After Socrates Episode 22

 [00:00:00] Christopher Mastropietro: If I'm sitting with Guy, like let's say we're in a circling exercise, and Guy is asking me questions, and he's imagining himself as me, and he's venturing, he's venturing a guess at what I might be feeling or thinking, it's not [00:00:20] the astuteness of his imagination that draws me to him, it is the interest that he has In the question itself, that is what galvanizes me.[00:00:40]

[00:00:54] Dr. John Vervaeke: I'm joined again by my good friends, Guy Sendstock and Christopher Mastipietro, and we're going to pick up [00:01:00] on what we were doing in the previous, uh, episode. We were taking a look at a, I guess I'll call him as neutrally as possible, a thinker. Who, uh, who made, um, Dialogos the center of, um, his thoughts and his framework, uh, this is the work of Martin Buber.[00:01:20]

[00:01:20] Dr. John Vervaeke: And uh, I was very grateful for that discussion, um, a lot was drawn out and, um, a lot was articulated. It was a lot of insight, um, very grateful for that. So first of all, thank you. And then what we're going to try to do is we'll keep doing that, but now we're going to turn the focus of that project on to.

[00:01:38] Dr. John Vervaeke: How could that [00:01:40] inform or transform a lot of the practices that have been discussed and demonstrated in this series? So I'm going to turn it over to Chris and Dai to get it started about some of the insights that caught your eye or your ear. And [00:02:00] what you think, how they might help us to, first of all, see more deeply what's already happening in the practices.

[00:02:07] Dr. John Vervaeke: Thank you. Or perhaps, and that's what I mean by inform, or, um, how it might give us some advice of some maybe possible innovations or modifications we want to bring to the practices, uh, [00:02:20] uh, that reflect what we've learned from the engagement with Poober's work. So. I'd like to go first.

[00:02:32] Christopher Mastropietro: One of the things that we talked about when we were in, when we actually did the practices episode and explained the dialectic and [00:02:40] ideologos and did a demonstration of it. And one of the things that I think as we, and as we do the workshops. Where we have people come and we all just try it out together.

[00:02:49] Christopher Mastropietro: And we just did one two weeks ago. And we just did one two weeks ago. Our fifth one. Yeah, Our fifth one, yeah. And every time, what's fascinating to me is that every time we do it, [00:03:00] I feel like, I feel as though I understand what we're doing better. Right? The, the practice itself becomes more and more of a thou, in other words, right?

[00:03:09] Christopher Mastropietro: It's particular abundance becomes far more open ended, even as it becomes tighter and more well defined. Mm hmm. It's possibility also becomes more open ended, which is, I think, an interesting way of [00:03:20] understanding the paradox of it, right? We double down on it on the one hand, we clarify on the one hand, and as we clarify and, and, and proscribe it in one sense, it also becomes a little bit more open ended in another sense.

[00:03:32] Christopher Mastropietro: Yeah. One of the things that is very tempting Even right now, what we're doing, it's very [00:03:40] tempting, tempting to become attached to the letter of what we say, the proposition of what we say, what we pitch and what we propose. And think of the insight itself, the semantic content of the insight as the fruit of the process.

[00:03:56] Christopher Mastropietro: And I think as we do it over and over and over again, it becomes very, very [00:04:00] clear. It's not the fruit of the process, right? That's an instrument in the process and that, and we, you know, we were talking about how, what is said part of the irony, I mean, that in the technical sort of the Kierkegaardian sense that you and I were just, were discussing that part of the irony of the practice [00:04:20] is that it's not a, it's not an exercise to gain objective insight.

[00:04:24] Christopher Mastropietro: That's not what it's for. The exercise is to develop a subjective relationship to a virtue. And that the act of proposing in the direction of a virtue is to deepen and unfold that relationship and to become progressively more intimate [00:04:40] with it, right? To make it more and more and more and more of a thou.

[00:04:43] Christopher Mastropietro: And that's something about the structure of the process and the repetition of the process. Repetition in the recollection forward sense, right? Not in the, not in the stalled sense. But in the progressive sense of repetition, of vertical repetition, you could say. [00:05:00] Is that the repetitiousness of the exercise helps to renew the commitment to treat the virtue as a vow.

[00:05:08] Christopher Mastropietro: And that commitment has to be renewed every time we propose, we err in the proposal, we know we err in the proposal, and that we have to propose again. And so there's something about that [00:05:20] repetitious structure that I think is meant to, when we're doing it properly, Renew the commitment to regard the virtue collectively as a vow.

