The 4 Horsemen of Meaning | Bishop Barron, John Vervaeke, and Jonathan Pageau | EP 204
What this covers
This episode was recorded on September 10th 2021.
Jordan Peterson, Bishop Barron, John Vervaeke, and Jonathan Pageau have a round table to explore ideas and theories of Meaning. All three guests have been on the podcast before, and all share Jordan’s passion for the universal truths of human experience. This deep discussion explores the roots of Meaning and religious significance.
Bishop Barron is the founder of Word on Fire and the auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese of LA.
John Vervaeke is a colleague of Jordan’s and an associate professor at the University of Toronto since 1994. He teaches courses on reasoning, cognitive development, and higher cognitive processes.
Jonathan Pageau is a symbolic thinker, YouTuber, and class carver of orthodox icons.
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Find more Bishop Barron on YouTube: https://youtube.com/user/wordonfirevideo And here: https://wordonfire.org/
Find more John Vervaeke online on his website: http://johnvervaeke.com John's YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UCpqDUjTsof-kTNpnyWper_Q
Find more Jonathan Pageau on YouTube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCtCTSf3UwRU14nYWr_xm-dQ Jonathan's website: http://www.pageaucarvings.com
_________ [00:00] Preview [01:30] Intro [02:40] Everyone gives their answer to “What is meaning?” [03:30] “We're using meaning as a metaphor... something similar to the way a sentence works. It has intelligibility to it that connects us to the world... so that we can interact and be informed by it” Jon Vervaeke [07:22] “Our mental framing is transparent like a pair of glasses, but there are times we need to step back and, by taking the glasses off and examining them, consider our framing structure" JV [09:10] “When you look at the world there is a central point of focus. When you focus on the point with your eyes it becomes very clear... until we no longer perceive anything by the edge of our vision. It's nothingness, it's just not there" Jordan Peterson [13:56] Bishop Barron's view on meaning and religion [14:23] “I would say that meaning is to be in a purposeful relationship to a value" Bishop Robert Barron [17:55] “So I'm talking to you, which I believe is a good, but it's nested in a higher good and a still higher good, so finally I want not just this particular good but good itself—that's a religious relationship" BRB [18:20] Pageau’s opening thoughts on meaning and religion [19:56] “The reason we perceive hierarchy is because we are always judging... or trying to evaluate whether something’s good" Pageau [20:31] Jordan’s brief foray into “mini-celebrations” [21:53] The idea of revelation [24:46] “It isn't obvious to me that we see objects—we see patterns" JP [27:40] “Like a Rolling Stone—it wasn't the first song I liked, but it was the first that rocked my world and rearranged my mind, and I think that's where real value is" BRB [28:42] Underlying causes of the crisis of meaning [30:10] “Something that starts with Scotus... and goes into the heart of the scientific revolution is that there’s no such thing as levels—reality just is" JV [31:00] Science around the hierarchy of intelligibility and connectedness [33:00] What is science? [39:00] “There’s an epistemic hierarchy and science does not belong on the top" BRB [42:00] “As scientists, we are motivated by a narrative we don't understand scientifically… The whole enterprise is driven by a dream whose reality can't be encapsulated within the process itself" JP [44:00] The ignorance in assuming science OR religion are correct [44:40] Eminationist ontologies [55:30] Religious experiences [01:07:30] The book of Revelations as a psychedelic experience. [01:17:30] The Psychedelic problem and why psychedelics are useful in communal experiences. [01:26:00] Jordan’s biblical lectures [01:32:00] What are the guests working on? [01:36:00] Beauty in churches [01:38:00] Growing up Christian [01:44:00] Possibility is real [01:50:00] Joining religion and science [01:58:04] Wrapping up
#Meaning #Psychology #Religion
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Source description (no synthesized summary yet).
