Convergence to Neoplatonism w/ Wolfgang Smith
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- čas přidán 19. 09. 2022
- This is an episode from the Meaning Code. Wolfgang Smith is an important mathematician and physicist, whose work converges powerfully with my work as we both discover in this powerful video.
"Realness is some kind of inexhaustible source of intelligibility" - Vervaeke.
That is really brilliant. I feel like this is a great summation of all your conversations with Jonathan
It's the only thing that can simitaniously be known and sought, the solution to Meno's paradox.
Hello Watching from Uganda 🇺🇬 East Africa. Love you John
One of the few Africans interested in these things.
@@mannytps9986 I will take that as a complement, thanks 🙏.
These guys speak mysteries in simplicity for a Black man like me to understand.
Kudos
From Algeria North Africa here! 🙏❤️
@@mannytps9986 you do extensive travelling, connecting with varied selection people face to face, across the huge continent called Africa? Including Egypt that was for long periods the capital of the world regarding exactly this type of subject? (Alexandria) otherwise, any scientific research that backs your statement? (Beyond, of course, the fact that relatively speaking there are only a few people in the world that are very interested in Neoplatonism etc)
@@HansenFT it’s really just rare. Not trying to be shortsighted or anything. Just being honest.
As a poet I am inspired by Wolfgang and John - poetry also is seeking lucidity - LOVE you so much for having these conversations with the world!!!!!
I found this to be a profoundly stirring dialogue. I am an undergraduate mathematics and physics student and did not know about Wolfgang Smith's life or work. To hear his ideas resonate both with your own, John, and with my own, in light of our shared mathematical, philosophical and religious (Christian) disposition, brought great and visceral clarity to my understanding of myself and resolved the tension which has existed in me now for years - how my aspirations and inclinations are to be channeled, submitted and married up to God.
Thank you as always for your work, insight, and magnanimous openness. Among all the life changing ideas and conversations out there, yours truly change lives for the better, instead of polluting and further misleading the minds of the misled. Here, unlike in so many other places, the blind do not lead the blind. Instead, those who have ears to hear and have heard continue to hear one another. May your good work ever continue and proliferate.
"The measurer ultimately cannot be measured!"
Take that evolutionary biologist! 😮
Always a mind and heart expanding conversation !
Thanks for the post John!
We really appreciate it.
This is epic 👌 thank you so much , John . Wow, so awesome! This discussion is powerful and so beautiful and good and it warms my heart ❤️ it makes me even more grateful for doing your course on Awakening from the meaning crisis
Thank you for your witty and inspirational conversation.
Thank you for your understanding of things and sharing with humanity. I might not be genius but i somehow get what is being said.
Wolfgang Smith, very interesting, will be ordering a few of his books, thank you for this conversation!
Me too.
I’m pleased that the discussion kept true to the core issue of ontology.
I was hoping Wolfgang and John would meet at some point. Very cool
Just wanted to voice that Karen Wong's Question or statement about Gibson and how if we talk as if every thing is just a single idea in the mind, or a hallucinations and totally subject to interpretation is a pretty awful way of seeing the connection of the outside world. The Red of red may be seen differently because of certain sensory deference's. but the signal is the same regardless of who's sensing it and in that Single we are all in the same world. Powerful.
What Wolfgang Smith says about our really experiencing the actual world and not Descartes' incoherent conjecture dovetails perfectly with Aristotle's and Aquinas' understanding that the active intellect literally becomes the object known. Ockham followed by Hume's self contradicting "fork rule" .. which breaks his "fork rule" followed this error. We've been adrift in childishly absurd scientism ever since. Great stuff. The path to reality and the hope of sanity.
Hey Tom, could you explain what you mean what you say "active intellect literally becomes the object known".
Thanks in advance :)
Or, more probably, exactly the opposite.
@@bachamadu2076 Form is abstracted from form and matter. We become informed. This is only possible if the mind literally becomes the object known. It cannot be a material process as Prof Feser shows . czcams.com/video/fNi0j19ZSpo/video.html&pp=ygUnZWR3YXJkIGZlc2VyIGltbWF0ZXJpYWxpdHkgb2YgdGhlIG1pbmQg
I love your question, John, at around 1h. Indeed, if I take the program of reconciling my existence as a scientists with my ontology, then the way I live is a big part of my authority. If I don't walk the talk, I'm not credible. Don't listen to my arguments unless you want to be like me, to a certain extent. This leads far.
