The Meaning Crisis: Resolution | Dr. John Vervaeke | EP 482

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Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down in person with associate professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, author, and podcaster, Dr. John Vervaeke. They discuss the alignment between the Gospel accounts and Western civilization; Neoplatonism as it applies to Christianity; the voluntary necessity of reason, love, and beauty; and what really caused the Roman Empire to fall.

John Vervaeke is an associate professor of psychology and cognitive science at the University of Toronto. John researches and publishes on the nature of intelligence, rationality, wisdom, and meaning in life, emphasizing relevance realization, non-propositional kinds of knowing, and 4E cognitive science.

This episode was filmed on September 5th, 2024.

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- Links -

For John Vervaeke:

Awakening From the Meaning Crisis Series

Vervaeke Foundation Website

John Vervaeke's Lectern (Walking the Philosophical Silk Road)

- Chapters -

(0:00) Coming up

(0:36) Intro

(3:32) The Gospel seminar, “it was a very healing moment for me”

(8:59) “Foundations of the West,” the proper alignment between the Gospel accounts and Western civilization

(10:36) Bridging the Ancient Greek philosophers to the Christian ethos

(13:28) “We Who Wrestle With God,” the book, the tour, and Dawkins

(15:28) Neoplatonism — unrealized potential, down to the level of atoms, suggests an implicate order

(17:28) When brilliant thinkers and theologians submit themselves to the spirit of the logos

(19:17) The love of wisdom versus the love of victory, the use of power to compel order does not bring unity

(21:53) Reason, love, beauty: voluntary necessities

(26:49) Different notions of faith, the deeper meaning of “understanding”

(31:05) Higher order ethical virtue, psychopathology and maturation

(34:40) A very powerful argument against moral relativism

(38:55) Distributed cognition via correctly oriented dialogical machinery

(40:04) Peterson Academy: intellectual autonomy with the world’s greatest thinkers

(43:36) Pre-enrollment success: 30,000 students already

(47:57) X is a snake pit and a looking glass

(49:44) An eye to the future: building out digital meeting spaces and the potential for real life lectures and cruises

(52:03) Deeper into the “We Who Wrestle with God” tour, grace in the throes of fame and notoriety

(1:00:42) Vervaeke’s ongoing work with the meaning crisis

(1:04:13) “The fact that there is a meaning crisis is actually evidence that things are not meaningless”

(1:07:07) Vervaeke was raised as a fundamentalist Christian, religious dread

(1:11:15) Deep nihilism and science fiction, when Vervaeke met Socrates

(1:14:39) Self correction, Neoplatonism in Eastern philosophy

(1:17:29) Agape defined, why the Roman Empire really fell

(1:20:23) Embodying the logos versus adhering to the propositional, the Cartesian problem

// COURSES //

Discovering Personality

Self Authoring Suite

Understand Myself (personality test)

// BOOKS //

Beyond Order12 More Rules for Life

12 Rules for LifeAn Antidote to Chaos

Maps of MeaningThe Architecture of Belief

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