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foreign [Music] it is an utter privilege to be joined here today by Ian McGill Crist and David Schindler otherwise known as DC
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Schindler if you've been reading his books and I'm going to do a sort of a truncated introduction because both of these gentlemen have so many accomplishments but there will be a
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longer introduction in the in the information section under the video and if you want to bypass this introduction you can check out the time stamps so Dr Ian Miguel Chris expertise is
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wide-ranging he's a psychiatrist a neuroscience researcher philosopher literary scholar a Quantum fellow of All Souls College Oxford and Associate fellow of green Templeton College Oxford
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a fellow of the Royal College of psychiatrists and a former consultant psychiatrist and Clinical Director at the Bethlehem Royal and Mosley Hospital in London a research fellow in neuroimaging at
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Johns Hopkins Hospital he has been in the past and a fellow of The Institute of advanced studies in Stellenbosch he's published original articles and research papers in a wide range of Publications on topics in literature philosophy
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medicine and psychiatry he's the author of a number of books but is best known for the master and his Emissary The Divided brain and the making of the Western World which was published in 2009 and his most recent
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work the matter with things our brains are delusions in the unmaking of the world DC Schindler studied the great books as an undergraduate at Notre Dame received a master's degree in theology at the
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John Paul II Institute and then completed his education with a master's degree in a PhD in philosophy at the Catholic University of America after teaching for 12 years at Villanova
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University first as a teaching fellow in philosophy and then is a founding member of the humanities Department Dr Schindler returned to Washington D.C to teach philosophy courses at The Institute
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is published more than a dozen books including Plato's critique of impure reason and love and the postmodern predicament and more than 70 articles and book chapters his principal thematic focus is
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metaphysics and philosophical anthropology but he also works in political philosophy phenomenology the philosophy of science the philosophy of religion and philosophical theology
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his main historical areas are ancient Greek philosophy especially Plato and neoplatonism German philosophy especially Hegel and Heidegger and Catholic philosophy especially Aquinas
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and 20th Century tomism it's a delight to have you two gentlemen here today and uh it's a delight to introduce you to each other because I've been following both
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of your work for a long time and I had sent you a little bit of um a heads up before we got going were you both able to look at that that section yes yes Lewis's book
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so so to just um give the audience a little bit of a heads up I had chosen a couple of pages out of C.S Lewis's book The discarded image because that's a book that a number of the viewers here have been
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um reading and thinking about for some time and I just wanted to talk about this one little section in here um I actually I think I'll put it on screen for people so that they can see
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it too is that visible to you yes yes it's helpful thank you yes um so I'm going to go down here
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such a prime mover he finds in the Holy Transcendent and immaterial God who occupies no place and is not affected by time but we must not imagine him moving things by any positive action for that
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would be to attribute some kind of motion to himself and we should then not have reached an utterly unmoving mover how then does he move things Aristotle answers he moves as beloved
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he moves other things that is as an object of Desire moves those who desire it and then in the next on the next page he says it would be easy to discount on the
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antithesis between this Theology and that which is characteristic of Judaism at its best in Christianity both can speak about the love of God but in the one this means the Thirsty and
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aspiring love of creatures for him in the other his Provident and descending love for them the antithesis should not however be regarded as a contradiction a real Universe could accommodate the love of
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God in both senses so wonder what you both think about this idea that he moves the universe because he is an object of Desire
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David I think you should go first an area of your deep scholarship and I can come afterwards like the jester or the fool and make a
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few comments on what you've just said and I mean do you would you like to know would it help if you knew why I was asking this question um uh sure that that would I mean
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there's it's such a rich the problem is if I begin well let me give let me give you a Target um I've been watching Dr mcgilchrist work for a long time and recently he's
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been having some very productive conversations with Michael Levin who is a biologist well that's that's a sad word to use for him he's um
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he is a biochemist and a developmental biologist and he's working on regenerating Limbs and all these kinds of things and um Ian has been having a lot of conversations with him
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so I know that Ian that you're familiar with this idea that Michael Levin is always saying how is it that the limbs of an organism know first of all how to grow bilaterally so that they're
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identical and also when to stop growing how do they know when to stop how do they know when they've reached Perfection and I've been thinking about this a lot and I think there's something in that
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idea of um growing towards an object growing towards participating in beauty or participating in Perfection and so
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that was why I asked you this question I see I I'm sorry just comment basically just comment a little about the um not not about my conversations with Michael Levin in general but just for
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um listeners who may not be familiar with this area it goes a lot more extraordinary than anything that Karen has just mentioned although that's extraordinary enough
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um the very um grain in the pattern in Antlers of deer is completely unique like fingerprints and um it's it's exactly
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mirrored in each of them and if you cut one of them off it will regenerate that particular shape and where is that shape stored accessible but to me even more
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incredible is that throughout pregnancy on average every minute half a million neurons are created now that's extraordinary in itself but each neuron has to know exactly if you like where
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eventually it's going to be I mean not at the moment that it's created but as this thing is is generating its form where is the three-dimensional minutely accurate detail of the
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structure of the brain where is that access it's not in the genome I can give you that for free that that's a that's a a really helpful uh point of reference I I mean one of
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the things that that is unique about this um passage that Lewis quotes and and uh I think it represents I I think actually one could make an argument represents the very heart of the
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classical Christian uh conception the the the the uh the found the philosophical Foundation of Western Civilization um Plato's
