Speaker 3
I'll put one more thing on that because I think I'm actually going to be talking to him later this week Michael Levin in his really interesting work on sort of exploration of morphological bio physiological space uses the term I would call it a bio cognitive light cone for that level but basically what he's saying is there's a there's an attractor state that this thing can move toward and then we can think about the radius of that light cone across number of different levels and I would say we're looking at the radius of a bio psycho social or living mental cultural and then maybe more kind of light cone in relation and the radius of that is some of what we're talking about and collective intelligence of a capacity would be sort of the highest radiance. You know, we can imagine God or that's really holding the, you know, the, the, the imaginal radius that that we're aspiring to so that is just another kind of angle that I think corresponds in a line very closely with what we were talking about here. Yeah.
Speaker 1
Well so yeah, this, this kind of brings me into the next slash I think maybe more or less last part of this whole thing that I was going to lay out but I'm also this is good this is really good to have this back and forth. So I could just jump into that or we could keep on these. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. So, so yeah, so this is I think maybe more of the novel stuff that I want to throw into the mix here because what I'm trying to do a lot is zero in on the symbolic complexification front, which is going to mean looking at culture. And how, yeah, essentially the learning process has unfolded through culture and disclosed more of reality in the way that we're talking about kind of creating iterative transcendent moves. And we, and actually I wasn't even going to get into this but I'm glad we did because it's really important. There's a really important mechanism for understanding that process which I'm calling the individual collective feedback cycle, which is what we were just getting at which is at these symbolic ideas get generated. They enculturate but then people kind of push the boundaries of that. And then you wind up sort of getting a gradual distributional shift in symbolic complexification over time and that's a way of understanding kind of cultural evolution. Yeah.
Speaker 2
So I mean, Dan Shepp and I've been going to random. And especially reason and philosophy and spirit of trust. And I mean, this is basically his take on Hegel. This is what he says, Hegel was actually proposing. And when you get out of sort of the, you know, the first appraisal of Hegel put it in this very pseudo religious, you know, deep. And you take it out and you put it into this language of intelligibility and rationality and we are responsible to prop, you know, to, to how things have been prioritized in the past were responsible to the future. So our, our, our, our, our acts of justification to use Greg's language are precedent respecting and they try to be precedent setting. And then we're doing this very thing. And it caught any, and of course that and how reality is disclosed through that is Geist or Hegel in a powerful way.
Speaker 1
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And, and so, so reading Habermas has been really influential. So, right. So, so basically, right, you get, you get Hegel talking about dialectics and then you get marks doing dialectical materialism, which in some ways is a really important move, right, because we got to naturalize this thing, right. But of course, Hegel, I'm sorry, to Marx is too simplistic and basically makes all of culture to sort of a superstructure to economic means of production. So then Habermas comes around and does a reconstruction of dialectical materialism and he grounds it on the kinds of learning processes that I'm talking about and community action
Speaker 2
in this sort of. Exactly. Exactly. And that's, that's very consonant with what Brandon is doing. Right.
Speaker 3
That's exactly what Brandon's project. And it's very consonant with justification system theory. In fact, Brandon talks about justification and the Habermas structure, which I didn't know about when I came because I was ignorant. But when I learned about Habermas's frame, I was like, Oh my gosh, I should have been more aware of this, but an enormous amounts of concepts there. Yeah. So, so then what I'm really interested by
Speaker 1
is trying to get into this with some specificity, right? It's one thing to kind of recognize some broad patterns and trends, but then it's like, is there a way to measure this or something like that? And we talked about, you know, energy or free energy rate density and that sort of a thing. And there are other metrics or attempted metrics for complexification at different levels of the stack. But what would that look like in the symbolic information processing. So here I've been very influenced by Daniel Gortz's work or Hansi Freinacht and bringing it. And I also mentioned Habermas and others who are basically using learning models to think about this process. And, you know, one of the great educational pedagogical thinkers of the 20th century and epistemologists was Piaget. And when you look at, so Habermas is using Piaget's models essentially and what comes from that, Kohlberg and that sort of moral development, that sort of a thing. But a lot of work's been done on those fronts over the past 30, 40 years, right? So you get this Neo Piageti and or
Speaker 2
post Piageti. Yes, yeah. Common is another. Yes. Yes. Exactly. And actually Greg
Speaker 1
