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Mathew David Segall - The Metaphysical Revolution that’s Redefining Science and Truth · Mahon McCann

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Matthew David Siegel,
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thank you for joining me again,
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sir,
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to discuss a very important topic.
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SPEAKER_02: I was kind of, I suppose, to give people an insight into
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to the framing of this i what i've observed on your channel
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really is that you're
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tracking this this change that's going on in the broader
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zeitgeist in some sense in
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science you obviously had conversations about in physics and in
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biology with
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michael levin that the scientific ontology is changing maybe
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the substance ontology
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is you know running out that there's questions about new things
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emerging and so
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SPEAKER_02: yeah i wanted to
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really get your opinion on this metaphysical revolution and
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maybe help kind of
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SPEAKER_02: catch people up to what's going on with it.
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SPEAKER_02: So first of all, do you think there is a metaphysical revolution?
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SPEAKER_02: Do you think this is actually happening?
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SPEAKER_02: And how do you think about it?
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, good to be back with you, Maun.
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SPEAKER_00: And yeah,
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SPEAKER_00: I mean,
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SPEAKER_00: on the one hand,
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I have to acknowledge there might be a little bit of selection
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bias because these
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scientists who are interested in pushing the envelope and
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changing the paradigm
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uh are looking around for philosophers who can help them work
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out you know the
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concepts that are at play here and so um because of my interest
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in whitehead i hear
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from these cutting-edge scientists who are looking for that new
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metaphysics and so
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it could just be that uh they're finding me and that what's
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going on in terms of
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SPEAKER_00: the broader scientific community uh
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SPEAKER_00: I'm not really sure,
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but I would like to think that there's a kind of metaphysical
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revolution underway,
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SPEAKER_00: both in physics and in biology.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean, obviously, I think physics underwent its own major revolution.
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Sometimes it's called the second scientific revolution about a
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century ago,
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SPEAKER_00: over a century ago,
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SPEAKER_00: both with quantum physics and relativity theory.
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SPEAKER_00: And the metaphysical background of that
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SPEAKER_00: has been difficult to work out,
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SPEAKER_00: and so I think there's more recognition of the open questions in physics,
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SPEAKER_00: and physicists tend to be more open to philosophy,
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SPEAKER_00: to theology,
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to the place of consciousness in the universe being somewhat
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more expansive than
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SPEAKER_00: just something going on inside the skull.
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Whereas biologists,
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for whatever reason,
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have been more metaphysically conservative,
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I think.
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SPEAKER_02: I would have thought it'd be the exact opposite.
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SPEAKER_02: That's so interesting in terms of, yeah.
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SPEAKER_00: You would think that.
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SPEAKER_00: But it seems to me that for much of the second half of the 20th century,
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biology was dominated by genetics and this reductionistic
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approach to evolution in
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SPEAKER_00: terms of tracking genetics.
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SPEAKER_00: certain genes through populations and whatnot.
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SPEAKER_00: And for whatever reason,
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they didn't get the memo that physics had moved on from the
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mechanistic ontology.
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And so biologists were still imagining that they needed to
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somehow figure out how
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SPEAKER_00: life could float atop a mechanistic universe,
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SPEAKER_00: mechanistic processes at the physical level.
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SPEAKER_00: And it turns out that mechanism doesn't work in physics.
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SPEAKER_00: biologists have been a little bit late to catch on to that.
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SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
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SPEAKER_00: more recently,
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SPEAKER_00: especially with thinkers like Michael Levin and other biologists that I,
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SPEAKER_00: I mean,
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SPEAKER_00: I talked regularly to Timothy Jackson about these things.
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SPEAKER_00: And yeah,
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SPEAKER_00: as you were suggesting before we jumped on the call,
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SPEAKER_00: I think formal and final causality is
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which have been ruled out of natural science since Descartes or
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Francis Bacon,
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they're beginning to come back into the picture here because of
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the stunning
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SPEAKER_00: capacity of cellular collectives to self-organize and to,
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SPEAKER_00: as Michael Levin is now comfortable saying,
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SPEAKER_00: to ingress form
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from a another plane of existence he calls platonic morphospace
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uh so there's a lot
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of interesting metaphysical questions now being opened up by
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empirical science
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which is really exciting for me as a philosopher yes and it's
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so interesting
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because the i would have thought like physics that almost that
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reductionist model
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of science was seems so physics driven in a sense of like okay
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we can just reduce
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SPEAKER_02: biology to chemistry reduce chemistry to physics and then
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we'll have the law-like rules governing the entire universe and
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human behavior,
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SPEAKER_02: and that'll be it.
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SPEAKER_02: And so it's interesting that you say that that's moved on in physics,
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SPEAKER_02: and now biology is kind of catching up to that,
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because it almost seemed mechanistically like you could never
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explain biology
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SPEAKER_02: entirely without ignoring goal-directed behavior and consciousness.
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An interesting example of this that I've been running into in
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my own research is in
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SPEAKER_02: the field of attention in cognitive science.
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Because basically when you study the psychology and cognitive
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science of attention,
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SPEAKER_02: it gets to this point where attention functions by what's relevant.
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SPEAKER_02: So attention should be given to whatever is relevant.
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SPEAKER_02: And then when you hit relevance,
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SPEAKER_02: it's like,
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SPEAKER_02: okay,
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SPEAKER_02: well,
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SPEAKER_02: that's scientifically,
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SPEAKER_02: that's what it is.
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SPEAKER_02: But then relevance is about value.
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SPEAKER_02: It's about importance.
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SPEAKER_02: It's about significance.
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SPEAKER_02: And it turns out attention is descriptively central in a person,
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SPEAKER_02: but then it's also this normative thing.
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SPEAKER_02: And so the end of the science pretty much runs into this value question.
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And so I think with biology and with teleological creatures
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that are capable of
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SPEAKER_02: goal-directed behavior,
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it's almost unavoidable that you're going to run into this
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teleological question.
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SPEAKER_02: Does that land okay for you?
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SPEAKER_02: I mean,
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SPEAKER_02: is that something you'd agree with,
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SPEAKER_02: that it was inevitable that they were going to get to this?
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean, on some level, if we go back to...
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SPEAKER_00: Immanuel Kant,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: in his third critique,
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SPEAKER_00: and he talks about the purposiveness of organisms for Kant,
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like life doesn't even show up to you unless you have an idea
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of purpose or goal directedness.
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SPEAKER_00: That's kind of what is, it is literally definitive.
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SPEAKER_00: It's what defines life.
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SPEAKER_00: where not only is it goal-directedness,
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SPEAKER_00: but in the sense that the organism is seeking food and avoiding prey,
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but the very morphology and metabolism and self-organizing
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dynamics that produce
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the body of an organism are very different from any kind of
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mechanical cause-effect
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SPEAKER_00: relationship that you might find in the inorganic world.
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SPEAKER_00: At least it's more prominent in the so-called inorganic world.
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And I think we could go into that more deeply that actually
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even without even
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SPEAKER_00: having to look at the level of biological organisms,
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I think there's evidence of formal and final causality just in
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the physical world.
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SPEAKER_00: But putting that aside for the moment,
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SPEAKER_00: yeah,
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I don't even think there really is a science of biology unless
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one is acknowledging biology.
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uh the let's say heightened goal directedness of of these
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systems and for much of
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you know the 20th century again because of this reactionistic
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approach um somehow
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we ended up with a biology that didn't even acknowledge the
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existence of organisms
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it was just all about you know genes and fitness landscapes and
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population uh
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SPEAKER_00: genetics and stuff and
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I think bringing the organism back into biology is a really
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important step that I
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SPEAKER_00: think is more widespread for sure.
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SPEAKER_00: It's good to see that happening.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
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SPEAKER_02: and on causality,
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SPEAKER_02: I mean,
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SPEAKER_02: because Kant,
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SPEAKER_02: well,
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SPEAKER_02: this is Verbecki's interpretation of Kant,
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but that he kind of concluded that biology was impossible
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because of Newtonian mechanics,
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SPEAKER_02: basically,
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SPEAKER_02: that you have this causality that's like,
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SPEAKER_02: you know,
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SPEAKER_02: billiard ball,
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SPEAKER_02: A hits B,
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SPEAKER_02: hits C.
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SPEAKER_02: But if we look at the example of a tree,
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SPEAKER_02: like a tree grows by...
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a feedback cycle you know the leaves spread out to take in more
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sunlight the more
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sunlight you know creates whatever photosynthesis and that
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helps the tree grow
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capture more sunlight so you almost need another kind of
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causality like what Alicia
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Uraro is bringing in with constraints and with self-organizing
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feedback cycles and
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these things to explain living things in the first place like
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it doesn't work with
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SPEAKER_02: the mechanistic model of Newton to explain how how living things grow
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SPEAKER_00: Right.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean, Kant thought that biology could only be descriptive.
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SPEAKER_00: It couldn't be explanatory in the way that physics could be explanatory.
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And so that means he developed these,
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he called them like regulative principles.
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SPEAKER_00: for the descriptive study of life.
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And that stems from the limitations that Kant places on our
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faculty of knowing that
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we can only know phenomena that are determined by these
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categories of understanding.