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um insight into the good as the the highest principle of all things and then an interpretation of the of the cosmos always you always have to take for granted some ultimate principle when you
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when you attempt to understand and for Plato um you're going to end up with a disorder in your thinking and therefore a disorder in your action if you don't begin with what is in fact ultimate and
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he posited the good and that's something that the the um uh Christian and not only the Christian uh tradition took up and affirmed um and developed but but
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essentially affirmed now the the reason I I I say this is the the a founding principle the of the classical Christian uh uh conception um it's it's a
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principle that's rejected that disappears in the late Middle Ages and um into the the birth of modernity uh and one of the things that happens there so this is a long wind up to um to come
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to the to the point but what what happens there is that um goodness ceases to be uh an ontological principle a principle of the very being of things and becomes a increasingly simply an
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object of uh deliberate um human aims uh and exercise of of intelligence becomes a thesis to be an ontological thing and becomes immoral
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um a moral principle now um that uh that has incredible uh implications but but one
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of them uh one of them is that um in in the classical world uh you know I lost you there um we we dropped out or something happens for a few minutes a minute yeah
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the moment I said that the good disappeared you disappeared [Laughter] out was about the point that he said that the in modernity goodness had
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ceases to be an ontological principle and becomes a moral principle yeah simply a moral principle and so something that simply can can concerns human beings and their activities and
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and one can trace out the the implications of that but in the in the in the pre-modern era um goodness was that um after which all things uh stroke so that includes
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um the not only the all living things but all being simply this this was made in quite explicit um so so everything can be understood as
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in some analogous way seeking Perfection seeking Beauty seeking a kind of actuality um and it seems to me you know if we begin with that kind of a principle it's
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a it's it's not so um disturbing you might say that we we come upon phenomena like the ones that you've described here that that we see
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that there's a certain tendency in uh in a non-spiritual sort of a non-intelligent at least this high level uh intelligence
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a non-intelligent being that nevertheless spontaneously seeks a kind of form and Perfection that's that from from a classical perspective that's a sign of this love for the good that that
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that that rules the universe as it were um and I I could say more about that but I I I don't want to go on too long here no no that's that's good I mean it's
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just that there's a number of really quite disparate strands here I mean they're not ultimately but we need to be able to knit them together I think for the uh for for for the listeners
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um yes I mean I I know exactly what you mean um when you say non-intelligent but then you see I think that intelligence is
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it's part of the stuff of the universe one of the most extraordinary things about the universe as Einstein said is that it is comprehensible at all how come these beings can come along and at
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least to an extent understand and understanding is quite different from you know having information or data about it means being able to somehow enter into this being
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and and see see it's essence or it's it's being in a new light that makes sense of it that dignifies it that that shows where
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it fits as it whether it has a part in a complex and beautiful hole so I think well I think of beauty goodness and Truth not just as um things at all because that's a that's
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us um a trick of the Greek language that invented the definite article and instead of just having things that were beautiful you could have the beautiful and so forth but I think that these are
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aspects of of being that the the being of the cosmos is intelligent it is beautiful it is good it is it it has its its truthfulness in the sense that it is it is
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um integral non self-declarative non um deceptive it it is what it is truly really foundationally now I'm not um
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um a a theological scholar so I can't put it in any other way than that I I uh would I very much a affirm that that description
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um I think I might one thing that that I don't want to make this a central Focus here but the question of whether what you've described as possible without some Transcendent app sort of uh finally
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absolutely Transcendent first principle is a question that I uh would want to raise but but in any event this notion of of goodness truth and Beauty
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pervading the whole of the cosmos so that in in a certain sense um um I I I think you were pointing to this that that even um creatures that we wouldn't call
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intelligent per se that can't speak say that they nevertheless participate in their own distinctive way in intelligence I think that's very important to see and
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very very true and in fact not just at a lower level but there are certain ways in which beings sub-human creatures can reveal to us aspects of the meaning of intelligence
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that we ourselves don't possess um I think that's uh yeah I I don't know whether you'd accompany me there but I'd go as far as to say that even non-animate sure um aspects of the universe reveal
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intelligence and beauty and complexity and a sense of purpose I mean this is the most extraordinary thing that we we see if you're a biologist if you're if you're even not a biologist if you're a
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an early cosmologist you see things that you have to be you have to exercise extraordinarily perverse arguments in order to get away from the idea that
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there's something that's clearly directive here and that brings us back to the idea of attraction that there is something that attracts towards certain ends I do strongly believe that
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um since you raised it for the record I would also um agree that there is something that is transcendent that embodies this this
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um this set of values or or principles or however one likes to put it in put it and that that is the ultimate primitive we don't have a right word it
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is the ontological Primitive it is being in itself and but but also that of course what's wonderful is and this is part of um Christian religion particularly this God is base
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Transcendent and imminent yes I I I would follow you all the way uh to to the Rocks that's a that's a that's a point I make with with my students even uh I mean if if this is
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true about the principle of all being then there can't be anything that exists that doesn't participate in some some way so even something like a stone rolling rolling down a hill is is an
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expression of the of the the love of God and and and meaningfulness in a way that's um fitting for that particular level um but uh I I I appreciate very much the