Meaning is fundamentally rooted in relevance realization—the embodied, affectively-laden process by which consciousness selects what matters—and religious meaning emerges when this connection to intelligibility is deepened into sacred participation, requiring recovery of wisdom traditions and integration of top-down (emanational) and bottom-up (emergent) modes of understanding against modern scientism.
- Meaning is not propositional but embodied and participatory, involving relevance realization across multiple cognitive modes (procedural, perspectival, participatory) that science alone cannot address
- Modern scientism has created a meaning crisis by divorcing science from value, rejecting hierarchy and participation, and leaving consciousness with no ontological home, causing widespread suffering and alienation
- Religious and mystical traditions offer sapiential frameworks and transformative practices that are rationally defensible as ways of life, not merely as propositional claims, and can integrate neoplatonic and scientific worldviews
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The problem is not scientism per se but scientism—the elevation of physical science to the supreme position among all forms of knowledge, when properly it should be subordinate to philosophy and theology, which deal with ultimate meaning and the summum bonum.
“i'm again i love the sciences but i hate scientism and scientism is all over the place in our culture i deal with it all the time in my evangelical work hearing from not just younger people from everybody in our culture that science is the uh criterion you know i i saw a video john i think you and jordan were talking to brett weinstein and it was about i don't know maybe something along these lines but he made very articulately intelligently but made the argument that the sciences the physical sciences belong in the supreme position vis-a-vis all forms of human knowing and i'm shouting at the screen no no that's exactly where they don't belong and that's a form of scientism uh the medieval is called theology like the queen of the sciences well at least you're that's more appropriate you're talking about god and the sumeum bonum having some kind of supremacy”
Liturgical churches (Orthodox and traditional Catholic) structure space according to ontological hierarchy, use patterned images revealing mysteries beyond words, engage participatory singing and processions, and enable insights that arise through embodied participation rather than propositional understanding—a fundamentally different practice than conceptual knowledge transfer.
“you enter into the church you say like you imagine an orthodox church even a traditional catholic church you have a space which is structured as the hierarchy ontological hierarchy of being and then you see these images which are patterned and are revealing to you these mysteries that are beyond words and then you participate in the singing these processions and it is it is a participative thing... as you're singing these songs and as you're hearing these hymns all of a sudden two images connect together and all of a sudden you know these things start to connect inside you in somewhat in almost a kind of super rational way”
Christian incarnational theology, particularly in St. Maximus the Confessor's cosmology, demonstrates that emanation (from above) and emergence (from below) are not opposed but interpenetrating—communion of love from below coincides with divine revelation from above in a both-and structure rather than either-or.
“in saint max's cosmology you have the notion that you know this these revelations are both a communion of love and also a revelation from above and that there's absolutely no contradiction between the elements coming together and coagulating in in this this relationship of love and in expressing this divine principle or this higher principle which is coming down from uh from above”
Consciousness and meaning are structured like the visual system: a high-resolution foveal center of focus surrounded by progressively lower resolution periphery fading to nothing, where the fovea is associated with what is most meaningful and the size of the foveal region requires substantial brain resources.
“when you zoom your eyes on inside on something that becomes very clear it's a very small area that becomes very clear and then you'll notice that around that area it's less and less and less clear until it fades out into nothingness and the nothingness you don't even perceive it's just not there and so it's high resolution in the center lower lower lower lower way out here in the periphery you actually don't even see color you can't tell that but you don't and you're better at detecting motion”
Nominalism (the view that patterns exist only in mind, not in the world) and the subsequent loss of levels of being broke the integration between the embodied person and reality; this ripping apart of heaven and earth manifested both in materialism and in esoteric, spiritualist developments; Descartes himself spent his life trying to become a Rosicrucian.
“a deeper kind of transformation which happened in the west related to nominalism into a kind of slow progression towards this separation of heaven and earth we could call it like this kind of ripping apart of the two sides uh which kind of led both to materialism and to all these esoteric things that were going on at the same time right it's not true that materialism was on its own but there are all these kind of esoteric developments that were manifesting themselves we have to remember that descartes spent his whole life trying to become a rosicrucian like these two things were”
Mystical experiences induced by psychedelics show that people encounter what they call 'the really real,' experience increased meaning and moral awareness, quit smoking, and become less afraid of death—but the ontological significance of this and the proper framework for integrating it into culture remain unclear questions.
