Introducing the Mind-at-Large Project: A New Paradigm in Consciousness Research | Mind-Body Solution - Mind-Body Solution

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(00:08):
Peter, Matt, thanks so much for joining me.
This is an exciting time. I think that most of the people
who are watching are familiar with both your work.
You've both been on the channel,both of you have provided
lectures to Mind Body Solutions.So firstly, it's an honor and
privilege to chat to you both together.
But more importantly, this is exciting because we're about to
introduce a project close to both of your hearts.

(00:29):
It's called Mind at Lodge. It's both of you are key
contributors to this. And perhaps, Peter, you could
start off by explaining for us exactly what Mind at Lodge
means. Where does that phrase come from
and what is this project? Right.
Well, first of all, Tevin, it's wonderful to be back.
And, you know, thank you for your endeavours here as well.

(00:53):
So mind at large. Well, it's a term that Aldous
Huxley used in his 1954 book Doors of Perception and also the
sequel Heaven and Hell 1956. And there it refers to a
Bugsonian concept, which is a kind of, as it were background

(01:14):
consciousness within the cosmos.And you know, Huxley, you know,
style, he brings in loads of different thinkers and thoughts
and scores of, of thought and creates this kind of mixed
ambiguous concept. And, but we're, we've, we've
used the name, the term mind at large because it is ambiguous in

(01:35):
a way. And we're using it in a way that
it's not Huxley and a Bergsonianor Vedantic or anything.
It's beyond that. It's it just generally refers to
theories of consciousness beyondwhat we commonly think are
necessary sufficient conditions for consciousness.
In other words, the brain kind of a beyond neuroessentialism, I

(01:56):
suppose fundamentally so it means so we incorporate then
ideas of pantheism, pan psychismfor E cognition, AI
consciousness or theories about that plant consciousness and so
on and so forth and many other theories.
So I suppose the common theme isan extracranial theories of

(02:17):
consciousness. Matt, same question.
Welcome to the show. Welcome back.
And yeah, what is mind at large to you?
Well, it's hard to say it betterthan Peter just did.
But, you know, this shift which is occurring, I think both in
academia and the, you know, intellectual culture generally

(02:39):
outside the walls of academia towards a more expansive view of
mind where this prevailing assumption, which I guess has
prevailed since, you know, the 19th century, that consciousness
is an accidental byproduct of some kind of as yet unexplained
mechanical process occurring inside human skulls.
And I think it could be that within the neurosciences that's

(03:03):
still the dominant view and the paradigm.
And there's a search for whatever that, you know, magical
mechanism might be. And we can get into why it would
need to be magical just from a philosophical point of view.
But mind at large, over the course of what we hope will be a
three-year series of conferences, we want to invite

(03:24):
the leading voices who are pushing the boundaries beyond
the skull, beyond beyond the human being and understanding
the consciousness as a a cosmological phenomenon,
exploring various forms of idealism and panpsychism, other
spiritual views, animism. And just to really make it clear

(03:46):
that materialism is no longer the only game in town.
And there are a variety of otheroptions.
And we really want to start thatconversation to hash out, you
know, among all of the panpsychists and all of the
idealists and, and others, how can we become more rigorous
about these alternatives to materialism and really just

(04:09):
shift the conversation, broaden the horizons?
And I think this has not just scientific and philosophical
implications, but cultural, civilizational implications.
There's a real, you know, as John Bervaiki would say, a
meaning crisis occurring. And I think how we approach

(04:30):
questions like the nature of consciousness has historically
been central to, you know, finding motivating stories that
that drive the human project forward or hold us back from
realizing our potential. Right.

(04:50):
So it has brought application beyond just academia.
And yeah, we're we're hoping to play a a role in shifting that
conversation. Yeah, I think this is super
exciting. When I when I started Mind Body
solution, the goal was get this core community online to inspire
global inquiry, break the boundaries, philosophy meets
culture and and you guys are doing this so and it's for me,

(05:13):
it's an honor to be part of thisand I think it's exciting.
You guys are hosting conferences.
This is going to be a massive project and it's going to break
boundaries in many ways. The project challenges the only
the brain only model of consciousness scientifically and
philosophically rigorously. What's most at stake?
Peter, perhaps you could answer this.

(05:34):
What do you think is most at stake if we move beyond the
brain only paradigm? Well, you know, 1935, Edmund
Hessel, phenomenologist, gave this what is now known as the
Vienna Lecture, and he spoke of the European crisis.
And although Hesel of course is known as as a phenomenologist,

(05:54):
he did say that there is essentially this deep spirit.
Well, I don't like to use the word spiritual, but metaphysical
crisis amongst academia, but also therefore amongst society
that we are thinking of ourselves in a very restricted
manner. And it follows in a way from the
sort of 4th decline of religion.We now believe that, you know,

(06:18):
there's only one other alternative, and that's kind of
strict reductivism. But you know, that is in many
ways product of the 17th century.
And I suppose what's at stake isto try to shift that
conversation away from that as an assumption, as an academic
assumption by rational means, empirical means, and so on, and,

(06:39):
and show that there are other alternatives out there.
There are other ways of thinkingabout the cosmos in relation to
the mind, and that's about yourself and your relation to
nature. And there are perhaps perhaps
beneficial to mental health and as well as well as beneficial, I
think, to new theories of consciousness, even to thinking

(07:01):
about the experiments 111 does on consciousness, you know, the
kind of, you know, thinking about the hypotheses which lead
to certain trials and so on and so forth.
I'm thinking non psychedelic research especially, but
generally. So I suppose ultimately what's
at stake is just just moving along academically, but as Matt

(07:24):
says, with social ramifications.This view that consciousness is
more fundamental in some sense to reality than has hitherto
been academically acknowledged, I suppose, yeah.
I think you, you touched on something very important there,
the fact that this is an academic venture for, for the

(07:45):
both of you personally. So this is while we're exploring
these concepts that sometimes are associated with the most
spiritual realm, this journey initself is trying to bring all of
this together in a very rigoroussetting, almost as I, as I
mentioned earlier, philosophy meets culture in a sense, an
academic setting meets this cultural setting.
So, Matt, for you, how do how dophilosophy and speculative

(08:08):
metaphysics help prepare the public 4 paradigm shifts in
consciousness studies like this one?
I think, you know, there's a, a broader sociological issue here,
which is the way that academic knowledge, whether scientific or
philosophical has been, has become increasingly abstract

(08:28):
and, and jargon filled. And the average person, even the
average intelligent person, can't make sense of what's being
said in any of the academic journals and if they can even
access the journals because they're behind Bay walls and so
on. And so I, I think, you know,
Peter and I and, and the others who are involved in this project
have always wanted to break downthat wall between academic

(08:51):
knowledge production and the broader cultural conversation.
And I think when it comes to a subject like consciousness, it's
both a special domain for building such a bridge and it's
also of tremendous relevance to every person.

(09:13):
And we're, we're all conscious more or less, I hope.
But as an object of inquiry, again, scientific or
philosophical consciousness is unique, right?
It's not just another object that we can weigh and measure
and slice and dice, you know, it's, it's something that each
of us has a, an intimate first hand encounter with.

(09:36):
And so it's as much subject as object.
It's not something impersonal. Everything else that science
studies is more or less impersonal.
We can hold it outside of ourselves and and look at it,
but consciousness is not like that.
And I think we want to be as scientific as we can and
studying it. But there's an invitation here

(09:57):
for people beyond academia to bring their own experience and
their own self understanding into the conversation.
And so there are a variety of reasons why academia became more
close, cloistered and ivory tower and you know all that.
But I think this this project, in addition to just exploring

(10:18):
the the value of these ideas, isa real chance to bring the
process of knowledge production back into the public domain and
allow there to be more of a Co creative process here.
I mean, we're going to be inviting as many luminaries and,
and experts and scientists and philosophers to contribute to

(10:39):
this as we can, but we also wantit to be very interactive and
participatory. And we're going to have a
session for students to share their ideas.
And so we're trying to break down walls, not just expand
consciousness beyond the skull, but get science and philosophy
back into the hands of the people around the subject of
consciousness because it it really matters to everyone.

(11:01):
Well, this is rolling minded large project has officially
begun. The process is starting.
Let's try and explore your work individually and try and bring
it all together. Before I begin and ask you as
individual questions, Peter, perhaps you'd like to tell me
why is Matt the perfect person to have on board with the Miami
Lodge project? I'll come back to that one

(11:23):
second. One thing I wanted to add to
what was just said as well as quickly, I think another way of
looking at this project is to UNuncover or reveal people's
metaphysical biases. You know, because we talk about
a lot of prejudices that each ofus has, often unconsciously.
But the one that is kind of in away the deepest, I mean, deeper

(11:44):
than religion in many ways is metaphysical biases, just
assumptions people make. And it's sort of, it sets a
standard for how people judge something to be like a crazy
theory or something like this, right?
So to uncover that I think is part of this project to reveal
underlying assumptions or priorsand to show, you know, like

(12:04):
rationally, you know, what really is included in those
assumptions and whether that really is a default view or not
or should be. I mean, just quickly,
physicalism, for example, is a metaphysical option.
It's not apart from metaphysics,it's a part of metaphysics.
And I think this is something that is very important to push

(12:24):
on society at large, really, because it's just Yeah.
And and academia at large, I just find it all the time.
I just wrote a commentary on thepaper, actually, which just
makes all these assumptions which generally scientists just
don't consider anyway, right? So why is Matt perfect for his
project? Well, Matthew is a good friend

(12:48):
of mine and he is one of the, ifnot the leading Whiteheadian
expert, I think. And Whitehead's philosophy, I'm
also a keen Whiteheadian. Whitehead's philosophy, known as
process philosophy or philosophyof Organism, is, I think a great
way of getting into this Mind atLarge project.
I mean, Whitehead and Bergsen influenced one another and you

(13:11):
see a lot of parallels in their work.
So, you know, I say this becauseMind at Large sort of comes from
Bergsen's theory in many ways. Whitehead is, in my view,
excellent at pointing out what is an abstraction.
He's got this fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
He is he is very unique as well.He shows problems of

(13:34):
physicalism, materialism, but promotes a fantastic new world
view and Matt's. You can't get anyone better than
Matt really to exposit this his thought.
That's that's one way. Also, he's got a way with words
as you've just heard and is a isa very productive, friendly

(13:55):
chap. Beautiful, Matt.
Same question. Why is Peter perfect for this
project? Well, I forget how long I've
known you, Peter, but yeah, we've been friends for a number
of years. And I think other than just
being a really cool guy and the stylish in in looks and

(14:19):
rhetoric, you know, bringing this a kind of philosophical
edginess where, you know, he's able to draw on a thinker like
Friedrich Nietzsche in such productive ways or Bruce Spinoza
and apply them to these really novel problems that that

(14:41):
academic philosophers are facing.
You know, the work that Peter's done on psychedelics to convince
the the therapists and the counselors and the people
working in the mental health application of psychedelics that
actually there are some really deep, profound metaphysical
questions that are being opened up by these experiences.
And Peter has just done a marvelous job shifting that

(15:04):
conversation away from, oh, not a way, but broadening it beyond
just the mental health applications and and healing
psychological issues to hey, maybe there are some bigger
metaphysical mystery is that onewill confront in a psychedelic
journey, a psychedelic experience.

