The Meaning Crisis, Process Cosmology & Whitehead's Universe | Mind-at-Large Project - Mind-Body Solution

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(00:08):
Andrew, thank you so much for joining me in this Mind Body
Solution special series in collaboration with the Mind at
Large project. Super stoked to have you on the
show today. How you feeling?
I'm feeling great, Devin. I've been looking forward to
this and appreciate all your good work and happy to be
continuing this conversation about the Mind at Large project,
which is something we're really excited about actually.

(00:29):
So I know we'll we'll get into that when you're ready.
I will. On that note, let's just dive
right in for those who are new to your work, Andrew, what is
mind at Large and both the concept and the project?
And how does process philosophy open up space for a mind at
large view of reality? Absolutely.

(00:50):
Yeah. Well, the Mind at Large label,
that framing comes from Huxley and even Berkson, right?
This notion of a mind that is not simply restricted to finite
minds, minds like yours and mine, but a mind that could be
all inclusive in some way. A mind that could be, could be
cosmic. The Mind at Large project is a
playful expansion of that label into a three-year academic

(01:14):
conference series. And this is an endeavour that
the Center for Process Studies where I work is partnering with
the University of Exeter. Peter Soschke Hughes.
We spoke with recently Matthew Segol of the California
Institute for Integral Studies, Ellie Ventiades of the American
University of Greece and severalothers are collaborating to
bring together a host of different thinkers to

(01:37):
essentially retell the story of mind, its omission from our
conceptual landscape in the modern world.
And now I think it's exciting return in in various forms.
So the Mind at large project names a three-year conference
series in which we're gonna be exploring essentially the nature
and character of mind from the, you know, finite firings of

(01:59):
actuality at the base of the quantum world through the the
ecological environment of which we're all apart.
And even up to the cosmic ecology, the the whole
cosmological landscape that we are so much a part of.
And so you brought in, you know,process philosophy.
So the founding team members as as you've discussed with them a
bit, is certainly informed by Whitehead's thought, informed by

(02:22):
process philosophy. And I'll just say as an aside,
you know, I'm in in love with Whitehead's thinking.
You know, I'll just admit to having a an intellectual crush
on his expansive vision. And Whitehead is a thinker that
pointed to the need for something like mind feeling,
interiority. He wouldn't say consciousness
per SE. That comes later.

(02:43):
But of course, that's a point wecan work out.
But mind is being fundamental inthe sense that there's no
situation in which mind is fullyomitted from the world.
We find ourselves as an expression of the world rather
than exception to it. And he emphasized a deep
continuity. So at least part of what this
conference series will do is explore the range of different

(03:05):
perspectives in what's called pan psychism or from the process
tradition, pan experientialism. So what it's thinking is process
thinking is a way of naming the way in which the very process of
reality is a process of experience building upon
experience and the dawning of contemplative heights found in
consciousness much later in the evolutionary scale.

(03:26):
But for him or a number of others, and psychism is a way of
of expressing a deep continuity and also deep meaning, right?
Our connection to this universe and not our disconnection from
it. So Whitehead's thought will
inform the Mind at Large project.
It'll not be confined to Whitehead's thought by any
means. So we anticipate bringing in

(03:48):
luminous thinkers from around the world who were working
across pan psychism, working across various forms of idealism
we see blooming out there. And we'll have some
countervailing voices too, who are, you know, skeptical of the
the extent of mind. But we want to regenerate the
story about mind's return after the fall of a more classical

(04:08):
materialistic perspective. And I just hope, you know,
everyone will stay in touch. Just listening.
We're very happy to have you, Tevin and Mind Body Solutions on
board. It'll be great to to meet you in
person. So I mean, that's a snapshot of
what's coming up over the next three years.
And I'll just say April 15th to the 17th is our date for the
first conference at the University of Exeter.

(04:30):
If folks go to mind@largeproject.com, we'll be
trying to keep that updated withall who's coming and different
ways to to get involved. So that's a broad overview of
what we're up to. I think it's a great way to open
up. You've covered so much in that
and I'm looking forward to it aswell.
And I can't wait to meet all youguys in person.
And, and this is going to be an exciting project.

(04:51):
It's, it's super stacked. There's so much to discuss.
Let's get straight into it. You've argued that materialism
or a physicalist view of the world is too restrictive to
explain consciousness and value.So let's sort of by discussing
what alternatives does process thought then offer us and why is
it a good alternative? Yeah, excellent.

(05:13):
Right. So I mean, it's it's no secret
that, you know, the mind body problem, right as we frame it,
is really a problem faced for a particular metaphysical
perspective. That perspective wife had called
it, you know, scientific materialism.
And this is the notion, the 17th, sixteen, 17th century
notion of matter as being a vacuous actuality.
So it's something that essentially in its nature and

(05:36):
character is immobile, it's dead, it's inert, it's only
externally related. And he and he essentially says,
if that's what the world is madeof and you are made of that,
then we face a problem as to howwe are conscious, experiencing
and above all valuing creatures.So I think, you know, this is a
perennial question, it's a long standing question for the

(05:57):
history of philosophy. And I think where Whitehead
begins, where the process tradition begins, is by stating
that we're anthropo, cosmic expressions of the nature and
character of things. I sort of hinted at this earlier
that what that means is that ourexperience, the internal
feeling, the qualia, the sensations of value, of meaning

(06:18):
that are present to consciousness are not just sort
of epiphenomenal byproducts. Our experience actually for
Whitehead is, is the most, the closest clue we have to what the
nature and character of things is like.
So at one sense that commits us to some form of pan
experientialism or pan psychism.And you know the distinctions

(06:39):
there is that process. Thinkers generally don't say
that consciousness extends all the way down in nature, but that
experience extends all the way down, a mode of prehension, as
Whitehead called it. So it's not apprehension or
comprehension, right, the sense of a conscious grasping of
things, but it nevertheless is amode of experiential feeling
that that goes all the way down and presumably all the way up,

(07:00):
right? We wouldn't want to necessarily
say that it pinnacles in the human being.
It has, the volume is turned up in an extraordinary way in us,
but there could be expressions of it far beyond us and maybe,
maybe we'll get to that. So, but having said that, it's
not pan psychism or pan experientialism in the process
tradition is not just a result of, you know, strategic

(07:21):
philosophizing from an armchair.We're a part of nature.
Therefore mind has to be a part of nature.
So it involves that there's a certain logical, you know,
continuity we have to face with we're faced with in being minds
in in nature. But Whitehead too, in the
process tradition, the mind at large group are very much
involved in the scientific worldas well.
So one thing we saw is that the death of materialism with the

(07:44):
quantum revolution opened up newspaces for seeing mind as
fundamental, seeing energy. I mean, what is what is energy?
This this ability to do this process, this becoming.
And for Whitehead, it's an abstraction from a more
fundamental becoming of events. And these events for him again,
are not events of nothing. They're events of something.
They're events of experience andeven a motive of intrinsic

(08:07):
value. So I mean, my work leverages all
of that or tries to in differentways, not only at the level of
finite minds, but also discussions of ultimacy, where
mind and where and value come together in very significant
ways. And just as a reminder to
everyone that any introduction to philosophy class, someone
takes all the philosophers you essentially study that are part

(08:31):
of a a basic intro to philosophy, They all held that
mind and or value had a place ofultimacy in the nature of
things. There's many contours, many
nuances involved there, but I think that's important to
emphasize because people often forget that we just think mind,
mind is a by product of purely physical processes.
The only problem is we've not inthe least solve how that can

(08:51):
actually happen, right? There's there's the problem how,
if the universe is dead, mindless, valueless, where and
how do we see the emergence of mind, value and consciousness?
We haven't solved that issue. And so this has caused a lot of
people, process thinkers, othersto say that these are a part of
the ontological primitives out of which the universe is made,

(09:12):
it's living, it's animate, it's minded, and it's striving after
possibilities of work. There's a lot I can, we can add
to that, but I'll, I'll pause soyou can, you know, jump on in.
You've touched on so many thingsthat I've got prepared to ask
you about that I'm prepared to ask you about.
But let let's take it step by step.
When when when we look at Whitehead's cosmology, how does

(09:34):
it connect with the mind at large projects aim of exploring
consciousness across scales fromquantum physics to ecosystems to
the cosmos. Perhaps.
Let's go through that because I think you one of your one of the
great features of your work is the way you you explain quite
complex concepts in a very easy to digest man.
And I think that's why I'm looking forward to this episode.
For anyone who watched the firstone, which is with Peter and

(09:56):
Matt, I think you'll be able to sort of give us a slight bit
more clarity on some of the concepts because that there were
a few comments when you when youread about it, because this is,
it's fundamentally a difficult thing for a typical materialist
thinker to grasp. And, and more often than not, if
there's zero training in philosophy, it's just deemed

(10:17):
crazy. Let's just be honest.
It sounds ridiculous, but if someone can explain it to them a
little better, I think it it goes a long way.
And that's precisely what the aim of this project is.
So, yeah. How does Whitey's cosmology then
connect us with this project in in greater?
Detail. Yeah, sure.
Well, and you mentioned, you know, the difficulty, the

(10:38):
language, not everybody is is reading this philosophy.
So it's important for philosophers to not just assume
that everyone knows what they'retalking about.
This is our besetting sin, by the way, We.
We do this all the time. I mentioned your Whitehead
writing at the turn of well, in light of the advance of a lot of
different sciences. So he was attuned particularly

(10:59):
to, to science to in the form ofphysics, evolutionary biology,
psychology, Physiology. He's quite keen on science being
essential to the philosophical endeavour.
It it, in other words, it offersan element of data that we
cannot ignore right. And there, and there's an
overall theme here. I think we don't want to miss
between science and philosophy. It's like these are different

(11:22):
disciplines, right? But they offer each other
something. So, you know, the, the, the sin
of the philosopher is that, you know, they're, they just sit in
their armchair, right? They're disconnected from the
data and just think lofty thoughts.
But they, the value that scienceoffers to philosophy is to, is
to keep them rooted to the data.But by the same token, if, if
science like, you know, and there's figures out here today

(11:43):
who, who always do this degrasseTyson or, you know, you've all
Noah Harari who actively sort ofdisparage philosophy as if, you
know, it's not needed or Hawking's comment, right?
Philosophy is philosophy is deadand it's silliness as far as I'm
concerned. But the value of philosophy to
science is to point out those unspoken presuppositions.
In fact, one of the the statements that Peter brought up

(12:06):
in part was that that Whitehead makes about scientists, and this
is from his Harvard lectures. He says, you know, every
scientist to preserve his reputation has to say he
disliked meta, dislikes metaphysics.
What he really means is he dislikes his metaphysics being
questioned. So the point of all that is to
say both the empirical data and the the probing of the

(12:28):
abstractions and and the assumptions of that data is
where philosophy and science cancome together.
And if we go back to this notionthat we're not separate from the
universe, this again I think offers us where forwards this a
place to start. So mine belongs to nature, as
long as we are a part of nature.And this again is something that

(12:49):
was overlooked, I think many times and different
philosophical views in the in the modern period that we've
been bifurcated or somehow abstracted.
It's a methodology, methodology that's important.
But again, if a methodology becomes a metaphysics, if we
forget to reintegrate ourselves as part and parcel of nature, as
exemplifications rather than exceptions to its nature, then

(13:09):
mine will remain anomalous to us.
So I think Whitehead reminds us through a radical empiricism
following James, that mentality experience is a product of
nature. It's as natural as trees,
rivers, and rain. And so we begin with that and
say that even from our experience, we have no
experience of vacuous dead matter.