“normally what we do is we take these experiences that are disconnected from our everyday intelligibility like a dream and we say it's not real because it doesn't fit in people do the opposite with these experiences they say that was really real and all of this has to change to get closer to it”
Science and scientists exist as entities in the world, yet the dominant scientific worldview has no proper ontological place for consciousness, meaning, or scientific practice itself—it is a 'black hole' within the framework that presumes to describe all reality, creating a corrosive alienation through our technologies and cognitive grammar.
“we have a scientific world view in which science and the scientists and their meaning making have no proper ontological place... we are the whole science and and we are the black hole within this brutal view that dominates us”
Beauty is the least threatening transcendental value in postmodern context because it doesn't argue or preach but shows itself self-evidently, making it a more winsome entry point into truth and goodness than direct assertion in an age of skepticism about objective values.
“it's the least threatening of the transcendentals in the post-modern context so people today you say here's something that's true who are you gonna tell me what's true i got my own truth... but the beautiful doesn't preach in that negative sense it it just is you know it shows itself so it's more winsome i think it's it's a more it's a less threatening way into the project”
Meaning is fundamentally disclosed to us in ways we cannot predict and that are outside our current knowledge, rather than being projected onto a meaningless objective world—new knowledge that we don't have can be revealed through the perception of value.
“meaning is disclosed to us and the phenomenologists phenomenological psychologists made much of this in the like first third of the 20th century uh following heidegger... the problem with the idea that we merely project meaning onto a meaningless objective world is that meaning is disclosed to us in ways that we can't predict and that are outside of our are what would outside of it new knowledge that we don't have can be revealed to us through the perception of value”
We perceive values as hierarchically ordered (some things are truer, better, or more beautiful than others), and we can only make these comparative judgments implicitly in relationship to something we consider highest in goodness, truth, and beauty—an unconditioned form toward which being naturally tends.
“we experience things in the world as more or less true good and beautiful... we also notice them ordered hierarchically they're some that's that's truer that's better that's more beautiful... we only can make that calculation in implicit relationship to something we consider highest in goodness truth and beauty”
We perceive affordances (like the graspability of a cup) which are neither objective features of the object nor subjective features of the perceiver, but real relations between agent and world, challenging the subject-object dichotomy that structures modern thought.
“the notion of an affordance and an affordance is not properly objective or subjective the graspability of this cup is not a feature of the cup it's not a subjective feature of me it's a real relation between me and”
The core of rationality is not inferential coherence but the capacity for self-correction through insight, and insight is more fundamental to overcoming self-deception and reframing problems than logical consistency.
“the core of rationality is not inferential coherence it's the capacity for self-correction and insight is one of our most powerful ways of self-correcting... you showed in some of your experiments that... insight predicts how well people are are are overcoming self-deception”
Mystical experience differs from ordinary consciousness in encounter with 'the really real'—a direct encounter with reality itself that is self-validating and leads to reorientation of the person's entire view of what is real, distinct from logical inference or subjective feeling.
“they say that was really real and all of this has to change to get closer to it... and if you take a look at this work you'll see like it's onto a normativity people encounter what they call the really real”
Possibility is a real component of explanation alongside causal events—constraining conditions (like the flat table allowing the pencil to roll, or the tree's shape constraining where photons hit chlorophyll) are as explanatory as bottom-up causes and are increasingly recognized as necessary in physics, biology, and cognitive science.