(15:24):
And if we're not preparing people to ask those questions
and providing them with, as Peter would call it, a
metaphysical menu to to help integrate that, then we're
really leaving people, you know,up the Creek without a paddle,
so to speak. And so I think the work that
he's done on psychedelics and psychedelic phenomenology is

(15:47):
really exciting to people interested in exploring
consciousness. Psychedelics are like the the
equivalent of the microscope or the telescope in consciousness
studies. I think it was Stanislav Grof
who first made that analogy. I could be wrong.
Peter would correct me if someone else said that before
Stan. But I think, you know, Peter's
holding down this, this really important new approach to

(16:12):
psychedelics coming out of philosophy, which still isn't
getting enough attention despiteall the work that he's doing and
teaching in this wonderful program there at Exeter
University, which brings together the mental health, the
anthropological and the philosophical aspects of
psychedelics. And most likely going to be
hosting us for this first conference, Mind at Large

(16:35):
conference there at Exeter. So for all those reasons and
more, it's great to have him on our team.
I certainly wouldn't want him tobe on the other team.
That would be frightening. Well, Peter, would that be said?
I mean, your work oftentimes Nietzsche, Spinoza, psychedelic
phenomenology matches discuss most of those concepts.
But how do psychedelics expand our understanding of mind at

(16:57):
large? Well, you know, I think
psychedelics generally expand our notion of mind.
They give us. I mean, the reason I I got into
psychedelics really was because I was interested in philosophy
mind first and foremost. And then I got interested in,
you know, altered states of mindor expansive, expanded or

(17:19):
extended states of mind. And of course, psychedelics were
one means by which that could beachieved.
So I've always taken psychedelics in an academic
sense. It's not an excuse, It's, it's
true. So the first thing that they do,
I think is just show a person, you know, what the mind is
capable of. Just the, the standard human

(17:40):
mind. You know, it's just, it's beyond
imagination, beyond dreams. It's just something, something
quite profound and beautiful canbe terrible as well, terrifying.
But that's the first thing that they do.
They just show you that, you know, there is much more to
consciousness than you have everdreamed, literally, unless you

(18:01):
have quite amazing dreams, whichis possible, I suppose.
Bergson actually did, He wrote to William James about that.
But generally speaking, that's the first way in which they, I
think, I think they, they basically, I would, you know,
this is becoming cliche for me now, but I always say
psychedelics are a gateway drug to metaphysics.
They just open, they just like when you've had an experience

(18:21):
such as psilocybin or LSD or DMToccasions, then you just want to
look into like, what the hell was that?
You know, what was that? And then that leads you into
theories of consciousness, metaphysics, mind and other and
other fields as well as course anthropology, history,
neuroscience, whatnot. But so they're a real catalyst

(18:41):
or trigger for exploring the mind.
I think first and foremost, I consider a lot of the
experiences to be what I call experiential metaphysics.
So, you know, in university or at home, you study intellectual
metaphysics. You can study Spinoza for years,
as still, as says. But at the same time, you can
have a sudden flash of Spinozism, like instantly, and

(19:02):
it seems that you understand it all.
You have this noetic quality, asWilliam James says.
But so then the question becomes11 interesting intellectual
question becomes with psychedelics, well, were these
merely delusions, hallucinations?
Were they completely veridical? Was there some kind of third
way? You know, that's an interesting

(19:22):
question. That is an ongoing debate.
Another question is, do such experiences actually inform us
about theories of mind? I mean that in the
philosophical, not psychologicalsense theory, theories of
consciousness, like, do they, you know, what do they say about
behaviourism or identity theory or emergentism, mental

(19:44):
causation, things like this? They have, you know, as many
ways in which you can use such what is essentially empirical
data to speak about certain hypotheses.
So, and you know, there's, there's a, there's growing work
on psychedelics and, and consciousness as as you all
know. Matt, anything about that you'd
like to add on? And have you ever had a

(20:04):
psychedelic experience? You're not being recorded, am I?
No, I'm already out on that. Yes, I think I have, and it has.
My psychedelic experiences have shaped my philosophy for sure,
because there's something that, you know, it's not just the

(20:25):
extreme nature of those experiences that produce these
anomalies. It's that you become more
sensitive to the, the subtle interactive, and I would say
participatory dimension of consciousness, Which is to say,
in a psychedelic experience, your thoughts and your
intentions end up immediately shifting the whole mood of, of

(20:53):
the experience, right? And so you can see how quickly a
positive or negative thought then flowers out into an entire
world that you're then inside of.
And so it, it, that's why it canbe really scary because the, the
mind manifesting power of psychedelics is such that you

(21:15):
know, you're, you're, you're putin the driver's seat of your own
consciousness in a way that you always already were.
But now you're seeing all the controls and levers.
And with practice, you know, I think you can navigate that
space a little bit easier and then take insights back into
your everyday consciousness where it then becomes apparent

(21:35):
to you that, you know, from a metaphysical point of view,
whatever our consciousness is, it's not this sort of ready
made, distinct and separate substance.
That's that's sort of. Given to us at birth, but it's
rather more like a, an ongoing creative process.
And each thought is contributingitself to what becomes the, the

(21:58):
sort of baseline for for an ongoing consciousness and an
ongoing thought process. So we're always building
ourselves. We're always engaged in soul
making, to put it in John Keats's terms.
And that James Hillman would later pick up on.
And so that's, that's frightening in a sense, right?
That you're not just a soul that's there ready made that you

(22:22):
can rely on, but you're actuallyresponsible for making soul
manifesting mind moment by moment, becoming more or less of
of who you're capable of being. You know, so I think
psychedelics kind of force the issue and and they can be a
frightening precisely because ofthe existential stakes that they

(22:45):
that they raise, that they bringto our attention that like we
can't avoid anymore once we've turned on and tuned in.
And whether we decide to drop out remains to be seen.
I think, you know, Peter and I both approached the study of
psychedelics not in an effort todrop out so much in in Leary's

(23:05):
sense, but more in an effort to transform the institutions that
were that were inside of. Yeah, agreed.
And and I should just add that this was the way that
psychedelics were seen in the early 20th century, starting
really with William James, you know, and you know, continued
Stan Gruff as well, you know, spoke about it intellectually.

(23:25):
HH Price, AJ even wrote something related to a
psychedelic like experience. But they became, now we think of
them as recreational drugs or criminal activities or but
there's there's so much, so muchof interest there.
Yeah, or as therapeutic agents, right.
Like I was saying earlier, it's kind of the psychedelic

(23:46):
renaissance has been so focused on mental health applications,
which is great, but what about the metaphysical and
philosophical implications? These are research instruments
as much as they are mental health treatments.
Absolutely. I should add, though, you know
that even with mental health, and I would say psychedelics are
more than medicine. They are medicine, but more than
that as well. But the now, you know, the Royal

(24:09):
College of Psychiatrists have said that we should have just
issued guidance saying we shouldintegrate metaphysics into
psychedelic therapy. So, umm, you know, that is an,
that's sort of indicative of thefact that kind of zeitgeist here
is changing, you know, and there's an acceptance of
metaphysics as well and a kind of acceptance that we have

(24:30):
neglected it for too long. Because if you look at the
history of metaphysics and mind,I mean, it was umm, big in the
early 20th century, but then there was a turn away from
metaphysics, partly due to the wars, an anti German kind of
feel and away from Hagelism thatinfluenced a lot of the idealism
of Britain and America at the time.
And then a kind of barren periodof redactivism.

(24:53):
That's the way I see it as anyway, not philosophers would
disagree with this, but a kind of barren period.
And and now we've had this metaphysical turn 20 years ago.
We had psychedelic turn 20 yearsago, maybe 10 years ago.
So they're kind of coming together now in interesting
ways. And Peter, you're touching on
something very important there because myself as a doctor

(25:13):
working in clinical practice, when I see the way we can
medicalize something so fascinating, something like
psychedelics, I've personally had psychedelic experiences
myself. This would be the best place to
have a disclaimer that we're notencouraging anyone to use
psychedelics, but just expressing our own experiences.
But you guys are touching on something very important, which

(25:34):
is the metaphysical component ofthis experience.
And for example, Matt, if you have to think of the way process
philosophy informs your work when it comes to Whitanian
philosophy, you have taken it further.
How would something like that, your process philosophical
thinking, impact the world with their understanding of using
psychedelics? For example, what Peter's

(25:55):
talking about was teaching metaphysics now within
psychiatry. How would something like that
shift the mindset of a practitioner trying to examine a
patient and treat them? Well, I think I can, you know,
if I broaden that to just the study of consciousness as such,
I think what Whitehead brings isfirst of all, an invitation to

(26:19):
people that they can take their own subjective experience
seriously as a, a lens upon the nature of reality.
And, and so much of the modern period, you know, with
behaviorism and the, the, the real focus on, you know, after
Galileo separates the primary characteristics, all the stuff

(26:39):
we can measure about the material world from the
secondary characteristics, whichis what everything that Galileo
said is added by the Organism, our perceptions, qualities,
tastes, colors, sense, and so on.
That led, you know, the average person to feel like
consciousness is mostly just a funhouse mirror maze that

(27:01):
produces illusions and biases and that anything having to do
with your subjective experience couldn't be part of science,
couldn't be part of metaphysics.And I think not only, you know,
this work on the philosophy of psychedelics, but Whitehead's
experientially grounded approachto, to metaphysics, where we're

(27:22):
trying to understand the nature of reality, beginning with our
own most intimate encounter withreality, which is through
experience and generalizing fromthat to then reach the cosmos at
large. It, I think it invites people to
see consciousness as a lens on reality, right, rather than a

(27:44):
blindfold or a source of illusions.
And in the study of consciousness itself, we've had
on the one hand, David Chalmers famous hard problem of
consciousness that he articulates in the mid 90s has
been a tremendous boon to the fields.
It's it's generated a lot of excitement and interest and
popularization of the, you know,the, the difficulty of the

(28:06):
problem, a lot of interesting debates.
But I think from a white Hedy and, and and process
philosophical point of view, it's not a hard problem of
consciousness. It's that framework is actually
the wrong problem because it can't be solved in the terms
that it's been stated. And Whitehead allows us to kind
of go back in time to this Galilean split, go back in time

(28:31):
to this Cartesian split between mind and matter and, and kind of
dissolve that framework, right? So we're not going to solve the
hard problem in the terms it's been stated.
We need to dissolve the whole framework in terms of which the
problem arose in the 1st place and see that there never was a
separation between mind and matter, right?
Minds are embodied and bodies are and minded if you want.

