In summary: Instead of asking about the nature of or how really *is*, which is problematic, rather ask, What is the best way to talk about ? , where "best" is determined by cultural context and purpose, sort of like walking into a toolshed and asking what the right tool for the job is.
I have been working my way through his book for several weeks. It is a very thick tome. His online videos and lectures are waaaay easier to follow! I know he has done a lot with Donald Hoffman recently. I would love to see an extended conversation between Lawson, Hoffman and Anil Seth.
Thanks for this interview. It was very thought provoking and original to me. The ideas are very subtle and I can see how even coming from his point of view can lead you back away from it, as can be seen in some of the comments. Nevertheless, I think it can be very useful to think in these terms, especially having the awareness that there are, or can be many different ways of describing something, each possibly having different implications. This understanding of different worldviews can then, perhaps, help us to better communicate and cooperate to continue working towards a common goal of the humanity.
It's really great that C2T is getting some post-structuralist and hopefully some other postmodern theorists on the channel. The word we use for things (cat, tree, table, chair) is not IN the thing, and therefore there is no absolute one-to-one correspondence between our language/s and what we might call external reality (only more or less arbitrary and artificial correspondence). It's vital therefore that we question how our language and semiotic (and cultural) structures are influencing our perception of that reality. Having said that, one problem I have with his idea of closure is that from a post-structuralist perspective, there can be no closure in language, for the linguistic fact mentioned, and as Lawson himself mentions in the video. Saussure taught us that language is a system of differences with no positive terms - that we don't know the difference between the words "cat" and "bat," for example, because those words are directly connected to things in "reality" that are different, but because the actual words are different: cat has a "c" and bat has a "b" -- and Derrida taught us that all we can hope to achieve in language is a free play of signification, where one signifier leads to another, that one to another again, and so forth, similar to the idea of the inherent circularity of a dictionary, where you need to know the definition of one word to understand the definition of another, and so on. Another big problem I think he has (the problem western culture always seems to have) comes when he demarcates "us" or ourselves from the "open-ness" "out there," stating that the openness is everything "Other," exclusive of "us," that the neuron is not the photon, etc. and failing somehow to recognize that there is no "Other," that there is no "out there," that we ourselves (what we artificially distinguish as "ourselves") necessarily are as much part of the "openness" and the "out there" as anything else, that therefore the photon is in fact the neuron (merely "two" aspects of the singular openness) and that his mistaken notion that we are not the openness is in fact just an artificial closure that he's made. The "Other" is precisely what is created by these more or less arbitrary closures throughout history, creating us/them dichotomies, in-groups/out-groups, man vs. nature, christianity vs. everything else ("savages," "primitives," non-believers, witches, jews, etc.) which from the standpoint of the "us" creating the "Other" have to be either converted, killed, "conquered" (have to "conquer" nature, for example) or marginalized in some other important way. That is definitely the wrong way to go. Perhaps he elucidates this differently in his book (haven't read it yet), but here at least he says very clearly (and in my opinion incorrectly) that we are not the externality, when even simple logic shows that "we" are. How, in fact, could we not be, as you necessarily would be part of my "openness," or externality, and I would be part of yours, and so on. It would be interesting to know at least where he draws the line as far as what is not part of the openness - are animals and their neurons part of it or not, are microrganisms with their cilia and rudimentary sensory apparatuses part of it or not, etc.
I have a feeling that Lawson assumes that many very different models of reality can be built, just as one can find an infinity of patterns in the night sky. And the point is that while it is true that, for example, an extraterrestrial civilization may have built a very different model of reality with very different science, in the end, the predictions will be the same, and surely a bijective relationship could be made between their science and ours. Perhaps the openness is no so open
How do you know their predictions would be the same? It’s foolish to assume an extraterrestrial civilization would have different scientific models, but the same predictions as us. It could be their models of reality describe their observations better than ours.
@@logicbomb8977 If they have correct models that make better predictions, then their models can be reduced to ours, unless ours are incorrect. Which leads us to the same conclusion, that there are not so many models of reality. (An example of this case is that general relativity can be reduced to Newton's law of gravitation. If their models are different because they have other ways of perceiving reality (for example they do not perceive the world through the electromagnetic range as we do) then we would have to investigate what fields affect their perception and again do a bijection of models. Another possibility is that they have a model, which cannot be reduced to any of us. For example, if it were finally shown that chemistry cannot be deduced from physics, then we would be talking about two models that cover different realities with certain overlaps. In the same way, aliens could have a model of certain aspects of reality that escape us...and this would be the case that would show us how restricted we can be by our perception or language
"That's what it is, it is a book. Well, it's also a collection of molecules." Right. "It's also a example in a conversation." Right. "It's also a vehicle for ideas." Right. "It's also a combination of organic material." Right. "It's also something you can burn on fire." Right. "And you get the idea, there is no limit to the number of ways you can hold this bit of the world... NO LIMIT!" Wrong. That's an example of a false extrapolation, a special form of false analogism. What his "closurism" attacks is just a primitive version of realism, where thoughts are understood as a one to one representation of the outer world. But despite the fact that there are uncountable ways of looking at that book, there are some constraints that separates a "book" from, let's say, a "tiger", and vice versa, and the awareness of this differences is the essence of knowledge, of the interconnectivity between thoughts and the outer world. So if a friend tells you there is a tiger outside lurking, you should better act like a realist not a closurist, otherwise you may not survive.
