So I had this love for still the physical, especially physical science that I
was trying to use in my studies. I was talking with you to try
to get more into the symbolic prology. I was also talking with John Riricki
about the cognitive science side, and also in general. It was great on
the physics side, and I was always trying to bridge, mainly between you
and John. I would say, yeah, it took several years. I
would often like run arguments by you and by him, and like try to
see if I can make something through this. I developed, I think pretty
carefully a path from materialism all the way to the symbolic world and even up
to the more let's say, esoteric debates in symbolism, like how is it
exactly that the world exists in Christ? And how is it that the world
exists through human consciousness? And like all of these more esoteric kind of questions.
This is Jonathan Pshell come to the Symbolic World. So hello everyone,
I am very happy to be here with JP Marso JP. For those who
have followed the Channel for a very long time, you see him on the
channel for years. He was the editor of the Symbolic World blog. He's
really been a partner in kind of developing a lot of the symbolic world ideas.
And we're going to launch a course where he's going to be giving a
class called the Metaphysics of Symbolism, where we're going to look at the relationship
between metaphysical ideas and the symbolic world as we kind of present it, and
also his take on it. I'll be part of it to some extent,
He'll be doing part of it alone. And we're also announcing that we are
going to publish a book on the same subject by JP and so I'm really
happy to see all this coming together. He's just been such a great help
all this time to help me think through because he has such clear thinking.
More than I do. I get kind of he has a very kind of
clear thinking. We've been doing a French podcast for years now that you can
also find on YouTube. If you just write Jonathan Pegel French you can find
that you can find the podcast. We'll put a link in the description.
So GP, it's good to see you, and I thought maybe we could
start with you telling people a little bit how you came to this. You
know, what what your what your story is, because it's pretty interesting.
Yeah, for sure, thanks. I never told it on your channel.
Basic background was really into science during my teenage years. I had been raised
Catholic in in Quebec, classic practicing family, but when I was a teenager
drifted away from the faith mentioned science as one of the excuses that say,
to make my parents stop bringing me to church. But I was still interested
by questions of meaning. I think these questions pop up naturally if you push
let's say the scientifical view far enough. I was just not very impressed by
the philosophy that I had seen when I was younger, let's say, in
high school or say jep that we have here in Quebec. So I decided
to study math in computer science in university because I was mainly interested in mathematical
logic and theoretical computer science. There's all kinds of cool theorems you can prove
about certain formal systems, what they can and cannot prove. It gives you
sort of an idea of how far you can push knowledge in some areas.
So anyway, I was really interested by that. But I think, like
many people with this basic scientific education, what I ended up sort of inheriting
at the side effect was a material stick traditionalistic worldview where I guess you spend
so many hours like trying to do problems where you reduce things to their constituent
bits that at some point it sort of became normal for me to just see
the world as particles moving about and even people, Like it was harn't for
me to see people as something else then, just complex sets of particles that
evolved randomly through natural selection to like have complex behaviors. But family, it's
just reducible two particles. And yeah, I just ad this basic kind of
worldview where it was hard to find meaning, like in my ontology and also
epistemologically in terms of what we can know. I was really drawn to mathematics
because it seemed like you can have like sure knowledge of things in mathematics.
That wasn't the case where that wasn't the case for the philosophy courses I add
before, Like mostly people were just doubting everything in philosphy, That's what I
saw it back then. But at least in math I could prove stuff,
So like, maybe it's not obvious how I can talk about meaningful topics in
mathematics, but at least we seem to be going somewhere because we seem certain
of what we're doing. But even then, in mathematical logic, I like
tried to take as many courses as I could early on to see the proof
of Girdles incompleteness theorems. And now when I saw the proof, I saw
that, well, I guess even in math you can be that short of
what you're doing. I had heard about Girdle's famous theorem that no formal system
that is coherent will be complete, and I had heard about it. But
typically when you have these really cool sounding theorems in math or physics, like
when you actually get to them and you see all the postulids that are required
for them, they're actually not that cool. But in that case, that
was truth, Like it was really as devastating as it sounds. So what
ended up happening is like, okay, like I had this world where I
saw everyone as just bits of matter, where it was hard to find meaning
in that, and my knowledge, like my access to knowledge in the world
that used to be mediated by mathematics, even that was destroyed by good Old's
theorem. So I was a bit a bit at rift, like like is
anything worth doing? Really? I wasn't doing that bad, Like it sounds
more depressing than it was. It just it just was great. But I
thought, like, if everything is meaningless anyway, I might as well think
about it to make sure that, like, I'm not screwing this up somehow.
