This is what I love about Peter and his guests. A conversation with complex ideas and direct challenges, and yet they both remain calm and measured. The work you are doing is so needed in today’s society. Keep doing what you’re doing!
OMG. What an insight. Socrates was interested in the soul of the other. I think even Peter, the Socrates student, appreciated that point and application to today. They don't care what you think, until they think that you care. Wow, another beautiful statement from a wonderful man; "You give unity to diversity". Thank you, gentlemen.
I loved when Peter jokingly compared himself to Cathy Newman and her infamous JBP interview, but I think it is important to recognize the exact moments where he had the option to be more like her and chose not to be. Whenever Jan is starting an explanation or response, and Peter says "I know where you're going with this", he doesn't cut him off, he doesn't finish his sentence, he doesn't assume that the exact landing spot will be the same. One of the easiest pitfalls in a conversation is to assume that you know the whole of an idea simply because you know the directionality of it. Giving Jan time to arrive there of his own reasoning allows his ideas to breathe and mold to the shape of the conversation as it develops. You NEED to have this man back on Peter, this is the best conversation I've listened to in a long time! I love that you're engaging with people whose beliefs are different than yours, and doing so in a respectful and constructive way.
It could've been settled in 5 minutes. I've met 100s of people exactly like Bentz. His views could easily be boiled down to, "Modern epistemology, with its dependency on empiricism, nominalism, etc. leaves the door open for all manner of subjectivism. In order to solve the resultant problems, I recommend we do *_not_* broaden serious investigation to outside just the areas that science can resolve. I recommend we instead retreat to my religion in which all these problems are arbitrarily resolved by fiat." By using exhalted, long-winded, and intellectual-sounding language, he can make this appear like a reasonable course of action. In reality, one needs to be a depraved monster to even consider such an answer.
@tombombadil8709 The empirical evidence is Benz talking. All he does is point at a few well-known limitations in modern epistemology and insists on that basis alone that we must revert to Thomist metaphysics. I don't need to pull up a study to respond to a position that does not, itself, reference any studies. Or are you making some sarcastic criticism of the strawman position that anything and everything must be based on "empirical data"? If so, you're barking up the wrong tree. I don't hold to that position, and neither do most real human beings, so this is a totally empty point. Just because people don't accept a comically radical empiricism, however, doesn't oblige anyone to roll back the clock and start taking the Summa Theologica seriously. We've still been given precisely zero reason to do that. *_Just because there are other criteria by which we can determine truth (e.g. mathematics is not an empirical subject) does not mean Catholicism or Christianity satisfy any of those other criteria._*
@tombombadil8709 That's a lot of text just to tell me that Benz's words don't mean what Benz's words mean. Kinda wasteful. One would think that, if you genuinely knew me to he wrong about what Benz was saying, you would then explain what his thesis was. If this was something you knew, the normal response would be to explain what you. What does he say that amounts to anything more than "your epistemology is imperfect so you must surrender utterly to mine"? Of course, it's likely you'll resist explaining. It would destroy the magic and reveal how trivial his argument really is. The case that I "do not understand it" is based, therefore, solely on my insufficient admiration.
@tombombadil8709 Notice that you *_still_* haven't even tried to explain to me what Benz actually meant. This would be the normal course of action when responding to someone who misunderstands an argument. It's kinda pointless for you to tell me I misunderstood it (somehow) but then say absolutely nothing about what it was I was supposed to have understood. It's as if I'm supposed to take your word for it that I'm too dumb to follow what, to me, was actually a pretty straightforward conversation (a conversation I grew up hearing over and over again).
Absolutely fascinating conversation. I had not had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Jan. So many interesting thoughts in the conversation! Thank you Peter!
“If it's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well” Yes, that sounds like something Dan Dennett would say. Great conversation so far, I'm about halfway through. Cheers 🍺
Peter, thank you so much for having this conversation. In addition to you two having just really good chemistry - and similar speaking styles, actually - I was excited to hear Dr. Bentz touch upon what I see as the problem of having skepticism as one's primary starting point, or default, when engaging with a particular claim, such as the existence of god - something I've sensed, but haven't been able to properly express. I'm agnostic in a sea of atheists. Anyway, AMAZING convo. On a side note, I'm also 58 years of age and my brother is named REID!!!
I admire the composure of Dr. Boghossian when at the very end Dr. Bentz argued that Einstein and Aquinas reached essentially the "same truth"... I would have exploded. Besides the fact that Dr. Boghossian's always thoughtful remarks on evidence and the importance of the weight of evidence didn't really find an echo conversation-wise, this was such a well-done and enrichening interview. Thank you for putting out such valuable content!
With regard to whether the epistemological framework needs to come first, from a psychological standpoint people tend to change either from the inside out or the outside in. Which is to say that for some people, they will understand a better moral framework as an idea and then make the change. But many people have to learn by doing the thing. For example they learn that treating other people is more rewarding after they start treating other people better. If you think of the twelve steps from AA. Many of the steps are there because those are the actions people need to make in order to internalize those behaviors as more rewarding. Ie they learn from the outside in.
Best interview so far, and one of the best and most interesting I’ve ever seen! More of this please! P.S. Thank you, Reed, for restraining Peter’s BJJ commentary 😂
Brilliant guy. I had such a hunch by the specific way that Jan disagreed with Peter in the beginning that he had to be a Christian. Turned out to be true.
At 1.09. My way of describing this has always been , you can’t reason somebody out of something they didn’t reason themselves into. This is fundamental to understanding the mess we are in.
That is the value of integrety. The key difference in Objectivist epistemology is that it deals with ideas-such as goals, hopes, and aspirations-by actively rejecting contradictions and aligning thoughts with reality. In Objectivist thinking, when an idea contains contradictions or errors, it must be broken down and replaced with a clear, non-contradictory understanding. This is in contrast to subjectivist thinking, where someone may not correct their beliefs until reality forces a correction through personal experience. An Objectivist begins with a goal or ambition-an imagined idea-and then actively integrates this with objective reality. They examine and refine their concepts, eliminating contradictions and false beliefs along the way. Through this process, they learn and discard flawed ideas, replacing them with more accurate ones that are better aligned with their purpose and needs. Clear differences in thought and action often reveal that someone hasn’t fully disintegrated old, contradictory ideas, even if they’ve adopted new ones. This results in conflicting beliefs that aren’t yet reconciled. In Objectivist epistemology, disintegrating outdated or incorrect ideas requires a conscious, deliberate process-just as integrating new, valid concepts does. Both involve an active effort of thought, where one evaluates and refines ideas to ensure they align without contradiction. It is a Focus on creating Unity between Thought and Action. The Value of Integrety. The purpose of Integrety, is to lose the feeling of terror towards existance. And as all potent values of the enlightenment, it is best dealth with humor and curiosity.
Peter (and Jan), I refer you to Hayek’s book The Counter-Revolution of Science, which explores the theme raised here of the problem of “the scientific method being used in all aspects of life” (scientism), your son’s notion of “the subjective turn as a kind of prophylactic against authoritarianism”…”the primacy of subjectivity being a bulwark against any objective dogma, any institutionalized hegemonic authoritarianism.” Hayek is all over this.
Peter: can love be quantified? Love is a quality of God, and also, love is God (not the feeling, but love as will). (God is also many other things that can't be measured, such as humility.) If you can't quantify love, then you can't quantify God with the scientific method. To believe in God, the Christian God, a person has to have some level of a poetic mind that is ok with mystery. It's not impossible, but it is difficult for analytical people to come to a belief in God, because the inclination to dissect and understand everything is so strong. (This reminds me of a saying: In order to dissect a frog, you have to kill it. I think the same thing happens to us... the more we dissect the material world, the more we kill the part of us that seeks after God. Thankfully, God never abandons us.) This mind has to ultimately humble itself before the heart. This doesn't mean you devolve to emotionalism, but that you serve that which you love, your values. For Christians, our values have their foundation in Christ, the God-Man. He is the Man of men, the Supreme Good; in Him are all perfect strengths and no weaknesses, all virtues and no passions. Christ is God, and we not only follow and worship this Perfect Man as God, we also seek to become like Him, to become little christs in a process called theosis. Anyway, if you read your comments, I hope this helps you understand Christianity a little bit more. I appreciate your content and very much enjoy listening to your work. Thanks!
Love can be quantified. Whether it can feasibly be measured is different question, but anything that exists conforms to mathematics and cam be quantified. This is clearly evident when someone decides that they love X more than they love Y. When something exists at relative strengths or intensities, this means that there is a scale by which these different levels can be compared, whether you can directly perceive and use this scale or not. The real problem with "love" is that it's a human word. The concept of "love" is a human invention that need not always map onto the same thing in concrete reality everytime it is used. This is one of the things that makes it such a fuzzy concept. Does one's "love" for their children really have anything to do with their "love" for chocolate? Does the "love" they show when they give charity to a stranger really have anything to do with the "love" they feel when experience affection for a close friend? A single word can apply to multiple, unrelated, and incommensurate phenomena. This can allow words to disobey the laws that govern concrete reality, but language is not the decider of what is and is not true. Also, sometimes words are used without there being *_any_* concrete manifestation of them. Sometimes words are abstract representations of undefined, undefinable, and non-existent. Does "God's love" for humanity, for example, really have anything to do with humans' "love" for, well, anyone or anything? God is not "loving" by virtue of him actually *_doing_* anything that we already defined as "loving." "Love," instead, is simply redefined so that God can meet the standards of being "loving." For these reasons and others, human words are often too imprecise to be quantified without first fixing the definitions. But, once those definitions are fixed, so long as those words now actually apply to real things (and only to one real thing per word) we can then quantify those real things.
The Enlightenment began with Francis Bacon’s (1561-1626) popularizing the idea that Deductive reasoning was barren of progress because it did not produce any new knowledge. He recommended Inductive Reasoning, testing hypothesis about the natural world to attain new knowledge. This was known as “The New Philosophy” or what we today call Science. The stated goal of those doing the ‘new philosophy’ was to “reduce as much as possible human suffering” and to “increase as much as possible human wellbeing”
@@user-Bob_T "Count it all joy my brothers, when you encounter trials of various kinds, for the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." James 1: 2-4
@@keeponrockin85 There’s a difference between stupid suffering and redemptive suffering. You are quoting scripture that refers to redemptive suffering. Yes!
Then Hume comes along a hundred or so years later and kinda sticks a fork in things no? But Inductive Logic can still carry us pretty far, which I think Hume would grant as well.