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the um emphasis you just laid on attraction I think that's another very helpful um Dimension because um some of the things that are coming up here I think are very often
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misunderstood as um in a kind of an extrinsicist sense you have God above the Universe um imposing order ordering things from without and and establishing uh laws the
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law of nature which he then imposes in some way on on creatures which is ultimately quite an incoherent view um if you if you think it through to the end uh it's very different attraction is
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is not um um extrinsic obedience attraction presupposes a kind of an internal participation in the ordering principle so that that
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this movement is is the order in a way is drawn out of things as much as it is uh introduced to them from above it's not it's not imposed in a kind of
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coercive way that I think a lot of the early modern thinkers supposed and and that was one of the reasons they wanted to get rid of this teleological sense of goodness
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um for the physical sure but there are different kinds of teleology under of course there's a teleology of an engineer making a machine for a purpose but there is also a kind of intrinsic
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teleology in the being or something like adults I mean a dance has no purpose in the sense that when it comes to the end it's achieved something but it's not that it's purposeless reading a poem is
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not purposeless but you don't do it for a purpose in some way that somebody is ordained this will produce a certain result so as long as we get away from the 18th century deistic idea of an
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engineering god tinkering with the universe the eye we can come back to an idea of a of an ever not completely known I would say and this is where I
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may come into conflict with with a with um a a more conventional Theologian but I I think that there is room for a god that is
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unchanging and a God who is like whiteheads God um bringing the cosmos into being and in that process there is a reciprocation between God and His creation and it's
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not just that God knows it all in advance and therefore just creates it because in that case why would he bother with a certain aspect in fact why would he do it at all what is a sense what is essential here is the idea of relation
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that first of all love love is a relation not a thing and if God is love and not just Christianity but other world Traditions suggest that whatever this founding principle is is love then
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it's got to be able to have something that is free to be not just designed to fit in and follow the steps that are forwarding it must essentially have freedom and that may help explain to
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some people who are listening to what we're saying and saying how can these two patches be going on about how marvelous the universe is it's full of love and goodness and Beauty but just look at you know what's going on in in
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Bosnia or look just look at so many things that we can point to which are not the way we would have liked them to be and this is surely the conflict between
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um freedom and love that that a true love must be free and the price of freedom is that things will not always look like the things that we would think they should yes yes
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and and um oh there's so many things that your your comments uh uh provoke it um in my mind here but uh one thing just immediately in in relation to to your
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last Point um I think some people think that uh if one insists on order that that expresses a kind of um reluctance to take seriously disorder
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and suffering and pain and and and such things but but in fact I think those the only way to take those things really seriously is to
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um sustain uh a belief in Ultimate order if if order is not ultimate then then um suffering is just as good as pleasure there's just no no real difference between happiness and despair they
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become the the it it all sort of flattens out into into meaninglessness we feel uh suffering as a as as tragic and as an affront precisely because we all I I
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think naturally spontaneously recognize order as as ultimate so and your comment that that um uh that love
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opens up this possibility that's that is something that um I think uh you're right that that uh on a certain stream of a more conventional theology has a
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lot of trouble facing but I think it's it's it's part of the classical tradition when I read the passage care in the tube wanted us um to begin with from from Lewis I thought of
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um the work that I have always considered to be I think one of the greatest creations of the human spirit I really um uh uh hold hold a particular text in
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in very high regard that is um Dionysus the areapagites um on the Divine names in which he expresses precisely this point in in an extraordinary detail and beauty
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and and and Glory this is this is where even the animals and the Rocks all the way to the inanimate being is seen to share in this but he at the heart of that he says that this desire that moves
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all things towards God ultimately is an image and this is where it becomes very paradoxical an image of the desire that God has for creatures that that um there's a there's
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a reciprocity of love absolutely okay now that and and so so I mean if you think about how what could it possibly mean for God to desire a creature that it wouldn't seem that uh
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Perfection the desire would seem to require some kind of imperfection and what one can um uh it would take some time to lay it all out but just in principle for
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Dionysus that love has a kind of a paradox that transcends that that dilemma and he can identify the absolute
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unchanging being of God with uh it doesn't exclude this true involvement in this true reciprocity with creation um that reciprocity
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is essential to the nature of love and cannot be it cannot exist without that degree of what is potentially an imperfection but
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you mentioned parrot Hooks and I'm no particular foe of paradox I mean as Niels Bohr said you know a good a paradox I think we're approaching some
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profound truth and this is another thing that is um maybe I don't know is easy or not easy for for conventional Orthodox Christian theology
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to embrace but you talked about order and that this suggests this idea of a uniform state but of course one of the aspects of order may be
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its ability to incorporate and actually make beautiful and orderly elements of disorder in fact it needs elements of disorder there must be disorder with the order and so we're into
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um I don't know if you've had a chance at all to look at or come across my book the matter with things but at the beginning of the part three of the book which is on sort of metaphysics I start with the chapter on The Coincidence of
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opposites and this necessary dance between things that require one another but it doesn't importantly require that they be equal they may be
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asymmetrical in value and so one is always able to take in the other for example we need principles both for Union and for division in order to have creation but they don't need to be
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divided they need to be United and it's when they're United that something creative actually happens you know could I just jump in here for a second because you you landed on my spot