I think Lawson would agree - a closure that represents a "tiger" as a "book" would not work. But I think he would also say you cannot say you "know" there is a "tiger"-thing outside, but rather that the closure of "potentially dangerous animal, aka a tiger, outside" works well in that case.
Hilary is absolutely correct. Aristotelian categories realized through language are how we build a framework for coping; but Lawson and Kant had it right. It's noumena all the way down.
In short, I understand him to mean Closure is how we perceive what exists or we think exists and that our perception is a mental confinement - "Closure."
After listening to his answers for over an hour I still don’t know where the toilet is! Gor Blimey, if this bloke is a philosopher, Mr Bean must have already won the Nobel Prize in literature and my cat is definitely a genius. Why doesn’t he do some useful like cleaning up all those stinking street corners aka public urinals and lavs in his city? He’d be much appreciated that way.
@@ReverendDr.Thomas you are a reverend, so a slave to jesus methinks. A persons that's been dead for two thousand years. Look at yourself before you judge others
"Our closure is never the same thing that the stuff out there..." So there is stuff out there! We cannot know the stuff out there, but I believe that the patterns we see repeating themselves all over the place are a sign that there is an underlying "thing". That would be my answer to the puzzle "how can we make sense of things without real knowledge of them?"
Reality lets say is like the full electromagnetic spectrum , thought is only in color , communication is only in black and white so everything we do and or express is an approximation its not 100% reality and it works because 100% reality is not needed to accomplish the task at hand / the desired out come, and life has a finite amount of "time" there for it must out of necessity approximate. Getting 90%+ success for the minimum "time" spent with the action is very efficient. Closer is the act/description of approximating. It's the richness of life/consciousness not the richness of reality , "Of course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong" lol
I have of late been offering my wife's discovery of time's arrow (935-QKK) as way to end the war in Ukraine precisely because it not only invites us to stop the attack on Ukraine physically through all the physical implements and mobilization that that entails but also to reconcile the divergent ideological timelines that led to war. As Zelensky so aptly put it at the beginning of the war, a leader of the world must necessarily be a champion of peace. The more his nation suffered in battle, the more I realized those of us not suffering should not only help with putting arms in Ukraine's hands, but disentangling and walking back the timelines that led to proclamations in support of genocide not only by Putin but especially by leading Russian filmmakers and propogandists like Timofey Sergeitsev. Recently my cousin asked me what credentials my wife and I had in offering this model? I pointed out that I was a Russian Studies major who wrote his thesis in Communications on the most contentious of events to arise during the Cold War, the shootdown of two passenger planes by the Soviets. From there my studies took me not only forward in time to today but backward in time to before WW II when Shiga Shigetaka saw a vision of peace cementing our friendship and alliance on the eve of WW I and offered a groundbreaking monument to the reconciliation of timelines in a gift of a stone monument celebrating our brotherhood through a shared vision of heroism. His gift was far more subtle than people realize, coming from his timeline of having been schooled by Lincoln's former colonel, chemist and botanist William Smith Clark. As luck would have it, Shiga was born in a city which was famous for its story of a siege of men in a castle (like the Alamo) and the story of the crucifixion of Torii Suneemon in the 15th century as he attempted to break the siege. The key to grasping the openness of this model came from my wife Kumiko and her observations of a likeness between her name and the numbers 9, 3, 5. It extended to include a feature of the Japanese language which offers different words for counting different objects by classification, for example by thing or person, or even by shape or function which by way of their class, require a different way of counting. It led to a sense of seeing the objects in this world through their own number, their own timeline.. That this timeline is effectively regenerative (quite akin to 'open' in the sense Hilary Lawson describes) accounts for both the stubbornness of our thinking (in terms of a cautionary tale) but offers hope that we may take such limitations into account and find the right path to peace.
While the results of observation is information (epistemological), how is the act of observation characterized? What actually is going on when there is observation?
So the conclusion to Closer to Truth, after watching every video made, is that we have no idea....or that agnosticism is the only genuine possibility one can come to if they fully explore religion, history and theology in all its forms.
Does closure argument fall apart at the before life question? Can closure be measured into a percentage of what we perceive at any moment in time. If we can control "closure" does that mean we could potentially manifest anything in our mind to be what we want? I'm just a layman thinking so forgive me.
Re: can we change our closure to manifest anything. I’m fairly confident in my understanding of this view, so I’ll take a crack at answering this part of your comment. Hopefully it makes some amount of sense haha. Closure is controlled by us only partially. So for example, we close things with our language and models-both of which can be developed and changed over time via a cultural adoption of said changes. But there is closure imposed upon us by our physiological and biological makeup, which we cannot change. Part of this imposition is done by the brain, but also in its relation to our senses. Compared to dogs-our noses, our sense of smell-is dramatically worse. A dog has been imposed with its brain and its hierarchy of senses; we have been imposed with ours. Because of this difference in perspective, the world is closed differently for us and the dog. Perspective is the first closure so to speak. You can then go further and say that any individual person’s experience will affect how they close the world. Another person and I might both use the word “God” for example and be able to communicate efficiently with sentences including that word, but we will both conceive of “God” differently based on our life experience. Concepts are much like sense experience. They’re fuzzy and not perfectly communicated. There are no words to describe the color blue that a blind person would be able to understand and know what it’s like to see something blue. Similarly, there are no words to describe what I conceive of as “God” or what I conceive of as my relationship to my friend, because those conceptions are unique to my mind, and I’ve come to them based on my entire life up until this point. If I’m to adapt these qualitative, experiential things, I have to close them in some way with language. And I’m similarly stuck with the languages that I’ve grown to learn. So any personal conception I want to communicate has to be closed by an unchosen language.