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SPEAKER_00: And he just didn't think we had the
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the categories or the intuitions to really rock what's going on
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in organisms
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because it's as if an idea is incarnate in the phenomenal world
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around us.
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SPEAKER_00: Ideas are only supposed to be active in the human mind for Kant,
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SPEAKER_00: but organisms suggest that there is some whole to part causality
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SPEAKER_00: that is operative outside the human mind in these other, you know.
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SPEAKER_00: And so that was mysterious to Kant.
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SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of the German idealists that followed in his wake,
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it developed a more organic cosmology and went beyond the
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epistemological limits
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SPEAKER_00: that Kant put in place.
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SPEAKER_00: They really exploited these intuitions that Kant had that he didn't
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SPEAKER_00: or wasn't able to fully accept, I would say.
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There's kind of a crack in the Kantian firewall in the critique
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of judgment,
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where the self-organizing capacity of organisms is like
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suggesting a totally
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SPEAKER_00: different understanding of knowledge and reality,
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SPEAKER_00: and Kant just wasn't willing to follow up those possibilities.
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SPEAKER_00: But Schelling, Goethe,
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SPEAKER_00: Hegel,
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they do follow that up and I think there's a totally different
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philosophy of nature
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that spills out of what Kant kind of unwittingly discovered but
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then backed away from.
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SPEAKER_00: Alicia Rojaro and Francisco Varela before her,
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many thinkers have recognized that Kant did in some sense see
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the way forward even
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SPEAKER_00: if he wasn't able to
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SPEAKER_00: to follow that path himself.
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SPEAKER_02: And I'm also thinking like,
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SPEAKER_02: there was some,
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SPEAKER_02: I had heard a few of your talks recently in terms of the Kantian,
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SPEAKER_02: like was his move in a sense,
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SPEAKER_02: did he,
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SPEAKER_02: he moved things forward,
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SPEAKER_02: but did he bring things back in a sense to almost a platonic model?
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SPEAKER_02: Like,
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SPEAKER_02: because understanding Kant that he's trying to fuse,
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SPEAKER_02: you know,
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empiricism and rationalism or trying to come up with this
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synthesis of it.
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SPEAKER_02: And then as you described, he ends up with this epistemological dualism
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where you have our unwalt and then the thing in and of itself
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that we don't get to.
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But he seems to put back in the driver's seat of epistemology
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our perception of the world,
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SPEAKER_02: in some sense,
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SPEAKER_02: as not being ultimate.
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SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
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I'm thinking empiricist science,
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sense perception is passive reality coming into the senses.
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Whereas,
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obviously,
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for Plato and the Platonic tradition,
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sense experience was...
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SPEAKER_02: you know, it was the world of appearances, essentially.
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SPEAKER_02: It almost seems like Kant does that,
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SPEAKER_02: but then,
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SPEAKER_02: unlike Plato,
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SPEAKER_02: doesn't have this ladder from appearances to reality.
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SPEAKER_02: Like, Kant just goes, it's only appearances.
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SPEAKER_02: Like, we can't actually get to the real thing itself beyond that.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that's fair.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean,
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SPEAKER_00: Kant is very platonic in a sense that,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: he's saying that our sensory experience is a sort of cave wall with,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: the mind projecting onto it.
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But the major difference between Kant and Plato is Plato did
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allow for this kind of
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SPEAKER_00: intellectual intuition,
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SPEAKER_00: this kind of participation in the forms or in the noumena,
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SPEAKER_00: the things themselves that Kant didn't allow.
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SPEAKER_00: In the Critique of Judgment as well,
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Kant talks about the possibility of intellectual intuition and
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what he calls
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SPEAKER_00: archetypal intellect,
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SPEAKER_00: which would be like a divine intellect.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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that unlike our intellect where there's a separation between
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the passive intuitive
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faculty and the active conceptual faculty for an archetypal
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intellect or divine
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intellect whatever that intellect thinks becomes real right and
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so there's a it's
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this is uh something that Kant didn't think human beings were
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capable of and Plato
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SPEAKER_00: thought at least philosophers were capable of uh
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SPEAKER_00: participating in the divine mind, in a sense.
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SPEAKER_00: Plato had a lot to say about epistemology,
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SPEAKER_00: but epistemology wasn't really first philosophy for Plato.
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SPEAKER_00: Plato was less concerned with how we know.
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He was concerned with how we know,
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but more so with what there is to be known.
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SPEAKER_00: And I think Kant got more caught in the first question, how do we know?
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And ended up kind of trapping himself in this perspective that
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we can't know
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SPEAKER_00: reality as it is in itself.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
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SPEAKER_02: which creates,
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SPEAKER_02: you know,
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SPEAKER_02: another dualism after the mind-body problem,
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SPEAKER_02: which he was trying to deal with.
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But I guess the reason I'm bringing Plato in as well is
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obviously because of the forms.
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SPEAKER_02: Like,
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SPEAKER_02: you know,
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SPEAKER_02: if you're bringing in formal and final causes again,
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SPEAKER_02: in some sense,
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SPEAKER_02: do you have to bring in the forms?
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SPEAKER_02: I know Michael Levin uses the language of the Platonic morphospace,
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SPEAKER_02: although he seems kind of ambivalent about that,
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SPEAKER_02: which is fair enough.
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SPEAKER_02: It seems like,
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SPEAKER_02: because for me,
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empirical science or mechanistic science wouldn't have any time
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for forms.
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SPEAKER_02: Like forms wouldn't be possible in that paradigm in some sense,
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SPEAKER_02: because forms are,
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SPEAKER_02: you know,
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SPEAKER_02: beyond the sensory.
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SPEAKER_02: They're not, I don't know, they're not exactly empirical.
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Maybe you could argue they're rational in a sense of like
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mathematical forms,
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SPEAKER_02: but they seem to be...
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SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02: Like, do the forms even fit into empirical science?
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SPEAKER_02: Like, do you see, you know, what do you think about that?
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SPEAKER_00: Only as generalizations, uh,
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SPEAKER_00: experience.
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I mean,
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you can't do science without generalizations,
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but mechanistic science is nominalistic.
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SPEAKER_00: And so those generalizations are not independently existing universals.
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They're just names,
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group names that we generalize from experiences of many particulars.
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SPEAKER_00: And so from the
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in the in a mechanistic ontology there are only particulars in
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any any holes or any
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sort of universal categories uh or yeah just just names that
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human beings come up
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with to group things together uh to group particulars together
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um and those names
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don't have any causal power right other than semantically and
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the way we like form
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our sentences and stuff they don't have any cause of power in
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nature they're just a
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SPEAKER_00: matter of our perspective as human beings
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SPEAKER_00: and how we categorize things.
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SPEAKER_00: So that's the nominalist view that's dominated science for a long time.
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SPEAKER_00: And what Mike is realizing,
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SPEAKER_00: which Kant was also realizing,
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SPEAKER_00: is that,
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SPEAKER_00: no,
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SPEAKER_00: there is some kind of a form active,
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some kind of a wholeness active in organisms that isn't just a
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matter of our
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SPEAKER_00: projection onto it.
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SPEAKER_00: That wholeness exists for itself.
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SPEAKER_00: And while we can come up with a mechanistic account of like,
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SPEAKER_00: as Newton did,
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like how an apple falling from the tree is obeying the same
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universal law of
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SPEAKER_00: gravitation as the planets orbiting around the sun.
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SPEAKER_00: But for Newton, hundreds of years ago, there was still this theistic
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SPEAKER_00: background to science such that that law of gravitation wasn't just,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
17:09
SPEAKER_00: that universal,
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that law wasn't just a name that Newton came up with and
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projected onto nature.
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SPEAKER_00: He's like, oh, no, nature is lawful.
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SPEAKER_00: Why is nature lawful?
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SPEAKER_00: Well, there must be some kind of a former
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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a creator of form behind nature that would explain these laws
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and this systematic
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SPEAKER_00: unity of nature as a whole,
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SPEAKER_00: such that it would be law abiding.
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SPEAKER_00: But then gradually mechanistic science continued to do its thing with the
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theological presuppositions underlying it kind of fading away
17:41
and being forgotten about,
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SPEAKER_00: which doesn't
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It starts to make the whole scientific enterprise seem rather
17:51
mysterious when you
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SPEAKER_00: remove that theological background,
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SPEAKER_00: because then what's the epistemological foundation?
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And Kant already is taking major steps in the direction of not
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requiring such an
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SPEAKER_00: explicit theological foundation,
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SPEAKER_00: but you still get it in his work as well.
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SPEAKER_00: It's just more on the side of moral philosophy.
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SPEAKER_00: But...
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SPEAKER_00: You know,
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the real question for biologists is not so much what is the law
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explaining how the
18:19
SPEAKER_00: apple falls from the tree,
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but what is the law explaining how the apple got up there in
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the first place?
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SPEAKER_00: Like,
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what is the formative and final teleological cause that gives
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rise to this tree and
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SPEAKER_00: this process,
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SPEAKER_00: this life cycle?
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SPEAKER_00: And that's a whole different ballgame.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
18:39
SPEAKER_02: I might pause on that as well,
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SPEAKER_02: because thinking about the formal causality,
18:42
SPEAKER_02: because like,
18:43
SPEAKER_02: OK,
18:43
SPEAKER_02: we've got the efficient causality,
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SPEAKER_02: billiard ball.
