Jack Roycroft-Sherry

Are demonic possessions real? Psychiatrist Richard Gallagher has been investigating them for over 25 years, becoming convinced after starting as a deep skeptic.We discuss the scientific understanding of these cases, how to differentiate demonic possessions from ordinary biological illness, how people become possessed, the dangers of psychedelics like ayahuasca today, the nature of evil in the world, demons in different religions, and more...Timestamps:00:00 Origins Investigating Demonic Possession05:05 The Journey from Skepticism to Belief09:17 Understanding Possession and Oppression13:58 Remarkable Cases and Experiences18:27 The Intersection of Science and Spirituality23:04 The Nature of Good and Evil27:56 Conditions Leading to Possession32:14 The Role of Psychedelics and Modern Culture36:57 Awareness and Caution Regarding Demons41:31 Conclusion and Reflections on the SubjectFind Richard: -Book: Demonic Foes: My Twenty-Five Years as a Psychiatrist Investigating Possessions, Diabolic Attacks, and the Paranormal. Amazon link: https://a.co/d/5sDHWt9

Whitehead had some "heretical" views on the nature of God, consciousness, evil, and the future of reality. I wanted to explore these ideas with renowned philosopher Matt Segall, author of the blog "Footnotes2Plato." Topics we discuss are: How Whitehead re-conceptualized God as within reality, Consciousness and experience as being embedded throughout the universe, Bergson and the strange nature of time; God's memory and the storing of value, the cosmic trajetctroy of the cosmos, and more...Timestamps:00:00 Exploring Whitehead's Concept of God04:10 The Primordial and Consequent Nature of God08:28 Relational View of the Trinity12:01 The Problem of Evil and Evolutionary Cosmology21:10 Whitehead's Dual Poles of God25:15 Metaphysical Reality and Human Cognition32:53 The Living Universe and Consciousness38:56 Humanity's Unique Contribution to the Universe39:05 The Nature of Consciousness41:29 Human Experience and Freedom44:32 Responsibility in the Cosmos48:08 The Future and Divine Possibilities50:58 Memory and Time01:05:09 The Role of God in Evolution01:12:53 Worship and Divine Participation

We often think of cognition as a grand, strange, and magical thing. However, what if it was actually pretty basic, simple, and pretty much everywhere? Such that even rocks, economies, or cells perform "cognition."My guest today is Benjamin Lyons, who has written a paper with the Michael Levin on the nature of intelligence. They argue that intelligence works much like an economy (Benjamin is an economist by training), whereby local-level parts each do their own little thing, and then aggregate all of it together. In the economy's case, this produces everything that we need in our daily lives. But as a general theory of intelligence, we can apply the same logic to get insights into brains, organisms, life, diseases, emotions, and more...Timestamps: 00:00 Rethinking Cognition02:56 Cognition Can Happen Anywhere06:12 Paper w/Michael Levin: Price System & Intelligence09:51 Bioelectricity vs. Price Systems12:00 The Role of Agency in Cells and Organisms14:48 Survival Instincts: Cells, Corporations, and Human Behavior18:03 The Nature of Goals: Beyond Survival and Reproduction25:35 Exploring Agency in Biological Systems28:27 Cognition and Embodiment: A Unified Perspective30:12 The Body as a Coordinating System34:32 Love, Sacrifice, and Biological Existence37:15 Complexity in Human Cognition and Coordination39:39 Emotions: Choices or Hard-Coded Responses?41:37 Optimization Principles in Physics and Biology42:49 Disease Models: Economics and Biology IntersectFind Benjamin:-Substack: https://interestingessays.substack.com/-https://x.com/BenjaminLy61243-Paper with Mike Levin: https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/osfxxx/3fdya.html (title: Cognitive Glues Are Shared Models of Relative Scarcities: The Economics of Collective Intelligence)Find Jack: -X: https://x.com/jack_roycroft -Substack (where I'll be writing soon): https://substack.com/@jackroycroftsherry

Joscha Bach is a cognitive scientist and AI researcher.Animism is the view that everything in the universe is alive and conscious. Is such a worldview absurd? Or might it help make sense of life, evolution, and consciousness?In this podcast, learn how Joscha came to understand spirits as "self-organizing software agents", how life is animated by non-physical software patterns, how non-physical patterns animate societies, as well as where emotions actually come from, the nature of consciousness, the future of AI consciousness, God and the deep nature of ultimate reality, and more...Timestamps:00:00 Joscha's Realization about Spirits04:16 Software & Brains07:08 Mind vs. Brain12:04 Where are Spirits before Incarnation?14:20 Software at Different Layers of Reality18:14 Ghosts22:42 Humans vs. Computers26:39 Artificial Intelligence28:45 The Hard Problem of Consciousness29:05 Understanding Consciousness and Its Implications32:05 The Nature of Consciousness36:52 Emotions, God, & The Outer Mind41:48 Hemispheric Differences in the Brain45:45 Conscious AI48:30 Collective Agents and Societal Dynamics52:38 Metaphysics & God53:30 Martyrs in Cells and Humans59:10 Origins of RealityFind Joscha:X: https://x.com/PlinzCalifornia Institute for Machine Consciousness: https://cimc.ai/Liquid AI: https://www.liquid.ai/Find Jack:Substack: https://substack.com/@jackroycroftsherryX: https://x.com/jack_roycroft

