This was a tremendous, fascinating conversation. I've always felt a deep affinity for Christianity without ever being able to call myself a Christian - which is why (a while ago) I then went & practised Buddhism for many years. Listening to the interplay between the ideas of Peterson and David is like having these two seemingly irreconcilable aspects of me brought together in some way - and with far more intelligence & insight than I'm capable of. Fantastic stuff. Thanks very much. Please do more!
The topic of this conversation has been one I’ve hoped to hear for years. It’s a dream come true and a real joy to listen to! Thank you both, and please do more in the future!
The intersections between your work and Jordan Peterson’s! I was really lit up by his maps of meaning lectures years ago, right before finding your work. Afterwards, I had this fantasy of hearing the two of you in conversation. This is not that, but satisfies greatly.
Fascinating conversation. David, I'm interested in your work and you're clearly a deep thinker, but I'm a little frustrated by how quickly you seem to wave away the entirety of the western philosophical tradition.
I don't remember if it's here or in another podcast, but I've heard you even characterize the entire Western metaphysical tradition as a mistake. Do you have any writings where you explicitly lay out the case for this claim?
Well, in a sense that's the theme of most of what I write!
Tomorrow morning's post is "Sacredness without metaphysics" for example.
_Meaningness_ (the book) explains why some central metaphysical claims cause unnecessary misery. Part One of _Metarationality_ explains why rationalism doesn't and can't work. And so on.
I dropped that because everyone hated it and yelled at me to stop. I thought this was quite funny—why are people so attached to philosophy as their de facto religion?
(Tomorrow's post may have a partial answer to that.)
I did eventually stop, before getting to the heart of the matter, because apparently the way I was communicating didn't reach many people. So maybe it has to be less direct, to avoid people getting upset by the possibility that their precious values are called into question. (Or whatever it is that gets them so angry!)
In short, though:
* Philosophy is all contaminated with metaphysics.
* Metaphysics consists of making up stories about imaginary entities that live in an imaginary place, and trying to make sense of the actual world that way.
* Obviously, that yields nonsense.
* If it was just random nonsense, everyone could ignore it, and that would be only mildly wasteful.
* Unfortunately, much of the nonsense is catastrophically harmful.
* And regular people, who know nothing about philosophy, are downstream from it, and their lives are messed up because they make decisions based on nonsense stories about imaginary entities in a fantasy world.
Wow, thank you for explaining your reasoning here! I have to admit I am also one of those people that gets really mad about your approach, for what it's worth, hah.
I'm pretty sure I (and many much more intelligent thinkers) would disagree with your conception of metaphysics, but I don't have enough of a handle on your arguments to litigate it here. Thanks again for responding and I may write up my own thoughts on your approach here at some point. If I do, I'll let you know.
> perhaps what amateur enthusiasts hold as sacred is not philosophy, but open-ended curiosity. It is the domain of personal inquiry, liberated from fixed institutional narratives, into the realm of meaning, and the wonder of existence.
"Open-ended curiosity" is great! But that's not what philosophy is. But perhaps many people who haven't read much philosophy somehow think it is, because that's what they want it to be.
I suppose I admit I identify with metaphysical constructs, from a Buddhist lens. I consider myself a westerner, and they are a part of my history and heritage. Even if they *were* completely false and a waste of time, which I don't concede, I would still have some sort of affection for them. They are, in a way, part of my identity and the chain of identity linking me back with my ancestors.
In addition, philosophy has directly improved my life in many ways! I've gotten into beautiful mystical states by meditating on the classical theistic theology, as outlined by David Bentley Hard in The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss.
Another initial argument that comes to mind is that metaphysics allow for us to 'map' the space of possible thought, so to speak. You'd probably argue that instead we get stuck in a sort of local minima based on Plato or whoever, but I disagree. I don't think it's obvious that if we lost a major tradition we would get a lot better thinking or better societies. The Dark Ages in Europe are potentially one example here, and I'm sure society has regressed many other times throughout history.
I'm also skeptical that it's possible to truly jettison these big ideas. I'd say for instance in your own work, you have plenty of what you would call metaphysical constructs! At least, from my perspective. I'll own that perhaps I don't understand your position well enough.
At this point, and I don't mean this with particular animus, but after skimming some of the links and the comments to it, I am not very interested in doing a deep dive to understand where you're coming from. Your claim as I understand it is simply too radical for me to take seriously, and while I respect your intellect, I think you're mistaken. If it continues to bother me I may return to it down the road.
Thank you, that was very interesting! I agree there's no reason to read stuff that doesn't seem likely to be true or useful. People often encourage me to read all sorts of things, and I usually do take a look, but how much time to spend on something is always dependent on how plausible it is that it will turn out to be rewarding.
I don't see David's Vividness article on Kegan and developmental stages in the "Further Reading" section here interestingly. Might help in building more context and definitely worth a read and/or review...
Thanks for this wonderful conversation and all the work that went into it, my wife and I greatly enjoyed listening. Despite having no money and more children than is generally advisable we've just subscribed here in the hope that in a small way it encourages you to keep releasing more in the future.