(28:54):
And you know, this is a sort of pan experientialist or pan
psychist view of which you know,there are a whole variety of
different pan psychisms and Whitehead has a variety that I
think is especially fruitful for, you know, allowing us to
advance the study of consciousness in a way that
doesn't presuppose dualism or materialism.

(29:16):
You know, in the way that Peter was saying, we, I think one of
the measures of success of this,this three-year project is if
you know, in, in, in 2028 or 2029, if the general
conversation is such that there are a majority of people saying,
gosh, materialism is crazy. Can you believe these
materialists are actually arguing for such an absurd

(29:38):
position that the mind is secreted by the brain, then
we'll know what we'll have succeeded, right.
So we're trying to tip the seesaw, as it were, to so that
we see these alternatives to materialism as more plausible
and recognize the wrong turn that science and philosophy took

(29:59):
centuries ago that have led to some dead ends.
Now, as as much as science has advanced in physics and biology,
this question of consciousness really forces us to examine our
priors, you know, and start fresh.
And so that's what we're attempting to do.
I think it's worth noting that while we're exploring these

(30:22):
concepts and fields beyond materialism, for all those
watching of you or listening, the goal is to still make sure
materialists are fundamentally part of the conversation.
So they're all invited. We're going to have panelists
who are attending who are very much materialists going to still
give their counter arguments because this is an Open Access,
free debate free thought environment.

(30:43):
So we don't want anyone to feel like they've if they're anti.
We won't treat, we won't treat the materialists like they have
treated the fan psychists and the idealists.
I mean, there's even the question of what materialism is.
So Galen Strawson, for example, insists he's a materialist, but
he's a pan psychist as well. So it's it's a question of what
matter means. And you know, that'll be part of
the conversation. Absolutely.
I. Think the.

(31:04):
History of it all, you know. I think Galen now leans towards
more for mysterionism if I recall.
He's doing that. McGinn.
Where is he? OK, I haven't spoken to him for
a couple of years. That's interesting.
Well, let's let's. He's he's given up, in other
words, basically. Let's explore some of these
concepts. So you guys touched on
panpsychism, Peter, perhaps you could start if, if you were to

(31:27):
go towards an anti materialist mindset and if you were
exploring beyond materialism, what, where would you go?
What? What would be the first theory
of choice and would it be panpsychism and why?
Well, I just start by saying that I suppose at the very least
we want people to know to realise that there are more

(31:48):
options than materialism or dualism.
So that seems to be what there'sa kind of false dichotomy that I
that we face all the time. Now.
The one of the I was, you know, I kind of defined myself as a
materialist in the past and or aphysicalist.
And perhaps I still am if Galen Strawson is, if he is, but
especially what moved me away from it partly was to was

(32:11):
deciphering which kind of materialist I was, right.
And by looking at that, I realized, well, here's problems
with this side and here's the problems with this side.
And then I sort of realized, well, actually, these problems
are very hard to, to kind of like get rid of on either side.
And that kind of moved me on as it were, right.
So when you, when you really analyze the concept of
materialism, I think you see allthe problems and that just opens

(32:32):
up your your mind to other possibilities.
Now, I just point out as well that I say this all purely in a,
in a purely scholarly fashion, because I think a lot of people
will suspect that there's kind of some kind of underlying
religious motives here or something like this.
But I'm, I'm not religious, you know, not in the traditional
sense anyway, or in any sense maybe.
And I read Nietzsche at a young age and that's kind of disturbed

(32:53):
my religious sensitivity as well.
So moving away from materialism.Well, I, I, I suppose my path
was this with Nietzsche. I was investigating his concept
of the will to power. It's kind of underlying Dr.
which underlies not only life, but all things.

(33:17):
And it, you know, although Nietzsche is ostensibly anti
metaphysics, it was a metaphysical tantrine.
And that brought me on to Schopenhauer and, and I studied
Kant as well. You know, Schoppenhauer was a
Kanty in many ways. Well, they rejected the ethical
theory and and then I found AnneBergson, I should say, at
Warwick University with Keith Ansell Pearson, people like

(33:39):
that, and Hegel with Stephen Holgate.
But I eventually found Whiteheadlike Matt did, and he
systematized a lot of kind of muddy thoughts perhaps I had in
the past, you know, and his formof pan psychism or pan
experientialism really appealed to me.
I mean, I also, I should say I was inspired by Spinoza as well

(34:01):
as Whitehead and others, but it seems to me that instead of,
well, there are many reasons to believe in panpsychism.
It's never a matter of proving anything.
Because if you believe that the mind is at least partially
private, then these metaphysicalissues go beyond the empirical.

(34:23):
If you accept that, that's a matter for debate.
But anyway, I found that panpsychism was under a kind of
absolute monism that Espinoza preferred.
Seem to be the most logical, parsimonious, beautiful theory,
really. You know that mind is matter and
we see it from two different ways, but there's an Infinity of

(34:45):
other ways of seeing the same substance, which he calls God or
nature. This kind of appealed to me.
I don't know, instinctively, butalso rationally.
There are problems with it, though.
I'm not saying that. I mean, I always say that I
don't really believe anything. I entertain ideas.
So, I mean, I don't think there's any sort of rock hard
theory without any issues, but Imean, at the very least, let's

(35:09):
say that what is considered the obvious theory has as many
problems as any other theory really.
So, you know, the question is anopen one.
And this is kind of why we're exploring other, you know, I
suppose, unusual theories here in a purely rational manner
though, you know. So I think the importance of

(35:33):
keeping it rational and academicis, is that that's going to have
more of an effect on others thanif you just appeal to faith or
intuition or or whatever, right?That's why it's quite important
to keep it logical. And that's why I suppose it's
important to bring in people whodisagree with any of you you
might held. Matt.

(35:55):
So, yeah, Matt, anything you want to add to that?
I mean, our episode when we recorded the first time, I think
I I think I labeled it is the universe and sold with
experience as the question. We explored if we had to take
this concept of the universe or cosmos as conscious, what does
it mean for our world view? And perhaps you could maybe
explain to us why other theoriesof conscience like idealism, why

(36:17):
is that not on the table at the moment?
Matthew Speaker. Thank you.
Idealism's on the table for me, but yeah, I think so.
I wanted to circle back to a fewthings Peter was saying, because

(36:37):
I certainly agree that we want to approach this in the most
rational way and logical way possible, avoid simple logical
contradictions, and we want to be as logically coherent as we
can. We want to draw on the best
scientific evidence. And I think that given all the
scientific evidence and given the need to remain logically

(37:02):
consistent, it seems to me that the weakest metaphysical
position on offer today is physicalism or dualism maybe in
in second place. And and that's, you know,
there's a case that needs to be made because that's probably a
rather controversial thing to say, but that's the case that

(37:25):
we're going to be trying to makeat this conference.
And of course, you know, we wantto welcome physicalists and even
panpsychists who think of panpsychism as a kind of
materialism. And, you know, I was, I've been,
I'm teaching the history of philosophy, Western philosophy
this semester. And we're doing the scientific
revolution right now. And rather than focus on on the

(37:46):
usual dudes, you know, Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, Newton, I
really wanted to look at one of the few women who was at least
trying to be part of this conversation, Margaret
Cavendish. I don't know if Peter, if you've
looked at at Cavendish's work, but she was very similar to
Galen Strawson, actually. I mean, at least prior to his

(38:08):
mysterion turn where, you know, she was like everything's
material, including thinking. So every material body is is
thinking to some degree, whetherminerals, plants, animals.
You know, she really argued against the Cartesians that
animals have rationality, that, you know, alligators build their
nests a little bit higher above the riverbank before a flood

(38:30):
happens. They must have some capacity to
to to predict the future, anticipate things.
And so for her, that's evidence of rationality in the non human
world. And so, you know, there are all
these alternatives in the history of philosophy that that
were kind of undercurrents that I think can be revived and and
revitalized. And so, you know, panpsychism is

(38:52):
not some newfangled idea that only emerged in the 20th century
or in the late 19th century. It's, it's quite, I mean, it's
ancient and it was there all along in, in, in the 17th
century as these more or less dualistic thinkers that we're
all familiar with, we're pushingforward that worldview.

(39:13):
People like Cavendish and beforeher, Giordano Bruno, you know,
we're, we're arguing for an alternative that would make soul
and experience more of an intrinsic feature of, of the
universe rather than something that belongs solely to human
beings. But I also wanted to say, you
know, in response to some thingsPeter was saying that as

(39:35):
important as logic and rationality and science are, I
really do think that philosophers can be open to the
full suite of human faculties and powers that go beyond just
reason, imagination, emotion, you know, aesthetic sensitivity.
And I think Peter probably agrees with me on all of this,

(39:58):
but just to, you know, make it. Yeah.
Yeah. Psychedelic experience, which is
at least non rational if it's not necessarily irrational.
And so, you know, I think we candraw on the full suite of our
human capacities and and powers of soul, so to speak, when we
search for evidence. And, you know, I might be a

(40:20):
little bit more, have a little bit more of a religious or
spiritual mentality than than Peter, which not, is not because
of my upbringing. It's actually because of
psychedelic experiences that I, I came to some of those views.
But I, I think that, you know, for me, part of the, the

(40:41):
evidence that should be allowed into the the courtroom when
we're trying to adjudicate whichviews are to be taken seriously
is our, our human longing for a sense of meaning in the
universe. And that might be dismissed by a
hard nosed scientific rationalist thinker as just, you
know, sentimentalism or whatever.

(41:02):
And it shouldn't matter what ouremotions are if we're trying to
understand the truth. But I think from a, a pan
experientialist point of view and a radically empirical point
of view, in William James's sense, this human longing for a
meaningful universe, even if it's a type of meaning that
requires something of us and it's really hard work.

(41:23):
And we have to be be we go through an initiatory trial to,
to understand it's not just, youknow, butterflies and rainbows.
And it's, it's an easy form of meaning that is just accessible
to everyone without any effort. It could be that the meaning of
the universe requires a lot of effort on our part to to grok
and and incorporate and assimilate.