So I decided to do a master's in the philosophy, especially about reductionism,
to try to see if, like something was wrong with my worldview.
Is reductionism wrong and can we talk about meaning and good and evil somehow can
we recover that. I had no expectation at all that it would work,
but I thought, well, if everything is meaningless anyway, as might as
well try. You know, well, there's literally nothing to lose. So
during the course of my master's Joan Peterson popped up onto this scene, and
as soon as I hear did him talk about the meaning and good and evil
in terms that I hadn't heard before, I just tried to look into it,
and through that I also stumbled upon you. I think I started.
I think I started contributing to your Patreon as soon as right away. You
were one of the first people that supported me. Yeah, that was crazy,
because I knew you were doing something interesting and I wanted to talk to
you because I didn't really understand what you and Jordan were doing, to be
honest, but I wanted, like I wanted some kind of access to to
try to dive into it. And I had lots of time because I was
with my masters in something related and one of the first things we talked about
was zombies because you were having you it was the existential question for you.
It wasn't just a theoretical question. Yeah, exactly. I think I wonder
how comment of a thing that is, Like, obviously it's present in the
common imagination because there's lots of zombie movies and books and so on. But
basically, if I think back about this period of my life, while I
was studying abstractly nihilism and materialism during the day in my studies, I would
spend like all night long exploring the same topics symbolically having zombie nightmares. So
like, for literally like all night every night for about a year, I
had like zombie nightmares. It again sounds worse than it is, Like,
Actually, what ended up happening after a while is I sort of figured out
what was like going on, Like because initially, if you just wake up
every time you have such a nightmare, like you'll never sleep. So at
some point I sort of understood that it was just like just yet another zombie
nightmare. So like even if I would get eaten or someone, I wouldn't
actually wake up. I would just like I knew that I would just start
another dream, but it never stopped, so like just this end the cycle
of zombie nightmares. But I ended up getting rid of my zombie problem in
part thanks to you and John ERVEACKI. It was really a series of steps.
First, in my studies, I was looking at, specifically arguments against
materialism and trying to find alternative ways of framing the world. At that stage,
specifically, I had seen enough arguments against materialism in flaws Feet that I
could drop materialism and adopt petsnychism. At the time, I felt that was
a nice easy bridge to make, and then from there started to dive into
some and yeah, what I should say is as soon as I did that,
there n be night mare started to go away, like they were cut
down I don't know, fifteen ninety percent, and like to a good extent,
like they started to go away. I still ad them, but it
was less frequent and then next step was diving into a little bit of classical
metaphysics, especially with regards to virtue ethics. Okay, if there isn't just
a matter in the world, if people aren't just particles following blind laws,
is there like also some kind of good and evil that we can talk about.
It's not immediate, like, because you're not a materialist doesn't mean that
you don't necessarily have antology that allows you to speak about good and evil.
But through classical philosophy I was able to find good arguments for that, things
we can find in Plato and Aristotle, but also new arguments coming from cognitive
science, some of the things that John Ervicki and Jordan and you talk about.
So like a big thing for me was realizing that in general, perception
is something that we practice, and it's not just our moral perceptions that we
need to practice and improve, it's just our perception of everything. It's something
that we know from developing infants, Like initially infants can't really see like it's
something they really have to practice, And when you sort of know that this
happens in infants, you can start to pick that up also in yourself.
An example, I always come back to is Brazilian jujitsu or like any complex
sport really like, if you look at it initially, you won't see anything
like You'll just see chaos basically, like you know, okay, at the
beginning of the fight, two people like are setting up and at the end
there's one person that's obviously losing and is tapping out. But you don't see
really what happened in between. You don't have the perception to make out the
pattern from the multiplicity of moves going on. So I just literally have that
experience that we talked about it where I'm watching a match and then all of
a sudden, the people that are there cheering and I'm like, what am
I There's nothing happening. I can't see what's happening, Like they know that
now the person is in the right position to do this or that, but
I have no idea. I'm just looking. And then, like you said,
at some point, one guy loses, and I'm like, what the
hell just happened? I don't know what I would just watch. But if
you practice the sport and you discuss it with others and you also like have
a habit of watching it, eventually you start to pick up the patterns like
a child who is learning to see objects, you learn to see moves in
jiu jitsu, And the same thing happens with more abstract truths as well.