Halfway plus through. And really great. Awesome. I'm generally unfamiliar with Peterson (as much as a somewhat living person immersed in a RW community can be).
At least so far, what I'd like to hear is something about how different starting points really require different responses (for what is common to the Peterson/Chapman path).
Being someone in a church going community (or a synagogue/mosque/newagetemple/wtvr) needs to learn how to deal with rationality and this is often a personal moment of crisis, and whether that moment can be infused with 'mythic' ways of being. (I guess your soul can wear Socrates or Hume or smth? But then I wonder if you are really able to absorb and take on rationality.)
And I think this leads me to wonder about how there are parallels between individuals and groups wrt developmental stages. Maybe a big problem is that we don't know how to scale society and create reliable learning trajectories and institutions. I'm thinking about how Uni is way to early for most people to be exposed to {Post-Modern/4.5/chaos/emptiness-against-form} thought- they don't have a real structure and way of looking at things, and you've inoculated them against any serious attempt at it.
This was great! I’m glad you talked about nuclear war concerns - I’ve been baffled by the world’s continuing despite nuclear weapons much like Peterson, but wasn’t aware of him having thoughts about that.
I just wanted to say, I actually think the eyes look decent and non-demonic and actually make you look a bit more charismatic/neurotypical than usual. You can sort of tell it glitches out for a few frames every once in a while, but the vibe improvement from the confident eye contact is constant.
Hard disagree! This is an interesting glimpse into the differences in how people perceive eye contact. I suspect my response to David and Jake’s eyes (“demonic” was the term that came to mind even before I read the show notes) has something to do with the amounts of eye-whites that are visible in the AI reconstructed image.
Yes, if you go to the desktop web version, there’s a spotify link shown in the righthand sidebar. (I vaguely remember this isn’t shown elsewhere, but I might be mistaken or they’ve fixed it!)
This was a tremendous, fascinating conversation. I've always felt a deep affinity for Christianity without ever being able to call myself a Christian - which is why (a while ago) I then went & practised Buddhism for many years. Listening to the interplay between the ideas of Peterson and David is like having these two seemingly irreconcilable aspects of me brought together in some way - and with far more intelligence & insight than I'm capable of. Fantastic stuff. Thanks very much. Please do more!
The topic of this conversation has been one I’ve hoped to hear for years. It’s a dream come true and a real joy to listen to! Thank you both, and please do more in the future!
Thank you for the encouragement!
Which topic was it that you were hoping to hear? (We seemed to cover many...)
The intersections between your work and Jordan Peterson’s! I was really lit up by his maps of meaning lectures years ago, right before finding your work. Afterwards, I had this fantasy of hearing the two of you in conversation. This is not that, but satisfies greatly.
Oh, I see, thank you!
Fascinating conversation. David, I'm interested in your work and you're clearly a deep thinker, but I'm a little frustrated by how quickly you seem to wave away the entirety of the western philosophical tradition.
I don't remember if it's here or in another podcast, but I've heard you even characterize the entire Western metaphysical tradition as a mistake. Do you have any writings where you explicitly lay out the case for this claim?
Well, in a sense that's the theme of most of what I write!
Tomorrow morning's post is "Sacredness without metaphysics" for example.
_Meaningness_ (the book) explains why some central metaphysical claims cause unnecessary misery. Part One of _Metarationality_ explains why rationalism doesn't and can't work. And so on.
I started to do a more explicit and systematic and direct explanation here: https://meaningness.substack.com/p/undoing-philosophy
There's several follow-on posts.
I dropped that because everyone hated it and yelled at me to stop. I thought this was quite funny—why are people so attached to philosophy as their de facto religion?
(Tomorrow's post may have a partial answer to that.)
I did eventually stop, before getting to the heart of the matter, because apparently the way I was communicating didn't reach many people. So maybe it has to be less direct, to avoid people getting upset by the possibility that their precious values are called into question. (Or whatever it is that gets them so angry!)
In short, though:
* Philosophy is all contaminated with metaphysics.
* Metaphysics consists of making up stories about imaginary entities that live in an imaginary place, and trying to make sense of the actual world that way.
* Obviously, that yields nonsense.
* If it was just random nonsense, everyone could ignore it, and that would be only mildly wasteful.
* Unfortunately, much of the nonsense is catastrophically harmful.
* And regular people, who know nothing about philosophy, are downstream from it, and their lives are messed up because they make decisions based on nonsense stories about imaginary entities in a fantasy world.
Wow, thank you for explaining your reasoning here! I have to admit I am also one of those people that gets really mad about your approach, for what it's worth, hah.
I'm pretty sure I (and many much more intelligent thinkers) would disagree with your conception of metaphysics, but I don't have enough of a handle on your arguments to litigate it here. Thanks again for responding and I may write up my own thoughts on your approach here at some point. If I do, I'll let you know.
Thanks! I'm baffled about why anyone thinks metaphysics is a good thing. If you can explain why you do, that would be great!