I agree with OP. 250 more years pass, and a small bunch of “Hegelians” observe the changes they lived through. What later became dialectical materialism also pointed to what we “externalised” - i.e. what are we NOT accounting for in our eh, “calculations”. As Bentz mentions, this tool of thought (philosophy) predates “Marxism”, but was core to Marx’s (and others) way of ingesting and critiquing the emergent group dynamics of the day - early to mid “modernism”. What came out as “politics” decades later, is like pointing to the crusades as being “Christian” - pointing more to us as quite silly (understatement of the day…) when we want power, and how we bend any externality for incumbency. Our attention creates our view of “reality”. Shift the attention - something also “shifts” in your perception, right…?
@@musiqtee The point I was making was quite uncomplicated: For the 1600 years from the beginning of Christianity, justified using deductive reasoning, the human condition had not improved much at all. However, since the time of Francis Bacon humanity has gone from the horse drawn cart to the moon, and all the wonders of the modern world (including the internet we are using). That leap forward was precipitated using the method of inductive reasoning.
I think a way to look at it is that utopia is a tool. The first and most important thing is to know that it means "no place" From that perspective, we already recognize that we use it to imagine better ways of being while also seeing that times change, people change and none of us have the same goals to begin with. But we can, and SHOULD, use utopia to discuss what we want to work towards in society. This is how we design systems and also how we build our own character. We learn, we imagine, we implement, we reassess, we improve (or fail), and then we repeat. The alternative is slipping into stagnation or even dystopia, both in an individual or social scale. The main issue he seems to point out is a misuse of this tool by the elites, to manipulate us into doing their bidding and falling for their belief structures (which keep them in power and with most of the wealth). The solution is not to get rid of utopia as a tool but to wield it properly. The key to that is simply recognizing its meaning and realizing that we will always have to work towards something better as the world is ever changing. What do you think?
1:07:00 Strong disagreement that starting with the "I" means that reality is "all in your head". Self-consistent proxies are reliable ways to know reality. Reality is outside of our head. We can start with the "I", and know reality. We know reality is real, because the external impacts what's inside the head.
The point is that you can't escape your own filters and perceptions. You are always modifying whatever reality is to come through your senses, which are limited. Check out the work of Donald Hoffman about how we evolved to specifically see only what gives us fitness benefits. There's essentially a 0% chance we sense reality in any true way. We are highly adapted to navigate the illusion, however. Even physics (my degree) tells us that we can never see things for what they actually are at the smallest quantum scales (a true mind f***), thanks to the uncertainty principle. Whatever reality is, it's WEIRD, and I think it helps to recognize this with humility. I couldn't even tell you what, let alone WHO "I" am
@@MattAngiono We know that we can sense reality because of a concept of "survival". If someone jumps off a cliff, we no longer can know the jumper, as they are dead, they didn't survive. We can know reality, because of "survival". In science, it is survival of ideas. Or it can be survival of relationships, or survival of body fat or survival of muscle. At the end of the day, something survives, or doesn't. That is reality.
Mind is blown. Gob is smacked.... Q: How do you get people to change their minds? (!! That's the thing we all want to know.) A: Love. ??!! Wait, what? We know it's not facts and logic. We think it may have to do with emotion. So culture. But, whoa, it goes straight to love? Humans are pretty efficient, I guess. A person has to know that I love him? And I have to love him? No wonder we're not changing more minds!! This actually makes a great deal of sense. Changing your mind feels risky. Love is a high bartier to entry! Next Q: are humans better at faking love/agape or better at detecting fake love? I think better at detecting, ICBW. Thanks from hurricane- battered FLA for great convo.
What a fantastic conversation, exchange; and that you obviously enjoy each other's company, added to my enjoyment. I enjoyed your enjoyment of each other's company. I don't want to come across as nitpicking but regarding epistemological frameworks. A tad idealistic I think Peter. If I ever get the chance to do one of your street "thingies" I will jump at it. Regards🙏
At 52:52, I had the same thought. From a developmental perspective, both the necessity of an epistemological framework and the idea that it evolves as a self-referential structure over time are correct. The self-referential aspect emerges naturally during sociocognitive processes, such as theory of mind and mentalizing-the capacity to differentiate one’s own mental states from those of others. A hallmark of this process is that much of it occurs implicitly, almost by definition. Children often go through a phase of asking “why” about everything, yet they lack the executive functioning to fully understand or organize such complex ideas into a latent knowledge source. When we explain complicated phenomena to children, we often give simple answers, which they accept while continuing to encounter new questions in real-time. As their executive function develops, their inquiries become more sophisticated, and the way they arrive at answers grows increasingly metacognitive. The real point of disagreement seems to be about when during development the epistemological framework becomes knowable and usable. Even when we become aware of this framework, we continue to encounter new situations that challenge our existing knowledge. In many of these cases, we don’t consciously engage with the framework; instead, we process things without necessarily understanding all the constituent parts. This lends some weight to the idea of “baptism by fire.” We carry an implicit epistemological framework based on the data we’ve gathered, and this framework is often recruited, in response to new challenges, to form reasoned responses based on the information we’ve already absorbed. The danger of relying solely on the automatization of cognitive processes, without a conscious understanding of an epistemological framework, is that it leaves individuals vulnerable to extremism and blind adherence. Without a clear reference point for evaluating ideas, even good ones can go unchecked and become the fuel for pathological systems. An epistemological framework, in this sense, serves as an “anticoagulant” for ideas-preventing them from becoming rigid or dogmatic. When left unexamined, ideas, no matter how well-intentioned, can morph into ideologies that stifle dissent and critical thinking, as we see in movements like critical social justice or extremist religious orders. Without a framework to challenge and test these ideas, they can harden into belief systems that resist self-reflection, ultimately fostering environments of intolerance and fanaticism.
Epistemological conditions such as necessary, contingent, possible and impossible, are modal propositions, and therefore metaphysical. Even the periodic table is metaphysical, because its an ontology of elements
I think what Jan asserts is that there are truths which you exclude from being known by virtue of making the scientific method the only tool of knowledge verification. If you decide that something only counts as knowledge if it was tested by the scientific method, you decided on what knowledge is possible beforehand
Jan is really just saying "if you can't solve every imaginable problem you must accept my answers for all the problems you can't yet solve." Science, in part, developed the way it did as a means to avoid the religious censors. By staying away from metaphysics and making sure they had all their ducks in a row before going public, they limited the chances that the Church would be able to find fault with them. The Church would typically understand disagreement to be a character issue on their opponent's part, and the scientific method allowed thinkers to avoid this charge by pointing to the method and saying "I'm simply reporting what I saw." When the Church lost its status as an arbiter of truth, however, some people started looking at science as its replacement. Treating science as the sole arbiter of truth, however, kinda guarantees a materialist worldview, regardless of what happens to be true, because science, by design, can only give answers related to the material world. A void is left in the space the Church used to occupy specifically because secular thinkers avoided that space for their own safety.
Great conversation. Regarding the JiuJutsu gorilla in the room: As a human combative behaviour specialist, an interesting topic for discussion is that the study of a combative sport that temporarily places the individual in uncomfortable/painful situations is a microcosm of the pressures of the world at large. The 'dojo' is one of the few places where everyone is truly equal. As a teacher of SouthEast Asian arts for over 40 years I can honestly say it is a place where everyone is the same, and might be one of the few places where merit is the only arbiter, but only in systems that pressure test their content. Some aspects of your conversation can be examined through that lens.
That all depends on the "dojo".... I got a black belt in Tae Kwon do many years back and my school had definite hierarchies. That said, it was still a very valuable experience to teach me about life, but I do wonder just how healthy it is to punch and kick each other in the head, even with pads. We used to go HARD sometimes! Now I much prefer the dojo of nature itself, like when I free solo rock climb. The only hierarchy there is me vs my own mind, with nature ruling over us both (though one can forget that sometimes). Another good example is river sports like kayaking or white water rafting
That was one great conversation, a veritable bonfire of deep thoughts! I feel one point around the Stanford prayer study was somewhat glossed over, though: the study could have gone the other way! The scientific method per se does not preclude such findings.
Ive spent my whole adult life creating a solid epistemological framework. Bery few people i meet have done that. Most fall into some sort of echo chamber, some pre-made position the wouldnt come to on their own.
Your opinion is completely flawed. If you have spent your whole life building this, but lack the knowledge to understand human generality, then you're also starting from a pre made position not of your own. Most likely a teacher or family figure.
"We see that science also rests on a faith; there simply is no science 'without presuppositions.' The question whether truth is needed must not only have been affirmed in advance, but affirmed to such a degree that the principle, the faith, the conviction finds expression: _'Nothing is needed more than truth, and in relation to it everything else has only second-rate value.'_ But you will have gathered what I am driving at, namely, that it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests-that even we seekers after knowledge today, we godless anti-metaphysicians, still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by a faith that is thousands of years old, that Christian faith, which was also the faith of Plato, that God is the truth, that truth is divine. No doubt, those who are truthful in that audacious and ultimate sense, that is presupposed by the faith in science thus affirms another world than the world of life, nature, and history." ~ *Nietzsche*
I've said it before, discussing opinions is so obviously necessary and even for people who are just in for the sake of winning an argument, if you don't test your views against others, there's no point in feeling like you're the bearer of all truth. It's just like gold medalist or Champions in sports, if they don't put that title to test, it's worth nothing
I would say it's dogmatic to believe that the only way to understand all phenomena is to use the scientific method because it's impossible to prove that belief with the scientific method, because you can't exhaustively test that hypothesis on all phenomenon. Therefore, one must dogmatically believe it's true.
Rupert Sheldrake discusses this idea in "The Science Delusion." He argues that the belief that all phenomena can be explained by the scientific method is one of the "dogmas" or assumptions that limit scientific inquiry. According to Sheldrake, this belief is rooted in the assumption that the scientific method is the only valid way of knowing about the world. He argues that this overlooks other forms of knowledge and inquiry, such as intuition, subjective experience, and spiritual or mystical practices. Sheldrake also points out that there are many phenomena that are not easily amenable to scientific study, such as consciousness, intention, and the placebo effect. He argues that these phenomena may require different methods of inquiry and understanding and that science should be open to exploring these possibilities. Overall, Sheldrake's argument is that the scientific method is a powerful tool, but it is not the only tool for understanding the world, and that science should be willing to expand its horizons and explore new ways of knowing.
You explained that concept much better than this Oxford guy. I think my reply to Sheldrake would be that the truly scientific thinker would leave a kernel of doubt available regarding the belief that all phenomena can be explained by the scientific method, thus proving it is not dogmatic, but simply the best approach. One example being the possibility that we are in a simulation in which the creators have tweaked reality to not always make sense.