“there are in addition to causal events there are constraining conditions that are just as real and they are as much explanatory of how things operate as the bottom-up causes so think of a tree you have all of the events causing the structure but the structure why does the tree have the structure it has because it increases the probability that a photon will hit a chlorophyll molecule it's structuring possibility into potentiality and that's just as much needed to explaining a tree as the chemical events causing it we need both to explain life to explain cognition”
The Eastern Christian (Hesychast) and mystical traditions consistently teach that the goal of mystical experience is not the experience itself but transformation and union with God—one must let go of extraordinary experiences, pass through them, toward the pure presence and light beyond all image and thought.
“in the hessy catholic tradition in the mystical tradition of the east it's exactly like what he said about sin john of the cross they consistently insist that the mystic has to ignore all experiences because the purpose is not to have experiences the purpose is to be united with god to be transformed... the highest point is is absence of all image and thought right... there's only this kind of pure presence and this pure light”
The modern physical sciences became possible because Christianity established two conditions: (1) the world is not divine, so it can be experimented on and analyzed objectively; (2) the world is radically intelligible in every part, derived from an intelligent source, so science can assume an orderly universe.
“there's an army of scholars that say the condition for the possibility of the of the physical sciences in the west was christianity that is to say the fundamental assumption that the world is not god if you divinize the world you're not going to experiment on it you're not going to analyze it in this sort of objectivizing way so the world is not god it's been created therefore it can be experimented upon it can be analyzed but then secondly as we've all been saying in different ways it is radically intelligible not just in a superficial way not just in certain parts but in every nook and cranny the universe is intelligible that's a very weird thing the more you think about it why should that be the case and of course it's coming out i would argue of a christian conception that the world did come forth the bible puts it poetically as a great act of speech meaning it's in it's imbued with intelligibility from an intelligent source”
Acts of will are always directed at some good, but those goods nest in higher goods, and we cannot regress infinitely; therefore we must finally arrive at some supreme good (summum bonum) that motivates all lower acts—this final good is what religious relationship addresses.
“every time i make an act of the will i'm seeking a good i'm seeking a value of some kind but as you say quite correctly and that's just like aquinas that value nests in a higher value which nests and is still higher value and so i can't go on indefinitely that would make my act of the will incoherent so i've got to come finally to some sumim bonum some supreme value that's motivating me”
Jung traced the origins of modern science to the alchemical dream of discovering a substance granting immortality, perfect health, and endless wealth, and scientists (including Newton who wrote more on alchemy than physics) have been possessed by this unconscious narrative fantasy for thousands of years.
“jung believed that... the alchemical notion was there exists a substance which eventually became a material substance whose discovery would grant upon its bearer immortality perfect health and endless wealth so the idea the dream was that substance could be found in the material world... scientists were encapsulated within that dream... newton who wrote much more on alchemy than he did on physics”
The failure of purely bottom-up approaches in reconciling quantum mechanics and general relativity over 40 years suggests the framing is wrong and that top-down constraints are as real and necessary as bottom-up causation in fundamental physics.
“we can't reconcile bottom-up quantum mechanics with top-down relativity we can't do it because we keep trying to make it it's got to come from quantum up to the relative the relativistic which is you know top down but i would argue the fact that we've tried this strategy and we keep trying it for 40 years and it's failing is probably a reason to think that maybe we're we're framing the problem with the wrong way and we have to think about no no no we have to give up a purely bottom up we have to make the top down as real to all of our explanations”
Angry atheists often prove to be traumatized former fundamentalists when examined closely, suggesting that the psychological root of strong atheism is frequently religious trauma rather than intellectual refutation of religious claims.
“when i deal with atheists online which i do a lot um very often i say when you scratch the surface of a really angry atheist you'll find as you put a traumatized fundamentalist at first that surprised me now it doesn't anymore that when i press a little bit and probe a little bit is someone recovering from just the kind of traumatizing experience that you had as a kid so that makes sense to me”
Meaning operates through relevance realization, which is a dynamical self-organizing process where attention varies and selects among available information based on what is affectively salient and connected to embodied goals, rather than through cold propositional calculation.
