Angels in Scientific Terms | pt.2 | with John Vervaeke

and so my i guess my goal is to continue the conversation from where we kind of stopped the last one which is looking at i guess in a certain manner what what the notion of agency is and you know how that relates to a person but then how agency relates to other forms of beings especially kind of uh higher beings the way that we talked about it let's say or transpersonal beings sure um that's really what i guess that's what we left on a kind of um cliffhanger on the last talk and i saw a lot of people in the comments saying oh no like this is the it was an interesting part so i'm hoping to uh to kind of explore that with you um and so yeah if you're fine with that we'll go that'd be great i mean that that uh so the the talk i gave at cambridge was based on the work that i've done with chan chappie and the three papers i published last year on the nasa scientists maneuvering the rovers on mars yeah yeah right all that so that and then i just did i just did uh my course um on the nature and function of the self and of course relationships between consciousness self and agency are now fresh on my mind so i'm really geared to go i'm really good to go this is jonathan pedro welcome to the symbolic world [Applause] all right so maybe i can i can give you lay out the way that i i see it let's say and so i the the first thing that i see is that from a purely physicalist point of view there's a sense in which either we we remove the notion of agency altogether which i think some people are trying to do but to me that just seems ridiculous in the sense that we have a concept called agency which we something something like agency which which we've used to talk about the way in which humans interact with the world so we should at least address what that even if it's an illusion we should see what that is like what it is that we're talking about and so it seems like from a physicalist point of view if we can attribute agency to a person then it's it seems like it's odd not to attribute agency to other beings because because then human beings become completely let's say a freak thing in the entire cosmos um and so in that sense that's how when i look at the manner in which multiple people come together in order to form units then what i see is a form of agency which comes back down on those people and that can use people as something like heads so you have let's say a chief or a president or a or a captain or something but that captain is not acting only out of his own kind of personal agency but he is manifesting the let's say manifesting the rules and the the the frame of that being in which they're participating and so to me that looks like in a similar manner in which we do to our parts like the man in which we uh interact with our own parts whether it's our different thoughts our different body parts and so we have a captain you know somewhere like it's it's not clear exactly you know how to frame that but there's a man in which we conceive ourselves as one in that manner then creates a form of of a coherence in other way we act and we interact with the world so that's kind of my that's kind of the theory that i'm working with okay so that uh did you want me to say something here or did you want to go for it if you have something that is worth saying after what i said uh so on the first point yeah i mean so um i think physicalism trying to do away with agency is i think is an is a is an on starter um uh because uh if physicalism is premised on the existence of physics and science in order to determine its ontology therefore science must really exist for physics science is predicated on rational revision of belief so it presupposes rationality rationality presupposes agency in that we correct our thoughts as we attempt to get at the truth and if that's not an illusion then rey rationality becomes an illusion and then science and then the whole thing just unravels uh this is why i think uh reductive uh reductive physicalism um i think it is and i if people want to reserve physicalism for the name uh the reductive version that's fine that's why i prefer naturalism right and more and one more point and it's directly relevant to what we're talking about in this argument i just made naturalism includes not only what is derived from the sciences but what is presupposed by the sciences so rationality has to be part of our naturalistic worldview or we get into all these kinds of contradictions so on the first point i'm in complete agreement and what that means is we have to acknowledge the reality of levels other than whatever like the inverted platonism of physicalism which is uh the very very bottom level which is some sort of abstract probability math somehow instantiated independent of human beings is the only really real we give that up and we have to say no we have to talk about uh reality being something that's present on multiple levels so that's the first point and so that means right away and this is something that has been taken up seriously by 40 cognitive science that you know as you said organisms have a reality to them that is more than just the sum of all their chemical components or the configuration and there's a lot of work going on about that and then the idea of distributed cognition which is what dan and i published on the you know and this goes back to ed hutchins there's no one person that navigates an ocean liner it's a bunch of people and a bunch of tools and they form a system and they navigate the ship the same thing with who who's moving the rovers around on mars well it's no one person it's a bunch of people and the rover because it has some ai and they're all coordinated together in order to do the science on mars and so there's a lot of people dan and i included who take seriously the idea of we agency and then on the participatory side i've been engaging in a lot of participant observation experiment and design of people getting into these colo collective flow states and experiencing something like we level intelligibility we level intelligence we level agency so not only theoretically but also phenomenologically i think there's converging evidence towards the reality of what you're talking about now i want to say one thing which is we have to be very careful about this because people too easily skip between agency personhood selfhood consciousness self-consciousness and those are not equivalent terms and we can't just sort of slide uh between them in an uncareful way so other than that i like i think there is a very scientifically legitimate framework uh uh for talking about everything you've just been talking about okay i mean and so but i think that my let's say i'm not gonna hide what my intention is in trying to no no i my intention is to try to bridge something which which until recently has been very difficult for people to bridge which is the notion of higher beings you know whether they're conceived of as gods or angels as being patrons of aspects of reality and kind of let's say having a form of of agency and i and i can i can concede that that form of agency is not exactly the same as the way that we experience agency but there's a manner what i'm trying to basically get to is the idea that that the the transpersonal beings have an existence they have an existence that we somewhat participate in by let's say circumambulating and by celebrating and by sacrificing two you know if you think about the mars rover for example you'll have you'll have exactly that you'll find all those elements where the team that you're working with they kind of have to be proud of what they're doing and celebrate what they're doing they also have narratives sacrifice their individual whims and individual thoughts in order to be able to participate in this this common goal let's say and so that's really what that's what i'm so do you see that it is possible to bridge those two aspects well maybe well we'll see i mean i i think there's definitely i would definitely want to acknowledge first of all vertesi one of the ethnographers um about the mars rovers and she talks about how identified uh the scientists get with they feel like almost a magical identity with the rovers uh i think i told you about this they'll be doing things like they'll they'll say things like you know i was in my garden and my right wrist kept getting stuck and then when i got to the lab you know spirit pun intended the spirit's wheel was right wheel was stuck i don't know for connect like they so there's clear deep identification so i think the language of participation is completely appropriate um and other thing another thing is for tessie says um and i don't want to read too much into her because she's not here to speak on her own but but she clearly means something by this and she unpacks it she says that the the the rover becomes a totem uh for became a totem for the group uh they all saw their identities as somehow collected into it and they participate in it and it somehow transcends them you know in in very much the way uh you know indigenous people had totems