(13:31):
Our whole experiential encounteris filtered through
consciousness. And so he reasons upward and
downward based upon our our factof continuity with nature.
And for him again, and people can probe this, you never find a
state where mind is irrelevant. In fact, the whole reason mind
is there is to allow for noveltyto enter the universe such that

(13:53):
if there were no minds, the universe would endlessly repeat
itself. So again, let me wrap it up by
just saying it's a process ontology because what he because
process is fundamental for him becoming.
It's the verb like nature of reality takes primacy over the
noun like nature of reality. But what is verbing, if you
want, is experiential states, not just vacuous dead stuff you

(14:17):
know? And so when you, when you reason
that forward, when you use it reason it backward, you find
that mind is primary in some sense and that evolution is
essentially evolving out of the functioning of mentality.
So does does that help a little bit?
I mean we can add more. I think Andrew something
important as well for for anyonewho has not read what it's work

(14:38):
and who don't know who he is, I think they should also know that
he was a mathematician and that lots of people forget about this
because his philosophy has grownso much at this point that they
forget this man, Bertrand Russell, the way they were
working and things. The Principia Mathematica, the
type of work he did in his earlier life versus the work he
did later on is very different, but he has the background to

(14:58):
sort of back it all up at the end.
Once he finally ties all these things together, he sort of
wraps it around into this uniquephilosophy that today you can
see is clearly on the rise. Anything you want to add about
that? No, I, I think you're, I think
you're right about that. So yeah, the first, you know,
his, his life is generally broken up into three scholarly
periods. But you're right, this this

(15:19):
mathematical phase is absolutelyprimary for him.
Initially working with Russell on Principia Mathematica, moving
into larger questions of the philosophy of science, physics,
philosophy of education is greatwork on, on education.
And then later in life when he comes to Harvard, yeah, 1924,
developing A systematic orientation towards the nature

(15:40):
of things. I'm at a physics respective
philosophy. So it's a kind of culmination of
his, of his work starting, you know, in, in the British
speaking world over to America. But absolutely, again, not just
an armchair philosopher, but somebody deeply entrenched in
the sciences and open to all modalities of human experience.
So this is again one of his big critiques of a scientific

(16:03):
perspective which omits to take adequate account of human
experience. We have the empirical
experience, but what about aesthetic experiences?
What about moral experiences? What about, you know, God
forbid, religious modes of experience?
So these are all elements of data, he thought, that have to
come into the metaphysical quest.
And his philosophy is, you know,philosophy of organisms trying

(16:25):
to account for those that range of experience in a way that's
coherent, adequate and and applicable.
Yeah, no, totally agree. I think I mean one of the things
I mean we discussed process philosophy in great detail.
The other thing is with these mathematics, it then develops A
relational ontology using it. I mean it's, it goes very deep
and and with that in mind value and cosmos, you develop a

(16:46):
relational ultimacy. Could you explain how value
itself maybe fundamental to reality?
Good. Yeah.
It's a great, great question. Yeah.
How much time do you have? No.
Well, so it's far back as we go again to Plato, but if we move
up through Platinus to Aristotle, to, you know,

(17:09):
Aquinas, Leibniz, Yeah. All these value has been a part
of the philosophical tradition, but it's not been obvious that
it stands on its own and it's not unproblematic, right?
So my work in Mindvalue Cosmos is really an exploration of the
notion of ultimacy conceived in terms of mind and or value.
So I, you know, speak about the Western philosophical tradition

(17:31):
in many ways being the axio noetic tradition, right?
Axio meaning value or worth the noetic or noetic coast meaning
mind. So this is a tradition wherein
mind and value have had this primary kind of place.
And so the reason I, I fell in love with value and, and I have
to credit Robert Kuhn on this too, because, you know, he, he
and I have been in discussions through John Leslie's work and

(17:52):
the, the notion that value can be a reason for being.
And we might define value as just a, a confrontation with
states of intrinsic work, right?States that are worthy in and of
themselves. And we think of notions like
truth or beauty or goodness as instantiations or modalities of
kind of value states. And so the reason I'm interested

(18:16):
in value is because I think value is one of those kinds of
things that can provide a kind of ultimate explanation if one
is interested in those. Now, admittedly, that's, you
know, more classical sort of interest metaphysically, and I'm
OK to be interested in that. But values, some of those things
where explanation stops, right? If something is good, right,

(18:36):
You've offered a reason for it'sbeing that doesn't require any
further sort of reasoning. And so in Mindvalley and Cosmos,
which is a really fun book, I changed some things about it.
You know, looking back, I tried to present a case for ultimacy
that wasn't based in one thing or reality as ultimate, nor even
many of them, but actually the way in which multiple domains,

(19:01):
domains of ultimacy require eachother.
So I playfully spoke of the relational nature of ultimacy
or, or, or ultimacy as relationality.
So here's where it gets fun though.
Because if one's willing to say that value is not simply
projected on the universe, but is announced to our experience
in some way, then we face all sorts of problems.

(19:21):
Like how can there be standards of value, possibilities of value
in the nature of things? Do they just, you know, float in
some metaphysical void? Would we want to say that?
And this is where mine comes in,right?
Because in our own experience, since we're expressions of the
universe are only access to the possible and possibilities of
value is through our mental apparatus, is through our

(19:44):
contemplation, through our evaluation.
But we know that there's possibilities that transcend us.
For example, our own actuality is an actualization of
possibilities that transcended us.
We didn't refigure our own possibilities.
So it's the womb of nature, in other words, holds infinite
potencies and not just vacuous possibilities.

(20:06):
I'd say there's no such thing. There's possibilities of.
Forms of order, forms of value, forms of truth, beauty, and
goodness, to use the standard terms.
And So what that book tried to do is bring together mind, value
in the cosmos, and their entanglement as the expression
of what is ultimate. So relationality is ultimate.
What mind gives to value, Value gives to mind.

(20:28):
And what God gives to the world,the world gives to God so that
it's not one thing that's ultimate.
It's looking at an entangled whole and naming that
relationality. Why did it call it mutual
imminence, right. The way in which there's a
reciprocity among domains of ultimacy, even hypothetically at
the level of of divinity. But you know, that takes it to a
region where some folks are a bit on unfamiliar or suspect.

(20:52):
Yeah, you mentioned there's a few things you'd change in the
book of you to rewrite it today.What?
What are those things and why? Yeah, great.
Well, so I mentioned this language of mutual imminence,
right? And one way I'll express that
relationship when it comes to like minded value from the from
the largest possible perspectiveis that it's not obvious that

(21:17):
value can do anything, right? If you just see value
abstracted, it's an abstract standard or an ethical
requirement, as John Leslie putsit.
So in this sense, value seems torequire the actuality of mind,
something concrete in and through which it can be realized
or enacted on the world, right. Think of the divine mind.
So Leslie has argued that, you know, God's existence is

(21:40):
reasoned by divine value. That value eternally procures
the existence of God and and theworld.
But it's hard to imagine value by itself doing that.
It's like saying, you know, 2 + 2 itself, 2 + 2 equaling
equaling 4. That abstract truth by itself
put 4 bucks in your pocket. Whereas we'd say we want to say
an agent or an actuality. An actuality did that.

(22:02):
So mutual imminence names the way in which mind requires value
and value requires mind, both ofthem together, that relationship
giving us a deeper insight into into ultimacy.
But I wonder about that now a bit.
Right. So you asked about what I
changed. Part of what I've appreciated of
Ian Mcgilchrist's work is this notion of asymmetry in relation.

(22:23):
So. So there can be things that are
equally necessary, but unequallyrelated in some way, right?
And I think at the level of value, this is this is quite
important. So like good and evil could be
inextricably related in certain sense, but but asymmetrically
related in the sense that good can include evil without

(22:45):
diminishing itself. But the reverse cannot be said
of of evil and good, right? So I, if I went back, I'd
probably take the notion of asymmetry a bit more seriously
and think I didn't really touch on it there.
But, you know, there's time for another book there.
You could also include a host ofother thinkers.
So I used John Leslie, Keith Ward Whitehead to think through
these questions of ultimacy. And I might, you know, expand

(23:08):
that to include various other voices.
Yeah, I think in the Gilchrist works.
Very enlightening. Highly recommended reading for
anyone. I've had him on the show and
he's he's such an excellent speaker.
You can really illuminate concepts in a way that's quite
rare at this point. But you, you just mentioned
something that follows up on exactly my next question, the
axiological asymmetry that you discussed.

(23:31):
How does this approach, how doesit help us approach the why
there is nothing rather than something mystery that the Mind
at Large project confronts? Very good.
Well, you said why there is nothing rather than something
else. I'd say why?
There's something rather than you want to reverse.
That Yeah. Good.
Yeah, great. Well, I just, I, I some, some

(23:54):
might argue there is nothing right.
Just a comment on the girl, Chris.
He's a good friend of mine, a good friend of ours.
I was just with him in Aspen. And, yeah, wonderful man doing
some great, great work. How does it help us?
Think of why there's anything? Because.
Because again, think of how if the look, if the foundations of

(24:15):
being were said to be evil, say,it would be rather hard to
account for the prevalence of good, right?
If there were sort of demonic drive, as it were, towards chaos
and destruction, it's hard to imagine why a world such as ours
would ever emerge. Because at least on Whitehead's

(24:36):
account, order is a fundamental conviction.
You have to have an order beforeyou have a world.
It's not as if you have a world that exhibits any random order,
he says. We have a world because we have
a more fundamental order, and that order is aesthetic, right?
So at the very least, there's aesthetic value at the
foundations of how of how there's a world.