The best answer I've been able to find is in https://meaningness.substack.com/p/does-this-chapter-explain-even-itself at the end:
> perhaps what amateur enthusiasts hold as sacred is not philosophy, but open-ended curiosity. It is the domain of personal inquiry, liberated from fixed institutional narratives, into the realm of meaning, and the wonder of existence.
"Open-ended curiosity" is great! But that's not what philosophy is. But perhaps many people who haven't read much philosophy somehow think it is, because that's what they want it to be.
I suppose I admit I identify with metaphysical constructs, from a Buddhist lens. I consider myself a westerner, and they are a part of my history and heritage. Even if they *were* completely false and a waste of time, which I don't concede, I would still have some sort of affection for them. They are, in a way, part of my identity and the chain of identity linking me back with my ancestors.
In addition, philosophy has directly improved my life in many ways! I've gotten into beautiful mystical states by meditating on the classical theistic theology, as outlined by David Bentley Hard in The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss.
Another initial argument that comes to mind is that metaphysics allow for us to 'map' the space of possible thought, so to speak. You'd probably argue that instead we get stuck in a sort of local minima based on Plato or whoever, but I disagree. I don't think it's obvious that if we lost a major tradition we would get a lot better thinking or better societies. The Dark Ages in Europe are potentially one example here, and I'm sure society has regressed many other times throughout history.
I'm also skeptical that it's possible to truly jettison these big ideas. I'd say for instance in your own work, you have plenty of what you would call metaphysical constructs! At least, from my perspective. I'll own that perhaps I don't understand your position well enough.
At this point, and I don't mean this with particular animus, but after skimming some of the links and the comments to it, I am not very interested in doing a deep dive to understand where you're coming from. Your claim as I understand it is simply too radical for me to take seriously, and while I respect your intellect, I think you're mistaken. If it continues to bother me I may return to it down the road.
Thanks again for engaging here though!
Thank you, that was very interesting! I agree there's no reason to read stuff that doesn't seem likely to be true or useful. People often encourage me to read all sorts of things, and I usually do take a look, but how much time to spend on something is always dependent on how plausible it is that it will turn out to be rewarding.
Lol, this is where I encourage you to read my blog. ;P
/s
Amazing. Thank you.
I don't see David's Vividness article on Kegan and developmental stages in the "Further Reading" section here interestingly. Might help in building more context and definitely worth a read and/or review...
https://vividness.live/developing-ethical-social-and-cognitive-competence
Thanks for this wonderful conversation and all the work that went into it, my wife and I greatly enjoyed listening. Despite having no money and more children than is generally advisable we've just subscribed here in the hope that in a small way it encourages you to keep releasing more in the future.
Wow, thank you! This is indeed encouraging! And congratulations on your abundant progeny!
Halfway plus through. And really great. Awesome. I'm generally unfamiliar with Peterson (as much as a somewhat living person immersed in a RW community can be).
At least so far, what I'd like to hear is something about how different starting points really require different responses (for what is common to the Peterson/Chapman path).
Being someone in a church going community (or a synagogue/mosque/newagetemple/wtvr) needs to learn how to deal with rationality and this is often a personal moment of crisis, and whether that moment can be infused with 'mythic' ways of being. (I guess your soul can wear Socrates or Hume or smth? But then I wonder if you are really able to absorb and take on rationality.)
And I think this leads me to wonder about how there are parallels between individuals and groups wrt developmental stages. Maybe a big problem is that we don't know how to scale society and create reliable learning trajectories and institutions. I'm thinking about how Uni is way to early for most people to be exposed to {Post-Modern/4.5/chaos/emptiness-against-form} thought- they don't have a real structure and way of looking at things, and you've inoculated them against any serious attempt at it.
Yeah I know he explicitly warns against undergrads learning about post modernism in this article. https://metarationality.com/stem-fluidity-bridge
Is there a copy of this video on YouTube? I can't seem to cast the substack video onto my TV :(
Yes there is! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOmVdMqZcJY
All my other videos are also on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@meaningness
Woo thanks!!
This was great! I’m glad you talked about nuclear war concerns - I’ve been baffled by the world’s continuing despite nuclear weapons much like Peterson, but wasn’t aware of him having thoughts about that.
I just wanted to say, I actually think the eyes look decent and non-demonic and actually make you look a bit more charismatic/neurotypical than usual. You can sort of tell it glitches out for a few frames every once in a while, but the vibe improvement from the confident eye contact is constant.
Hard disagree! This is an interesting glimpse into the differences in how people perceive eye contact. I suspect my response to David and Jake’s eyes (“demonic” was the term that came to mind even before I read the show notes) has something to do with the amounts of eye-whites that are visible in the AI reconstructed image.
Finally watched the whole thing. Awesome stuff!
I most enjoyed the Prajnaparamita/Tiamat comparison.
Is this on spotify by any chance?
Yes, if you go to the desktop web version, there’s a spotify link shown in the righthand sidebar. (I vaguely remember this isn’t shown elsewhere, but I might be mistaken or they’ve fixed it!)
Missed that. Thanks!
You can play this on any podcast player that lets you add a URL: https://meaningness.substack.com/feed