(41:44):
But none the less that that desire for meaning is part of
the anthropological evidence that we have to contend with
when we when we try to understand our place in the
universe. Why do we have that desire?
Is it really just sheer foolishness on our part that we

(42:07):
would long for that? And it's not to say that any
particular religious response tothat longing is the correct one,
But I think we can at least recognize as some materialists
do, like Daniel Dennett would, Ithink, acknowledge that there is
a humans have a natural instinctfor religion.
And that it religion might even form some have some sort of

(42:29):
evolutionary value in terms of the the social effects that it
has and the the ways that it makes certain groups of human
beings more adaptable than others and so on.
I think that's a more reductionist view of the purpose
of religious feelings. But, you know, there are ways
that even materialists could acknowledge part of what I'm
trying to say here. And so, you know, this process

(42:52):
philosophical view that I derivefrom Whitehead and and others
like Friedrich Schelling, who's often grouped with the German
idealist, which is why idealism and panpsychism are close
cousins, if if not siblings, youknow, And so it's all on the
table. But I think they allow us to, to
look again at the theological tradition and find ways of

(43:14):
avoiding this sense of conflict between science and religion
that, you know, we, we could instead imagine forms of
theology that are evolutionary, that are pantheist or pantheist
where whatever we might imagine by the divine and what that term

(43:35):
might mean and how we think of nature, these these could be two
sides of the same coin, different ways of talking about
the same creative process. And so I think bringing all of
this back onto the table is one of the exciting consequences
that follows from shifting away from the old, tired forms of
materialism. Yeah, I mean, essentially it's a

(43:58):
question about teleology, isn't it?
You know, these ultimate purposes, if they exist, going
back to Aristotle, prime mover, I think.
Didn't Whitehead speak about this output urge?
Wasn't the function of reason, you know, this kind of urge or
complexity, as did Bergson. Bergson ends his last book with
a with a beautiful line, which Ican't remember, but it's
something like the function of the universe is a machine for

(44:19):
the making of gods or something like this.
So there is that sort of ultimate telos.
But yeah, I mean, that can't be reduced to matter as we
understand matter. So if it does exist, and it
seems to exist, even Schopenhauer, the atheist, you
know, atheist, really, you know,he said that man is a
metaphysical animal, right? There is that desire for deeper

(44:41):
meaning, a deeper sort of metaphysical meaning behind
things, which I completely accept.
It's just suppose I am more secular than you are, Matt.
Maybe that's the sort of cultural difference, you know,
European, American, I don't know.
But but yeah, no, it's good thatwe don't agree on absolutely
everything isn't. It I think that that's that's a
perfect place for me to ask thisnext question.
Let's do a little bit of cross pollination.

(45:02):
So I was speaking to to Robert Lawrence Coon today.
We were chatting via e-mail and we're discussing the fact that
he's landscape of consciousness has now reached over 350
theories of consciousness. So this is getting a bit absurd
at this point. So much to discuss, so many
things to prove right or wrong for you.
Peter, where do you think this spectrum of different fields lie

(45:26):
closest to your own worldview interms of may I just mention the
fact that he considers A physicalism to be the worst
beyond dualism. Do you agree?
Well, I think it depends on how you define it.
I, I generally want to put on, put out like other theories
rather than criticize the theories like physicalism,

(45:48):
dualism, which I, I do criticize, but I, I am more, I,
I suppose I, I prefer to look atother theories that have been
off the table. As I said, I'm more in the camp
of absolute monism. So sort of kind of kind of
modern sort of neo Spinozaism. So mind and matter are the same

(46:10):
thing as one fundamental substance, but with Whitehead,
that substance is a process. In fact, Whitehead said that
about Spinoza substance, I believe somewhere, and I with
Whitehead and Bugs on I, I sort of prefer an open creative
universe which allows for freedom rather than Spinoza's
kind of fatalistic predetermineduniverse.

(46:31):
Even though Spinoza allows for atype of freedom, the freedom
which is the understanding that everything is determined, which
is kind of funny, kind of free. More fatty.
Yeah. So yeah, no.
And then the Nietzschean side, Isuppose, is that I do, I do see

(46:52):
a lot of the beliefs that we have in society today in the
West to emanate from Christianity.
I think Christianity has, Christianity has had a huge
influence on the West. I mean, Christendom is another
word for the West in many ways, in ways that are sort of not
explicit. This is what Nietzsche brings to
the fore. You know, this is what he's

(47:14):
known for, really making these implicit assumptions explicit in
terms of morality first and foremost.
But more than that, I think we can trace the sort of
development of our standard metaphysical outlook to, you
know, the Reformation, especially the Protestant
Reformation. I think that's had huge impact

(47:36):
on how we think of the world, even scientifically,
skeptically, you can make good argument.
Dale Allison made this great argument and Essendon a few
months ago that, uh, modern notions of scientific skepticism
actually come directly from the Reformation, from Protestants
being skeptical of Catholic claims to miracles and so on and
so forth, right? So there's, there's, there's a

(47:58):
lot of religious undercurrents that form what we consider to be
secular thinking and, and that informs our kind of standards of
metaphysics and, and consciousness even, right.
So uncovering those and Nietzsche's genealogical method
is a good method by which we cando that.
I think highlights where we are in terms of our standards, our

(48:22):
theories of consciousness, and it perhaps shows us in the path
we are on, the path we can move to.
So there's a lot of value in in this.
It doesn't mean being anti religious just means being kind
of openly, just just acknowledging the sort of power
of religion and Christianity in the West at least.
And I think it's, you know, personally very emancipating,

(48:44):
you know, sort of emancipates you from ways of thinking that,
you know, you're supposed to think this way.
You should, you know, should believe this or that or you
should do this or that. And, you know, you should feel
this. You know, it's kind of very
emancipating in a way to sort ofquestion all these things.
Whitehead does that as well. He really uncovers these primal
assumptions we have in society. Nietzsche does it as well, but

(49:05):
in another way. And that's why I've always found
Nietzsche and Whitehead to be the most powerful philosophers
because of that. They just, things that I before
had read them or studied them, Ijust take for granted.
Suddenly thrown up into the openhas open questions which which
can be, I suppose, I suppose that you know for for some
people that could be damaging, right?
But. It was you, Peter, that I, I

(49:27):
think, first pointed out to me that White had had a copy of
Nietzsche's Will to Power that he had marked up in the
Marginalia. And so that he read Nietzsche
and liked it and builds on that and Modes of Thought, his own
book. Yeah, that's right.
I know he did. And one of his students wrote a
book on Nietzsche and I forget his name, George something, but
you know, he was, he was very, he was interested in Nietzsche

(49:51):
in in a time when Nietzsche was considered quite sort of a
National Socialist. So before Kaufman and de
Lausanne Fuku and outlaw sort ofthe liberalised Nietzsche.
So he was quite again, you know,Nietzsche saw that beforehand.
He never, I don't think, explicitly wrote about
Nietzsche, but yeah, you get it in then in letters and notebooks

(50:14):
and whatnot. Nietzsche is an amazing,
amazingly open philosopher. It's controversial for
historical reasons. I mean, Mussolini was and Hitler
were inspired by Nietzsche. There's no doubt about that.
But, you know, we all know the story about Nietzsche's system
and misreadings and so on so forth, you know, But you know,
Nietzsche knew himself better than any other person knew

(50:35):
themselves. I think Freud said that about
him. And and it just just last little
point here brings me back something you said Matt, about
weird saying that. And Shapenow said this as well.
You know, instead of thinking about ourselves in terms of the
outside external nature, as it were.

(50:55):
In other words, thinking about ourselves in terms of the laws
of physics and something we should look at the outside from
an internal perspective so we know we have agency and
imagination and feelings and whatever.
And then instead of sort of bringing the outside in, we
project the inside out. And that's where we get this
notion of mind at large. You know that mind is not

(51:16):
necessarily something that is contained within our skulls.
Yeah. Matt, do you think you want to
add to that? Yeah, I mean, I, I've, I
definitely agree with what Peterwas saying about the sort of the
genealogy of secularism and secular humanism that that

(51:40):
actually, rather than being justsimply opposed to Christianity,
it's actually a natural development of Christianity in
some sense. And there are a number of
scholars that that that show that like Charles Taylor, this
great book, A Secular Age shows how many of these values that we

(52:02):
associate with secular humanism were seated by some of the core
ideas in, in in the Christian worldview.
And and Luther, you know, in theProtestant Reformation, that
sense of like, you know, as Luther would say, the priesthood
of all believers. We don't need the church to

(52:23):
mediate it. It might at first appear like
Luther's biblical literalism andhis attempt to, you know, purify
the Church of Greek philosophy and bring it back to, you know,
the original revelation that might seem opposed to the
scientific revolution. But at the same time, the

(52:44):
consequences of the Reformation leading to the disenchantment of
nature. And the, you know, Luther was
very critical of Aristotle. And until you get rid of
Aristotle's physics, you don't really, you can't get modern
science. And so it contributes to
clearing the way for the rise ofthis new approach to nature.
Despite Luther saying to about Nicholas Copernicus, I think he

(53:07):
called him an upstart astrologerand a fool when you heard about
the heliocentric theory. So there, you know, there's all
of these subtleties and seeming superficial conflicts between,
say, what was going on in the Reformation and then what
happens in the scientific revolution.
But just beneath the surface, I think there's a lot of ways in
which, as Peter was saying, the Reformation opens up this

(53:30):
possibility of like, you know, Luther was a nominalist, for
example. And instead of thinking that we
can just understand the structure of nature by
reflecting on the structure of our own reason, which is kind of
like one way of understanding what Aristotle was doing.
If, if, if we reject Platonic realism and that there is a
structure of forms that's shaping the natural world, we

(53:53):
actually have to go out as the more empiricist method would
suggest and look and see how nature is organized, because
it's a contingent order. It's not a rationally necessary
order imposed from the realm of forms or something, right.
And so they're, they're all these.
It would, it would take hours tofully unpack all the nuances
there. But this shift away from

(54:13):
Aristotle towards more nominalist views that Luther
ushered in, drawing on Occam andstuff, I think really does open
the door to modern science. But the the irony is nominalism,
when Occam and others were beginning to articulate that was
actually a defense of divine power.

(54:34):
They didn't want God to be subject to the logical structure
of of the Platonic forms. They wanted God to be so
powerful that God can make 1 + 1= 7 if God felt like it.
And So what started as a defenseof divine power ended up being
utilized by this new scientific materialist point of view to say
all we know are the particulars of nature.

(54:55):
And then any, any what we calleduniversals in the past are just
generalizations derived from ourexperience of many particulars
that are similar. You know, so all these
interesting shifts which occur that the genealogical method
allows us to track. And one more parallel I'll point
out is this, you know, monotheistic obsession with the

(55:18):
one God who has power over everything leads right into the
scientific obsession with the one truth that rules over
everything. And science is the only way of
knowing that truth. And so that type of materialist
fundamentalism follows directly from this monotheistic
theological fundamentalism, right?