[00:05:29] Christopher Mastropietro: And there seems to be something about regarding one another as thou that helps to triangulate that move. And I don't know exactly how that works, but it strikes [00:05:40] me that one another being thou to one another, and that being bi directional, right? Because there's a certain vulnerability in being a thou. So it's having to treat another as a thou.

[00:05:55] Christopher Mastropietro: Disposing yourself to receive the kind of attention and virtue of which you would [00:06:00] become a thou and then to use that reciprocal opening to understand the virtue on those terms. And that's not as easy as it sounds because it requires, there's a sacrificial element to it. You have to be willing to err.

[00:06:16] Christopher Mastropietro: And error again and error again, knowing everything you [00:06:20] say is in some sense wrong, wrong in the sense that it doesn't capture the virtue, right? It's not equal to it. And so in some sense, being an error, being an error in the letter of what we say serves the building and development of the relationship.

[00:06:38] Christopher Mastropietro: And it's at the level of [00:06:40] the relationship that we come to know the virtue. Right. So anyway, maybe I'll, I'll start there. Yeah.

[00:06:46] Guy Sengstock: And that. thing we were highlighting in the last conversation about, and I vow, it's not the question of how you're relevant to me, but how I'm relevant to you. Right. [00:07:00] And, and I would say I really saw this clearly in the last one.

[00:07:04] Guy Sengstock: I think I, and I, looking back, I saw, you know, in every single one, but it was just really prominent in the last one. Yeah. The last workshop is this people sharing about their experience. But from that place of being relevant to [00:07:20] the virtue, right, there was this kind of like almost a, there was almost a ecstatic, um, there was an ecstatic place people were talking about, right?

[00:07:35] Guy Sengstock: It's as if they realize that they were significant to the [00:07:40] degree that they, they were able to participate in something glimpsing where it would start to glimpse the universal thing that would, when it would catch, there's a sense of being significant in that sense. So it was really thou, right? And the, in the, the ecstaticness coming from, [00:08:00] from them was, it was really interesting because if that was towards themselves, they'd be so inflated, right?

[00:08:07] Guy Sengstock: But it was this, it was this. It wasn't an inflate. It wasn't an inflation. It was an ecstaticness, right?

[00:08:14] Dr. John Vervaeke: This is, um, this virtuous vulnerability [00:08:20] and because one of the things we warn people about in these practices is try to resist sort of, uh, the attractive pull of autobiography, right? Because autobiography is about trying to bend everything towards, uh, the self, right?

[00:08:35] Dr. John Vervaeke: Even though the first autobiography is Augustine actually trying to invert that [00:08:40] arrow the other way around. Um, people don't read the confession of the first great autobiography Or if they do, they don't read it deeply enough to see that that's the point. So the thing I want to ask about that then is, uh, first of all, I want to make one modification.[00:09:00]

[00:09:00] Dr. John Vervaeke: I, I will, I will, I would want to say that it's not. That the I thou isn't subjective objective, I would say the I thou is transjective, from which the subjective and objective poles can be posited, um, and that what people are realizing with this intimacy that they have not understood before, they've not encountered before, but they've always longed.

[00:09:19] Dr. John Vervaeke: The [00:09:20] only way I can make sense of that kind of platonic anamnesis, that's Plato's word for remembering or recollecting, is that. They've always been operating, if I can put it that way, from transjectivity, but they've never realized, in a phenomenological sense, transjectivity. And I think the I Thou relationship is a profound [00:09:40] transject, we talked about it, it's primordial, it's underneath, right?

[00:09:43] Dr. John Vervaeke: And, uh, and, uh, and it's also generative. It's not just reflective, uh, it's not just representative, it's generative, right? It's creating persons. So, what I wanted to say, then, is. I want to try and [00:10:00] bring the question I brought in when we got into the discussion of, you know, there's this interrelationship between discerning the voice, um, and realizing the hour of the, uh, the either relationship and, and being in an aspirational zone of proximal development, right.[00:10:20]

[00:10:20] Dr. John Vervaeke: Is there, I mean, it seems to me that what we have to be doing all of that to some degree to get what you're putting your finger on, that people are willing to make the turning the arrow around, kind of. But I'm wondering, again, [00:10:40] like part of it is the fact that we choose virtue as a thing, right? Because, um, typically if you ask people, do they, would you want virtues to continue exist?