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here um I've had this channel for four or five years I think and from the beginning I've been working on this there's a sort of a triumvirate of Love context and anomaly
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that I think um kind of show up everywhere and I look at it Through The Eyes of an artist because I have studied creativity and the the principles and elements of
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design for many years and when I look at those principles of design it's not that an artist says I'm going to design this thing like a blueprint and then recreate it that's
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not what it is at all it's a matter of all of these principles that are in ratio with each other fitting together at any given moment in
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the artist's connection with whatever that inspiration is and what the context is on the canvas at the moment in order to bring about the next stroke and um
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and the canvas and the pains and the tools and everything are also working in concert with the artists so it's it's all of a piece and um you you mentioned something Ian just
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now that Unity has to work with conflict so so the principles are unity Harmony conflict dominance repetition variation gradation and balance
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and each of those interacts with all the elements of the work the line and size and shape and Direction and color and value and texture and so by the time you get that Matrix
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worked out with all of the colors that are possible you have a combinatorially explosive Matrix of possibilities so every single stroke
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all of those options are there and this is why it's a continually creative process that's always moving on and um you know in in one place it it calls
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the Lord that the the great architect of the Universe I think the word also could be used for artists um and in that sense I think that um I love what you say about The
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Coincidence of opposites Ian that they don't they don't come together equally there are they're proportional um but I do Wonder there is one opposite that seems to me it can't be that way
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and that would be good and evil do you guys have anything to say about that yeah I mean to me that is an example of what I'm saying um
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but I mean first of all I I'm what I'm not saying just to go back to something you just said what I'm not saying is that when there is a coincidence of opposites
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they are sort of asymmetrical in the sense that you can see one as big and the other as lesser they are both important fully equally to one another but
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in the end in either the bigger picture in time of the bigger picture in space one of them can always embrace the other now so for example Union can embrace
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Union and division but division can't Embrace Union and Division love can Embrace hatred and perhaps redeem it that's what Christians believe
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but hatred can't Embrace love good can Embrace evil take it up into itself and take it in and make it something else but evil can't take good up into itself in any way at all it
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resisted and repels it so I I that's the way I would answer that question but I'd like to hear what David says well I uh that was very beautifully put uh thing exactly
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um I when you were speaking uh initially actually both of you um uh Karen your your your description of of the artwork I it um I don't know it was very Illuminating
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um it brought to mind you you talked about God as the architect it's it's interesting in the Septuagint when uh Genesis says that God looked on the world he created and saw that it was
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good the the word there is kalon it's not it's not agathon it's kalon which is uh often translated as beautiful um uh that he saw that it was beautiful and and in insofar as Beauty has has to
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do with this in intrinsic kind of goodness I think that's a that's a really helpful way to think about it I thought initially um uh of of Plato's Symposium um there's so there are many strands I I
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I'd like to try to tie together here but um in Plato's Symposium it's it's one of the first um philosophical texts about the
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nature of beauty that we have uh it's a dramatic text which I think is not accidental um and in the attempt to Define what's so interesting about that text is he's
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the um uh there are so many words for order and references to order and the proper seating and the uh he's he's he's constantly referring to this need for order but it's the it's the one dialogue
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where you have this um disorder that's introduced to it when Al sovieties famously uh enters into the Symposium and and stirs things up turns it all over but but what you what you realize
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is that um in fact it adds to the beauty of the dialogue the dialogue itself becomes this expression of beauty now now how is that possible the um uh this
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comes back to the the the the very first point um that I was trying to make about the Transcendence of of a first principle um it's there's a difference between thinking of order and thinking of a
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principle of order and uh an order is something that's already complete and then when this order is added introduced it it it uh undoes what was there but if
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you think of order as um arriving from a Transcendent principle um it's it it gives order to things but it's not exhausted by that so that if an
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introduction of a contrary principle arrives it can incorporate even that and recast it once again in a surprising way in an even more beautiful sort of way and that's I think this is
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this is the the the the pairs that that uh Ian was describing um about love being able to embrace hatred and good evil in that in that way that's that that was beautifully said I
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think if you think of it in terms of this um this this inexhaustible principle that constantly can give itself there's no there's no limit to in a way the the
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contradictions that are made to it you know the the the the affront to the to the the um the beauty it represents there's no limit to what it is capable of of
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embracing and overturning and revealing yet a new dimension of of of the of the love well the the way that Jordan Peterson kind of draws the analogy there is a
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the walled City being a representative of order so if we think of that as um order as a Transcendent principle and then outside the city is chaos
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but that chaos is where all the the unknown resides it's where all the creative opportunities reside is out in the unknown and that the um he talks about the hero being the one that
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navigates out with one foot in order and one foot in chaos with the potential to find the treasures hidden in the chaos but the reality is that any time an individual falls out of order into chaos
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which can happen many times in your lifetime that that is the time when you can look around in the chaos if you can imagine that there
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is beauty there and you can find beauty in the chaos and that that's why we can come out of trauma and painful situations with a treasure that we can bring back into and bring it back into the ordered life
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and that also makes me think of the way um Michael Levin is always talking about that he thinks the evolutionary principle is
