Chasing Consciousness

How have we ended up in a meaning crisis and what are the symptoms? Why is embodiment important to knowing? Why is an ecology of practices part of the solution? Today we have the growing issue of The Meaning Crisis to discuss, and the embodied practices that could offer a few solutions. This conversation is a part 2, following directly on from Episode #51, where John and I talked about Collective intelligence, and how the evolution of distributed cognition has led to homo-sapiens being such effective collaborators. It was so fascinating that we didn’t have time to connect the sheer power of our collective intelligence, to today’s discussion about what John has dubbed The Meaning Crisis. We come back to the importance of our propensity for self-transcendence, and the correspondent risk of self-delusion; how important a sense of the sacred is to our sense of meaning in life, to our mental health; then we zoom in on the importance of a range of embodied practices that John calls an ecology of practices, like Chi Gong, circling, flow states and meditation to re-discover lost forms of knowledge and embodied cognition that John thinks can bring us back from the brink of self delusion and self destruction. There is of course only one polymath who can speak about so many things and connect them all, like a ninja of the mind as one listener called him, the Cognitive scientist and philosopher John Vervaeke. Vervaeke is the director of the university of Toronto’s Consciousness and Wisdom Studies Laboratory and its Cognitive Science program, where he teaches an Introduction to Cognitive Science and The Cognitive Science of Consciousness. Vervaeke has taught courses on Buddhism and Cognitive Science in the Buddhism, Psychology, and Mental Health programs for 15 years. He is also the author and presenter of his much loved YouTube series “Awakening from the Meaning Crisis” and ‘After Socrates.’ What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 06:15 Self-transcendence VS self-delusion. 07:45 The ‘frame’ problem, the need to ignore many things to attend to the ‘salient’ ones. 12:30 The history of meaning in the west. 17:00 The history of religion and philosophy: connectedness across generations. 20:00 Pre-agricultural sacred practices and rituals. 22:30 The upper palaeolithic transition - the artistic, technical, and symbolic. 24:30 The axial revolution - numeracy, literacy and democracy. 27:30 The ‘2 world’ mythology revolution - the natural and supernatural. 29:30 The scientific revolution - the collapse of the 2 world mythology. 31:20 The impossible promise of scientism. 38:00 The difference between wisdom and knowledge. 43:00 Participatory knowledge - graspable, shapable knowledge. 45:00 Gnosis - embodied knowledge. 49:30 The importance of the sacred to meaning. 54:00 Maladaptive replacement of religion with consumerism. 57:45 A relationship with the transcendent. 59:00 Becoming mature is about facing reality. 01:01:00 Loss of epistemic humility. 01:04:00 Loss of wonder 01:05:00 Humility + Wonder = reverence. 01:06:09 The disappearing of traditional men’s roles. 01:17:30 The changing of women’s roles. 01:23:50 Direct embodied experience 01:26:00 An ecology of practices - there is no single panacea practice 01:30:20 Dialogical over monological reasoning - we don’t become wise in isolation. 01:33:40 Flow States and the lowering of the ego mind. 01:38:00 Circling: Listening as an intentional action 01:41:30 Meditation helps break mental frames. 01:46:40 The lowering of the Default Mode Network 01:50:20 Tai Chi and Qigong.  01:53:45 ‘Transjective’ embodiment References: John Vervaeke, “Awakening from the meaning crisis”, You Tube lecture series. Karl Jaspers - Bronze Age collapse to Axial revolution, 1949 article Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems Elisabeth Oldfield - ‘The Sacred’ podcast. ‘Soul Heal’ film, Jose Enrique Pardo, with James Hollis, a film about healing the issues of men Flow states The Circling Institute