(55:39):
Science believes that there's one truth that holds over the
entirety of the universe, and that science is privileged
access to that truth as an inheritance of this monotheistic
religious belief. I would say right, There's a
parallel there, so. And also that God is a law
giver, so the laws of the universe must be constant,
right? And this is what weigh heads.
And for him, Hume actually questioned, of course.

(56:00):
And there's also another little aspect of the genealogical
method here about, about the Reformation process and
reformation, which is that the Puritans who really pushed that
reformation, they wanted to get rid of all traces of paganism
from medieval Christianity and alot of that.
I mean, so Aristotelianism was considered paganism, of course,

(56:20):
but also animist. You know, native European
anonymous thought was also kind of pure, you know, filtered away
from Christianity. And that's what you left with.
You left with a dead unconsciousmaterial universe.
But then, you know, opposed to that, you have the human soul.
And for Deca it was only humans who had souls and minds, you

(56:43):
know, and then you had that extreme dualism.
But you can even before Deca andGalileo, as Matt was intimated,
you can see it in yeah, political, religious, social
movements, which were, you know,political because they were
about, you know, authority, authorities, governments and
what whatever, you know what not.

(57:04):
The reason that Spinoza was suppressed to such a high extent
was because he questioned religious authority and about
who wrote the the Old Testament or the first five books, The Old
Testament and, you know, was basically suppressed for 100
years, excommunicated by his fellow Jews, books banned by the
church. And these were really for
political reasons. But now that the church kind of

(57:25):
ostensibly lost power and the state has taken over, things
begin to shift. But of course, the state has.
I mean, really, you can make thecase that, you know, secular
Western societies, really Christianity, but it's it's
hiding its real origins. And that's the whole purpose of
Nietzsche's claim that God is dead.
You know, if you don't believe in this Christian God, then

(57:46):
you've got no right to these stretches.
Anyway. Perhaps we're straying too far
into politics now, but it's all interrelated, you know?
You guys have already sort of bridged philosophies.
I mean you you both show where you guys slightly disagree
perhaps with the religious aspect of it all, but complement
each other in many ways. Are there any other ways you
guys see perhaps mature Whiteheadian process thought or

(58:10):
Peter's psychedelic inspired philosophy?
He's a niche in Spinoza philosophy.
Will you guys complement each other more, or perhaps challenge
each other more? Well, you, Peter, you were
saying absolute monism is more where you tend to, to ally
yourself. Whereas I, I think you know
Whitehead in process, in reality, when he's talking about

(58:33):
Spinoza and live Nets, he says I'm, I'm with Leibniz on the
question of pluralism versus monism.
So Whitehead affirms ontologicalpluralism as against Spinoza's
monism because he thinks monism necessarily leads to
determinism. Whereas his account of pluralism

(58:53):
isn't the same as Leibniz's monads, which are windowless and
enclosed and and and have no real relations to one another.
Whitehead says his actual occasions are they enter into
prehensive relationships with others with one another.
Prehension being his technical term for feeling causal

(59:17):
transmission, you could say. And so for Whitehead, the
plurality that constitutes reality is an ongoing,
open-ended creative advance where every every moment, every
occasion of experience is the entire universe recapitulating
itself, the many becoming one and being increased by one.

(59:39):
As he says, that's what the process of congressence is all
about. And so it's, you know, they'll
lose in Guatere somewhere. Maybe it's in what is
philosophy. They say, look, we're all
searching for that secret formula which allows us to see
how monism equals pluralism. So maybe this isn't really a
conflict, but it struck out. It stuck out to me when you were

(01:00:01):
defending monism a moment ago. I guess so.
I mean you're certainly it's different from Spinoza's monism,
which I don't fully accept. But no, yeah, you're right.
I mean, I suppose I'd say this, that you know, Spino Wahid also
did say that you can, if you understand Spinoza's substance
as his process, then he's in accord with Spinoza.
But I do agree that he's more Leibnizian generally.
Not with the pre established harmony of course, and things

(01:00:22):
like this, but if you take, you know, in way of creativity is
the highest tenet really above God himself.
You know, if you take that as the the kind of primary dare say
substance, then he isn't honest in that sense.
So a lot of these questions, I mean, I don't disagree with
anything you said. So I think a lot of these
disagreements quite often are about terms used, you know, so

(01:00:44):
you use one uses a term in different ways and then you
think you disagree with people. But I don't think we do
essentially disagree on that point.
I'm, I think prehensions and Whitehead is the, are the
greatest contribution to modern philosophy in modern times.
Really, this notion of, you know, the, the outer in the past
becoming part of the presence. But probably we do to describe

(01:01:07):
an ethical theory. I think actually, so I'm I'm
probably more Nietzschean based and I'm generally a bit more
relativist than absolutist with regard to that.
Much like Spinoza was as well I suppose.
Absolute relativist as as were. Not not that far.
But you know, I, I don't know, Ithink perhaps that's a point of
point of difference, but it doesn't really pertain that much
to metaphysics. Well, maybe it does, but other,

(01:01:30):
I mean, you know, I'd say generally Devin that Matt and I
are pretty much on the same page.
Maybe he's he's at the top and I'm at the bottom or left and
right, whatever. But you know, there's not much
difference between us really. And I suppose that's why we know
each other, right? Yeah.
No, it's the the type of differences between our thought
is I enjoy having a beer or two and then surfacing what those

(01:01:53):
differences might be. It's really fun and interesting
and fruitful to explore differences that that you and I
might have philosophically because their generative
differences. And I think, you know,
philosophy for me is not about getting everyone to agree.
That's kind of boring. And, and so I've always enjoyed

(01:02:17):
debating physicalist and materialist and duelist and so
on. But the problem in that in that
case is that very often my own position gets totally dismissed
as absurd or whatever. And the good thing about being
friends with someone like Peter is that we can take each other's
position seriously enough to really engage, you know?
So that's what it's all about for me.

(01:02:38):
I think at this point it's important to mention the fact
that that's the point of this conference is to sort of bring
these concepts and these terms. Peter, you were discussing the
fact that you have such similar views, but there's a terminology
issue and that's the point. We need to discuss these, bring
them to the forefront, allow people to understand it, Which
brings me to this question, how do we communicate these paradigm

(01:02:59):
shifting ideas without them being dismissed as mere
mysticism? Both of you could answer this.
Matt, feel free to start. Well, I mean, I think we first
of all can defend mysticism as alegitimate way of knowing.

(01:03:20):
It's not the only way of knowing.
And we wouldn't want to base a philosophy entirely on a
mystical experience or even on the whole history of mystical
experiences. But at the same time, you know,
if, if you're, if you read William James's Varieties of
Religious Experience, there's a lot of, I think that's a, that's

(01:03:41):
a catalog of evidence. As James said, you know, we, we
could never be closed with our account of reality until we've
really examined all of the different modes of consciousness
that are available to us. And mysticism is one of the
modes, one of the lenses that wecan look through to understand
reality. And I think we should take it
very seriously. And so just to say, you know,

(01:04:03):
first of all, let's not dismiss mysticism, but we can also, I
think, justify our views that would take us beyond materialism
and and physicalism on scientific grounds and logical
grounds. There's a lot of new paradigm

(01:04:23):
science being done. You know, Michael Levin's work,
for example, showing how geneticreductionism is just completely
inadequate to the empirical evidence coming out of his lab.
And so it's it's and in, you know, in physics has been in a
paradigmatic crisis for 100 years with where the two most

(01:04:46):
successful theories, relativity and quantum theory, just they
don't know how they fit together.
And so, you know, there are a lot of reasons to begin to
question this idea that somehow physicalism has closed accounts
with reality that don't require us, you know, dropping acid and
and having a grand mystical experience.
You don't even need to go there at all to be skeptical that

(01:05:09):
physicalism is the best account of the scientific evidence.
But one thing I want to add, though, is I, you know, maybe
another difference between Spinoza and Whitehead.
Spinoza, you know, wrote his ethics in this geometrical way,
trying to really prove his position step by step as one

(01:05:30):
would articulate A mathematical proof.
And I think that's compelling, but I would say it's compelling
as a as a rhetorical move. It's not.
You can't actually prove metaphysics as you would prove a
mathematical theorem. And Whitehead makes the point
that mathematics is valuable, and useful as it has been to
philosophers has also really misled philosophers because they

(01:05:54):
got the wrong sense of what the philosophical and the
metaphysical aim is, which is not to arrive at some definitive
proof. Whitehead says philosophy is not
deduction, you know, contrary tothe method Spinoza was
deploying. Philosophy is the search for
premises and the search for premises requires us to be open

(01:06:17):
to these intuitive insights to the full, again, the full suite
of human experience can allow usto feel like a certain premise
is justified. But then we have to test that
premise. Yeah, through deductions,
seeing. Well, what implications does it
lead to and does that produce any absurdities?

(01:06:37):
And we have to to test our philosophical premises
experientially. Is this adequate to, you know,
the, the various facets of humanexperience or does it end up,
well, mystifying aspects of our experience where we we can't
explain it if those are our premises, For example, the hard
problem of consciousness, if mind and matter are these two
entirely different sorts of things as a premise that's going

(01:06:58):
to lead to some problems down the road that might require we
back up and unask that question or dissolve that premise.
Right. So metaphysics is not about
proof. In other words, I think we're
we're really looking for something more like an adequate
interpretation that that's what metaphysics is seeking.
We shouldn't imagine that we would ever have some, you know,

(01:07:23):
final argument to to rule them all that's going to allow us to
just be finished with metaphysics of.
Course Hegel, you know, tried tomove Spinozaism onwards by
saying, OK, let's like try to find these premises, these
axioms, you know, imminently in an imminent dialectic, you know,
which was very influential, influential Marks and later

(01:07:46):
human history, of course. But yeah, no, I agree that, you
know, we get, you know, if you think about the word proof, what
does it mean? You know, it's like you don't
use the mathematical proof is not or logical proof is not the
same thing as empirical proof, right?
I mean, they're very different forms.
And history doesn't use proof asbiology does, for example,
right? So what does metaphysics
require? I mean, other, other

(01:08:08):
methodologies, right? For instance, explanation,
parsimony and so on and so forth, where one could even
question, of course, logical presuppositions.
And interesting thing is that certain states of experience can
question, you know, laws of contradiction and so on and so
forth. Yeah, absolutely.

