Just watched a wide ranging discussion between University of Toronto professor of cognitive psychology and cognitive science John Vervaeke and polymath Iain McGilchrist. It certainly was not a debate. Coming at the subject from different perspectives, they end up agreeing on many point. Hearing how each express what it is they agree on brings the topics into clearer focus. Their discussion which was recorded about a week ago is narrated by Curt Jaimungal on his Theories of Everything channel. This episode is titled God, Meaning, Consciousness and Being:
Iâve titled this thread differently because the part Iâd draw your attention to can be found in a seven minute patch toward the end, between the 2:00:20 and 2:07:20 marks. This section begins with JV discussing religion, myth, prophesy and the cultivation of virtues and ends with IM discussing the limits of certainty and how the primacy of the implicit sets limits on what we can accomplish with words. I canât transcribe well from a video and Vervaeke in particular talks very fast. But at the beginning of the seven minute section JV says:
âWhat youâre doing with religion is contiguous with what youâre doing with all your cognition which is relevance realization, trying to fit your framing to the worldâ
That video says thereâs a transcript of it available: click on the three dots below and to the right of the video â. . .â and then click on âShow Transcriptâ in the pop-up menu.
If you open it in the YouTube app on either Apple or Android devices, you can view the transcript. Just tap the ⨠symbol to the right of the title under the video and then scroll until you see the SHOW TRANSCRIPT box.
While trying to find the transcript I listened again to this part where IM responds to JVâs idea of drawing from a number of sources to recommend intentional practices which can help people progress in wisdom. He echos what I hear many of you here saying about why a long tradition which has evolved to reflect the thinking of many just is more likely to be successful than what anyone can scrap together on their own. I agree with what IM says but like him it doesnât lead me to go all in with any particular tradition. Weâre weird or at the very least inconsistent. But I donât find the pursuit of consistency trumps every other consideration. Like everyone else, I am caught up in some truth. It chose me, not the other way around. I donât think I am in command of all the facts to the degree that I can compose truth from scratch on rational grounds. It is something we feel our way into.
JVâs part begins around 37:30 and IMâs response comes in from 38:40 to 41:00.
Timestamps. At least a start:
Timestamps : 00:00:00 Introduction 00:05:44 Iain on the âmeaning crisisâ 00:09:29 John on the âmeaning crisisâ 00:15:10 Technology amplifies our lack of wisdom 00:18:26 Rationality and Belief (Iain vs. John) 00:28:35 Imaginary vs. Imaginal 00:37:03 Non-theism vs. Religion (against meditation as spiritual redress) 00:53:38 Not doing vs. Un-doing vs. Being passive vs. Un-Knowing 01:09:22 The way God sees us vs. The way we see God 01:22:06 Sam Harris, Closing yourself off to the Divine, and Terror 01:29:20 The importance of Sangha (community), and how can Johnâs neoplatonism work? 01:40:43 Faith, Whitehead, and Reciprocal Opening 01:47:56 Against âbeing presentâ 01:54:58 Marrying a religion 02:04:24 Should we certainly give up on certainty? 02:06:06 On not speaking and the un-making of TOE 02:08:14 John and Iain summate
I havenât watched it. So I hope the time stamps are helpful for anyone who needs a TOC (table of contents).
Below is a link to a Google Doc I created with the auto-generated transcript from YouTube, which will only provide limited help, because it doesnât identify the speakers. It will really only be useful as a basic guide for what was said, but not who said it. Additionally, itâs not edited, so all the misstarts in speaking are there.