you know in the durkheimian sense um third thing um i know when people are in these participant practices that i've been talking about they they start to talk about something like a spirit or a we presence or a logos uh that's there that seems to be directing the word the language is kind of fuzzy directing regulating governing shaping like it's not the same thing as you know you pushing a table right it's not like that but there's some sort of sense of it shaping uh what everybody else is participating in so that's a first step in that direction perhaps um yeah because it's the same with let's say in terms of pushing a table which is that there's a sense in which my hand is that which pushes the table right yes i'm not the one who pushes the table in terms of actual physical causes but my let's say my will participates in that it directs or shapes the manner in which my hand will push the table so there's a there's an aspect in which multiplicity in my body i can perceive that multiplicity in my body um exists in a in an analogical way to the manner in which multiple players in a team or multiple aspects of a city will come together and and manifest their unity and and that's the original argument uh made for a sort of extended mind by uh thomas and clark in a very famous article that has generated endless controversy although more and more people in 40 well it's one of the four e's of 4e cognitive science uh but their basic argument was like any argument you for saying well that's not an agent or a mind you could turn it inward and and say well that's not an agent or a mind either um and so you're making uh and this is not to discredit you this is to give you conversion you're making you know the the the core argument uh that sort of started the whole idea of extended cognition like like are are not the principles of organization and an action uh relevantly similar and many people you know and chalmers and clark are big names and many people like gallagher and myself and dan uh you know um i think the hutchins it's like that's why it's one of the four e's it's a very it's considered a very plausible thing now where where we might have a difference and i don't know um is that most people who talk about we agency and collective intelligence do not think there is a consciousness there or any kind of self-awareness uh and so they talk about and i think i mentioned this at the end of the last one they talk about zombie agency um which is a funny allusion to both of our previous work yeah so that's one of so one that's one of the the differences now i don't know maybe i could i the reason why i would push back maybe is because then if we do the same like if we if we have the same experiment with us you know like do we have real like those people that talk about zombie agency what beings do they consider having true agency no no no no so sorry zombie agency means they're real agents but they don't have consciousness or self-consciousness that's what's meant so the idea is many things can have real agency like for example a mitochondria is a real agent uh but attributing consciousness to it seems uh for many people a very questionable thing to do and so similarly the idea is um attributing consciousness to these supra individual uh entities is like does science have a consciousness even though there's a scientific community and we're all working together and it's constantly deeply interpreted many people say no that doesn't seem to we don't have any evidence for that kind of thing and so would they limit consciousness just to the human person is that where they're no no so uh i mean so the the idea is that you attribute consciousness um to uh beings that for which you have sort of clear evidence for a kind of internal organization that's analogous to something like our brain for example let's use us you can you and i can both move between conscious and unconscious states i can give you propofol general anesthetic and you will fall out of consciousness right and then i can bring you out i can reduce the propofol bring you into consciousness and then i can note the differences between when your brain's unconscious and conscious and say look you need this it's kind of this uh fractal small world network organization in order to sustain consciousness and when you don't have that right you right you fall into unconscious and the idea is that you need uh you need a certain kind of uh density of connectivity appropriate structuring of the communication system so most people just to finish the point most people deny consciousness for example to the crew steering the ship because the bandwidth and the speed of the connectivity is too low because if that was in your brain you would not be conscious that's that so they they they take the analogy in both directions basically and so the let's say but the accumulation of connectivity in the brain to other brains is not enough to so not in so it's not an objection in principle nobody says in principle that we couldn't get the connectivity and the bandwidth and the speed it's also a speed right because uh like it's it's almost like the five phenomena if the speed gets too low the things separate they they they separate out as separate entities like for example if if i disrupt your communication between you and your arm and make it too slow you will start you'll you will ah right you'll lose this you'll lose the the sense of your arm being part of you kind of thing yeah um so but there would be a way in which like uh let's say if you a city for me is the best way to think about it because it's you know it's the closest in my my estimation to a human being in terms of analogies is that the speed in which the communication needs to happen at that level is the speed like you said which is necessary for the beings to continue to go the let's say the lower beings that constitute the higher one are able to coherent to continue to function in in their purpose and so you're right so if there's a breakdown let's say in the email communication between the person managing the roads and the people doing it then at some point it's gonna break apart and then these people are gonna start to do whatever they think is right or whatever they want and then it's not going to it's not going to it's not going to connect but if if the let's say the efficiency and the speed of the communication is is is fine then they'll continue to fix the roads and continue to do the things they need to do so it is a reduced speed but because the being is a different level the speed doesn't have to be the same let's say um well but there's a difference right your brain can be highly functional because most of your processing is unconscious for example so your brain can be highly functional without rising to the level of consciousness so it's it's something more is needed than just functional coordination uh because um there seems to be this other kind of specific kind of organization that needs to be in place now i want i didn't quite get to finish the point you didn't interrupt me it's fine but like nobody says in principle like if if this is kind of a weird horror story and i don't believe that the neural link that i'm very suspicious of elon musk's claim because most of the science that it was based on has just failed to replicate massively and so it's like i caught that but let's say he was let's say he was telling the absolute truth um and then we started getting all these neural links and we could really speed up then many people say it's possible we could get an emerging consciousness that could be conscious of itself independent of us so i want to make clear that this the argument is not an argument in principle it's just an argument in practice it says we don't think for example ant colonies achieve consciousness even though they collectively solve problems um because they don't seem to get the the tight uh and dynamically interconnected and like like the massively recursive functionality of our brain it seems to be missing yeah because i mean an ant colony also doesn't let's say um maybe it does i was going to say it doesn't it doesn't uh change with time it doesn't have it's doesn't seem to have an identity like but a city has an identity like you can recognize chicago from new york yeah but to see here's the thing about identity like there's a difference between us attributing an identity and you're right we don't attribute it to the ant colony and we attribute it to unique but the key thing is whether they aren't the ant colony or new york attributes the identity uh to itself um right so that's that requires self-consciousness and um like i i i i've expressed the doubts for why i don't think these entities have self-consciousness yeah and i mean it's hard it's it's hard to perceive because we're not at that level also we're at the level that we are so we can't it's like it's hard enough to ver to it's already impossible to verify consciousness of another human person directly you only verify your own consciousness uh so it's it would definitely be very difficult to verify the consciousness of a