's so interesting because I'm thinking of sins as like
45:47
participation in lower part.
45:48
SPEAKER_02: It makes sense why sins are illusions in some sense,
45:51
SPEAKER_02: because you're mistaking a lower pattern for a higher pattern.
45:54
SPEAKER_02: Like you're putting something in the place of God.
45:56
SPEAKER_02: It's like idolatry.
45:57
SPEAKER_02: Like you're putting,
45:58
SPEAKER_02: a lower good in the place of where a higher good should be.
46:01
SPEAKER_02: And in some sense,
46:02
SPEAKER_02: you have to overcome that,
46:04
SPEAKER_02: uh,
46:05
SPEAKER_02: that pattern by seeing a higher one to replace it.
46:08
SPEAKER_02: Like you, you can't, and that's why you could get stuck at that level.
46:11
If you just simply refuse to,
46:13
to participate in a higher form,
46:15
um,
46:16
of existence.
46:17
Dr.
46:17
Anna Lemke said once to me that,
46:19
uh,
46:20
the solution to addiction is the reorientation of life.
46:23
SPEAKER_02: It's an entirely new life philosophy.
46:26
SPEAKER_02: And like,
46:26
SPEAKER_02: religious conversion is the number one treatment for alcoholism.
46:29
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's like empirically verifiable.
46:31
SPEAKER_02: So there's something really deep there, man.
46:34
SPEAKER_02: And that,
46:34
SPEAKER_02: that for me,
46:35
SPEAKER_02: because the powers and principalities thing,
46:37
SPEAKER_02: something,
46:37
SPEAKER_02: it seems like for Christian,
46:39
the Christian world or the ancient worldview was entirely based
46:41
on like the
46:42
SPEAKER_02: existence of spirits,
46:43
SPEAKER_02: which are like forms that could potentially hijack you,
46:46
SPEAKER_02: like the porous self idea.
46:49
that charles taylor has like that was so like the even the idea
46:52
of having a holy
46:53
spirit like versus you know other unholy spirits is like in a
46:57
reductionist
46:58
materialist world that doesn't have those forms that's just
47:00
like non-existent and
47:02
unsurprisingly we've been possessed by totalitarian ideologies
47:05
and horrendous like
47:07
death cults and we're like oh yeah i wonder why that happened
47:10
like because we
47:11
completely ignored you know the the things we built to protect
47:16
us from that
47:17
SPEAKER_02: happening in the first place
47:18
SPEAKER_02: Like,
47:20
SPEAKER_02: you know,
47:20
SPEAKER_02: yeah,
47:21
SPEAKER_02: it just,
47:22
SPEAKER_02: for me on a personal level,
47:23
SPEAKER_02: that,
47:24
that kind of realizing of powers and principalities is like
47:27
demonstrable existence
47:29
SPEAKER_02: of the forms or existence of non-physical,
47:33
SPEAKER_02: physical things.
47:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's an argument I don't talk about that much in the book.
47:37
But for the ancients,
47:39
as you said,
47:39
it was obvious that there are higher level patterns.
47:44
SPEAKER_01: You can also study them to some extent.
47:46
So Plato in the Republic famously makes the analogy between a
47:49
person and a city.
47:50
So there are patterns in a city that mirror patterns in an
47:54
individual person.
47:56
SPEAKER_01: And in the same way that the city has a certain head,
48:01
SPEAKER_01: a certain chief that's going to direct it,
48:03
like the human body has a head that's going to direct the
48:06
members and so on.
48:07
SPEAKER_01: You can study these things.
48:10
SPEAKER_01: The idea that you can...
48:12
Let's say be part of a bad body or a good body was pretty
48:15
obvious for the ancients.
48:17
SPEAKER_01: And it's coming back.
48:18
SPEAKER_01: It's becoming clearer to people.
48:19
SPEAKER_01: I think because of things like social media too.
48:22
The fact that our attention can be redirected to serve certain
48:26
gods is becoming
48:27
SPEAKER_01: more and more common.
48:28
People are becoming more comfortable talking about angels and
48:30
demons when they talk
48:32
SPEAKER_01: about modern technology.
48:33
and even ifs i think has been very big in that like internal
48:37
family system yeah
48:38
that's true in like seeing how you're a community of beings
48:42
rather than just one
48:43
you know buffer itself essentially and then yeah things that
48:46
capture your attention
48:48
because really the cognitive science attention is just it's
48:50
like the end of it is
48:51
just like attention functions by value like attention should be
48:54
given to what's
48:55
valuable to what's relevant to what's sacred and then the
48:58
question is like well
48:58
what's what's relevant what's sacred what's valuable and
49:01
there's lower values and
49:02
SPEAKER_02: there's higher ones like
49:03
And addiction,
49:04
alcoholism,
49:05
these things capture your attention and hold it.
49:07
SPEAKER_02: But they're not actually,
49:08
SPEAKER_02: you know,
49:09
SPEAKER_02: once you start thinking attentionally,
49:11
SPEAKER_02: it's very hard to think any other way,
49:13
SPEAKER_02: that there aren't these competing forces for our attention.
49:18
SPEAKER_02: Some which are good for us, other ones which are very harmful.
49:23
But it seems like,
49:23
yeah,
49:23
we're tiptoed from classical metaphysics into Christianity now.
49:27
SPEAKER_02: Like in the book,
49:28
SPEAKER_02: you point out,
49:30
SPEAKER_02: you do say you could probably pump the brakes,
49:32
SPEAKER_02: like after reductive materialism,
49:34
SPEAKER_02: just be like,
49:34
SPEAKER_02: I'm just going to be a classical metaphysics guy.
49:37
I'm not going to go,
49:38
go the whole hog of Christianity,
49:40
which I thought was interesting.
49:42
SPEAKER_02: Cause for me,
49:42
SPEAKER_02: I kind of,
49:43
SPEAKER_02: the more I got into classical metaphysics,
49:45
SPEAKER_02: the more I was just like,
49:46
SPEAKER_02: it's so unbelievably Christian.
49:47
SPEAKER_02: Like there's no kind of denying it at an extent,
49:51
SPEAKER_02: but you did seem to think it's possible to just be like,
49:53
SPEAKER_02: I'll just pause at classical metaphysics and like not.
49:58
SPEAKER_01: I think it's mainly because of my friendship with John Rubicki,
50:01
SPEAKER_01: where I think he lived as just a Platonist for decades.