@laugh629 i don't want to put words in your mouth, but if I'm hearing you correctly, you're saying these "creators" are physical manifestations like us which begs the question what created the creators? We then get into an infinite regress. If we posit One Creator that is outside of time, space, and physical manifestation then the buck stops there. This hypothesis is supported by the Big Bang. Since all matter, time, and space had a beginning it is logical to use the principle of causality and say the cause of the big bang lies outside of matter, time, space, and all the laws that govern them.
I love this discussion! It just feels like my IQ jumped several points after wading through all the crap and word salads of the internet. Finally, some real intellectual thought! What books do you recommend for someone who is interested in reading philosophy on her own?
39:30 Agape actually is the ontological root of all moral virtue. While the Principle of Reciprocity is basically the Law of Identity applied to normative conditions. With that in mind, morality and ethics are branches of normative ontology and epistemology, respectively.
I haven't read Michael Shellenberger, but there are many other academic books and documents going back 140 years saying the same thing. I would not be surprised if communism wasn't a plan to do just that. Let's see if this comment remains.
Don't forget that thy real threats of deteriorating environment and the elite will to power over us aren't mutually exclusive. There's a very real reason to be concerned about ecosystem collapse and overshoot (very real things in biology), while also seeing that leaders are using knowledge of such things against us (also because they are largely the ones most responsible for this mess). It's a diversion tactic, but not a reason to forget about the concerns surrounding the ecosystem, which are very real
@@MattAngiono agreed, which is generally why the "solution" the government/media tries to sell us on, is usually not the actual solution, but small local changes (like regenerative ag, etc) can make a greater impact, it just takes unplugging from their diversion/fear mongering to see we have a lot of power, and there are actually are many options.
@@MattAngiono _Ra: I am Ra. The technology your peoples possess at this time is capable of resolving each and every limitation which plagues your social memory complex at this present nexus of experience._ _However, the concerns of some of your beings with distortions towards what you would call powerful energy cause these solutions to be withheld until the solutions are so needed that those with the distortion can then become further distorted in the direction of power._ Ra Material (1981)
25:00 To state that we are supernaturally tainted, that we strive for "the perfect state" and a "logos beyond experience," shows a robustly traditional metaphysical enthusiasm. 37:00 Yes, most people tend not to accept reasoning that threatens their beliefs. But some will forgo convictions and edicts for understandings and assertions. They are able to revise and replace their understandings and assertions as new evidence, new reasons, warrant. 39:00 Our empathy is perhaps the most important inheritance of human self-domestication. Why Platonize-Christianize it? 44:30 Yes, a pragmatic and naturalized epistemology, one with both/and (pluralistic) thinking. 46:00 Dr. Bentz looks to use a traditional epistemology, one characterized by either/or (dichotomous) thinking. His "ideals" are absolutes abstracted from experience. When shared by a group, such notions tend to be made dogma, weapons of ideologues. Different groups, different ideologies, the 30-year's war, and Gaza. Much better to share a meal, a funny story by the fire, aesthetic appreciations, and tentative understandings. 54:00 Peter opines that metaphysics will not help us address today's challenges. Nice support of The Enlightment and humanism. I'd have asked Jan to specify his 'right kind' of metaphysics and what The Enlightment, "a child of religion," supposedly inherited from it. 59:00 Jan says that Enlightenment individualism led directly to identity politics and made it impossible [for individualists] to connect to the world. I'd ask him if identity politics is about being a member of a group. I note that the philosophers Jan cites to support his notion were among those who would not let go of metaphysical absolutes, would not let go of a spirit world. "Modern philosophies are all the establishment of a museum." Jan cannot have read James, Dewey, or other American pragmatist philosophers. Pragmatist philosophers employ abductive reasoning. They work with processes, with practice to improve theory, with democratic interactions among the members of societies to improve solutions to social problems. Pragmatism is very much anti-representational. Jan speaks of the "inner telos [purpose] of the essence of a thing." Using metaphysical abstractions when he's trying to discuss nature is not helpful. I'd ask Jan why both woke and Christian nationalist ideologues are staunchly anti-science. 1:10 "The dogma [of science] is that you cannot go beyond the method." Scientists (indirectly) dissolve dogmas when their efforts improve our understandings of nature. The methods employed by scientists develop and evolve through trial and error; they change with new discoveries-inventions, new instruments, new concepts, with new kinds of analysis and interpretation. Scientists have taken to using abductive reasoning, reasoning that's anathema to traditional metaphysicians. Jan equates science and The Enlightenment with scientism. Those who sever mind from body will wield the subject/object distinction. 1:17 When adjectives are reified, confusions like "accuracy is attractiveness" may ensue. 1:26 To believe something that's not supported by evidence is wishful thinking and does not deserve being taken seriously. And too, it can be deadly. 1:29 Jan repeats his contention that scientific methods are dogmatic. Then he says that theology is scientific! His equation of science [methods of exploring natural processes] with knowledge is an outdated natural philosopher's usage. This is misrepresentation. 1:32 Jan again says that scientific methods are static & dogmatic (scientism). He stresses that "the method" does not change with new understandings. This is a misrepresentation. Read some philosophy of science. Read Steven L. Goldman's "Science Wars." 1:37 Jan states that (all?) our decisions are definitive. To reject that they can be provisional is an example of deductive reasoning, of dichotomous thinking and the metaphysician's way of making a godly thing, knowledge, from the process of knowing.
The Open Society and it’s enemies: “Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.-In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.”
I guess just pick a reasonable sample of such individuals and question them on what is it about his paintings they like so much. Compare the answers, see which ones match the most between all of them and take your conclusion, which could actually be that it is unexplainable.
@1:25:48 I love that you are able to move between or differentiate between the objective and subjective realms but what you are missing is that the problem is only when people reduce all of reality to one or the other. The enlightenment and today's post modern thinkers are reducing things to the I, but science reduces reality to the is or the objective, but there are again the 3 that Plato defines and are often called the big 3, the individual interior (subjective/Beautiful/consciousness) the collective interior (intersubjective/Good/culture) and the objective (facts/True/physical reality) The problem is when society reduces reality to one, scientism, fundamentalism and subjectivism are the result of reducing reality to each of these 3. We need to recognize and integrate all three and understand where each of them fits.
@@goa9034 haha I've read a lot of Wilber, I don't agree with everything he has said but he is correct that people reduce things to one of the quadrants instead of learning how to integrate all 3-4
As a non-believer, I strive to live my life well not in order to receive a prize in heaven but in order that I may leave the world in a better state than how I found it. The very fact that I do _not_ believe in having an immotal soul causes me to strive towards good for its own sake.
So your lifes purpose is to 'strive towards good'? You cant fail because without an external moral framework, or a logos then 'good' can be subjectively defined. 'Good' for me can be to smoke pot and watch Family Guy all day long.
The words/terms good or evil have NO intrinsic value outside of some indubitable established orhtodoxcy. As was hidden in plain-sight within the STORY?MYTH of the Geneses narrative. Where Adam and Eve had the choice to choose between the "tree of LIFE" and the "Tree of the knowledge of both good and evil. Thus, all that which could be representivie of good and evil should be always reference to all that which is representive as LIFE and its sustainability. Hence, seeking and discussing what is up and down without some well fix stndard of referencing it vanity and vexation of spirits. And futher more that which establishes the Standard of Reference MUST of necessity transcends the control of mere human rational logic and emotional desires. Most if not all western atheist refuse and thus can NOT see that their values of good and evil are based off the Judeo-Christian values even as they reject to us terms associated with such and "hide" be hiden much philosophcal jargon that would fool all those that stumble at mere mords/terms as used within some particular expressed contextual settings. Akin to people NOT seeing the old IDEAS of MARXISM presented with the Serpent (which represented the highly educated and intelligent hgh order angel of God (Lucifer) convincing Eve to partake of the forbidden tree because God and HIS governance were maliciously withholding her progress. Thus, making Eve the first FEMINIST and Adam the FIRST SIMP. There is NOT a THING new done under the sun therefore, the wise among the living should be willing to learn from the mistakes of others so as to make the better chioce in matter at hand.
I believe that the reason it’s so hard to dig down at why people believe what they believe, is because consciousness is the illusion that sensory stimuli grouping algorithms have; that their hierarchical grouping mechanism is them generating thought. When in fact it’s no more controlled by the generator than the movement of mRNA from the nucleus to the cytoplasm is controlled by the phosphate groups that produce movement. People don’t formulate opinions through mechanisms of reason. Nobody does. Even the most rational people form their opinions via the influence of a set of conditions over time.
@dreamwalkertunes what are the evolutionary selection pressures that select for illusion? Who perceives the illusion? What are selection pressures that select the perciever of the illusion?
“Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.” Thomas Paine, Common Sense
35:15 to 33:37 - I've rarely if ever seen personal testimony play much of a role in Christian apologetics. Usually it's more along the lines of the moral argument, the fine-tuning argument, etc.
Isnt personal testimony technically more important than what we tell ourselves is objective? We operate 99% of the time on unconscious modes of operation and we rarely have the knowledge needed to actually confirm our believed to be true “scientific facts”. We live subjectively and closer to personal testimony rather that objectively and closer to proven scientific truth. When dealing with someone in debate who we don’t want to accept some validity to their answers. We expect a proof or example well beyond any actual proof we have taken up on our own in our own beliefs.
Tend to agree with Peter about the scientific method. Referring to results as 'truth' is not scientific, we have hypothesis, theories & empirical laws with definitive meanings of which none refer to a truth of objective reality. It sounds like Bentz issue with dogmatism in the method is unique only to people misusing/misunderstanding it which I would completely agree with. Somwhat makes sense with his stance against relativism - but I don't think relativism is fundamentally the issue we have, the issue is that people are not even attempting to form their reletivistic understanding using empirical evidence & rational thinking.
From what I've read, certain thing becomes a fact, or universal Truth, if you want, after you can achieve a certain result and continuously replicate through the same method. So I'd say true science does seek to explain the Truth, and has, in many cases, but the results have to be heavily put to test, peer reviewed and eventually easily replicated to be considered as such
@@duarteleonardo8352 Science seeks to explain observations. With testing/collaboration of observations, we build up confidence about it being 'the truth' but never complete certainty. Everything that occurs in reality by definition becomes fact - as a fact is proven by occurrence, however, we can never say anything factual about what will happen, only about what has happened (assuming we trust our measuring device so technically even then, we could say 'probably a fact' but if we understand our view is relativistic then the 'probably' is implicit for everything and redundant). Everything for which you do not have the entire scope of information can inevitably only be theoretically perceived as probabilistic. For example, A bag of buttons called objective reality is filled with 1 billion red buttons and 1 blue button. Scientists pull 1 million consecutive buttons from the bag and measure them all to be red. Considering the massive number of measurements for which we have seen red without fail we can write an empirical law that if one measures a button from the bag it will be red. Being sensible scientists, they understand that this empirical law is still probabilistic, based on measurement (facts) because they are missing information. This is wise because you, having all the information about objective reality can see that they are not guaranteed a red button.