And another thing...using language to explain that language is an inadequate representation of reality is...well...silly. An interpretive dance may have been a better expression?
This is the first time I saw an RLK (or any serious) interview with a person who recognizes science as just another religion. As to the question of destination he left open, the correct answer would be: Closure can become ultimate, permanent, certain, final, absolute,......, (just name it), if and only if we discover the method to render all life immortal after certain point and implement it in practice. For then doubters, fatalists, pessimists,....., would all be forced to eat their own words.
This is the first I’ve heard of Lawson. Really interesting ideas BUT (and I could be wrong of course) this seems to be eastern philosophy/spirituality (Tao/Zen) in a western philosophical garb. (The vocabulary is even the same, openess, holding without fixating or grasping. )It also seems to be the logical destination of postmodern thought. I don’t really necessarily hear the diffrence between process and closure in his last argument. Who says that process is anymore ”out there” than closure? To quote Buddha - ’we don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are.’ We are ever changing, in forming and disintergrating processes that I suppose could be described as closures. But that is only from our perspective. On another level, we as a species aren’t born as a clean slate. Wich seems to be a common postmodern argument. For instance, the infant doesn’t have to learn to explore putting diffrent things in their mouth. This of course, says nothing about an independent truth ’out there.’ It’s just another example of us understanding the world as we are.
so nourishing - robert is cutting to the chase now after skirting around mere frameworks for so long -hilary rightfully puts them in their place.the idea resonates with donald hoffman’s user interface metaphor to explain how if we dont see reality we can still function / survive
Lawson seems more radical than Hoffman or Kastrup, in that he thinks that theories of what's out there (beyond the interface) are impossible _in principle._ I have to say that I rather agree with him. On the other hand, _scientific modeling_ of how the brain works with its closures would still be useful, so I'd like to know more about Lawson's attitude to _mathematics._ Why is mathematics so unreasonably successful in building scientific models? Something for a future interview?
Reminds me a bit of Isaiah Berlin discussing how we can understand that there are in fact a variety of world views and understand those world views without believing or adhering to those world views only to be repeatedly hit with the charge of "relativism" as a child would understand it. Reading the comments I can see the same simplistic charge is waiting for Lawson. My biggest problem isn't really with what I can understand of his position from just this interview, but what appears to be an underlying assumption of "human progress" or an "upward" arc of history in some sense. It might be that we aren't going to find the answer from a guru on a mountaintop but I don't think the 10,000 years of human civilization he mentions as evidence of this shows that it is an idea we have advanced past in some way, or that we are really "advancing" outside of our technology and thus we and our tech will continue to advance in some way. The encapsulation and closure of both Modernism and Postmodernism, which Lawson seems to be working toward, may well be something more primitive than either yet armed with better technology.
there is more important question: criminal thieves all around the world have very weak morals, values, ...... etc but how they still pretend that they have dignity to protect !
24:40 I would make a more concrete example by saying "if we grew up on a spaceship, we wouldn't be saying "stars in the sky ABOVE us" i.e. it's not a fact of "reality"
I don't think Hillary really has any good grounding for saying that there isn't a substrate upon we build our closures. He keeps saying, "that's not what's going on", but he doesn't know what going on, so how does he know what it isn't?
6:30 that is what I have wrote before on this you tube channel ! the apes will never get rid of of their old bad habits "thievery as patching techniques" !
As a Muslim, I respect the principle of Hilary's philosophy. Allah told us in the Quran: {And you have been given nothing but a little knowledge}; so no matter how much we think we know, our knowledge will always be incomparable to the realities we're exposed to, never mind the infinite realities we're NOT exposed to; it's a real shame he doesn't believe in a creator.
@@hatemsoliman7787 What falsity did i claim? What ego are you talking about? I get the strong feeling you have an ideological or religious ax to grind. Perhaps deep down inside yourself you know that what you believe may very well be false. This makes you psychologically project those insecurities onto others like myself, but perhaps i'm wrong (it could be worse) as you will surely say.. only you would know. I'm sorry that you felt that way, but not for what i said. Tell me what you think i claimed and maybe i can substantiate it or not, depending on what you think it is.
To play the devil's advocate, science obviously works in many ways. After all, science ultimately led to the internet and RUclips, which made the long distance conversation possible and available to a wide audience. Doesn't this mean that science got a lot of things right and science is closer to the ultimate reality, even if we cannot get to the ultimate reality?
Not new.Vedanta tells us much more clearly about closure and gives a means of realising and live it.. After all Indian Gurus has figured it out long time back !!