higher being because you're not you're not there like you're just not at that at that level uh but it would be it i mean we would take seriously and this is perhaps where we differ well whether or not these events have occurred right um if uh you know if that if that agency started to like communicate uh with us uh in a self-conscious self-identified uh fashion right but you wouldn't let's say if the cell if the agency of the city would start to communicate with us we would not we would receive it at our level so we would get it as a letter from the city saying that they're making taxes higher that's how we would get it like it would come down that way at the level let's say of the level of agency it would it would be at a certain level but at our level it would be like a new law or a new rule or a new boundary or we're going to invade this other country or we're going to defend ourselves from this other thing and so it it activates the the lower beings towards a new purpose that the that the city has contrived or this and there's and i was thinking about the unconsciousness and the consciousness i think that i can see that in a city as well because there's a level of functioning in the city for example that doesn't require high level sure interaction that just kind of runs right it just runs but then something happens like some event that is unforeseen or a change that needs to happen and then all of a sudden everything aligns towards yeah like i said like you know a new a new a new tax rate or whatever it is a new law or there's a problem right you know there's a there's a problem and it requires all of a sudden the higher levels of this of the city to activate and kind of communicate down um and you know that that would happen no matter who is there right no matter who the top levels in the the city are there that would happen nonetheless so it is in a way independent from the agents that are constituting it right and and that's and that's good uh like uh i see the the the the difficulty that's facing me um in this yeah and it's not your difficulty um it's not difficulty with you that's what i'm saying um is that i think you all of this makes very good sense for collective intelligence and i actually argue that there's an overlap between the functionality of intelligence and consciousness that they're not like this they're more like this and so your arguments like they have force for me first of all wanting to acknowledge that i guess what i have trouble understanding uh so let me give you let me give you the reverse case where most people's intuitions go the other way so this is a famous argument by ned block okay so unbeknownst to you right while you're sleeping the chinese government for whatever reason for totalitarian reasons comes in in the middle of the night and puts you into a state of pain and then completely maps out your cortex right and then they go to china and they choose china because there's enough people presumably it's not quite right but let's say and then what we do is we train everybody to hold up ones or zeros at a particular rate to completely simulate the neurons firing and then what we do is the population of china is simulating right by holding up the ones and zeros right and it doesn't have to be that they can touch one person or not touch it doesn't have to be just holding up cards and then they completely map out the same thing and then does that mean that you've now achieved this sort of state of pain spread over the chinese countryside when you ask most people that they say no there's no pain there there's just cards going up and down right because it doesn't have the right kind of connectivity and bandwidth and speed in order to give it the phenomena of consciousness so do you do you see what i mean right yeah i see i see what you're i see what you're doing but i think it's because you're trying to take the like the way in which uh like being exists in us and trying to bring it up to the to the higher level but in a higher level i could tell you how to do it to bring a country into a state of pain but i picked pain for reason yeah pain goes through all the organisms we we attribute consciousness to from very very minor worms to us right it seems to be so there's good evidence to believe it would be part of a hyper consciousness as well it's hard to find in fact i challenge you to find an instance of consciousness where you can't find a creature capable of pain but so so it so think of now um think of i mean wartime is a is a place where you can see your country experiencing pain because what happens is that even that sometimes the agents that constitute the country wait what even the agents that constitute the country will sometimes not even be directly affected that is they're not starving if they're in a part of the country where nothing's going on there's no bonds going off where i live but nonetheless this the state of pain will will kind of infiltrate the entire identity of that of that country and so people will feel pain and anxiety because they're in that country even though they're not no bombs are falling on them at the time so do you think that's that's a that's true that that would happen i i think that people feel empathy uh but see the problem i'm having is like when we when we drop to the brain like the individual brain is not the individual neurons aren't feeling pain it's only at the level of the organization but in the country example there are individual people that are suffering and then we express the we we in ourselves feel empathy towards them um like for example if let's go back to the the china example if every time somebody held up the one they were in pain then we'd go oh yeah there's pain spread across the chinese countryside but that's not the example the example is they themselves aren't feeling pain just like your individual neurons don't feel pain but they're simulating the connection while they're enacting the connection and yet the connection isn't producing to most people's intuition a sense of pain yeah i think i think it's again i think the same the same issue comes about which is that let's think again about a country that's a war so there there's that say your capital is being is being attacked it's kind of horrible to use that now because we're actually in the war right now but nonetheless like i think it's still the best way to understand it like your capital is being attacked and you live in the countryside and so you you know that that's you that's being attacked and and even though you don't even though you don't you're not having bombs rain on you you will your anxiety and your care will connect you and will maybe even make you like i don't know like take up arms and go to the capitol to to start fighting all of a sudden because the country is in pain right so again uh but the pain of the country is not the same as of course as the individual pain isn't it it's it's in a it's a obviously it's an animal it's analogical there's an analogy between how let's say a higher being experiences pain and how like the beings that constitute it experience it it's but there's nonetheless a sense that this is that's a going on i don't know okay so so let me let me try again uh and and and this is good i think we're we're we're really honing in um so we've got clear evidence some of it almost frightening that collective intelligence can solve problems that individual intelligence can't so there's more to that than just the sum of the intelligence of the participating parts that's how that's one of the main arguments for we agency collective intelligence and there was a really gruesome experiment about a guy actually wired mice brains together yeah i heard about that yeah yeah yeah but anyways and i hope we never have to do that again and just all accept that that was done that worked yeah yeah right okay so right now do we have anything equivalent to that for saying there's a consciousness above and beyond just the sum aggregate of consciousnesses of the people that are in pain in like in the war that's that's that's the missing difference to my mind i acknowledge like so we we we want to acknowledge at least a distinction between an aggregation and a real unity just piling a bunch of stones together as an aggregate yeah right right and if i see that there's an aggregation of pain in the war example but i don't see the gestalt that transcends the aggregation and so let's say there's no so there's no let's see if there's no aggregation then what would make the person in the countryside take a weapon and go fight in the capitol what is it that would drive them there like what what what no no i i i i i think i i think it wasn't clear i think there is aggregation and what i'm saying is what we want for like an agent so we have a we have a we have evidence for something beyond aggregation in intelligence because when you add them together you get more than the adding of them together right and that's why right and so i'm saying what evidence do we have that we have anything beyond just aggregating all the individual pains and motives of