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SPEAKER_02: How did the forms cause?
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SPEAKER_02: Because for Plato, I mean, my reading of him anyway is really that like.
18:51
the example he gives in book 10 of the republic of a bed is
18:54
like the image of the
18:56
bed really is is the cause of the physical bed and the creation
19:01
of like that's it's
19:03
in some sense the physical bed can't exist the particular can't
19:05
exist without the
19:06
universal it's in a dependency relationship but then also in a
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kind of um i don't
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SPEAKER_02: know a downward causality i'm thinking about like
19:15
his analogy of the sun as the good illuminates the world of the
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forms that allows
19:20
the person leaving the cave to see them like it that's a kind
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of causality or an
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enabling constraint or something like that um that seems to be
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well i don't know
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hard to account for uh in in the current paradigm um does that
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are you okay with
19:40
SPEAKER_02: that description of formal causality would you change it like
19:43
SPEAKER_02: Do you have thoughts on that?
19:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
19:47
so it's kind of like what becomes epistemological in Kant is
19:51
cosmological in Plato,
19:53
SPEAKER_00: by which I mean Plato,
19:56
SPEAKER_00: like in his dialogue to Emmaus,
19:57
SPEAKER_00: describes the creation of the universe,
20:01
SPEAKER_00: or at least the ingression of form into a chaos,
20:06
SPEAKER_00: into something unformed.
20:09
and plato describes the demiurge and the realm of forms that
20:13
provide the demiurge
20:14
with the sort of prototype to mold the physical world as a as a
20:18
copy of of that
20:20
SPEAKER_00: prototype of that realm of forms whereas in in kant all that gets sort of
20:25
sequestered into the human mind and so rather than there being
20:29
a cosmic demiurge
20:30
SPEAKER_00: there's
20:31
uh you know the there's a reason and uh reason is like stamping
20:38
the material of the
20:39
of our sensory experience with these categories right and so um
20:45
there's so many
20:45
structural parallels between kant and plato it's just that cons
20:50
uh squeezed the
20:51
SPEAKER_00: whole platonic cosmos into the human mind in a sense
20:55
SPEAKER_02: Um, you see that really an active inference as well.
20:58
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to go down that tangent,
21:00
but that really is connected there in terms of like the priors
21:03
and beliefs structuring,
21:05
SPEAKER_02: like our experience of,
21:06
SPEAKER_02: uh,
21:07
SPEAKER_02: objects and that,
21:08
SPEAKER_02: you know,
21:09
SPEAKER_02: the brain and nervous system are in the body.
21:10
SPEAKER_02: And so
21:11
We're using these goals or drives or whatever you want to call
21:14
them to to guess at
21:16
SPEAKER_02: the causes of our sensory experience.
21:18
SPEAKER_02: It's very Kantian in that sense.
21:20
SPEAKER_02: But Plato isn't really for Plato.
21:22
SPEAKER_02: These things are real outside of our heads.
21:25
And I suppose there has to even for Kant,
21:27
I suppose there is reality behind it.
21:29
SPEAKER_02: He just doesn't think that we can access it in some sense.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
21:36
one way to understand this that I find handy is coming from
21:41
Anderson Weeks,
21:42
SPEAKER_00: who's a philosopher,
21:43
SPEAKER_00: Whiteheadian philosopher.
21:44
And he talks about the main difference between sort of ancient
21:48
Platonic philosophy
21:49
and modern sort of post-Cartesian philosophy has to do with the
21:54
subject-object relationship.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: And
21:56
for the for plato it wasn't um the subject that was uh shabby
22:03
or or limited it was
22:05
the objects the sensory objects were shabby and uh you know
22:10
always changing and
22:10
never the same and but in modern philosophy like after
22:13
descartes that's that shifts
22:15
and it's not the objects the sensory objects that are shabby
22:18
that present the
22:18
SPEAKER_00: problem for philosophy it's the shabby subject
22:23
And so it's all about developing rules for more epistemological
22:32
rigor to improve
22:35
SPEAKER_00: how the subject perceives the world.
22:37
And so it becomes more subject-focused in modern philosophy
22:40
from Descartes through
22:41
SPEAKER_00: to Kant and afterwards.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: So there's the shift from Plato's concern with shabby objects to...
22:49
Descartes and Kant's concern with shabby subjects it's like how
22:52
do we uh for Kant
22:54
it's like well we need to um we need better hygiene better
22:58
epistemological hygiene
22:59
in a sense um but yeah the thing with Plato is that you know
23:05
the forms take
23:05
preeminence and they do seem to have this downward causal
23:10
influence on the physical
23:12
SPEAKER_00: world um and there are other ways of
23:16
SPEAKER_00: construing formal causality that aren't just one directional like that.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: And that's Whitehead.
23:23
He's a Platonist,
23:25
but he's inverting Plato's emphasis on the forms as the
23:31
preeminent reality.
23:33
and instead recognizing that,
23:34
yes,
23:35
we do need to reference these eternal objects.
23:38
We need to check this nominalistic impulse to reduce everything
23:43
to particulars.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: But at the same time,
23:47
what really has value and the locus of value is in individual
23:52
occasions of experience,
23:53
SPEAKER_00: not in the universals,
23:55
SPEAKER_00: not in the forms.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: But those individual occasions of experience need to draw on the forms
24:01
in order to define themselves,
24:03
in order to have any definiteness or character at all,
24:08
right?
24:08
And so I think we can reverse the emphasis in terms of where
24:12
the value is realized
24:14
SPEAKER_00: and avoid this platonic overemphasis,
24:17
SPEAKER_00: I think,
24:18
SPEAKER_00: on another world.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: But we still need to make reference to forms, even so.
24:24
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
24:24
SPEAKER_02: And because your point as well about the
24:27
difference between ancient philosophy and modern philosophy is
24:30
something there
24:31
that's coming up is that the loss of the good really because
24:34
the good for Plato is
24:35
the guarantor of the forms like the forms aren't the realist
24:39
thing in terms of his
24:40
SPEAKER_02: schema the realist thing is the good and that's what is you know causally
24:45
significant or the first the unhypothetical first principle as
24:49
he calls it and in
24:50
modern philosophy the good is very absent like Descartes
24:54
pursuit of just like
24:55
SPEAKER_02: absolute certainty within his mind
24:57
would have seemed ridiculous really in a world with the
25:00
guarantee of the good,
25:01
which is that like there's a rational order of the cosmos and
25:04
our minds are capable
25:06
SPEAKER_02: of grasping it,
25:06
SPEAKER_02: you know,
25:07
SPEAKER_02: that,
25:07
intelligibility and reality are wedded logos and ontos um which
25:12
was plato's first
25:13
principle i think in in that argument um in the good and that
25:18
but that first
25:19
principle became lost in a sense of like that that doesn't that
25:23
doesn't cut the
25:23
cheese anymore uh we need like uh you know some sort of i don't
25:28
know account um do
25:29
SPEAKER_02: you think that's that's fair in a sense
25:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
25:33
SPEAKER_00: well,
25:34
SPEAKER_00: one of the,
25:35
SPEAKER_00: so Descartes really does emphasize divine power over,
25:40
SPEAKER_00: you know,
25:41
SPEAKER_00: goodness and truth and so on,
25:43
SPEAKER_00: because,
25:44
SPEAKER_00: you know,
25:44
SPEAKER_00: for Descartes,
25:45
SPEAKER_00: it's not that two plus two equals four.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: For some logical reason, that's how those forms relate.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: It's because God could change that if God wanted to.
25:55
SPEAKER_00: God could make two plus two equals seven because God's all powerful.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: Whereas for Plato, God was limited by the logical relations of the forms.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: So similarly, in the Euthyphro, it's like God is good because it's good.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: The good is not good because God says so.
26:12
SPEAKER_02: but that's totally that like divine command problem of like,
26:15
SPEAKER_02: is it good because he commands it or is it,
26:17
SPEAKER_02: does he command it because it's good.
26:19
SPEAKER_02: But for Plato, I think God is the good.
26:21
SPEAKER_02: Like it's, it's not like a separate thing.
26:25
SPEAKER_02: Right.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: Right.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: Whereas for Descartes,
26:29
SPEAKER_00: um,
26:29
SPEAKER_00: which is a consequence of nominalism actually,
26:31
SPEAKER_00: because nominalism began,
26:32
SPEAKER_00: uh,
26:35
the theological motivation to not restrict god's power because
26:38
if there are these
26:39
universals uh with with a definite character to them god is
26:45
limited by the logical
26:46
relations of those universals and these medieval christian
26:49
theologians were like we
26:50
SPEAKER_00: can't have god limited by ideas and you know so ideas must just be names
26:57
and eventually nominalism becomes the justification for
27:02
mechanism and reductionism.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, Descartes is
27:09
you know,
27:09
he'll still make reference to benevolent,
27:11
the benevolence of God.
27:12
I mean,
27:13
that becomes a whitehead jokes and process in reality that a
27:17
cart needs a,
27:20
an insurance.
27:20
He needs to take out an insurance policy with God in order to
27:23
establish his,
27:25
SPEAKER_00: the possibility of our knowledge of nature.