50:07
And he might be on the return back to Christianity now,
50:09
but he spent so long as a
50:12
SPEAKER_01: as a plainness that I acknowledge that this might be possible.
50:16
Also,
50:16
on my own journey,
50:18
I was very happy just not to be a materialist for a while.
50:22
SPEAKER_01: And I did make my way to Christianity,
50:23
SPEAKER_01: but also I can see,
50:25
SPEAKER_01: and I think it's worth acknowledging that this is already a great spot.
50:29
SPEAKER_01: And it depends on how you want to frame your apologetics.
50:33
SPEAKER_01: I think if you look at my book,
50:34
SPEAKER_01: for instance,
50:35
SPEAKER_01: the way I argue in the classical metaphysics section,
50:40
SPEAKER_01: it's...
50:41
SPEAKER_01: it's, I would say, pretty forceful.
50:43
SPEAKER_01: I don't really leave room for maybe this might be wrong.
50:46
I'm very,
50:47
very confident that materialism is wrong and that classical
50:52
metaphysics is correct.
50:54
SPEAKER_01: So I'm very forceful there.
50:58
SPEAKER_01: But I think there's already enough people making forceful,
51:04
SPEAKER_01: definitive arguments for Christianity.
51:08
SPEAKER_01: I don't feel like I need to do this.
51:10
SPEAKER_01: And typically, they don't come from just metaphysics.
51:12
SPEAKER_01: I think I don't...
51:14
SPEAKER_01: I'd be curious to know if you know,
51:16
SPEAKER_01: but I think because Christianity does at some point rest on revelation,
51:22
SPEAKER_01: I think it would be...
51:23
I would tend to think it would be impossible to give a
51:28
philosophical argument alone
51:30
SPEAKER_01: that would be definitive for Christianity.
51:32
SPEAKER_01: I think the way it works when you get to this layer, rather, is that
51:37
SPEAKER_01: Christianity, if you grant it,
51:40
a few claims will then explain more things more elegantly than
51:45
classical metaphysics can.
51:47
SPEAKER_01: But I think if you could give an exhaustive philosophical argument for
51:51
SPEAKER_01: Christianity,
51:52
SPEAKER_01: you would be reducing Christianity to a philosophical system,
51:55
SPEAKER_01: which I don't think is possible.
51:56
I think Christianity,
51:58
because it's the highest,
51:59
it cannot be reduced to anything lower.
52:01
SPEAKER_02: So that's why I don't- Yeah, I love that, man.
52:04
SPEAKER_02: There's no knockdown argument for it in that sense.
52:07
SPEAKER_02: But I do think,
52:08
because something that really impacted me was how similar it
52:12
was to Plato in a
52:14
SPEAKER_02: sense of like,
52:15
SPEAKER_02: obviously way more advanced,
52:16
SPEAKER_02: but like you could see Plato like gesturing towards it,
52:19
like his cave analogy and like the way that that ends in
52:23
beholding the good,
52:24
SPEAKER_02: which is like an experience essentially.
52:27
Like he has this kind of virtue epistemology where it's like
52:31
you develop the
52:33
SPEAKER_02: character traits,
52:33
SPEAKER_02: you have the insights,
52:34
SPEAKER_02: you go on this journey and then
52:36
SPEAKER_02: You have an encounter, essentially.
52:38
You get that kind of insight into insights and you see that
52:43
there's something that
52:44
SPEAKER_02: exists that's illuminating all of this machinery and that so it works.
52:49
SPEAKER_02: And that experience in itself is like something that's super cathartic.
52:54
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
52:54
the philosopher king is happier in their condemnation than the
52:58
people that condemn
52:59
SPEAKER_02: them because
53:00
they've had this experience and like Plato obviously is
53:03
thinking of Socrates in this case.
53:05
SPEAKER_02: And I think he really,
53:06
SPEAKER_02: for him,
53:07
SPEAKER_02: like Socrates is Jesus in a sense,
53:09
SPEAKER_02: but it's a very similar kind of thing of like the person,
53:14
SPEAKER_02: you know,
53:14
SPEAKER_02: the highest pattern of the person that could go to the good of,
53:18
SPEAKER_02: and return.
53:19
SPEAKER_02: And then that's what we're supposed to be emulating in some sense.
53:22
SPEAKER_02: Like that's what we,
53:23
SPEAKER_02: this is now moving to the kind of moral narrative level,
53:26
SPEAKER_02: but as a meta narrative,
53:27
SPEAKER_02: I really saw how Plato was gesturing towards that,
53:30
SPEAKER_02: but like Christianity perfects it.
53:32
SPEAKER_02: Like Christianity takes it to like the next level.
53:36
SPEAKER_02: But that, but that, that is completely necessary.
53:39
Like there has to be a participatory,
53:41
like how do we know the good and how do we know God?
53:45
and you know obviously for christ i i am the way the truth and
53:48
the life nobody
53:49
comes to the father but through me like he he makes that
53:52
possible for everyone
53:55
which socrates i don't think does in the same way but i think
53:59
that for me would be
54:00
where i'd see it's like there isn't another way i don't that
54:04
i'm aware of i don't
54:05
SPEAKER_02: know is that landing does that make sense
54:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
54:08
SPEAKER_01: I know you've spoken with DC Schindler on your podcast,
54:11
SPEAKER_01: and I suspect you've probably read this Plato book,
54:13
SPEAKER_01: Plato's Critique of Impure Reason.
54:15
SPEAKER_02: A couple of times, yeah.
54:17
So I quite like that book because it does make the parallel
54:21
between Christianity
54:22
SPEAKER_01: and Plainism pretty striking in ways that I had not read before.
54:26
SPEAKER_01: I think there's a lot of new insights in that book.
54:29
And one thing in particular that Schindler stresses that I
54:33
think is worthwhile is the fact that
54:37
SPEAKER_01: Like the good itself...
54:40
SPEAKER_01: will be a kind of revelation to you if you do get close to it.
54:44
SPEAKER_01: And you cannot reduce it to something lower.
54:47
SPEAKER_01: But then what happens is when you do come into contact with the good,
54:51
SPEAKER_01: then when you come back down,
54:53
SPEAKER_01: you can sort of be a body for the good there.
54:58
SPEAKER_01: And that's how I see Christianity at the higher layer.
55:05
SPEAKER_01: I see contact with the logos in Christianity
55:10
then enabling Christians to come down into the cave and do more
55:15
than Platonists could.
55:17
SPEAKER_01: So I do agree with you that I see this parallel.