Why do we have the tendency to believe things when they may not be true? Why do we project patterns, agency and meaning onto the world when sometimes there is none? How can we consider the probabilities of conspiracies to identify the ones that may be true? How do we encourage brave journalism that calls out conspiracies even by powerful institutions, in spite of the pejorative term ‘conspiracy theorist’? Today we have the uncomfortable topic of how our brains often believe things which aren’t true. The topic fits perfectly with our theme for series 4 of Self-transcendence vs Self-delusion. Our innate ability to notice patterns in systems, assign agency and find meaning in the world are among the reasons we’ve evolved to become so successful at predicting, understanding and creating meaningful collaborations in the world. But the issue with these abilities is that we might make the mistake of thinking what the brain assigns to the world for our own survival, is necessarily true of the world itself. Sure our brains do track the truth but truth is not always what’s needed for survival; so issues like negativity bias, confirmation bias and creating narrative stories that conveniently map onto our existing world view have become a deeply engrained part of our society. Add to this modern phenomena like the siloing of information by the internet into small echo chambers where only like minds come together; algorithmic amplification of memes led by the internet business model of “maximising engagement”; and decreasing trust in institutions, as economic inequality in the world increases exponentially, and you get a perfect storm of clashing beliefs about the truth. Fortunately, our guest today is one of the most established sceptical voices in science who reminds us that we need to track closely the difference between what can be collectively confirmed to be true, and what our brains project to be true from the inside out. He is of course, New York Times best selling author and founding publisher of Skeptic magazine Michael Shermer; he wrote for 18 years for the Scientific American. He’s written nine books but today we’re going to focus on his books “The Believing Brain” and his new release “Conspiracy: Why the rational believe the irrational”. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro 07:00 The philosophy of scepticism. 08:45 ‘Default to truth’ 15:40 Moral truth VS moral relativism. 19:00 Scientific revolutions overturning consensus. 24:30 ‘The Believing Brain’. 25:40 The ability to see patterns in the chaos, and assign agency to them. 26:50 Evolution selects for assuming more things are real than not, just in case. 30:10 Bayesian inference: levels of confidence in being right or wrong. 32:40 ‘Agencicity’, impugning patterns with intentional agency. 33:40 Most things happen randomly, and can’t be predicted. 41:10 Assigning meaning to patterns in nature. 43:50 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. 44:40 Teleology: goal directness in life. 47:50 Dennet - the intentional stance 48:50 Confirmation bias. 54:00 Algorithmic amplification. 57:40 There are many real conspiracies. 01:00:20 Tribal, proxy and paranoid conspiracism. 01:03:35 Being overly suspicious - negativity bias. 01:07:50 Critical thinking - how not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. 01:16:50 Conflict of interest in media - shareholders vs stakeholder interest. 01:18:40 The pejorative term ‘conspiracy theorist’ demotivating brave journalism. 01:26:30 Reductionism and determinism evaluated. 01:32:20 Remote Viewing and psi phenomena: sceptics view. 01:46:30 The UFO phenomena: sceptics view. References: Michael Shermer, “The Believing Brain” Michael Shermer, “Conspiracy” Michael Shermer, “The Moral Arc” Scepticism 101 course: How to think like a scientist Remote viewing Stargate Program documentary “Third Eye Spies” Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean - ‘Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program’, NYTimes article

Dr. Sarah McKay, expert on women's hormones and neuroscience, discusses the role of estrogen and menstrual cycles in women's moods, the phenomena of 'baby brain' during motherhood, and the symptoms of menopause. She emphasizes the need for more information and awareness about female hormones, particularly for women facing motherhood and menopause, and for men hoping to provide support.