the people uh in in that particular situation well which is that let's say the person is going to fight for their motherland sure that's what they're going to fight for they're actually not going to fight for the empathy necessary they have for an individual in the city because maybe they don't even know a person in the city but it doesn't matter because they they they get a sense that the my motherland or my fatherland or my country is being attacked and so i need to defend that i'm i'm activating towards a higher being and now i want to go defend it because i am part of it like i am a it is bigger than me and i and i know that i'm willing to sacrifice myself for it uh you may be sacrificing my life for it uh because i understand that it's what gives me direction and purpose and and gives me uh cohesion with my neighbors and all of that stuff i agree with all of that i think people can uh again i think the entity i'm willing to agree there's a a motherland right uh that right that england really exists or canada really exists and that we can feel uh well love for that but that's that's that's the wrong way of the arrow i was asking i wanna i need to see how the motherland like like is in pain itself above and beyond me caring for it you caring for it like what would be the evidence for that like the way you can get evidence right and it's this is a difficult question i know jonathan because getting evidence for consciousness to across the board is hard and we both agree on that i'm not challenging i'm not trying to make but like i can point to something is what i'm saying i can point to here's problems that no individual can solve an only collective intelligence consult i can point to them and in those problems being solved i have to i say that's my evidence for why there has to be an agent there because only that agent can solve those problems okay so i i have a i have an answer to that and the answer is it's a it's a it's a very bottom-up answer i guess is that is that when we act as if that being exists then we get better results as it from the different from when we act as if it doesn't exist right if we act as if there is let's say france and that france is that which binds us that which directs us that which you know that connects us that connects us to the past to the future uh you know that that that creates a sense of of unity and a purpose if i act as if that is real and is a an agent that acts upon me then i then i then it will survive no i think you've got a stronger argument and i'm in agreement with you yes i think the stronger argument is right it's not just that that we like problems get solved that only uh only something like france could solve that no no no smaller set of just like you can't run the internet on a computer you have to have a network of computers to establish an entity like the internet there's only certain things that i think they're i think the evidence now i i'll be careful i'll have to be i don't want to misrepresent say everybody would agree with me but the evidence for there being you know top-down agency and collective intelligence i think that for me it it i'm not in this i don't think i'm in any discipline it's the consciousness part it's a consciousness well consciousness self-consciousness and something like personhood it takes a long time for example even for a human being uh to become self-conscious and person um and that seems to me and only certain animals seem to be capable of it highly intelligent organisms like cats don't seem to rise to the level of self-consciousness uh because we have no behavioral evidence for it right um and so i think you have to have pretty there's a pretty limited set of conditions that have to apply in order for there to be self-consciousness consciousness um so there's a manner in which you would be willing to let's say understand them as intelligences that exist let's say but not necessarily as conscious which which i i'm kind of pushing too because i don't even in the even in the sense of let's say the way that uh traditionally uh angels are understood it's not clear that they're that they're conscious they're certainly intelligences uh and so your way you if you hear about the way for example that the fathers talk about um the fall of the angels they'll say something like they fell as soon as they were created like they it was one time they fell and then that's their state for forever because there's a sense in which they're not capable of change they're not capable of the type of procedure that we're capable of so miles i'm also kind of it's like i'm i'm also not totally convinced about the consciousness element of it like i'm trying to figure out how far i can push it to see if i can perceive it or understand it but at least even the intelligent part is already to me a lot because i i think that's undeniable the the the thing you have with the intelligences is like is you have like you can have a location problem that you traditionally don't have for persons like for example where's the agent that's doing the rover well it's on the earth and mars and also relativistically time delayed by eight minutes between and like like like and like you could sort of zoom out and say well it's sort of between earth and mars but they're like right and so it gets very problematic um well maybe agency is is not a it's not physically located it well i i think agency because you couldn't where is it in the person well that's the thing right and so uh but and but what i'm i i'm not disagreeing with you on that what i'm saying is we we seem to pull because personhood has moral responsibility attached to it and moral responsibility binds us into causation like where are you in the room when agnes died then you could have killed her kind of thing right because personhood is bound into morality we seem to put we we seem to need it to be limited like locatable um in a way that we don't have to have the same kind of tight location for agency that's what that's what i was pointing to yeah and what what i was going to say one of the reasons why i i'm kind of pushing this is just it's actually because of a statement that christ makes where christ talks about um he talks about the city in which he is and he said woe to you you know it'll be easier for you it'll be harder for you on judgment day than the people of of nineveh that will judge you like the the the city of nineveh will judge you in the end so there's a sense in which the notion that the cities cities are judged let's say and that and so you can kind of understand that even when christ is saying that he's he's you can understand he's not saying that there's a judgment upon the city that judgment doesn't actually necessarily boil down to every single individual in this city there's a sense in which there can be a judgment on the city which is real but that is not it's not exactly the same as the judgment that would be on each person let's say it's like another level of judgment that yeah that that coexists with individual judgment that's good let's play i when you said that i thought of sodom and gomorrah the opposite where abraham's bargaining and if there are like you know 40 righteous people god exactly for the city so yeah it separates out yeah so that that's a very interesting thing and that we'd actually wrestle with that um uh in re like so for example um post-world war ii there was a lot there was a lot of trying to figure out who do we punish for the holocaust right who do we punish um and and we we did some sort of we did some we created some myths by the way we the vermont was clean and it was only the ss so it was evil and yeah but attributing that responsibility uh uh it's a project that's still ongoing like as far as i can tell no we haven't come to uh a final decision about that like are the german people comp were the german people complicit they were to some degree how much does that matter right that's really hard i don't know how do you do that i mean but it's easier it's also easier to it's harder to like now let's think of i mean i i i said i wouldn't talk about politics i told myself that but you know it's hard not to and so and so now let's say we're we're we're putting we put sanctions on russia right so we're judging russia and we're applying pressure on the country yes itself as a means to change its course as a means to affect its it's the direction in which it's heading and so there's a sense in which you know where when you apply let's say a punishment to the country you're you're not thinking at an individual level you're not thinking who in the country is going to get affected some people will and it's going to be there's even going to be a kind of unfairness about the man in which it falls down onto the people of the country but there's a sense in which we have to act against the country itself in order to affect the direction uh you know that it's going and so there's a sense where you're judging a country or you could do that for high levels but yeah so so then let's take it that's a very good point then let's take it that our moral judgments um can