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!