That's basically what happens with I think moral truths. There's even this good theory
I Think by Jonathan It and a few of his colleagues about moral foundations theory.
It says that we it's kind of like with with visual perception. Let's
say there's all kinds of photons in our eyes. There's like all this multiplicity,
but it takes time for us to turn that multiplicity into coherent patterns to
make out the world. In the same way, we seem to have basic
moral intuitions that we used to make up more complex moral judgments. Like we
have discussed that like is a very basic emotion that protects us from pathogens and
dangerous substances in general, but it's also a moral emotion that we end up
exacting to reject certain injustices or let's say, ideas that are also pathogens for
our tribe and this kind of stuff. So like he has I Think this
good theory where you can see how there's like these basic senses that we have
to perceive initially just chaotic multiplicity in the moral realm, but as we grow
up and we try to practice our moral perceptions, we end up being able
to perceive more and more complex patterns. Yeah, but it's important to say
just just as you as you go through this, that understand that what's important
to understand in what you said is that it makes the analogies real that when
we use the analogy, for example, if we say you know that that
this person is a parasite on the system that the analogy between and even the
mechanism by which we recognize a parasite, let's say, coming towards something dirty,
something that that is that is dangerous physically, is the same mechanism that
we use to then see the moral or societal parasite. Yeah, and also
like it, like I think this continuum of like when you understand that perception
is something you need to practice not just in morality, but also even just
to perceive very basic objects, it makes it really hard to reject moral realism
on the basis of varieties between different nations or groups or tribes, for instance,
because if you were to look also at developing infants, like they also
can't really see the world, like they're very confused, that it takes long
time for them to be able to perceive like faces and objects and pick things
up, and like it's something we need to practice. The same way that
if like you're just starting to do jiu jitsu, you won't perceive what's happening.
You'll be confused, and it's going to take longer for you to perceive
jiu jitsu moves then to perceive like basic objects when you're an infant. Like
in the same way, it's going to take like all of your life to
improve your moral perception and still then like you probably won't be able to see
everything perfectly unless you become a saint. So it's not surprising that different cultures
disagree about like how they perceive morality. It's just like, so these kinds
of ideas were able to destroy my moral relativism, and in like immediately when
that happened, my zampin i mayors were again cut down by like fifty or
sixty or ninety percent. So at that point I were starting to have like
way less zombie nightmares. I still add some, but like it was very
manedgeible. I honestly thought it would just stay like this forever. But because
I was supporting you on Patreon, we had like these regular chats and we
became friends, and at some point I asked you, like, what would
you do, like if if you were in my position, where like,
okay, you were having a zombie nightmare right now, like you're you're the
main character in a zombie story. Let's see what do you do? Like,
what's the what's the solution? How can I get out of this?
And we ended up working through it together. Do you remember what the solution
was? You don't you remember? Yeah, I remember what it was.