“the problem of relevance realization which is this deep profound problem at the heart of cognitive science... of all of the information available to me how do i zero in on the relevant information... we're doing it all right now and we're doing it like this and it's not a cold calculation uh you know i'm standing out i'm salient there's an element of arousal there's affect you're caring about some information and you're backgrounding and ignoring other information”
A fundamental contradiction exists in scientism: it assumes flat ontology with no levels of being (rejecting Platonic hierarchy), yet posits that the bottom level is most real while upper levels are derivative—this is exactly symmetrical to the opposite position (top-down) with no deep difference.
“reductionism so you have this whole tradition that says there are no levels of being get rid of all that platonic stuff but the bottom level is the really real level and all the levels above it are false that is exactly symmetrical to the upper level is most real and everything uh coming down from it is derivative there's no deep difference this is part of the point i've made between an emergentist ontology it's it is hierarchical it has levels and an emanationist it is hierarchical and have levels”
A participative view of being holds that the world is in God and reflects God, rather than God being one supreme being among others; this participatory ontology (found in Aquinas, not as 'en sumum' but as 'ipsum esse' or being itself) is what is lost in nominalism and Scotist univocity.
“a participative view of being you know the world in god the world reflecting god not a world of separated things and god being the supreme thing among them so aquinas says that god is not the supreme being he doesn't call him en sumum but he calls them ipsum essay to be itself so there's a whole view of reality that that's implicit in that description of god”
The alignment of nominalism, Duns Scotus, William of Occam, and certain forms of Protestantism with the rejection of participatory metaphysics and the univocal conception of being set the conditions for modern problems including scientism.
“trace it to people like descartes but i i'm with uh john i'd go right back to don scotus and and occam and the breakdown of a participation metaphysics and when you get this univocal conception of being and following from that nominalism”
Science provides description of terrain (physical mechanisms, processes, facts) but cannot provide a map for human meaning and direction—science is methodologically incapable of determining where humanity should go, what is good, or how to live.
“science is not a map it's a description of the terrain... there's direction there i suppose but it's implicit the scientists impose that direction by following the dictates of their intuition of meaning but science itself doesn't offer a map right”
When religious meaning has no proper place in secular culture, the religious impulse infiltrates politics and other domains, creating a destructive politicization and imbuing trivial matters with quasi-religious significance—hence recovery of proper religious practice and meaning is a prerequisite for healthy secular politics.
“the religious would drop into the political and then you watch what happens and we are watching what happened because there's no domain for the religious now no specified domain so tiny things become imbued with religious significance because there's no proper place right and that's a that's not good”
Psychedelic experience without proper sapiential framework and community integration risks fragmentation rather than binding—the 1960s introduction of psychedelics without embedded ritual and social coherence shows that mystical experience in an atomized society can become narcissistic and destabilizing.
“when we talk about the eleusinian mysteries now everybody's excited to talk about the spiked wine but no one cares to talk about the entire ritual in which this was embedded... we kind of throw this stuff out into a world that is individualistic and based on on everybody's own little whims... instead of binding we'll we'll we'll continue to kind of fragment our society”
The Eleusinian Mysteries may have used LSD-spiked wine to produce collective mystical experiences that constituted the fountain from which Greek wisdom and culture flowed for thousands of years, raising the question of whether mystical experience (including drug-induced) is aberration or the foundation of culture.
“brian mararescu and carl rock... the ellucinian mysteries... the greeks were using a an lsd spiked wine essentially to produce a collective mystical experience... that that experience was at the basis of the unity of greek culture but more than that that it was the fountain from which greek wisdom flowed”
The inversion of reason as the dominant faculty to will as the dominant faculty for understanding human identity is bound up with the historical shift toward materialism and represents a loss from the earlier integration of reason and will.
“the reason was was supplanted by will as the dominant faculty by which humans uh understood and identified themselves”
Recovery of wisdom tradition must emphasize philosophy as a way of life (following Pierre Hadot) rather than academic philosophy—a practice of transformation involving discipline, conversion of mind, and conformity to reality rather than mere knowledge acquisition.