55:21
SPEAKER_01: What I would tend to say,
55:22
SPEAKER_01: though,
55:22
SPEAKER_01: is that this kind of interpretation of what happens in Plato,
55:26
SPEAKER_01: which I think is correct,
55:27
SPEAKER_01: gets to be more theological than just philosophical.
55:31
SPEAKER_01: So that's what I mean.
55:33
SPEAKER_01: Plato himself is not giving...
55:35
SPEAKER_01: like knock down classical arguments for.
55:38
SPEAKER_02: No, he kind of likes it that they run out.
55:40
SPEAKER_02: He's just like, you can't actually argue for it at all.
55:43
SPEAKER_02: He's like, you have to go and do it.
55:48
He could give you every argument on the world,
55:49
but that won't get you there.
55:51
I think what always happens in the Platoning dialogues is
55:55
people try to reduce
55:56
SPEAKER_01: something higher to something lower,
55:58
SPEAKER_01: and Plato shoots them down.
56:00
SPEAKER_01: Socrates is always shooting them down.
56:01
SPEAKER_01: So there's no way to reduce what's highest to something lower.
56:04
SPEAKER_01: So you can see there's no way to reduce God to something lower.
56:08
SPEAKER_01: But there's even no way to reduce Platonism to a set of arguments.
56:12
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's what Plato is trying to do.
56:14
SPEAKER_01: Totally.
56:16
SPEAKER_01: He wants to get people into contact with the good.
56:19
SPEAKER_01: That's what he's trying to do.
56:20
And there are many images for this and Schindler does it very
56:23
well in the book.
56:23
And I don't remember it well enough to like say it better than,
56:27
than you would.
56:28
SPEAKER_01: But I think what,
56:29
what comes out is that you cannot give definitive philosophical
56:34
arguments for
56:36
SPEAKER_01: Platonism.
56:37
SPEAKER_01: And that's only going to be more true for Christianity.
56:41
SPEAKER_01: I think you have to, um,
56:43
SPEAKER_01: make people attracted by the beauty.
56:46
SPEAKER_01: So that's what Plato often does with Socrates.
56:48
SPEAKER_01: So people are trying to, let's say, reduce goodness to something else.
56:53
SPEAKER_01: Plato is shooting them...
56:55
SPEAKER_01: Socrates is shooting them down,
56:56
but Socrates is embodying goodness in a way that should put
57:02
people into contact
57:03
SPEAKER_01: with goodness.
57:04
SPEAKER_01: So they do...
57:07
SPEAKER_01: So the dialogues do kind of answer the question in a way.
57:10
Like they do,
57:11
like,
57:11
in a way tell you what goodness is,
57:13
but they don't do it philosophically.
57:14
SPEAKER_01: They do it like through a story and through you being...
57:17
SPEAKER_02: The form of it becomes more...
57:20
SPEAKER_02: And yeah,
57:20
SPEAKER_02: like that Socrates,
57:21
SPEAKER_02: Schindler puts it that way,
57:22
SPEAKER_02: like that Socrates is like a symbol for the good in it,
57:26
but in recognizing like his actual death and like the actual
57:30
sacrifice that he
57:31
SPEAKER_02: makes,
57:31
SPEAKER_02: he becomes,
57:32
SPEAKER_02: it almost like flips.
57:33
I think he describes it as like a reversal in the narrative
57:36
where it's like,
57:37
SPEAKER_02: it's not even about the narrative.
57:39
SPEAKER_02: It's almost like an image that flips to point at a reality to be like,
57:43
SPEAKER_02: the image isn't the reality.
57:45
SPEAKER_02: So it's like,
57:45
you have to go and like Plato's critique of images and like
57:48
book 10 is like,
57:49
SPEAKER_02: seems so weird.
57:50
Cause it's like,
57:50
he's just made this huge image and then he's complaining about
57:53
images.
57:53
But like the reason for doing that is because he's not making
57:57
philosophical arguments.
57:58
He's pointing towards something that are beyond the arguments
58:01
in the images.
58:02
SPEAKER_02: that you have to kind of use images to point to,
58:05
SPEAKER_02: but which the images are insufficient to actually capture in some sense.
58:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
58:10
SPEAKER_01: So to go back to what started this train of thought,
58:14
I think we can be very forceful in denying immaterialism and
58:22
pointing towards
58:23
SPEAKER_01: classical metaphysics.
58:24
SPEAKER_01: I think we can be pretty forceful there.
58:26
SPEAKER_01: But when we reach this point, which is pretty high...
58:30
If we try to get to something higher,
58:32
like Christianity,
58:34
I don't think we can be as forceful.
58:36
SPEAKER_01: Because if we were,
58:37
SPEAKER_01: what would happen,
58:38
SPEAKER_01: I think,
58:39
SPEAKER_01: is a kind of reduction that we want to avoid from what we saw in Plato.
58:42
SPEAKER_01: So for instance, I can give you an example.
58:45
SPEAKER_01: There are a kind of argumentation that actually many people like is,
58:50
SPEAKER_01: historical argumentation for why Jesus rose from the tomb.
58:53
People will argue,
58:54
let's say,
58:54
based on the fact that the apostles were martyries.
58:56
SPEAKER_02: So annoying, like, my love wears off, but, like, he's got to starve, man.
59:00
SPEAKER_01: It's like...
59:02
SPEAKER_01: But I think...
59:03
SPEAKER_01: I think,
59:05
SPEAKER_01: like,
59:06
SPEAKER_01: this...
59:06
SPEAKER_01: I think this can be,
59:08
SPEAKER_01: like,
59:08
SPEAKER_01: fine,
59:09
SPEAKER_01: but it's gonna sort of get you stuck at a certain layer,
59:11
SPEAKER_01: I think,
59:12
SPEAKER_01: if that's how you see Christianity.
59:14
SPEAKER_01: Because then what you risk doing is reducing Christianity to history.
59:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
59:19
So what I prefer to do is give an argument for Christianity
59:23
that is like the
59:26
SPEAKER_01: structure we talked about for Plato.
59:27
SPEAKER_01: I try to give people an ideal.
59:31
SPEAKER_01: I try to give people like,
59:33
SPEAKER_01: OK,
59:34
SPEAKER_01: if you granted Christianity,
59:35
SPEAKER_01: let's say you grant this,
59:37
SPEAKER_01: then here are all the beautiful things you can explain.
59:40
So what I do in the book,
59:41
more specifically,
59:42
is I take a few aspects of creation.