What technological solutions can mitigate our ecological and economic crises? Why are horizontally integrated 'smart' data sharing networks so important? What are 'Glocalisation' and Bio-regional governance? Will we rise to the challenge in time to survive the next extinction event? Today we have the technological solutions to our economic and ecological crisis offered by the Third Industrial Revolution to consider. Some may jump to the conclusion that technology and industrialisation are what got us into this mess in the first place and depending on my mood on any one day I might agree with you, but there’s no turning back the clock on the scientific and technological revolutions, so if you can’t beat it then reform it; And many social elements of the digital and internet revolution seem to have started doing just that, quite independently. That said it has been the campaign and deep vision of my guest today for more than 40 years to go further than just talking about it, to push beyond political divides by prioritising life over blind growth and productivity, and get big entities like governments and trade federations to start thinking like this. He is of course the economist, social theorist, activist and author of 21 books, Jeremy Rifkin. His work focuses on the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment. Today we’ll be focusing on this new book the “Age of Resilience”, his 2014 book “The Zero Marginal Cost Society”, and his 2011 book “The Third Industrial Revolution”; Rifkin has been an advisor to the leadership of the European Union since 2000 and several other European heads of state, particularly on ushering in the smart, green revolution; he has advised the Peoples Republic of China on the build out and scale up of the Internet in a sustainable low-carbon economy; And he is currently advising the European Commission on the deployment of the Smart Europe initiative. What we discuss: 00:00 Intro. 06:20 Dysfunctional economic system from 1st and 2nd and Industrial Revolution. 08:00 Exponential Climate change feedback loop from industrialisation. 08:30 New Communication, Energy, logistics and water paradigm changes alter society radically. 10:20 Infrastructure paradigms define our world view. 15:00 Dropping productivity and efficiency after 2008. 17:50 Near-marginal cost economy e.g Solar, wind, internet commerce. 20:00 Jeremy’s 3rd Industrial Revolution vision, all at near zero marginal cost. 21:30 Component 1: Communication via the internet. 22:30 Component 2: Energy internet - sharing surplus globally. 23:55 Component 3: Logistics internet fed by the energy internet. 24:30 Component 4: The Water internet. 31:00 The 3IR infrastructure system is by its nature distributed using data over the internet. 38:00 "The Age of Resilience" Book. 38:20 Biophilia, Eco-consciousness, and an empathic society. 44:10 “Periods of Happiness.. are the black pages of history” Hegel. 47:00 Mirror neurones and empathic neurocircuitry. 55:00 Extinction events lead to unity. 55:50 Shadow 1: Big data. Can this common be democratised? 01:02:52 Bio-regional governance. 01:04:45 “Glocalisation”. 01:19:00 Shadow 2: The internet business model. 01:29:40 Shadow 3: No motivation for corporations to move from multinational investment to ‘glocal’ investment. 01:39:00 Differences between Claus Schwab’s “4th Industrial Revolution” and Jeremy’s 3rd. 01:50:00 The Ginsburg “Moloch” allegory. Jeremy Rifkin, “The Age of Resilience: Reimagining Existence on a Rewilding Earth” https://search.app.goo.gl/g97t6pL Jeremy Rifkin, “The Third Industrial Revolution” https://search.app.goo.gl/gbMdqE9 Jeremy Rifkin, “The Zero Marginal Cost SocietyThe Zero Marginal Cost Society” https://search.app.goo.gl/eiZXAy5 The Human Microbiome Project NIH https://hmpdacc.org/

Why do complex systems self-organise? What is cellular uncertainty and stem cell plasticity? Can we create artificial digital life that’s subject to the same creative adaptability that nature and life demonstrate? Today we have the extraordinary phenomena of self-organisation in Complex Systems to look into. We’re going to be looking into the conditions for a system to be considered complex, how a certain amount of randomness in the system releases the creativity required to permit adaptability, and how the feedback loops within that adaptability lead to a self-correcting organisational principle that keeps the system’s order and randomness in balance as it evolves. We’re going to be seeing how that self-organisation is operative at almost every level of scale in the universe and in life and death, and trying to get our heads around what that means for the nature of reality and consciousness. So who better to discuss this with than stem cell biologist and diagnostic pathologist Neil Theise. Neil is is a professor of