“pierre hadeau i know has has brought back where that one i think is better yeah the it's a way of life well yes and what i would what i would point to is that that points us to a kind of why do we what's the difference between the academic philosophy and i have training in that and philosophy as a way of life”
The high suicide rate in affluent liberal democracies like Australia, the loneliness epidemic, addiction epidemic, and preference for virtual over real worlds indicate a significant stressor pointing to a meaning crisis despite material prosperity and peace.
“there are more deaths uh by suicide in australia right now than copenhagen yeah and australia is one of the epitomes of you know the best countries in the world affluent liberal democracy not much conflict been at peace for a long time... what you have is spiking in suicide you have the loneliness epidemic you have the addiction epidemic you have people choosing to learn live in a virtual world rather than the real world you have all of these things that are pointing to the fact that there's a significant stressor”
Young people are leaving the church primarily because of intellectual problems (not understanding doctrines, conflicts with science, questions not being answered) rather than primarily because of scandals, yet the response has been to 'dumb down' both doctrine and aesthetics rather than to clarify and elevate them.
“the scandals will be mentioned but by far the most prominent reason is i don't believe the doctrines i never had my questions answered uh it's in conflict with science it doesn't make sense they're intellectual problems well yeah i get it we dumbed the project down for about 50 years uh so smarten it up and and reintroduce people to this tradition”
The cutting edge of cognitive science is recognizing multiple types of knowing beyond propositional knowing: procedural knowing (knowing how to do something), perspectival knowing (knowing what it's like to be in a state, giving situational awareness), and participatory knowing (being transformed by and conformed to others and the world).
“what we're discovering and you can even find you know specific kinds of memory for each one of these there's also procedural knowing there's knowing how to do something the skills there's perspectival knowing which is knowing what it's like to be here in this state of mind in this situation giving me situational awareness and then the deepest is uh participatory knowing this is this is the way in which we know by how we are conformed and transformed by others by the world so that our knowing of ourself and our knowing of this so you see this of course prototypically in the way you know your beloved you don't know them yeah by your skills or your proposition of course you know them this way but this is not the the essence of it the essence of it is the way you know you are conforming to that and you're being transformed so your self-knowledge and your knowledge of them are bound together”
The problem of meeting crisis is severe and has been worsened by COVID-19, and it is vain hope that things will return to the way they were; the response must be to ramp up efforts to provide sapiential frameworks and ways of life to people.
“i take the meeting crisis very seriously um and i think covet has made it worse i've got a lot of evidence for that and um i don't think i think the the v i think it's a vain hope that everything's just going to go back to the way it was i think that is not where we should place our existential or epistemic bets and i think we need to ramp up the project of getting the call to a sapiential framework and a way of life to people out there”
Religious meaning specifically arises when we reflexively focus on the connection itself (religio, the binding together) that normally operates transparently, seeking to accentuate and deepen mutual resonance with reality's depths, creating an experience of inexhaustible emerging intelligibility that is sacred rather than merely transparent.
“normally religio is transparent to us and and therefore we are it affords our agency but there are things we do where we step back and we try to become more directly aware of religio in order to educate it... when we're doing that in a way that creates what i i call a reciprocal opening... i'm experiencing this inexhaustible fount of emerging intelligibility that's not just conceptual but is this about this religio for me that's the experience of sacredness and so when when religio when we we when we focus upon religio rather than focus through it... that for me is what religious meaning would be the religio about the sacred”
Christ's story reaches the limit of storytelling in all its aspects—he goes down into death and defeats it (the underworld becomes empty), reaching both the highest summit and the lowest depths, making it the supreme narrative expression of binding ultimate reality together into coherent form.