59:44
SPEAKER_01: I draw the works of C.S.
59:46
SPEAKER_01: Lewis there.
59:47
I take a few aspects of creation that are really hard to
59:49
explain if you don't have
59:51
SPEAKER_01: Christianity.
59:52
SPEAKER_01: And I explain them in the light of the incarnation.
59:55
SPEAKER_01: OK, then I can explain those things.
59:57
SPEAKER_01: I also take a problem from classical metaphysics.
59:59
SPEAKER_01: We talked about it earlier, the intrinsic nature of physical entities.
1:00:03
SPEAKER_01: What are really electrons?
1:00:04
SPEAKER_01: And this is not an answer.
1:00:06
SPEAKER_01: There's no answer to this, really, in the classical tradition.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_01: like in more recent post-reductionist thought.
1:00:14
SPEAKER_01: The only good answer I've seen comes from Christianity,
1:00:17
SPEAKER_01: like giving what is the real nature of things,
1:00:19
SPEAKER_01: really,
1:00:20
SPEAKER_01: like beyond their equations.
1:00:22
SPEAKER_01: And I think Christianity can answer this.
1:00:24
So I just give you an overview of the argument I want to make
1:00:27
for Christianity.
1:00:29
SPEAKER_01: We can talk more about the details,
1:00:30
SPEAKER_01: but I think it's good to point out the structure,
1:00:33
SPEAKER_01: given what you just said about planism and reducing Christianity.
1:00:37
SPEAKER_01: Christianity or the good to something else.
1:00:39
SPEAKER_01: I think the way I like to put it in the book,
1:00:42
SPEAKER_01: rather,
1:00:42
SPEAKER_01: and again,
1:00:43
SPEAKER_01: here I have John Verbeke in mind,
1:00:44
because I don't think forceful historical argumentation would
1:00:48
have done any good
1:00:49
SPEAKER_01: trying to point him towards Christianity.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_01: I think what is much more helpful is
1:00:54
SPEAKER_01: Try to do what Plato did.
1:00:55
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I'm going to try to point you towards that ideal.
1:00:59
SPEAKER_01: Let's say Christianity.
1:01:00
SPEAKER_01: And then I'm going to try to show you how,
1:01:02
SPEAKER_01: if you grant these things,
1:01:04
SPEAKER_01: and then you go back down into the cave,
1:01:05
SPEAKER_01: you can explain all of those things.
1:01:07
SPEAKER_01: You can put light on the shadows.
1:01:08
SPEAKER_01: So that's my strategy in the second half of the book.
1:01:11
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
1:01:12
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
1:01:13
SPEAKER_02: So yeah,
1:01:13
SPEAKER_02: that you can,
1:01:15
SPEAKER_02: if you apply this,
1:01:16
SPEAKER_02: it has more explanatory power in the lower levels than without it.
1:01:21
SPEAKER_01: And that becomes beautiful.
1:01:22
SPEAKER_01: That becomes attractive.
1:01:23
And it moves people towards Christianity in a way that is not
1:01:26
like a forceful argument.
1:01:27
SPEAKER_01: It's, well, it has its own kind of force.
1:01:30
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of pull, I would say.
1:01:31
SPEAKER_01: It's a, yeah, like, purely pulling people towards it.
1:01:35
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
1:01:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay.
1:01:38
SPEAKER_02: And do you think,
1:01:39
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
1:01:39
SPEAKER_02: because you make the argument,
1:01:41
something that we didn't touch on in the beginning that we
1:01:42
really should have
1:01:43
SPEAKER_02: touched on,
1:01:43
SPEAKER_02: it was my own fault,
1:01:44
SPEAKER_02: but the zombification problem of reductive materialism,
1:01:48
SPEAKER_02: like,
1:01:49
because really what we're talking about here is that reductive
1:01:51
materialism is the
1:01:52
SPEAKER_02: cause of the meaning crisis.
1:01:54
SPEAKER_02: It's the cause of this kind of decontextualization,
1:01:57
SPEAKER_02: depersonalization,
1:01:58
this kind of existential horror show that happens and that it
1:02:04
leads to us becoming
1:02:05
SPEAKER_02: like zombies,
1:02:06
SPEAKER_02: like mindless kind of consumption,
1:02:08
SPEAKER_02: pointless machines.
1:02:10
SPEAKER_02: And that the solution to that is in the resurrection.
1:02:14
SPEAKER_02: It's in the Christian story in some sense.
1:02:17
SPEAKER_02: Like it's,
1:02:18
SPEAKER_02: our participation in the sacrifice of Christ brings us back to life.
1:02:25
Because you've set them up kind of as opposites in the book,
1:02:28
if that makes sense.
1:02:28
Like the reductive materialism has brought us down to the
1:02:31
zombification and now
1:02:32
SPEAKER_02: returning to Christianity can give us life again.
1:02:35
SPEAKER_02: Is that a fair kind of counterbalance?
1:02:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's true.
1:02:40
SPEAKER_01: We can talk more about it.
1:02:41
SPEAKER_01: I opened the book with zombies because...
1:02:44
SPEAKER_01: It is a good way,
1:02:45
SPEAKER_01: I think,
1:02:45
SPEAKER_01: to understand people the impact outside of philosophy of something like
1:02:52
SPEAKER_01: reductionistic materialism.
1:02:54
And also,
1:02:54
I can already give a mythological idea of the solution in
1:02:59
Christianity.
1:03:00
SPEAKER_02: So... Oh, I think you're muted there, JP.
1:03:08
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
1:03:08
SPEAKER_01: So, sorry.
1:03:10
SPEAKER_01: Zombie myths are fairly recent.
1:03:11
SPEAKER_01: They arose in the...
1:03:14
SPEAKER_01: mid-20th century with, I think, Romero, Night of the Dead in the 60s.
1:03:18
SPEAKER_01: And they've become more prominent.
1:03:20
They peaked maybe around the mid-2010s and they dip down a
1:03:26
little bit and then
1:03:27
SPEAKER_01: they've been stable.
1:03:28
SPEAKER_01: It keeps coming back from time to time like The Last of Us.
1:03:31
There's always something that pops up because it's not a
1:03:33
problem we've dealt with.
1:03:34
SPEAKER_01: But we use the zombie myth to talk about materialism, as you mentioned.
1:03:40
SPEAKER_01: And for people who are not that familiar with
1:03:42
SPEAKER_01: symbolism, it might seem weird.
1:03:44
SPEAKER_01: But we do this with all kinds of stories.