Actually we also like further improved it, I think two three years ago on
the French podcast. But the initial solution was like it took us a few
iterations to figure something out, but the basic idea we came up with was
to do what Jesus would do, because like zombies are You've talked about this
on your channel before, zombies are a parody of the Christian resurrection. They're
really a parody of the Christian world view, is specifically the Christian apocalypse,
because zombies come back to life, but they don't have this glorious body they
just have this decaying body. They are all together, but rather than being
in communion, they just like follow their impulses in the same direction. They
look let's say unique and special, but it's only superficial. Really. The
only like all want to eat it is the same thing they like they eat
brains because it's the least remnant of meaning in the materialistic universe, Like they're
trying to destroy, like the only thing that doesn't fit quite right in the
materialistic worldview, like even if they try to to deny. So anyways,
there's all these parallels between zombies and Christianity, where zombies are trying to basically
destroy the ancient meaning systems. And there's also the key I think in Jesus's
story against this again to trample down death by death. So Jesus even today,
like in the Eucharist, he lets us eat him, but doing that,
he actually eats us the same way that he let us kill him two
thousand years ago, in a way that would bring us into his story to
make us saints. So like there's this key inside of christ story and we
could go deeper into many details like what we do, especially during the Eucharistic
lateurgy is the exact antidote to the meaning crisis and the zombie crisis, because
zombies, like they just grown, they can't make sounds. But we saying
when we're in the church, zombies just like jumble up to eat stuff and
destroy stuff, thinking only about themselves. But we're in church, we're praying
for one another, being thankful towards the same thing, rather than just consuming
everything for ourselves. So there's all these parallels you can make to see how
Christianity is the specifically per spitting and returgies in llurgy is the solution to the
zombie problem. And what we came up with was, okay, then what
you would need to do is like somehow let yourself be eaten by zombies,
Like you would have to do something like spiritual like like pray or like find
some way in your zombie universe to become a saint, and then you let
yourself be eaten by zombies to save even the zombies. And when we worked
through that, then my nightmares disappeared. I never add one since then.
The only times I add some after where when I would explicitly be trying to
write about my experiences for others but I never add this again for myself.
The dreams just run away. Yeah, And what's crazy about that is that
we kind of we did came up with this like a story. It was
like a narrative about the idea of a saint like like that get that roommate
that lets himself be eaten and then wakes up truly let's say, resurrects truly
doesn't come back as a zombie, but comes back as a as a kind
of glorious being in the zombie story. Uh. And it's weird because it
seems like that's a story that should exist, like somebody should write it,
you know that the idea, because I don't think that exists, the idea
of a zombie that wakes up from his state and retrieves, you know,
a kind of even a better level of consciousness that they had before. So
you know that's out there, folks. Whoever does it? You know,
if you don't do it, at some point, I'll write it myself,
just because that story has to exist. Yeah. I think the closest I've
seen is Warm Bodies. It was meant into a movie, but there was
also a book from futures ago, but the zombie doesn't come back to a
glorious body. Let's say it comes back to the same kind of existence.
And there's like interesting I think, let's say facets of the Christian story you
can see in that movie and especially in the book. Like in the book,
there's almost a baptism scene. At some point, the zombie like he's
starting to wake up basically out of love for one girl because he ate the
brains of his boyfriend. But like he ends up like slowly like developing feelings
towards that girl, and he saves her, spends time with her, and
like through this attraction he becomes more and more human. But at some point
he has to make like a kind of confession, and there's a kind of
baptism scene, like in front of her church when it's raining and he's washing
his mouth from blood because he just ate someone but he didn't want to anyway,
Like there's this progression and the zombie ultimately smoiler alert shut this down if
you don't want to read the book or watch the film. But at the
end, the zombie comes back to normal human life by sacrificing himself for that
girl, so like he has to basically like wrap himself around her as they're
getting shot, and yes to like drop in like a building, I think,
and like he's thinking he's gonna die during that, but he eventually like
drops in a pool, so again there's this water baptism thing. And then
when he comes back, like he sees that he's bleeding, so he's become
human again. So like you can see glimmers I think in popular culture of
this this solution, but as you said, I don't think anyone has come
up with the full narrative arc so far. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
well that's part of the that that part of what's coming over the hill,
let's say, on storytelling. You know, it seems like it's a perfect
story to tell. So so basically that was the that is kind of what
healed you. But that also kind of that involved going back to church and
involved getting married, like your whole life changed, really yeah yeah, yeah
yeah. I think as soon as soon as it worked out the let's see
moral layer, as soon as I could see that, okay, I have
a metaphysics where it's starting to be possible to talk about good and evil,
then I started going back to church. I was brought up Catholic. I've
done my sacraments when I was a child. So I just came back and
eventually like found a really good parish here. There's sort of this blessing in
disguise that we have here, Like in Quebec, the church collapse so much
that the people who are left are actually like really trying to do it for
the right reasons, and like it becomes really clear examples of what to follow.