“christ doesn't just go down into the underworld and resurrect when he comes back up the underworld is empty and death is defeated and that's the end and so it's like that for almost every aspect of christ's story where he reaches the limit of storytelling uh and so in that way it's it's a it's it's the fact that we recognize it that we've brought it together that we've celebrated it means that it is part of this kind of cosmic revelation”
The dominant modern worldview holds that objective reality is made of material things existing independently of consciousness; humans project value onto these things; values are ephemeral and evanescent, with no fundamental ontological status once human consciousness ceases.
“the standard view of the world now is that there's an objective reality that's devoid that's made out of think material things that's the most appropriate way to conceptualize it it's made out of objective things they exist independently of consciousness and we project a value structure onto them and with and when we die let's say when there is no human consciousness that value structure is there's no value structure like that there and so it's epithelial and evanescent it's not a fundamental part of objective reality outside of subjectivity”
The distinction between substance (hypostasis) in the alchemical tradition leading to material substance versus the theological history of hypostasis leading to the Trinity represents two different developmental paths, one toward materialism and one toward incarnational theology integrating multiple and unity.
“substance goes back to hypostasis but of course there's another history of hypostasis which is into the persons of the trinity which is a very different history and so there's there's no necessity that you go from hypostasis the grounding of intelligibility to materiality”
The weakness of rationalist atheism is that it treats religion as a set of propositions (which it then tries to refute scientifically) and misses the non-propositional dimensions (the participatory knowing, liturgical engagement, communal practice) through which religious meaning actually operates.
“i think one of the weaknesses i believe of the rational atheists position is that first of all that their argument is carried out almost entirely in the propositional landscape they treat religious they treat religion as if it's a set of propositions that are in some sense expressed in a manner contrary to this propositions that constitute science and then i think well wait wait a minute guys you're missing the point here”
Four essential capacities constitute proper rationality: being attentive to what is actual, being intelligent (discerning intelligible form), being reasonable (making judgments about what is true), and being responsible (following through on implications)—and the human mind is fallen in all four, requiring disciplinary process.
“lonergan... had those four imperatives if you want to know the world you've got to be attentive be intelligent be reasonable and be responsible... his point was we tend not to be those four things the mind is fallen it falls away from attention... it doesn't see what's there... it's not intelligent which for him meant it doesn't have insights... it's not reasonable... it doesn't make judgments... and then finally it's not responsible”
A post-nominalist neoplatonism integrating scientific worldview with classical metaphysics is not the project of resurrecting the old neoplatonism but of profoundly reconceiving it in light of both contemporary science and theological tradition, showing reconciliation is possible.
“the project is not to try and resurrect um uh neoplatonism or the neoplatonic structure... the ambition of the project towards aquinas or maximus which is to show right to revise that neoplatonism... to show how it is profoundly uh you know to do a reciprocal reconstruction between the neoplatonism and the scientific worldview... i think we need a post-nominalist neoplatonism if i could put it that way in a profound shape”
Recognition of any good is intrinsically a mini-celebration, and this stacks up in religious practice where people gather, sing, and process together to celebrate the highest good, binding people as a body rather than remaining as disparate individuals.
“every act of recognition of a good is going to be a mini celebration but that stacks up together in terms of people gathering and singing and and processing and doing all the things we do in order to celebrate the highest good”
Modern Western consciousness has flattened out liturgical churches by presenting the Bible through pure historical criticism while also emptying churches of mystical and cosmic symbolism (images, color, hierarchy, saints, angels), creating aesthetic and spiritual deprivation.
“the same time we were presenting the bible in this in this flattened out historical critical way we also were flattening out our churches emptying out our churches of just that mystical cosmic symbolism the angels the saints color uh the cosmic dimension and we flattened them out and we made them like you know empty meeting spaces”
Approaching scripture as a psychologist approaching a strange and complex artifact—investigating rather than explaining, pulled along in inquiry—is more effective at communicating meaning than dogmatic assertion because it models participation in meaning rather than reception of doctrine.