apply to the level of collective intelligence and we agency that did not immediately translate like in an identity relation to a judgment on all of the individuals i think that is well said um now the pro the issue is do we require and this this gets really thorny then and like so this is fun um so do we require only agency and intelligence to attribute responsibility moral responsibility or do we it seems that's all we require or or but then but then we have the problem all right that we tend to think that individuals are only morally responsible if they have an act of conscious intention right right that's true that's an interesting point of that yeah we if there's no if there's no moral intention we tend to not attribute blame let's say or we that's our usually that's at least that's the the kind of more modern uh modern system we tend to attribute less blame at least you know if you kill someone deliberately or if you kill someone uh you know in a fit of rage it's already not the same and if you kill someone accidentally then it's not the same so so classic examples of where this has come up um and whether or not they're let's not argue about whether or not the case was true but you know there there have been cases where people have been found innocent uh because they were sleepwalking when they killed somebody right so part of them is like is like a zombie part of them is an intelligent agent getting out the knife you know directing it in the right way like all that intelligent agency it's it's a difficult problem to kill another person right it's it's not it's right and yet they're they're dreaming about like they're not they're they're not forming any conscious awareness or intent um so yeah and so but that's a it's an interesting to think about it so i was thinking about it recently where let's say i could say i could say something like i don't know chicago is corrupt right i can't say something like that yeah and that would be true but it wouldn't be true at every level like it wouldn't mean that everybody in chicago is corrupt and i don't think that right right i don't think that everybody in chicago is corrupt obviously not but i can say something like that you know and it nonetheless has a truth to it that when i look at it when i zoom out i look at at the identity and i see that there's something that there's something there yeah i agree with you and uh i'm doing the philosophical thing of agreeing with you and then noting how problematic it becomes once we agree uh because like i said we seem to do we seem to we seem to break a principle we when we're talking about uh human persons i'll try and because i'm going to use the word person to mean a moral agent not just an agent or intelligent when we right when we we do it we seem to require the ability to form a conscious self-reflective intent in order to attribute at least the most moral blame but we don't do that uh for collective intelligence um and that's really that's really why like sorry i really mean that like why like why what like what like what what why do we hold that there like if we're trying to modify the intelligent agency right that should seem to be the only like why do we why do we care about whether or not the pr i mean we we we do punish people that don't form a conscious intent when we find them criminally negligent for example right um is that is it like that you're really making me wonder here don't i i don't i don't have any clear or easy answers but this is very messy ontology yeah actually so maybe we can keep i mean obviously we could keep thinking about it because i'm still i'm in the i'm the same position you are i'm still thinking about it and still trying to figure out how it fits but let's say at the at the least i think that there's a manner in which understanding this or at least a notion of intelligence and agency can can help us understand that the way the way of representing the world that is more traditional is in line with this that is that the ancient way of representing the world with with with gods and patron saints and patron angels there's a manner in which this is closer to that reality than the one that we have now which is this kind of the the the sense in which we we don't even have a theory like we do it right we still celebrate teams we saw mascots we still have all these things and we rely on this it's not it's as if it's not part of our world view but we still do it at the same time yeah i i want to acknowledge that right up there's a performance contradiction um in thinking that agency is atomic and individualistic right and then relying on you know airlines and electric grids and the internet and blah blah blah blah that are clearly cases of distributed cognition and collective intelligence what's interesting of course with something like the internet is it's this weird blend of humans and computers that is making it and creating it and running it and it obviously transcends any computer it transcends any individual brain and it just keeps growing and developing and and taking on properties and a kind of complexity there's a i think sawyer wrote a a science fiction novel that it you know that that it's plausible that the internet will actually achieve the kind of complexity and density and bandwidth we see in a brain and then it would start to have a kind of consciousness on its own which is a frightening thought um i think it definitely already has agency at least i think that's clear i think that's clear and like i said we were talking last time in very many ways people have a a sacred religious relationship uh to the agency of the internet they treat it like an oracle they treat it like a spirit they treat it like a god um in a lot in in in in like i find it funny but in a sort of kafka s way that people complain about religious then interact with the internet through their phones in they devote hours a day right and they're paying attention and they're getting advice and like and like it's very very religious behavior yes and so one of the aspects of the agency for example i think is a good way to understand it maybe you can tell me what you think is is really even now using a kind of darwinian lens which is that let's say the main the main aspect of agency is something like self-preservation at the level of the being and so we we can say that the internet has intelligence to the even to the extent an agency even to the extent that it just tries to self-perpetuate and and the people that are playing roles at the lower level the companies the the you know the tech people you know they want to cap they know that the internet exists through attention and so the entire the entire the internet itself becomes a let's say run by attention and that and and that attention is what makes it continue to exist like the more attention that more people give to to to the internet in general the more that it will especially in its user interface obviously there's a whole aspect of the internet which is not user yeah not user interface like wires and and stuff like that but to the extent where it interacts with our consciousness that's what makes it continue and so it's as if there's a but the reason why i'm saying that is that there's a sense in which we're kind of doomed if that's the case because the the monster or the the creature the being it really is asking for worship like it appears very low at a low level but as it scales up it becomes more and more evident that it's asking for something like worship um something like primal attention like this is where you get your worldview this is where you get your information this is where you get truth this is where you learn what it means to be human even almost yes yes i agree with you i i think that um the internet is at least something like a greek god in the way it uh uh you know and encompasses the like like it's it's not it's not again it's not in one place it's ubiquitous i'm not saying it's omnipresent but it's ubiquitous right it's ubiquitous and it's uh it's coordinating people's lives it's training people's attention it's asking for devotion it's asking for identification you identify with your avatars and your right there's yes there there's a lot of behavior that like as soon as you step outside of familiarity and try to look at it uh through a more anthropological lens you'll say well this they clearly have a religion and their their religion is the internet but that that i guess the difference for me is um and that's why i use the greek god uh purposely uh you know the greek gods are ha uh they had no moral they had no moral direction that they just represent sort of primordial powers and they're important later on under the pressure of platonism and others they started to become moral agents but initially they're not um and so i guess that's what i i was trying to convey when i think the internet is like a bronze age deity right it's it right it's it's it's like seth of ancient egypt or something it's this it's this power um that people identify in and with and does all the things we're talking about but it doesn't have um it