[00:10:49] Dr. John Vervaeke: Even if you didn't, they say yes. And then, right. So, so the two that I've been sort of boiling down all of the meaning in life questions to two questions, which is tell [00:11:00] me what you want to exist, even if you don't, and tell me how much of a difference you make to it now. And if you've got a strong answer to both of those, I predict you'll, you'll find your life very meaningful.

[00:11:11] Dr. John Vervaeke: Right. And so we choose a virtue because people generally answer strongly to the first. They would want it to [00:11:20] exist in a world, even if they didn't exist in that world, because they see sort of the inherent value of virtue or something like that. Um,

[00:11:30] Dr. John Vervaeke: we're trying to get them to come into right relationship. And I want to, and I'm not trying to challenge what you said, Chris, I'm trying to balance it. [00:11:40] How do we balance off them?

[00:11:46] Dr. John Vervaeke: Or how could we better do it? Cause perhaps I think we're doing, we might be doing, we must be doing it in some way, how do we balance off them feeling that they matter and make a difference to [00:12:00] they're connected, they're relevant to the virtue. And you'll see, this is kind of like the Mino's paradox while also kind of all doing what you said, that they are, they are not coming into a semantic grasp of it.

[00:12:18] Dr. John Vervaeke: Yeah. So [00:12:20] how. I mean, this is the, I'm sorry, this is also the paradox of love, right? So how is it that they can feel that they're in right relationship to it, Ratio Religio, that they are being relevant to it, while at the same time reminding them that they're probably mistaken about it? And the it [00:12:40] being?

[00:12:40] Dr. John Vervaeke: The virtue. The virtue. Yeah. Right? So this is, this is, you want to say you're probably erring around this, yet that doesn't mean you're not relevantly connected to it. Yeah. Yeah. You see the problem? Sorry, I had to lay out a bit of a preamble to get that.

[00:12:57] Christopher Mastropietro: Right. So, how, how does, [00:13:00] in other words, if I can make sure I understand your question, how does, how does error, how does the, the, how does the knowledge of being in error in relation to your apprehension of a virtue incentivize your participation?

[00:13:14] Christopher Mastropietro: Or even

[00:13:15] Dr. John Vervaeke: not. And draw it? Or not even undermine the sense that you are relevant [00:13:20] to it. Because if the project is not, how does it matter to me? But how do I matter to it? Typically, when I'm in error about something, I'm in error about mattering to it. That's does that make the sense as a problematic? And I, I'm not, I'm not here proposing how we change a practice.

[00:13:38] Dr. John Vervaeke: I'm trying to [00:13:40] say is if we could get a little bit clear about this, we could provide people with better, right? Because. You often express a concern about, you know, don't worry if you're frustrated and I'm not saying we shouldn't do that. Are we fully, are we fully engaging with their concern? Their concern might be, but if I'm not [00:14:00] actually connecting with it, how could I possibly know if I'm relevantly connected to it or having the right relationship with it?

[00:14:07] Dr. John Vervaeke: Mm hmm. Now, does that, does that make sense now as a problem?

[00:14:11] Guy Sengstock: Yeah, yeah, the first thing that I'm, I'm kind of coming to is, I don't think on any of the [00:14:20] people who came out and shared about the dialectic and the dialogues that they were just in, that were in that ecstatic place, I don't think any of them said like, I was clearly, we clearly got it right.

[00:14:34] Guy Sengstock: Right. Like, I don't think any of them said that actually. I agree. Totally. In fact, in fact, I'd say that [00:14:40] they, it was precisely in that they didn't, they hit an aporia yet they were in relationship with it while not being able to put it into words. Right. Into right words. Yeah. That, that, that somehow not being able to put it in right words, but still being in contact with [00:15:00] it.

[00:15:01] Guy Sengstock: Actually had it mean more

[00:15:04] Dr. John Vervaeke: somehow, right? Because I think the non propositional connectedness, the, the, the religio is more important, right? So I agree that that's happening. Yeah. Okay. You, you want to say something?

[00:15:17] Christopher Mastropietro: Yeah. So using that [00:15:20] exact point, I think it has something to do with interest. So let's imagine for a second because what was happening in philosophical fellowship, right?

