Ep 14 | Transcendent Naturalism w/ Gregg Henriques, John Vervaeke, Matthew Segall

I thought my responses to a few questions that were asked on my blog post about this dialogue were worth sharing here. I was asked to unpack the significance of love in a relational ontology; what John meant in his discussion of causality as something we grasp non-propositionally; and what "worship" might look like in relation to the process-relational image of God. Love is a good word for relationality, but it comes in at least the two forms I mentioned in the dialogue: Erotic and Agapic. Putting it rather simply, but not, I think, incorrectly: the former, Eros, relates to possibilities, while the later, Agape, relates actualities. These are the two poles Whitehead distinguishes in the divine (and in every) process. With regard to causation, I think the point is it is not something we understand by way of conceptual reflection, but rather something we directly intuit in our bodily feelings and, I’d add (John didn’t go here), in our willing. I would say we can worship this process God by doing as best we can to attune to what is most beautiful in ourselves, in others, and in the world.

I am very impressed by Matt's ability to make the ideas of Whitehead very accessible for the layman and also to identify convergent thinkers and schools. I also have been chipping away at William James and had never heard anyone else make the connection between himself and Whitehead. What a treat and a boon to this project. Thank you all very much. 🙏

The PERFECT antidote for insomnia. 😉 🥳🎉 Happy New Year! 🎉🥳

Is this the greatest conversation on the internet? John kept pushing and pushing to the point... Thank you.

What we need is a philosophy that takes the human body seriously.

Thank you Matthew, John, and Gregg for your continued dive into this rich subject matter, peace Just wanted to say that Matthew shouldn't be too let down by not getting Bernardo's buy in, he can be a good listener and ask the rich questions but he is also a little fickle about the waters he's ready to jump into, peace

Awesome, thanks the three of you! Regarding interiority, I remember Alan Watts used to say, a bit in his habitual tongue in cheek fashion, that the secret to the deepest metaphysical mysteries is that for every outside, there's an inside, and vice versa, and they go together. Resonating with him, I add: many of the footnotes we have been contributing after Plato, are "variations on the chicken and the egg theme". I like to think of each of such contributions as a koan that has been realized (at least in some aspects). The problem is the lack of Zense of humor among some scholars. The good old Axial fellows should remind us not to be too obsessed with putting rigid tags on the ineffable.

The deepest aspect, upon which everything depends, is no Love perse, but The Acceptance of What Is in the Moment’. This deepest aspect, in past and potential possibilities in the present moment of oneself is self-acceptance, acceptance of others in social interactions, acceptance of metaphysical phenomena that may occur, all in full Acceptance that the 'divine' in its complexity remains a great mystery.

Very enjoyable, thankyou all. I'm reminded of hermit nun Sr Wendy Beckett, no intellectual slouch, when asked a mundane question about an aspect of herself she said; I don't really know what my self is because each time I look into it I just fall into God. So listening today it seems praps the self is just this alive experience in now, attended by the interior past and exterior future but always new, and old, as now......and maybe deeping/steeping into God

Am I reading into this conversation too much? Last few years Whitehead, and Matt's work especially, has been pushing my personal writings greatly. Gregg UTOK is so beautifully binding, seems like he is getting more inspired by Whitehead, while we watch, seems like a surprise. While John gives me a sense that Whitehead is absolutely becoming a Daemon of the religion that is not a religion. Verifying a whole hemisphere of this corner of the internet, its becoming more apparent too me, that Whitehead is like a gospel hummingbird, that once we listen to his work creates a space that holds LeGuin's names as ownership, as Esoteric as my post here is, Im just getting it outside of me sorry. I am really feeling that Whitehead explains more than a god space, but how the individual is a collective need. And only experienced through the eyes of god AND other people. We have more in common with death then we do with living right now.

Beauty is when appearance conforms to reality…brilliant statement.

Yes John….this was long the issue I had with understanding panpsychist argumements….i misunderstood the type of interiority that was truly meant.

Thanks again to all 3 of you. Matt, it seem to me that the Neoplatonic notion of inexhaustible fount of intelligibility has some relationship to god as the ultimate organizer of “ beautiful “ concrescence?

participatory logic: I don't have a soul, I am a soul

When John is asking what is the internality of an individual moved away from essentiality and social funvtion I am screaming out the potentiality of the individual. The infinite moreness that each person has beyond their actuality.

Perhaps a way for this discussion to seek a little more into what is characterised h e re as the ineffable self experience might be to shift gears and simply sit with each other feeling into that ineffable space and share what one feels there, senses there, intuits there, shifting to a more participatory sharing. I've git a feeling more might be found in this way, collective participation.

Got Matt's book on my shelf, planning to read it. Very resonant with what I encounter in nature, but have no idea what it is. 01:04:00 Reference to Markov Blanket (a set of variables defining a channel governing the dialectic between the inside and the outside - thus effectively making up "the thing", or particle in Friston's language).

wow!

And I wonder how M Segall would characterise the relation b/w the 'self' as described at the end of this vid, and Whitehead,s God...does the self maybe wind up being, amongst other things, an experience of the two poles of God dynamically meeting?

Hey guys. Thank you for another great conversation and wonderful reflections. I discovered the YouTube channel about a month ago and I'm still in the process of understanding exactly each participant's worldview. Not that this is a problem, but in this conversation one thing was not clear to me: what is being defined as supernatural? I saw that John mentioned telepathy, although there is evidence that points to the veracity of this phenomenon. Is reincarnation and karma also being understood as supernatural? Or just the self-awareness of it? Are people who report near-death experiences just hallucinating? Is Rudolf Steiner's clairvoyance supernatural? Is the Higher Self a mere tool for expressing language? Are the sacred experiences of indigenous populations involving herbs of power and alterations of consciousness illusions? If there are videos discussing this, I accept recommendations.