doesn't have a moral directedness to it it's not an it's not an agent that is self-organized towards helping us uh become wiser um which i think is that's an important difference yeah it's i mean it is like you said it's it's more it's looking for propitiation and it's and it's looking to be satis it's looking for to capture to capture us so that we could because we can sit constitute its body in a certain in a certain way like in the same way that if you understand the way a greek god would function is that the greek god would have temples with people sacrificing animals to the god in order to provide body for that god in the world like places where they they step let's say and they they have anchorage and so we are that's what we are for the internet we're basically the anchor because without us the internet obviously doesn't the internet needs us as a body but i think also the greek gods and the ancient gods needed humans as a kind of body you know in order to celebrate them and to make them to ha let's say that there will be done in the world you needed humans and casts of priests and all these things that would enact the the enact the the identity of the god in in reality yeah and i think that i mean speaking as a naturalist i think that was the reality of but it still is i'm not saying i believe in zeus or but you know there's a sense in which ares is is is taking shape in ukraine right now right and and you know and war is this thing right it's maybe the pathetically maybe it's the most collective thing we do um which and so thinking that war can't take on a life of its own uh look look we are terrified not unjustified that if we do anything wrong this will spin off yeah and esca right and who well no one person is gonna make that happen and that ability for things to spin off and consume us that's ares that's the greek god aries or eros eros like if you don't believe that eros is real like wow i don't know what like i don't know what that means um so yeah and i think the internet is like that so i guess the the the uh so can i ask you and i mean like what like uh like why is this like important like what why does it why is it important no no no no no no no no that's not an insult i i i don't know not at all no no no i as a cognitive scientist i'm very interested in this with we're really trying to understand intelligence and agency and and that and so i want to know what your like what your interest is in it well i think that my interest is really to be able to help people understand and not only understand but participate in a proper manner in the way in which the world exists and so if we understand that the world actually exists this way and if i can convince people who at least until recently were materialists or physicalists that this is actually how the world works then how do we do it properly what's the best way to engage with the reality of higher beings and their and their agency and their intelligence what's that what's the most appropriate way and like you said there's a man in which you can see you know the world of tribal gods that existed you know in the ancient world and how what that led to and what that brought about even human sacrifice and and and uh a very a very dark reality you know often that involved sex and involved all kinds of stuff that was going on in order to give body to these to these gods um and so the question is once we realize that this is so i i would go as far as to hope that people can understand for example something like if you sacrifice to a god it works like it's not just a thing people do for like just for fun or for whatever it actually will engage the agency of the god back into the world if you sacrifice to a higher entity like it's harder for people to understand the idea of sacrificing an animal fine like let's just keep it to attention for now at least for people could not understand if you sacrifice something precious that you have your attention or your money if you give your money to a cause or if you give something to a higher higher being then that will engage it back down into reality both by your dedication by your attention but also by the fact that you're willing to sacrifice something precious for it to actually exist um so that's really what i why it's important to me because i feel like this is a bridge that a lot of people can kind of see in front of them they're not totally willing to to cross yet but that if they can cross it then we can reconnect i think as much as possible the the religious world with the scientific world that we can help people even scientific minded people understand that they are already religious that they do these things but they do it unconsciously in a little me in a messy manner but that there are ways to engage in a more proper and a more you know like you said the ancient gods they didn't they they didn't care about you like they just wanted their they wanted to be fed and then maybe you would get something from them but there's a manner in which that transformed with time then you get to religions uh like like christianity and within other religions as well that understand that at the top of all of this there's love and that that is what has to kind of come down into these different ages and that we do conceive that there are agents that are different that are demons that are wild and have their own will and will suck you into themselves and will kind of devour you and we understand that but we also want people to reorganize their attention and their will towards that which leads towards infinite love you could say um so that's that's really the purpose of that's why i care about this so much that's that's very helpful thank you um i might want to recommend i will i recommend that you might want to read lerman's book how god becomes real uh don't be put off by the title uh because she's talking about you know uh the different kind of reality that these agents have um and she's a great anthropologist um and she's basically arguing that we have different senses of real um and we can't use the real we apply when we talk about a rock being real for how these things are real and and we're we're already getting that i mean i think evolution is real that doesn't mean i can point to it there it is there's its location right and like it like it's a hyper object you use morton's term and so i guess that's one thing i want i want to bring up now that that's why lerman came to mind first of all to recommend the book to you but there's also a notion of aspects of reality there there are hyper objects um uh let's say like like say evolution or global warming um like you can't there it is or there it is or like it's right but but but you can't say well it's not real so it's not an object this is why i call it hyper object now dan and i have been making the argument that it takes something like distributed cognition to be able to come into a realization of of these hyper objects like right like for example global like no one person can become no one person can perceive global warming you need people all over the globe and all these equipment and all these computers before you can say oh there's the real pattern do you understand what i'm trying to point out uh and so i also wonder if there's a sense in which uh uh i'll try this and i'll probably mungle it but this idea that these collective agents also uh give us access to real patterns that we couldn't have access on our own does that did that make sense i'd like like you're right okay okay it makes sense like if you think of uh leaving at a smaller scale like if you think for example of uh even of a famine for example or of a war is the same thing where you need these these higher beings to understand that it's not just me that's dying of hunger yeah right i need to be able to to perceive at what scale this is happening and then in order to engage it properly then like you said there has to be a scale a scale at which it makes sense to act a level at which it makes sense to act in order for these these hyper uh whatever you you call hyper objects to be dealt with yes yeah like there's there's there's phenomena that are real that affect us but don't don't affect us the way physically like spatial temporally limited objects affect us like tables and chairs and rocks and things like that evolution and global warming and you know economies economies are hyper objects like you know like yeah i i think that the fact i think the fact that you separate those to me is what maybe surprises me because to me like all beings are constituted by let's say an identity a pattern and a body and that that body does it could be subtle it doesn't have to be physical like right so a story has a pattern and a body but its body is not is also it's not it's a subtle body it's not a it's not a physical body let's say um and i think that that's true of just all beings so the idea that they're like a table is also that like a table has a pattern and a purpose and that's how you can recognize that it's a table and engage with it as if it's a table so so does global warming let's say it's