Anderson Todd is a cognitive scientist and a Jungian psychoanalyst.Remarkable experiences happen in our dreams every night, and bizarre, meaningful coincidences (synchronicities) are reported in waking life. Can science make sense of all this?In this podcast, we explore whether there is meaning in our dreams, Anderson's personal experiences with lucid dreaming, Carl Jung's model of the Self, how to interpret your own dreams, dissociated alters in our mind, how to explain strange synchronicity experiences, the metaphysics that might explain synchronicities, and much more... • Timestamps00:00 The Meaning of Dreams06:43 Exploring Lucid Dreaming19:00 The Therapeutic Potential of Lucid Dreaming25:09 Understanding the Psyche and Internal Models42:00 The Interplay of Self and Others46:59 Exploring Altered States and Connectivity50:12 The Role of Dissociation in Experience51:01 Parenting and the Impact of Influence53:04 Evolution, Compromise, and Self-Development55:31 Navigating Problems and Intentional Self-Development57:53 The Risks and Rewards of Conscious Intervention58:51 Understanding Dreams and Their Interpretation01:01:15 The Nature of Dreams: Immersion vs. Messages01:03:07 Transjective Symbols in Dream Interpretation01:05:32 Specificity in Dream Symbols01:09:22 The Paradox of Dream Interpretation01:12:01 The Role of Dream Journals01:16:45 Interpreting Personal Dreams01:21:04 Jung's Model of the Self and Anima/Animus Dynamics01:35:57 Mediating the Unconscious: Persona and Anima01:38:02 The Dynamics of Projection in Relationships01:41:10 Understanding the Self: Center and Totality of the Psyche01:51:46 Exploring Synchronicity: Meaningful Coincidence and A-Causality02:10:02 The Role of Magic: Psychotechnologies and Synchronicity •Find Anderson Todd:-His Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/@AndersonTodd-Our previous conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=256d2PZ1huw&t=5447s

Brant Elwood is a Social-Organizational Psychologist and consultant.Aodhán Moran is a psychologist and entrepreneur.Are myths just made-up stories? Or do they tell us something important about our psychology and our world today, and the unconscious dynamics going on every day in groups, families, organizations, and societies?In this podcast, learn how myths describe eternal patterns in human history, the role myths have played in human biological evolution, mythological patterns at play in our political world today, the ontological reality of collective group minds, the unconscious forces that shape our everyday decisions, and more....Timestamps:00:00 Mythology Meets Group Psychology 01:49 Are Mythological Stories Real? 12:53 The Role of Myths in Group Formation23:53 Leadership and Group Dynamics31:12 The Maverick Archetype and Its Implications32:48 Creation as Rebellion: The Role of Disruption34:35 Trust and Group Dynamics35:31 Disruptors: Messiahs or Scapegoats?37:44 Unconscious Group Behavior41:18 Extreme Ownership: Leadership and Accountability51:56 Game Theory and the Unconscious in Group DynamicsFind Brant & Aodhán: X: @aodhanpmoran X: @TheGroupLens Book: Gods, Heroes and Groups - https://www.karnacbooks.com/product/gods-heroes-and-groups-relational-dynamics-through-mythic-archetypes/97812/?MATCH=1 See Brant and Aodhan at a Jungian Psychology event this June: https://heresyprogrammes.podia.com/alchemy25

Damian Kelty-Stephen is a cognitive scientist and psychologist.What if cognition was not limited to neurons and brains, but rather everything from cells to molecules to groups of people could all do cognition?In this podcast, learn about the intelligence capacities of organisms with no neurons, how scientists are re-thinking DNA's role in the body, how even molecules and proteins have a kind of cognition, radical ways to build computers, archetypes and patterns instantiating unconscious influence across individuals, new perspectives on how evolution works, and more...Timestamps:00:00 Intelligence in Single Cell Organisms 00:02:15 Michael Levin & New Perspectives on DNA 05:25 What does DNA Actually Do?07:54 DNA Can't Encode for All Intelligence09:39 Weird Competencies of DNA15:20 Everything has Agency (to a degree)18:08 False Subjective-Objective Dichotomy19:38 The Reality of Myths and Archetypes23:20 Cognition in Groups and Societies26:20 How Cognition Works: Generalizing Cognition from Physics to Brains36:08 Alan Turing's Strange Ideas and Evolution of Computing38:11 The Nature of Symbols and Continuous Flows41:40 Self-Organization and Symbolic Structures43:35 Turing's Mercury Computer50:02 Cognition and Computation: A Dual Perspective56:10 The Interplay of Genes, Cognition, and Evolution01:00:57 Understanding Consciousness and Experience01:12:58 Current Research and Future Directions in NeuroscienceFind Damian: Our previous podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwj9TZDguwc Website: https://sites.google.com/site/foovian/Find me: X: https://x.com/jack_roycroft Substack (where I'll be writing soon): https://substack.com/@jackroycroftsherry