27:27
Like,
27:27
why is it that the representations in our mind line up with the
27:31
extended world?
27:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, because God is good and wouldn't deceive us at that level.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: So there's still reference to the divine goodness in Descartes,
27:40
SPEAKER_00: but ultimately divine power takes the cake.
27:46
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
27:46
And that's such an interesting slip,
27:48
like that,
27:48
that changes as time goes on.
27:50
SPEAKER_02: Cause obviously,
27:51
SPEAKER_02: yeah,
27:51
SPEAKER_02: like nominalism starts within Christianity in a,
27:55
SPEAKER_02: which is like,
27:56
I don't even understand how you could understand like a
27:58
classical theism with nominalism.
28:00
SPEAKER_02: Like it doesn't really,
28:02
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
28:02
SPEAKER_02: it seems so,
28:03
SPEAKER_02: yeah,
28:03
SPEAKER_02: so counterintuitive,
28:05
SPEAKER_02: but for,
28:06
SPEAKER_02: for Plato,
28:06
SPEAKER_02: that,
28:07
SPEAKER_02: that the good,
28:08
SPEAKER_02: I think that underlies truth and knowledge
28:11
SPEAKER_02: And is the foundation of all, like the unhypothetical assumption.
28:14
DC Schindler,
28:15
I don't know if you've read his book,
28:16
Plato's Critique of Impure Reason.
28:20
SPEAKER_01: No.
28:20
SPEAKER_02: Definitely, man, he's like unbelievably good.
28:24
But he makes that argument in a sense that because you can't
28:28
provide a reason for
28:29
reason or you can't provide a rational argument for rational
28:32
arguments because it's circular.
28:34
SPEAKER_02: Rationality and reason has to be under underlied by something else,
28:38
SPEAKER_02: which he argues is the good,
28:40
SPEAKER_02: this unhypothetical first principle,
28:44
which is that there is this connection between intelligibility
28:47
and reality.
28:48
SPEAKER_02: Otherwise, you
28:49
you know we can't know anything or we can't you know argue for
28:52
any truth and it
28:53
SPEAKER_02: becomes almost uh it's like you can't argue for it because every argument
28:58
presupposes it but if you argue against it you know if the
29:02
argument's true then
29:03
it's possible we know truth so it's true so it's like this
29:06
weird like chinese
29:07
finger trap that you can't get like around in some sense and i
29:12
think in the modern
29:13
SPEAKER_02: philosophy they broke that out of it and so we end up
29:16
SPEAKER_02: Like, what is the hypothetical?
29:18
SPEAKER_02: What is the first principle?
29:19
SPEAKER_02: What is the guarantor of,
29:20
SPEAKER_02: like,
29:21
SPEAKER_02: that our minds are such that we're capable of truth,
29:24
SPEAKER_02: that there's an order to reality?
29:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
29:29
we've somehow lost track of the fact that the scientific
29:34
interest in truth is
29:38
SPEAKER_00: itself the expression of value,
29:42
SPEAKER_00: right?
29:43
SPEAKER_00: And so if there isn't an ontological ground for value in the universe,
29:47
then it pulls the rug right out from under the scientific
29:51
process of inquiry
29:53
SPEAKER_00: because that makes our interest in truth totally arbitrary.
29:57
uh and you kind of see this happening with you know um donald
30:03
hoffman and and maybe
30:05
this is more the way that reality isn't isn't real yeah i i
30:10
think this it's a kind
30:12
of reductio like where if you take evolution seriously then and
30:17
and you don't have
30:18
SPEAKER_00: any kind of um
30:21
SPEAKER_00: ontological good or any sort of platonic sense of the forms of the good,
30:32
SPEAKER_00: the true and the beautiful,
30:33
SPEAKER_00: then all you take is evolution as this random searching process,
30:37
SPEAKER_00: then yeah,
30:38
SPEAKER_00: that undermines the scientific enterprise.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:40
um because we're just animals that have contingently evolved
30:44
for us to survive not
30:45
to know the truth um and so if if you take the the mechanistic
30:51
nominalistic picture
30:52
of the universe seriously you end up with donald hoffman's
30:55
perspective it's
30:56
SPEAKER_00: perfectly consistent from that point of view but
30:59
SPEAKER_00: If you push it a little bit further,
31:00
I feel like it's self undermining because how do you know that
31:03
all the models
31:04
SPEAKER_00: you're developing to prove that we don't know the truth are true?
31:09
SPEAKER_02: Totally.
31:10
SPEAKER_02: Ultimate skepticism, isn't it?
31:11
SPEAKER_02: Like it just undermines itself really.
31:13
SPEAKER_02: If ultimate skepticism is true,
31:15
it's false because like we can know about ultimate skepticism
31:18
and you end up in
31:19
SPEAKER_02: this weird,
31:20
SPEAKER_02: like,
31:20
SPEAKER_02: you know.
31:21
trying to but I think like Donald Hoffman is a perfect example
31:24
where like he should
31:25
be a Platonist like he's kind of got to the point where it's
31:28
like okay yeah sense
31:28
perception isn't like passive reality straight through the
31:32
senses and Plato would
31:33
be like yeah definitely that's why we need to go on this
31:36
journey like a virtue
31:37
SPEAKER_02: epistemology
31:38
Or like a transformative kind of journey to see degrees of
31:44
truth or to scale up
31:45
SPEAKER_02: degrees of truth in a sense.
31:47
Like Plato wouldn't stop there,
31:49
I think,
31:49
and just be like,
31:50
oh,
31:50
yeah,
31:50
it's,
31:50
you know,
31:51
we can't.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: And in Hoffman's defense,
31:54
SPEAKER_00: you know,
31:54
I know he has responses to these sorts of criticisms and his
31:59
view of reality
32:00
SPEAKER_00: ultimately being made of conscious agents.
32:03
uh at different levels i think is moving in the right direction
32:06
at least it's just
32:06
the way that totally yeah the videos the interviews he does the
32:10
way they get titled
32:11
and the sort of uh summary statements he'll make uh these
32:15
catchy free i i feel like
32:17
it just is playing into this global skepticism that's not
32:21
really helpful totally
32:23
yeah the thumbnails man are just reality is an illusion and
32:27
yeah they're not good
32:28
SPEAKER_02: um
32:29
SPEAKER_02: But yeah,
32:31
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
32:31
SPEAKER_02: getting to that point then,
32:32
SPEAKER_02: I suppose,
32:33
SPEAKER_02: of like the limits of perception,
32:37
because even that like the evolutionary argument against
32:41
naturalism is coming up,
32:42
SPEAKER_02: like Alvin Plantinga's thing,
32:45
SPEAKER_02: that yeah,
32:47
SPEAKER_02: it seems like if you get to that point,
32:50
SPEAKER_02: we need some account of reality,
32:52
SPEAKER_02: but we can't really argue for it rationally.
32:55
SPEAKER_02: So it's like, how do we
32:58
SPEAKER_02: how do we ground our pursuit of truth in that, in that sense?
33:03
I mean,
33:03
I was going to ask you to describe a little bit,
33:05
like,
33:06
you know,
33:06
true.
33:06
You wrote a great essay recently that I read truth is
33:09
correspondence and then truth
33:10
SPEAKER_02: is coherence and then moving to truth as participation.
33:15
SPEAKER_02: Um, so maybe that, that would be a good place to kind of discuss.
33:20
Cause I think really that we're talking about truth as
33:22
participation in a sense,
33:23
SPEAKER_02: what it's participating in,
33:25
SPEAKER_02: um,
33:27
I don't know if you'd agree with it as truth is Alethea or
33:29
truth is disclosure.
33:31
SPEAKER_02: Like,
33:31
SPEAKER_02: it seems to be truth as,
33:34
SPEAKER_02: you know,
33:34
SPEAKER_02: approaching what's real rather than just correspondence.
33:38
SPEAKER_02: But maybe, yeah, could we say a little bit about that?
33:43
SPEAKER_02: And like, yeah, does it connect to what we've been discussing?
33:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
33:48
SPEAKER_00: Plato's highest form of knowing is intuition,
33:52
SPEAKER_00: not Kant's sense of intuition,
33:55
SPEAKER_00: but more like intellectual intuition,
33:56
SPEAKER_00: noesis,
33:57
SPEAKER_00: which is participation.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: Instead of there being a subject object differentiation,
34:04
there's a identification of the knower and the known at that
34:08
highest level.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: In our contemporary scientific context,
34:17
SPEAKER_00: there's this problem or principle,
34:22
SPEAKER_00: the anthropic principle,
34:23
SPEAKER_00: right?
34:24
SPEAKER_00: There are different ways of rendering it,
34:26
but we could say we could only come to know that universe that
34:30
was capable of
34:31
SPEAKER_00: producing us.
34:33
And so when we are mystified by the fine-tuning of the
34:36
fundamental constants and
34:37
SPEAKER_00: all of that,
34:38
SPEAKER_00: it's just...
34:39
SPEAKER_00: Some readings of the anthropic principle would say,
34:41
SPEAKER_00: well,
34:41
SPEAKER_00: that's an artifact of this coincidence that,
34:47
SPEAKER_00: you know,
34:48
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
34:48
SPEAKER_00: we exist in this universe that created us.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: And so, of course, it's going to seem fine-tuned to create us.