Good question, how did we get to where we are? He answered how he got to where he is not us. You do not need to go far back to explore this question, just go back to late C19 and follow the people who discovered or made things and not the 'learned' ones who just talk like this guy. It is not hard; the trick is to do your own thinking.
Well, not really, because he's talking about the history of western thought and why we think about and categorize things the way we do, which goes back to Plato and Aristotle at least. Then comes the whole history of western philosophy elucidating and trying to build on that. So you have to go back quite a bit farther than the 19th cent., lol. You also have to know a hell of a lot about epistemology, ontology, phenomenology, as well as critical theory, inc. structuralism and post-structuralism. It is pretty hard, indeed, and "doing your own thinking" isn't going to get you very far if you don't have the right foundation on which to do it.
yeah: the deaf mute persons and language and their mental life. human write it in one valuable sentence while the apes write an entire book to reach one human sentence ! not only that it is already stolen from one human's sentence !
It is always difficult for me to tell: are these people saying there is no grand/profound bedrock reality, or are they saying literally nothing we are experiencing is real in any intelligible sense? I mean, even if we cant reach truths about the deepest facts of reality, surely we are capable of using intelligent inquiry to navigate this universe towards a more desirable future. I feel like that's all anyone means by "true/real" in an ordinary context.
Realism may not be true but its still real, its just not true. That would be something called truthism. So why not call one self a non-truthist and remain calling oneself a realist. There is no alternative to what is real. Being a non-truthist is far more acceptable sounding to me.
Is Hilary real? Language is symbolic...Not a very new idea. He doesn't mention mathematics. Does he disagree with 2 + 2 = 4? Me thinks that if he stood in front of the camera, completely silent, his point would have been more persuasive. One more thought...Do you realize, he pretty much said: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."? (circa 1878) But it took him 30 minutes to do it
@@ReverendDr.Thomas Obviously Western educated. All European music examples. Very discriminating, which is culturally transparent...to me. Ha! But it's fine with me. I'm in the same boat. Hilary is a boor and he took over an hour to pontificate about a topic that could have been adequately discussed in 20 minutes.
No ultimate reality. Only constructive useful models. It's all that we can ever hope for. Wow. Reality alert. Dr. Lawson you need to deliver this lecture to a tribe of cannibals. You can model your visit as an educator. They'll appreciate you as uber eats. And as they boil you in a pot you can take profound intellectual consolation that their model better served them than your model. You're lecture will be tasty. And more useful. Thank you for resolving so many questions about reality!
@@johnsnyder3443 It's OK, I realize that my experience of listening to the Beatles and yours could be very different. But I know one thing. I know I need to get out of the way of a moving bus. My blood is real!
the apes are so funny, the imprison and torture human and at the same time they steal his own thoughts to keep their faked shaky realm standing ! sick irrational apes, who can blame sick irrational apes "the curse on mankind"! the funny part is how the apes interpret human thoughts ! the style the apes ornament human thoughts with is so funny "apes style"!
![[Part 1] Frank Wilczek on the Future of Science | Closer To Truth Chats](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/FitxAlU6J8c/mqdefault.jpg)
In summary: Instead of asking about the nature of or how really *is*, which is problematic, rather ask, What is the best way to talk about ? , where "best" is determined by cultural context and purpose, sort of like walking into a toolshed and asking what the right tool for the job is.
Wonderful .I really wish closer to truth makes a nother interview with hilary lawson
Great! An interview I have been hoping for for a while.
So glad you enjoyed it!
I have been working my way through his book for several weeks. It is a very thick tome. His online videos and lectures are waaaay easier to follow!
I know he has done a lot with Donald Hoffman recently. I would love to see an extended conversation between Lawson, Hoffman and Anil Seth.
Thanks for this interview. It was very thought provoking and original to me. The ideas are very subtle and I can see how even coming from his point of view can lead you back away from it, as can be seen in some of the comments. Nevertheless, I think it can be very useful to think in these terms, especially having the awareness that there are, or can be many different ways of describing something, each possibly having different implications. This understanding of different worldviews can then, perhaps, help us to better communicate and cooperate to continue working towards a common goal of the humanity.
It's really great that C2T is getting some post-structuralist and hopefully some other postmodern theorists on the channel. The word we use for things (cat, tree, table, chair) is not IN the thing, and therefore there is no absolute one-to-one correspondence between our language/s and what we might call external reality (only more or less arbitrary and artificial correspondence). It's vital therefore that we question how our language and semiotic (and cultural) structures are influencing our perception of that reality.
Having said that, one problem I have with his idea of closure is that from a post-structuralist perspective, there can be no closure in language, for the linguistic fact mentioned, and as Lawson himself mentions in the video. Saussure taught us that language is a system of differences with no positive terms - that we don't know the difference between the words "cat" and "bat," for example, because those words are directly connected to things in "reality" that are different, but because the actual words are different: cat has a "c" and bat has a "b" -- and Derrida taught us that all we can hope to achieve in language is a free play of signification, where one signifier leads to another, that one to another again, and so forth, similar to the idea of the inherent circularity of a dictionary, where you need to know the definition of one word to understand the definition of another, and so on.