Dear John Vervaeke, thank you for all your great content - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis in particular. Can I find this and and everything else on Spotify / as a podcast? I listen while driving. Thanks again for ever inspiring conversations and lectures!
In today's episode of "How long can John be in a discussion about his work before being asked what he thinks about God?", we have...28 minutes!
God is a Jungian archetype.
@@victorking1267 okay
I don’t recall John being asked this question at all in this interview. The “aeveternal realm” is a Platonist conception, not a theological one.
@@brianmurphy9223 I sometimes notice that a lot of philosophical discussion is just recapitulating things everyone knows while avoiding using certain words. Not to say that's what's going on in this discussion, but to try to declare the aeveternal realm as being somehow different than talking about God, is to circumscribe it as "secular" and that--as a practice--is one of the core mechanisms of what is being denigrated in this discussion. It's fine for it to be framed as a question about God, and to deny that everyone in the room has a God-colored memory and framework that is being invoked by considering these questions is performative.
Not to mention, I know Vervaeke has had plenty of exposure to profound expressions of Christian theology, there's no way he doesn't hear at least the rhyme if not the nested cognate.
@@EamonBurke
Aeviternity is supra-spatiotemporal, but it is still cosmic.
_Eternity_ is supra-cosmic; that is where God comes in.
One shouldn't conflate the eternal and the aeviternal. Nor should one reduce the eternal to the aeviternal, as that would reduce God to an object which exists "within" the world (or universe).
Dear John, thank you so much for your inspiring work! If only I was introduced to philosophy by something like your series... At the very least I would not be as dismissive of it for most of my life as most of physicists are :)
I wonder how familiar are you with work of Rudolf Steiner? As far as I recall you mention him just once (in talk with Zak Stein if I am not mistaken) and still, when you speak about ontology here - it sounds almost like direct quote.
PS BTW did you know that Valentine Tomberg was Steiner's student?
Every time I hear Wolfgang speak against perennialism I become more convinced of its reality. He states that the fall of man is nowhere present in Vedic traditions then says they have the idea of God mutilating man then says the Judeo-Christian explanation of this fact is the fall of Adam, then concludes that there is no idea of the fall of man in Vedic traditions, am I the only one that is lost?
I’m only 15 min in so far, but I can’t help but be elated that I’m listening to a mathematician/physicist and a philosopher arguing for the need for metaphysics/ontology, and a neo-Platonic one to boot. I say that as a systematic theologian, with Bonaventurian leanings.
This video was really special, thank you all. I want to share a convergence of my own -- I have been "a physicist" since I was 14 for that is when it was decided in me that that is what I wanted to be simply because that is what "shined" the most for me. It was most salient but it was more than becuase I kept being drawn in mainly because of the beauty of physics and language: mathematics. One of the reasons that I found it so beautiful is that to me doing physics was like accessing a realm of truth -- immutable truth is what I would call because I don't fully know what eternal means. And that made me think that the truths really existed in someway and so when I learned of the Forms from John, really, then through Plato I could see that I what I sought to be in my pursuit of physics was Platonism. Let no non-geometer enter and all that.
I too, in my teens and early twenties, was immersed in the Advita Vedanta philosophy -- mainly because thst is how my mom raised me. She taught me "all religions contain the same truth" but from that Vedic POV that Wolfgang described. And that there is a movement to see all religions as containing that truth. I still do see that truth as the Truth but dont think the Advitan way is the right way (to close yourself off to the world).
But to get to my ultimate point: I cannot see the Christian view as either superior or containing Vedanta. Just because a Christian mystic (Eckhart) got it right does not redeem the Christian endeavour. Intellectually that it is a form of Platonism all is the only point of agreement because I would assert that the Greek's findings were drawn from the east -- Pythagoras learned from the Persian Magi. So really Platonism is more like Yoga modified through Zoroaster (the silk road triad). Getting off topic there.
Even if the truth of reality is Christian I reject it and cannot except it. The most obvious reason to me is it's ugliness. The damning of the universe. The constant sin. The eternal damnation. This cannot be the truth. The truth must be beautiful.