So found a really great parish here pretty quickly, got involved with different
groups that really helped me. Found the woman that I married and now that
I have a son with, and yeah, like the like as you said,
this intellectual path really followed also a concrete, like embodied path in a
community that I was lucky to find. So yeah, this big path of
transformation and no more Zmi nightmares, no more nihilism. And so that has
helped you in some ways, because one of the things that I've been impressed
by you is that the fact that you really have studied philosophy quite a bit,
and you know, you've talked a lot with John Raveki, with several
people that are in this sphere, and so you've been able to talk about
symbolism in a more technical way using more philosophical language, and that is what
the book is going to be, and that, in some ways is what
the class is going to be, to help people have more precise language,
even a language that is closer to the ones that you will hear in university
and stuff, because both Mattyr and I. Mattsyr developed really his own language
which is very powerful and beautiful. But I also recognize that some people they
when they try to explain it to their friends in school, they struggle to
find the way to link it to the to the And I have the same
problem. People accuse me of being imprecise, of not using the right words
and not knowing the right words, and so I'm really happy to see this
this as a possibility to help kind of bolster the case. So maybe you
can tell us a bit about what the thesis is and what it is you're
hoping to accomplish with it. Yeah, So I'm trying to aid the book
specifically for people who were sort of in the position where I was ten years
ago, where you're in the course of an education focused on science and you're
developing this sort of materialism as a result, and you're wondering if there's another
solution and for I think people of this kind of character, the arguments as
they're sometimes presented will be a bit too fast, Like phenomology didn't work for
me, like it like either it wouldn't click or I would sort of understand
what you were saying, but I think it was going too fast, and
it was gonna make me drop some of the value that I saw in physics
and math. Like there's stuff that I just, let's say, loved too
much still in that scientific world view to be able to drop it too quickly
with phenomenology. I know that ultimately, like you can recover physics from phenomenology,
but at first it does feel like you're abandoning something that you really love.
So, as you said, glad you're doing that because I don't have
I don't have like a specific love for physics myself, so it's good that
you that you're doing. And as you said, what ended up happening is
like, okay, So I had this love for for still the physical especially
physical science that I was trying to like still use in my studies. I
was talking with you to try to get more into the symbolic epology. I
was also talking with John RIVICKI about the cognitive science side, and also in
general. It was great on the physics side, and I was always trying
to bridge, mainly between you and John. I would say, yeah,
and it took, it took several years. I would often like run arguments
by you and by him, and like try to see if I can make
something. Most of our conversations you and I Jonathan were in private on like
for Patreon chats with John. All of my discussions are public on my channel
or on its channel. But basically, as you said, like through this
I developed I think, pretty carefully a path from materialism all the way to
the symbolic world and even up to the more let's say, esoteric debates in
similism, like how is it exactly that the world exists in Christ? And
how is it that the world exists through human consciousness? And like all of
these more esoteric kind of questions. You can get there pretty quickly with phenomenology.
But as I said, this was too much for me, so I
go I went at it very slowly, and I tried to document it in
the book. So the main thesis is that we're in a meaning crisis because
of materialistic reductionism. I use the zombie myth to talk about it, and
then I try to the way that I try to do it to go slowly.
As I said, is I tried to show like within science itself,
there's no good way anymore to be a reductionist. This is like in nineteenth
century you of science, it doesn't work. Not only can you still have
your science, including your physics today by going towards non reductive materialism, non
reductive naturalism, sorry, you'll even have like a better science and better physics
to love. So I'm trying to give something to materialists so they don't have
to drop anything, they actually just add something better. So that's the first
part of the book where I try to take people from materialism to non reductive
naturalism, which is really just classical metaphysics. Like if you read let's say,
like what classical metaphysicians wrote using Aristotle or Plato like in the last two
centuries, like you'll see something that Olmos really well modern non reductionist naturalism.
And in the book I go through it carefully, but there's arguments really coming
from both like the top and the bottom, Like there's all kinds of arguments
that popped up in philosophy and cognitive science about the impossibility of reducing the mind
to matter, and even like in general the idea that there are those emergent
properties that you can't reduce to lower entities. So it shows up in chemistry,
in biology, and the most obvious case is with consciousness. Like you
won't find many people now in philosophy of mind or kind oftive science who think
that the mind is just a matter of particles or neurons. Let's say,
So there's this like problem coming from the top, but there are also problems
coming from the bottom in physics, where like things always get if when you
talk about quantum stuff because people like can defend easily New Age ideas about this.