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not evolving the creature but rather evolving the capacity to adapt yes there's quite a bit to say about that but um yes I
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by the way I like I like one thing particularly about your picture you represented earlier which is the importance of context and in fact what you went on to say just exemplified that everything changes because of the
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context in which it is so when we're talking about these things we think of them in a very abstract way you know Beauty openness water chaos and so on but actually put in a slightly different context the very thing that you thought
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had one quality has another and in fact that quality can indeed be so profoundly affected by context that it can be completely reversed and that's a very interesting thing to think about when
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we're talking about these country elements and their necessary existence I think one can one can see in the case of order and disorder that there is a kind of
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Beauty and Order which can only exist if it is an element of disorder and chance in it you see this throughout the most expert works of Oriental art
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and it's particularly literally exemplified in the art um Kentucky which is repairing Ceramics so when the when a beautiful bowl is broken and sometimes
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it's deliberately broken it is then put together again often using lines of gold and the thing when it's finished because the asymmetry and the unpredictability of these lines has a sort of energy
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which is profound and is not to be found in the original before it was shattered and that in turn reminds me of something I'm sorry if I've said this before but I
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just I I I in in the last 10 years came across the Kabbalah and there's a story of Creation in the luriana Cabella in which
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um the first principle ends off um once a creation that is there to respond to what ends off is and in a way to fulfill what ainsov has to be
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and his First Act is not to do anything positive but actually to withdraw so first of all you've already got this straightly odd and interesting act which seems like a negation but it's actually
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the creation of a place where something other can be and it's a parallel I believe to the idea of kenosis in in Christian theology in a way and in this space
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there appear 12 vessels which are actually part of um of another idea which is this tree of but anyway there are these 12 vessels
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and a single spark of light or fire comes out of ends of and it falls on the vessels and it shatters most of them and then there is a that's the the second phase of creation and the third
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phrase is called repaired symptoms and what it is a a phase of creation which gives a specific role to humanity that only Humanity has achieved the level
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where it can see that what needs to be done is not just to survive or to evolve or whatever but actually to put together again something that has the potential to be even more beautiful and deep than
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in the original vessels of The Shadow the Felix culpa when thinks of there the Felix corporate yes that you could exactly yes that's that's a an analogy yes
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although I'm not sure Christianity it's ever suggested is it that I mean it's a Felix Cooper because then it enables Christ to Etc but this idea that actually out of it something better comes maybe maybe
00:41:09
that is in in the whole idea I think so it's it's that there's a there's a right the the Restoration in Christ is not just going back to what was given originally originally yes yeah it's a
00:41:22
it's a radical transformation and yes of course also why the scripture would say um Angels long to look into these things that the Angels the Angels somehow
00:41:40
cannot experience what Humanity can experience and and what they can what what they can't experience that Humanity experiences is this very aspect of imperfection that's right right and
00:41:53
struggling with it I I think and if you extend that I think this is um um I was thinking as the two of you uh were speaking earlier of of life
00:42:06
um what what you know what is the essence of life and that's a big question but but one dimension of it certainly is is something analogous to to just this point it's a capacity to
00:42:17
um uh there's a certain contingency uh about life a living thing has a history it has to undergo experiences and time and none of that can be pre-programmed or simply anticipated it has to in a way
00:42:32
creatively respond to whatever presents itself Moment by moment and and one of the extraordinary um uh and I think this is this is part of the essence of what beauty really is
00:42:43
one of the extraordinary Miracles is um that um these these things that are uh unanticipated can be taken into the organism um and and become part of it in a way
00:42:57
that that uh is represents a genuinely uh creative sort of Step Beyond what was there before four it can it can um in one percent in one sense growth is a very obvious dimension of this but it
00:43:11
goes beyond just growth there can be um um uh accidents there can be wounds there can be um uh trouble of some sort that is encountered that gets incorporated into
00:43:25
the organism and becomes itself a kind of uh uh an expression of life of a new kind of life and you know that that's to tie this all the way back to the very
00:43:37
first comment you know this is why I think um you know with the antlers of the uh of the of the deer for instance I mean that that um there has to be a principle of an ordering principle a principle of
00:43:51
order that that is not simply physical it's not simply part of the physical being it has to it has to transcend it so that it's able precisely to um uh generate
00:44:04
physical order um out of out of apparent disorder or at least trouble um how about something that isn't necessarily either physical or not and
00:44:16
maybe transcends that Duality so that there could be something like a force field of a certain kind an electromagnetic force field perhaps but increasingly we I mean our ideas have
00:44:29
matter aren't they are changing so much I mean we we now see matter lots of little bits of stuff or anything but as a field of potential which can change
00:44:41
and collapse in certain circumstances and can move and communicate and so on so the the world that we're looking at even the world physicists are looking at is far more when it's easier isn't it to
00:44:55
um accommodate into many of the problems we've had how does this form where does it exist what is it I we don't I mean I'd like to have that conversation I have had that conversation with people like Michael Levin because I want people
00:45:08
to come to the point where they say well yes there are these there must be formed fields that contain these things they're not just in you know a sequence of chemical code yeah that's right I mean it's interesting to
00:45:21
think there was a time in the sort of uh period of classical physics where um this kind of mechanistic physics was taken to and this of course is something you've written quite a bit about but taken to be the model and we thought of
00:45:34
of life uh there was an effort to to reduce all other kinds of scientific inquiry chemistry and then and then life to physical properties it seems that we're
00:45:46
entering into a period where maybe that's going to reverse and we think of yes organisms in a way as showing us what physics shedding light on physics rather than the reverse exactly I don't know if you knew the
00:45:59
philosopher Robert Rosen he was a mathematician and biologist but he wrote um a book called life itself and a rather more um digestible book called essays on life
00:46:12
itself but his point was that exactly this that um the mechanisms that we think are sort of basic are very special cases in fact
00:46:26
unusual cases of organism and then in fact everything that exists has more the properties of an organism he demonstrates this um mathematically I I can just about
00:46:38
follow it but I think the point that struck me is very interesting is the idea that animacy is not an aberration actually that organism organisms as the Germans
00:46:50
organisms [Laughter] organicity let's say that is is something absolutely fundamental and that mechanism is a very odd sort of
00:47:06