34:53
And so there's this tension between being overly
34:58
anthropomorphic and being overly
35:01
SPEAKER_00: anthropocentric on the other hand.
35:03
And I think truth as participation is an attempt to thread the
35:06
needle there where
35:08
SPEAKER_00: we recognize that,
35:10
SPEAKER_00: well,
35:11
SPEAKER_00: we do live in an anthropic universe.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: This universe created us.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: And it's clear from cognitive science,
35:19
SPEAKER_00: of course,
35:19
SPEAKER_00: we have the tendency to project our own humanness onto the world.
35:26
We want to see faces everywhere and agency everywhere because
35:31
we're sort of
35:31
SPEAKER_00: hardwired to do that.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: But on the other hand,
35:35
SPEAKER_00: if we go to the opposite extreme and say,
35:38
SPEAKER_00: well,
35:39
SPEAKER_00: all mind,
35:40
SPEAKER_00: all agency,
35:42
SPEAKER_00: all consciousness is just unique to the human being.
35:45
It only exists within human skulls and the rest of the universe
35:49
is totally lacking
35:52
SPEAKER_00: anything like that.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: Well, that kind of anthropocentrism is also problematic.
35:57
And so the participatory approach to truth is to say,
36:02
hey,
36:04
human beings are not exceptions.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: We are exemplifications of these deeper exceptions.
36:10
cosmological principles and when we talk about truth uh yeah
36:16
it's more of an event
36:18
uh alethea works well here it's a it's a it's an event of
36:22
disclosure and yes we
36:24
live in an evolutionary universe such that you know the
36:27
universe is never the same
36:28
SPEAKER_00: twice and so what was true yesterday might not be true tomorrow
36:35
SPEAKER_00: Truth as an event means we are ourselves co-creators of the truth.
36:43
SPEAKER_00: There are elements of correspondence and elements of coherence,
36:48
but I think this view of participation goes further because it
36:52
breaks us out of
36:53
SPEAKER_00: having to decide,
36:54
SPEAKER_00: oh,
36:55
is truth just lining up my inner concepts with something that's
36:59
external and
37:00
SPEAKER_00: separate from me?
37:01
Or is truth just a matter of getting my concepts to fit
37:04
together in a coherent way?
37:06
SPEAKER_00: Well,
37:06
SPEAKER_00: those are elements of what's required for truth,
37:08
but there's a deeper synergy and identification of nowhere
37:12
unknown that the
37:15
SPEAKER_00: participatory form of truth acknowledges.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: And on the one hand, there's something here for everybody.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: Like there is a correspondence element, there's a coherence element.
37:26
And so partisans of those theories of truth should be able to
37:29
come part of the way here.
37:32
But there's also a big ask because it requires acknowledging
37:38
that truth is not just
37:40
SPEAKER_00: out there waiting for us to find it,
37:43
SPEAKER_00: nor is it just something that we construct internally.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: It really does ask something of us.
37:51
SPEAKER_00: It asks us to
37:55
to take a risk in a way of opening ourselves to something that
38:00
will change us.
38:03
And so it's not just truth that could be objectified out there
38:09
in an empirical way
38:10
SPEAKER_00: or objectified logically.
38:13
SPEAKER_00: It's something that changes us as persons, right?
38:18
SPEAKER_00: And so it becomes,
38:22
SPEAKER_00: I think,
38:23
a relationship to truth as something that has a more religious
38:28
or spiritual quality
38:29
SPEAKER_00: to it.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: It's of value.
38:34
that yeah requires something of us as as knowers right whereas
38:39
i think science in
38:40
the modern period uh has thought of truth as just value neutral
38:45
and uh like you
38:48
know like the facts don't care about your feelings like that
38:50
type of attitude well
38:52
it could be that we have to comport ourselves appropriately to
38:54
the truth and that
38:56
there is a sort of yeah emotional and affective dimension to
39:00
that comportment right
39:01
SPEAKER_00: it's not just cognitive so
39:04
SPEAKER_02: Yes,
39:04
SPEAKER_02: and that,
39:05
SPEAKER_02: like,
39:05
SPEAKER_02: because with science,
39:06
SPEAKER_02: obviously,
39:07
SPEAKER_02: there's a method that can be applied impersonally by anybody.
39:10
SPEAKER_02: It's actually probably better if you're not involved in it, in a sense.
39:14
SPEAKER_02: Like, the more you're not involved in it, the more true it can be.
39:16
SPEAKER_02: Like, if there's any kind of human interference, like, that's it.
39:20
SPEAKER_02: It's not true.
39:21
SPEAKER_02: You know, that makes sense for the scientific method.
39:25
SPEAKER_02: But in truth is participation.
39:26
SPEAKER_02: It seems more like a transformation.
39:28
SPEAKER_02: It's more like a...
39:30
thing you have to actually participate in uh in order to have
39:34
this insight into
39:35
what's real or to have a kind of transform which is very
39:39
platonic in a sense i
39:40
think plato was really if you look at the cave anyway that's
39:43
his argument of like
39:44
ascending these levels of being like true philosophy is the
39:47
move from appearance to
39:49
SPEAKER_02: reality um of almost getting through levels of
39:54
And then I swear his language is beholding the good or
39:57
beholding what's most real.
39:58
SPEAKER_02: Like he doesn't think that we have like a concept of it or that we,
40:02
SPEAKER_02: you know,
40:02
SPEAKER_02: capture it in some theory or something like that.
40:06
SPEAKER_02: Like,
40:06
SPEAKER_02: I think for him,
40:07
SPEAKER_02: it's really an experience,
40:08
SPEAKER_02: almost like the beatific vision in a sense in Christianity,
40:11
SPEAKER_02: like that where these kind of experiences are.
40:15
SPEAKER_02: are where we're connect to what's most real.
40:18
SPEAKER_02: Um,
40:18
SPEAKER_02: and so,
40:19
SPEAKER_02: you know,
40:19
SPEAKER_02: that's the job of truth seeking in some senses to get to that,
40:24
SPEAKER_02: that kind of insight,
40:25
SPEAKER_02: which is very personal and very,
40:27
SPEAKER_02: you know.
40:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
40:29
And there's a place for,
40:31
you know,
40:32
science as the correct representation of factual information.
40:36
But I think truth in this higher capital T sense is more as in
40:41
the platonic sense
40:42
SPEAKER_00: that you're speaking to.
40:43
SPEAKER_00: It's more like the virtuous transformation of the knower, right?
40:51
It's not just correct representation of information,
40:53
but it's requiring us to transform.
40:56
And it brings this question of the virtue of the knower to the forefront.
41:05
SPEAKER_00: You see this in the post-Kantian thinkers like Goethe,
41:10
where his way of relating empathically to the growth of plants
41:16
or any natural
41:17
SPEAKER_00: phenomenon that he was studying,
41:19
SPEAKER_00: there was a certain...
41:22
SPEAKER_00: moral disposition that one had to take to actually lovingly relate to the
41:27
phenomenon which revealed aspects of that phenomenon that
41:31
wouldn't otherwise be
41:32
apparent to us if we objectified it right and so all of a
41:35
sudden that subject
41:36
object boundary and that sense that facts and values are
41:39
separate it really breaks
41:40
down um when again we it's and this is part of recognizing the
41:45
human being as
41:46
ourselves i mean you could put it different ways as ourselves a
41:49
natural phenomenon
41:50
SPEAKER_00: We are an example of what we are studying, right?
41:54
SPEAKER_00: And that means all of our aims,
41:57
SPEAKER_00: our values,
41:59
SPEAKER_00: our consciousness is an exemplification of what nature also is doing,
42:05
SPEAKER_00: right?
42:06
SPEAKER_00: And granting nature the sort of interiority that we have,
42:11
SPEAKER_00: I think is a prerequisite for this deeper kind of participation,
42:14
SPEAKER_00: right?
42:16
SPEAKER_02: Oh man, there's so much stuff coming up there.
42:18
SPEAKER_02: I was reading recently, I don't know if you know James Filler.
42:22
SPEAKER_02: Only through John Verveke's dialogues with him.
42:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I need to read these guys.
42:31
His substance ontology,
42:33
or his critique,
42:33
he's trying to move to a relational ontology.
42:35
SPEAKER_02: I think it fits very well with the process.
42:38
and stuff as well but he argues that plato has a virtue
42:41
epistemology in a sense
42:42
that we know we know the real by becoming virtuous and i think
42:47
with the ancient the
42:48
ancient worldview they had this premise that you know we were a
42:51
microcosm of the
42:52
macrocosm in a sense so by it almost like um becoming more i
42:59
don't know ordered or
43:01
something i don't know if that's the right word or more true
43:03
more good more
43:03
SPEAKER_02: beautiful or something like that we became
43:06
like the the reality and that's you know by becoming um john
43:11
has that conformity
43:12
SPEAKER_02: theory of knowing which is like uh
43:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
43:16
SPEAKER_02: that you,
43:17
SPEAKER_02: I suppose,
43:18
indwell or become like the thing in order to understand it
43:22
rather than just being
43:23
SPEAKER_02: able to represent it.