(24:58):
But back to the evil good thing for a moment.
So if, if, if foundations of being are in some sense evil,
it's hard to explain how there could be so much good.
But I think the reverse is not necessarily the case, right?
And this is that asymmetry. So good and evil, if you want to
use those terms, require each other, but they're unequally
related in the sense that goodness can include evil
without being diminished, whereas if evil includes good,

(25:20):
it's extinguished, right. And I think this is so
important. So this allows us at One Ave.
you know, I'm not saying the mind at Large group would agree
with this. Peter and I have our, you know,
arguments about value. But if goodness is at the
foundation of being, it can include evil within itself.
So you know it's. It's as if.

(25:41):
It fulfills itself in doing so right.
Or love and hate right for something about these, the
entanglement of these values, they require each other.
Love and hate seem to be relatedat one level, but love fulfills
itself by including its opposite.
Hate destroys itself by including its opposite.
And so if we're trying to make sense of a world where there's
hate in a world where there's evil, right, I don't think it's

(26:05):
the right solution is to locate those at the ground, the ground
of it all. I think a certain richness of
value can be the reason for their being, even if there are
instances of their opposites which take precedence.
Again, that's a arguably, you could, you know, bring that back
to Plato's idea that that the good is that which procures

(26:26):
being, but is itself beyond being, you know, and then that
evolves through Aristotle, through Platinus, and through
the whole Western Christian largely tradition.
I even think you find it in Whitehead, right, who says in
some sense God's existence is founded on value and that God's
nature is limited by goodness, right.
So here's a interesting claim that to be good is to be is to

(26:49):
not be evil in some way. It's to be limited at an
ultimate sort of axiological level.
Now, again, that's Speaking of God be different.
When we think about us, we're we're a whole complicated mix of
these value domains, I think. Yeah, I think you brought this
up now by bringing up Peter, you, you guys have some
differences in thought and and that should be the case.

(27:10):
And that's exactly the point of this, these discussions, because
we've got many panelists who have certain views drawing a lot
in panpsychism, idealism. You mentioned that we'll try and
get other people who have alternate views so that that we
can have some good discussions. But I think at this point it
would be great to highlight somedifferences that you might have
with some of the other panels. Peter, Matt, anything in
particular you could you could discuss with us where you guys

(27:32):
differ, where your views might align or diverge?
Because I think that's the greatway for people watching or
listening to realize that this isn't just a group of guys
getting together to try and sellyou a price, some sort of a
this, because that's that's always at the back of someone's
mind. What are these guys trying to
sell? I mean, what's going on?
Let's try and show people that there are differences.
A very big ones perhaps sometimes, but ultimately it it

(27:54):
all leads to us trying to do onething specifically, and that is
question metaphysics, all metaphysics.
And and that's just the primary goal here, I think ultimately.
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, right.
We're not just trying to get youto drink the, you know, our
particular flavor of metaphysical kool-aid.
So we really want a critical andrational and a committed

(28:16):
endeavour to to think through these different ways in which
mind is returning when mind returns, but value also returns
in some way. So again, I would say that we're
not. Where there's mind, there is the
announcement of value as well. Like again, Max Schaller, right,
the German phenomenologist, and again, Ian, Ian Mcgilchrist
bringing this up a lot. Value announces itself to

(28:38):
consciousness. It announces itself to
experience. Why?
It says that the primary glimmerings of consciousness
reveal something that matters. It says have a care here is
something that matters, right? So the mattering of things not
simply matter. The world is made of meaning as
opposed to simply that matter. Now the Mind at Large team,
again, we share a lot of affinities and love for

(29:01):
Whitehead's thought, for processthinking, for, you know, German
idealism and for a lot of these different perspectives.
But yeah, we have our nuances ofdifference.
So I think the biggest one between Peter and I would be
this whole question of of a value in axiology.
So, you know, he has a Nietzschean interpretation of
Whitehead, which I've critiqued a little bit in a in a recent

(29:21):
article in Process Studies on whether or not Whitehead Scott
is good. But at a more general
philosophical level, I'm still trying to figure out what his
claim of value is. So he claims to be a relativist
in some way. Now relativity of value I'm
quite fine with, right? People disagree all the time

(29:42):
about what is good, what is bad,what is ugly, what is not.
But that there's a difference between them is an assumption we
inevitably bring to our experience and to to the data.
So I don't think it's possible to be a moral or an axiological
relativist. I think, I think value is a
metaphysical question, and I think Peter has all the
scaffolding to include value in a robust sense, but he's still

(30:06):
too hesitant in my perspective. But that's an ongoing, ongoing
discussion. Now.
Matt and I share a lot in common.
I'd say Matt is not as value centric as I am, although he's
more value centric than Peter. I think Matt has more of a
spiritual and religious inclination, Peter less so, and
I think I'm probably aligned with Matt on that, if not a bit

(30:29):
more so on the spiritual and kind of religious side, although
I think Matt is a great religious and spiritual thinker
as well. None of that is required.
You know, people don't be interested in that.
To come and enjoy this conference is to hear from
potentially Christophe Cock or Bernardo Castrop or Phillip
Goff, you know, colleagues of ours who are again offering mind
centric mind primary proposals. It just so happens that value is

(30:53):
also part of this conversation. And if one's willing to admit
the reality of value and its possibility as in some sense
transcending our actualization, then that becomes a natural
place to look for as to why there's anything now.
Wyatt doesn't think there was a time when there's nothing,
right? He didn't ask the question of
Heidegger or Leibniz, right? So between something and

(31:14):
nothing, there's becoming, right?
Existence is activity ever moving into the future.
So as far as he's concerned, there was not a time when, you
know, nothing was the reigning default.
So we don't ask the question, you know, how do we get from
nothing to something that's that's problematic?
That's the the ontological question for him.
It's the cosmological question. So it's not Heidegger or
Leibnitz, it's Aristotle and Plato.

(31:36):
It's the emergence of a certain dominant order that is aesthetic
in nature, right. So again, an order being deeper
than the world itself, order being an aesthetic reality, and
the with the world itself emerging from layers of
aesthetic order upon aesthetic order at a very high level, of
which Whitehead thinks is the dawning of moral intuition, the

(31:57):
dawning of moral value. So, and this is the point Peter
and I argue about too, aestheticvalue is the widest and deepest
form of value. And some want to say Whitehead
simply reducing moral value to aesthetic value.
I don't think so. I think he's locating moral
value across the continuum of evolutionary experience, a
continuum of evolutionary value.Electrons can't be moral or

(32:21):
immoral, but they're instantiations of aesthetic
harmony, right? Moral dawning.
Moral consciousness emerges later when we can actively
discriminate past, peasant and future, and in the way in which
our actions further the progressof the world in some way.
So again, we don't all agree. And, you know, as you can
imagine, when we have our pints,we have a lot of fun just

(32:43):
discussing these issues. But they're wonderful guys.
Yeah, I love them. They're wonderful philosophers.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to oneof those discussions when we get
together because all those namesyou mentioned, Christophe Coch,
Bernardo Castro, Philip Goff, I mean, I've had all of them on
the show. Ian Mcgulcris, you spoke with
Robin Roberts. He's he's such a kind guy.
If you send him an e-mail with alengthy paper you need him to

(33:04):
read, go through, he's he's one of those people who reply
instantly. But there's one of those people
on that whole list we just mentioned there who I wish I
could interview one more time. And I probably will in the
future and most likely even partof this project is Ian
Mcgulcris, because when I had a time with you, it was it was
many years ago at this point. At the time, my knowledge of
this was quite, quite, very superficial.

(33:26):
I still think it is quite superficial.
Couldn't go compared to many of you guys.
But there's so many questions I know that I would ask him now
that would be so much more fruitful to the discussion.
And, and that's the beauty of projects like this is it's an
opportunity for us to explore this even further and, and sort
of get done into the nitty gritty.
You just briefly touched on the anaesthetic, sorry.

(33:47):
And and anatheistic worth. Let's, let's, let's touch on
that a bit a bit more. So you write about panentheism
and then it's anatheistic worth.How does panentheism advance the
mind at large? Discussion of God, cosmos, and
and thereafter we'll take it to consciousness as well.
Awesome. Yeah, Well, well, wonderful

(34:09):
question. And just again a comment on the
Gilchrist. We hope to get him involved
actually in this project, if notin person, then certainly
online. But yeah, I I agree, his thought
is just amazing. And he draws quite a bit on, on
the process tradition, not not just Whitehead, but many others.
But he's a deep appreciator of Whitehead and of course,
Heraclitus says the ancient founder out of process thinking.