(01:08:29):
But yeah, yeah. Well, what's the next question?
What was your question? Oh, yes.
How to how to, how to move it forward.
That's right. Yeah.
Well, I think that I, I also respect mysticism in many ways.
But of course, mysticism, as I, as I point out to a lot of

(01:08:49):
people, mysticism is not metaphysics.
Metaphysics seeks, maybe it doesn't achieve as we are saying
now with axioms, but metaphysicsat least seeks to offer some
kind of explanation as to a certain belief or Stan's
position or something like this,you know, using reason and
experience and whatnot, genealogical methods, etcetera,

(01:09:11):
etcetera. So that's one thing.
And also I think it's very important to get the message out
as you ask, to just make people realise that physicalism is, as
I repeat myself now, but physicalism is a metaphysical
position. I think generally I come across
this view that physical, you know, there's metaphysics and
then there's, you know, like just standard materialism.

(01:09:32):
I don't believe in metaphysics. I'm just just believe in matter,
right? That is just an avoiding the
problem, right? Because materialism is 111
theory within metaphysics. Also, I notice other difference
here between America and Europe.I think America, as I understand
it, metaphysics is kind of in the new age bookshelf or

(01:09:54):
something like this. Whereas in Europe and Britain at
least, it's, it's like, you know, a dry academic logical
subject that we teach with, you know, teaching stuff about
causation, modality and so on, so forth, right.
So there's that. There's slightly cultural
connotations that differ. So just pointing out that
metaphysics is actually, you know, from Aristotle's book, The
Metaphysics, that's where the word comes from, is a dry,

(01:10:16):
boring subject. No, it's not boring.
It's very interesting, but it's,it's demanding, right?
It's a disciplined science itself.
You know, science in the sort ofin the sense of business shafts,
you know, the sort of, you know,methodological study.
So that's one way to point out again, people's metaphysical
biases and say that, you know, you can't have a, what was that

(01:10:36):
great quote quotation from Wait,heads late.
If you don't go into metaphysics, you assume an
uncritical metaphysics, right? I think that came out recently
in the Harvard lectures, didn't it?
So just pointing this out, just constantly pointing this out.
There's no neutral default position here, right?
As you know, Tevin, because of the old podcasts, you know,
people think there's just the default position, but there

(01:10:57):
isn't. Nothing is neutral.
Nothing is not problematic. We just want to problematise all
of this and offer alternatives. And perhaps, you know, when we
speak when, when in the in the conferences, people from all
types of disciplines, plant biology, AI for E cognition and
so on so forth, you know, speak to each other, you know, like

(01:11:19):
common commonalities will will appear as well as differences.
And we can really sort of, you know, debate these out, you
know, see, see, you know, like move the move the conversation
forward and you know, how to bring it out to people.
Well, I think, you know, podcasts like like this Tevin, a
documentary perhaps, or documentaries and so on and so

(01:11:41):
forth. Something at once.
Sorry, Matt. Continue.
Well, I mean, I just was thinking on, you know, Peter was
talking about this cultural difference between America and
the UK when it comes to metaphysics.
I've been to Glastonbury. You know you guys have your own
New Age spiritual metaphysical tradition going on there too.
But we don't, we don't call it metaphysics, though.

(01:12:02):
You see, that's the difference, right?
We would call that spiritualism or spirituality or or whatever.
Sure. OK, OK.
Yeah. I think we have it for sure.
I mean, I live in West westernmost Cornwall in Britain
here. I mean, you know, the Cornwall
is known as it's like a Christmas.
This is an old adage. It's almost like Christmas
stocking. All the nuts go to the end, as I
said. Got.

(01:12:24):
A huge collection of neo pagans,witches, Wizards and all types,
right? So certainly, certainly that
that's an aspect of Europe. I didn't.
What I really meant to say was that the word metaphysics is
generally not used within those circles.
Yeah, I think that's, well as assomeone from South Africa, it's
we're very imbued with historically British or European

(01:12:47):
colonized. So at, at this country's
fundamentally very British thinking.
So we're kind of in the middle because we're very much
influenced by the US, but also imbued with culture from from
Europe. And, and I find it is quite what
what Peter's saying is is sort of accurate, but perhaps too
simplified. Yeah.

(01:13:08):
I mean, you know, certainly it'strue of California.
I think in East Coast like New York City, intellectual cultures
more European than say what's going on in Northern California
in terms of how people understand metaphysics.
But but yeah, point taken. Well, does this before we go
back to the conference and to Minded Lodge project.

(01:13:30):
Peter, you just touched on documentaries, the podcasts like
these and what we're going to dowith the future.
But let's first touch on 2 concepts before we move on.
One being MIND and AI. How do both of you view
artificial intelligence in the framework of mind at large?
Do you see AI as a new kind of mind or just an extension of
ours? Shall I start?

(01:13:53):
Well, a few things. AIFAIFAI or robots or computers
can be conscious. That's a form of consciousness
outside the human brain. So it's kind of extracranial.
And that's why it'd be interesting to speak about these
things. However, one asks then, and this
is the fundamental question I suppose, what are the sufficient

(01:14:13):
and necessary conditions for consciousness, right.
And once you know that, then youcan apply that to plants and
bacteria and and AI, of course, but AI presents different
problems really from plants because plants and fungi,
whatever their self to a certainextent, self-contained
organisms. Whereas, you know, when you ask
a question to AI, you'll get an it will go to the Internet and

(01:14:34):
go to a cloud and and reply. So you don't have the
self-contained physical units atleast, you know, so it
complicates, certainly complicates the issue.
I personally am, I must say, undetermined about the question
whether AI can be conscious. I was speaking to Bernard Carr,
you know, the physicist about itif you a couple of months ago.
And if you, if you take a Buxonian exogenous theory of

(01:14:58):
mind, so you know that the brainreceives rather than generates
consciousness, then you know, it's conceivable of course, that
you could create some kind of mechanism which could receive,
right. So that would be a type of AI
consciousness. But that's if you accept that
exogenous theory of mind in the 1st place, which has got a lot
of problems. I think we've certainly moved on
from the Turing test to, you know, to say that, you know,

(01:15:19):
something's conscious if it can pass, if one can't determined
whether it's a human or not. I think this is based on logical
behaviourism in the 1950s from Turing, you know, and no one
really, not many, hardly anyone believes that anymore.
But I do notice in AI circles, Daniel Dennett is a huge
influence still. And in philosophical circles
he's kind of, you know, he's respected, but kind of, I feel

(01:15:41):
like we've moved on from his wayof thinking.
But it's quite, I was at an AI conference in Exeter a few weeks
ago and one does notice these assumptions being made, you
know, and, and there's historical reasons for that,
that John Searle, who just died,spoke about.
But I, I'm interested to, you know, debate this.

(01:16:03):
Like I say, I'm personally on the fence with this and.
Do you do you find that these AIconferences are just
philosophically uninformed? Yeah.
So I, I mean, my role was just to get set out the standard, you
know, like the difference between simulating consciousness
and instantiating consciousness,you know, just the, the, the,

(01:16:27):
the Chinese room, you know, thought experiment and so on and
so forth. Yeah.
So there are, there are a lot ofassumptions there because of
course people who are specialists in AI can't be
specialists in philosophy might understand that.
But there's see again, a great role here to play with
philosophy and and the development of AI and the social

(01:16:48):
ramifications of AI which will prob which are manifesting
regardless of the truth of the instantiation of consciousness.
So really fascinating and reallydangerous.
A lot of it, you know, really like some of the things I heard
some of the talks. It's quite worrying, but
fascinating nonetheless. Yeah, well, in, as a an

(01:17:09):
experientialist, I, I, I can't rule out that there might be
artificial forms of consciousness at some point.
But at present, large language models, I'm pretty sure cannot,
are not and cannot be conscious or even intelligent in any
meaningful sense of the term. These are information

(01:17:31):
processors. And the thing about, you know,
say Claude Shannon's understanding of information is
he sort of brackets the sender and the receiver and just looks
at the message as a in a syntactical way without meaning
because meaning comes from the sender and the receiver.
In other words, human beings arein the loop.
And so when a large language model spits out something, we

(01:17:53):
understand its meaning. The information processing going
on in the computer itself, completely meaningless.
There's no intelligence happening, no understanding.
This is Searles Chinese room argument, right?
Then there's certainly no consciousness there.
And I've found that, you know, as a philosopher of religion who
has some understanding of, you know, some of these ancient

(01:18:15):
myths of, of in the Kabbalah of the Golem, I mean, there's Mary
Shelley's Frankenstein. And we have, we have this, this
and demonology and the occult and all of this.
My background and all of that stuff helps me understand what
some of these Silicon Valley computer engineers are are
getting on about, where it's becoming a religious phenomenon

(01:18:35):
for them. And these AI systems are being
treated like gods. And all the sudden demonology,
which might have seemed superstitious, is being drawn
from by computer engineers to make sense of what they think
they're doing. And again, I'm open enough to

(01:18:57):
some of that stuff, you know, the occult orientation to think
that, OK, if the brain is in some kind of a receiver, then
maybe there is a way in which anadvanced information processing
system could, could be a sort ofreceiver for some alien
intelligence that would then have a body and access to this

(01:19:20):
dimension through that system. You know, I don't know,
something weird like that. We might be in a universe that's
as weird as that. But I think at present I have
seen no evidence in machine learning and large language
model technologies of anything that could in principle become
conscious. I think that's just
fundamentally confused to imagine that a digital computer

(01:19:46):
could achieve that. And you know, there's so many
interesting things to explore inregards to the nature of human
intelligence in the ways that it's always already been
artificial, in the sense that human beings have needed
external tools to think in the abstract ways that we do think
from. The first stone tools through
the whole history of media technologies, written language,

(01:20:08):
alphabets, you know, our our brains have always been
augmented by these external tools that that extend our
memory. I mean, you know, if you,
there's so many parallels between people worried about the
effects of large language modelson human cognition today to what

(01:20:29):
Plato was saying about the alphabet over 2000 years ago,
right? All the damage is going to do to
our memory and our capacity to think for ourselves and so on.
So this isn't a new problem, butI think there's a lot of hype
and philosophy has never been more important to help us avoid
falling prey to that hype and allowing the PR and advertising

(01:20:54):
approaches of these big AI companies to distract us from
the real technical limitations and, and, and philosophical
limitations of these technologies.
The whole idea of conscious machines and artificial general
intelligence, that's an advertising campaign.

(01:21:15):
The the AI systems themselves are powerful and interesting and
useful, but they're not conscious and they can't be
conscious. That's.
My my view it's not the current architecture.
Before we before I move on to Peter, what would you say?
Where do you think the humans, sorry non human minds come from

(01:21:37):
in terms of plants, fungi or other alien like species?
How does it fit within your framework?
Well, I mean, I think the the cosmos is an ecosystem from top
to bottom. And as Whitehead argued, physics
is the study of the smaller organisms.

(01:21:57):
And so you know, there there areatomic minds and photonic and
electronic minds, little minds, different, very different kinds
of minds from what we think of as the human mind.
And so every self organizing system in nature is
experiential, has a perspective,right?