43:25
SPEAKER_02: But that seems like something we've really lost.
43:27
And in active inference,
43:29
I'd be interested in getting your opinion on this.
43:31
Degenerative modeling,
43:33
I think,
43:33
brings back the idea of microcosms and macrocosms.
43:37
SPEAKER_02: Because to be a good model of the environment is to be...
43:43
essentially to have an image of the environment or a model of
43:46
the environment.
43:47
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, the biggest environment is, you know, reality.
43:51
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you think that,
43:53
SPEAKER_02: sorry,
43:53
SPEAKER_02: I'm throwing a lot at you here,
43:54
SPEAKER_02: but that train of thought of,
43:56
SPEAKER_02: you know,
43:57
SPEAKER_02: microcosm,
43:58
SPEAKER_02: macrocosm,
43:59
SPEAKER_02: and then that there's a journey.
44:02
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
44:03
SPEAKER_00: I think there's a lot of promise in free energy principle,
44:11
SPEAKER_00: active inference,
44:12
SPEAKER_00: predictive processing,
44:13
because there's clearly a dimension of our cognition that is
44:20
about energy.
44:22
SPEAKER_00: anticipation.
44:25
SPEAKER_00: And I think,
44:27
SPEAKER_00: from my point of view as a process philosopher,
44:30
SPEAKER_00: it's just important to balance the two poles of experience.
44:36
SPEAKER_00: There's anticipation, but there's also confirmation to the past.
44:40
And every moment of experience in the life history of an
44:44
organism is about
44:45
SPEAKER_00: balancing confirmation to the past and anticipation of the future.
44:51
SPEAKER_00: And in some sense,
44:52
that's about finding the proper balance between efficient
44:56
causality and final causality.
44:59
SPEAKER_00: Both are real.
45:00
So the point that we've been talking about how science is
45:04
taking on board the
45:05
SPEAKER_00: reality of final causes again,
45:07
SPEAKER_00: the point's not to jettison efficient causes as a result of that and
45:11
SPEAKER_00: try to explain everything as a result of teleology.
45:14
SPEAKER_00: There is a push from behind and there is a lure from up ahead.
45:18
SPEAKER_00: And I think,
45:20
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
45:22
while the ancient world and the scholastic philosophers were
45:26
maybe overemphasizing
45:27
SPEAKER_00: final causality,
45:29
SPEAKER_00: downplaying efficient causality,
45:31
mechanistic scientific revolution for the last few hundred
45:34
years overemphasized
45:35
SPEAKER_00: efficient causality and didn't have much room for final,
45:38
SPEAKER_00: we want the proper balance.
45:40
SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, in terms of, you know, microcosm, macrocosm, that
45:46
SPEAKER_00: Hermetic principle,
45:49
SPEAKER_00: I think,
45:49
is so important because it seems to be true in terms of certain
45:58
holographic
45:59
interpretations of what's going on in quantum physics and the
46:05
sense in which
46:08
SPEAKER_00: information is available in the cosmos.
46:17
every point in the universe is a reflection of every other
46:23
point in the universe.
46:26
SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, this principle seems to apply
46:31
physically but also um understanding the deeper meaning of the
46:37
human being um again
46:39
rather than seeing us as some special anomaly uh that like does
46:44
it fit into our
46:45
picture of the rest of the universe uh i i really do think we
46:49
need to recover this
46:50
ancient hermetic sense uh of the human being um as a mirror of
46:57
the cosmos as the uh
47:00
the the universe um in microcosmic form because then again we
47:07
can look to uh the
47:09
study of our own nature as a source of um insight into the rest
47:15
of nature uh the
47:17
human being as exemplar of uh deeper cosmic principles rather
47:22
than as exception an
47:23
SPEAKER_00: exception to them um
47:26
SPEAKER_00: And there are naive and silly ways of recuperating this principle,
47:32
but I think there are also really rigorous ways of doing it
47:36
that allow us to bring
47:41
epistemology back into contact with reality so that we don't
47:47
end up where some
47:49
SPEAKER_00: accounts of the predictive processing for energy principle stuff,
47:53
SPEAKER_00: where they go in this skeptical direction,
47:56
SPEAKER_00: where all of our conscious experience is just a hallucination.
47:59
I think we need to check that tendency of thought by grounding
48:06
ourselves in this
48:08
SPEAKER_00: deeper understanding of the microcosm macrocosm relationship and that
48:14
SPEAKER_00: and,
48:15
SPEAKER_00: and,
48:15
SPEAKER_00: and you can get there very easily through active inference,
48:17
SPEAKER_00: because as far as I can tell in,
48:20
SPEAKER_00: in terms of the,
48:21
SPEAKER_00: the formalism of the model,
48:24
SPEAKER_00: um,
48:24
SPEAKER_00: you can just as easily say that just as you could say,
48:27
SPEAKER_00: organisms are modeling the environment.
48:30
You could say that,
48:31
uh,
48:33
an organism is the environment's model of itself,
48:37
right?
48:37
SPEAKER_00: So you can invert organism and environment, uh, and who's modeling you.
48:41
SPEAKER_00: Um,
48:44
quite easily here and so there's that microcosm macrocosm
48:46
relationship right there
48:49
yeah the other the other way around um yeah totally i mean i i
48:54
think it's it's kind
48:54
of coming when you bring in the generative modeling in some way
48:57
it's hard to avoid
48:58
really because it brings in this level of like building an
49:02
image of the environment
49:03
SPEAKER_02: that you're um
49:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't know.
49:07
SPEAKER_02: It's the adaptation of the environment in a kind of evolutionary way,
49:10
SPEAKER_02: but also an internalization of the environment that can be beneficial.
49:17
And like in a human environment,
49:19
obviously,
49:19
our environments are mostly cultural in creation.
49:22
So we're internalizing the norms of social functioning and
49:27
these things like that
49:28
SPEAKER_02: that are becoming part of our generative modeling.
49:31
SPEAKER_02: And then obviously, we're changing that as well and creating it.
49:34
SPEAKER_02: So we're co-creating
49:36
in both ways but yeah I mean I don't want to push that too far
49:41
but you mentioned
49:44
something about the proper balance of efficient and final calls
49:48
this is something I
49:49
SPEAKER_02: was wrestling with recently did a podcast on Plato's Timaeus with Dr.
49:53
SPEAKER_02: Peter Larson he's a
49:55
SPEAKER_02: An expert in ancient philosophy who works at DCU with me in Dublin.
50:01
SPEAKER_02: And he had singled out this part of the Timaeus,
50:04
SPEAKER_02: I think it's 68 to 69,
50:07
SPEAKER_02: of Plato's identification of divine causes and necessary causes.
50:12
SPEAKER_02: His two kinds of causality.
50:15
SPEAKER_02: and that there needs to be,
50:18
he actually says that we ought to look at the necessary causes
50:21
in order to
50:22
SPEAKER_02: understand the divine ones,
50:24
SPEAKER_02: which was something we were chewing on,
50:25
SPEAKER_02: which is really weird.
50:26
SPEAKER_02: Um,
50:28
that he seems to put like natural service or natural science in
50:31
the service of
50:33
SPEAKER_02: understanding the divine forms or understanding the good.
50:36
SPEAKER_02: Like there's something there,
50:38
SPEAKER_02: but I mean,
50:39
how do you see the relationship between the efficient causes
50:41
and the final causes,
50:43
SPEAKER_01: you know,
50:43
SPEAKER_02: um,
50:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
50:45
SPEAKER_00: Great question.
50:46
SPEAKER_00: And that's funny.
50:47
SPEAKER_00: You were just talking about the Timaeus.
50:48
SPEAKER_00: I just did a video on the Timaeus as well.
50:51
SPEAKER_00: I know.
50:52
SPEAKER_02: I started watching it actually.
50:53
SPEAKER_02: It was the same week, interestingly.
50:54
SPEAKER_02: So it's quite synchronous.
50:56
SPEAKER_00: Nice.
50:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
50:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
50:59
I mean,
50:59
one of the things that's interesting is that our English
51:03
translation
51:05
SPEAKER_00: of, of the Greek, I think is this as necessity.
51:10
SPEAKER_00: It's almost,
51:11
SPEAKER_00: um,
51:12
SPEAKER_00: uh,
51:13
an inversion of the meaning of that term in Greek in the sense
51:17
that I think Plato
51:18
SPEAKER_00: meant something more like chance,
51:21
SPEAKER_00: uh,
51:21
SPEAKER_00: the unruly,
51:22
SPEAKER_00: the wild,
51:23
SPEAKER_00: that which can't be subsumed by rationality and form.
51:28
Um,
51:29
whereas when we say necessity nowadays,
51:30
it,
51:32
it seems more like mechanism,
51:33
uh,
51:34
SPEAKER_00: it seems more like, uh, yeah, deterministic causality.
51:38
SPEAKER_00: And I think for Plato, um, it had a different, different connotation.
51:43
SPEAKER_00: Um, it was associated with the quora and the receptacle, right?
