Metamodern Meaning

Embodiment practitioner Ēlen Awalom discusses bringing embodied wisdom to online spaces, navigating triggering interactions with somatic intelligence, and the importance of increasing somatic intelligence in response to the meta-crisis and interpersonal relationships.

Whitehead scholar and process thinker Matt Segall joins me to deepen our conversation about responses to the meaning crisis as it relates to reconnecting cosmos, consciousness, and value. In this discussion, we dive into the topic of "prehension," an idea from Whitehead that posits an experiential component to all phenomena in the universe. 0:00 Introduction5:08 Prehension: Not Interior, but the Interior/Exterior Bridge12:06 Prehension and Panpsychism16:27 Identifying Basal Experience: Subjectivity and Time25:52 Experience and Complexity33:40 Attempting to Describe Fundamental Experience47:06 Is Time Subjective?54:36 Metaphysics and Novelty: Evolving Laws?1:00:16 The Spectrum of Consciousness1:04:22 Whitehead vs. Anthroposophy?1:10:28 Philosophy's Role in a Scientific Age1:21:43 Next Steps To hear more, visit brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com

Matt Segall joins me to debate the relative merits of "anthroposophical" aproaches to addressing the meaning crisis, such as those adopted in the works of Steiner, Stein and Gafni, and, to some degree, Whitehead.0:00 Introduction4:15 Revisiting the Image of Nature: Revitalizing Romanticism?12:00 Humans in a Cosmos or a Cosmos Known by Humans?21:17 Is Mechanism Just a Part of the Process? Emergence All the Way Down30:05 Advance or Regression? Thinking in Terms of Assimilation and Accomodation38:13 Defining a "Mechanistic" Approach: The Minimal Need for Causality41:17 Retrojecting Novelty into Primals? Positing "Prehension"57:01 Upshot: So...Is the Universe Expanding or Not?1:11:52 Against a Model--or ...Models?1:17:13 What Does an "Emodied" Knowledge Entail?1:25:25 Conclusion To hear more, visit brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com

Developmental psychologist Michael Mascolo discusses dynamic skill theory and its implications for moral reasoning. They explore the complexities of development, moral domains, and assessing skills. They also delve into the connection between hierarchical complexity and moral thinking, as well as the concept of normativity and its emergence in different levels of complexity. The podcast concludes with a discussion on agency, emergent causation, and free will.

Jared Morningstar discusses integrating Islamic tradition with metamodernism, exploring ritual, ethics, and autonomy. The conversation delves into the appeal of Islam, normativities in different religions, and the intersection of process theology with Islamic heritage.

Bonnitta Roy discusses teleology and evolutionary narrative. Highlights pivotal mutations, increasing organism abstraction, and models of hierarchical complexity. Explores pure abstractions, perception of causal manifold, and recursive vantage points. Questions complexity without increasing degrees of freedom. Addresses directionality in mind evolution and potential for further discussion.

Could AI become conscious? Is it already? Everyone seems to be talking about this, yet little of the discussion is actually informed by grounded theories of consciousness and mind. In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Gregg Henriques, professor of psychology at James Madison University, originator of the unified theory of knowledge framework, and the author of 'A New Synthesis for Solving the Problem of Psychology' to talk about the prospect of consciousness in AI. After zeroing in on just what we mean by "consciousness" in this sense (to get past the endless equivocation commonly found in these discussions), Gregg and I get to the heart of the matter. 0:00 Introduction2:00 The Question: Can AI Be(come) Conscious?4:40 (Context: Gregg's Work to Address Confusions about Mind)Part I: What Do We Mean By "Consciousness"?8:33 Three Definitions:9:07 (1) Cognition18:08 (2) Subjective Conscious Experience (The One I Mean)19:57 (3) Egoic Self-ConsciousnessPart II: AI and Consciousness23:08 Could AI Have (2) Subjective Conscious Experience?29:00 Beyond the Turing Test Standard33:10 Panpsychist and Idealist Challenges?35:46 Functional Parallels Are Not Equivalence37:50 Approaching the Fifth Joint Point50:17 What Should We Value: Intelligence or Sentience? To hear more, visit brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com

Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm discusses conceptions of value after postmodernism. Is postmodernism a nihilistic relativism or an activist moralism? Critics have accused it of both. What values pervade the postmodern academic paradigm? How do value conceptions shift when the postmodern paradigm gets diffused in popular culture? Is the "is-ought distinction" actually valid? What would a positive value project look like, and what are its benefits? Finally, what comes next for metamodernism and Storm's work?0:00 Introduction0:52 Postmodernism: Relativist or Activist? Nihilist or Moralist?9:11 Value vs. Critique17:07 Politics and Academia22:17 Postmodern Diffusions31:04 Is vs. Ought: Who's Afraid of Normativity?38:04 Systematic Metamodern Philosophy43:08 Imagining a Positive Future: Ethics and Wisdom55:55 How Can Academia Reincorporate Wisdom?59:42:21 Towards a Paradigm Shift: The Future of Metamodernism1:09:35 Paradigm Projects1:14:49 What's Next? To hear more, visit brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com

Psychology professor John Vervaeke discusses updating Neoplatonic spirituality with contemporary philosophy and cognitive science. They touch on topics like complexification as narrative, nonduality vs. nihilism, and death and reincarnation.

Metamodern sociologist Daniel Görtz joins Brendan Graham Dempsey to dig deeper into the nuances of developmental theory and how it can be applied at the individual and collective levels. Are individuals "at" a stage of development, or do they occupy a range of complexity? With all the distributional ranges involved in individual development, how can we make assessments about entire cultural worldviews? Daniel digs into the nuances of the Model of Hierarchical Complexity, exploring unpublished theories and ideas of Michael Commons and himself as they relate to thinking about conceptual complexification for people and societies.0:00 IntroductionPart I: Individual Development2:28 Are People "at" a Stage or Thinking/Behaving Across a Distribution?5:12 The MHC vs. Holistic, Whole-Person Models10:11 Transjective Behavioral Complexity: Context and Scaffolding25:17 Cognitive Ranges, Cognitive Ceilings30:22 Piaget and BeyondPart II: Cultural Development33:04 Are Ideas "at" a Stage?42:16 Are Cultural Worldviews "at" a Stage?56:44 The Dynamics of Cultural Evolution1:20:36 Pattern and Medium1:32:16 Problems and Progress: Nothing for Granted To hear more, visit brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com