Another big problem I think he has (the problem western culture always seems to have) comes when he demarcates "us" or ourselves from the "open-ness" "out there," stating that the openness is everything "Other," exclusive of "us," that the neuron is not the photon, etc. and failing somehow to recognize that there is no "Other," that there is no "out there," that we ourselves (what we artificially distinguish as "ourselves") necessarily are as much part of the "openness" and the "out there" as anything else, that therefore the photon is in fact the neuron (merely "two" aspects of the singular openness) and that his mistaken notion that we are not the openness is in fact just an artificial closure that he's made. The "Other" is precisely what is created by these more or less arbitrary closures throughout history, creating us/them dichotomies, in-groups/out-groups, man vs. nature, christianity vs. everything else ("savages," "primitives," non-believers, witches, jews, etc.) which from the standpoint of the "us" creating the "Other" have to be either converted, killed, "conquered" (have to "conquer" nature, for example) or marginalized in some other important way. That is definitely the wrong way to go.
Perhaps he elucidates this differently in his book (haven't read it yet), but here at least he says very clearly (and in my opinion incorrectly) that we are not the externality, when even simple logic shows that "we" are. How, in fact, could we not be, as you necessarily would be part of my "openness," or externality, and I would be part of yours, and so on. It would be interesting to know at least where he draws the line as far as what is not part of the openness - are animals and their neurons part of it or not, are microrganisms with their cilia and rudimentary sensory apparatuses part of it or not, etc.
I have a feeling that Lawson assumes that many very different models of reality can be built, just as one can find an infinity of patterns in the night sky. And the point is that while it is true that, for example, an extraterrestrial civilization may have built a very different model of reality with very different science, in the end, the predictions will be the same, and surely a bijective relationship could be made between their science and ours. Perhaps the openness is no so open
How do you know their predictions would be the same? It’s foolish to assume an extraterrestrial civilization would have different scientific models, but the same predictions as us. It could be their models of reality describe their observations better than ours.
@@logicbomb8977
If they have correct models that make better predictions, then their models can be reduced to ours, unless ours are incorrect. Which leads us to the same conclusion, that there are not so many models of reality. (An example of this case is that general relativity can be reduced to Newton's law of gravitation.
If their models are different because they have other ways of perceiving reality (for example they do not perceive the world through the electromagnetic range as we do) then we would have to investigate what fields affect their perception and again do a bijection of models.
Another possibility is that they have a model, which cannot be reduced to any of us. For example, if it were finally shown that chemistry cannot be deduced from physics, then we would be talking about two models that cover different realities with certain overlaps. In the same way, aliens could have a model of certain aspects of reality that escape us...and this would be the case that would show us how restricted we can be by our perception or language
"That's what it is, it is a book. Well, it's also a collection of molecules."
Right.
"It's also a example in a conversation."
Right.
"It's also a vehicle for ideas."
Right.
"It's also a combination of organic material."
Right.
"It's also something you can burn on fire."
Right.
"And you get the idea, there is no limit to the number of ways you can hold this bit of the world... NO LIMIT!"
Wrong.
That's an example of a false extrapolation, a special form of false analogism.
What his "closurism" attacks is just a primitive version of realism, where thoughts are understood as a one to one representation of the outer world.
But despite the fact that there are uncountable ways of looking at that book, there are some constraints that separates a "book" from, let's say, a "tiger", and vice versa, and the awareness of this differences is the essence of knowledge, of the interconnectivity between thoughts and the outer world.
So if a friend tells you there is a tiger outside lurking, you should better act like a realist not a closurist, otherwise you may not survive.
I think Lawson would agree - a closure that represents a "tiger" as a "book" would not work. But I think he would also say you cannot say you "know" there is a "tiger"-thing outside, but rather that the closure of "potentially dangerous animal, aka a tiger, outside" works well in that case.
A great chat! Thanks.
I'm on the boat too, just swabbing the poop deck, although... Thanks for the uploading the interview to easily access on CTT again.
Hilary is absolutely correct. Aristotelian categories realized through language are how we build a framework for coping; but Lawson and Kant had it right. It's noumena all the way down.
In short, I understand him to mean Closure is how we perceive what exists or we think exists and that our perception is a mental confinement - "Closure."
After listening to his answers for over an hour I still don’t know where the toilet is!
Gor Blimey, if this bloke is a philosopher, Mr Bean must have already won the Nobel Prize in literature and my cat is definitely a genius.
Why doesn’t he do some useful like cleaning up all those stinking street corners aka public urinals and lavs in his city? He’d be much appreciated that way.
This was a good interview, and very informative to see Hilary Lawsons point of view put forward clearly
@@ReverendDr.Thomas why are you screaming?
@@ReverendDr.Thomas you are a reverend, so a slave to jesus methinks. A persons that's been dead for two thousand years. Look at yourself before you judge others
Thank u great stuff and lot to learn.,
Our collective conscience is creating reality
Our collective consciousness agrees upon a language that describes what we see and how we feel. Reality is there despite our existence.
Great conversation. How is Hillary Lawson’s theory of Closures/openness different from the Jainism philosophy?
"Our closure is never the same thing that the stuff out there..." So there is stuff out there!
We cannot know the stuff out there, but I believe that the patterns we see repeating themselves all over the place are a sign that there is an underlying "thing". That would be my answer to the puzzle "how can we make sense of things without real knowledge of them?"