(34:32):
So panantheism or it's close cousin pantheism, right?
And one of the big debates out there today is how to demarcate
these positions. It's tough to do.
There's a lot of nuances, nuances at play, but both
theism, pantheism, panentheism, there's other, you know, forms
of theism are definitely a part of this mind at large project

(34:56):
when we begin to elevate or risethe status of mind to its
highest kind of level, as it were, its highest altitude.
So these are ways of framing theGod world relationship.
And the notion of anotheism comes from Richard Kearney,
anotheism all that means Anna, the prefix antheism is the

(35:17):
returning to God. And Richard Kearney has a great
book called Returning to God after God, and anotheism is his
way of expressing that. So pantheism, I think, is a is a
fruitful theological model, a fruitful anotheistic model, to
the extent that it's offering a way to reconceive the reality of
God in the world in a way that doesn't arguably have the

(35:42):
deficiencies of theism on the one hand and pantheism on the
other. So at least as traditionally
understood, you know, pantheism means all or everything is God,
whereas theism means simply simply God as distinct from or
in no need of the world. So at the etymological level,
pan empty ISM tries to hold on to the respective strengths of

(36:04):
both these positions, the absolute eminence of pantheism,
the transcendence of theism in away in which the world is
internal to God and God is internal to the world.
So at a popular spiritual level,and I have a book series on this
called How I Found God and Everyone and Everywhere, people
are beginning to be more attracted to pan and theistic

(36:24):
conceptions precisely because itallows for a deeper way of
returning to God after God, right?
God is dead. Nietzsche says, yes, but the
death of one God doesn't mean all conceptions of God has died,
right? Atheism.
This is the value of atheism, right?
It's a, it's a, a riding of those idolatrous forms that are
obviously false. But but atheism is not the next

(36:46):
best solution once one discussion of God has died,
right? Because there's as many
conceptions of God as there are,you know, you know, forms of
atheism, you know. So I just think panentheism
emerges as a way of integrating imminence and transcendence in
the science religion discussion.It's become very important.
In the discussion of theodicy and the problem of evil, it's

(37:06):
become an important discussion. And even in discussions of
religious pluralism and interreligious dialogue,
panentheism becomes a, a model that's anatheistic, that allows
people to avoid the difficultiesof other more arguably extreme
positions. It's a mediating sort of
position. But again, these require nuances

(37:28):
because folks have to define things in relation to other
positions and and pantheism itself is not all that simple.
Peter just wrote a great articleon it.
Nor is theism all that simple. So we have to be careful about
charactering these positions andoffering and offering new
models. Yeah.
And one of the distinctive themes in your work is exo life

(37:49):
or astrology. And if life exists beyond Earth,
how does that expand the minded large vision of consciousness in
the cosmos? Wonderful question.
Yeah. Exo theology, EXO philosophy.
This is a really energetic fieldright now.

(38:10):
There's a lot of really cool work being done in it.
Where I like to begin is to say that we are, or let's assume
that there are, there's at leastone other mental perspective
elsewhere in the universe. If we assume the truth of that
for the moment, then we are extraterrestrial life, right?
We are ET on this planet and we're an example of the kind of

(38:32):
dimensions that are embodied in extraterrestrial life.
So again, what I would say in the, in the context of the
process tradition is that mind or experience is a part of the
ingredients of evolution, right?It's a part of the, it's a part
of the ontology again, because let's remember, vacuous dead
matter dissolve the Newtonian Cartesian conception of matter

(38:55):
dissolved into something much more fluid by hypothesis.
The fluidity of that energy is mental processes is mental
experience, at least for Whitehead.
So at one level, if mind is in the ontology, then there's
absolutely mind beyond Earth, right?
In some sense, evolution of the,the advancing rise of evolution

(39:15):
is turning the volume up on mentality.
And not just that, but those qualities that come along with
mentality, the capacity for realizing value or enjoying
value, the the ability to entertain, to evaluate possible.
So in some sense I think the universe is about the evolution
of mind and we haven't figured out the relationship between

(39:38):
mind and life, right? I, I am rather keen to say that
just as there's a hard problem of mind, there's a hard problem
of life, and that these are in amany ways related to each other.
My thinking at this point is to say that mind and life are sort
of mutual expressions of each other in some way, right?
So that where there is mind there is also an attendant form

(40:01):
of life in a sort of bio psychic.
Ontology, that's Evan Thompson'sterm, right, where life and mind
Co arrives together. And so assuming that's in the
ontology, then we should expect that where conditions are ripe,
there are infinitudes of other minds.

(40:22):
We, we, we know this about our own planet in some sense.
Michael Levin speaks about the mind blindness, right, of of
modern culture, of modern philosophy.
We should expect there to be infinitudes, I'd say, of other
populated worlds. That's not by any means a
stretch of the imagination. It's like, you know, we need to
stretch it beyond that. We need not be the only minds

(40:43):
nor the highest pinnacle of mine.
Mind is not just a human thing, right?
We have a particular expression of mind and life in human
beings, in hope Homo sapiens. But these categories, these
possibilities preceded us. They're deep and their range of
expression elsewhere is, is perhaps beyond our imagination

(41:03):
to conceive now where that connects.
So that's all Exo philosophy in some way, in some way reasoning
about the status of mind value in life beyond Earth.
I have an upcoming volume on Exoaxiology, which again is taking
that value discussion beyond Earth, right.
All the debates we have about value theory here and in a
principle be extended beyond as well.

(41:26):
And the last thing I'll say is exotheology or Astro theology is
a very interesting field as well.
This is the theological side of my thought.
We've always wondered about, youknow, whether or not the divine
reality procures one world or many.
And So what would it mean internal to religious traditions
or not, whether God, as it were,seeks out many worlds?

(41:50):
Plenitude, Augustine called it, right, Multiplicity, Whitehead
called it. So all of that comes into play
in this whole EXO discussion. I have another book or two in me
on the topic. Eventually I'll try to try to
get to it, but it's very, very exciting.
It's the cosmological dimension of all this.

(42:10):
Touching on that cosmological notion, when what role do you
see psychedelics or extraordinary states of
consciousness playing a role in testing or even inspiring
process cosmology? Do they hint at dimensions of
minded logic? Yeah, it's a great question.
I don't have as much experience with psychedelics as Matt or
Peter, right? So I have a sort of somewhat of

(42:32):
a distance from it. Although, you know, the more I
hang around Peter, that might change.
God, listen. Let's Andrea just just to also
just adjust that question a little.
It's it's more about psychedelicor extraordinary states of
experience. So this could be anything more
of extraordinary conscious states, whether religious or
slow states, high on LSD, any ofthem.

(42:55):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I, I just think again to
go back to when we're experiencing, it's not just
we're, we're not just internal to our own subjective
experience. In a sense we are.
But what Whitehead says again isthat what you're experiencing
there is a clue about the way inwhich nature is the way in which
it works. So the fact that we can have

(43:16):
these extraordinary experiences again, yeah, as you say,
mediated by, you know, substances or randomness of
mysticism or flow states, you know, John Verbaki, another
friend of ours, you know, doing good work in that regard.
All of these are clues about thedeeper depth of mind that is

(43:36):
behind, if you want, normal waking states.
So in here, I think it's worthwhile to bring up
Whitehead's big critique of epistemology in modern
philosophy. So he critiqued, you know,
Russell and Hume even caught to some extent for assuming that
our dominant mode of perception is through the senses, what we

(43:58):
hear, you know, what we see, what we taste, our sensory
modalities. And it's no wonder that a lot of
things get, you know, sort of ignored if the only way of
knowing and perceiving the worldis through our senses.
So why did critiques that and say it's it's up, it's the wrong
side up. He wants to invert it and say
that there's a deeper mode of causal relatedness.

(44:19):
He calls it causal efficacy. It's experiential, but it's non
conscious, right? And he gives examples of it.
So he says, for example, when Hume says that we see with our
eyes, isn't he assuming a whole causal efficacy of our bodies
relatedness right through the viscera of our eyes such that we
can see 'cause when you see, youdon't see your eyes, you see you

(44:42):
with them, right? When you taste, you don't taste
your tongue, I hope not, right? You taste with it.
So what this suggests for Whitehead is that there's a
whole inheritance below the conscious level, right?
If we think of conscious waking experience through our senses as
the tip of the iceberg, there's a base, there's a depth that the

(45:02):
iceberg, there's also a part of the iceberg.
And So what this means is that there's far more experiential
possibilities than simply sent conscious sense perception
allows for, right. What else is in that world below
the iceberg, You know, infinitudes of Platonic like
forms, you know, other entities or beings, the reality of God in

(45:25):
some way. And is it the case that
sometimes those realities that were related to in an
unconscious way sometimes rise to consciousness?
Is that what a religious experience is?
So why did says we started from the wrong side up?
Not all experience is is sensoryexperience just a moment ago,
right When you hear it, we hear it, our moment that is

(45:47):
continuous with this moment. Now memory is not a a a motive
proceeding through our senses, right, If it's another sense of
non sensory perception. So all that comes into play.
I think that's one of the most important contributions
Whitehead makes. It's it's there in his book
symbolism, it's meaning and effect.
It's small but very powerful. It's there in process, in

(46:09):
reality, but that experience happens first at a non century
level and through the miraculousnature of our body, it's
channelled into the cohesiveness, the clarity of our
sense perceptions. Whitehead calls the body at a
complex amplifier, right? So it turns the volume up of
these more primal feelings into the clarity of our sense
perceptions. But we make a mistake if we

(46:30):
think that those waking sense perceptions are all there is,
right. And I think what helps us show
that that's a mistake are these forms of exceptional experience,
whether psychedelics, near deathexperience, mystical forms of
experience or what have you. There's a deeper story that can
be told that mind and our relatedness to mind,
consciousness and unconsciousness, I mean, these

(46:51):
are interplaying and we didn't just need the modern, you know,
psychoanalysis to tell us that so.
Yeah, I think stay in line with these different states of
experience or consciousness. Let's talk about AI and
artificial consciousness. Could a process relational
framework provide better tools than behaviorist benchmarks for

(47:13):
evaluating machine consciousness?
Yeah, it's it's such a great question.
And again, thinking about your discussion with Matt and Peter,
Peter seems a bit more open right to to AI taking on a
conscious form. Matt less so I think I side with
more Mat on this, although we have to qualify and say in an

(47:36):
ontology where experience is fundamental, we can't
categorically rule out that machines will become conscious
in some way. I follow Mcgilchrist in this
too, right? He, he says what we're dealing
with is artificial information processing, not artificial
intelligence, right? It's one thing to simulate, you

(47:57):
know, intelligence in these machines, but others would say
we're not simulating, we're simply trying to emulate it.
These distinctions are very important because again, the AI
discussion as wonderful and profound as it is raising all
sorts of questions. If we're not careful, we will we
will return back to a more mechanical like framework,
right? And the reality is that the vast

(48:20):
things in the universe are are not machines, but organic in
nature. They're prehensive.
Again, the feeling tones of relatedness that is fundamental
to Whitehead's universe. So I think process thinking,
there's more work needs to be done.
Frankly, not a lot of work has been done in terms of process
metaphysics and AII remain skeptical that we can leverage a

(48:45):
pan experientialist or panpsychist ontology into the
reality of real conscious machines.
I mean, how do I know your consciousness?
We still, you're conscious. We still face the problem of
other minds. This is not really going away.
We face it with our biological companions, right.
I think it remains in terms of of machines as well.

