Ralston College Humanities MA
Dr John Vervaeke is a cognitive scientist and philosopher who explores the intersections of Neoplatonism, cognitive science, and the meaning crisis, focusing on wisdom practices, relevance realization, and personal transformation.
Ralston College presents a lecture titled "Levels of Intelligibility, Levels of the Self: Realizing the Dialectic," delivered by Dr John Vervaeke, an award-winning associate professor of cognitive science at the University of Toronto and creator of the acclaimed 50-episode "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis" series. In this lecture, Dr Vervaeke identifies our cultural moment as one of profound disconnection and resulting meaninglessness. Drawing on his own cutting-edge research as a cognitive scientist and philosopher, Vervaeke presents a way out of the meaning crisis through what he terms "third-wave Neoplatonism." He reveals how this Neoplatonic framework, drawn in part from Plato's conception of the tripartite human soul, corresponds to the modern understanding of human cognition and, ultimately, to the levels of reality itself. He argues that a synoptic integration across these levels is not only possible but imperative.
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00:00 Levels of Intelligibility: Integrating Neoplatonism and Cognitive Science
12:50 Stage One: Neoplatonic Psycho-ontology and the Path to Spirituality
41:02 Aristotelian Science: Knowing as Conformity and Transformation
46:36 Stoic Tradition: Agency, Identity, and the Flow of Nature
01:00:10 Stage Two: Cognitive Science and the Integration of Self and Reality
01:04:45 The Frame Problem and Relevance Realization
01:08:45 Relevance Realization and the Power of Human Cognition 01:20:15 Transjective Reality: Affordances and Participatory Fittedness
01:23:55 The Role of Relevance Realization: Self-Organizing Processes
01:31:30 Predictive Processing and Adaptivity
01:44:35 Critiquing Kant: The Case for Participatory Realism
01:53:35 Stage Three: Neoplatonism and the Meaning Crisis
02:00:15 Q&A Session
02:01:45 Q: What is the Ecology of Practices for Cultivating Wisdom?
02:11:50 Q: How Has the Cultural Curriculum Evolved Over Time?
02:26:30 Q: Does the World Have Infinite Intelligibility?
02:33:50 Q: Most Meaningful Visual Art?
02:34:15 Q: Social Media's Impact on Mental Health and Information?
02:39:45 Q: What is Transjective Reality?
02:46:35 Q: How Can Education Address the Meaning Crisis?
02:51:50 Q: Advice for Building a College Community?
02:55:30 Closing Remarks
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Authors, Ideas, and Works Mentioned in this Episode:
Antisthenes
Aristotle
Brett Anderson
Byung-Chul Han
Charles Darwin
Daniel Dennett
D. C. Schindler
Friedrich Nietzsche
Galileo Galilei
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Heraclitus
Henry Corbin
Immanuel Kant
Iris Murdoch
Isaac Newton
Igor Grossmann
Johannes Kepler
John Locke
John Searle
John Spencer
Karl Friston
Karl Marx
Mark Miller
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Nelson Goodman
Paul Ricoeur
Pierre Hadot
Plato
Pythagoras
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Descartes
Sigmund Freud
W. Norris Clarke
anagoge (ἀναγωγή)
Distributed cognition
eidos (εἶδος)
eros (ἔρως)
Evan Thompson's deep continuity hypothesis
Generative grammar
logos (λόγος)
Sensorimotor loop
Stoicism
thymos (θυμός)
Bayes' theorem
Wason Selection Task
The Enigma of Reason by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber
The Ennead by Plotinus
Explorations in Metaphysics by W. Norris Clarke
Religion and Nothingness by Keiji Nishitani
The Eternal Law: Ancient Greek Philosophy, Modern Physics, and Ultimate Reality by John Spencer
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Additional Resources
John Vervaeke
https://www.youtube.com/@johnvervaeke
Dr Stephen Blackwood
Ralston College (including newsletter)
Support a New Beginning
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Thank you for listening!