just bigger or it's just just not it's not it's not at a level that i can perceive at a glance with my eyes um but uh like it's a uh there are other types of beings that i don't necessarily perceive with my eyes but that have that have being right right the point i was making was not an ontological point i think that they're all real that's the point so i wasn't making any kind of ontological distinction i was making i was i was making a an epistemic distinction to try and explain a kind of confusion which i i thought might be helpful to your project because i think what i'm saying is and this is you know you can see this in marla ponti and others and obviously in plato right is that uh you know and sandy makes this argument about plato's permanentes is that we use the familiarity of how we realize perceptually limited specifiable temporal spatial we use that as the universal standard of being real and that actually blinds us to the idea that to to realizing that there are many of these realities that can't be uh grasped in that manner that's what i would that's what i would so i i guess i i'm sort of suggesting to you that part of the problem that your project is facing is that you're not just i mean one part of it is a truly philosophical metaphysical thing and we're talking about it here but another might be a confusion in your audience in that they are bound to a the attribution of like kind of a very simplistic nominalism only raw spatial temporal objects exist and everything else is an illusion i mean that seems to me to be possibly also what is perhaps thwarting you um is that a possibility uh maybe i mean i'm hoping that most people that listen to me by now like they they're past that i hope so it's possible that there's still people that are there because i see it some people are confused when i say things uh sometimes when i say certain things exist and they're like what how can you say that that exists uh that there are different matters in which things exist um i think that like for me the let's say for me the the biggest obstacle i think is finding a language that would make it understandable and appropriate to talk about how being stacked up and scales towards higher higher beings and higher agencies to find a way in which in which people can because it's difficult like the difficulty is this like if i talk about angels then then people think of people have such fantastical ideas of what angels are like it's all science it's all fantasy and it's all weird ideas of people with angels that exist in other dimensions or whatever it is that they think so it becomes almost impossible to use those terms anymore because all of a sudden people think of angels as physical beings that are invisible basically is what they think yes and so how what language can i use to help people bridge back into a more traditional vision of what of what higher beings are higher cesar i'm going to push back on you a little bit not in the context i totally agree with that project and i i i hope we can continue to be partners on it because i i think i mean that's what i mean about the neoplatonic courtyard as a poll as opposed to the the courtroom of debate like getting this kind of ontological framework that allows us to do this however the pushback is this and this is something that again i've been deeply impressed upon me by plato and marlo ponte how difficult it acts we can know this sort of propositionally but act like i think it takes transformative practices to let go of the ray of firing mind right you know and i'm reading maximus and i see that in him i see that obviously in dionysus right it's all through plato right it's like like we can like in the parmenides play socrates knows the theory of the form and but parmesan comes in and crushes him because although he can make all these arguments he's clearly still working within that that rarifying grammar you know yeah right now i see what you mean right yeah that in fact in order to perceive this it's not about thinking and arguing it's about participating through like mystical prayerful uh practice that would actually make you and biological practices yeah because that's where i see people getting i don't i don't i don't want to put them i don't want to put them exclusive i think you need to be doing both and they need to be sort of helping each other along the way that's what i'm that's what i'm proposing yeah that makes that makes that makes a lot of sense um but i think you've already you you've already kind of helped me to to understand what the issues are and to kind of to kind of push in a way but even like the the consciousness aspect is one which i was i'm trying to push against and trying to to see if there are ways to perceive consciousnesses at at those levels but it's like i realize that even in the fathers there seems to be some ambiguity about about that you know and you see it in even i've read some some rabbis let's say the way they talk about angels as well and there seems to be some ambiguity about whether or not we could say they're conscious in the way that we are conscious let's say there's more but they're definitely intelligences that are agentic but they don't have they don't have this they might not have the kind of self-consciousness that we that we tend to that we experience we're not sure yeah and uh you know and then we have to also be worried uh along with that ambiguity we have to be worried about anthropomorphic bias right um and um but that doesn't the anthropomorphic bias doesn't bother me so much in the sense that i i tend i think that it it seems that it seems as if there's probably a reason for that like there's a reason why we view reality through the mirror of our own of our being right where we tend to project the human a level of reality into different levels of reality because that's the level where we are like there is no other we don't know of another point of consciousness by which we can interpret the world this is the only point of consciousness that we know and so we we tend to use that as the measure we could say of other beings and i think that that is somewhat inevitable maybe not not that big of a deal well i mean let me uh i mean the anthropomorphism can be a little bit more specific let me try and give you an example of where i think it can be problematic we sort of figured out at least in our culture i don't want to presume on other cultures that children are actually not just little adults right uh uh only sort of you know in the last couple centuries i mean if you go back to earlier periods john locke for example thought the only difference was just how much information they had in their brains and things like that and so i mean that's an example also of a version of the anthropomorphic that every every human exactly is an adult and they're not and and and it it's it's been i think very i think not that there hasn't been uh negative consequences but i think on the whole realizing that children aren't little adults has been a very positive thing for children um in terms of how we treat them and educate them and things like the fact that they used to try children and convict them of crimes like we things that we would find like horrendous nowadays right um um things like that that's what i mean about we can we can we can we can overestimate how much things are like us too yeah that makes sense definitely definitely um listen i think i need i think i will now need to think about all our conversations but i i think it's great i think it's great i really feel like i'm kind of moving i'm moving i'm moving forward and trying to you're the best person to kind of put my arguments against and so i i think that's that's good likewise i mean uh like there's enough of i hope you don't take this as any kind of insult there's enough of a sort of shared neoplatonic uh outlook that allow us to get into some very good discussion but there's enough differences between us two that we both also uh you know generate insight in each other and i think that's really good i think that's really good definitely definitely all right so we'll have to uh i have to keep thinking about it and we'll have to organize another another discussion at some point yeah yeah because uh there's one thread i'd like to come back to at some point which you made and you made a point i didn't challenge it and i didn't mean to challenge it i don't want to challenge it i want to explicate it the idea of meaning in life as this sense of being connected and one of the problems like if you go to susan wolf's right being connected to something bigger than yourself right and right and then she says but there's things that she doesn't think there's any objective reality to that and that's the problem facing us but you said you know people get a meaning in life because they're connected to this and what if it does have at least a semi-autonomous kind of existence then that relationship is a real relationship it's not just a if it's not just an as-if relationship and that might say something about the project of meaning in life about this kind of