@@BillsRUclipsAccount hmm, I get your point, but what I mean is that, after being thoroughly tested, there are some concepts and laws that we, as humans may accept as universally true, which can also be quite helpful, while also being aware that unexplainable exceptions may occur, since we cannot predict the future. Of course this concept of universal Truth is just another man made thing, as we do with so many other things. For example, we universally accept that 2+2=4, but in reality and on practical terms, no 2 objects are exactly the same, so that addition would never be 100% correct. But I do get what you're saying.
The problem with scientific method is that it is limited on what we can physically detect in our world. 3000 years ago using the scientific method we would have never known that ultraviolet light, x rays, and gamma rays, etc that aren't visible to humans even existed. This is part of the reason I am agnostic because there could be a god and we just have no way to physically detect that he is there. In another 5000 years if we are still around our reality may be completely different in what we learn to detect that we never knew in the past. I also like to extend that even further in that what makes life better. Even if we just ignore facts it may mean living by certain rules is better. I don't believe in morals and I think nothing is wrong in this world. However, for society to function we need laws to restrict what we can do or society falls into chaos. Those laws change over time and sometimes can make things better or worst but we should always be questioning everything no matter how long it has been the standard to try to reach the best reality we can live in. The difference is factual reality (we are just random organism with no god creating rules to live by there is no moral right or wrong and it is all subjective) vs practical reality (we create laws using average subjective beliefs or right and wrong to try to find a way for us to not be afraid every day of our life).
Guest was on point about disproving the existence of God. I also can't say for sure that there is a God, so that's not what I'm trying to defend here, but how can anyone claim otherwise, how can anyone claim to be an atheist, doesn't that mean they woud need to have proof of the non existence of God. It's easy to understand why someone woud be agnostic, but if there's still the slightest chance we may actually have proof of God's existence, why would anyone not be interested in proving that. In my opinion, science and religion should never be separated as some people want them to be, they can and i think it's vital that they coexist.
@@Username-nu8el sorry, but that's not correct. I mean, you don't HAVE to disprove anything at all, no one's making you do so, but evidence is anything someone presents to you to defend their case, it can be strong and compelling evidence or the opposite. All the original scrolls that compose the bible, the shroud of Turin, amongst other things, are evidence for the existence of God, or at least Jesus, but then it's said they're the same, but that evidence needs to be analyzed in order to find out if it indeed proves the existence of God or not.
Problems Raised: ● The Limits of Reason and Persuasion: The conversation underscores the difficulty of persuading others through reason alone, suggesting that people are often swayed by factors beyond logic and evidence. Emotional connections, personal experiences, and cultural influences play a significant role in shaping beliefs, making it challenging to achieve consensus solely through intellectual arguments. ● The Problem of Defining "Reality": A recurring challenge lies in defining what constitutes "reality" and how we can access it. One speaker advocates for a realist perspective, accepting the data we gather from the world as a starting point, while the other emphasizes the limitations of our senses and the potential for subjectivity to color our perceptions. ● The Tension Between Objectivity and Subjectivity: The conversation highlights the persistent tension between the desire for objective truth and the inherent subjectivity of human experience. This tension manifests in debates about the validity of different methods of knowing, the role of personal interpretation, and the degree of confidence we can have in our beliefs.
Are we as a species to the point that we are in need of reinventing Christianity ? This whole conversion although a nail biter and truly one of the best of the channel, is just apologetics.
33:26 As far as I know breast cancer is not caused by smoking. When she was nervous about the treatment and what happened in the bar, it probably soothed her. A good effect. * Recent research shows applying irradiation actually promotes the (delayed) spreading (source Sam Brokken). So then the secondary problem also lies elsewhere. I would worry about.
Great conversation. By the way, Buddhism doesn't say suffering is an illusion. Not sure where Dr. Bentz heard this but he is misunderstanding the tenants of Buddhism.
One of the problems with using scientific method is when you go from some scientific inference to application. Say introducing a restrictive intervention with positive effects negatively affects a smaller share of population than not doing so, and, in contrast to what we had a couple of years ago, we have a solid scientific base for that. Should we do introduce it? If your answer is unequivocal yes, than that's dogmatic, I would say.
Hey Peter, referring to the part where you two discuss that love is the most convincing approach. Isn’t what Dr. Bentz described the same thing as the way Sybok’s character in Star Trek operated?
Great interview. I think your question about when the scientific method has been used and claimed to be objectively true is wrong though. The obvious example of that is the one already discussed, ie with ideologies like gender ideology, identity politics, implicit racism which all claim to be objective and scientific. The social sciences, that claim and use that term to turn the subjective into objective and binding scientific truths. I’ll give you another: defining mental illness and the science of the mind, the fields of psychology and psychiatry, the history and status quo of which are really worth investigating. The better question I think you meant to ask is the one you later delve into (I think you actually get sidetracked into theology) which is to ask if there are examples of non-scientifically verifiable ideas that nonetheless ought to be held with high confidence. The answer to that should be equally obvious; not just theology, but philosophy, the very conversation that you are having and discussing. The very idea of scientific, empirical validity being the necessary benchmark of objectivity is itself questionable under this very presupposition because it is not verifiable. It appeals to information outside of the empirical. It is philosophy, not science. You hold it with in fact the highest confidence you have, as you admit numerous times. Yet it is NOT scientific! There is nothing in science itself that demonstrates “convergence” or verifiability ought to be the standard of human progress and flourishing, in fact this is no different a claim than a dictator claiming that to force their subjects into converging on their own subjective standards will lead to their flourishing. It is inescapable using the science alone, and to say that scientific method should be the measure with confidence requires appeal to the unscientific. Anyway, great interview. Loved your pushback on Dr Bentz’s arguments, I can tell you really got his gears turning, and although I think there were moments he seemed to stumble or didn’t quite answer the question I think he found some really intriguing answers on the whole. Can’t help but feel that having different mother language is unfortunately still an obstacle, even if minor. I can’t believe he didn’t attack you on your scientific “dogmatism” when you spent more than an hour and half arguing about philosophy and neither of you are actually even scientists.
1:44 I think the most important tradition is to understand that humans have original sin, and at the same time we're made in the image of God, and therefore we need checks and balances, limited government, private property rights, and free speech etc, etc... (I used to be an "enlightened atheist")
Like everything woke, it depends on how you apply it. Criticizing something for genuinely feeling there's something you feel wrong about and could possibly be improved is very different from criticizing everything just for the sake of it.
Re: Jan Bentz's critique of Enlightenment. Descartes was one philosopher & not the template for Enlightenment philosophers. Philosophers aren't always the best people to understand Enlightenment; because the philosopher looks at the books. So misses the forest for the trees. But Enlightenment was a process: thinkers writing long letters to each other, Salon culture, the project of the Encyclopédie, finally the French Revolution itself. Yes - it went wrong. But it also went right. It gave us the USA, industrial revolution, ... I want to hear Jan Bentz criticise the scientific method directly. I can criticise scientific method from the point of view of better method, and better science. There is no other was to criticise it. I agree that empirical methods are ubiquitous, overwhelming, and a tax on the better life. So far, criticisms of science taking over the whole of our lives, have one massive flaw - what else? What else but science? Please show us by giving us counter examples. Much enjoyed this.
Remember petitions are for my shared "i" Am, came with sincere conversations, and shared clay feet mixed with iron resting upon all dry grounds. Grounded! Yes, ye know? Who's Footstool!
27:21 it's that desire creates suffering. The false need created by the mind for an object or experience is in its essence self imposed suffering. The Buddha didn't say that people who are starving aren't in fact suffering from starvation. This is why he rejected severe austerities and self-mortification as a means to achieve spiritual enlightenment, of the ascetics.
1:21:10 My example would be Love. Particularly in the Agape sense of the word. You cannot use the scientific method and "prove" (I know proof is only in mathematics and law) Love exists. Yet there are people who do try and use it and say Love is objective and reducible to brain chemistry, which is reducible to atomic forces.
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This is easily one of the best conversations you have posted.
Certainly. One of the worst is the recent one with Destiny. Talk about a dichotomy, lol
Wow …..
Watching again 🕊
So great
Thank you 🕊
This is what I love about Peter and his guests. A conversation with complex ideas and direct challenges, and yet they both remain calm and measured. The work you are doing is so needed in today’s society. Keep doing what you’re doing!
Wow, these guys really bring out the best in each other. I'm blown away by this deeper side of Peter, even when he's being challenged.
OMG. What an insight. Socrates was interested in the soul of the other. I think even Peter, the Socrates student, appreciated that point and application to today. They don't care what you think, until they think that you care. Wow, another beautiful statement from a wonderful man; "You give unity to diversity". Thank you, gentlemen.
Thank you
What a fun thinker Dr.Jan is.
This may be your best interview ever, Peter. Great dialogue!
Hands down your best video, and I’ve seen most of them since the beginning.
More conversations like this! 👍👍👍
More to come!
Two more hours, please!!! ❤ Best conversation in a while
Thank you!
That's a good one, the best in a long while, especially the second part. I even had to slow it down to normal speed.
This has been my favourite conversation that I've watched this year, thank you both. Peter, please have Dr. Bentz on again!
I loved when Peter jokingly compared himself to Cathy Newman and her infamous JBP interview, but I think it is important to recognize the exact moments where he had the option to be more like her and chose not to be. Whenever Jan is starting an explanation or response, and Peter says "I know where you're going with this", he doesn't cut him off, he doesn't finish his sentence, he doesn't assume that the exact landing spot will be the same.
One of the easiest pitfalls in a conversation is to assume that you know the whole of an idea simply because you know the directionality of it. Giving Jan time to arrive there of his own reasoning allows his ideas to breathe and mold to the shape of the conversation as it develops.
You NEED to have this man back on Peter, this is the best conversation I've listened to in a long time! I love that you're engaging with people whose beliefs are different than yours, and doing so in a respectful and constructive way.
Incredible conversation Peter!!!
Interesting and challenging guest, I will seek out more of his work!
Thanks for watching!
Amazing conversation gentlemen 😊
One hour and 47 minutes was not enough. Thanks for giving us this interview.
I came to the comments to ask for more dr Jan
It could've been settled in 5 minutes. I've met 100s of people exactly like Bentz. His views could easily be boiled down to, "Modern epistemology, with its dependency on empiricism, nominalism, etc. leaves the door open for all manner of subjectivism. In order to solve the resultant problems, I recommend we do *_not_* broaden serious investigation to outside just the areas that science can resolve. I recommend we instead retreat to my religion in which all these problems are arbitrarily resolved by fiat."