(01:22:18):
And in some sense, from a white Hedian point of view, reality is
made of perspectives of various kinds, and many of those
perspectives are nested so that you can build up richer
perspectives from simpler perspectives.
In the sense that, you know, my more or less unified
consciousness is made-up of billions of cells.

(01:22:41):
Somehow the combination problem is, is solved by our biology.
And so whether or not we can think clearly about how that
combination problem is solved, we know that in fact, it is, you
know, because the, the sentienceof cells somehow does achieve A

(01:23:02):
synthesis into the sentience of a whole animal.
So, yeah, I mean, I, I think we live in a the whole universe can
be understood as an ecology of organisms, each with its own
peculiar form of sentience. And the human being is, you
know, unique in some senses, butin another sense, we are one

(01:23:23):
member of this much larger community of, of, of organisms.
You know, what are your thoughtson that?
Other minds, and perhaps even altered minds.
Well, again, you know, I'm a Whiteheadian, so I didn't really
disagree with that. My PhD was on panpsychism, so

(01:23:45):
pretty much in accord. Just kind of quickly about the
AI thing though, that's, I thinkthat the sort of an issue that
won't be solved or the hardest issue here really is to
determine whether AI were a robot and certainly not the
current LLMS, but in the future some kind of robotic device

(01:24:06):
achieves consciousness. The problem is how to determine
that. And William James actually wrote
about this, I think 100 years ago or so, calling it an
electronic suite house, I think something like this.
But how you know, and, and essentially John sells issue as
well, you know, like even if youhad a robot which cried and
said, listen, I insisted, look, say I love you, why do you not

(01:24:27):
believe me? And this is true love, you know,
and and so on that all of that could be fake, just like an
actor would do it. And, and this comes back to the
methodology with regard to consciousness, you know, and the
problem of other minds. Essentially, you know, it seems
that these questions can't be empirically validated, falsified
or verified. So how then do we determine it?

(01:24:47):
Are we at the level whereby we cannot determine it?
Will this always just remain a question or are there some kinds
of solutions to this apart from just inference, best
explanation, so on, so forth? You know, these are fully open
questions and that's why I don'twant to say absolute yes or no
to, you know, the question of robot consciousness
consciousness. But they are extremely difficult

(01:25:10):
questions and they sort of demand a new, a new form of
science, really a new form of methodology.
Yeah, forward. Yeah, I mean, I've been to a
couple of AI conferences lately as well, Peter.
And one of the things that I gotclued into by being part of

(01:25:30):
those conversations is the the concern about false positives,
which is to say, more and more people are imagining that their
particular instance of ChatGPT or Cloud or whatever, that
they've woken it up by a unique form of prompting, right?
And so might not be the ChatGPT as such is conscious, but their

(01:25:52):
particular instance of it, they think is conscious.
And as, you know, robotics advances, we're going to have
more and more cases of that sortof thing where people are going
to want to defend their AI that they've formed this relationship
with as a sentient being that deserves rights.

(01:26:13):
And different societies and and individuals are going to come
down on different sides of that question.
And while I again, think that the particular form of
artificial intelligence that is popular nowadays, large language
models and whatnot, I don't see that as an Ave. to conscious
machines. I can see various forms of
Cyborg, you know, architecture where there's some living tissue

(01:26:36):
versus with with silicone and microchips like, yeah, all bets
are off when you start to mix the biological tissue in with
with these machines. So what the future holds, I
can't say. And as a, again, a pan
experientialist, I have to be open to this possibility.
I just don't see it happening with these stochastic parrots as

(01:26:56):
there's. Some well, I think I'm in
agreement with that. Also, another whole factor here
is transhumanism. You know, it's out of political
dimension to all as well, which it stems partly from from
Nietzsche. When I was in California a few
months ago, I was near Silicon Valley.
And these people, I remember a woman asked in the audience like
#1 what is consciousness? And #2 should we prohibit the

(01:27:19):
system we've just created from insisting it is conscious, You
know? And so I sort of replied to her
that, you know, gave her the classic philosophy man spiel
about what consciousness is, which gives a Tempest for but
but her colleague said, no, If it says it's conscious, then it
is conscious, you know, that's that's good enough.

(01:27:40):
And of course it's not good enough.
But I mean, if people believe this is going to change the
society regardless of the truth,you know, And so this is a whole
other aspect of it as well, you know?
Yeah, but The thing is that eliminated materialists would
say that we human beings say we're conscious, but that's
really not true. So like these issues, they cut
both ways. But if there's no consciousness,

(01:28:00):
like the logical behaviors, thenof course, yeah, they know they
are equivalent to us in terms ofconsciousness or non
consciousness. Yeah.
So again, this question really comes back to fundamental
metaphysical beliefs. You know, that's what determines
this is again the underlying implicit undercurrent that
determines more surface beliefs such as this.

(01:28:21):
And, and again, to bring it backto the focus here, this is what
our conference conferences are about.
You know these underlying default metaphysical metaphysics
and mind positions that go unchallenged quite often.
Peter. Peter.
Aside from that overarching theme of just trying to
highlight the fact that every position is technically a

(01:28:43):
metaphysical position, physicalism is not the default
point, standing point which. So in terms of interdisciplinary
impact, which fields do you believe stand to get in the most
from this project and these conferences?
Well, you know, I do think, I mean, obviously I'd say

(01:29:04):
philosophy first and foremost, perhaps.
I think neuroscience actually has a lot to gain from this.
And I'll tell you why a lot. I know many neuroscientists now
I work with them. There's many involved in
psychedelic research here in Britain and Europe and America.
And when you speak to something,you know, in the pub and
whatever, they're not actually, they're not many of them are

(01:29:26):
physicalists, you know, materialists, you know, in their
in their articles. This is a kind of assumption,
but when you really question question them, they're like,
well, maybe maybe some kind of monism is more over it likely or
whatever. When you question them about
mental causation, then then thenit will falls apart as well.
I think that if you change metaphysical underlying beliefs,

(01:29:49):
you could potentially change neuroscientific experiments,
right? So here's an example of
something analogous, epigenetics, founded in large
part by Charles Waddington. It came about as a science
because what Waddington, as he writes in his autobiography, was
very much influenced by Whitehead's metaphysics.

(01:30:11):
This actually changed the direction of his experiments,
which then lead to epigenetics, which before that was
considered, you know, from a NeoDarwinist point of view, heresy,
you know, even 20 years ago probably, right.
I think the same in neuroscience, right?
So what we're proposing here is not at all anti scientific or
anti neuroscientific. It's just questioning the

(01:30:33):
underlying metaphysics of of much of neuroscience.
Jake Juan Kim, you know, the philosopher mind said that the
general working hypothesis of neuroscientists today, and this
was a few, you know, a decade ago was methodological
epiphenomenalism, right? It's just the assumed
metaphysics. If you if you challenge that,

(01:30:54):
you might see other kinds of neuroscientific experiments.
For example, at the moment we'reonly scanning brains, you know,
in relation to consciousness. Why not scan the whole body?
Why not try to see correlations there at least, you know, for a
start, for example, or are thereways of neuroscientifically
testing huge, you know, very varied metaphysical theories?

(01:31:18):
So, for example, Bergson's theory that the brains of
receiver rather than generator of consciousness, can this not
be in some way, you know, empirically tested perhaps, You
know, maybe the different hypotheses will have different
predictions about outcomes, right.
So that would be, I'm not sayingthis will happen, but that would
be, I think, a very productive way in which metaphysics could

(01:31:39):
change the movement of science. Just as metaphysics now is
coming into therapy. I think it now demands itself in
other fields like that. Maybe I'm just saying
Euroscience because I'm in psychedelic research fields, but
I think at least that's one discipline which will benefit
from it. Yeah.

(01:32:02):
Which fields do you think will be impacted most by this by this
project? Philosophy, religious studies,
hopefully all the natural sciences.
I think it touches everything. And you know, as Peter is
pointing out, the the the extentto which we can notice certain

(01:32:24):
salient facts that would be considered evidence for a view,
it really depends on the theoretical framework we bring
to our observations. And so a limited theoretical
framework that rules out in advance that consciousness might
be realized outside the brain, outside the skull, then of

(01:32:44):
course you're not going to notice any evidence for that
position. And so people often think that,
you know, this idea that in neuroscience that the mind is
produced by the brain, that that's a scientific discovery or
something. No, that's not.
That's a paradigmatic assumptionthat shapes the research before
they've even found anything out about the, you know, there's no

(01:33:07):
theory of how the brain can produce consciousness that I've
seen in terms of an actual mechanism.
And so metaphysics allows us to back up and recognize that there
are certain paradigmatic assumptions that have been, I
would say holding back the sciences and neuroscience in
particular, all of the availableneuroscientific evidence,

(01:33:29):
including all of the brain scansis just as compatible with the
receiver theory as the producer theory, right?
There's the whole discipline of,of parapsychology and, and side
research where because materialism has, you know, ruled

(01:33:51):
over academia for so long, therehaven't, there hasn't been much
experimentation done and, or much, much research funding
directed towards looking at, youknow, things like telepathy and
remote viewing and and psychokinesis and all these
things. They're just dismissed as well.
That's not possible. So why would we research it?
But the research that has been done suggests that there's

(01:34:14):
something there that needs to belooked at that's inconsistent
with the usual materialist picture.
And so I think if we can open the door to getting more
intelligent minds and more research funding in areas like
PSI, that could really change, change things.

(01:34:35):
And, you know, one of the thingsthat I love about Whitehead's
metaphysics is that if he's right, telepathy is happening
all the time. We're just mostly unconscious of
it. And so rather than it being
parapsychological, it's just normal psychology if you change
your metaphysics, right? And so I think we can really

(01:34:58):
move the ball forward here if this project is successful.
And we're not the only ones who are trying to do this work, but
we want to contribute to a larger push that would just
expand the conversation and allow us to really be scientific

(01:35:20):
and, and ask questions that havebeen forbidden by the priesthood
of materialism, right? We need a, we need in a sense,
another Protestant Reformation against the, the Church of
materialism. That's that's part of what we're
up to here. I think the sheer amount of
topics we covered in this in this conversation thus far
highlights the interdisciplinaryimpact it already makes.