Reality lets say is like the full electromagnetic spectrum , thought is only in color , communication is only in black and white so everything we do and or express is an approximation its not 100% reality and it works because 100% reality is not needed to accomplish the task at hand / the desired out come, and life has a finite amount of "time" there for it must out of necessity approximate. Getting 90%+ success for the minimum "time" spent with the action is very efficient. Closer is the act/description of approximating. It's the richness of life/consciousness not the richness of reality , "Of course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong" lol
I have of late been offering my wife's discovery of time's arrow (935-QKK) as way to end the war in Ukraine precisely because it not only invites us to stop the attack on Ukraine physically through all the physical implements and mobilization that that entails but also to reconcile the divergent ideological timelines that led to war. As Zelensky so aptly put it at the beginning of the war, a leader of the world must necessarily be a champion of peace. The more his nation suffered in battle, the more I realized those of us not suffering should not only help with putting arms in Ukraine's hands, but disentangling and walking back the timelines that led to proclamations in support of genocide not only by Putin but especially by leading Russian filmmakers and propogandists like Timofey Sergeitsev. Recently my cousin asked me what credentials my wife and I had in offering this model? I pointed out that I was a Russian Studies major who wrote his thesis in Communications on the most contentious of events to arise during the Cold War, the shootdown of two passenger planes by the Soviets. From there my studies took me not only forward in time to today but backward in time to before WW II when Shiga Shigetaka saw a vision of peace cementing our friendship and alliance on the eve of WW I and offered a groundbreaking monument to the reconciliation of timelines in a gift of a stone monument celebrating our brotherhood through a shared vision of heroism. His gift was far more subtle than people realize, coming from his timeline of having been schooled by Lincoln's former colonel, chemist and botanist William Smith Clark. As luck would have it, Shiga was born in a city which was famous for its story of a siege of men in a castle (like the Alamo) and the story of the crucifixion of Torii Suneemon in the 15th century as he attempted to break the siege. The key to grasping the openness of this model came from my wife Kumiko and her observations of a likeness between her name and the numbers 9, 3, 5. It extended to include a feature of the Japanese language which offers different words for counting different objects by classification, for example by thing or person, or even by shape or function which by way of their class, require a different way of counting. It led to a sense of seeing the objects in this world through their own number, their own timeline.. That this timeline is effectively regenerative (quite akin to 'open' in the sense Hilary Lawson describes) accounts for both the stubbornness of our thinking (in terms of a cautionary tale) but offers hope that we may take such limitations into account and find the right path to peace.
While the results of observation is information (epistemological), how is the act of observation characterized? What actually is going on when there is observation?
So the conclusion to Closer to Truth, after watching every video made, is that we have no idea....or that agnosticism is the only genuine possibility one can come to if they fully explore religion, history and theology in all its forms.
I'm probably stupid , but I struggle to see any point in what he's saying .
You're not stupid. It's all bullshit.
Yeah ! Seems very pretentious !
Does closure argument fall apart at the before life question? Can closure be measured into a percentage of what we perceive at any moment in time. If we can control "closure" does that mean we could potentially manifest anything in our mind to be what we want? I'm just a layman thinking so forgive me.
Re: can we change our closure to manifest anything.
I’m fairly confident in my understanding of this view, so I’ll take a crack at answering this part of your comment. Hopefully it makes some amount of sense haha.
Closure is controlled by us only partially. So for example, we close things with our language and models-both of which can be developed and changed over time via a cultural adoption of said changes. But there is closure imposed upon us by our physiological and biological makeup, which we cannot change. Part of this imposition is done by the brain, but also in its relation to our senses. Compared to dogs-our noses, our sense of smell-is dramatically worse. A dog has been imposed with its brain and its hierarchy of senses; we have been imposed with ours. Because of this difference in perspective, the world is closed differently for us and the dog. Perspective is the first closure so to speak.
You can then go further and say that any individual person’s experience will affect how they close the world. Another person and I might both use the word “God” for example and be able to communicate efficiently with sentences including that word, but we will both conceive of “God” differently based on our life experience. Concepts are much like sense experience. They’re fuzzy and not perfectly communicated. There are no words to describe the color blue that a blind person would be able to understand and know what it’s like to see something blue. Similarly, there are no words to describe what I conceive of as “God” or what I conceive of as my relationship to my friend, because those conceptions are unique to my mind, and I’ve come to them based on my entire life up until this point. If I’m to adapt these qualitative, experiential things, I have to close them in some way with language. And I’m similarly stuck with the languages that I’ve grown to learn. So any personal conception I want to communicate has to be closed by an unchosen language.
I'm open to openness.
Could human observation of information in any way be used to examine if information of the world or reality comes from observation?
Time 43:28 Closure is the process of imposing name and form on "the open totality."
What is the full implication of self reference?
And another thing...using language to explain that language is an inadequate representation of reality is...well...silly. An interpretive dance may have been a better expression?
Does language have more to do with observation than with the world or reality?
Since human observation of information is epistemological, is theology the ontological observation of human being(s)?
This is the first time I saw an RLK (or any serious) interview with a person who recognizes science as just another religion.