51:48
SPEAKER_00: This, um, this very dark and mysterious, uh,
51:55
SPEAKER_00: what to call it uh matrix um that uh is almost something like the form of
52:00
formlessness you might say um and so whoa that's like a zen
52:06
colon yeah yeah um and
52:12
SPEAKER_00: so i don't i guess you could relate um
52:18
necessity to efficient causality as long as you don't reduce
52:21
efficient causality to
52:23
mechanistic causality well that might be it because that was
52:25
another thing we
52:26
thought was the problem of reading aristotle's causes into
52:29
plato's ones in the
52:30
timaeus because i was kind of doing that reflexively and then
52:33
peter was like there
52:35
might not be the same thing and he was like he thinks plato's
52:38
causality would be
52:40
that they're all kind of efficient causes in in the way that
52:43
aristotle means them
52:44
SPEAKER_02: but obviously like with formal causes i don't
52:46
SPEAKER_02: that the forms exert some kind of forceful cause almost on the matter.
52:53
SPEAKER_02: But I guess the difficulty of reading in Aristotle's ones to those,
52:56
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
52:56
SPEAKER_02: Plato could mean something entirely different.
53:02
Sometimes the form of formlessness or the receptacle in the
53:05
Timaeus can be thought
53:08
SPEAKER_00: of as equivalent to
53:10
what aristotle will later call hule or matter but i think that
53:15
misses something
53:17
that's still active in plato's account of the receptacle like
53:20
literally the
53:21
receptacle has uh some activity to it it's not simply passive
53:27
uh uh matter as it is
53:29
SPEAKER_00: in aristotle it's almost like aristotle domesticates
53:34
plato's receptacle and it just becomes this this substratum
53:37
awaiting form whereas
53:39
in plato's timaeus the receptacle is uh has this vibratory
53:44
quality to it it's
53:45
already like winnowing the the four elements to order them in a
53:49
certain way before
53:50
the demiurge gets involved and so there's something really
53:53
weird going on in
53:55
SPEAKER_00: plato's account of
53:57
SPEAKER_00: if we want to call it materiality,
53:59
SPEAKER_00: that makes materiality still kind of active or animate in Plato.
54:04
SPEAKER_00: Whereas in Aristotle, matter loses that.
54:07
SPEAKER_00: It's just pure passivity.
54:10
SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
54:11
I think Plato did seem to conceive of form nonetheless as
54:17
something that the divine
54:18
SPEAKER_00: mind stamps onto this receptacle,
54:22
despite this other weirdness going on with the receptacle
54:27
having its own agency or
54:28
SPEAKER_00: activity of some kind.
54:30
SPEAKER_00: you still,
54:30
SPEAKER_00: and there are,
54:31
SPEAKER_00: you know,
54:31
SPEAKER_00: in the Timaeus,
54:32
SPEAKER_00: I should say,
54:32
SPEAKER_00: there are multiple accounts of the process of creation.
54:36
And I think the first account is much more what we usually
54:40
associate with Platonism,
54:41
SPEAKER_00: where,
54:42
SPEAKER_00: you know,
54:42
SPEAKER_00: the divine mind is like stamping the forms onto matter.
54:45
SPEAKER_00: But it's in the second attempt,
54:47
SPEAKER_00: you know,
54:48
SPEAKER_00: Timaeus,
54:48
SPEAKER_00: the astronomer starts over and he's like,
54:50
SPEAKER_00: oh,
54:50
SPEAKER_00: let me try that again and give this likely story.
54:52
SPEAKER_00: And in that second account,
54:55
then the receptacle has more of his agency and he's working
54:58
with the difficulty of necessity.
55:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
55:01
SPEAKER_00: in some ways,
55:02
SPEAKER_00: the whole dialogue is about the unruliness of that which resists reason,
55:09
SPEAKER_00: of that which resists intellectual explanation.
55:14
SPEAKER_00: And it's such a brilliant dialogue.
55:18
You get this in the first line where Socrates counts like one,
55:23
two,
55:23
three,
55:23
where's the fourth?
55:26
SPEAKER_00: And then I forget the other interlocutors like, oh, he's sick.
55:31
SPEAKER_00: He got ill.
55:32
SPEAKER_00: What is illness?
55:35
SPEAKER_00: The fourth doesn't show up because of illness.
55:38
SPEAKER_00: He wouldn't willingly have missed this conversation.
55:41
SPEAKER_00: But illness,
55:42
SPEAKER_00: necessity,
55:44
SPEAKER_00: in other words,
55:44
that aspect of materiality that we can't rationally control
55:48
prevented him from
55:49
SPEAKER_00: being there.
55:50
And so already you get the sense for what Plato is struggling
55:52
with in this dialogue.
55:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and Timaeus is a sequel to The Republic.
56:00
SPEAKER_02: In a sense,
56:01
SPEAKER_02: it's like the second part of The Republic,
56:03
SPEAKER_02: like after The Republic gives this account of like,
56:06
SPEAKER_02: you know, politics and then epistemology and ontology.
56:08
And then he goes to the cosmology because for some reason I'm
56:11
thinking at the end,
56:12
SPEAKER_02: obviously,
56:13
SPEAKER_02: of the Republic of the Myth of Ur and the Spindle of Necessity.
56:17
SPEAKER_02: It's like crazy image,
56:18
SPEAKER_02: man,
56:19
SPEAKER_02: of this like,
56:20
SPEAKER_02: you know,
56:20
ginormous kind of hyper object or something that's like
56:25
spinning together all of
56:26
SPEAKER_02: the
56:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
56:27
SPEAKER_02: it's almost like an ordering structure,
56:30
but also something to do with fate and determinism and this
56:34
strange kind of idea.
56:36
SPEAKER_02: Do you think that's connected to what he's talking about with necessity?
56:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, it's certainly related to fate.
56:42
SPEAKER_00: But again,
56:43
I think there's a connection that's easy for us to lose between
56:47
fate and chance,
56:50
SPEAKER_00: like drawing lots.
56:54
SPEAKER_00: You never know what fate has in store for you, so it can seem kind of
57:00
SPEAKER_00: But it's different from our,
57:01
SPEAKER_00: I think,
57:02
SPEAKER_00: conception in the modern period of deterministic mechanism or something.
57:09
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I think the proper approach here is...
57:14
SPEAKER_00: from my Whiteheadian point of view,
57:15
SPEAKER_00: is not to think of form as the influence of form on evolution,
57:24
SPEAKER_00: on development,
57:27
SPEAKER_00: as a kind of another efficient cause.
57:30
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't want to go that direction.
57:33
SPEAKER_00: I would want to understand form as formal causality as a kind of lure
57:39
SPEAKER_00: it doesn't force anything to occur.
57:42
It's more like in each moment of our experience,
57:48
certain possibilities are available to us.
57:52
SPEAKER_00: And depending on our past and our present situation,
57:59
SPEAKER_00: we will reach for a different set of adjacent possibilities to realize.
58:04
SPEAKER_00: And we can't reduce those adjacent possibilities to
58:10
SPEAKER_00: to matter or to something in our past that's like,
58:12
SPEAKER_00: there really are these forums,
58:13
SPEAKER_00: but they're not,
58:15
SPEAKER_00: uh,
58:16
SPEAKER_00: themselves,
58:16
SPEAKER_00: the agents that are reaching in to stamp us,
58:19
SPEAKER_00: uh,
58:20
SPEAKER_00: to take on their shapes.
58:21
SPEAKER_00: We are reaching towards them, I would say.
58:23
SPEAKER_00: Um,
58:24
SPEAKER_00: and so the agency is with the organism and this is a,
58:29
SPEAKER_00: this is a,
58:29
SPEAKER_00: you know,
58:30
a conversation I've been having with Michael Levin because he
58:34
seems more prone to
58:34
SPEAKER_00: want to give agency to the forums themselves.
58:37
SPEAKER_00: That they're reaching in, in some sense.
58:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
58:42
SPEAKER_00: And maybe,
58:44
but Whitehead's view is more to give the agency to actualities
58:50
that are making the
58:50
SPEAKER_00: decisions as to which forms to draw upon moment by moment.
58:55
But the forms still have to have a kind of ontological
59:00
definiteness in their own right.
59:02
SPEAKER_00: And so Whitehead still maintains the tension between
59:07
actuality and possibility but he doesn't want possibility to
59:10
have agency that that
59:12
seems to him yeah is that like giving counterfactuals an agency
59:16
in some way like
59:17
you'd have like like if i have a goal to be a football player
59:21
and like the being
59:22
the dream of being a football player constrains my behavior now
59:26
so it in that sense
59:27
SPEAKER_02: it influences what i do
59:29
but it doesn't call like efficient causality me in a sense it
59:33
just limits the you
59:35
can still call it a cause as it is for sure but but it's not
59:40
the agent yeah no but
59:43
then again is there say is there a relationship between the
59:46
agent and the dream
59:47
like why like being a football player over being something else
59:51
like i don't know a
59:52
SPEAKER_02: scuba diver or something like is there
59:54
between that goal that ideal vision of the future state that
59:58
constrains the
59:59
behavior now you know has something particular to the agent in
1:00:06
a way that makes it
1:00:07
motivational but then there's also a universal element in that
1:00:10
it's it's a it's a
1:00:12
good maybe everybody wouldn't consider it good but i'm kind of
1:00:16
trying to gesture
1:00:16
SPEAKER_02: out is there a two-way thing there a little bit um
1:00:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:00:22
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
1:00:23
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:00:24
the forms have to make themselves attractive to the agents who
1:00:29
are deciding among them.