um hobbled deformed version of this that works to explain certain very limited sets of circumstances but there is another example actually where the organism model can embrace the mechanism
00:47:18
but the mechanism model cannot embrace the organism So within an organism it's perfectly okay to say there are certain mechanical Pathways but within the idea of the machine you can't create what that absolutely you know the
00:47:32
unpredictable the entirely creative thing which is so special about life yeah that that's excellent no thank you thank you uh and and you know one wonders too the relationship between so
00:47:44
that there you're describing the relationship between life and the animate in the inanimate um in this this interesting way I wonder if if that analogy would also hold with
00:47:56
uh life and intelligence um that there would be a kind of an analogous um uh relationship in the background uh I I have in mind uh and this would take
00:48:08
us off in a very different direction but just just to to register um this uh phrase that one uses constantly these days without any seems to me awareness of the um
00:48:21
uh what's at stake and what's implied by the phrase the phrase artificial intelligence um I think is is deeply disturbing uh just a very regardless of what you know
00:48:35
what might happen with these things but the very phrase itself I think already implies a radical revolution in our thinking I I it seems to me that uh you can't think unless you live that there's
00:48:47
a I completely agree and more and more I'm having conversations with AI people about this and I think that it should be called artificial information processing
00:48:58
it has no features of intelligence about it and that one of the problems there is it can know an enormous amount of thinking in inverted commas it in innovate has a store of data but it it can't
00:49:11
um it can't actually create out of that it can it can do something that looks like creation and AI specialist will say oh yeah look here it's been creative but what it's actually done is it's gone around the the
00:49:24
um you know the the the the the Cyber verse very very fast and found certain shapes and so on that it's going to it thinks it can use but it in fact in order to be intelligent as you say you
00:49:38
have to live including the bad side of that so I don't think that anything can be intelligent and certainly cannot interact with a human being in a way that has true meaning unless it knows
00:49:50
that it unless first of all it has a body secondly it has emotions thirdly it has the knowledge that it can suffer and has experience of suffering and it knows it's going to die that it is you know
00:50:03
death is it's not somehow a negation of life it's the yin yang bit of life that can't be done aware of it maybe it's a childish sort of I I make that point in a kind of a maybe a
00:50:16
childish sort of way but I I I was saying to a friend the other day I I won't take an artifact and an example of artificial intelligence seriously unless it poops
00:50:29
and and there that and the meaning of that is that you know it's got It's it's there's there is a negative side too you know embodiment and and being part of yes and that's that's part of the
00:50:41
meaning of intelligence but I I think one can connect all of this then back with what it means to say that love is the principle um goodness truth and beauty and love or
00:50:53
the principle of the cosmos I mean um um this this this whole line of thought makes sense in relation to that and the moment you lose that then it seems to me
00:51:06
um there's going to be a kind of an inevitable drift into a certain kind of mechanistic thing taking a reduction of intelligence to um information processing
00:51:16
um a kind of uh loss of a sense of of beauty um and uh dramatic sense of beauty and so forth I mean one can go on and on brought into the
00:51:31
sorry I'll I'll ask later go ahead no no we're and I was going to say unless these values are brought into the Forefront they're sort of assumed um to have answers so for example some
00:51:45
people seem to know what they think progress is they think it's obvious what progress is and they think we're making it but in order to answer that question that very naive assumption which has never been made before in the history of
00:51:58
the world that we're constantly getting better in order to make that assumption you'd have to know what your values are and in order to know them you'd have to live with them and try to embody them
00:52:12
and live according to them because they are things that call you towards action and it's no good just saying well we can make it more beautiful like the iPod is very beautiful which in indeed it is but
00:52:23
but that is that's got nothing to do with what you and I are talking or not nothing to do with it but it's not what we're talking about I mean implied in the very notion of
00:52:35
progress and and a kind of uh prioritizing of progress I I don't think people realize that the cynicism that is implicit in that it means that what we
00:52:47
are is not good and needs to be improved upon I mean you know what what would what would happen if we removed the idea of progress altogether I mean and and and and and thought okay the point of
00:52:59
existing is to exist well I mean just be well um uh that's exactly very different uh um I mean everything changes that
00:53:13
exactly and you know when they say well we can increase your cognitive intelligence or something I don't want to increase my cognitive intelligence I I want to to live a fuller life I want
00:53:27
to be a full human being more and more than we are and that's not something that they know what is involved in that and all kinds of things that are ruled out from the calculus at the start like
00:53:41
you know the need for things that are that appear not at first to be um congenial to it and certainly not just the simplistic idea that things that bring us physical Comfort or bring
00:53:53
us wealth or bring us power power is only as good as the values that we bring to bear in order to exert that power well I lost your sound I've got many things I'd want to say but I know that
00:54:09
Karen wanted to ask a question so I yeah yes well this question goes back a little bit to what we were talking about earlier but I wondered if either of you had ever run into the work of Stephen Wolfram
00:54:21
he's a physicist his name seems to seems to ring a bell he he's a mathematician and a physicist and he developed a thing called Mathematica which is used by most mathematicians and scientists now
00:54:36
um an online kind of gigantic Google for mathematicians it goes beyond that it's it's a pretty spectacular thing but but he has a new
00:54:50
idea of what physics is and whether you agree with the idea or not I think it opens up lots of avenues for thought about the nature of reality foreign
00:55:05
's idea of space-time he says that space is actually made up of discrete particles smaller than the smallest particle that you can imagine smaller than the smallest particles that's physicists
00:55:18
have so far seen and he calls these little particles eems and yeah I have come across this okay and so and so time is the updating of
00:55:31
events so these Eames start out let's say you start out with one e and then it grows into three games and then whenever a certain pattern
00:55:43
shows up time updates that event and then new aims are created and then time updates and time updates so the the purpose of time is to update events and
00:55:56
these Eames are continually building out reality and I played with this idea quite a bit and had a lot of people on talked about
00:56:08
it researched it and one of the things that occurred to me because he talks about originally he talked about there being one rule that these Ines are responding to a rule
00:56:20
but I think then he realized that there are certain implications of that idea that there'd be only one rule that he didn't really want to deal with so then he decided it's operating according to all possible
00:56:33
rules so at any given moment any aim can be responding to all possible rules but I went back and kind of played with this idea what if there is just one rule
00:56:45
and that one rule is love I don't know what the aims explains what does it help explain them that isn't otherwise explained um that's an interesting idea what does it
00:57:04
help explain it's massively prodigal I mean it it certainly doesn't conform to any kind of Occam's razor it's it's rather like the you know multiverses and so forth which
00:57:20
you can multiply add infinite and in one of them everything will be true so nothing is true so we might as well fold up the conversation so I don't like this idea and I particularly dislike the idea
00:57:32
that whatever is is real is compounded of small pieces many of the problems in mainstream anglo-american analytic philosophy now come from the need to start from
00:57:45
something small and see how the hell does it get aggregated into a mass so you even find Consciousness must have little tiny bits but I don't believe this for for an instant it's a an
00:57:57