Jean-Philippe Marceau is a writer and Christian symbolic thinker.Ancient thinkers were often wise to non-material higher-level beings like angels. However, modern day materialism has made us myopic to such patterns. How should we understand angels and higher beings in light of modern science?In this podcast, learn how modern science is embracing non-materialist ideas, how ancients thought about angels in terms of higher-level patterns like cities or societies, why physical laws like E=mc2 are angels if such patterns are agentic, why Christ's incarnation helps bridge the material world with higher-level patterns, evolution's compatibility with Christianity, and more...Timestamps:00:00 Modern Science Vs. Christianity02:01 Why Scientists Aren't Always Materialists04:07 Successes and Failures of Materialism05:19 Higher Level Entities07:26 AI, Facebook and other Higher Beings09:30 How We Participate in Higher Beings11:21 What are Angels and Spirits?12:18 The "Angel" of Patterns such as E=mc214:27 We know nothing of the real nature of physical entities15:30 The Angels of Virtues and Other Patterns18:00 Modernity Ignoring Higher Level Patterns20:59 Being Manipulated by Social Media24:30 Modern Meaning Crisis and Higher Level Agencies30:29 Surviving in a world with Higher Patterns33:05 How Higher Patterns Lead To God33:56 Why Can Humans Interact with Mathematical Entities?39:05 The Incarnation is the Best Scientific Theory of Reality41:50 Why Christ's Incarnation Makes Science Possible44:42 Why Miracles Show us the Structure of Reality46:55 The Resurrection and Its Implications for Creation48:20 Resurrection of the whole of creation in Christ51:08 Why did God create the world?54:20 How we bring up animals and lower level patterns56:54 Evolution and Its Compatibility with ChristianityFind JP Marceau: Symbolic World articles: https://www.thesymbolicworld.com/team/jean-philippe-marceau YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@j.p.marceau5146 New book: https://store.thesymbolicworld.com/products/post-reductionist-christianity-a-way-out-of-the-meaning-crisis Our previous Conversation: https://youtu.be/ecIpILEnAyoFind me: Substack: https://substack.com/@jackroycroftsherry (where I'll be writing on topics related to this podcast soon...)

Adam Safron is a researcher focused on consciousness, currently organizing a Royal Society issue on the nature of agents. In this discussion, he tackles the distinction between consciousness and intelligence while pondering the implications of conscious AI. Safron explores the idea of creating artificial species and the moral responsibilities we hold toward them. He provocatively addresses the risks of AI and our duty to consider ethical parameters in both AI and space exploration, asking whether we should even aim to develop conscious AI.

Joshua Pauling is a vicar and co-author of the book "Are We All Cyborgs Now? Reclaiming Our Humanity from the Machine."AI and digital technology are changing our world. What are their true dangers? What does Christianity say about technology? And what might a positive future with technology look like?In this podcast, we explore the new problems technology has created, the dangers of concentrated technological power, why technology is not the same as progress, the nature of humanity from a Christian perspective, the creation of artificial beings through AI, how society could be shaped by AI and digital technology, and more...Timestamps:00:00 Are We All Cyborgs Now?03:03 Technology on Attention and Relationships06:06 The Unintended Consequences of Digital Tools09:05 Smartphones as a "Reality-Mediating Mechanism"12:03 The Trade-offs of Technological Progress15:30 The Complexity of Modern Supply Chains17:52 The Disembodiment of Digital Interactions21:01 The Human Relationship with Technology23:58 The Philosophical Framework for Technology26:59 Technology in the Biblical Narrative29:53 The Role of Technology in Human Flourishing34:43 Exploring Human Identity and Technology39:10 The Role of Technology in Human Experience44:21 The Impact of Digital Technologies on Relationships50:24 Navigating the Challenges of Smartphones55:14 Understanding AI and Its Implications01:01:23 The Quest for Meaningful Connections01:07:02 Intentional Use of Technology in Daily LifeFind Josh--New book: Are We All Cyborgs Now? Reclaiming Our Humanity from the Machine: https://www.amazon.com/Are-All-Cyborgs-Now-Reclaiming/dp/B0DDKYLNP4--Online writing:https://muckrack.com/josh-pauling/portfolio/listhttps://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/author/joshua-pauling/https://www.modernreformation.org/resources/authors/joshua-paulinghttps://www.frontporchrepublic.com/author/jpauling/