By using exhalted, long-winded, and intellectual-sounding language, he can make this appear like a reasonable course of action. In reality, one needs to be a depraved monster to even consider such an answer.
@tombombadil8709 The empirical evidence is Benz talking. All he does is point at a few well-known limitations in modern epistemology and insists on that basis alone that we must revert to Thomist metaphysics. I don't need to pull up a study to respond to a position that does not, itself, reference any studies.
Or are you making some sarcastic criticism of the strawman position that anything and everything must be based on "empirical data"? If so, you're barking up the wrong tree. I don't hold to that position, and neither do most real human beings, so this is a totally empty point. Just because people don't accept a comically radical empiricism, however, doesn't oblige anyone to roll back the clock and start taking the Summa Theologica seriously. We've still been given precisely zero reason to do that. *_Just because there are other criteria by which we can determine truth (e.g. mathematics is not an empirical subject) does not mean Catholicism or Christianity satisfy any of those other criteria._*
@tombombadil8709 That's a lot of text just to tell me that Benz's words don't mean what Benz's words mean. Kinda wasteful.
One would think that, if you genuinely knew me to he wrong about what Benz was saying, you would then explain what his thesis was. If this was something you knew, the normal response would be to explain what you. What does he say that amounts to anything more than "your epistemology is imperfect so you must surrender utterly to mine"?
Of course, it's likely you'll resist explaining. It would destroy the magic and reveal how trivial his argument really is. The case that I "do not understand it" is based, therefore, solely on my insufficient admiration.
@tombombadil8709 Notice that you *_still_* haven't even tried to explain to me what Benz actually meant. This would be the normal course of action when responding to someone who misunderstands an argument. It's kinda pointless for you to tell me I misunderstood it (somehow) but then say absolutely nothing about what it was I was supposed to have understood.
It's as if I'm supposed to take your word for it that I'm too dumb to follow what, to me, was actually a pretty straightforward conversation (a conversation I grew up hearing over and over again).
My heart murmurs listening to this!
Absolutely fascinating conversation. I had not had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Jan. So many interesting thoughts in the conversation! Thank you Peter!
Thank you!
Can't upvote this one enough, excellent discussion.
“If it's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well”
Yes, that sounds like something Dan Dennett would say. Great conversation so far, I'm about halfway through.
Cheers 🍺
This should have a million views. Probably one the best conversations I've listened to on RUclips ever. (And I am heavily on this platform.)
Peter, thank you so much for having this conversation. In addition to you two having just really good chemistry - and similar speaking styles, actually - I was excited to hear Dr. Bentz touch upon what I see as the problem of having skepticism as one's primary starting point, or default, when engaging with a particular claim, such as the existence of god - something I've sensed, but haven't been able to properly express. I'm agnostic in a sea of atheists. Anyway, AMAZING convo. On a side note, I'm also 58 years of age and my brother is named REID!!!
I admire the composure of Dr. Boghossian when at the very end Dr. Bentz argued that Einstein and Aquinas reached essentially the "same truth"... I would have exploded. Besides the fact that Dr. Boghossian's always thoughtful remarks on evidence and the importance of the weight of evidence didn't really find an echo conversation-wise, this was such a well-done and enrichening interview. Thank you for putting out such valuable content!
I admire Dr. Bentz so much!
He’s a reminder of the old German fame of the „poets and thinkers“🙏🏼‼️
Absolutely fantastic and fascinating conversation.
My HOSTS Jan and Peter thank you for attending!
Excellent discussion
With regard to whether the epistemological framework needs to come first, from a psychological standpoint people tend to change either from the inside out or the outside in. Which is to say that for some people, they will understand a better moral framework as an idea and then make the change. But many people have to learn by doing the thing. For example they learn that treating other people is more rewarding after they start treating other people better. If you think of the twelve steps from AA. Many of the steps are there because those are the actions people need to make in order to internalize those behaviors as more rewarding. Ie they learn from the outside in.
This is the best interview so far. Thank you for sharing
I really appreciate that - Thanks for watching!
Bravo. To you both. Re-watching! And discussing with a friend.
Amazing! This is exactly what got me out of wokeness, i.e., to no longer start with the "I", this modern idol of identity. It's so freeing.
Best interview so far, and one of the best and most interesting I’ve ever seen! More of this please! P.S. Thank you, Reed, for restraining Peter’s BJJ commentary 😂
Brilliant guy. I had such a hunch by the specific way that Jan disagreed with Peter in the beginning that he had to be a Christian. Turned out to be true.
At 1.09. My way of describing this has always been , you can’t reason somebody out of something they didn’t reason themselves into. This is fundamental to understanding the mess we are in.
Thank you my HOSTS Meeks Jan and Peter!
Very nice conversation, it is always nice to hear clever people talking about complex stuff
Incredible talk. Love it !
That is the value of integrety.
The key difference in Objectivist epistemology is that it deals with ideas-such as goals, hopes, and aspirations-by actively rejecting contradictions and aligning thoughts with reality. In Objectivist thinking, when an idea contains contradictions or errors, it must be broken down and replaced with a clear, non-contradictory understanding. This is in contrast to subjectivist thinking, where someone may not correct their beliefs until reality forces a correction through personal experience.
An Objectivist begins with a goal or ambition-an imagined idea-and then actively integrates this with objective reality. They examine and refine their concepts, eliminating contradictions and false beliefs along the way. Through this process, they learn and discard flawed ideas, replacing them with more accurate ones that are better aligned with their purpose and needs.
Clear differences in thought and action often reveal that someone hasn’t fully disintegrated old, contradictory ideas, even if they’ve adopted new ones. This results in conflicting beliefs that aren’t yet reconciled. In Objectivist epistemology, disintegrating outdated or incorrect ideas requires a conscious, deliberate process-just as integrating new, valid concepts does. Both involve an active effort of thought, where one evaluates and refines ideas to ensure they align without contradiction.
It is a Focus on creating Unity between Thought and Action. The Value of Integrety.
The purpose of Integrety, is to lose the feeling of terror towards existance.
And as all potent values of the enlightenment, it is best dealth with humor and curiosity.
Peter (and Jan), I refer you to Hayek’s book The Counter-Revolution of Science, which explores the theme raised here of the problem of “the scientific method being used in all aspects of life” (scientism), your son’s notion of “the subjective turn as a kind of prophylactic against authoritarianism”…”the primacy of subjectivity being a bulwark against any objective dogma, any institutionalized hegemonic authoritarianism.” Hayek is all over this.
Thank you for the book recommendation - much appreciated!
@@Frigty23 You’re welcome.
I’m a fan of this channel. Keep up the good work!!
Good and bad are RELATIVE. 😉
Incidentally, Slave, are you VEGAN? 🌱
Thanks for watching!
Peter: can love be quantified? Love is a quality of God, and also, love is God (not the feeling, but love as will). (God is also many other things that can't be measured, such as humility.) If you can't quantify love, then you can't quantify God with the scientific method.
To believe in God, the Christian God, a person has to have some level of a poetic mind that is ok with mystery. It's not impossible, but it is difficult for analytical people to come to a belief in God, because the inclination to dissect and understand everything is so strong. (This reminds me of a saying: In order to dissect a frog, you have to kill it. I think the same thing happens to us... the more we dissect the material world, the more we kill the part of us that seeks after God. Thankfully, God never abandons us.) This mind has to ultimately humble itself before the heart. This doesn't mean you devolve to emotionalism, but that you serve that which you love, your values. For Christians, our values have their foundation in Christ, the God-Man. He is the Man of men, the Supreme Good; in Him are all perfect strengths and no weaknesses, all virtues and no passions. Christ is God, and we not only follow and worship this Perfect Man as God, we also seek to become like Him, to become little christs in a process called theosis.
Anyway, if you read your comments, I hope this helps you understand Christianity a little bit more. I appreciate your content and very much enjoy listening to your work. Thanks!
Love can be quantified. Whether it can feasibly be measured is different question, but anything that exists conforms to mathematics and cam be quantified. This is clearly evident when someone decides that they love X more than they love Y. When something exists at relative strengths or intensities, this means that there is a scale by which these different levels can be compared, whether you can directly perceive and use this scale or not.
The real problem with "love" is that it's a human word. The concept of "love" is a human invention that need not always map onto the same thing in concrete reality everytime it is used. This is one of the things that makes it such a fuzzy concept. Does one's "love" for their children really have anything to do with their "love" for chocolate? Does the "love" they show when they give charity to a stranger really have anything to do with the "love" they feel when experience affection for a close friend? A single word can apply to multiple, unrelated, and incommensurate phenomena. This can allow words to disobey the laws that govern concrete reality, but language is not the decider of what is and is not true.
Also, sometimes words are used without there being *_any_* concrete manifestation of them. Sometimes words are abstract representations of undefined, undefinable, and non-existent. Does "God's love" for humanity, for example, really have anything to do with humans' "love" for, well, anyone or anything? God is not "loving" by virtue of him actually *_doing_* anything that we already defined as "loving." "Love," instead, is simply redefined so that God can meet the standards of being "loving." For these reasons and others, human words are often too imprecise to be quantified without first fixing the definitions. But, once those definitions are fixed, so long as those words now actually apply to real things (and only to one real thing per word) we can then quantify those real things.
The Enlightenment began with Francis Bacon’s (1561-1626) popularizing the idea that Deductive reasoning was barren of progress because it did not produce any new knowledge. He recommended Inductive Reasoning, testing hypothesis about the natural world to attain new knowledge. This was known as “The New Philosophy” or what we today call Science. The stated goal of those doing the ‘new philosophy’ was to “reduce as much as possible human suffering” and to “increase as much as possible human wellbeing”
@@user-Bob_T
"Count it all joy my brothers, when you encounter trials of various kinds, for the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."
James 1: 2-4
@@keeponrockin85
There’s a difference between stupid suffering and redemptive suffering. You are quoting scripture that refers to redemptive suffering. Yes!
Then Hume comes along a hundred or so years later and kinda sticks a fork in things no? But Inductive Logic can still carry us pretty far, which I think Hume would grant as well.
I agree with OP. 250 more years pass, and a small bunch of “Hegelians” observe the changes they lived through. What later became dialectical materialism also pointed to what we “externalised” - i.e. what are we NOT accounting for in our eh, “calculations”.
As Bentz mentions, this tool of thought (philosophy) predates “Marxism”, but was core to Marx’s (and others) way of ingesting and critiquing the emergent group dynamics of the day - early to mid “modernism”.
What came out as “politics” decades later, is like pointing to the crusades as being “Christian” - pointing more to us as quite silly (understatement of the day…) when we want power, and how we bend any externality for incumbency.