intuited this when you were talking about level ontology. He, but one point was like, oh, MHC and this sort of thing. And so this is a very interesting way. So what I'm looking at is this, if you look at these models of hierarchical complexity and the two I'm particularly drawing from our commons model of hierarchical complexity. And then there's another one called dynamic skill theory, which basically, you know, they're sort of consensus. They're basically mapping the same levels of hierarchical complexity. Now, part of the Piageti and epistemological program is our knowledge kind of comes out of the body in some ways. But what I kind of focus on, so there are a number of those stages of hierarchical complexity that are basically just purely sensory motor, right? And Piageti identified that in the early process. Once you get language in the mix, though, then you're dealing with purely kind of symbolic hierarchical complexity. So in my work, I'm sort of synthesizing those two models of hierarchical complexity, lapping off the sensory motor bit and just looking at the linguistic complexification, you know, of basically symbolic information. So that gives us sort of 10 or so, what I call symbolic complexity grades of just thinking about how this works. And then we have an actual pattern that's in many ways empirically grounded and also theoretically and mathematically even robust. And then we think about how symbolic information complexification unfolds and what that looks like. I mentioned gorts and Freinach's work because they are doing some really interesting things around looking at cultural history in the way Habermas and others were doing through this kind of learning process. And when you do that, you see learning the learning patterns that we see in these hierarchical models of complexity become manifested in the collective representations of cultures over time. And so this gets us into the main thrust, I want to argue, which is that at this point now we're dealing with ideas of religion, spirituality, you know, institutional frameworks, God, etc. And my whole thing that I'm very fascinated in and trying to bring my biblical studies background to as well is looking at the very ways that God and religion complexify and evolve. And of course, with all the value normative frameworks that go along with that. So I can actually just do one thing real quick and then I'll kind of wrap up my little spiel is that what we're doing right now can be situated in this sort of learning process, a cultural symbolic process right. If you want to think about the two worlds mythologies that we get from the axial age, the move into modern reductionism but generally, you know, well summarized at the beginning of the series. And then this attempt to try to bridge into some kind of transcendent naturalism, etc. Right, you can see this process unfolding culturally in terms of the symbolic complexification thing. And basically, you know, you know, the axial age is this cultural movement into MHC abstract stage thinking where you get the abstraction from the stories and the sort of thing and then you get the universal one, you know, you get the abstract conceptual and all this stuff the immaterial other world So in many ways, you can read the entire axial age shift through this learning process development that goes on in this sort of leveling up of collective representations according to a new level of symbolic complexity. Now, that is sacred, right, that was sacred for that world and that was the, that was the locus of the engaging with transcendence and if you look at where the world had come from it was, you know, dominated by, yeah, basically empires and, you know, kind of like a world that goes in, you know, kind of master slave dialectic sort of stuff. So then to jump from that into deep moral interior landscape and a world of the abstract and the transcendent. This is a, this is a leveling up process that is rightly deemed sacred, because it is disclosing something more about reality, it is part of this learning process, and it is perceived as an experience of transcendence. So when you get into sort of the dawn of modernity and the advent of modern science you're dealing with the next stage of hierarchical complexity or form full formal operational thought, which is all about linking basically abstract variables into finding sets of relationships and doing that and studying the world that way, and you start to get this mechanistic universe. And of course that does go in in many kind of almost pathological directions or at least maybe potentially destructive ones for for all sorts of meaning making but at the same time. There's a sense in which what sacred becomes the truth and the quest for knowledge and the, you know, the sort of notions of progress, etc. Anyway, if I had more time I could go into looking at more of cultural history this way but I think what we're really doing us right now in this broader kind of metamoderncy and I think is trying to do that next step now I missed the postmodernism in there but, you know, you go from modernity to post modernity, and now we're entering this new thing, and we are in this sort of meta systematic vantage where we're taking into account all these different systems of knowledge. We're trying to see the meta systematic through line that unites them all, and we're also trying to integrate the insights of all those so that we've got, you know, the best of, I think you called it the sweet juiciness of the two worlds mythology. Something like that. We want to bring that in, right, but we also want the modern skepticism or the modern rationalism and we want to post modern pluralism and we want to be able to see a meta narrative that unfolds through all of this so anyway. Yeah, that's my basic gist is that this has been a successive layering of kind of further disclosures of reality and higher levels of symbolic complexification. And of course, then this starts to tap into issues of, you know, the fifth joint point and whatnot, but we can understand the sacred and transcendence as being that call to complexify that call to level up into new disclosures of reality new levels of learning and understanding about reality that give us a more optimal drip and enhance our viability in the universe so
