#external-article
Here is the video recording of the panel discussion
Text of my opening statement:
OK. -- I have the uncanny feeling that I have been invited to a birthday party and am going to complain about the cake. If I come across as hard hitting, please know that I do not mean to be disrespectful. I've added some humor to lighten the load for you.
I respect John for his opening arguments because he seemed to be hitting hard. Not sure who he was arguing with. But here, I'll let you know I am pushing back against some of the ideas presented in this conference, because I'd rather you leave the conference with good questions instead of bad ideas. I believe that good questions can lead to consilience. And wisdom needs us to ask good questions in a hard way.
First let me give you an example of what I think is happening here. Way back in Socrates' time, during the axial age, there was a guy named Zeno. Zeno analyzed the flight of an arrow. His analysis led to the conclusion that movement from one place to another is impossible, because to get to that place, you'd first have to get ½ way there, but to get ½ way there, you'd first have to get ¼ way there. And on and on.
Of course, when we hear this, we become skeptical about the analytic process itself, not about the possibility of movement. There is actually an extremely complex mathematical proof that resolves the problem, but if we had to understand that proof before we could get from one place to another, we'd all be stuck in place forever.
What we do know is our "axial age" minds can create riddles in this way about all kinds of things. We can call all kinds of "folk knowledge" into question, and come face to face with the specter of extreme doubt, or stunned into a state of aporia.
Only educated people are worried about these things, though, because they have been made neurotic enough to contemplate the problem, smart enough to conjure the riddle, but not smart enough to do the math.
This leads to skepticism around the nature of the self, skepticism around the deep and real continuity of the physical, biological and spiritual realms -- something that was self-evident to pre-axial age peoples---and skepticism about reality itself -- that perhaps we are completely unhinged and are living in a simulation.
The point here, is that we must be careful that we are not fighting our own ghosts. That the existential problems we are fighting are not the very same ghosts that we have hypothesized in the first place.
And that the very performance of fighting for what would otherwise be self-evident truths to the undoctrinated---especially when** fighting for** them with high-fallutin concepts and extortionary reasoning, actually calls them into question.
It's like we are constantly asking ourselves the question "how can you be so sure" -- a question that the mind cannot possibly resolve, and so it continues to drive itself **upwards **into more and more complex arguments.
So let me share two experiences of the conference so far.
The first experience:
Yesterday I learned people have to level up to get a grip on reality. You have to level up in order for reality to be intelligible. So I said to my dog, you have no chance at all of being in the world.
Now, I think John has argued for a strong transcendence but has a weak naturalism. He seems to think that a strong naturalism only leads to reductionism -- which it doesn't. It only leads to reductionism if you still think that the only causal relationships "down below" are Newtonian billiard ball bang and go kinds of relationships. So I would like us to question this idea.
The second experience:
Yesterday in a panel discussion on spirituality three positions were called into question
- That real knowledge of the world is possible
- That meaning and value are real
- That there is a real possibility for communication
Now, I don't mean that the presenter was being skeptical of these things. No, he was actually arguing for them. But in order to prove them, we were taken on a journey into cognitive thermodynamics, metaphysics and opponent processing. And it seems to me that this is a kind of way to invite skepticism about them. It's what Zeno was doing, except we have perfected the art of the riddle.
It seems to me that the ongoing intellectual debates that will ensue, puts these three fundamental existential truths out of reach of most people. I said to my dog, there's really no hope for you at all.
My dog looked at me in a curious, way, and I took him to be asking " when did people start to be skeptical about these three truths in the first place?" "I suppose," I said, "from their education." I went on to explain how scientists and philosophers had made strong arguments that called them into question. And that I was witnessing some strong arguments that put them back into the realm of the real. But my dog was already sleeping again and didn't hear any of it.
So you know. Maybe there is a sorcerer among us. Maybe there is a fight to fight here. I don't know. What I do know is that the malware runs very deep.
Ivan Illich said that at some point in western culture, due to powerful systemic levers, there was an inflection point such that now, the medicine makes you sick, the money makes you poor, and school makes you stupid.
This would be funny if not for the statistics around physical and mental health---especially in the youth. In the US, the most advanced nation in the history of the world, 1 out of every 16 "kids" under the age of 20 are diagnosed with severe mental illness. I have seen too many "kids" walk out of the monastery and into a mental institution. So maybe the spirituality now makes us insane.
Maybe Metamodernism is characterized by this unique oscillation between the priest and the psychiatrist, between two rituals which share one thing in common -- the analytic reductive examination of our minds. Maybe that signifies an inflection point in the "wisdom" industry, a sign of iatrogenic soteriology.
In other words, maybe a strong transcendence without a strong naturalism
does more harm than good.
What I propose is a dialogue around the possibility of a deep continuity between a strong transcendence and a strong naturalism. That we find them to be in fact what Varela would call "dynamically isomorphic." This might be a way forward toward consilience and the beginning of a wisdom commons.