Our attention creates our view of “reality”. Shift the attention - something also “shifts” in your perception, right…?
@@musiqtee The point I was making was quite uncomplicated: For the 1600 years from the beginning of Christianity, justified using deductive reasoning, the human condition had not improved much at all. However, since the time of Francis Bacon humanity has gone from the horse drawn cart to the moon, and all the wonders of the modern world (including the internet we are using). That leap forward was precipitated using the method of inductive reasoning.
The segment about utopia I found very interesting. I’ll be reading up on more of dr bentz’s work
I think a way to look at it is that utopia is a tool.
The first and most important thing is to know that it means "no place"
From that perspective, we already recognize that we use it to imagine better ways of being while also seeing that times change, people change and none of us have the same goals to begin with.
But we can, and SHOULD, use utopia to discuss what we want to work towards in society.
This is how we design systems and also how we build our own character.
We learn, we imagine, we implement, we reassess, we improve (or fail), and then we repeat.
The alternative is slipping into stagnation or even dystopia, both in an individual or social scale.
The main issue he seems to point out is a misuse of this tool by the elites, to manipulate us into doing their bidding and falling for their belief structures (which keep them in power and with most of the wealth).
The solution is not to get rid of utopia as a tool but to wield it properly.
The key to that is simply recognizing its meaning and realizing that we will always have to work towards something better as the world is ever changing.
What do you think?
1:07:00 Strong disagreement that starting with the "I" means that reality is "all in your head". Self-consistent proxies are reliable ways to know reality. Reality is outside of our head. We can start with the "I", and know reality. We know reality is real, because the external impacts what's inside the head.
The point is that you can't escape your own filters and perceptions.
You are always modifying whatever reality is to come through your senses, which are limited.
Check out the work of Donald Hoffman about how we evolved to specifically see only what gives us fitness benefits.
There's essentially a 0% chance we sense reality in any true way.
We are highly adapted to navigate the illusion, however.
Even physics (my degree) tells us that we can never see things for what they actually are at the smallest quantum scales (a true mind f***), thanks to the uncertainty principle.
Whatever reality is, it's WEIRD, and I think it helps to recognize this with humility.
I couldn't even tell you what, let alone WHO "I" am
@@MattAngiono We know that we can sense reality because of a concept of "survival". If someone jumps off a cliff, we no longer can know the jumper, as they are dead, they didn't survive. We can know reality, because of "survival". In science, it is survival of ideas. Or it can be survival of relationships, or survival of body fat or survival of muscle. At the end of the day, something survives, or doesn't. That is reality.
Mind is blown. Gob is smacked....
Q: How do you get people to change their minds? (!! That's the thing we all want to know.)
A: Love. ??!!
Wait, what? We know it's not facts and logic. We think it may have to do with emotion. So culture. But, whoa, it goes straight to love? Humans are pretty efficient, I guess.
A person has to know that I love him? And I have to love him? No wonder we're not changing more minds!!
This actually makes a great deal of sense. Changing your mind feels risky. Love is a high bartier to entry!
Next Q: are humans better at faking love/agape or better at detecting fake love? I think better at detecting, ICBW.
Thanks from hurricane- battered FLA for great convo.
What a fantastic conversation, exchange; and that you obviously enjoy each other's company, added to my enjoyment. I enjoyed your enjoyment of each other's company. I don't want to come across as nitpicking but regarding epistemological frameworks. A tad idealistic I think Peter. If I ever get the chance to do one of your street "thingies" I will jump at it. Regards🙏
At 52:52, I had the same thought. From a developmental perspective, both the necessity of an epistemological framework and the idea that it evolves as a self-referential structure over time are correct. The self-referential aspect emerges naturally during sociocognitive processes, such as theory of mind and mentalizing-the capacity to differentiate one’s own mental states from those of others. A hallmark of this process is that much of it occurs implicitly, almost by definition.
Children often go through a phase of asking “why” about everything, yet they lack the executive functioning to fully understand or organize such complex ideas into a latent knowledge source. When we explain complicated phenomena to children, we often give simple answers, which they accept while continuing to encounter new questions in real-time. As their executive function develops, their inquiries become more sophisticated, and the way they arrive at answers grows increasingly metacognitive.
The real point of disagreement seems to be about when during development the epistemological framework becomes knowable and usable. Even when we become aware of this framework, we continue to encounter new situations that challenge our existing knowledge. In many of these cases, we don’t consciously engage with the framework; instead, we process things without necessarily understanding all the constituent parts. This lends some weight to the idea of “baptism by fire.” We carry an implicit epistemological framework based on the data we’ve gathered, and this framework is often recruited, in response to new challenges, to form reasoned responses based on the information we’ve already absorbed.
The danger of relying solely on the automatization of cognitive processes, without a conscious understanding of an epistemological framework, is that it leaves individuals vulnerable to extremism and blind adherence. Without a clear reference point for evaluating ideas, even good ones can go unchecked and become the fuel for pathological systems. An epistemological framework, in this sense, serves as an “anticoagulant” for ideas-preventing them from becoming rigid or dogmatic. When left unexamined, ideas, no matter how well-intentioned, can morph into ideologies that stifle dissent and critical thinking, as we see in movements like critical social justice or extremist religious orders. Without a framework to challenge and test these ideas, they can harden into belief systems that resist self-reflection, ultimately fostering environments of intolerance and fanaticism.
Epistemological conditions such as necessary, contingent, possible and impossible, are modal propositions, and therefore metaphysical. Even the periodic table is metaphysical, because its an ontology of elements
I think what Jan asserts is that there are truths which you exclude from being known by virtue of making the scientific method the only tool of knowledge verification. If you decide that something only counts as knowledge if it was tested by the scientific method, you decided on what knowledge is possible beforehand
Jan is really just saying "if you can't solve every imaginable problem you must accept my answers for all the problems you can't yet solve."
Science, in part, developed the way it did as a means to avoid the religious censors. By staying away from metaphysics and making sure they had all their ducks in a row before going public, they limited the chances that the Church would be able to find fault with them. The Church would typically understand disagreement to be a character issue on their opponent's part, and the scientific method allowed thinkers to avoid this charge by pointing to the method and saying "I'm simply reporting what I saw." When the Church lost its status as an arbiter of truth, however, some people started looking at science as its replacement. Treating science as the sole arbiter of truth, however, kinda guarantees a materialist worldview, regardless of what happens to be true, because science, by design, can only give answers related to the material world. A void is left in the space the Church used to occupy specifically because secular thinkers avoided that space for their own safety.
My favorite is 49:25 followed by (paraphrase Dr.) Human experience is trusting authority and then discerning
Great conversation. Regarding the JiuJutsu gorilla in the room: As a human combative behaviour specialist, an interesting topic for discussion is that the study of a combative sport that temporarily places the individual in uncomfortable/painful situations is a microcosm of the pressures of the world at large. The 'dojo' is one of the few places where everyone is truly equal. As a teacher of SouthEast Asian arts for over 40 years I can honestly say it is a place where everyone is the same, and might be one of the few places where merit is the only arbiter, but only in systems that pressure test their content. Some aspects of your conversation can be examined through that lens.
That all depends on the "dojo"....
I got a black belt in Tae Kwon do many years back and my school had definite hierarchies.
That said, it was still a very valuable experience to teach me about life, but I do wonder just how healthy it is to punch and kick each other in the head, even with pads.
We used to go HARD sometimes!
Now I much prefer the dojo of nature itself, like when I free solo rock climb.
The only hierarchy there is me vs my own mind, with nature ruling over us both (though one can forget that sometimes).
Another good example is river sports like kayaking or white water rafting
@@MattAngiono true!
That was one great conversation, a veritable bonfire of deep thoughts!
I feel one point around the Stanford prayer study was somewhat glossed over, though: the study could have gone the other way! The scientific method per se does not preclude such findings.
1:10:07 wow, 💯 yes this is exactly on point!
best conversation
That was truly beautiful!!!
🙏🏽❤️🙏🏽❤️🙏🏽❤️🙏🏽❤️
Ive spent my whole adult life creating a solid epistemological framework.
Bery few people i meet have done that. Most fall into some sort of echo chamber, some pre-made position the wouldnt come to on their own.
Your opinion is completely flawed. If you have spent your whole life building this, but lack the knowledge to understand human generality, then you're also starting from a pre made position not of your own. Most likely a teacher or family figure.
@@LordIceify anarchism. I started with anarchism. Imagining society from the ground up without institutions or legal systems.
"We see that science also rests on a faith; there simply is no science 'without presuppositions.'
The question whether truth is needed must not only have been affirmed in advance, but affirmed to such a degree that the principle, the faith, the conviction finds expression:
_'Nothing is needed more than truth, and in relation to it everything else has only second-rate value.'_
But you will have gathered what I am driving at, namely, that it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests-that even we seekers after knowledge today, we godless anti-metaphysicians, still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by a faith that is thousands of years old, that Christian faith, which was also the faith of Plato, that God is the truth, that truth is divine.
No doubt, those who are truthful in that audacious and ultimate sense, that is presupposed by the faith in science thus affirms another world than the world of life, nature, and history."
~ *Nietzsche*
6:30 first shot in the jujitsu drinking game for those playing along 😊🥂
I would love to see a discussion regarding these topics between you and John Vervaeke.
I've said it before, discussing opinions is so obviously necessary and even for people who are just in for the sake of winning an argument, if you don't test your views against others, there's no point in feeling like you're the bearer of all truth. It's just like gold medalist or Champions in sports, if they don't put that title to test, it's worth nothing
I would say it's dogmatic to believe that the only way to understand all phenomena is to use the scientific method because it's impossible to prove that belief with the scientific method, because you can't exhaustively test that hypothesis on all phenomenon. Therefore, one must dogmatically believe it's true.
Rupert Sheldrake discusses this idea in "The Science Delusion." He argues that the belief that all phenomena can be explained by the scientific method is one of the "dogmas" or assumptions that limit scientific inquiry.
According to Sheldrake, this belief is rooted in the assumption that the scientific method is the only valid way of knowing about the world. He argues that this overlooks other forms of knowledge and inquiry, such as intuition, subjective experience, and spiritual or mystical practices.
Sheldrake also points out that there are many phenomena that are not easily amenable to scientific study, such as consciousness, intention, and the placebo effect. He argues that these phenomena may require different methods of inquiry and understanding and that science should be open to exploring these possibilities.
Overall, Sheldrake's argument is that the scientific method is a powerful tool, but it is not the only tool for understanding the world, and that science should be willing to expand its horizons and explore new ways of knowing.
You explained that concept much better than this Oxford guy. I think my reply to Sheldrake would be that the truly scientific thinker would leave a kernel of doubt available regarding the belief that all phenomena can be explained by the scientific method, thus proving it is not dogmatic, but simply the best approach. One example being the possibility that we are in a simulation in which the creators have tweaked reality to not always make sense.