pathology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and a pioneer of adult stem cell plasticity research. In 2018 the news of his discovery of the interstitial, a vast communication network throughout the human body went viral and was featured in the New York Times and Scientific American among many others. Theise is also a long term student of Zen meditation and Kabbalah. And his studies of complexity theory, summarised in his new book “Notes on Complexity: A scientific theory of connection, consciousness and being”, have led to interdisciplinary collaborations in fields as diverse integrative medicine, consciousness studies and the science-spirituality interface. Since speaking with biologist Michael Levin on Cellular cognition, and cognitive scientist John Vervaeke on collective intelligence, in the last series; I’ve been keen to speak to Neil about stem cell plasticity and self-organising systems, as their elegant sophistication begs so many questions about the nature of reality and consciousness. So without further ado, let’s go! 00:00 Intro 05:45 Livers have stem cells, Neil’s first of many discoveries 13:50 “Cellular Uncertainty” - Stem-cell plasticity. 17:43 Heisenberg’s ‘Uncertainty principle’ analogy. 20:20 Cellular sensitivity 22:00 The TechnoSphere - interacting with virtual creatures 26:20 Emergent bottom-up structure, self-organising inside the game 27:20 Artificial Life. 29:20 Complexity Theory explained by Ants. 34:20 Randomness allows the creativity to adapt to changes: in the environment Divergent ants. 35:20 A minimum of elements are needed over time to become self-organising. 36:50 Cells, ants and humans all self-organise: micro macro phenomena. 38:40 No planning or top-down intelligence managing complex systems. 42:55 ‘Wholarchies’ not hierarchies. 47:50 Living systems and complexity arise at the boundary between perfect order and fractal chaos. 49:55 Extinction is also part of complexity, as much as creative adaptivity. 50:30 “What makes you able to be a living system, inevitably, given enough time will lead you to die. You can’t separate life and death”. 53:10 Self correction 55:50 Cancer, economic crashes, extinction events: Pruning away the corrective negative feedback loops leads to collapse. 57:30 Every scale of nature adheres to complex system behaviours. 59:50 Complementarity exists at all levels of scale - Niels Bohr. 01:01:40 Biological complementarity. 01:04:50 Breaking down the separations between discrete organisms. 01:10:50 Not upward or downward causation but complementarity. 01:35:50 Zen meditation insights which led to scientific insight. 01:18:20 The risk of over-rating our personal experience. 01:23:20 Where you find mind, you find life. References: Neil Theise, “Notes on Complexity: A scientific theory of connection, consciousness and being” Evan Thompson - Deep Continuity (of Life and Mind) Francisco Varela - (Evan Thompson’s mentor)

How are traumatic memories stored in the body? How has Somatic Experiencing helped thousands of people release the symptoms of trauma through bodily practices rather than talky therapy? How did Peter resolve his own devastating childhood trauma? What will a trauma aware society be like? In this episode we have the fascinating question of the different ways traumatic memories are stored to think about, and how the body itself and not only the brain is instrumental in the way the memory’s are made and processed, and so in how we might ease the symptoms of the trauma later on. We’re going to delve into the brain-body connection in traumatic memory, looking at the way trauma can influence our bodily states and so in turn the way we can use bodily methods in a bottom-up approach, to re-train the brain to feel safe and integrate traumatic memories.  For this there can be no better person than the psychotherapist, Dr. Peter Levine, the creator of the Somatic Experiencing therapy method, founder of the Institute of Somatic Education and author of many books on trauma and therapy, including “Waking the Tiger”, “Healing Trauma”, “Trauma Through a Childs Eyes”, “Trauma and Memory” which we’ll be discussing today, and his brand new book, which this episode is happy to celebrate the release of “An autobiography of Trauma: A healing Journey”. Minus 1 minute What we discuss: 00:00 Intro. 06:00 Conscious memories start earlier than we might imagine. 07:00 Descartes was wrong, better “I move, I sense, I feel, I have images, I have thoughts: therefore I am.” 07:30 The mid-1960’s session with Nancy that started it all for Peter. 14:20 The 3 different nervous system bodily states: fight or flight, freeze and social engagement. 20:00 Body/Nervous system bi-directionality: Influences between Polyvagal theory and Somatic Experiencing. 