1:03:46
We don't spend billions of dollars each year on stories just to
1:03:51
amuse ourselves.
1:03:52
There are reasons why we care about those things and why we
1:03:55
spend so much money on them.
1:03:57
SPEAKER_01: Even if you're a materialist,
1:03:58
SPEAKER_01: you shouldn't understand that evolution wouldn't select this much waste.
1:04:01
SPEAKER_01: If we've been telling stories to each other since we could speak,
1:04:05
SPEAKER_01: there are reasons for those stories.
1:04:07
And typically is that these stories allow us to practice our
1:04:10
perception of patterns
1:04:11
SPEAKER_01: that really exist in the real world.
1:04:13
But it's a kind of play where you play with something similar
1:04:16
and then it's going
1:04:17
SPEAKER_01: to transfer to something in your real life.
1:04:20
SPEAKER_01: So for instance, a classical example,
1:04:22
SPEAKER_01: Every culture has stories of killing dragons.
1:04:27
Dragons are a good symbol for potential in general,
1:04:31
both positive and negative.
1:04:32
SPEAKER_01: So dragons are a mix of predators that can kill us,
1:04:36
SPEAKER_01: like a cat with its claws and its jaws that can eat us.
1:04:41
SPEAKER_01: It also has fire, like fire that can kill us.
1:04:44
SPEAKER_01: And even wings,
1:04:45
because we used to be like small mammals that would be preyed
1:04:48
upon by winged
1:04:49
SPEAKER_01: animals.
1:04:52
The dragon is a good representation of the negative sides of
1:04:56
potential,
1:04:56
but it also holds gold.
1:04:59
SPEAKER_01: And typically, if you get the dragon, then you get the princess.
1:05:01
SPEAKER_01: So there's this idea that if you can dominate that danger,
1:05:05
SPEAKER_01: maybe you can tame the wild animal,
1:05:08
SPEAKER_01: maybe you can kill the lion that's terrorizing the tribe,
1:05:10
SPEAKER_01: whatever,
1:05:10
SPEAKER_01: then you will get all kinds of positive things after it.
1:05:13
SPEAKER_01: So the story of,
1:05:14
SPEAKER_01: let's say,
1:05:15
SPEAKER_01: not waiting until the dragon comes to your village to destroy it,
1:05:20
but rather going out to undone the dragon in his cave and then
1:05:25
taming it or killing
1:05:26
SPEAKER_01: it,
1:05:26
SPEAKER_01: that's like a transferable story.
1:05:28
SPEAKER_01: It's applicable in the sense that Tolkien would say.
1:05:31
If you explore this pattern narratively,
1:05:34
then you're going to be able to better apply it
1:05:36
SPEAKER_01: in your own life when you're facing your own dragons.
1:05:39
SPEAKER_01: So we do this with stories in general.
1:05:41
SPEAKER_01: And the zombie arose in the 20th century because materialism
1:05:46
SPEAKER_01: which did come out of a laboratory hypothesis from Galileo,
1:05:50
SPEAKER_01: leaked out,
1:05:51
SPEAKER_01: as you said earlier,
1:05:52
SPEAKER_01: and started to encroach upon more and more of reality.
1:05:56
SPEAKER_01: At some point, people started to see themselves as just matter as well.
1:06:01
SPEAKER_01: If you explain more and more of the world in just reductionistic,
1:06:05
SPEAKER_01: materialistic terms,
1:06:06
SPEAKER_01: of course,
1:06:07
SPEAKER_01: at some point,
1:06:07
SPEAKER_01: you're going to forget God because it's just matter.
1:06:11
SPEAKER_01: There's no human mind, let alone any God.
1:06:14
SPEAKER_01: you're going to forget that goodness and virtue are real.
1:06:18
SPEAKER_01: Like really, we're just monkeys that evolved to perpetuate our genes.
1:06:25
And what we think is good is really just beneficial for the
1:06:28
survival of the species.
1:06:30
SPEAKER_01: So you evacuate goodness.
1:06:32
SPEAKER_01: And at some point you think,
1:06:35
SPEAKER_01: well,
1:06:36
we've explained so many things with physics really that I can't
1:06:39
explain the mind
1:06:39
SPEAKER_01: yet,
1:06:39
SPEAKER_01: but really the mind is just physics.
1:06:41
SPEAKER_01: Like somehow we'll discover it.
1:06:43
SPEAKER_01: But that kind of thing puts you in a meaning crisis.
1:06:47
SPEAKER_01: If you know those ideas, they're going to have a meaning crisis.
1:06:50
And even if you don't explicitly study philosophy and you don't
1:06:54
talk about those
1:06:54
SPEAKER_01: kinds of things,
1:06:55
SPEAKER_01: it's still going to trickle down to the culture.
1:06:58
SPEAKER_01: The intellectuals,
1:06:59
SPEAKER_01: the elite,
1:06:59
they're going to care more about material things than about
1:07:01
spiritual things.
1:07:02
So our elites are no longer the priests or religious people or
1:07:07
people who do tons of good works.
1:07:10
CEOs of big companies or now it's like influencers or like it's
1:07:15
people who focus on
1:07:17
SPEAKER_01: material gains.
1:07:20
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, I don't want to speak bad about CEOs.
1:07:22
SPEAKER_01: I think running a company can be a perfectly good thing to do.
1:07:24
SPEAKER_01: Even social media can be used well.
1:07:26
But the point I'm trying to make is that we've shifted what we
1:07:29
consider to be the
1:07:30
elite occupation and also what we consider to be the best thing
1:07:35
to make you happy.
1:07:36
SPEAKER_01: We started to think that the billionaire is happier than the monk,
1:07:40
SPEAKER_01: which would have been obviously false to people in earlier ages.
1:07:44
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's starting to be more obvious now as well.
1:07:49
SPEAKER_01: What that means is there's a relationship between cultural materialism,
1:07:53
SPEAKER_01: where you care only about material gain,
1:07:56
SPEAKER_01: and
1:07:57
SPEAKER_01: Philosophical materialism, where you consider that only matter is real.
1:08:02
SPEAKER_01: And the zombie is a good representation for those things.
1:08:04
SPEAKER_01: Because the zombie only cares about eating stuff.
1:08:08
SPEAKER_01: He's only like the material aspects of ourselves, we can say.
1:08:13
SPEAKER_01: He wants to eat others, not celebrate with them.
1:08:18
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't have friends.
1:08:19
SPEAKER_01: Like zombies walk together.