(49:06):
So I, I feel a bit, I have some tension in my spirit about it.
I'll put it that way. And more and more work needs to
be done. But I'm, yeah, I'm rather rather
skeptical of the the pseudo religious nature of the quest
for, you know, thinking machinesor at least consciousness,
right? Yeah, if if.
OK, so if you had to consider conscious as not a brain bound

(49:32):
entity but rather relational, how should we think about things
like ecology and planetary mind in relation to the current
current issues that we have going on with our climate and
and plants? Yeah, great.
It's certainly the case that oneof the metaphysical dimensions

(49:56):
that is exacerbated the ecological crisis has been this
notion that nature is at its fundamental level, dead,
vacuous, inert. That's Bacon can be summarized,
right? We can master and control her
right for her secrets. So this is a a portrait of
nature that is instrumentally valuable but not intrinsically

(50:17):
valuable. So again, to get back to some of
our earlier conversation, I think that where there is mind,
there is also value. And again to bring up Whitehead,
value pervades nature in some sense because experience
pervades nature, right? So where there is experience,
there are states of value presented, appreciated by that
form of experience. Now he would say that even at

(50:39):
the most the fundamental level of ontology, we don't have to go
that low, even though I would argue that that's, you know,
plausible. But when you think about a plant
life or other animals, right, you can't just cut into them and
find mechanical parts as Descartes suggested, right?
This is somewhat anathema, but it really makes a difference how
you understand status of mind and value with respect to the

(51:01):
ecological situation. So I think this is part of the
reason why it had thought process thinking has been at the
foundations of ecotheology on the one hand.
So John Cobb wrote a wonderful book, Is it Too Late?
A Theology of Ecology, 1972 or three.
This started the whole ecotheological movement.
Around the same time Whitehead sought was being adopted at a

(51:23):
philosophical level in a environmental philosophy as
well. So, you know, this notion that
experience, sentience, value arepart and partial of one another
and are in some sense pervasive of nature has tremendous
repercussions for how we treat nature.
You know, we cannot see nature as simply something that is
instrumentally valuable. We have to, we're obligated to

(51:45):
treat intrinsic value in the waythat it requires.
That's what we require of ourselves.
And again, we're not separate from nature, right?
So you're experiencing, valuing expressions of, you know,
extraordinary order and harmony that doesn't pop out of nowhere,
right? There's no magic in metaphysics,
but it's not for magic in metaphysics.
With James, with Bergson, there's a deep continuity that

(52:07):
extends behind and below us. And if that's the case, we're in
a world of mindedness and minds deserve, deserve certain
obligations with when it comes to treatment at a moral level.
So all that's being rethought now, of course there's debates
between deep ecologists and process thinkers about, you

(52:29):
know, whether everything is equally valuable in the same way
or whether there's hierarchies or gradations of value which
then impact our treatment and what is owed to other species.
But if you were to take that even higher because you asked
about planetary forms of consciousness, we were just an
Exeter for a plasma cosmology conference suggested by a number

(52:51):
of people there, that plasma mayexhibit a form of life and
intelligence that's non organic,that's not non biological in a
sense, but nevertheless sentient.
Is the sun conscious, right, As Rupert Sheldrick has argued,
Michael Levin has suggested this, Attila Grande Pierre,
others in the process tradition,or as Whitehead said, perhaps

(53:13):
the nebular sentient entities, right.
So just how wide are we willing to imaginably conceive the
extent of mind, life and sentience?
I think in the kind of frameworkthat we're discussing here, you
know, we have to be careful, butI think imagination has to be a
part of it. And we don't know.
We don't know. But the idea that it stops with

(53:33):
us or emerges randomly from a, you know, a dead universe
previously is, is totally incoherent in my perspective.
You, you've touched on this indirectly and directly in many
ways, but I think it's it's great for me to still ask you.
The problem of evil is central to your work, your theological
work, let's say. But how would you express how

(53:55):
this view of yours helps us to reframe things like suffering,
meaning and value in new, fruitful ways?
Yeah, yeah. So there's a sort of theological
and just more the philosophical side of that discussion.
I mean, at one level, suffering is is not something that is

(54:19):
purely the domain of of human beings, right?
We again, it sounds ridiculous to say this, but this was not
the general perspective that animals could suffer, right.
So in one sense, we face the problem of where there are
minds, right? There could potentially also be
modes of suffering too. I don't wanna, you know,
anthropomorphize too much. Again, trying to avoid that

(54:40):
because again, I think mind is not just a human concept for
Whitehead. So again, anthropocosmic versus
anthropocentric, this is these distinctions are very, very
important. Creatures can suffer, perhaps
not like us, right? Do it.
Can amoeba suffer? I'm not sure, you know, they
have some sort of emotional satisfaction, but it's not like

(55:03):
ours by any means. But the idea that suffering goes
all the way down, I'd have to think about that a bit further.
That would that would only exacerbate the the Odyssey
question, right? In some way.
So, but if at a basic level, we are compelled to take suffering
serious, simply beyond us, right?

(55:25):
We see ecosystems suffer, right?This is a form of collective
suffering. You know, we don't know if if
there's an awareness of that suffering per SE or a tree is
not actively aware per SE like we are, doesn't have the kind
of, you know, unified coordination that would allow
for experience like us. But but we know there's damage
that can be caused. We know that species can go

(55:46):
extinct. We know that there's a form of
suffering, perhaps indirectly, that can be recognized.
Why? If the foundations of being are
good, right? This is to to bring back the
theological discussion. Whitehead is a voracious critic
with Nietzsche, with a lot of the masses of suspicion over the

(56:07):
over this notion of a barbaric divine power.
And Hartshore named it well in his last book.
Omnipotence is a theological mistake.
So part of the problem of theodicy is to reconcile how
divine power and divide goodnesscan be reconciled.
The process tradition thinks we've misunderstood divine power
as coercive, as impositional in some way.

(56:31):
Rather, it reconceives it based on persuasion and based on
possibilities. So the only way in which God can
bring a world into being or process theology is through the
provision of the possible, the offering of what is right.
It's like the best of yourself being offered to UTEV and at
each moment, right. But you are the one that has to
actualize, right? So in some sense, the reality of

(56:53):
suffering is a byproduct of a Cocreative universe where God
offers the possible by means of persuasion in the world, accepts
or deviates from that possibility.
Now I don't know about you, but a possibilities never pushed me
over as such, right? Possibilities are received into
our experience as lures, as persuasive coaxes towards

(57:15):
certain modes of definiteness, modes of value.
They're persuasive ways in whichevolution is brought from chaos
into into cosmos. So process thought doesn't
affirm divine omnipotence. Evil is a reality.
It's a shadow side of an evolutionary cosmos.
And we think we can affirm that and not lose the conviction that

(57:38):
at the foundations of being there is still, still goodness,
right? Again, because we face the
problem of how a world such as ours comes into being, right?
The world is ripe with tragedy, but also triumph, axiology, also
atrocity, right? All these things come together
in a process conception. So I'll, I'll just stop there.

(58:00):
But I think the honesty remains an interest of mine at a
theological level. For for some, it's enough to say
there is no divine reality, but there's deeper conversations to
be add about all that. And it's not as if it God
doesn't exist. The world is unproblematic.
The world's always problematic, you know.
You know, if I'm just thinking about a 17 year old, me first

(58:23):
year, mid school, coming out of school, high school, thinking
about how I love science, mathematics, and I don't think I
would ever be able to have conversations like these with
philosophers, theologians. I think it's something I was so
closed off to at that time in mylife.
You know, when you come out of this new age atheist movement,
you're almost antagonistic and anti theism or anti discussions
about it. And, and I just look back

(58:46):
thinking like, if I had to tell me back then I'd be having
conversations like this. I, I would probably not believe
that to be the case. And it takes me to the next
question, which is many scientists are skeptical of
metaphysics and, and this project is aimed to try and get
us not as well. At this point, I'm very much a
supporter of what we're doing. I love this course and it's it,

(59:08):
it sort of shows over the years of how I've transitioned and my
own thought, my own philosophy and appreciation for the broader
knowledge that you guys are sharing and that everyone we're
bringing on board is going to share.
They remain sceptical still. Why do you think this is
fundamentally Andrew and and howcan this project and what we're
doing now try and change this? You're absolutely right that

(59:31):
many scientists, although not all right, have to qualify that
remain very sceptical of of metaphysics.
And I mean, to be clear, many philosophers remain skeptical of
metaphysics, right? So there's all sorts of reasons
metaphysics can be dismissed. We have to be careful about what
we mean by that. So I mean, maybe I'll just lay

(59:51):
out a couple of reasons philosophers and scientists tend
to dismiss metaphysics. So one would be sort of
following the content line that,well, whatever metaphysics deals
with, deals with things beyond all possible experience.
Of course, the problem is if that's what metaphysics is.
Who cares, right? I mean, really, who cares if
it's detached from experience? You know, we can't ever bridge

(01:00:13):
that gap between experience and beyond experience.
I mean, how does that help us? So if a scientist thinks that
that's what metaphysics is, it has no connection to empirical
data. And philosophers would also, you
know, be suspect. Another sort of caveat of that
kind of critique is that it deals with some dimensions of

(01:00:34):
experience but neglects others, right.
So again, Hume, Descartes, others really had a disembodied
view of what the human being was, right?
They they discounted that causalefficacy of our bodily relation
to the wider environment and therefore, you know, offered a

(01:00:55):
sort of half truth with respect to their metaphysical
understanding. Others have just critiqued
metaphysics for essentially being about mastering and
controlling nature, right? There's a sort of Heideggerian
critique that could come in, right, that we thrust concepts
onto the world and then through technological means, sort of
master control. Her metaphysics, people think is

(01:01:18):
about absolute certainty, right?We all have friends who like to
make these kinds of statements, right?
And then in brighter moments we might make them ourselves.
But that's not what metaphysics is about.
Whitehead nor does it start withthe claderty of first
principles. So again, all that is to say
that we need to to know what we're talking about when we use
the language of metaphysics. What it meant previously is

(01:01:41):
connected, but not necessarily, you know, when it's not confined
to that. So for Whitehead metaphysics, it
can be expressed in the method of an airplane flight.
It's beautiful metaphor, he says.
You know, you start on the ground, a particular
observation, you make a flight into the thin air of imaginative
generalization, and then you land again to the ground to

(01:02:04):
analyze through rational kinds of means.
So that's the method of philosophy over him, that's the
method of metaphysics. You start with experience,
you're on the ground, you generalize that experience
imaginatively to different altitudes, longitudes of the
flight, and then you return to the ground to rationally test
again what the ground offers. So scientists may be, you know,

(01:02:27):
pretending they don't need metaphysics and maybe they don't
need it to the extent that it's been interpreted or dismissed in
the ways that I, that I mentioned.
But for Whitehead, again, it's apart of the scientific
endeavour, right? And every good.
Well, I'll be careful. Every great scientist has known
this, right? They've known in some sense that

(01:02:47):
science and philosophy require each other.
They are, they're companions. The thing is why headwood ad
theology is offering data too. So, you know, he has this great
statement where he says it's a mistake for science to dismiss
theology and theology to dismissscience.