As to the question of destination he left open, the correct answer would be:
Closure can become ultimate, permanent, certain, final, absolute,......, (just name it), if and only if we discover the method to render all life immortal after certain point and implement it in practice.
For then doubters, fatalists, pessimists,....., would all be forced to eat their own words.
This is the first I’ve heard of Lawson. Really interesting ideas BUT (and I could be wrong of course) this seems to be eastern philosophy/spirituality (Tao/Zen) in a western philosophical garb. (The vocabulary is even the same, openess, holding without fixating or grasping. )It also seems to be the logical destination of postmodern thought. I don’t really necessarily hear the diffrence between process and closure in his last argument. Who says that process is anymore ”out there” than closure? To quote Buddha - ’we don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are.’ We are ever changing, in forming and disintergrating processes that I suppose could be described as closures. But that is only from our perspective.
On another level, we as a species aren’t born as a clean slate. Wich seems to be a common postmodern argument. For instance, the infant doesn’t have to learn to explore putting diffrent things in their mouth. This of course, says nothing about an independent truth ’out there.’ It’s just another example of us understanding the world as we are.
so nourishing - robert is cutting to the chase now after skirting around mere frameworks for so long -hilary rightfully puts them in their place.the idea resonates with donald hoffman’s user interface metaphor to explain how if we dont see reality we can still function / survive
Lawson seems more radical than Hoffman or Kastrup, in that he thinks that theories of what's out there (beyond the interface) are impossible _in principle._ I have to say that I rather agree with him.
On the other hand, _scientific modeling_ of how the brain works with its closures would still be useful, so I'd like to know more about Lawson's attitude to _mathematics._ Why is mathematics so unreasonably successful in building scientific models? Something for a future interview?
Reminds me a bit of Isaiah Berlin discussing how we can understand that there are in fact a variety of world views and understand those world views without believing or adhering to those world views only to be repeatedly hit with the charge of "relativism" as a child would understand it. Reading the comments I can see the same simplistic charge is waiting for Lawson.
My biggest problem isn't really with what I can understand of his position from just this interview, but what appears to be an underlying assumption of "human progress" or an "upward" arc of history in some sense. It might be that we aren't going to find the answer from a guru on a mountaintop but I don't think the 10,000 years of human civilization he mentions as evidence of this shows that it is an idea we have advanced past in some way, or that we are really "advancing" outside of our technology and thus we and our tech will continue to advance in some way. The encapsulation and closure of both Modernism and Postmodernism, which Lawson seems to be working toward, may well be something more primitive than either yet armed with better technology.
With this interview, this channel is definitely getting closer to truth
Take a drink every time he says "That's not what is going on."
there is more important question: criminal thieves all around the world have very weak morals, values, ...... etc but how they still pretend that they have dignity to protect !
24:40 I would make a more concrete example by saying "if we grew up on a spaceship, we wouldn't be saying "stars in the sky ABOVE us" i.e. it's not a fact of "reality"
I don't think Hillary really has any good grounding for saying that there isn't a substrate upon we build our closures. He keeps saying, "that's not what's going on", but he doesn't know what going on, so how does he know what it isn't?
in the past they used one rotten grain to build a whole irrational dome, but now they can build a whole dome out of many stolen grains !
6:30 that is what I have wrote before on this you tube channel ! the apes will never get rid of of their old bad habits "thievery as patching techniques" !
Could observation be more fundamental than information?
or could observation be information
Compare Hillary term openness with Pierces term of "Firstness"
18:46: the apes already built their own faked sick irrational realm ! (not humans at all !) unbelievable !
Hillary is wrong. We are the stuff out there. That's why we can connect to it.
Language describes everything. Everything is by the word. Your Creator is also your Savior.
Is Hilary's image inverted/mirror image? Tell me yes. In the image his won't is to glance to his image's right.
looking right (in America) is commonly thought of by so-called experts as indicative of disingenuousity.
As a Muslim, I respect the principle of Hilary's philosophy. Allah told us in the Quran: {And you have been given nothing but a little knowledge}; so no matter how much we think we know, our knowledge will always be incomparable to the realities we're exposed to, never mind the infinite realities we're NOT exposed to; it's a real shame he doesn't believe in a creator.
Hence Closer To Truth.
@@fparent Precisely
@@fparent Hence further from falsity.
@@alexgonzo5508 You will find it impossible to substantiate such claim of falsity. Try to humble your ego.
@@hatemsoliman7787 What falsity did i claim? What ego are you talking about? I get the strong feeling you have an ideological or religious ax to grind. Perhaps deep down inside yourself you know that what you believe may very well be false. This makes you psychologically project those insecurities onto others like myself, but perhaps i'm wrong (it could be worse) as you will surely say.. only you would know. I'm sorry that you felt that way, but not for what i said.
Tell me what you think i claimed and maybe i can substantiate it or not, depending on what you think it is.
realnost je cisto drugacna od cloveka do cloveka..toliko je realnosti,toliko kot je ljudi na svetu..in zivali..
To play the devil's advocate, science obviously works in many ways. After all, science ultimately led to the internet and RUclips, which made the long distance conversation possible and available to a wide audience. Doesn't this mean that science got a lot of things right and science is closer to the ultimate reality, even if we cannot get to the ultimate reality?