So I never talk about that stuff just because I know the problem that
it brings. Yeah, but there's a real problem for people who want to
be materialist there, because like if you're a materialist and you want to reduce
things down to particles, like you have to be able to talk about those
particles. But like you're gonna enter into like New Age territory pretty fast because
it doesn't look like what you see down there is stable particles. Like you
can see like fields and you can mathematize them, and there's interesting stuff to
say, but it's definitely not stable particles, Like at best, it's probability
fields that you can quantify. But as you do that, you're starting to
like go towards stuff that is closer and closer to the prime matter that the
classical metaphysicians talked about. And another problem coming from physics is that, and
that's something coming from physicalists themselves, is like there's no we don't know what
physical entities are. Like even by nature, physics doesn't tell you what its
entities are. It tells you how they behave like it only gives you equations.
And even if physicians tell you like the mass and charge of the electronicists
this or that, all that means is that if you put such and such
values in an equation, you'll get this in this behavior. But you actually
never know what physical entities are in physics. So like if you try to
reduce things down to particles that say, and you're a materialist, like you're
in big trouble because it doesn't look like what you have at the bottom or
stable particles, and you don't even know like what is their nature? You
know how the waves behave, let's say, but you don't know why or
what they are fundamentally, So there's like these big problems if you want to
be a modern naturalist of like there seems to be irreducible stuff at the top,
and there also seem to be something like prime matter at the bottom.
But like that's perfect if you just consider Aristotle and Plato and like the whole
classical metaphysical tradition, because in that world view, what you have at the
top or irreducible forms, and what you have at the bottom is prime matter,
and the world exists in a hierarchy between them. Like the classical metaphysicians
didn't quite use the words that John RIVICKI use uses for that, but I
think it's great, Like is terminology of emanation top down and emergence bottom up.
I think that's a great way of explaining it. Like from potentially ty
things emerge, but if you just add this bottom up emergence, like it
would be impossible to explain why things go air. So you also need this
top down emmanition of forms, these patterns that allow potential to coher into actual
entities. So that's the first part of the book, Like how you can
retrieve a classical wordview where you not only have this ontology of like matter and
form in a hierarchy, but you also have forms that have to do with
vices and virtues. Like you can recover what I said earlier about perception,
the fact that okay, you learn to perceive objects, but also vices and
virtues, so you recover a sense of good and evil. You're already starting
to leave nihilism behind. You're not quite up to crestient yet and a full
solution to the zombie problem, but at least like you're not a nihilistic materialist
anymore. And what I like about doing it this slowly is that there's nothing
that the scientist loses at this stage, Like it's just positive, Like you
basically take the entire science that the scientists add, but you take his ontology
called hierarchy, and you just make it a bit bigger so that what he
has makes more sense, but it doesn't have dropped anything. So that's the
first part of the book. And then the second part of the book.
What I do is I try to go further by saying, Okay, Christianity
is still the full solution, Like I can't justify Christianity fully using arguments coming
from naturalism or materialism. I think like if you could fully justify Christianity using
something lower, you would actually be reducing Christianity to something lower. I think
the way that truth works in general is you have to rather like try to
seduce people into something higher. So what I try to do is a lot
like what Lewis did in his book Miracles, but I do it for modern
naturalism now. I say, if you take the pattern of the incarnation now
and you try to see the ontological hierarchy, you try to see the natural
world in the light of the incarnation, the natural world actually makes more sense.
And it's the same way that any new theory is against even in science,
Like the way that new for instance, advanced his theory of relativity was
exactly just like he came up with new axioms that people thought were crazy.
By the way, people thought Newton was proposing something occult because it was proposing
a force that acted as a distance, whereas everyone back then was a mechanist,
like people thought that everything was just like basically build billiard balls and like
things pulling and pushing against one another. So people thought there was like something
like material explaining why we're attracted to the earth. But because Newton said it
was just a force acting at a distance, people thought he was insane,
but because he was able to seduce them, they actually ended up agreeing with
him, because he said, okay, just I know it doesn't make sense
from your standpoint, but if you grant me what I'm proposing, then you're
gonna have all that you have right now and more. So he basically ended
up like seducing people and now we think nothing of it. Like of course
gravity of course for setecting at the distance, but I'm trying to do the
same for the incarnation. I'm trying to say, Okay, the incarnation seems
crazy, like it seems to be too much from a naturalistic standpoint, even
a non reductive naturalist. But actually I think that if you take the incarnation,
you'll be able to get all of what you had before and more.