[00:15:27] Christopher Mastropietro: We did it with Buber, for instance, right? Whereas we're, we're circumambulating Buber or encircling the way that you're doing it with an individual who's present or in dialectic ideologos, the way that we're doing it with a virtue. What [00:15:40] is being expressed and, and, um, and conjured again and again and again is the interest that we have in the coming to know of you'll Whether it be the virtue or the person.

[00:15:55] Christopher Mastropietro: A kind of wonder. Wonder. So let's maybe take the [00:16:00] analogy of the I Thou between two people, right? So let's do that, let's do that for a moment and see if we can maybe carry it over to the virtue. If I'm sitting with Guy, I like to say we're in a circling exercise. Sure. And Guy is asking me questions. And he's imagining [00:16:20] himself as me.

[00:16:20] Christopher Mastropietro: And he's venturing, he's venturing a guess at what I might be feeling or thinking. It's not the astuteness of his imagination that draws me to him. It is the interest that he has in the question [00:16:40] itself. That is what galvanizes me. That's what makes me commit to the interaction with him. He might say, you know, I'm imagining something about you.

[00:16:49] Christopher Mastropietro: And he might be completely off. Usually it doesn't happen, incidentally. Usually pretty good.

[00:16:55] Dr. John Vervaeke: Devastatingly

[00:16:55] Christopher Mastropietro: so at times. Yeah. But he might be completely off, but that actually [00:17:00] doesn't deter me. What attracts me to the conversation and the interaction to him, what magnetizes me to him is the interest he casts to me in the proposal that he makes.

[00:17:12] Christopher Mastropietro: It is the gesture of the proposal, far more than the exactitude of its content, that actually opens up the [00:17:20] relationship. And in fact, depending on the kind of error he makes, he makes, he may make errors in such an interesting way. He might be wrong in ways that are so. Insightful in and of themselves that they might actually open possibilities and how I imagine myself.

[00:17:36] Christopher Mastropietro: That isn't what I imagined at all It's not [00:17:40] him according with me or to me. It has everything to do It's far more, it's, it's far more related to attitude than it is related to precision. Now, I don't know how much that carries over to when we're talking about the virtue, but I do think that [00:18:00] there is something about the nature of being in error in an exercise like that.

[00:18:06] Christopher Mastropietro: That is a demonstration of interest, interest as in commitment, right? In that sense, right? We, we do, we, we compare this a lot to, um, to very dramatic exercises like [00:18:20] improvisation. There's a hell of a lot of improvisation in this kind of exercise, right? It's an artistic exercise in as much as it is anything else.

[00:18:27] Christopher Mastropietro: And because of that, making creative errors isn't, to use that terrible, tired expression, it's not a bug, it's a feature, it's actually what opens up the possibility. [00:18:40] Error is necessary, right? It's necessary because part of this is actually a creative error.

[00:18:50] Dr. John Vervaeke: So I think this isn't exactly what you're saying, but it's what is sparking in me, which is an instance of exactly what I'm going to talk about.[00:19:00]

[00:19:01] Dr. John Vervaeke: So it's not the content of the error. It is like when you're on an errand and the two words are related in that the errors are actually helping evolve you towards the thing. There's a, [00:19:20] it's something like the affordance of.

[00:19:26] Dr. John Vervaeke: Uh, of reciprocal change and the rate at which you feel the person is homing in on you. If, if, for example, we don't like interest that is not doing that, that's [00:19:40] the stalker and we don't regard that as something positive. We regard that as something very, very negative, right? And if, if, if the errors that guy we're making were neither systematic towards you or systematic of him, let me explain what I mean by that.

[00:19:55] Dr. John Vervaeke: Um, so one of the great insights of Piaget is everybody [00:20:00] was doing IQ testing way before him, and they were throwing away the error and only looking at the success rate. And then Piaget said, I wonder if the errors are systematic, if there are patterns in the error, because the systematic error actually reveals the competence of an individual rather than just circumstance.

[00:20:16] Dr. John Vervaeke: And lo and behold, there's systematicity in the error. And what I [00:20:20] mean by that is if his errors, if they, if they have this kind of ordering rather than the content of the error, you get a sense of how he is constraining and also, right, if, right, right. So you get insight into him. , [00:20:40] but you also get the way he's giving you feedback.

[00:20:44] Dr. John Vervaeke: Yeah. On the errors, is also giving you information about the constraint. Yes, exactly. Yes. And this is, you know, Heidi's notion of the connections between error and going on an error, right? Oh yeah. Right. Yeah. And right. And so the idea that, interesting, and I'm trying to [00:21:00] get on your notion here, but there's something disclosing.