artifactual problem from a certain way of looking at the cosmos in my view and it's also the view of David Tong who's the professor of physics at Cambridge that there is no evidence for
00:58:08
discreetness I mean discreetness notice that the basis of everything of course it comes in as I said Union needs division otherwise everything collapses into one and one of the reasons we have
00:58:20
time is surely say that everything can be individual the one can be many because if there was no time it would just have to be one big one and and then there could be no relations and there could be no love and
00:58:33
I profoundly believe that everything exists in relations which exists actually before the relata fantastic if everything's everything fits out with and then
00:58:48
the nodes that connect all of these various ones are the relations then then the entire map becomes a matter of relation now the question is whether he's just developing a map or whether
00:59:02
he's actually got some idea about a concept of reality that's where the question comes in but it is all about relationship because all of these nodes relate to one another
00:59:13
over either near or far distances and uh yeah I understand what you're saying about not wanting to to start with the idea of small particles and build up from there because that's that's how we
00:59:26
got into all this problem right I mean one way to put that is to say is to say that the the one at issue here can't just be a it can't be a particle that that that that exists at the same
00:59:40
level of the then differentiation that uh proceeds from it because then the differentiation I mean you start with one and then two the two represents a loss of the unity and you get you get
00:59:52
for increasing fragmentation if the one is something uh again you know I keep coming back to this point but somehow transcends that um it's able it's able to to uh
01:00:04
differentiate itself without losing unity and you get it you get uh simultaneity a more paradoxical and and living uh relationship of unity and
01:00:16
difference and one of the one of the implications to this I I was struck by your the phrase you used about time updating itself um I don't think time can update itself I think uh well without qualification
01:00:29
that that um there has to be a time transcending principle that allows things to update themselves in time um and and you know this is in the again
01:00:41
in the classical uh understanding um uh it was impossible to conceive of time except in some relationship to what transcends time um because otherwise time just becomes
01:00:53
pure dispersal and kind of uh ultimately as a an endless fragmentation that's that is equivalent to disorder um to chaos because you have to have duration as
01:01:09
well as because time is time is flow time is this whole idea of updating is so cybernetic it's also comes from a
01:01:22
machine only machines need to update I mean this thing doesn't need updating at all and time isn't of that nature time isn't particulate that's one of the main things that's
01:01:35
gone wrong with with modern philosophy in my view and I I agree on that point I mean time is is enormously mysterious but there are certain things
01:01:51
you can say I think about it and one for me is that although you can retrospectively turn it into coins it can't exist as points or be put together
01:02:05
from points they are an artifact of the analytic Minds retrospection on something that already exists and so to in import this into
01:02:16
a story a myth that is explained or purports to explain I don't know what it proposely explained but I anyway sorry Karen you're not going to convince me of this one oh I'm here it has brought up lots of
01:02:36
interesting questions um and I obviously haven't done a very good job of explaining it so I feel bad about that but um and I'm not a supporter of the particular
01:02:49
theory that he has as much as the implications that people have to deal with if they're looking at the theory because there are a lot of implications one of them which you brought up David
01:03:01
about if if the beginning is a one and then it splits into three then you've already lost the Oneness right so the difference always has to be there the unity always has to be there and then
01:03:15
the multiplicity always has to be there and so um yeah so I mean it brings up a lot of interesting questions one but one of the things that one of his scientists found that I thought was so really fascinating
01:03:28
he calls this universe that's that is created out of this thing he calls it a rouliad but in order for the really odd to function there actually has to be a hyper rouliad something outside the rouliad so there they keep getting all
01:03:42
these implications that come out of this original idea so you have this hyper really ad and then one of the scientists that was working on this idea of the hyper rouliad said
01:03:53
in order for these aims to exist at all in order for the universe to exist every eem has to be unique every particle in the universe has to be
01:04:06
unique in order for but we already we already know that from mainstream physics from Quantum field Theory I can encroach you Robert Muller Richard
01:04:18
Muller saying that every particle in we think of particles as being of nine kinds and that we can specify what they are but no one particle is ever the same as another and the two reasons for this
01:04:30
one is context and the other is time so they they each of them must exist in a different context and part of that context is the time at which they exist so we already have that but I'm deeply
01:04:43
deeply suspicious of people who need to invent oh God Eames rouliads hyperuliasm okay sorry this this kind of thing you know gives me the way Richard Richard
01:04:56
Mueller I'm going to have to look that up because I've thought about that for a long time how every single particle that exists has to have an identifier in terms of the location and the speed and
01:05:09
the context and the time in which it exists and so everyone is it's automatically unique and but I had never heard anybody talk about that before so Richard Muller I'm going to look that up
01:05:23
In classical metaphysics this is the the implications of a principle of analogy um that there's there's no mere identity anywhere in the in the cosmos um
01:05:36
it's a I I I always go back I I can't help but I'll always go back to uh to to Plato with these sorts of things and and see so many of the new ideas and new terms are are variations on and
01:05:51
something that that uh one can find already in this in the earlier thought well so when we talk about this issue how do you prevent falling into
01:06:03
post-modernism I I know I listened to one of your conversations Ian what you did with I think Rowan Williamson and uh you had started talking about
01:06:16
context and uh yeah I can't remember exactly where where the section was but oh um here's a transcript of it you were saying the way we think of
01:06:35
knowledge it's not that stuff out there that we can more Faithfully or otherwise record simply passively something about if we really want to know it we have to enter into a relationship with it
01:06:46
and that means that something of us goes into the experience of whatever it is we experience there's no surprise in that but it does not and I emphatically insist does not
01:06:58
lead anywhere near a sort of post-modern belief that we all just make it up and uh yes and it's but I think whenever we start talking about this issue of context it's
01:07:11
really easy to fall over into the idea of well if everything is context then we can never know anything for sure and then we fall over into the whole post-modern predicament so well it
01:07:24
depends what exactly the sentence being out it is but I mean context is incredibly important but the fact that things change their nature because of the context does not mean that they can mean anything you like you know
01:07:37
and and I I if anybody's interested if you just read the first 20 pages of the matter of things I I talk about exactly that that it's neither something
01:07:51
reality out there as I call it which is what a lot of old-fashioned scientists used to believe which I call rot rot nor is it Mumbo
01:08:06
miraculously made up by ourselves it's it's it's something we um we we come into a relationship with and in that relationship we find whatever it is
01:08:17
that is there so it's always different because of the relationship but it's all it's not as though it's so vastly different that we can't have some coherence in our lives every
01:08:30
time a piece of music is played it's going to be somewhat different because it's played by different people and different aspects of it will come out and others not but I can't just make Mozart's G minor quintet sound like
01:08:43
anything no it's very strictly what it is but every single performance of it and every single hearing of it will be different because the hearer is a different person at a different stage in their life with a different intelligence
01:08:55
and so on so people will see and experience different things but there's nothing in this very important idea that all is in a relationship it leads us into a kind of Despair that we can't say