How do you know if a different model to our science cannot led to the internet sooner than this one?
Survival of the smartest. ❤️
Hilary Lawson looks like Mike Jagger...lol
the curse on mankind is a real tragedy.
what is going on ! they are not humans mentally and psychologically ! it is the curse unbelievable !
yeah most of the thieves have the same accent ! that is not by coincidence !
Not new.Vedanta tells us much more clearly about closure and gives a means of realising and live it..
After all Indian Gurus has figured it out long time back !!
Good question, how did we get to where we are?
He answered how he got to where he is not us.
You do not need to go far back to explore this question, just go back to late C19 and follow the people who discovered or made things and not the 'learned' ones who just talk like this guy.
It is not hard; the trick is to do your own thinking.
Well, not really, because he's talking about the history of western thought and why we think about and categorize things the way we do, which goes back to Plato and Aristotle at least. Then comes the whole history of western philosophy elucidating and trying to build on that. So you have to go back quite a bit farther than the 19th cent., lol. You also have to know a hell of a lot about epistemology, ontology, phenomenology, as well as critical theory, inc. structuralism and post-structuralism. It is pretty hard, indeed, and "doing your own thinking" isn't going to get you very far if you don't have the right foundation on which to do it.
Yeah it's quite a liberating view.
I wouldn't agree with anything. Generally, you get "nope, I ain't havin' it."
thievery as patching techniques is a culture among the apes (not humans) !
1:05:00 they are not humans at all ! unbelievable !
yeah: the deaf mute persons and language and their mental life. human write it in one valuable sentence while the apes write an entire book to reach one human sentence ! not only that it is already stolen from one human's sentence !
the deaf mute person and language and their mental life, they do not need the conventional language to think ! that what he talks about.
the curse gives advices too !
keeping human imprisoned among the apes is a very bad idea, better for the apes to get rid of him to keep their sick irrational realm.
mind you they're not even neurons or photons
55:00 not humans at all (real sick irrational apes) !
how did the apes lost all human characteristics and became a curse on all mankind ?!
It is always difficult for me to tell: are these people saying there is no grand/profound bedrock reality, or are they saying literally nothing we are experiencing is real in any intelligible sense? I mean, even if we cant reach truths about the deepest facts of reality, surely we are capable of using intelligent inquiry to navigate this universe towards a more desirable future. I feel like that's all anyone means by "true/real" in an ordinary context.
Realism may not be true but its still real, its just not true. That would be something called truthism. So why not call one self a non-truthist and remain calling oneself a realist. There is no alternative to what is real. Being a non-truthist is far more acceptable sounding to me.
danes sem spet dozivela de ja vu..to je preteklost in obenem prihodnost..v preteklosti je to..
Is Hilary real? Language is symbolic...Not a very new idea. He doesn't mention mathematics. Does he disagree with 2 + 2 = 4?
Me thinks that if he stood in front of the camera, completely silent, his point would have been more persuasive.
One more thought...Do you realize, he pretty much said: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."? (circa 1878) But it took him 30 minutes to do it
@@ReverendDr.Thomas Your cultural relativity is showing.
@@ReverendDr.Thomas Obviously Western educated. All European music examples. Very discriminating, which is culturally transparent...to me. Ha! But it's fine with me. I'm in the same boat.
Hilary is a boor and he took over an hour to pontificate about a topic that could have been adequately discussed in 20 minutes.
No ultimate reality. Only constructive useful models. It's all that we can ever hope for.
Wow. Reality alert. Dr. Lawson you need to deliver this lecture to a tribe of cannibals. You can model your visit as an educator. They'll appreciate you as uber eats. And as they boil you in a pot you can take profound intellectual consolation that their model better served them than your model.
You're lecture will be tasty. And more useful. Thank you for resolving so many questions about reality!
I think you need to listen to what he is saying. It's fairly straight forward
@@johnsnyder3443 It's OK, I realize that my experience of listening to the Beatles and yours could be very different. But I know one thing. I know I need to get out of the way of a moving bus. My blood is real!
can apes cheat human ?!
Opinion...opinion...opinion...
In a word "bullshit".
the curse talks about science, education, humanity,...... !
So the learned professor has written a book that proves the futility of writing books. A novel approach, I must admit.
the apes are so funny, the imprison and torture human and at the same time they steal his own thoughts to keep their faked shaky realm standing !
sick irrational apes, who can blame sick irrational apes "the curse on mankind"!
the funny part is how the apes interpret human thoughts ! the style the apes ornament human thoughts with is so funny "apes style"!
Why Hilary Lawson keeps moving around when he talking? It disturbing.
Yeah, in what way? I think it's fairly normal
i think it`s a personal thing. some people are better able to express themselves by motion
It irritated me too. But when I noticed that he recognizes science as just another religion all the irritation vanished. He deserves respect.
@@mykrahmaan3408 Agree!
Paging Jonathan Pageau….
time and the two cycles: they have stolen that too, but wrong interpretations "funny"!
Don´t like he´s haircut, indicates past views of thinking. And what do we get? Gibberish.
What would the Egyptian hieroglyphs be called? They are both phonetic and describe physics at the same time. 📐🕐🔥