(01:03:08):
It's a mistake for either of them to dismiss metaphysics and
and metaphysics dismissing them,right?
He says there's no shortcut to truth.
I think that's the larger theme here.
It's like we need the best of our disciplines at play.
Science does not answer all the questions.
It raises metaphysical problems.It depends upon metaphysical
presuppositions. It's the purpose of philosophy

(01:03:29):
to point that out and let the scientists know.
Hang on. You're bringing a whole edifice
scaffolding to your data. And again, the purpose of the
scientists is say, hey, you're taking that imagine of
generalization too far. We have to bring you back down
to the data. The metaphysical method for
Whitehead is that flight of the airplane, the ground, the sky,
the ground, and on and on and on.

(01:03:49):
That's how it that's how it works.
Does that help a little bit? Yeah, I think it's a, it's a
beautiful analogy as well. I on Friday I had a, a wonderful
colloquium with two professors, Lauren Ross and Megan Peters,
both cognitive science, old neuroscientist and philosopher
from Irvine. And it was amazing because the
topic we had we discussed was called why science and
philosophy need each other. And ultimately that was the the

(01:04:13):
main thing was to to come out ofthis was that they need each
other. It's this is something that is
very mutually beneficial. It's a symbiotic relationship.
They build upon each other. And, and what most, what I find
to be, particularly if I look atmyself at 17, is that I had a
caricature of these other thinkers in my head.
You know, as a scientist, you have a caricature of anything

(01:04:34):
goes sort of view of the other person or was the philosophy
looking at the scientist? It's almost the shut up and
calculate caricature and both are looking at each other in
this very caricatured way. And that's a big problem.
I mean, overall, you need to realize there's so much detail
and nuance behind people's views.
So there's a layer of respect that sort of grows with it.
And and this project is one of those things to sort of sort of

(01:04:57):
highlight these nuances. Well, it absolutely is.
And I mentioned sort of popular scientists earlier note again,
Dougras, Tyson and Hawking. And you know, Harare himself is
not a philosopher scientists perSE, but what you see in all of
them, unfortunately, despite their popularity is saying

(01:05:18):
philosophy is really not needed,right or or Harare like value is
just a story we tell ourselves. That's no connection really to
to the universe. It's like, it's such a
pernicious perspective and again, abstracting the human
experience as if though it tellsus nothing about the wider
world. Degrasse Tyson does this all the
time as well. So what this project will do,

(01:05:38):
the Mind at Large project, in addition to critically exploring
the various ways in which Mind is returning, is to also offer
our return, right? Our own continuity, our own
belonging to this universe in the ways of meaning and and
value and purpose. And and that's not insignificant
because as we know the meaning crisis, as Verbaiki and many of

(01:06:00):
his colleagues have promoted it is linked to all many things
that has many layers. The biggest part would be
belonging, I would argue, right?A sense of belonging to this
universe and I belonging is where being and longing come
together, right? And we need a worldview where
that can happen. So I think in addition to the
theoretical, the empirical scientific dimensions of the

(01:06:21):
Mind at Large project, there's ameaning, there's an existential
dimension for me, that's quite important.
That will definitely be a part of this as well.
We belong to the universe, right?
That's the gospel right there. That's the good news, right?
And I think we can find find good ways of expressing that and
mind helps, right? So we're going to take all that

(01:06:41):
very, very seriously. Andrea new forthcoming
Whiteheads universe. You aim to make process thought
more accessible. How important is public
philosophy for a paradigm shift like Mind at Lodge?
Awesome. It's extremely important.
And one of the difficulties of process philosophy, process

(01:07:03):
metaphysics, is it's opaque language, right?
So you've read some Whitehead. No, folks listen to you've read
Whitehead is very difficult. So yes, my my next book,
hopefully coming out in the new year is Whitehead's Universe, a
prismatic introduction. And what that aims to do is
really offer a comprehensive, but conversational introduction
to Whitehead for an audience of undergrads and early grads and

(01:07:27):
philosophy and science in and inreligion.
So I think public philosophy is extremely important because
let's remember, philosophy was about originally a guide for
living. You know, it's ancient
conception. It wasn't just about sitting in
armchairs and thinking lofty thoughts.
It was about the inculcation of wisdom, was about the

(01:07:47):
cultivation of wonder, even if that wonder is never quite
satisfied. But that's, that's the brilliant
thing, right? So philosophy begins in wonder,
Whitehead says. And in the end, when philosophic
thought is that it's best, the wonder remains.
So whatever philosophy is, it's not about riding ourselves of
wonder. It's about its cultivation.
And we need people wondering, not just in ivory towers.
I mean, we need, we need the wider culture, we need the young

(01:08:09):
voices to feel free to to wonder, feel free to find
wisdom. As Rebecca rightly says, we're
in a sort of wisdom famine. How do we get wisdom back?
Well, there's only one discipline whose very meaning is
the love of wisdom, right Philo Sophia.
So I think the public turning the volume up at a public level

(01:08:32):
on philosophy, on central questions is essential.
I think my new book, you know, is been so much fun to write.
I think, I think it'll be the next go to Introduction to
Whitehead. There's a few of them out there.
I could be wrong, but I hope so.And it's been a love affair for
me and I, and I've written it because I think people can
benefit from Whitehead's vision.It allows them to fall in love

(01:08:52):
with the universe again. And make no mistake, love is a
part of this universe because it's a part of our experience.
Again, making no big distinctionbetween my experience and what
the universe is doing. So, well, I'm looking forward to
that book. Can't wait to read it.
Excited if you any expected date.
Andrew, do you know any at any point here you're planning to

(01:09:13):
try and get this out? Yeah, I'll have to keep you
updated. I am very close to signing a
contract with Orbis Books, and so I hope as soon as I do that
it'll be on the mend here, hopefully in the new year.
But yeah, I'll have a day for you.
I'll definitely send you a copy.I really think you're going to
really think you're going to enjoy it.
No, I'm super excited for it, but but to get back to this

(01:09:35):
minded last project as well, Andrew and link it up, how does
your process philosophy handle things like free will and agency
in a cosmos of relational becoming?
And how might this inform debates about things like AI and
autonomy? Yeah, well, it's certainly the
case that freedom remains on theattack.

(01:09:57):
I mean, I put it that way, I suppose, from all sorts of all
sorts of philosophers. And again, this is where
metaphysics become so important.In a world that is made of
vacuous dead matter that is onlyexternally related or agency in
mind is vanquished, it's no wonder that people think we're
in a determined cosmos, right? We look out, we see the motion

(01:10:18):
of the planets, we see the regularities of things that seem
to proceed with this deterministic dimension, and we
read that back into our experience.
We too must be utterly determined.
Free will must be an illusion. Hey, this again is where
Whitehead would say, hold on, you've just looked at nature
from the outside in. You neglect to look from it,

(01:10:39):
look at it from the inside out. I would argue our experience
absolutely gives U.S. data that we are able to, as agents, break
the power of the past and novel ways.
That's what freedom is, right? Efficient causality pushes on us
to repeat, right? What was what was repeated in
the past. But we have the ability to take

(01:11:01):
what the past offers and do something novel with it.
So self determination in this regard for Whitehead happens at
every level of reality. The past is heavy.
It doesn't fully determine what the event chooses.
So why did remains convinced that there's a slice of self
determination, There's a slice of self creativity that pervades
nature, right? And like, why doesn't nature

(01:11:23):
endlessly repeat itself? Like why do novel things happen?
This is a philosophical question.
Whitehead refused to take light,right?
So there's possibilities of novelty a part of the
metaphysical structure. But then there's decisions,
right, which choose for some possibilities as opposed to
others, which allow novelty to come in.
And again, deciding an event, siding an amoeba, deciding we're

(01:11:46):
again stretching language here. We have to do that.
But think of the Latin root desider right?
To cut off something is chosen in something negated a new
possibilities realized so. How does human?
Creativity emerge in a universe that's purely determined.
I think that's the sort of wrongquestion.
We have to start with the insideand generalize outward.

(01:12:07):
Even the laws of nature, for Whitehead, are habitual patterns
that have come into a certain reign but will pass out
eventually when our epic passes.They're not unchanging and
ultimately necessary in a pure deterministic fashion.
So this is where I think, you know, there's a pragmatic
principle, there's a pragmatic dimension to Whitehead's

(01:12:27):
thinking. He says, you know, we must bow
to those presumptions, which in despite of criticism, we still
employ for the regulation of ourlives.
Freedom is one of those presupposed notions.
Deny it theoretically. Have fun doing that.
Try to live that out practically.
You can't do it right. So the practice of your life has

(01:12:48):
to govern the theory and not theother way around.
And when those are at odds with each other, what it says there's
negations of what in practice ispresupposed practice determines
metaphysical theory and not and not the other way around.
So it's a long way of saying freedom belongs in the process
universe as long as we are an expression of this universe.

(01:13:09):
And you know, as to whether thatcan be extended again to the AI
discussion, I'm I'm not sure. I remain sort of open minded
about that, although although skeptical, but imagine what
would happen if, if we really believe we are fully determined,
what are our courts of law for, right?
What are our, I mean like all sorts of humanitarian crises

(01:13:30):
would emerge if we really believed it.
So my approach is that you cannot hold that we are
determined consistently. It's theory which which really
overlooks practice when it should be the other way around.
Andrew, one of the things we mentioned earlier was that
White, it was a mathematician and I think an important

(01:13:51):
question would be then could mathematics or formal models
play a role in clarifying the axiarchic or process relational
vision of consciousness in the cosmos?
Yeah, I mean that's, that's a, it's a great question.