And then, and this is my main point in all of this: I cannot square away the Christian view. I cannot believe that one man was the son of God. Either we all are or none of us are. Either we are ourselves tiny gods or we are apes with too much mind. Probably both. Reasons for why I cannot believe in anything other than "Jesus was a good person" is that no one can perform miracles. Nothing can defy the laws of physics. Nothing can come back to life. Nothing can be resurrected. The only supernatural element to this universe is that is contains "action at a distance" fields but that all things are still conserved in that potentiality. My true faith, in my true religion, that of Spinoza who is chief of the Stoics and of Platonists, in my opinion, and my love of Epicurus and Diogenes, is the faith, the real faith "ultimate concern" is that the laws of physics cannot be defied. That the promise that is the One guarantees that the relationship between being and intelligibility is exhaustible, to paraphrase John.
That Jesus was a man because that is all anyone is. Maybe he was born of a virgin -- parthogenisis -- a natural possibility, leading to claims of godhood. But it seems obvious to be that the Roman Saul stole the description of Caesar, the son of god, the son of Jupiter Stator, set to free all man, from the Roman Gospel -- the good news of the son of god (Augustus) come to save us. The Romans did that because of their Greek worship. And the myth of Jesus seems plainly obvious to me what a Greek idioling person would make of a blessed life person: by saying there were a Hero: born of God and able to perform supernatural feats. They have pulled the wool over our eyes and stolen a pagan view of the world and applied to their messiah. There is no way one only comes to the father thru him. Because if that is true then god is joke and I would spit in his face for all the suffering it wrought.
Islam has a much greater conception of that worldview but even that contains the mythologization of its central figure. Again. No physics can be defied. The moon could not have been split. It's just hero worship. And of course we only have the works of the Greeks thru them. We could have no Elkhart without Ibn Sina and Al-Ghazhali.
So yes, no Christianity for me and when John speaks of "this worldview simply isn't viable for many people" this is why. Because I love the truth most of all and the reality it creates and the story of Christianity cannot be true. And in my denying of that religion I believe I am closer to that truth.
Sorry for the self aggrandisement: it takes a lot of courage to speak out against Christianity and so when I have the courage to I do it with too much chest: I am sorry. But my point of view is still what it is: no miracles. No supernatural anything. Only the real Nature (or God) that does not insult reality by saying things that are impossible, and possible to know they are impossible thru the gift of reason, can happen. I lay my loyalty at the feet of reality and the laws that govern it.
@@EnemyOfEldar He is Reality.
The only radically coherent worldview, from every possible angle, ontological, teleological, psychological , theological and historical is that of Roman Catholicism. Period. And she is not at all about damnation... something we prefer to the demands of loving others... and Love itself.. Himself.... take the sexist rejection of God being "like as" a father up with God... She does not condemn lovely little Chinese kids growing up in incoherent and absurd atheism, or anyone else. You will find LOVE Himself in her sacraments; the only possible coherent explanation for a cosmos that arrives at free willed rational moral agents after 14 billion years. But by all means do drop the caricatures you carry around in your head. The path is before you.
@@EnemyOfEldar Do you know the Quran 4 : 24 asks muslims to take the women of the Kaafir as Sex slaves? Read more. I've been in your position and that was my delusion. READ MORE! READ THE CRITICS OF THESE IDEOLOGIES TOO. Without that you'll still be brainwashed. Thank you. Truth honestly is probably very trivial and NOT SPECIAL. I know disappointing but isn't life disappointing?
@EnemyOfEldar I think you protest too much, as you resist the pricks and think of all those reasons you have for passing judgment against the Creator God for giving his creatures the gift of free agency to learn and grow, and to freely choose to accept His Love in Eternity, or reject Truth eternally, for the falsehood of self-righteousness; making yourself the god of your own damnation. I once thought I was an atheist, because I was caught-up in the machinations of reasoning within myself, without the benefit of the wisdom that comes only from God. If you ask Him, He will give you wisdom; with it, He will give you discernment that is not possible without Him. But, with Him, you will see, understand and know, He IS God! Three Persons in One Essence: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus, the Son, is fully God and fully Man. No other being has two Natures: of God and Man; I don't, and you don't. Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no man cometh to the Father but by Me."