1:08:21
SPEAKER_01: But they don't have any kind of communion.
1:08:23
SPEAKER_01: They don't even talk to each other.
1:08:24
SPEAKER_01: They just grunt.
1:08:25
SPEAKER_01: They have no meaning, no real spirit.
1:08:28
SPEAKER_01: They are homeless, so they can't really build anything.
1:08:31
SPEAKER_01: They just go from place to place.
1:08:32
SPEAKER_01: We feel like this is happening to us.
1:08:34
SPEAKER_01: We only care about our careers,
1:08:36
SPEAKER_01: let's say,
1:08:37
and then we'll just move and we won't build communities that
1:08:39
actually nourish us.
1:08:42
SPEAKER_01: It's very interesting that the zombie eats brains.
1:08:45
SPEAKER_01: It's the only creature that specifically does this.
1:08:47
SPEAKER_01: There are other creatures that represent materialism, by the way.
1:08:50
SPEAKER_01: Robots also do this a little.
1:08:51
SPEAKER_01: Are we just robots?
1:08:53
SPEAKER_01: And there's tons of stories that explore this.
1:08:55
SPEAKER_01: It's tied with reductionism, obviously.
1:08:57
SPEAKER_01: But zombies are even more special because zombies eat brains.
1:09:00
SPEAKER_01: And if you're a materialist, that's what you're trying to do.
1:09:02
SPEAKER_01: You're trying to reduce...
1:09:05
SPEAKER_01: the mind to something material like the brain.
1:09:08
So you can see that zombies are like the materialist spreading
1:09:14
outside of the lab
1:09:16
SPEAKER_01: and contaminating more and more of the world.
1:09:19
SPEAKER_01: There are more parallels we could say,
1:09:21
SPEAKER_01: but maybe the one I can use to finish is that in the zombie story,
1:09:24
SPEAKER_01: typically,
1:09:24
SPEAKER_01: there's no positive way out.
1:09:26
SPEAKER_01: There's no hope.
1:09:27
SPEAKER_01: If you're a materialistic,
1:09:30
reductionist uh you are also a nihilist where you think there's
1:09:32
no real good and
1:09:33
there's no reason why things would end well in the end we we
1:09:37
will not stop the
1:09:38
march of materialistic nihilism zombies are just going to keep
1:09:40
spreading and at
1:09:42
best people in classical zombie movies would just try to
1:09:45
survive for as long as
1:09:47
they can but they would know that ultimately they would perish
1:09:49
so funny man i'm an
1:09:50
absolute zombie film fanatic like i think i've watched every
1:09:54
single zombie thing
1:09:55
SPEAKER_02: that's ever come out and there's a real thing of like
1:09:57
the walking dead,
1:09:57
like season 11,
1:09:58
it's just like,
1:09:59
they're just still wandering around.
1:10:01
SPEAKER_02: Like nobody has any, like, they're like, how do we solve this?
1:10:04
SPEAKER_02: I was like, Oh, I don't know.
1:10:05
SPEAKER_02: The army will come in and kill everybody or something.
1:10:08
SPEAKER_02: Like it's, there's never a good solution.
1:10:10
SPEAKER_02: Like there's like a vaccine maybe or something like,
1:10:13
SPEAKER_02: but never a good,
1:10:14
SPEAKER_02: because none of them would think the solution is the Eucharist.
1:10:17
Like nobody's going to be like,
1:10:19
we need to give these zombies,
1:10:20
you know,
1:10:21
the flesh of Christ.
1:10:22
SPEAKER_02: It just, our, our culture just doesn't, you know,
1:10:26
SPEAKER_02: couldn't go there.
1:10:28
SPEAKER_01: Well, the coolest is Warm Bodies.
1:10:29
SPEAKER_01: Like, have you read the book Warm Bodies?
1:10:32
SPEAKER_02: No, I haven't read the book.
1:10:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, I saw the movie, yeah, yeah.
1:10:35
SPEAKER_01: But I mean, it's similar in the book.
1:10:36
SPEAKER_01: It's maybe a little bit more obvious in the book.
1:10:38
SPEAKER_01: There are more cushion parallels in the book, maybe.
1:10:40
SPEAKER_01: But still,
1:10:43
SPEAKER_01: in the movie,
1:10:44
you can still see that it's gesturing towards the solution
1:10:47
because zombies come
1:10:49
SPEAKER_01: back to life not because of a vaccine or something,
1:10:51
but they come back to life because they give themselves to
1:10:56
others because they love
1:10:57
SPEAKER_01: others and they give themselves for others.
1:10:59
SPEAKER_01: And that's how they progressively become humans.
1:11:01
SPEAKER_01: So I think that's gesturing at least towards the solution.
1:11:04
nice yeah that's it's so it's like a relational stop eating
1:11:08
people's brains and and
1:11:10
you know get involved in communities kind of is the cure yeah
1:11:15
and i think like it's
1:11:16
become it's more obvious in christianity um but so i mean we
1:11:22
can talk more about
1:11:22
that in even before we talk about the solution it's worth
1:11:27
pointing out that
1:11:29
SPEAKER_01: There's this inversion in the zombie story of the Christian story.
1:11:33
SPEAKER_01: So zombies can be seen as a way...
1:11:38
SPEAKER_01: They're really the sign of a culture that has lost its Christianity.
1:11:43
SPEAKER_01: And we can even go back to the metaphysics we talked about earlier.
1:11:46
SPEAKER_01: Like, if you go back to...
1:11:49
SPEAKER_01: most ancient classical systems,
1:11:51
it was obvious that forms are real and that there is goodness
1:11:56
there and that
1:11:57
SPEAKER_01: rejectionism made no sense.
1:12:00
SPEAKER_01: Christianity,
1:12:01
SPEAKER_01: by affirming that all the layers are real,
1:12:05
gave value to the material world in a way that you don't see
1:12:09
ancient intellectual
1:12:10
SPEAKER_01: systems do.
1:12:10
SPEAKER_01: You don't see that in the East.
1:12:11
SPEAKER_01: You don't see that in the ancient Greeks.
1:12:14
SPEAKER_01: So that did open up
1:12:18
SPEAKER_01: the door for down the line,
1:12:20
something like Galileo saying that the external world is
1:12:23
mathematizable and that
1:12:25
SPEAKER_01: it's real.
1:12:26
And it did open the door to us at some point thinking that
1:12:30
there is only matter and
1:12:31
SPEAKER_01: that the mind doesn't really exist.