(01:14:11):
They could I suppose, right. I don't know if I have so much
just to say in depth on this. Math is not my Forte per SE.
I look at Whitehead's later work, right about the earlier
work, I think. I think absolutely they could
clarify, they could assist. I think 1 caution though, that I
would offer and that Whitehead would offer is to not is to not
mistake the abstract for the concrete, right?

(01:14:35):
Peter mentioned this, the fallacy of misplaced
concreteness. It's a beautiful fallacy.
Well, it's a terrible fallacy, but it's a beautiful way of
naming it, right? That we mistake our mathematical
often abstractions for for the reality.
So I think abstractions are tools, they're instruments of
methodology, but we have to be quite careful to not reify them

(01:14:58):
into the reality itself, right? So mathematical models continue
to shed insight, but the world will always be more than
mathematical models, right? And there's some philosophers
say it's all just pure mathematics.
Well, in a sense, but it's more than that too, you know.
Anyway. But again, math is not my direct

(01:15:18):
acquaintance per SE. Now, the reason why I ask that
is because it's a good way to show that this is still going to
be useful within this project. So things like mathematics,
everything we do, study, learn, etcetera, it all falls into this
project. It's not a way to sort of
isolate, to move away from it. This is a very much
interdisciplinary bringing together of different thoughts
and ultimately leads to that to one of the questions I want to

(01:15:42):
ask you, which is what do you see as the biggest barrier
preventing mainstream academia from embracing A broader mind
infused ontology? Yeah, great.
I think the biggest barrier is acertain habitual bias against

(01:16:02):
this whole idea, you know, OK. But having said that, there is a
lot of signs that The Academy Isshifting, right?
I mean, think about it, somebodylike Philip Goff, his work again
doing great work thinking used to, you know, study process
philosophy more, but his ideas are now seen as more mainstream

(01:16:23):
or Galen Strawson or yourself Koch.
I mean, these are all folks who are pushing towards the
panpsychist direction and are not losing their jobs because of
it, right? So there was a time when when it
was really anathema to to see mind or sentence pervading
things. You know, this 20-30 years ago,

(01:16:46):
process thought always anticipated the pan psychic sort
of renaissance. And I think what we're seeing in
Goth and Coke and Strawson's work is an expression of that,
right? We were calling for it.
Again, not that it's a competition, but I just think
that the Academy, although it has this habitual bias,

(01:17:06):
especially in philosophy departments, there's also signs
that that that bias is not completely strong.
I mean, there's there's holes init.
And so that's important. I think there's a the fact of
cultural change when it comes toideas is a part of this as well.

(01:17:26):
It's slow, right? Patience is required.
Whitehead is a beautiful analogy.
In his first lecture at Harvard,1924, he ends it saying in a
sense philosophy does nothing but pay attention and look
closer, right? And just as the waves which
slowly beat the shore seem to donothing over long periods of

(01:17:47):
time, shape whole continents of thought, right?
So it's a beautiful analogy thatchange in the Academy may happen
fast with respect to these ideas, these debates.
Changing the wider culture may take a few 100 years.
We've taken a few 100 years to to get to a place of really
saying materialism is wrong. We've known that 100 years in

(01:18:07):
the physics world, less so in the biological world, although
that's changing. But the wider culture, I'd say
still has a default assumption of a mechanistic, materialistic
world. And I just think that this
project and you know, the, the kinds of rioting that are
involved in myself, my colleagues are trying to sway
the culture, sway the Academy towards these more animist and

(01:18:30):
psychist, idealistic forms of proposals.
They don't agree on everything, but they're at the return of
mind in a really strong and a really interesting and creative
and adventurous way. And as far as I'm concerned,
that's a, that's a good thing. But the culture is lapsing
behind the Academy often. Yeah.
And I think it's it's it's sort of shows also with with not just

(01:18:53):
the thinkers who have brought this up to the forefront for
many years who've been doing it,but also in the way certain
thinkers have now treated it as well.
Because you've got certain people like as you said, Michael
Levin's doing incredible work. And initially, while he never
really openly said he was pan psychist or, or really
approached it that way, you could sort of see the philosophy
extending out of his work at this point.

(01:19:14):
And, and, and now he talks aboutit a lot more openly in the way
his views have changed over timeand how his work has changed his
own views. You've got the, I mean, him
writing papers with Daniel Dennett about cognition all the
way down and someone like Dennett to even write papers
about something like that. I mean, it's not particularly in
his illusionist frameworks interest, I would say, but it's

(01:19:35):
not to say that Dennett became apen psychers before dying, of
course, but and rest in peace, Dan.
And then you've got someone likeSusan Blackpool has written
recently. I don't know if you know this,
but I actually forgot to mentionthis to Peter because we spoke
after Peter and I discussed the fact that him and Sue had a
meeting coming up and and yet tomeet her because they live quite
close to each other. But Sue's now got a a pan

(01:19:57):
psychist of models. She sees consciousness a little
bit differently at this point. And, and, and it swings towards
the Pancycus view, which is surprising at, and, and I told
her about this as well when we chatted about it, but she has a
Pancycus of models all the way down, which I think everyone
should check out. It's quite fascinating.
But yeah, that's one of the things you can see, which is

(01:20:18):
this view is a lot more accepted, a lot more discussed
within the academic circle, and it's being a lot more respected
ultimately. Yeah.
Well, and just to add to that, you know, and, yeah, rest in
peace, Dan. I thought it was interesting
that you wrote your dissertation.
I didn't know that about you. On illusionism, right, As the
Gilchrist often says, well, you know, there has to be something

(01:20:40):
to be eluded, right? So what is it that's being
eluded, right? You look, I think, I think
illusionism similar to pensychism.
When I used to look at pensychism from an illusionist
framework, I could tell how misunderstood Pennsyka's views
were while trying to argue for illusionism the same way.
I can see the way an illusionist's views are very

(01:21:02):
logical, coherent, but not everyone's.
But I used to. When I look at the way Keith
Frankish argues his points and Isee the way he discusses certain
concepts, I can see exactly how why he, he doesn't need to.
I feel like there's no need to backtrack as much as they as
they do because I sort of understand where he's coming
from. And I find the same thing
happens to a lot of pan psychos thinkers where they're trying to

(01:21:23):
backtrack certain things for theaverage materialist or the
illusionist. And at this point, because of
this podcast, I've, I've, I've managed to because I, I tell
people I create a model of the guest in my mind and I'm trying
to embody that modeled throughout the entire couple of
weeks leading up to it while reading their books.
I think I've done that so much that I cannot claim to be an

(01:21:45):
illusionist anymore because thathas the that has fundamentally
changed over time. I can't claim to be a pan
psychist either because I'm still exploring so many
different concepts. It's not to say I'm a
mysterious, but I am a lot more open minded that's for sure.
Yeah, no, I think that I think that's the right posture, right,
You know, but I'm glad you're, you know, you're not not on the

(01:22:07):
illusionist side. So again, I have good friends on
the illusionist side, you know, so I.
Think it's at this point, so I'magnostic about the the logical
status of the mind. OK, OK.
Well, I hope you won't stay in the agnostics forever.
I think with a channel like thisyou're destined not to.
Exactly. I think I've committed myself
alive at this point. For sure, for sure.

(01:22:30):
You mentioned Michael Levin, there's no mind body problem.
They cannot be a mind body solution.
I guess I should end the show atthat point if we've.
Exactly. And you don't want to do that.
The wonder has to remain so, youknow, but I just wanted to pick
up though on, on the science philosophy relation again,
because you mentioned several people there.
Again, Michael Levin's work is fascinating.

(01:22:51):
And we've, we've had, you know, done some work together.
We had him at a conference. Actually, he was at our
Mcgilchrist conference virtually.
It's hard to get in person anywhere, I've realized.
But here here's somebody who is letting the empirical data
govern his work. Absolutely.
So he's very keen on saying that, OK, I'm not, I'm not just
giving like thrusting philosophical concepts on the

(01:23:12):
data here. I'm letting the data speak and
then, you know, imaginably generalizing what that means
philosophically. So you're right.
While he says he's not a an out hand psychist, although maybe he
has it, it seems to be implied in what he's demonstrating.
Moreover, he's recently promotedthe reality of platonic like

(01:23:33):
Morpho spaces, right? But here we are back, back to
this platonic like question. And maybe your colleague George
Ellis in South Africa there. Are you familiar with George
Ellis? I'm familiar with George, but I
don't I haven't met him. All right, well, here, here's
another, you know, cosmologist, you know, on Yurcon and they're
working, you know, originally with Hawking, but somebody who's

(01:23:54):
a a fantastic scientist, but somebody who's unwilling to let
go of the philosophical dimensions, right?
You know, there's a lot to say about him.
Just to alert you and some of your audience in November, we're
going to have Levin and George Ellis in a, in a moderated
discussion for the Center for Process that at least precisely
on this question of possibilities places, right?