[00:21:03] Dr. John Vervaeke: The self organizing pattern, there's a logos in the error that, right, is nevertheless the locos. Yes. Right. And, and, and, and so in, in a predictive processing framework, the system doesn't orient just to error. [00:21:20] It orients to patterns of error and rates of error. Because those are actually deeply informative about how it should update its model.

[00:21:29] Dr. John Vervaeke: Is that?

[00:21:30] Christopher Mastropietro: And that's why, boy, yes. And that's why giving an account of your error. Which there's a sacrament for we talked about in reference to Kierkegaard called confession. Yeah [00:21:40] is actually an instance of the logos, right? Yeah being accountable to giving account of is Exactly the act of gathering oneself together and making conscious to oneself and to the vow you're facing What the constraints of your encounter actually are such that you can know them

[00:21:57] Dr. John Vervaeke: I'm going to throw away one more piece of cogsci, [00:22:00] um, and then, and then talk about a sort of a meta virtue that is, I think we, we, we, there's like, we were thinking about maybe Soffresen as a meta virtue, but I'll come around to this.

[00:22:10] Dr. John Vervaeke: So one of the heuristics that's proposed for enhancing insight, um, the hot insight is called the notice and variance [00:22:20] heuristic. And what this heuristic is, is I failed to formulate this problem. I failed to formulate this problem. I failed to formulate this problem. I failed to formulate this problem. Now I can just leave that as arbitrary, or I can say, I can say, maybe there's systematicity in my error.

[00:22:35] Dr. John Vervaeke: I'm going to look for what I'm not changing in each one of my mistakes, because that's probably a [00:22:40] good thing to try and change. So I'll get success and that will actually provoke insight. But that requires a terrific kind of epistemic humility. It requires you to look at the errors and, uh, like pay serious attention in them in order to write, see if there might be systematicity in the error, [00:23:00] because that can actually disclose.

[00:23:01] Dr. John Vervaeke: So if you're seeing that, you know, that you're getting the feedback and you're realizing that, you know, there's a certain kind of constraint that might be limiting. From the systematicity and the error, then, you know, well, maybe that's what I press on. Maybe that's what I challenge or open up because then that could get me [00:23:20] closer to the connection.

[00:23:21] Dr. John Vervaeke: Yeah. Does that make sense? That does make sense. Okay. But here's the problem. That works really well as a model of you and I. How does it work when we're doing it with a virtue? Because the virtue, like. We, [00:23:40] we, we are in a weird double role. First of all, the meta, the meta virtue of humility comes to the fore.

[00:23:46] Dr. John Vervaeke: We are somehow having to stand in for the virtue for each other and act as the feedback on that. We are giving the voice to the virtue by which it does this with each other.

[00:23:59] Guy Sengstock: [00:24:00] Yeah. And what, and what is it, what is it then that is letting us know, yay, no. Exactly. If it's not, if I don't have the authority and the virtue and you don't have the authority and the virtue.

[00:24:16] Guy Sengstock: What exactly are we, what's giving us, [00:24:20] so is

[00:24:21] Dr. John Vervaeke: there a possibility that, right, we are also we're, we're, we're at least implicitly plicit learning. And I mean that like in the cog size, we're picking up on patterns in each other and through each other of ourselves and that we're actually using that to give voice to the virtue to tell us how, whether or [00:24:40] not we're sort of dead reckoning towards the virtue.

[00:24:42] Dr. John Vervaeke: Yeah. Yeah. So the we space. Is a defining constitutive feature of this working, right? That's a fundamental way in which it's different from dialogue because this wheel space is performing an irreplaceable role that can't be [00:25:00] captured in traditional, just interpersonal dialogue, right? That's the argument

[00:25:05] Guy Sengstock: I'm making.

[00:25:05] Guy Sengstock: So the, so, so the, so I just want to make sure I'm getting what you're saying. So there's a way that where. Implicitly recognizing, right, patterns in each other's [00:25:20] bodies,

[00:25:20] Dr. John Vervaeke: tonalities. I'm almost guaranteeing you that we're doing this. That's how implicit learning works. And the, and the Geist comes out of that.