The so-called truth you claim to know is false evidence appearing real (F.E.A.R.). Many have chosen to believe the lies. When you know Jesus Christ, or more accurately, when He knows you, you will know that Truth is a Who, not a what, and the Holy Spirit will show you all things. You will know why there is suffering in the world. While your eyes will be opened to see miracles! And you will rejoice to know Truth!
Wolfgang's commentary on his catholicism brought a tear to my eye, I'm still where he was in his younger years but one day I feel in my being is that I long to return like the prodigal son he embodied! I'm not there yet, but one day! 👍
You'll find she is the real deal; the realest of deals. The key is God present to us in His sacraments not the fallen and broken daring souls who attempt to offer up their lives to living truth. And intellectually and philosophically with Aquinas she is one long wondrous drink of clear and sustaining water. You will be received by Love Himself.
czcams.com/video/Z4KInYlRYc8/video.html - there are quite a few to choose from, but I like this one :^)
@@tommore3263
Who is she??
@@bachamadu2076 She is the Bride of Christ. His church. As we see in free willed rational beings formed out of stardust over 14 billion years, the universe is Personal.
At what minut is his commentary on his catholicism ?
Vervaeke. Blows my goddamn mind.
I wonder how Wolfgang's view of the irreconciliablilty of Vedanta and Christianity would sit with Father Bede Griffith and Swami Abhishiktananda's attitude? I was fortunate to see a lecture by Ven. Bede shortly before his death, and he seemed to have thoroughly integrated the Vedantic and Christian in his outlook.
Aside from that, a great discussion, it opens a lot of doors for me, and also gives me a better grasp of Wolfgang Smith, whom I encountered only in the last couple of years. Thanks very much for it.
Well, it just so happens, Wolfgang recently published a book which discusses his views on Abhishiktanana's journey and views, _Vedanta in Light of Christian Wisdom_ ... you may want to check it out, it might surprise you.
@@TheDisinterestedSpectator Thanks. He did mention that book, and I might consider it - but his attitude seemed rather dismissive on the basis of what he says in the video.
@25:00 the point should be that not _only_ are the objects we say are coloured real, but that the redness of the red is something real too, and not physically describable. Although Frank Jackson rejected himself, his original work on the "What Mary Didn't Know" gedanenexperiment still stands (and is these days buttressed by heaps of other arguments that justify a platonistic stance, not just mathematical platonism). There is more to reality than meets the eye.
The crescendo of this conversation brings this scripture to mind, “Acts 17:28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
Somebody has got to get Wolfgang Smith together with Jordan Peterson!!
It was not absolutely rare to find info like 1:05:15 during early school years.
Of course, it is like a seed. One could plant/seek its meaning. Or just eat it leaving it lost in the bottom/chronos of some drawer.
"Being is what science actually denies". Yes and we could say that science only acknowledges the first level of the three 'levels" that Wolfgang is pointing out and science in its present form actually denies the other two levels. Historically and developmentally this may have been necessary but I say that a real science of today would not find it necessary to deny the other two levels but would find it necessary to include both of these other 'levels' into the scientific endeavor. J G Bennett is his book "Deeper Man" points to three distinct but mutually relevant 'levels' as function, being, and will. Part of what he says about function is: "The world of function is also the world we see going on around us; the world of process. Just as every part of us has a function, so does every part of the knowable world have a function, whether it is a living body, or a tool that we use, or some kind of machine we construct, or the air we breathe, or a heavenly body. If we know something in this way, we know it by what it does and even such a great thing as life on this earth can be looked at in this way.......However much we know in this functional way, we can never answer the question, 'What is this'? We can give things a name and say that, 'That is a house, This is a person,' but giving something a name does not tell us what it is. A name in this sense is a sign of ignorance....Our language is through and through functional, particularly this indo-european language we are using, and what we can say is not what we are after." In this chapter called "The Three Worlds" the world of function is referred to as the first world. "The real means we have of access to the other worlds is the work of transformation in us. The man who participates in the transformation of his own knowing substrate must be in contact with the two other worlds of referred to as "being" and "will". I will attempt at a later date to relate something of what Bennett says of these two worlds (which can also be said to be 'modes of being' or 'levels of perception') by adding to this post by making a reply to this post.
Thanks everyone!