Again, so I'm trying to saluce people into it. And we talked I'm
making use of much of the stuff we discussed a few years ago related to
miracles, especially a demiracle of the incarnation. I think like it just makes
so much sense of even the experience I had doing mathematics when I was a
student, because and it just blows my mind and anytime I think about it.
Let's say, if I try to prove the theorem, let's see,
even something basic like the pathagurrent theorem, I'm taking an abstract truth that exists
outside of the space and time, like even if there was no physical universe,
the Pythagaurian theorem would still be true. And yet when I'm thinking about
this, like somehow all of my neurons like are assembling to host this immaterial
truth. So there's this crazy bridge that happens in human beings when we ponder
eternal truths. And I think the world makes more sense if it's made for
this, like if at its root like this, this bridge is just an
image of the bridge that happens in the incarnation, where the creator of the
forms and matter comes and embeds himself into that great hierarchy. So that's just
one example, but you can find so many, let's say, aspects of
nature, aspect of this ontology called hierarchy that you find in non rereactive naturalism
that are better explained if you take the incarnation as the key that ultimately I
think like people should be seduced into the story of the incarnation, and mythologically,
also, what this does is a solution to the zombie crisis. I
opened the book with like a solution to I opened the book with the zombie
it to explain our reductionistic materialistic standpoint. But as I also said earlier,
ultimately is the Eucharist. It's self sacrifice that is the full solution to the
zombie problem, and I want to invite people into that story. I want
to sluce people into the story of the Incarnation. I think I provide a
solution to the zombie problem. And also in metaphysics, I give people something
that makes more sense than just non reductive naturalism. So that's the main trust
of the book. Like I try to take people from materialistic reductionism to classical
metaphysics where they're not nihilists anymore, where good and evil exist, and then
I try to take them all the way into the story of the incarnation,
where like all zombies are vanquished all the times they're very quid. I mean,
I think it's exciting because it seems like it's also just the right moment
for that to come out, because we have all these people, all these
surprising moments like Ian HERSEYI Lee, who's says he's a Christian. She's literally
I've heard that she's there's gonna there's a debate organized between her and Dawkins,
Like they're going to actually debate that all of a sudden. So the all
of these things happening, you even have people like Brett Weinstein who are also
kind of moving in a direction saying, oh, this isn't work anymore,
this is in some ways, this is over, Like this world, this
kind of nineteenth century thinking is done, and so it's a it's a wonderful
time. Joan Peterson's next book is called We Struggle with God, and he's
going through the Bible and he's doing a similar thing to what you're doing,
which is he says, says, by the time people finish reading this,
there'll just be no room for atheism anymore. So this is a perfect time
for all this to come together. So how do you see the course going
going with this? Like? How do you see the class coming together?
Yeah? Good question. Basically, the more the more topics I decided to
keep for the course, I want the book to be more general public.
Let's say, so there's no need to go into some of the more niche
symbolic world topics, Like I think it's important for people who are really interested
to know, like what distinguishes the symbolic quality physics from the say perennialist metaphysics
or universalist metaphysics. I think it's important to try to see like more precisely
interesting stuff like how it is that the world exists in Christ, how it
is that the world comes to exist through human consciousness. But I don't think
it's necessary to go into those topics for a general audience that is just trying
to get out of nihilism. So basically my approach was to take the course
as an opportunity to dive deeper into more advanced topics that I think will be
interested interesting to the symbolic world audience, people who have some background in symbolism.
But I also cover everything that is in the book. So if someone
just wants to work through the arguments carefully, like in the setting, with
other people and ask questions, I think the course is going to be a
great place to do so. And for people who want more, who want
stuff that there's not going to be in the book, if people want to
hear more about the more difficult aspects of symbolic world metaphysics, the course is
going to be a great place to delve into those topics. So this is
I mean, to me, it seems like like an exciting thing. And
I know because I can see that. I mean, I see it.
