They embark on a journey through modern worldviews, diving into concepts such as reductionism, the Cartesian divide, and the tension between objective and subjective understanding. This dialogue brings out the complexity of reconciling quantum mechanics and relativity, the prevalent models that rob human beings of meaning and wisdom, and the importance of transcendence. Furthermore, the discourse touches on extended naturalism, the critique of reductionism, and the groundbreaking concept of energy information singularity. Drs. Vervaeke and Henriques shed light on meta-arguments, the relevance of convergence in argumentation, the depth of "transjectivity", and the vast expanse of collective intelligence. They also explore the concepts of abstraction, self-organization, and the interplay of causality and constraints.
Is Vervaeke a Platonist? I forget. I'm not sufficiently immersed in any of the important literature to get all that much from these on line sages but Vervaeke is an improvement on fellow Canadian Jordan B Peterson, who (and I may be wrong here) often seems to attempt a similar project, a type of restorative transcendentalism. — Tom Storm
Anyway, Vervaeke's main concern is 'awakening from the meaning crisis' - that Western culture is undergoing a crisis of meaning, which manifests in a huge number of ways, rooted in the 'scientistic' view that the Universe is basically devoid of meaning. — Quixodian
I suspect there has been some kind of meaning crisis throughout human history. But since the project of modernism has been to foster independent thinking and living as a reaction against the inflexible strictures of religious orthodoxy and the bigotries this has generally entailed, it's no wonder that people today are spoiled for choice and many feel adrift. Certainty has gone and society seems atomized - I find this exciting, but many fear it. — Tom Storm
Australian academic John Carroll wrote a vicious tirade against humanism back in 1993 - Humanism: The Wreck of Western Culture. — Tom Storm
I think the most important challenge we collectively face is dealing with the practical economic and ecological consequences of the 'continuous growth' paradigm — Janus
What secular reason is missing is self-awareness. It is “unenlightened about itself” in the sense that it has within itself no mechanism for questioning the products and conclusions of its formal, procedural entailments and experiments. “Postmetaphysical thinking,” (Jürgen) Habermas contends, “cannot cope on its own with the defeatism concerning reason which we encounter today both in the postmodern radicalization of the ‘dialectic of the Enlightenment’ and in the naturalism founded on a naïve faith in science.”
Postmodernism announces (loudly and often) that a supposedly neutral, objective rationality is always a construct informed by interests it neither acknowledges nor knows nor can know. Meanwhile science goes its merry way endlessly inventing and proliferating technological marvels without having the slightest idea of why. The “naive faith” Habermas criticizes is not a faith in what science can do — it can do anything — but a faith in science’s ability to provide reasons, aside from the reason of its own keeping on going, for doing it and for declining to do it in a particular direction because to do so would be wrong.
The counterpart of science in the political world is the modern Liberal state, which, Habermas reminds us, maintains “a neutrality . . . towards world views,” that is, toward comprehensive visions (like religious visions) of what life means, where it is going and what we should be doing to help it get there. The problem is that a political structure that welcomes all worldviews into the marketplace of ideas, but holds itself aloof from any and all of them, will have no basis for judging the outcomes its procedures yield. Worldviews bring with them substantive long-term goals that serve as a check against local desires. Worldviews furnish those who live within them with reasons that are more than merely prudential or strategic for acting in one way rather than another.
The Liberal state, resting on a base of procedural rationality, delivers no such goals or reasons and thus suffers, Habermas says, from a “motivational weakness”; it cannot inspire its citizens to virtuous (as opposed to self-interested) acts because it has lost “its grip on the images, preserved by religion, of the moral whole” and is unable to formulate “collectively binding ideals.” — Does Reason Know what it is Missing? Stanley Fish, NY Times
:up:Certainty has gone and society seems atomized - I find this exciting, but many fear it. — Tom Storm
:100:I think the most important challenge we collectively face is dealing with the practical economic and ecological consequences of the 'continuous growth' paradigm, and the enormous problem of plutocracy and corrupted politics. — Janus
:yawn: i.e. adolescence of the species ...Western culture is undergoing a crisis of meaning — Quixodian
Incidentally I've just been listening again to a (long!) online debate between Vervaeke and Kastrup. It's reasonably congenial, although Vervaeke throws up many objections to Kastrup's idealism. — Quixodian
— Does Reason Know what it is Missing? Stanley Fish, NY Times — Quixodian
That's why I think it's so important to find a basis of real values other than continued growth and economic improvement. But there's nothing necessarily within liberal democracy or naturalism which provides a basis for that, other than better technology and engineering. Like, there's no rationale corresponding to the role that mokṣa plays in Hinduism. — Quixodian
I don't believe such a thing is possible these days, and I also don't think such frameworks are necessary for personal transformation. — Janus
They're trying to thread the needle between scientific reductionism on the one side, and religious dogmatism ( including what is described as 'degenerate romanticism' in this talk) on the other, by situating natural science within a broader context which includes the (re)introduction of levels of reality taking into account the qualitative dimensions of human existence — Quixodian
Which would comprise what, exactly? Transformed how? Into what? — Quixodian
Vervaeke says here and elsewhere that he's committed to naturalism, but that he doesn't accept materialist reductionism. — Quixodian
The counterpart of science in the political world is the modern Liberal state, which, Habermas reminds us, maintains “a neutrality . . . towards world views,” that is, toward comprehensive visions (like religious visions) of what life means, where it is going and what we should be doing to help it get there. The problem is that a political structure that welcomes all worldviews into the marketplace of ideas, but holds itself aloof from any and all of them, will have no basis for judging the outcomes its procedures yield. Worldviews bring with them substantive long-term goals that serve as a check against local desires. Worldviews furnish those who live within them with reasons that are more than merely prudential or strategic for acting in one way rather than another. — Does Reason Know what it is Missing? Stanley Fish, NY Times
In the sciences we see emergent hierarchies, and the lower do provide the foundations for the higher, but it certainly doesn't follow that the higher can be exhaustively explained or adequately described in terms of the lower. — Janus
I don't see materialism as a bogeyman as you apparently do — Janus
Hence the requirement for the vertical dimension, the qualitative domain. — Quixodian
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
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Mankind’s common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism. In heroism, we feel, life’s supreme mystery is hidden. — William James
It says that intelligent agents such as ourselves can be explained and understood solely in those terms, and that the qualitative domain - the felt quality of existence - has no intrinsic reality apart from that. — Quixodian
No mention of Heidegger or Dreyfus in this. — plaque flag
Would this not be enabled rather than hindered by a free society ? — plaque flag
Watch this trailer. The full movie has been released on YouTube but the trailer is a mini-documentary in its own right. Dreyfus is in it. — Quixodian
We have the freedom to pursue any ‘ecologies of practice’ we want to but absent the connective tissue provided by culture they can be very difficult to develop and enact. I was part of an informal Buddhist practice group for about ten years which was invaluable but it dispersed and it’s been impossible to replace. — Quixodian
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