connectedness to these kinds these kinds of transpersonal uh uh agents yeah that makes sense but also you could understand that even let's say that that would come even as your your your ex your experience as a child and having a relationship with your parents and you i think that probably as a child you would almost experience your parents as trans personal and descent as higher beings than you like you said you see them as these these higher things um and so it wouldn't make sense that also then that would be an image like the idea that god is our father would would make sense in that in that way yeah if it makes sense even in terms of our actual experience of how we experience authority and how we experience our fathers as children exactly and theoretically that might mean there's deep connections between attachment and meaning in life the kinds of connections might be more similar than we usually think they are i think that's a very interesting idea to consider yeah but then you can see also how someone who i mean you can also see how it goes awfully wrong like he kept wanting all these examples right so how can go completely completely off the rails which is of course the the danger of attachment to oh totally right just just like i think you can't reduce meaning in life to morality um i don't think you can reduce morality to meaning in life like you either reduction is a a serious missing and a serious mistake yes i totally agree with that yeah and and it's interesting because attachment to higher purposes is not the same as morality right there is a morality to it like ultimately you would want those higher purposes to be right you know to be true let's say yeah in the moral sense but then you can all obviously you can you can you know people everybody knows people or it's happened to you where you get involved in a higher purpose that is just pointless or either pointless or even dangerous you know or not not good for you or for others yeah and and i mean this gets uh chris and chris master pietro and i are working on a new series of socrates and kirkegaard and now we're bumping up against the teleological suspension of the ethical um right and so yeah well anyways i'd like to talk to you about that at some point right like to what degree does meaning in life depend on people coming into resonant living relationships uh with uh these higher order agents uh does that make life more meaningful if it does how and why what are the dangers there's a way in which at least the way it's expressed in christianity is really is interesting in say maximus for example like there's a sense in which the bond of love you have towards god is expressed in the bond of love you have towards each other right that's what christ says and so there's a sense in which the you know let's say the love you have for your neighbor is the manner in which now you're attaching yourself to these higher to these higher beings and so it's like a there's a that's the how the scalability happens like you bind together and then that if you bind together towards towards something which is above you then it all kind of works because you you know and everybody knows of uh that they have a higher purpose that actually like a vampire that sucks the energy from all the other things inside and then just discards them as it moves forward you know it's like a kind of pathological organization that just sucks the energy and doesn't create the bond inside in order to make a real kind of fruitful body you could say that's very cool yeah yeah i i guess so i want to talk about that and also uh like the other thing because we most of the discussion and quite rightly so has been sort of bottom up but there's a sense in which right there's a there there there has to be some discussion of what's what's the top-down aspect of of these things right yeah uh i mean that the top the top top down aspect is mostly identity and that sounds like it's a weird it's a weird thing for people they think like why why does that matter but it's mostly it gives you it makes it's that what makes you participate and so there's that and purpose like a purpose like higher purpose and higher identity is what is what comes from above but there's also i i agree um um i get my question was a little askew um yeah what i meant is we sort of got like there's all these causal interactions right all the soldiers are fighting and that makes aries but there's also all kinds of constraint like factors that also make that make that take the shape it does right like so the analogy i'm getting like you've got like you you have to have all these environmental constraints for a tornado to take shape the tornado is actually driven by heat and all that stuff and the motion but you also have to have all these differences and constraints in place um that's what i'm trying to get at uh and i like and you can think about like something really interesting with your city exam you've got all the people and they literally make laws but then the laws constrain the people and then like you get bottom-up top-down stuff happening that's what that's what i that and i want to press that analogy to other things yeah definitely i mean i i that's definitely something i'm interested in for sure i mean i i actually i mean i tend to think top down and more naturally the last five years of my life has been has been like an experience in trying to express this bottom up as much as possible to kind of get people to understand what we're talking about but uh but definitely the top down part is important to explore and i think the bottom up and the top down are equally scientifically valid like they're equally scientifically legitimate and important yeah and but i'm happy to see you reading maximus because i feel like at least my in my experience is that in maximus you really have one of the best expressions of how those two kind of come together how they're they they depend on each other right they there's a sense in which the bottom up you know expresses i mean my brother talks about it in his book by the way very very well right it's like there's informa the the top informed on the bottom embodies or or supports you know and that these two things must happen at the same thing time for reality to to to manifest let's say yeah i'm trying to read all the great synthesizers maximus i'm reading balthazar's uh biography on him as well um and obviously aquinas especially the new neoplatonic interpretation of aquinas um and of course uh regina uh yeah yeah yeah i know you you talked about him quite a bit before yeah and so and it's amazing to me how um uh you know how all of these these great synthesizers seem to be converging up they they obviously have important differences and for christians i know those differences are doctrinal and kinds of things and but but there's also a deep convergence on this shared ontology and i think that's really something that's really catching my attention i'm really i'm really trying to let myself follow that as deeply as i can right now that's great yeah i mean i'd love to hear more about that too so we'll have to yeah we'll have to set it up quite soon another conversation well i i i think we're sort of drawing to a close now but uh this has been really really really good um um i always look forward to talking to you i think it always goes in wonderful places um so definitely i do i hope we get a chance to be in the same place again you know soon it feels like as things are kind of falling down all the the mandates and stuff like that seems like it could be more possible uh yeah i hope so i mean i hope someday still that you and i and paul get to be physically co-present and and do something so that would be wonderful i would really love that so yeah all right john it's good to talk to you excellent talking to you thank you my friend as you know the symbolic world is not just a bunch of videos on youtube we are also a podcast which you can find on your uh usual podcast platform but we also have a website with a blog and several very interesting articles by very intelligent people that have been thinking about symbolism on all kinds of subjects we also have a clips channel a facebook group you know there's a whole lot of ways that you can get more involved in the exploration and the discussion of symbolism don't forget that my brother matsuya wrote a book called the language of creation which is a very powerful synthesis of a lot of the ideas that explore and so please uh go ahead and explore this world you can also participate by you know buying things that i've designed t-shirts with different designs on them and you can also support this podcast and these videos through paypal or through patreon everybody who supports me has access to an extra video a month and there are also all kinds of other goodies and tiers that you can get involved with so everybody thank you again and thank you for your support

Channel: Jonathan Pageau

Views: 27,677

Keywords: symbolism, myths, religion

Id: 2BVjIOpV9KQ

Length: 78min 3sec (4683 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 14 2022