John Vervaeke: Can Science Untangle the World-Knot of Consciousness? Relevance Realization & Meaning

If you have any questions for John, reply to this comment and I'll do my best to ask him as many as possible in our next podcast together. Also, if you enjoy the content please like, share and subscribe to the channel. Thank you for watching!

Vervaeke may be the most valuable philosopher living today, the real "MVP" [: His lecture series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis made a huge impact on my life, no one else has influenced me more positively, and I hope to have him on my own channel someday!

I have watched Awakening From the Meaning Crisis over 10 times through 😅 I am not educated and that has been what it has taken to grok its content, and it continues to unfold for me. It’s been the most important piece of work I have ever consumed.

Ian McGilchrist I believe puts out the idea in his work "The Master And His Emissary" that nature speaks a language initially to the animal kingdom so they need to be conscious first on the evolutionary scale. Animals also have a fundamental intercommunication on fundamentals like food presence, predator danger etc. Humans take the social intercommunication to a higher social level. Plus humans introspect language as thought and conceptualization or we fold language back within our brains via the highly developed frontal lobes.

It didn’t take 10 minutes for this episode to potentiate as an all time most rewarding listens.

1:15:00 Glad to hear John's openness to Whiteheadian (process-relational) panpsychism/panexperientialism!

Consciousness is eternal. You may forget your life when you "die" but you dont disappear. Universe cant exist without observers/consciousness. Consciousness create matter, space and time, not the other way round.

Wonderful conversation, @Tevin, you're a new host discovery for me to the conversations I am already listening in on, and @Vervaeke is already anchored in my respect and appreciation. This conversation really tapped into his work and brought together so many dimensions. Can't wait to get into some of the other researchers in the field mentioned in the conversation. Mike Levin''s work already has been a point of fascinating attention for me. What a time to be alive and active!

Happy to have found this channel. Some of the highest quality content I've come accross regarding these questions.

Work by Vaughan Pratt points to the possibility of using the Stone Representation theorem as a way to tackle the problem of dualism.

Super good conversation. And I know Tevon. you’ve had Don Hoffman before if you truly understand what Don is talking about if both of you truly understands what Don is talking about , that space and time are not fundamental, and that’s not just a philosophical statement you can see the plank time and see the details. many of those questions would drop away immediately.

So many great minds within these collaborative encounters... But what will it take for any of the thinking and new iterations of language on age old ideas to make any measurable difference in the living world? What does "cog sci" have to do with healthier ecosystems and functioning societies? Are we truly exercising "relevance realization"?

Please forgive the pedantry, but I do not think it is the case that most people misuse the word "anxiety". The word has been used in English for half a millennium in its popular sense of "apprehensive uneasiness or nervousness"; for example, when John Donne wrote “Temporal prosperity comes always accompanied with so much anxiety” in 1623, he wasn't talking about a medical condition. It wasn't until the end of the nineteenth century that it became shorthand for what Freud called "anxiety neurosis" and is now termed "generalised anxiety disorder". So now we have what Lakoff would call a "folk category" and an "expert category" for anxiety, and it is only an error to use the folk category when you think you are using the expert category (e.g., self-diagnosing). Otherwise, saying that a layperson is incorrect because they aren't using "anxiety" in the sense that a clinical psychologist might use it is like saying that psychologists misuse the word because they don't use it the same way as existentialist philosophers..

That was a great show, thanks.

Quickly subscribed! Great interview and channel. Thank you 👊🏼🤠

John never comes across as pronouncing judgement. Me on the other hand...the many and the one as displayed by a broken shear pin. A vertical solid shaft with layers of increased diameter pipe allowing the horizontal, with the shear pin connection. The One piece stays (embedded)with the one shaft, and the pipe cuts the pin so that two outer bits are made. More added larger diameter pipe, more bits, but the One is still embedded.

I've had the mystical experiences that he's talking about and he's right about that. When you're within the experiences you have the intelligence of the of the being that you are part of whereas normally you don't have the overall intelligence you just have the intelligence of the singled out unit that is you but when you're having a mystical experience you have the intelligence of the entirety and it gives you understanding Beyond something that's explainable but it's understanding the way you know what you are experiencing is real because you're too intelligent to be fooled at that point your IQ is literally infinite and that's something you can't carry back with you when you come back to the reality of here so you can't explain it to other people of normal intelligence because it doesn't allow itself to be confined in finite language