@laugh629 i don't want to put words in your mouth, but if I'm hearing you correctly, you're saying these "creators" are physical manifestations like us which begs the question what created the creators? We then get into an infinite regress. If we posit One Creator that is outside of time, space, and physical manifestation then the buck stops there. This hypothesis is supported by the Big Bang. Since all matter, time, and space had a beginning it is logical to use the principle of causality and say the cause of the big bang lies outside of matter, time, space, and all the laws that govern them.
I love this discussion! It just feels like my IQ jumped several points after wading through all the crap and word salads of the internet. Finally, some real intellectual thought!
What books do you recommend for someone who is interested in reading philosophy on her own?
That was amazing 😮
39:30
Agape actually is the ontological root of all moral virtue. While the Principle of Reciprocity is basically the Law of Identity applied to normative conditions.
With that in mind, morality and ethics are branches of normative ontology and epistemology, respectively.
23:36 "Apocalypse Never" by Michael Shellenberger, they don't want Utopia, they want to control others.
I haven't read Michael Shellenberger, but there are many other academic books and documents going back 140 years saying the same thing. I would not be surprised if communism wasn't a plan to do just that. Let's see if this comment remains.
They want to control others, but they try to do it by selling them Utopia
Don't forget that thy real threats of deteriorating environment and the elite will to power over us aren't mutually exclusive.
There's a very real reason to be concerned about ecosystem collapse and overshoot (very real things in biology), while also seeing that leaders are using knowledge of such things against us (also because they are largely the ones most responsible for this mess).
It's a diversion tactic, but not a reason to forget about the concerns surrounding the ecosystem, which are very real
@@MattAngiono agreed, which is generally why the "solution" the government/media tries to sell us on, is usually not the actual solution, but small local changes (like regenerative ag, etc) can make a greater impact, it just takes unplugging from their diversion/fear mongering to see we have a lot of power, and there are actually are many options.
@@MattAngiono
_Ra: I am Ra. The technology your peoples possess at this time is capable of resolving each and every limitation which plagues your social memory complex at this present nexus of experience._
_However, the concerns of some of your beings with distortions towards what you would call powerful energy cause these solutions to be withheld until the solutions are so needed that those with the distortion can then become further distorted in the direction of power._
Ra Material (1981)
25:00 To state that we are supernaturally tainted, that we strive for "the perfect state" and a "logos beyond experience," shows a robustly traditional metaphysical enthusiasm.
37:00 Yes, most people tend not to accept reasoning that threatens their beliefs. But some will forgo convictions and edicts for understandings and assertions. They are able to revise and replace their understandings and assertions as new evidence, new reasons, warrant.
39:00 Our empathy is perhaps the most important inheritance of human self-domestication. Why Platonize-Christianize it?
44:30 Yes, a pragmatic and naturalized epistemology, one with both/and (pluralistic) thinking.
46:00 Dr. Bentz looks to use a traditional epistemology, one characterized by either/or (dichotomous) thinking. His "ideals" are absolutes abstracted from experience. When shared by a group, such notions tend to be made dogma, weapons of ideologues. Different groups, different ideologies, the 30-year's war, and Gaza. Much better to share a meal, a funny story by the fire, aesthetic appreciations, and tentative understandings.
54:00 Peter opines that metaphysics will not help us address today's challenges. Nice support of The Enlightment and humanism. I'd have asked Jan to specify his 'right kind' of metaphysics and what The Enlightment, "a child of religion," supposedly inherited from it.
59:00 Jan says that Enlightenment individualism led directly to identity politics and made it impossible [for individualists] to connect to the world. I'd ask him if identity politics is about being a member of a group. I note that the philosophers Jan cites to support his notion were among those who would not let go of metaphysical absolutes, would not let go of a spirit world. "Modern philosophies are all the establishment of a museum." Jan cannot have read James, Dewey, or other American pragmatist philosophers. Pragmatist philosophers employ abductive reasoning. They work with processes, with practice to improve theory, with democratic interactions among the members of societies to improve solutions to social problems. Pragmatism is very much anti-representational. Jan speaks of the "inner telos [purpose] of the essence of a thing." Using metaphysical abstractions when he's trying to discuss nature is not helpful. I'd ask Jan why both woke and Christian nationalist ideologues are staunchly anti-science.
1:10 "The dogma [of science] is that you cannot go beyond the method." Scientists (indirectly) dissolve dogmas when their efforts improve our understandings of nature. The methods employed by scientists develop and evolve through trial and error; they change with new discoveries-inventions, new instruments, new concepts, with new kinds of analysis and interpretation. Scientists have taken to using abductive reasoning, reasoning that's anathema to traditional metaphysicians. Jan equates science and The Enlightenment with scientism.
Those who sever mind from body will wield the subject/object distinction.
1:17 When adjectives are reified, confusions like "accuracy is attractiveness" may ensue.
1:26 To believe something that's not supported by evidence is wishful thinking and does not deserve being taken seriously. And too, it can be deadly.
1:29 Jan repeats his contention that scientific methods are dogmatic. Then he says that theology is scientific! His equation of science [methods of exploring natural processes] with knowledge is an outdated natural philosopher's usage. This is misrepresentation.
1:32 Jan again says that scientific methods are static & dogmatic (scientism). He stresses that "the method" does not change with new understandings. This is a misrepresentation. Read some philosophy of science. Read Steven L. Goldman's "Science Wars."
1:37 Jan states that (all?) our decisions are definitive. To reject that they can be provisional is an example of deductive reasoning, of dichotomous thinking and the metaphysician's way of making a godly thing, knowledge, from the process of knowing.
The Open Society and it’s enemies:
“Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.-In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.”
Yes, even time sent forth for thee!
@1:29:40 how did you know you like olives? did you have to use the scientific method and have other people confirm for you?
No. But it is possible for it to be tested. Which is the argument. Not that testing is needed. But possible.
Explain how you would use the scientific method to explain why people enjoy Rembrandt's art.
I guess just pick a reasonable sample of such individuals and question them on what is it about his paintings they like so much. Compare the answers, see which ones match the most between all of them and take your conclusion, which could actually be that it is unexplainable.
@1:25:48 I love that you are able to move between or differentiate between the objective and subjective realms but what you are missing is that the problem is only when people reduce all of reality to one or the other. The enlightenment and today's post modern thinkers are reducing things to the I, but science reduces reality to the is or the objective, but there are again the 3 that Plato defines and are often called the big 3, the individual interior (subjective/Beautiful/consciousness) the collective interior (intersubjective/Good/culture) and the objective (facts/True/physical reality) The problem is when society reduces reality to one, scientism, fundamentalism and subjectivism are the result of reducing reality to each of these 3. We need to recognize and integrate all three and understand where each of them fits.
Ken Wilber😁
@@goa9034 haha I've read a lot of Wilber, I don't agree with everything he has said but he is correct that people reduce things to one of the quadrants instead of learning how to integrate all 3-4
@@integrallens6045 100%
Pete’s gotta go to Germany.
This was awesome.
It’s like a Continental Christian vs. Anglo Atiest wrestling match.
We have to get a round 2.
Peter, I don't know if history will remember you as a hero, but I always will.
😊
As a non-believer, I strive to live my life well not in order to receive a prize in heaven but in order that I may leave the world in a better state than how I found it. The very fact that I do _not_ believe in having an immotal soul causes me to strive towards good for its own sake.
So your lifes purpose is to 'strive towards good'? You cant fail because without an external moral framework, or a logos then 'good' can be subjectively defined. 'Good' for me can be to smoke pot and watch Family Guy all day long.
The words/terms good or evil have NO intrinsic value outside of some indubitable established orhtodoxcy. As was hidden in plain-sight within the STORY?MYTH of the Geneses narrative. Where Adam and Eve had the choice to choose between the "tree of LIFE" and the "Tree of the knowledge of both good and evil.
Thus, all that which could be representivie of good and evil should be always reference to all that which is representive as LIFE and its sustainability. Hence, seeking and discussing what is up and down without some well fix stndard of referencing it vanity and vexation of spirits. And futher more that which establishes the Standard of Reference MUST of necessity transcends the control of mere human rational logic and emotional desires.
Most if not all western atheist refuse and thus can NOT see that their values of good and evil are based off the Judeo-Christian values even as they reject to us terms associated with such and "hide" be hiden much philosophcal jargon that would fool all those that stumble at mere mords/terms as used within some particular expressed contextual settings.
Akin to people NOT seeing the old IDEAS of MARXISM presented with the Serpent (which represented the highly educated and intelligent hgh order angel of God (Lucifer) convincing Eve to partake of the forbidden tree because God and HIS governance were maliciously withholding her progress. Thus, making Eve the first FEMINIST and Adam the FIRST SIMP. There is NOT a THING new done under the sun therefore, the wise among the living should be willing to learn from the mistakes of others so as to make the better chioce in matter at hand.
I believe that the reason it’s so hard to dig down at why people believe what they believe, is because consciousness is the illusion that sensory stimuli grouping algorithms have; that their hierarchical grouping mechanism is them generating thought. When in fact it’s no more controlled by the generator than the movement of mRNA from the nucleus to the cytoplasm is controlled by the phosphate groups that produce movement.
People don’t formulate opinions through mechanisms of reason. Nobody does. Even the most rational people form their opinions via the influence of a set of conditions over time.
Yes but it feels like we're doing it and that's close enough!
@dreamwalkertunes what are the evolutionary selection pressures that select for illusion? Who perceives the illusion? What are selection pressures that select the perciever of the illusion?
Please have Jan back
“Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.”
Thomas Paine, Common Sense
35:15 to 33:37 - I've rarely if ever seen personal testimony play much of a role in Christian apologetics. Usually it's more along the lines of the moral argument, the fine-tuning argument, etc.
William Lane Craig comes to mind.
@@oliverhug3
The only intellectual approach to apologetics you’ve allowed to reach you is what comes to mind?
That makes total sense.
Isnt personal testimony technically more important than what we tell ourselves is objective?
We operate 99% of the time on unconscious modes of operation and we rarely have the knowledge needed to actually confirm our believed to be true “scientific facts”.
We live subjectively and closer to personal testimony rather that objectively and closer to proven scientific truth.
When dealing with someone in debate who we don’t want to accept some validity to their answers. We expect a proof or example well beyond any actual proof we have taken up on our own in our own beliefs.