1:12:32
So the fact that the zombie arises in a Christian culture is
1:12:36
not an accident.
1:12:38
SPEAKER_01: It's the fact that materialism comes out of Christian culture.
1:12:43
And also it's worth pointing out that there were materialists
1:12:45
in ancient Greece and
1:12:47
SPEAKER_01: people tried to reduce things before,
1:12:48
SPEAKER_01: but like you also needed math.
1:12:50
SPEAKER_01: You also needed to respect forms at least enough to try math.
1:12:53
And you need to have a society that had enough order and enough
1:12:56
wealth to have
1:12:57
SPEAKER_01: people doing full-time science to advance those kinds of things.
1:13:00
So I think really like you needed both to give value to the
1:13:02
physical world and to
1:13:03
SPEAKER_01: give value to forms to be able to do something like science and develop
1:13:07
SPEAKER_01: materialism.
1:13:08
SPEAKER_01: So I think it had to happen in Christianity pretty much.
1:13:11
SPEAKER_02: probably Christian compassion as well.
1:13:13
SPEAKER_02: Cause in ancient Greece, they just killed them a lot of the time.
1:13:16
SPEAKER_02: Uh, I'm thinking of, uh, what was that guy?
1:13:18
SPEAKER_02: Anaxagoras.
1:13:20
SPEAKER_02: These annoying phosphorus.
1:13:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:13:22
SPEAKER_02: Kind of, you know, didn't really let them away with it, to be honest.
1:13:26
SPEAKER_02: Uh,
1:13:27
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, Christians being nice, guys.
1:13:29
SPEAKER_02: They didn't torture Galileo enough.
1:13:30
SPEAKER_02: We should have got... Yeah, that's a good point.
1:13:36
SPEAKER_01: But we can even dig deeper because mythologically in the zombie,
1:13:40
SPEAKER_01: you'll see all kinds of versions of Christianity.
1:13:44
SPEAKER_01: You can see it as an inversion of mass.
1:13:45
SPEAKER_01: So...
1:13:47
SPEAKER_01: And zombies will, rather than sing together, they will just groan.
1:13:52
Rather than being in communion with each other and exchanging
1:13:55
the Son of Peace and
1:13:55
SPEAKER_01: so on,
1:13:56
SPEAKER_01: they don't care about each other.
1:13:58
SPEAKER_01: And if there are humans otherwise, they just want to eat them.
1:14:01
SPEAKER_01: They're not thankful...
1:14:02
SPEAKER_01: for anything.
1:14:03
SPEAKER_01: Zombies just want to devour.
1:14:05
SPEAKER_01: Also, zombies are undead.
1:14:07
They are a parody of the resurrection where they do come back
1:14:11
to eternal life in a
1:14:12
SPEAKER_01: way,
1:14:12
SPEAKER_01: but it's an eternal life without quality.
1:14:15
SPEAKER_01: It's just material.
1:14:16
SPEAKER_01: There are probably other parallels I'm forgetting,
1:14:19
SPEAKER_01: but this all makes,
1:14:22
SPEAKER_01: I think,
1:14:22
a pretty strong point that zombies are a symbol that we're
1:14:26
using as a culture to
1:14:28
SPEAKER_01: understand our materialistic nihilism.
1:14:31
SPEAKER_01: And the solution you can also find in Christianity.
1:14:35
So that's like,
1:14:36
I'd say,
1:14:38
a mythological way of saying what I do in the book in general.
1:14:42
SPEAKER_01: I try to give a Christian remedy to the meaning crisis in the book,
1:14:45
SPEAKER_01: but you can see it in the myth of the zombie too,
1:14:49
SPEAKER_01: and how it's solved in the mass,
1:14:50
SPEAKER_01: I would say.
1:14:52
SPEAKER_01: The zombie eats...
1:14:55
SPEAKER_01: People, the zombie eats brains.
1:14:57
So the zombie would,
1:14:58
of course,
1:14:59
want to eat Jesus,
1:15:01
would want to eat the Eucharist.
1:15:03
SPEAKER_01: But the Eucharist will operate a huge flip on the zombie because,
1:15:07
SPEAKER_01: OK,
1:15:08
SPEAKER_01: Jesus accepts to be eaten by zombies.
1:15:10
SPEAKER_01: He accepts to be killed by us.
1:15:11
SPEAKER_01: But what happened when Jesus was killed by us,
1:15:13
SPEAKER_01: when we ate him,
1:15:14
SPEAKER_01: we can say,
1:15:15
SPEAKER_01: is that he brought us into his story.
1:15:18
SPEAKER_01: So we did, in a way, eat his flesh.
1:15:20
SPEAKER_01: But he also ate us and put us into his body by doing that.
1:15:26
SPEAKER_01: And there's all kinds of levels at which we can talk about this.
1:15:28
SPEAKER_01: Very practically,
1:15:30
SPEAKER_01: we can emphasize the fact that when we participate in liturgy,
1:15:34
SPEAKER_01: when we participate in the Eucharist,
1:15:35
SPEAKER_01: we're practicing exactly the skills we need to stop being a zombie.
1:15:40
SPEAKER_01: So if you practice seeing God in the Eucharist,
1:15:45
SPEAKER_01: it's going to be hard to stay materialist.
1:15:47
SPEAKER_01: Look at the molecules there.
1:15:48
SPEAKER_01: It's bread molecules.
1:15:52
So if you see a connection between that material level of bread
1:15:57
and God behind form
1:15:59
SPEAKER_01: and matter,
1:16:00
SPEAKER_01: then you are chipping away at your tendency to materialize things.
1:16:07
SPEAKER_01: If you see that
1:16:09
SPEAKER_01: God does give himself to others and calls us to do the same,
1:16:15
SPEAKER_01: then you don't want to devour or exploit your brothers and sisters.
1:16:19
SPEAKER_01: You want to do good for them.
1:16:21
SPEAKER_01: You want to sing with them rather than just ignore them or devour them.
1:16:30
you want to build a community rather than just roam around and
1:16:33
change whatever you're doing.
1:16:35
SPEAKER_01: So the liturgy makes you focus on exactly the right things.
1:16:38
And the sacrifice of Jesus in the Eucharist is like the kind of
1:16:44
thing that the
1:16:44
SPEAKER_01: zombie is just naturally pulled towards.
1:16:46
SPEAKER_01: So I find that really,
1:16:47
SPEAKER_01: really fascinating because it's like you have in the myth of the zombie a
1:16:54
SPEAKER_01: caricature of what happens in the liturgy,
1:16:56
SPEAKER_01: but you still open the door to the solution.