26:00 Exercises to switch the hyper-aroused message coming from the body. 29:00 Animal kingdom research into ‘shaking off’ daily life threatening experiences. 31:00 The very sensations that help animals release, are scary to us so we block them. 31:40 Vitality, movement and exuberance VS a disembodied society. 33:20 As children we learn to limit our exuberance, so as not to disturb adults. 35:30 Different types of memory and the role of the body in recording them. 36:00 Declarative conscious memory. 36:45 Autobiographical conscious memory. 38:30 Emotional unconscious memory (associative). 39:00 Procedural/body unconscious memories (to protect oneself). 39:45 Peter as Chiron “The Woundd Healer” archetype. 45.10 Being heard, witnessed and listened to: why reflection and mirroring are important. 47:00 “I don’t think there is consciousness without being mirrored”. 47:40 A trauma aware society. 51:00 Being heard and mirrored leads to resilience. 54:00 Peter’s devastating childhood trauma and shame: “An Autobiography of Trauma” 57:00 Confronting shame tends to intensify it. 59:30 Why share such a personal vulnerable story with the world? 01:01:00 The dream that helped him choose whether or not to publish this deeply personal story. 01:02:20 Encouraging others to tell their stories: cathartic sharing. 01:04:45 Sharing vulnerability with the compassionate other. 01:05:30 Is trauma required to transform or is it just an inevitability of life? 01:07:00 Trauma is a rite of passage towards being truly compassionate. 01:07:40 Gabor Mate, “Compassionate Enquiry”. 01:08:00 Curiosity can’t co-exist with fear, use it to shift the process. References: Peter Levine, “An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey” 2024 (Available at Ergos Institute, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Amazon UK, Inner Traditions, Books A Million, and Bookshop.org) Somatic Experiencing https://www.somaticexperiencing.com/home Peter Levine, “Trauma and Memory” 2015 https://g.co/kgs/vAzjvB2 “Hand in Hand: Parenting by connection” episode, Listening technique https://www.chasingconsciousness.net/episode-18-parenting-by-connection-maya-coleman

In what way is beef in UFOs religious-like? Is there evidence for collective visions of these objects and entities, or rather for their objective reality? In what way could the experience have elements of both? In this episode we have the ever more mainstream story of UFO experiences to assess; Not necessarily the important questions around the existence of the phenomenon, which the office of the US director of National Intelligence confirmed in an official 2021 report that they were, in fact, a ‘population of objects’ (see show notes below)- but rather the belief in the phenomenon, in 2008 polled at around %37 of Americans, but by no means confined to the US. This widespread belief, along with less ridiculed beliefs bolstered by the high probability of extraterrestrial civilisations more advanced than our own existing out there in the cosmos, has had a huge sociological and cultural influence on western society. So in this episode I want to put into a sociological context all of this quasi-religious belief; understand the role of our perception of technology; get our heads around a rare example of a modern myth forming in real time; look at the ways a phenomenon can be both physical and psychological at the same time; and examine various scientific, academic and even philosophical doors into this confounding phenomena that no matter how much the sceptics deny, just won’t go away. So when we study belief we have to turn to a religious studies specialist, and who better to call on than Professor of Religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Diana Pasulka. She’s also the author of 3 books, “Heaven Can Wait”, a book about purgatory, “American Cosmic” on scientists who believe in UFO’s, and her new 2023 book “Encounters” on multi-disciplinary academic approaches to the UFO phenomenon and experiences with non-human intelligence. Don’t forget listeners, that we talk about all the science in more detail with Stanford medical School’s immunologist, pathologist and inventor Garry Nolan in this series so check that out too. What we discuss:00:00 Intro.13:08 Meaningful events propel people towards religious belief.21:30 Heidegger’s warning about underestimating the influence of technology on our culture.27:00 Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” - A just government and the control of information.34:40 Nietzsche, the risk of assigning causal power for synchronicities to higher powers.44:00 Perspective change: The creation of a modern myth, to a real physical phenomenon.45:50 Looking for UFO crash parts in the desert with Garry Nolan, taken blindfolded by a Space Force scientist.49:00 The ‘Antenna’ hypothesis: the brain as a receiver and transmitter.56:00 