“i wasn't exactly telling people what i thought about them i wasn't saying this is how you should read these stories i was trying to investigate something i knew was beyond my comprehension and i was doing that on my feet... i approached the bible as a psychologist in some sense but as if it was something i really didn't understand a strange artifact... it's been around forever... i was an investigation and i kind of pulled people along with me during the investigation”
Science fiction narratives (like Zelazny's Lord of Light) can express wonder and self-transcendence within scientific worldview, showing that the apparent conflict between science and spiritual experience is not necessary but an artifact of reductive materialism.
“what opened me up was a science fiction book that showed it was a book by rodgers alaska the lord of light that showed the possibility of wonder and self transcendence within a scientific world view that's what blew me open out of fundamentalism”
Christ functions psychologically as the symbol of the self and the hero of heroes in Judeo-Christian culture, representing the implicit figure at the outer edge of narrative structuring that orients moral agency and meaning-making, whether or not one holds explicit religious belief.
“that implicit figure at the outer edge of the narrative structuring of my consciousness and meaning realization that would be something that's psychologically equivalent to the the hero of heroes in some sense that would be culture free but in our culture in the judeo-christian culture that figure is christ”
Religious experience and trauma in fundamentalist Christianity are not unrelated to the lack of bridge between religious and scientific worldviews—the false dichotomy between two incommensurable systems allowed tyranny over consciousness, whereas integration or post-nominalist neoplatonism would restore possibility of coherence.
“there was no bridge it was easy to give me an either or isolating choice you're either in this world view or you're in that world view and that one's demonic and if you go over there you're lost there is a deep connection between the lack of bridge between the religious worldview... and the scientific worldview... those are not separable phenomena that's what i'm arguing they are deeply interpenetrating and mutually supporting that's how i experienced it”
Recovery of objective value against the culture of self-invention (where individuals generate their own values) is key to addressing meaning crisis and spiritual death, and is what churches should emphasize alongside recovery of authentic mysticism.
“the recovery of the wisdom tradition over and against this deadening scientism the recovery of value over and against this equally deadening culture of self-invention that i just generate my own values... the recovery of objective value culminating in god the supreme value that's the key to meaning”
Religious revelation is a life lived in purposive relationship to the supreme value when that supreme value is not passively waited for but actively pursues the human consciousness, breaking in and reorienting it; this differs from Platonic contemplation where the good dumbly waits to be found.
“now when the suma bonum isn't just dumbly out there waiting for us to rise up through some contemplative exercise because i mean the sumabonum plato and platinus and khan could all say yeah there's assuming bonum but when it really gets interesting to me is when the sumimbonum is after me the psumabonum is trying to find me and is breaking into my reluctant and recalcitrant consciousness and now you're talking about religious revelation but it has to do with that that i don't know stunning objectivity the the good think of iris murdock there she was so strong on that theme that the good confronts us and it changes us and it doesn't let us go and um religious revelation is the sort of ultimate expression of that it seems to me”
Cardinal George taught that philosophy is a rational path distinct from science; the confusion of rationality with scientific method is a modern error; many people think the only rational path is scientific, but rationality includes philosophical and theological reasoning; this opens the possibility of thinking of religion as rational without being scientific.
“a lot of people especially young people think the only rational path is the scientific one those are simply coterminous to be rational is to be a follower of the scientific method and so if religion isn't that well then it must be irrational well if it introduced philosophy as indeed a rational path that the most brilliant people in the tradition have have uh have practiced it but it's not a scientific path it's it's rational without being scientific and that might open the door cardinal george would say to thinking about religion as also a rational path that's not scientific”
Meaning is derived from nested hierarchies of values, where perceiving something good in relation to a higher good produces positive emotion (dopaminergically mediated), and without this nested hierarchy of valued goods there is no positive meaning in life.
“if you see something that leads you down the pathway to that value that produces positive emotion technically speaking that's dopaminergically mediated... meaning is derived from this nested hierarchy and then the perception of of valued what would you what the the perceptions of values that lead us down that pathway without that there is no positive emotion in in my in my understanding of it”