(01:24:16):
There's, there's morphogenetic possibility spaces for Ellis.
There's ethical possibility spaces, right, possibilities of
states of value that could be but are not yet right.
Though all those things were in the nature of things before we
were, right? So again, we're, we're being
pushing back to ontology, pushing back to metaphysics, not

(01:24:36):
in spite of, but because of the brilliance of our scientific
advance. Right.
OK, again, just the theme of science and philosophy being
tangled is such a fruitful 1. Yeah, I, I, I definitely see the
appeal. And I must say when it comes to
if, if I try not to give too much of my specific views on it,
because I find that the show is a lot more about the guests.
But yeah. And in terms of the work that's

(01:24:58):
been done by Michael, he's becoming, he's, he's one of
those people who who if there had to be someone who could like
push me to that edge, he's definitely the one.
I mean, he's his work is incredible.
And even the way he defends it online, if someone tweets him
something that's so axes him something, let's say that about
his views, he'll say, no, this is exactly what I'm trying to
say is happening in the biology.And this is what it therefore

(01:25:21):
means. It's not that he's just making
these games, as you just said, it's, it's more about the work
is literally dictating his view at this point, which I think
it's pretty, pretty cool to see someone do such groundbreaking
work and then it have so many philosophical implications
immediately after. It's it's so epic to him.
It really is. He's he's very admirable, clear

(01:25:41):
thinker to hark back to the cultural discussion too.
It's like, and the Academy, they're going to need more than
just philosophers telling them, right.
They need to have the science bepushing the culture in that
direction as well. So I think he he's a wonderful
example of that there. There's others as well, but you

(01:26:02):
know, science guides philosophy,philosophy guides science,
theology, religion, if if that'syour thing, put it that way,
offers an overall context of meaning, right, for these
endeavours, right. And I think all of them belong
in an adequate worldview. And adequate metaphysics, I

(01:26:23):
think, is one that integrates our disciplines, which often are
desperate, but finds a unified synthetic context in which to
see the whole together in some way and do so and communicate it
in a way that's inspiring, that's adventurous.
I mean, I'm inspired by the philosophy.
That's why I keep doing it. And This is why when I have, you

(01:26:46):
know, I have two step kids and they're in ever take a
philosophy class or ever read mybooks, who knows?
But if philosophy structures are, you know, deflated persons,
if the wonder has left them, this is the failure of
philosophy, you know, And I'll just say there's nothing in the
scientific worldview that requires meaninglessness, this

(01:27:09):
default perspective of sort of meaninglessness and nihilism.
There's nothing in the science that requires that.
That's a philosophical perspective brought to the data.
But the data is more interestingthan that.
I absolutely believe that. Yeah, I think we, we, we share a
lot in common in that regard. I think that mind body solution
is primarily I try and make thisclear to people as well because

(01:27:29):
I'm a medical doctor. They people assume when they
hear the title it's also something medical, but it's not.
This is fundamentally about my love philosophy.
This is a philosophical project.This is a this is my ode to
philosophy in a sense, particularly philosophy of mind
at that point. But I love it and this is just
the best topic to explore. It's it's my favorite hobby.

(01:27:50):
This is this brings me the most excitement, the most joy in it.
And it's ultimately to inspire global inquiry in philosophical
questions in these fields that we love so much beyond the
philosophy as well into the other realms of theology,
science, whatever about B mathematics, etcetera.
It's, it's, it's just a pure love and and passion project.
And on that note, I mean, one ofthe things you mentioned was, I

(01:28:12):
mean, this academic bridge, bringing it together, trying to
bring all of this together with film media conferences, mind and
lodge. We're trying to do this via
podcast as well. Why do you think, Andrew, it's
important for us as philosophers, as scientists, or
or just global thinkers in general?
Why is it important for storytelling?

(01:28:33):
How essential is storytelling when it comes to shifting the
collective imagination about consciousness and reality?
Yeah, because arguments are not enough, right?
You can give a bare deductive argument.
You know, that is characteristicof analytic philosophers.

(01:28:53):
God love them. But.
But things need embedded in in astory.
You know, we we need stories. Who was it?
The American poet Mariel Kaiser.The universe is not made of
atoms. It's made of stories.
OK, that's a very processual account, right?
Stories go all the way down and all the way up, right?

(01:29:15):
And stories are the most arguably historically, when you
think about human species, the most important way of
communicating deep and abiding truths and the importance of
those truths. Think of, you know, Christ in
the parables, right? Of course, you know, it need not

(01:29:37):
be historically true that the story of the prodigal son, but
we understand the moral ethos behind it.
We want to also tell stories that are true literally as well.
I think of Whitehead, who who quoted Plato and say what he's
seeking as metaphysics is the most likely story.
So we have to embed what we're doing in a story because the

(01:29:58):
stories of the way in which we actually connect to phenomena in
a deep sense, We don't do that through dry arguments.
We have to. We have to use poetic
dimensions. We have to use metaphor, even
myth, right? These are not.
Again, the modern world looks atthese things often and says myth
is just something that's not true, you know, or whatever you

(01:30:21):
know, imagination is, it's just imaginary.
This is not true or whatever metaphor is, right?
It's the less than literal rather than the more than
literal rendering of human language.
Story is the context in which all those metaphor myths, all
those come alive in a deep and abiding sense.
We think of cosmologists today, big history, right?

(01:30:41):
That whole label of big history is a cosmological story.
And like it or not, we're in a story.
We haven't written it per SE, right?
But we're a part of it, and we have an important element of
writing chapters in that narrative.
And so I think the story of mindis our story, you know?

(01:31:01):
And I think we have to tell it in that way.
It's not just our story, right? The story of mind is a part of a
wider cosmic narrative that belongs to to the universe
itself. And so story is revealing.
It's revealing of depths of value, depths of possibility.
Story presents what we could be but are not yet, you know, and
then that sense, they haunt us, right?

(01:31:22):
That's what this parables do. They haunt us with moral
achievement that we've not yet achieved.
I think you can tell stories of ideals and science.
You can do it in philosophy, right?
And let's just remember that a lot of the scientific stories
of, of achievement, of advance from Einstein to others, but
these didn't happen just by baredata.

(01:31:45):
They happened by imaginative leaps, by imagining what could
be as to a story of the universe, right?
I just think all that comes intoplay, man.
And, and we, we're storied beings and we're storytellers.
We're narrative beings in a narrative cosmos, and I think
there's better and worse ways totell that story and there's ways
to get closer and further from the truth, right?

(01:32:07):
Signaling Robert Kuhn, right? So story's fundamental and we're
going to tell a story about the rise in the fall of
consciousness and its return in the way in which it in the way
in which we're protagonists, youknow, chiefly so.
Yeah, I think. And I can't wait to be part of

(01:32:29):
it. I'm excited.
I mean, it actually reminds me of something I wrote in my
dissertation, even though it wasat the time, so different from
my own views right now. But something I did write was,
is that I am a process. I'm a part of this.
I am a part of this universe, not apart from it.
I'm a conscious conglomerate of cells designed by DNA,
manufactured by molecules, organized by organelles,

(01:32:51):
assembled by atoms, forged by fusion via Stella supernovae.
I am. We are fighting part of this
beautiful illustrations. I loved it.
It was one of my favorite. Things.
But I mean, you're telling a story right there and in a
poetic way, right? Yeah.
So again, when we do not, when we, when we refuse to divorce
ourselves from the universe, allsorts of things come back into

(01:33:14):
play. Stories are part of this cosmos,
right? It's like Dostoyevsky every
every bit as much as, you know, the biblical narratives to the
Upanishads. What does story reveal about
what this universe is up to and the most primal peoples?
We told stories about the universe, creation stories.
We're still telling those stories, right?

(01:33:37):
This is not something we can runfrom.
I think we should embrace it andtry to try to better these
stories, you know? Yeah, and I, I can't wait to
tell more stories with you guys.This is going to be an exciting
project. I think finally to to sort of
round it all off, if the Mind atLarge project succeeds, how
might our future, how might our view of humanity's place in the

(01:33:58):
cosmos look different in the next 10 to 20 years?
Yes, yeah, beautiful. And I hope it does succeed.
I mean, as Peter and Matt rightly suggested, we're not
trying to, like, change the world in a few conferences.
But remember the ocean waves beating the continent, right?
Things happen slowly. So I think in 10 to 20 years, I

(01:34:20):
would hope that the ideas, many and diverse as they will be
behind this project will help shift our understanding of
ourselves to a complementarity rather than a contradiction with
this universe, right? We're not contradictory to it.
If that were the case, we wouldn't exist.
And we do, right? We are compliments of this
cosmos. And I, I really hope that that

(01:34:43):
the sense of belonging and continuity that comes along with
that hits people at an existential level.
This is the sort of pastoral dimension in me, right in my
work. You could do it philosophically,
scientifically, all that's important.
But I think for the wider masses, when we face ecological
destruction, the meaning crisis,all these different crises,
existential risk, right? All the ways in which we could
render ourselves extinct. We need a new story of ourselves

(01:35:06):
as continuous with this universeas adventures with it, not just
as anomalies, you know? So I think we hope to advance
the science and the philosophy. I hope in particular to advance
the existential dimensions that are a part of this, right?
There's a whole movement of philosophical counseling, right?
It's been around since the early, early 80s, which uses

(01:35:28):
philosophy as an alternative to a rampant therapy culture and
says that by sitting with these ideas of the greatest thinkers,
as complemented by other disciplines, we can actually
revive the human spirit. And I think that's what we need.
I'm strongly against the notion that human beings are just a, a,

(01:35:48):
just a, a negative and destructive force purely.
That's a part of us. But metaphysics can cure
misanthropy. And maybe that'll be a book
title I'll have to write one day.
Yeah, I mean, Andrew, have you? Are you familiar with the work
done by Fulford at University ofOxen?
Bill Fulford. I know the name, I know the

(01:36:11):
name, but you ought to remind me.
Yeah, phenomenological psychopathology and this, it
touches on exactly what you're talking about right now, the
integration of phenomenology within psychotherapy and
treating patients and and another thing called values
based practice, which also ties in beautifully with your work.
It's something you should definitely be interested.
Check it out. But I agree with you everything

(01:36:33):
you just said completely beautiful.
Your work is amazing and mind body solution myself.
Well, I'm excited to be part of it because ultimately the vision
of mind at Lodge is this inspiring global inquiry in
these fields and, and to push this field forward in a, in a,
in a more open minded way, whichI'm completely on board and,
and, and super excited to be part of.

(01:36:55):
So thank you so much for your work in this field, your work
with mind at large. And I look forward to chatting
to you in the future with many more about your work in a lot
more detail. So yeah, thanks for joining me.
It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much.
And yeah, we're very, very happyto have you along.
It'll be great to connected person continue this discussion.
So thanks, Devin. My, my pleasure, Andrew.

(01:37:17):
Anything about the project in general, Andrew, you'd like to
close off on? Any final words?
Just a reminder to everybody, yeah, the Mind at Large
project.com or I think it's Mindat Large project.com, not the.
So we're going to be updating that website with all the
details for the upcoming conference in University Exeter
scheduled for April. If you're interested in my work,

(01:37:40):
Andrew M davis.info. I keep that updated with books,
course opportunities, other things.
The Whiteheads Universe book that I mentioned is a course
that Ioffer starting on the rolling schedule in 2026.
So if anybody out there is wanting to learn Whitehead and
start with the text that I hope will hit the culture in an
interesting way, you're able to do that.

(01:38:02):
Just go to either my website orwhiteheadsuniverse.com.
That's another place where you can find information about that.
Otherwise, let's think together and continue the Wondering
project. That's what this is all about,
some deep sense.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Meaning Crisis, Process Cosmology & Whitehead's Universe | Mind-at-Large Project