1:00:32
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:00:33
SPEAKER_00: And so to the extent that that attractiveness is a form of causation.
1:00:42
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
1:00:44
SPEAKER_00: if,
1:00:44
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:00:44
SPEAKER_00: in Whitehead,
1:00:45
all of the forms are held in and envisaged by the primordial
1:00:50
nature of God.
1:00:52
SPEAKER_00: And for Whitehead, God is another actual entity.
1:00:55
SPEAKER_00: And so in some sense,
1:00:56
SPEAKER_00: you could say that through God,
1:00:59
SPEAKER_00: these forms have efficient causation,
1:01:03
SPEAKER_00: but the efficient cause is God,
1:01:04
SPEAKER_00: not the forms.
1:01:06
And that efficient cause also is not determining of what each
1:01:11
organism decides to do.
1:01:12
SPEAKER_00: It's still a lure.
1:01:13
SPEAKER_00: Sure, it has agency as a lure,
1:01:22
it just doesn't have agency in the way that a physical force by it,
1:01:27
right?
1:01:27
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:01:28
SPEAKER_02: And is the lore then behind it?
1:01:30
SPEAKER_02: Because I guess for Plato, the lore would be the good behind the form.
1:01:34
SPEAKER_02: So like there's almost like in the cave,
1:01:37
SPEAKER_02: you're called almost by the light,
1:01:40
SPEAKER_02: the fire,
1:01:40
SPEAKER_02: which is like,
1:01:41
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:01:41
SPEAKER_02: a representation of the light of the good to get to the forms.
1:01:44
Then you look from the forms up to the source of the light and
1:01:47
then you get to this
1:01:48
SPEAKER_02: kind of,
1:01:49
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:01:50
event horizon in a sense that you can't get beyond this the
1:01:54
infinite that you
1:01:55
behold but in some sense that experience orders your
1:01:58
understanding of everything
1:01:59
else like it puts things in in perspective but that the good is
1:02:04
present at each
1:02:05
level of the at each level of the higher like even in the cave
1:02:09
the good is there in
1:02:10
SPEAKER_02: some sense like it's got that causal influence and so you could kind of
1:02:15
follow it up in a sense it's it's luring by being the cause i
1:02:20
don't know if that
1:02:20
makes sense like if you're following to the cause of reality or
1:02:26
what's real it's
1:02:27
SPEAKER_02: there necessarily
1:02:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:02:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:02:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's similar.
1:02:32
God functions similarly to the good in Whitehead's philosophy
1:02:37
as the ultimate object of desire.
1:02:39
I mean,
1:02:40
that's starting to sound like Aristotle's God too,
1:02:43
but there are parallels there.
1:02:48
Whitehead also has his consequent nature of God,
1:02:50
which is what allows for there to be a more
1:02:53
evolutionary uh process here which i think plato is actually
1:02:57
way closer to an
1:02:58
evolutionary picture than aristotle uh who who has a sense of
1:03:04
it i mean aristotle's
1:03:05
cosmos is uncreated uh and it's eternal or as plato's timaeus
1:03:10
describes the
1:03:11
incoming of a new form of order into uh chaos you know there's
1:03:16
already matter in
1:03:18
SPEAKER_00: the tomato there's already the receptacle
1:03:21
SPEAKER_00: before creation by the demiurge, you know, unfolds, right?
1:03:26
SPEAKER_00: And so it's a very different picture that's, I think, more evolutionary.
1:03:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
1:03:33
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't have an unmoved mover at the start of it.
1:03:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there was one thing...
1:03:41
SPEAKER_02: It's a bizarre one to finish on, so apologies.
1:03:43
But during your conversation with Ruth,
1:03:47
I can't remember her last name,
1:03:48
actually.
1:03:48
SPEAKER_02: Kastner.
1:03:50
SPEAKER_02: Kastner, yes.
1:03:51
SPEAKER_02: A great conversation as well.
1:03:52
SPEAKER_02: I need to read some more of her work.
1:03:55
SPEAKER_02: It seemed really interesting in terms of the physics.
1:03:57
Obviously,
1:03:57
I can't understand a lot of physics,
1:03:59
but yeah,
1:04:01
it seemed very cool.
1:04:02
SPEAKER_02: And you were talking about atemporal things.
1:04:05
SPEAKER_02: And I wondered,
1:04:06
had you heard of Terence McKenna's idea of a transcendental
1:04:10
hyper object at the end
1:04:11
SPEAKER_02: of time?
1:04:12
SPEAKER_01: This kind of lurker beyond space time.
1:04:19
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:04:20
SPEAKER_00: It's actually from Terence McKenna that I first heard of Whitehead.
1:04:24
When I was an 18 or 19-year-old,
1:04:27
I was listening to a lot of McKenna's lectures.
1:04:30
SPEAKER_00: And yeah,
1:04:30
the time wave zero hypothesis and model and the transcendental
1:04:35
hyperobject at the
1:04:36
SPEAKER_00: end of time is,
1:04:38
SPEAKER_00: I think,
1:04:39
SPEAKER_00: McKenna's...
1:04:41
reading of both Pierre Terre de Chardin's Omega Point and
1:04:48
Whitehead's understanding
1:04:49
SPEAKER_00: of the consequent nature of God,
1:04:52
SPEAKER_00: which are somewhat different ideas related,
1:04:55
but McKenna sort of mashes them together and adds some of his
1:05:02
cannabis-fueled Irish
1:05:03
SPEAKER_00: bard genius to it.
1:05:07
SPEAKER_00: And I think has a compelling perspective
1:05:11
SPEAKER_00: vision that unfortunately,
1:05:13
SPEAKER_00: well,
1:05:14
SPEAKER_00: I used to think,
1:05:15
SPEAKER_00: you know,
1:05:17
SPEAKER_00: maybe back in 2015,
1:05:17
SPEAKER_00: it was like,
1:05:18
SPEAKER_00: huh,
1:05:18
SPEAKER_00: I guess that whole 2012 thing was a big nothing burger.
1:05:22
SPEAKER_00: But looking back,
1:05:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm like,
1:05:24
SPEAKER_00: now things do seem like they've gotten really,
1:05:26
SPEAKER_00: really weird since then.
1:05:29
SPEAKER_02: Maybe something did happen.
1:05:30
SPEAKER_02: Actually, yeah.
1:05:31
SPEAKER_02: Maybe the Mayans were onto something, to be honest.
1:05:36
SPEAKER_02: I'm revisiting that one, actually.
1:05:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:05:40
SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, yeah.
1:05:42
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I guess to finish up on...
1:05:46
because in theory this was a conversation about truth i mean
1:05:49
obviously we've had to
1:05:50
go into so many other areas because when you talk about truth
1:05:53
it's you know
1:05:55
impossible not to discuss these other things really and so yeah
1:06:00
i wonder how yeah
1:06:03
how would you i don't know if i want to say define truth for
1:06:07
people but like um
1:06:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:06:10
SPEAKER_02: How,
1:06:11
SPEAKER_02: how would you help somebody to think about this,
1:06:15
SPEAKER_02: this version of truth,
1:06:16
SPEAKER_02: you know,
1:06:16
SPEAKER_02: that we've moved on to something else?
1:06:18
Like,
1:06:19
is it,
1:06:19
did they participate in,
1:06:21
you know,
1:06:22
um,
1:06:22
the good or in this,
1:06:25
you know,
1:06:25
account?
1:06:26
SPEAKER_02: What, what, what's the significance of this change of truth?
1:06:30
SPEAKER_02: I think is a good place to end.
1:06:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:06:33
SPEAKER_00: That it requires something of us.
1:06:37
SPEAKER_00: that there's something ecstatic about participation in the truth.
1:06:41
SPEAKER_00: You have to get outside of your comfort zone,
1:06:45
your settled sense of identity and put yourself at risk to be
1:06:49
transformed by the world.
1:06:52
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:06:52
And so it's moving out of this sense of truth as just something
1:06:56
static out there
1:06:57
SPEAKER_00: waiting for us to find and more like something that we need to co-create.
1:07:04
SPEAKER_00: And yeah,
1:07:05
that we are in turn created by like we're it's not just that
1:07:09
we're creating the
1:07:10
truth we are created by the truth at the same time and so we
1:07:14
have to risk ourselves
1:07:16
and recognize truth as you know etymologically it's related to
1:07:21
trust right and so
1:07:24
it's about trusting the universe to unveil itself to us but
1:07:31
that unveiling
1:07:32
SPEAKER_00: can't and won't occur until we are virtuous enough that it trusts us.
1:07:39
It's more about building a relationship to the world,
1:07:46
to other people,
1:07:47
to other forms of life.
1:07:53
SPEAKER_00: Accepting that truth is not just information.
1:07:58
SPEAKER_00: It's about forming ourselves so as to be worthy of that revelation.
1:08:07
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Matt.
1:08:11
SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate it, man.
1:08:13
SPEAKER_01: That was awesome.
1:08:14
SPEAKER_01: I enjoyed it.
1:08:15
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Mahan.