Physical data analysed by top scientists, and government “management” of information.01:01:00 Where the physical and non-physical meet: idealism or VR hypotheses.01:05:00 Humans may be a sophisticated type of biotechnology.01:06:00 The use of intuition protocols to find technological solutions: intention and visualisation.01:11:30 New Encounters book: a “reorientation”.01:14:00 Iya Whitely: validating pilots experiences. Diana Pasulka, “Encounters”. https://g.co/kgs/tFfG3Mx Diana Pasulka, “American Cosmic”. https://g.co/kgs/MbQ1tXQ Office of the Director of National Intelligence Assessment on UAP, June 2021, John L. Ratcliffe https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf Martin Heidegger essay, “The Question Concerning Technology” https://g.co/kgs/ed5JVEW Iya Whitely “Trusting and Learning from Pilots”, Lecture at the SOL Foundation symposium at the Nolan Lab at Stanford Medical School https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR09GHQ5AwA Beyond UFOs: The Science of Consciousness & Contact with Non Human Intelligence - Rey hernandez et al. https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-UFOs-Science-Consciousness-Intelligence/dp/1721088652

Does the use of computer models in physics change the way we see the universe? How far reaching are the implications of computation irreducibility? Are observer limitations key to the way we conceive the laws of physics? In this episode we have the difficult yet beautiful topic of trying to model complex systems like nature and the universe computationally to get into; and how beyond a low level of complexity all systems, seem to become equally unpredictable. We have a whole episode in this series on Complexity Theory in biology and nature, but today we’re going to be taking a more physics and computational slant. Another key element to this episode is Observer Theory, because we have to take into account the perceptual limitations of our species’ context and perspective, if we want to understand how the laws of physics that we’ve worked out from our environment, are not and cannot be fixed and universal but rather will always be perspective bound, within a multitude of alternative branches of possible reality with alternative possible computational rules. We’ll then connect this multi-computational approach to a reinterpretation of Entropy and the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The fact that my guest has been building on these ideas for over 40 years, creating computer language and Ai solutions, to map his deep theories of computational physics, makes him the ideal guest to help us unpack this topic. He is physicist, computer scientist and tech entrepreneur Stephen Wolfram. In 1987 he left academia at Caltech and Princeton behind and devoted himself to his computer science intuitions at his company Wolfram Research. He’s published many blog articles about his ideas, and written many influential books including “A New kind of Science”, and more recently “A Project to Find the Fundamental Theory of Physics”, and “Computer Modelling and Simulation of Dynamic Systems”, and just out in 2023 “The Second Law” about the mystery of Entropy. One of the most wonderful things about Stephen Wolfram is that, despite his visionary insight into reality, he really loves to be ‘in the moment’ with his thinking, engaging in socratic dialogue, staying open to perspectives other than his own and allowing his old ideas to be updated if something comes up that contradicts them; and given how quickly the fields of physics and computer science are evolving I think his humility and conceptual flexibility gives us a fine example of how we should update how we do science as we go. What we discuss:  00:00 Intro 07:45 The history of scientific models of reality: structural, mathematical and computational. 20:20 The Principle of Computational Equivalence (PCE) 24:45 Computational Irreducibility - the process that means you can’t predict the outcome in advance. 27:50 The importance of the passage of time to Consciousness. 28:45 Irreducibility and the limits of science. 33:30 Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem 42:20 Observer Theory and the Wolfram Physics Project. 50:30 We ’make’ space. 51:30 Branchial Space - different quantum histories of the world, branching and merging 58:50 Rulial Space: All possible rules of all possible interconnected branches. 01:19:30 The Measurement problem of QM and Entanglement meets computational irreducibility and observer theory.  01:32:40 Inviting Stephen back for a separate episode on AI safety, safety solutions and applications for science, as we did’t have time. 01:37:30 At the molecular level the laws of physics are reversible. 01:45:30 Entropy defined in computational terms. 01:50:30 If we ever overcame our finite minds, there would be no coherent concept of existence. 01:51:30 Parallels between modern physics and ancient eastern mysticism and cosmology. 01:55:30 Reductionism in an irreducible world: saying a lot from very little input. References: “The Second Law: Resolving the Mystery of the Second Law of Thermodynamics”, Stephen Wolfram “A New Kind of Science”, Stephen Wolfram Observer Theory Article, Stephen Wolfram