Thanks Lee
40:00 "[excepting recent advancements academic pursuits have been caught in] a computationalist, representationalist straight jacket"
💓
Can we see the forest for the trees? Lumberjacks see logs going to the mill, bankers see money growing on the trees, carpenters see houses & furniture, publishers see paper & books, treeplanters see the seeds in the cones to plant more trees. There are takers who profit & there are givers who do not profit. Takers profit from global deforestation & givers break their backs to plant seedlings but the wise man plants seeds because nature plants seeds not seedlings. Reforestation on a global level can only happen when we recognize trees for the forest that plants the seeds directly into the earth rather than transplanting trees from nursery to desert. First came man deserts followed to create local-global warming trends. Contemplating Platonics the thinking physicist sits calmly under the shade of the last tree growing vertically up towards the sky & downwards with roots drilling deep into the ground to procreate itself in the midst of a concrete city. Gods voice is like the sound of many waves weaved together in a field of frequencies, colors, life & trees.
Why is Bergson left out of these conversations? I think Bergson subsumes Gibson.
I find it difficult to accept that qualities have an objective reality. How could this ever be verified? Qualities can never be communicated from one being to another, we can only communicate relations among these.
If you prefer audio only, check out The Meaning Code on Spotify and Apple podcasts:
open.spotify.com/show/4v8GyhS0JNUfYAHpRE7IR3
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-meaning-code/id1631237209
That is absolutely correct - physics cannot solve the measuring problem because all physical quantities have no fixed magnitudes as currently expressed by rational numbers. Physical quantities must be measured with transcendental numbers such as pi which have infinite rational approximations, however, humanity has so far failed to develop a mathematics of transcendental numbers.
The actual problem is cognitive and it was first resolved by myself after I discovered the Universal Law, from which I derived all known physical laws in 1995 ( for further information search with my name and the word Universal Law on the Internet and find my websites and read my 18 books and more than 3000 publications on the new Science and Gnosis of the Universal Law). I proved that there are only 2 dimensions - space and time - and all other dimensions and units in the SI system can be reduced to space and time, i.e. to meter and second. At the same time, I proved that space s and conventional time t are one the same quantity. The reciprocal value of time t - frequency f - is the actual "absolute time" short time - hence the concept of "space-time" for energy that has not been understood so far by all physicists, especially not by Einstein in the theory of relativity.
Space and time cannot be separated as they are canonically conjugated entities and constantly change their magnitudes. This precludes any exact measurement in physics as all known quantities consist only of space and time. Physics has resorted to an invalid trick in mathematics to evoke the impression that it can measure precisely physical magnitudes - it arrests in the mind abstractly and apriori time by assigning it the number 1: time f = 1:
space-time = space X time = s X f = space X 1 = space.
This is how the empty Euclidean space was introduced in classical mechanics and has obscured physics from the very beginning - by eliminating time in the mind within mathematics which is a hermeneutic discipline of the human mind and has no external object of study. This is pure philosophy of science and human cognition. I hope Dr. Wolfgang Smith can understand and appreciate this insight which revolutionizes our understanding of physics.
I would think the "medium" of exchange. Is being manipulated and it's making virtue imbalanced thought-out the cultures of the world that participate in the exchange.(edit) I watch alot of breedlove.
I have that green screen! ^.^
Hey Memes... First time I see you here ! How long since you've been following John ?
@@ErnestoEduardoDobarganes 👋 Since Thad recommended him. ^.^ Several months now?
Word goulash
Yo
I got to know Dr. Wolfgang Smith's work thanks to brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho.
Anyone here that's just a working class person?
me
Haha John disappeard when Wolfgang brought the g-word i.e geocentrism---a very dirty word in académic circles.
Lol uncertainty..actually isn't a science it's self evident to an elk but theorticalists!.hey always want the clock as real. Tictock
Plato was an occultist. Study the occult and you understand Plato
You mean in addition to Plato… Is there an explicit reference that brings them together or makes this link?
No the occult per Definition does dark things. It doesn't deal with the Devene. It trys to control principalitys. So it just selfserving narcissistic. It realy just satanic. (with satanic meaning trying to behave like you can become God on your own(it's literally the story of the garden of eden)
Do not study the occult.
@@Michael-sc2gj lol way ahead of you
@@christopherhamilton3621 where do you think Greeks got there knowledge from? Egypt and the Jewish.. ancient occult text riddled with symbolism and secret meaning, that’s how they ruled the world