Speaker 2
that's kind of my take. So I want to I want to draw you out on one point you sort of you did an updated and improved version of the Dokaymian thesis that you know this gets taken up into collective representations God, et cetera. And there's Vygotsky counterpointing Piaget there's the top down of culture right the bottom up of sensory motor. And so all of that was you tapped on it. But what I then what I was expecting after you just made that sentence is I was expecting something like, and this call should be a call to exactly an evolution of the sacred. And again, I mean, in the midst of redoing till it for a course so this is the God above the God of theism right that call. That if this argument is correct, and we are in this particular. Chirotic moment, then this is not just, you know, a revision of how we understand ourselves or even reality. It is a fundamental way in which we are trying to afford and be receptive to a new disclosure of the sacred a new way in which God can be. Which sounds of course ridiculous but but that's exactly what Tullic is at the end of the courage to be right he's proposing right and in the God above the God of theism or as I sometimes say the God beyond God. And so, is that fair to to to to lob that back at you and see what
Speaker 1
I mean of course I mean my way into this whole project was through that lens basically. So I'm not kind of coming back to to the whole theoretical foundations of a project like that but that is where this comes to in many different ways. I mean, so Tullic right I mean he the idea of ultimate concern is itself a version of doing a move like
Speaker 2
that. Right. It is. It is. Right.
Speaker 1
It's. Yeah. Yeah. So you're you're moving actually in Fowler I didn't mention but Fowler who's doing something similar talking about stages of faith
Speaker 2
and sort of thing.
Speaker 1
Yeah, he uses a phrase ultimate environment. And so I like that as well because entities environments are looking in some ways for that ultimate environment that will be maximally viability enhancing and so. But but more to your point. Yes. One of the. I mean we could really there's a lot to this whole thing but I guess briefly I would say this I think sets up a participatory aspect to to the religious life in a way that's not, you know, an inheritance of traditional practice and belief but an actual generative co creative process because collectively I mean and John this is our earlier conversations right with layman and what not getting into
Speaker 2
some of this is is
Speaker 1
where this really leads to is that once you realize that okay we're working with inherited world models basically which are these world views of shared collective representations for navigating the world and they're no longer adequate to meet the needs of the moment. We need to level up there's an existential kyrotic element to that. And so and we need to do that together but we also need to do it at a personal level and basically be networking or shared personal representations of this sort of thing so that's like when I talk about building the cathedral. That's the whole idea right developing a personal mythology engaging in the mythopoic activity that we see our symbols right but we were able to sort of network together and to then make possible new forms of thought which are we're going to need if we're going to more optimally navigate our environment towards
Speaker 2
viability. That's sort of what you're talking about and what you've been talking about in other conversations I've seen and I've participated in at dovetails with what Rita was talking about last very much very much so.
Speaker 1
And it also it also gets to the dangers to that that we're mentioned at the outset right because because anytime you enter the chaotic to look for that next level of transcendence you're in the realm of chaos you're in the underworld you're in the world you could be swallowed by the by the dragon right. So there's danger here and that can lead to destructive cults it can lead to you know all sorts of things right. I think one of the challenges of the moment is how do we how do we situate this whole narrative in some ways that we're telling as optimally and coherently as possible so it becomes a kind of intuitive groundwork for people to engage this. While also with a built in epistemic humility because you realize that there's this transcendent process that sort of narrative and you're not getting the absolute final necessarily you're getting you're getting the next step and so there's all sorts of really important sort of checks and balances that need to be part of a project like that but it is the urgent I think kind of religious innovation project that we're engaged in and it's the religion of no religion it's emergentism you know people trying to engage this but also trying to be aware and responsible to the inherent dangers as well so there be
Speaker 2
dragons. So it seems to me that there's no two things then that also are going to need some sort of reciprocal resimbalization. One is reason and we have to get it outside of the Cartesian framework. It's all against that in important ways and return reason to you know that note or that notion of right overcoming self deception and affording realitymatic disclosure in an interlocking fashion as as the primary thing. And then of course, and then that that's going to relate ultimately to wisdom, but I'm thinking also particularly of courage again, right?