I am a physicist and I will explain why scientific knowledge refutes the idea that consciousness is generated solely by the brain; this leads us to conclude that our mental experiences cannot be purely physical/biological. The brain operates in a fragmentary manner, with many separate processes happening simultaneously. I prove that such fragmentary structure implies that brain processes are not a sufficient condition for the existence of consciousness; therefore, something else must be involved—something indivisible and non-physical, which we often refer to as the soul. (in my youtube channel you can find a video with more detailed explanations). Emergent properties are often thought of as arising from complex systems (like the brain). However, I argue that these properties are subjective cognitive constructs that depend on the level of abstraction we choose to analyze and describe the system. Since these descriptions are mind-dependent, consciousness, being implied by these cognitive contructs, cannot itself be an emergent property. Preliminary considerations: the concept of set refers to something that has an intrinsically conceptual and subjective nature and implies the arbitrary choice of determining which elements are to be included in the set; what can exist objectively are only the individual elements. Defining a set is like drawing an imaginary line to separate some elements from others. This line doesn't exist physically; it’s a mental construct. The same applies to sequences of processes—they are abstract concepts created by our minds. Mental experiences are necessary for the existence of subjectivity/arbitrariness and cognitive constructs; Therefore, mental experience itself cannot be just a cognitive construct. Obviously we can conceive the concept of consciousness, but the concept of consciousness is not actual consciousness; We can talk about consciousness or about pain, but merely talking about it isn’t the same as experiencing it. (With the word consciousness I do not refer to self-awareness, but to the property of being conscious= having a mental experiences such as sensations, emotions, thoughts, memories and even dreams) From the above considerations it follows that only indivisible elements may exist objectively and independently of consciousness, and consequently the only logically coherent and significant statement is that consciousness exists as a property of an indivisible element. Furthermore, this indivisible entity must interact globally with brain processes because there is a well-known correlation between brain processes and consciousness. However, this indivisible entity cannot be physical, since according to the laws of physics, there is no physical entity with such properties. The soul is the missing element that interprets globally the distinct elementary physical processes occurring at separate points in the brain as a unified mental experience. Clarifications The brain itself doesn't exist as a completely mind-independent entity. The concept of the brain is based on separating a group of quantum particles from everything else, which is a subjective process, not dictated purely by the laws of physics. Actually there is a continuous exchange of molecules with the blood and when and how such molecules start and stop being part of the brain is decided arbitrarily. An example may clarify this point: the concept of nation. Nation is not a physical entity and does not refer to a mind-independent entity because it is just a set of arbitrarily chosen people. The same goes for the brain. Brain processes consist of many parallel sequences of ordinary elementary physical processes occurring at separate points. There is no direct connection between the separate points in the brain and such connections are just a subjective abstractions used to approximately describe sequences of many distinct physical processes. Indeed, considering consciousness as a property of an entire sequence of elementary processes implies the arbitrary definition of the entire sequence; the entire sequence as a whole (and therefore every function/property/capacity attributed to the brain) is a subjective abstraction that does not refer to any mind-independendent reality. Physicalism/naturalism is based on the belief that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. However, an emergent property is defined as a property that is possessed by a set of elements that its individual components do not possess; my arguments prove that this definition implies that emergent properties are only subjective cognitive constructs and therefore, consciousness cannot be an emergent property. Actually, emergent properties are just simplified and approximate descriptions or subjective classifications of underlying physical processes or properties, which are described directly by the fundamental laws of physics alone, without involving any emergent properties (arbitrariness/subjectivity is involved when more than one option/description is possible). An approximate description is only an abstract idea, and no actual entity exists per se corresponding to that approximate description, simply because an actual entity is exactly what it is and not an approximation of itself. What physically exists are the underlying physical processes. Emergence is nothing more than a cognitive construct that is applied to physical phenomena, and cognition itself can only come from a mind; thus emergence can never explain mental experience as, by itself, it implies mental experience. Conclusions My approach is based on scientific knowledge of the brain's physical processes. My arguments show that physicalism is incompatible with the very foundations of scientific knowledge because current scientific understanding excludes the possibility that brain processes alone can account for the existence of consciousness. An indivisible non-physical element must exist as a necessary condition for the existence of consciousness because mental experiences are linked to many distinct physical processes occurring at different points; it is therefore necessary for all these distinct processes to be interpreted collectively by a mind-independent element, and a mind-independent element can only be intrinsically indivisible because it cannot depend on subjectivity. This indivisible element cannot be physical because the laws of physics do not describe any physical entity with the required properties. Marco Biagini

Relevance and meaning are almost the same thing and can probably be tought or inferred to at least some degree. I don't think this will have any impact in an AI having more or less consciousness. It will just become very convincing at emulating conciousness. Given the many positive reviews of the man I'll spend time on viewing content of his such as 'awakening from the meaning crisis'

Of course it is a dualism, but not the mental-physical chasm.