Tend to agree with Peter about the scientific method. Referring to results as 'truth' is not scientific, we have hypothesis, theories & empirical laws with definitive meanings of which none refer to a truth of objective reality. It sounds like Bentz issue with dogmatism in the method is unique only to people misusing/misunderstanding it which I would completely agree with. Somwhat makes sense with his stance against relativism - but I don't think relativism is fundamentally the issue we have, the issue is that people are not even attempting to form their reletivistic understanding using empirical evidence & rational thinking.
Well said.
From what I've read, certain thing becomes a fact, or universal Truth, if you want, after you can achieve a certain result and continuously replicate through the same method. So I'd say true science does seek to explain the Truth, and has, in many cases, but the results have to be heavily put to test, peer reviewed and eventually easily replicated to be considered as such
@@duarteleonardo8352 Science seeks to explain observations. With testing/collaboration of observations, we build up confidence about it being 'the truth' but never complete certainty. Everything that occurs in reality by definition becomes fact - as a fact is proven by occurrence, however, we can never say anything factual about what will happen, only about what has happened (assuming we trust our measuring device so technically even then, we could say 'probably a fact' but if we understand our view is relativistic then the 'probably' is implicit for everything and redundant).
Everything for which you do not have the entire scope of information can inevitably only be theoretically perceived as probabilistic.
For example, A bag of buttons called objective reality is filled with 1 billion red buttons and 1 blue button. Scientists pull 1 million consecutive buttons from the bag and measure them all to be red. Considering the massive number of measurements for which we have seen red without fail we can write an empirical law that if one measures a button from the bag it will be red. Being sensible scientists, they understand that this empirical law is still probabilistic, based on measurement (facts) because they are missing information. This is wise because you, having all the information about objective reality can see that they are not guaranteed a red button.
@@BillsRUclipsAccount hmm, I get your point, but what I mean is that, after being thoroughly tested, there are some concepts and laws that we, as humans may accept as universally true, which can also be quite helpful, while also being aware that unexplainable exceptions may occur, since we cannot predict the future. Of course this concept of universal Truth is just another man made thing, as we do with so many other things. For example, we universally accept that 2+2=4, but in reality and on practical terms, no 2 objects are exactly the same, so that addition would never be 100% correct. But I do get what you're saying.
The problem with scientific method is that it is limited on what we can physically detect in our world. 3000 years ago using the scientific method we would have never known that ultraviolet light, x rays, and gamma rays, etc that aren't visible to humans even existed. This is part of the reason I am agnostic because there could be a god and we just have no way to physically detect that he is there. In another 5000 years if we are still around our reality may be completely different in what we learn to detect that we never knew in the past.
I also like to extend that even further in that what makes life better. Even if we just ignore facts it may mean living by certain rules is better. I don't believe in morals and I think nothing is wrong in this world. However, for society to function we need laws to restrict what we can do or society falls into chaos. Those laws change over time and sometimes can make things better or worst but we should always be questioning everything no matter how long it has been the standard to try to reach the best reality we can live in.
The difference is factual reality (we are just random organism with no god creating rules to live by there is no moral right or wrong and it is all subjective) vs practical reality (we create laws using average subjective beliefs or right and wrong to try to find a way for us to not be afraid every day of our life).
Guest was on point about disproving the existence of God. I also can't say for sure that there is a God, so that's not what I'm trying to defend here, but how can anyone claim otherwise, how can anyone claim to be an atheist, doesn't that mean they woud need to have proof of the non existence of God. It's easy to understand why someone woud be agnostic, but if there's still the slightest chance we may actually have proof of God's existence, why would anyone not be interested in proving that. In my opinion, science and religion should never be separated as some people want them to be, they can and i think it's vital that they coexist.
The point is that there is no evidence and since there is no evidence i don't have to disprove anything.
@@Username-nu8el sorry, but that's not correct. I mean, you don't HAVE to disprove anything at all, no one's making you do so, but evidence is anything someone presents to you to defend their case, it can be strong and compelling evidence or the opposite. All the original scrolls that compose the bible, the shroud of Turin, amongst other things, are evidence for the existence of God, or at least Jesus, but then it's said they're the same, but that evidence needs to be analyzed in order to find out if it indeed proves the existence of God or not.
Problems Raised:
●
The Limits of Reason and Persuasion: The conversation underscores the difficulty of persuading others through reason alone, suggesting that people are often swayed by factors beyond logic and evidence. Emotional connections, personal experiences, and cultural influences play a significant role in shaping beliefs, making it challenging to achieve consensus solely through intellectual arguments.
●
The Problem of Defining "Reality": A recurring challenge lies in defining what constitutes "reality" and how we can access it. One speaker advocates for a realist perspective, accepting the data we gather from the world as a starting point, while the other emphasizes the limitations of our senses and the potential for subjectivity to color our perceptions.
●
The Tension Between Objectivity and Subjectivity: The conversation highlights the persistent tension between the desire for objective truth and the inherent subjectivity of human experience. This tension manifests in debates about the validity of different methods of knowing, the role of personal interpretation, and the degree of confidence we can have in our beliefs.
Are we as a species to the point that we are in need of reinventing Christianity ? This whole conversion although a nail biter and truly one of the best of the channel, is just apologetics.
Yes, petitions don't belong unto thee!
33:26 As far as I know breast cancer is not caused by smoking. When she was nervous about the treatment and what happened in the bar, it probably soothed her. A good effect.
* Recent research shows applying irradiation actually promotes the (delayed) spreading (source Sam Brokken). So then the secondary problem also lies elsewhere. I would worry about.
Heidegger. Thats where a reimagined metaphysics of our relatiinship to being is examined in connection to the problem of human freedom.
Great conversation. By the way, Buddhism doesn't say suffering is an illusion. Not sure where Dr. Bentz heard this but he is misunderstanding the tenants of Buddhism.
Rather it states it as the first truth...
But also that we can overcome it!
One of the problems with using scientific method is when you go from some scientific inference to application. Say introducing a restrictive intervention with positive effects negatively affects a smaller share of population than not doing so, and, in contrast to what we had a couple of years ago, we have a solid scientific base for that. Should we do introduce it? If your answer is unequivocal yes, than that's dogmatic, I would say.
Hey Peter, referring to the part where you two discuss that love is the most convincing approach. Isn’t what Dr. Bentz described the same thing as the way Sybok’s character in Star Trek operated?
My HOSTS Jan and Peter more than 2 nor more....in thy midst!
Sent forth upon all dry grounds! To bring to remembrance and comes with comfort. Who's coming
Great interview. I think your question about when the scientific method has been used and claimed to be objectively true is wrong though. The obvious example of that is the one already discussed, ie with ideologies like gender ideology, identity politics, implicit racism which all claim to be objective and scientific. The social sciences, that claim and use that term to turn the subjective into objective and binding scientific truths. I’ll give you another: defining mental illness and the science of the mind, the fields of psychology and psychiatry, the history and status quo of which are really worth investigating.
The better question I think you meant to ask is the one you later delve into (I think you actually get sidetracked into theology) which is to ask if there are examples of non-scientifically verifiable ideas that nonetheless ought to be held with high confidence. The answer to that should be equally obvious; not just theology, but philosophy, the very conversation that you are having and discussing. The very idea of scientific, empirical validity being the necessary benchmark of objectivity is itself questionable under this very presupposition because it is not verifiable. It appeals to information outside of the empirical. It is philosophy, not science. You hold it with in fact the highest confidence you have, as you admit numerous times. Yet it is NOT scientific! There is nothing in science itself that demonstrates “convergence” or verifiability ought to be the standard of human progress and flourishing, in fact this is no different a claim than a dictator claiming that to force their subjects into converging on their own subjective standards will lead to their flourishing. It is inescapable using the science alone, and to say that scientific method should be the measure with confidence requires appeal to the unscientific.
Anyway, great interview. Loved your pushback on Dr Bentz’s arguments, I can tell you really got his gears turning, and although I think there were moments he seemed to stumble or didn’t quite answer the question I think he found some really intriguing answers on the whole. Can’t help but feel that having different mother language is unfortunately still an obstacle, even if minor. I can’t believe he didn’t attack you on your scientific “dogmatism” when you spent more than an hour and half arguing about philosophy and neither of you are actually even scientists.
2:04 I agree with Dr. Bentz, criticism is woke, all they can do is criticize, with almost no gratitude from what I can tell.
1:44
I think the most important tradition is to understand that humans have original sin, and at the same time we're made in the image of God, and therefore we need checks and balances, limited government, private property rights, and free speech etc, etc...
(I used to be an "enlightened atheist")
Thin line from criticism to questioning like say a contrarian would do or be.
They can't criticize themselves. Vampires cannot see themselves in a mirror
Like everything woke, it depends on how you apply it. Criticizing something for genuinely feeling there's something you feel wrong about and could possibly be improved is very different from criticizing everything just for the sake of it.
@@sdrc92126 😂 sad but true!
Peter, metaphysics is fascinating. Look into the PEAR labs research (at Princeton). Quantum physics of "spooky action"
What I wouldn't give to sit in on this conversation...
Oxford very much into diversity in their job adverts, hiring practices in my speciality and overall public presentation of themselves.
Re: Jan Bentz's critique of Enlightenment. Descartes was one philosopher & not the template for Enlightenment philosophers. Philosophers aren't always the best people to understand Enlightenment; because the philosopher looks at the books. So misses the forest for the trees. But Enlightenment was a process: thinkers writing long letters to each other, Salon culture, the project of the Encyclopédie, finally the French Revolution itself. Yes - it went wrong. But it also went right. It gave us the USA, industrial revolution, ...
I want to hear Jan Bentz criticise the scientific method directly. I can criticise scientific method from the point of view of better method, and better science. There is no other was to criticise it. I agree that empirical methods are ubiquitous, overwhelming, and a tax on the better life. So far, criticisms of science taking over the whole of our lives, have one massive flaw - what else? What else but science? Please show us by giving us counter examples.
Much enjoyed this.
I don't think Benz thinks of it as an either/or. Using only one method to search for truth can be seen as dogmatic.
Remember petitions are for my shared "i" Am, came with sincere conversations, and shared clay feet mixed with iron resting upon all dry grounds. Grounded! Yes, ye know? Who's Footstool!
The 2 EDGES SWORD Raise!
27:21 it's that desire creates suffering. The false need created by the mind for an object or experience is in its essence self imposed suffering. The Buddha didn't say that people who are starving aren't in fact suffering from starvation. This is why he rejected severe austerities and self-mortification as a means to achieve spiritual enlightenment, of the ascetics.
Hosts Meeks and HIS Beautiful will say, our TEACHER came to pray!
1:21:10
My example would be Love. Particularly in the Agape sense of the word. You cannot use the scientific method and "prove" (I know proof is only in mathematics and law) Love exists. Yet there are people who do try and use it and say Love is objective and reducible to brain chemistry, which is reducible to atomic forces.