1:17:01
SPEAKER_02: I mean, man, it's so incredible.
1:17:03
I would have bet a million dollars that the Eucharist couldn't
1:17:07
be the solution to
1:17:08
SPEAKER_02: the meaning of Christ.
1:17:10
SPEAKER_02: I would have thought that that was impossible.
1:17:12
SPEAKER_02: And yet,
1:17:13
SPEAKER_02: think about everything that we've just talked about,
1:17:15
SPEAKER_02: like this loss of the form,
1:17:17
SPEAKER_02: the loss of the pattern,
1:17:19
SPEAKER_02: the falling to the material.
1:17:20
Thinking of the Eucharist as just bread is the most materialist
1:17:23
thing you can possibly do.
1:17:25
SPEAKER_02: Even thinking of it as a symbol is materialist.
1:17:28
SPEAKER_02: Because if you recognize that the form is what informs the matter,
1:17:33
SPEAKER_02: that literally the meaning makes it what it is,
1:17:36
SPEAKER_02: then in that moment when the priest says those words,
1:17:39
SPEAKER_02: it is the body of Christ.
1:17:40
SPEAKER_02: And that is like,
1:17:42
SPEAKER_02: you're,
1:17:42
SPEAKER_02: in a sense,
1:17:43
SPEAKER_02: you're accepting the reality beyond materialism in an inactive ritual.
1:17:50
SPEAKER_02: And that's the covenant that Christ offers to us to participate in his
1:17:57
SPEAKER_02: I mean, what would you call it?
1:17:59
SPEAKER_02: I don't know,
1:17:59
SPEAKER_02: life,
1:18:00
eternal life beyond this material zombification that happens
1:18:05
when we just live in
1:18:05
SPEAKER_02: the material.
1:18:06
SPEAKER_02: I mean, like, who could have predicted that?
1:18:09
SPEAKER_02: Like, I never, you know what I mean?
1:18:12
SPEAKER_01: I do remember hearing, I think it's the theologian Brett Sockold.
1:18:17
He wrote a good book on transubstantiation and he spoke with
1:18:20
Paul Vernickley a few times.
1:18:21
SPEAKER_01: And I heard him make a good point that
1:18:25
SPEAKER_01: Because he did his PhD on the Eucharist,
1:18:27
SPEAKER_01: and that's the book that he published with the title Transubstantiation.
1:18:32
And he said that it was very interesting for him to focus on
1:18:35
the Eucharist because
1:18:37
SPEAKER_01: through the centuries,
1:18:38
SPEAKER_01: the Eucharist did operate as a kind of...
1:18:42
SPEAKER_01: shield against the errors of the modern world.
1:18:45
Because while there's this zombification happening in society
1:18:50
with materialism
1:18:53
SPEAKER_01: ramming through society and people becoming nihilists,
1:18:58
SPEAKER_01: if someone could hold on to the Eucharist,
1:19:00
SPEAKER_01: then they would be preserved,
1:19:02
SPEAKER_01: really,
1:19:03
SPEAKER_01: from this materialism
1:19:06
SPEAKER_01: going through culture.
1:19:07
SPEAKER_01: So I'm not the first person making this kind of point.
1:19:11
But it's fascinating that concretely,
1:19:14
the way it works out in the zombie story is so neat.
1:19:18
I don't think that's something that people would have said,
1:19:21
I don't know,
1:19:22
two centuries ago.
1:19:23
SPEAKER_01: The zombie myth itself is fairly recent.
1:19:25
SPEAKER_01: But the idea that the Eucharist is a kind of shield, that's an old idea.
1:19:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:19:31
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
1:19:31
SPEAKER_02: And the,
1:19:32
SPEAKER_02: I've heard it said,
1:19:32
I think it was Max Weber made the argument that like the
1:19:35
Protestant work ethic was
1:19:37
SPEAKER_02: a kind of substitute for trans,
1:19:39
SPEAKER_02: for the mystery of transubstantiation.
1:19:41
SPEAKER_02: Like the,
1:19:42
our kind of worldliness are like need to achieve in this world
1:19:47
and just like to,
1:19:48
SPEAKER_02: to work,
1:19:49
SPEAKER_02: to feel,
1:19:49
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:19:50
SPEAKER_02: I don't know what you would say,
1:19:52
SPEAKER_02: uh,
1:19:52
SPEAKER_02: like worthy of it or something was a replacement for,
1:19:56
SPEAKER_02: for the actual trans participation,
1:19:58
SPEAKER_02: transubstantiation.
1:19:59
SPEAKER_02: And even that,
1:19:59
like not taking the Eucharist and mortal sin and needing to
1:20:02
confess and needing to
1:20:03
SPEAKER_02: be concerned with your,
1:20:05
SPEAKER_02: the quality of your soul is like,
1:20:07
it really lends credence to that shield argument that you're
1:20:09
making of like,
1:20:11
SPEAKER_02: if you could just do that and do it well,
1:20:13
SPEAKER_02: you'd be all right.
1:20:14
SPEAKER_02: That would be like, you know, you won't fall into these other pitfalls.
1:20:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:20:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:20:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:20:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:20:22
SPEAKER_01: It's interesting.
1:20:22
SPEAKER_01: I had not heard that from, from Weber.
1:20:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:20:27
SPEAKER_01: I'll need to think more about that.
1:20:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:20:30
SPEAKER_02: I mean, yeah, I don't know.
1:20:33
SPEAKER_02: I think we've pretty much covered everything, man.
1:20:35
That's all the way from like reductive materialism through
1:20:38
classical metaphysics to
1:20:40
SPEAKER_02: Christianity to the Eucharist saving us from the zombie apocalypse.
1:20:45
SPEAKER_02: Pretty good place to finish up, I think.
1:20:47
SPEAKER_02: So thank you so much, JP.
1:20:49
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, man.
1:20:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:20:51
SPEAKER_02: And I encourage people.
1:20:52
SPEAKER_02: I'm going to put the link in the bio.
1:20:54
SPEAKER_02: This book is the best introduction to these issues possible.
1:20:58
SPEAKER_02: Like I haven't read another book.
1:21:00
covers them all with such clarity and so i think i think it's
1:21:03
perfect for people
1:21:04
i'm going to be giving it to people for christmas and harassing
1:21:06
them with it so i'm
1:21:08
SPEAKER_01: a big fan thank you thank you