I see that people have questions let's say that I don't necessarily have, and
so they have issues because they they're trying to connect kind of the symbolic thinking
with other aspects that are not the ones that I either know or that are
let's say, in the forefront of my mind. And so this is really
important for people who have those kind of specific questions and people who are also
you know, we all have we all have our strength and our capacity to
do certain things. And I'm really grateful that you're there to also provide some
a little more technical specificity to how this works and trying to say, you
know, try to work it out in a more detailed way. It's useful
for everybody, especially people that are in the symbolic world kind of thinking and
kind of roaming around that way of seeing the world, but they also are
in university or then in grad school and they or they even some people like
they even have positions in universities, and you know they they're starting to think
that way, but they're struggling sometimes to justify to their peers and to be
able to explain it to people around them. So this is a very useful
thing you're doing. Yeah, I think now it's also a good time to
do it because it's still close enough to me, Like I can tell that
i'd see as as Christianity in the symbolic world, it becomes more second issue
to me, Like it takes more taught to put myself back into the shoes
of a reduction stick materialist. So I can feel that it could slip,
Like in ten years, it would be much harder for me to write the
book than it was now. And I think the same thing is going to
happen to a lot of people. Like ideally, if the book can save
time for people who are at the point where I was ten years ago,
that's great, and then they can forget about it and move on to just
like sing the world symbolically. But yeah, as you said, I think
now is a good time to do it. If there's lots of people going
through this transition if I can save them a lot of time. I think
this is great and it would be order to do. Like at some point,
as more and more people see the world this way, like it's going
to be ordered to document the transition exactly how it works. Yeah, because
I mean our prediction, both my brother and I his prediction, and I
think Georg Peterson' told we had a similar insight when he wrote Maths, meaning
he said, you know, in twenty five years, everybody's going to think
this way and no one will know that they've changed the way they think.
And so I think that for those of us that are at the outset of
this and that are kind of helping to instigate the change, it's useful for
us to be clear on what's going on on as we notice it kind of
infuse the backgrounds of people's minds and change the world view slowly. So wonderful
stuff. I'm I will be there in the class, folks. I'll be
there not in every single episode, but I'll be there at the beginning,
maybe a few times during it, and I'll definitely be there at the at
the last class to kind of to wrap it all up. So I'm looking
forward to seeing people there and to and to follow along and you know,
this year like how can I say this? Like everything now COVID after COVID
ended, things are kind of starting to consolidate. I feel, you know,
we have the Symbolic World Press. Now we're going to start to publish
not just my works, but also works of people like John Fidipp that are
in the Symbolic World and that are thinking about this and that have really worked
out some aspects, so both fiction and nonfiction. So it's a it's a
great time to to to jump in and to get involved. We did the
Baywolf class. It was massively successful, and I think we'll see something similar
with this class as well. So people sign up the class is what do
we say the first day? Was it going to be? We just had
the twenty fourth Yeah, twenty fourth January twenty fourth January twenty fourth is the
first class. Sign up. We'll put a link in the descriptions of course
you can. You can sign up and we'll have questions there. It is
a mix of lecture and interaction and we're looking forward to seeing you guys there.
Thanks. The book is going to be ready for the summit. Basically
that is the plan. The plan is to have a pre launch at the
summit, so if you come to the summit, you'll be able to get
early copies of the book, and then after that we'll have a more official
or official launch. So good stuff. Perfect, Thanks Nathan, Yeah,
thanks, thanks you. I want to invite you all to the very first
Symbolic World Summit. Over three days, we will finally meet in real time,
in real space, and everyone from this little corner of the Internet will
be there to explore the theme of reclaiming the cosmic image. Of course I
will be speaking. There will also be Martin Shaw, who is an amazing
mythographer, her father Stephen de Young of Lord of Spirit fame. There will
be Richard Rowland from the Universal History series, Vesper Stamper, Nicholas Kotar,
and Neil de Gray that you've all seen on my channel here and there for
entertainment, we have everyone's favorite apocalyptic band, the One and Only Dirt Poor
Robbins. This event will be the chance of a lifetime to capture and embrace
our current moment, So join us from February twenty ninth to March second,
twenty twenty four in Tarbinspins Florida. Visit the Symbolic World dot com slash summit
for more information, and I will see you there