How has the evolution of cognition led to homo-sapiens being such effective collaborators and how is the collective knowledge and wisdom of the society distributed and passed on to later generations? How can we apply the amplified wisdom of distributed cognition to solve some of humanities biggest problems? Today we have the important fields of Collective Intelligence and how we can use it to solve our problems as a society, to try and get our heads around. We’ll be discussing the relevance of difficulties arising from cognitive science and physics research that for some put into question the consensus story that embodied feelings were fundamental in the development of reasoning and consciousness; We also discuss the relevance of the work of Carl Jung on the Collective Unconscious; of Neuroscientist Anil Seth’s Controlled Hallucination and Don Hoffman’s User interface theory; of Iain McGilchrist’s split brain research and of Michael Levin’s take on cellular cognition.  There is of course only one polymath who can hold that many topics in a single conversation and that’s the Cognitive scientist, and philosopher John Vervaeke. Vervaeke is the director of UToronto’s Consciousness and Wisdom Studies Laboratory and its Cognitive Science program, where he teaches an Introduction to Cognitive Science and The Cognitive Science of Consciousness.  He has been a leading intellectual observer of the modern meaning crisis: the loss of a spiritual worldview in the West, and the decline of wisdom traditions that help individuals find meaning in their lives. His online lectures and practices integrate teachings from many different disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, religion, and cutting edge cognitive science. He is the author and presenter of the YouTube series, “Awakening from the Meaning Crisis” and his brand new series, "After Socrates." What we discuss: 00:00 Intro. 05:35 Losing faith without losing a taste for the transcendent. 15:30 The difference between intelligence and living cognition. 18:40 Relevance realisation: What to attend to in the sea of info available. 21:00 Cognition “cares” because its life is on the line: Salience landscapes. 24:15 Humans VS persons. 30:05 Distributed Cognition explained. 30:30 ‘Reason is monological’ framework. 33:15 The rise of individualism. 34:30 Distributed computation and problem solving via the internet. 36:30 ‘Reason is dialogical’ framework. 38:00 Your best self-correction ability is with other people. 42:30 Life builds collective intelligence without language. 45:50 Issues from neuroscience and quantum physics. 50:30 Predictive processing to identify salience. 52:30 The imaginary VS the imaginal. 53:40 Imaginally augmented perception. 58:00 Causality is not the same as causal relevance: Acausal phenomena. 01:00:30 Determinism VS fractal probability.  01:03:50 A hierarchy of cognitive selves: Michael Levin. 01:06:50 There isn’t just bottom up emergence but top down emanation. 01:07:20 Deep continuity - Evan Thompson. 01:09:30 Hierarchies of selves: Michael Levin. 01:15:30 Could we be part of single selves greater than our individual organisms? 01:17:30 Cognition is a continuum but differences of degree eventually make differences of kind. 01:19:30 Solving collective problems via distributed cognition and practices of connectedness. 01:25:20 Left/right hemisphere considerations for distributed cognition: Iain McGilchrist. 01:32:30 Adaptivity: Self-transcendence VS self-delusion. 01:35:15 Narrative bias and the Left Brain interpreter: Mike Gazzaniga. 01:37:00 Extended naturalism 01:40:24 The Collective Unconscious - Carl Jung. 01:46:25 A lot of the unconscious contents are not narrative like or persona like. References:  “After Socrates” You Tube series “The meaning Crisis” You Tube series Michael Levin - Cellular cognition episode Evan Thompson - Deep continuity hypothesis “Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind”

Discover how breathwork interacts with the nervous system, accesses memories, and treats ailments. Learn about the pioneers in the field and the basics of breathwork. Explore the impact of past experiences on the nervous system and the healing process for trauma. Discover the connection between meditation, breathwork, and relaxation. Understand the transformative power of breathwork for various ailments. Dive into the speaker's books, training school, and website.