(01:35:43):
When you guys spoke about evolutionary biology, physics,
neuroscience, psychology, parapsychology, philosophy,
ecology, this is such a wide-ranging impact and it's at
some point has to have some sortof a global relevance.
So Peter, what do you think? How do you think these ideas
resonate with these contemporarycrises that we have?
Ecological collapse, technological acceleration,

(01:36:05):
spiritual hunger, for example, is a big part of why we have
these conversations. I mean a huge question, but you
know, it's all, it's all very much interrelated.
I mean, the ecological crisis, for example, I think is partly
due to seeing nature as having any instrumental rather than
intrinsic value, which is a kindof metaphysics.
Again, you know, that you don't attribute A consciousness to,

(01:36:29):
you know, natural, natural entities, plants, whatnot.
So and that was actually the base of deep ecology from
Ananes. You know, he's used Spinoza to
try and change our approach and attitudes to the environment,
you know, not on a practical technological level, but on a
deeper metaphysical level that we that we see nature in a

(01:36:49):
different way. So this is one way in which we
can we push deeper ecology. Deeper ecology I see as part of,
you know, fits nicely into this whole project.
And Matt has already spoken about the meaning crisis.
I mentioned herself European crisis.
I do believe that there's a caseto be made.
Now, I don't think I'm quite as sort of antagonistic against

(01:37:10):
materialism as Matt is, perhaps.But I would say that there is a
case to be made that materialismitself as an underlying implicit
belief system that has underlined the Western mind for
the last 300 years can maybe is perhaps a factor of mental
health decline, you know, depression, meaninglessness,

(01:37:33):
nihilism, essentially. So.
And also I should say that I do believe that ethics is very, in
most cases, theoristical ethics is based on metaphysics as well.
You know, if you want to really substantiate your view, you have
to go into deep metaphysics. And, and so changing that
underlying current, changing thedirection of its flow to a

(01:37:54):
certain extent should have, you know, I'm not saying that this,
these three years will do this, but it should like begin to kind
of move, move. This is under current in, in a,
in a direction that has perhaps been pointing in the wrong
direction for a few 100 years now.
I mean, you can trace this back,I think again very much to the

(01:38:17):
Reformation and then Cartesianism.
And well, there are a number of events, you know, that that
contribute to this. But this is the hope, you know,
a rational logical redirection of implicit metaphysical
undercurrents. Beth, what do you think about
the global relevance and how this project is going to help?

(01:38:42):
Well, you know, for most of human history on every
continent, the default worldviewwas some form of animism.
And it's only in the last few 100 years in the Western modern
world that this strange idea that all of consciousness and

(01:39:03):
all meaning in the universe is again sequestered inside human
heads. That's that's the anomalous
view, That's the the odd perspective that I think future
anthropologists will look back and say, wow, that was a very
strange tribe of, you know, western people that had that

(01:39:25):
bizarre view about the whole universe as a machine or
something. And so, you know, I think in
terms of the global impact, we're trying to to de
provincialize in some sense, Western academic science and
philosophy to come back into touch with again with the rest

(01:39:45):
of the world for the majority ofhuman history has believed.
But I think, you know, so much of the the issues that our
contemporary, you know, modern civilization is faced with, I
think stem from a overly pessimistic view of the place of
consciousness in the universe. You know, the anthropologist and

(01:40:09):
philosopher Ernest Becker talkedabout the denial of death as a
crucial source of different. Cultural coping mechanisms I
mean, he kind of thought all culture was a coping mechanism
to figure out ways of not havingto face our mortality and and

(01:40:30):
make meaning in the face of death.
And I think we all do need to confront death, but
metaphysically speaking, none ofus knows what happens when we
die. And the dominant Christian view
for, you know, a few thousand years in the West was what, you
die and you go to heaven or you go to hell or you get lodged in
purgatory unless you buy an indulgence, which is what upset

(01:40:53):
Luther so much. And so there's this one life,
you know, and there was this kind of escapist mentality in
the act. We want to believe the right
thing, so we go to heaven when we die.
But that is an anomalous view aswell.
Most cultures, I think, believe in some form of reincarnation,
actually. And even early church fathers
like Origin thought that reincarnation was a thing and

(01:41:15):
was compatible with Christianity, as did Pythagoras
before Christianity. You know, it was at the ancient
Greeks thought that there was some form of, of reincarnation.
And so I think in terms of the rampant consumerism, the meaning
crisis, this idea that if consciousness is just limited to

(01:41:35):
the, to the brain, that when we die, it all just goes black and
it's as if we never existed. There's a kind of pervasive
sense of nihilism. And I know, you know, Peter has
a maybe different reading of, ofnihilism as a generator of new
values perhaps. And I think we do need to face
this, this nothingness at the core of modern culture and not

(01:41:57):
turn away from it and and paced over it with, you know, wish
fulfilment and fantasy. But I think if we if we had a
more expanded view of consciousness, we could take
seriously something like reincarnation.
I think it opens up whole new possibilities for the deep
structure, the deep motivationalstructure of our civilization,
which, you know, we need, as Whitehead says, as we think we

(01:42:21):
live, right, the ideas that we entertain shape our
civilization. And right now the lowest common
denominator of, of value is consumer capitalism and profit
and money. And that's leading us in some
very dark and, and dangerous directions, ecological

(01:42:45):
devastation, the social fragmentation, alienation and so
on. And so I think that this
expanded view of consciousness really does have the potential
to ripple out and affect cultural life and, and provide
people with deeper sources of meaning that could, you know,
shift our entire civilization off of the, I would say this

(01:43:06):
track it's currently on towards our own extinction and many
other species besides, towards maybe a more positive direction.
Yeah. And I, I think I'm super excited
to be part of this as well because mind and Lodge's mission
overall conference vision alignsvery much with that of mind body
solution. If if I look at it, I feel like

(01:43:27):
I'm the most materialist slash physicalist leading person in
this conversation because when Iwrote my dissertation was on
illusionism as a theory of consciousness.
But after starting this podcast and experiencing this for the
last five years, exactly what you want to come out of this
conference has happened to be personally.
I mean, you start off very much doubting everyone else's views

(01:43:47):
and it's the more you expand your mind, the more you expose
yourself to all these different theories of consciousness.
You're able to really understandthe way philosophy is done if
someone's got a logical frame ofthinking, if they metaphysical
view is coherent enough and it'svalid enough for you to pay
attention, That's exactly what you want.
And you're able to give that so much more credence because of
the flow, the natural state of the argument.

(01:44:09):
And I think that's primarily what the focus is here for
people to understand that these metaphysical positions are all
on the table. And the problem is, is when
someone just dismisses it merelyout of query mysticism, quote UN
quote or or just pure lack of understanding the the field in
itself. So if if you guys are to close

(01:44:31):
off a round of your future vision for mind at large, the
field of consciousness, the project itself, Matt, perhaps
you could start and then Peter, you could close us off.
Well, yeah. I mean, in in let's say five
years, the five year plan after these, this series of
conferences that I would like tosee manifest would just be that

(01:44:53):
we're able to have a different kind of conversation.
Not that we're all going to agree on what the the
alternative to materialism or physicalism is, but that we
would be able to have a more fruitful dialogue about the
alternatives and work out in detail whether it's idealism,

(01:45:17):
panpsychism, you know, some other position we haven't even
thought of yet. Work out the details so that we
could not just be critical of materialism, but have a viable
alternative that's asking questions that we can get
answers to. And, you know, I didn't know you
wrote your dissertation on illusionism.
And I, I had a really lovely conversation with Keith Frankish

(01:45:40):
where I realized we actually have a lot more in common, you
know, And so maybe I would hope them that the people who are
currently identified as a materialist of one form or
another could be part of this conversation too.
And they have important insightsto bring to the table and in

(01:46:00):
many ways are catalytic of this whole thing.
Because if they weren't making good arguments, then we would
have not needed to have this conference, you know, so.
Yeah, I have a colleague, ExeterAdam Toon, who's also an
illusionist of sorts. And when, when we had a
conversation, I mean, there's a lot of overlap.
You know, you sort of read things into books, but you have

(01:46:21):
proper conversation. You realise that's not all
completely nuts after all. Whatever side, right?
My, my, my. I suppose my hope and my view of
the next few years is that, yeah, you know, I just, you
know, I teach false remind to psychology students.
They've only been looked at psychology, you know, factory

(01:46:42):
analysis, you know, data and statistics and what and whatnot.
Presenting options to them as I do there really, really changes
people. You know, it really can have an
effect on people when you just show them that there are other
views other than physicalism anddualism.
They are not completely nuts. They're not religious or

(01:47:03):
mystical or whatever you want tocall it, right?
They are actually very cohesive logical positions.
Then then that opens up a lot ofminds who think, well, we need
that, you know, to like talk about it.
So that's the hope just to open people's minds to different
rational positions. When I say rational, I don't
mean excluding the non rational,but you know, certainly showing

(01:47:27):
that there are rational other positions.
And thus, you know, the effect of that then would be hopefully,
as we sort of showed, spoke about changing the trajectory of
certain scientific experiments. Also something Matt touched on

(01:47:47):
which you never really got into is funding.
You know, like if you to get funding, you need to be a sort
of legit, you need to offer something legitimate in there in
the eyes of the funders. And at the moment a lot of
these, you know, like idealism, for example, or as psychism,
it's not seen as a legitimate position in which to place a lot
of money, right? If you if you make the point

(01:48:09):
that actually is at least equally legitimate to other
underlying hypothesis, then you're more likely to get that
funding, of course. And then we progress because a
lot of these experiments requirea lot of money, you know?
So that's my hope, I suppose. And and I, you know, I'm not
saying we're going to change, change the world, but we're just
going to sort of like give it a little, little nudge, you know?

(01:48:31):
Yeah. Look, Matt, just by the way on
what you said, the when I wrote my dissertation, this was back
in 2021, Keith was actually a big part of it.
We spoke about it for quite sometime, but I'd come out of mid
school so fundamentally materialist thinker, physicalist
with with very little philosophy, philosophy training.
So not much of A philosophical background.
But that goes to what you guys are trying to say.

(01:48:52):
Because the moment you do explore this, because when I did
my philosophy degree, started the podcast, started interacting
with all these great thinkers. That's exactly what happens is
that you're you're forced to then question your own reality.
You're forced to question your own view.
And that's primarily what this podcast is about is to do that,
challenge it and to continue to explore great work just like

(01:49:14):
your your work for both of you are excellent philosophers,
great professors. And I think this conference is
going to be one that these set of conferences will be one that
will be unforgettable. Thank you so much for joining
me. This is going to be some
exciting stuff and I can't wait to be there.
Thanks for being part of it, Tevin.
Yeah. Thank you, Tevin.
And you're an excellent host. I mean, I've always admired the

(01:49:36):
way that you're very clear. You've got excellent questions,
but you're also really diplomatic to all point of view.
So thanks for that and we're really happy to have you on
board here. Thank you.
Now it's my pleasure gentlemen, if is there anything about the
conference or minded lodge you feel you haven't said that you'd
like to close off on or make clear?

(01:49:57):
Updates on the website that we can link people to.
Yeah, Mind at large project.com Mind at.
Large project.com. I'll put links to everything
below. Yeah, gentlemen, thank you.
This was wonderful. Thank you man.

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