01:09:07
more clearly that certain things are mature than others really that is so foundational this is this is I mean this is exactly the point of analogy I think
01:09:20
and and we're back to the the the the relationship that we've been talking about the whole time the one in the many really um those aren't this unity and differentiation are not a pose and once
01:09:32
you've graduated I mean that that really is the fundamental principle here once you grasp that um uh to say that the piece of music is different in each context doesn't mean it's not the same in each context it's
01:09:44
the same and it's different at the same time yes the very things that are the same appear in a different way at every different moment um the the the this is what analogy is
01:09:56
all about we never get outside of analogy grasping everything that one says the words of the sentence um are never reducible back to the conditions under which they were spoken
01:10:08
there's the meaning of the words that's always going to transcend context but that doesn't mean that the context does not profoundly condition the words um at the same time those things are not
01:10:21
opposed at the basic yes and it's not not open to somebody else to come along and say well I think this means something completely different I mean they're going to have to argue very very convincingly why they say that yeah you
01:10:35
know I I give this sort of example that um you know you can you can see Hamlet has if you want as a reflection on European politics in the early 17th
01:10:49
century you can make that argument you'll miss most of what it's really about in the process rather like people who insist on applying an ism of some kind to any great work about but well congratulations you came away in the
01:11:02
within your hand the thing that you took there but you haven't learned anything new and you haven't seen anything beautiful instead you've just substituted your rather simple idea for it but what you cannot say is that
01:11:14
Hamlet is a story of um the condition of slaves in 11th century Azerbaijan I mean it just isn't so there are very strict constraints to
01:11:27
what things can be and within that there is a lot of degree of intelligently and sensitively used Freedom which is engaged in trying to make a better and
01:11:40
Fuller contact with the original not bringing to it your heart faked idea that that is your ISM that you want to apply to everything that's right and you see there the the why intelligence is
01:11:52
embodied intelligence in the human expression that it's that it's indeed it involves this uh relationship that is is um always going to be because we are
01:12:03
embodied creatures it's always going to be mediated in space and time and and locations but that doesn't make it any less intelligent it's it's the it's the precise form
01:12:15
um and when we understand uh intelligence also is an expression of love I think that's um an implication of point that you were making in there what you see is you know the the most fun when you're talking
01:12:28
about serious things like the meaning of Hamlet or um as opposed to just a simple empirical fact um the the Criterion isn't uh right and
01:12:41
wrong in a kind of superficial sense we we tend to be locked in this dichotomy either you can say it's right or wrong or you can't make any North judgment about it at all and exactly yeah the the
01:12:55
Criterion is more debt to my mind uh uh deep or superficial one one can have a deeper grasp of something or a more superficial grasp and that's a that's a different way of thinking about the
01:13:07
nature of knowledge and truth yes oh and and for almost everything the either it's this or it's that the black and white position is the less intelligent The Superficial position
01:13:20
because most things are complex and require complex thought but that does not open the door to every ridiculous idea that's right so it's you can't get
01:13:32
away from experience and to come back to love and I'm sure we could talk for days but we're probably gonna need to wind up fairly soon I just thought I'd mention this thing that I know you know because
01:13:44
you're an expert on Shayla and he's a philosopher I particularly admire but Shayla following on from an observation of pascals and like many things in Pascal it could even be in
01:13:56
central Augustine I don't know but this idea that you don't um love something as the outcome of a process of knowing it so much as know it out of a process of loving it and that
01:14:09
with that by trying to sidestep or um abbreviate this process of actually making at least an attempt to love it that you will not properly know it
01:14:23
yeah that's I I you you've been demonstrating that very principle in some of your descriptions of these things and and I I think that's that's the you know the the personal engagement
01:14:35
to take to to be struck by the beauty of an idea and to respond to it and to to throw oneself into it that's part of coming to its truth and that's part of the objectivity of
01:14:48
knowledge properly understood um white is fully personally engaged um it is and I think it's Michael I'm sorry Michael Palani is a it
01:15:01
has said some really profound things on that score he's he's wonderful yeah yeah um I was thinking of um you know Plato's idea of Eros which is much
01:15:14
bigger than the idea of what we would now think of as sexual love but a kind of love of the true and the Beautiful and it can also actually that can
01:15:27
Encompass at a lower level some degree of what we mean by Eros because you know people talk about just sex you know that's a phrase that people use but I don't think that there's ever
01:15:41
anything just in that sense about sex sex is always an amazingly complex beautiful or should be in my view um thing that is part of the whole
01:15:54
coming to terms with with life physical and mental and I I remember it was a an Insight I had I'm sorry I'm being very self-confessing here but it was an Insight I had
01:16:07
um in in some therapy I did was that I actually find that ideas to me are not just either true or not but also
01:16:18
have a degree of beauty that even has an erotic charge it's something that pulls you to them you know ideas can be pure and beautiful when you think about this idea of um
01:16:36
needing to love something in order to know it do you think sometimes I mean I've read Esther make I've read a little bit of Michael Palani and I get the feeling that what they're
01:16:48
saying really is that there's an offering of love being given to us with every bit of knowledge that we have an opportunity to gain that that that that there is out there there is
01:17:02
all this wonderful knowledge that is a gift that's available to us and that in order to acquire that gift we need to love we need to be drawn by that love it's a loving offer that then we
01:17:16
reciprocate by receiving that loving offer and that that's where some real college comes from yes and it doesn't come just like that as a person it emerges and continues to
01:17:28
emerge eternally out of the relationship so that one can keep revisiting a poem a piece of music or of course a person a work of art of any kind a living being of any kind a landscape and one can
01:17:42
always find more and more in it the the that relation is never completed it's never over and dead and you know it's it's a business of coming into being all the time in in my view maybe tying all
01:17:56
this now finally back to the very very beginning this is I think in the phrase that that that that that God moves the universe by being loved
01:18:09
um and that each instance of knowledge moves us to know by being loved and what does it mean to to be loved to to attract is to be beautiful and I I think and and here we understand
01:18:22
in the way you were describing Beauty as a kind of endless invitation to uh more to deepen the relationship it's not it's not simply a closed thing but it's an
01:18:34
invite I I like to think of beauty always as kind of invitation a call that's a lovely thing to say I so agree with it and and it brings me back to a
01:18:46
poem I imagine you know um Herbert's poem love about me welcome uh and my soul Drew back guilty of dust and sin it's a short poem it's utterly
01:18:58
Exquisite and it's this idea of an invitation and so I did sit and eat and the implication is that that is not just well that's that done and off I go it was like an endlessly fulfilling process
01:19:12
that's why sing on Bay was able to carry it with her uh always it it never dries up I yes yes she's another wonderful person we could talk about
01:19:25
I'm very sorry but I feel I need to you know bring things it wrapped it up beautifully there so the banquet we could call it the banquet right yes
01:19:40
wonderful well thank you very much David and Karen too and it was a real good and a joy to talk to you uh so a pleasure to meet you and Karen thank you so much it's nice to see you again
01:19:54
thank you for making that possible for us yes yes thank you so much very very good okay
End of transcript