[00:25:29] Dr. John Vervaeke: Right. And then the Geist is what gives voice to the virtue. And that is the only way we could do it. Whereas if we didn't have the WeSpace, the Geist, the logos [00:25:40] as Age it. There was nothing to give voice to the virtue so that we could enter into an I Thou relationship. Right.

[00:25:48] Christopher Mastropietro: Right. Okay, so this is good. So then what's the relationship between the emergence of the Geist from that We space and the I Thou?

[00:25:58] Christopher Mastropietro: Vulnerability that we dispose [00:26:00] toward error. And the consciousness of that error. How do that? Because I think there's a connection there. We let's, what is that?

[00:26:06] Dr. John Vervaeke: I, I, well, I mean, from a CogSci perspective, and, and that's not gonna be sufficient. We're gonna have to bring it back into the existential. So this is just to get the ball rolling.

[00:26:17] Dr. John Vervaeke: I think w what we're getting, and this is a [00:26:20] way of, again, sort of understanding vulnerability, and I'm, I'm just on the edge of this, so give me Yeah. Space. But remember that I was saying about the systematicity, the, the, the canus. Um, the rate of, of the error being information independent of the content, uh, of the error.

[00:26:38] Dr. John Vervaeke: Right. And [00:26:40] so what if, as we are open to the Geist, we, that we are experiencing an enhancement of the rate at which we feel we are moving towards the virtue. Say [00:27:00] that one more time, if you would. So the Geist is constellated. Yeah. And then the Geist has. And I'm not saying a consciousness, but the Geist has, um, it has a collective intelligence, right?

[00:27:14] Dr. John Vervaeke: That is giving us this guidance of how to move towards the [00:27:20] virtue, giving voice to the virtue. And what if we are picking up that our vulnerability to that is being rewarded, I'll try to use some of the like rewarded by the. And an increase in the rate in which we are feeling guided by the Geist. [00:27:40] Mm.

[00:27:40] Guy Sengstock: Yeah.

[00:27:40] Christopher Mastropietro: Mm.

[00:27:41] Guy Sengstock: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's the feedback. Yeah. The sense of the, the sacrifice, the sacrifice of my, of my vulnerability towards it. Right. The rate, the rate in which that, that vulnerability is fed back is like on, [00:28:00] off, on, off. Yep. Is coming from the Geist. Yes. Right. And is, and, and the slowness or the rapid, the rapidity of that.

[00:28:11] Guy Sengstock: is what's giving, it's, that's the relationship between the vulnerability and the geist.

[00:28:14] Dr. John Vervaeke: Right? Right. And so the way I would then try and bring it a little bit more is that we've talked about [00:28:20] this as a flow state this way. Yeah. But I'm now thinking that there's something like a flow state this way. Yeah.

[00:28:26] Dr. John Vervaeke: Between us and the guys also, when the flow state we're getting, we're getting basic feedback, keep doing what you're doing. Now, the, the flow state is not perfect, but it's really, really good. Right. Yeah. I mean, all the arguments, the Hogarth and you know, the [00:28:40] stuff that Leo and I. Uh, right published about and so, but what I'm what I'm trying to get it as I'm trying to get at a non supernaturalistic account of what it is when we're talking about the voice of the virtue.

[00:28:53] Dr. John Vervaeke: I think the Geist. It takes a shape this way and we get religio. We get bound to it [00:29:00] and with each other to it in this way, such that it becomes the voice of the virtue. Yeah. We conform. So the virtue can become a vow for us because the virtue is not a doubt in and of itself. Right, right. Right. Yeah.

[00:29:13] Guy Sengstock: So

[00:29:13] Christopher Mastropietro: that, so that collective presence that emerges is, gives us a kind of generalized model of [00:29:20] error and reflects it back.

[00:29:23] Christopher Mastropietro: And basically the reflection of that generalized model of error becomes then the center of the dialogue. Right.

[00:29:30] Dr. John Vervaeke: It's like how each one of us is sort of picking up on an aspect of Spinoza in the, in the philosophical fellowship. And we all know, at least [00:29:40] implicitly, it's inadequate. But the sense of somehow between all of these, we could remove bias and get closer back to the original presence of the perspectives, is

[00:29:50] Christopher Mastropietro: something like that.

[00:29:50] Christopher Mastropietro: Right. But it's almost a negative presence, right? In the sense that the, like, whatever... What, however it is, it's, it's, it's

[00:29:57] Dr. John Vervaeke: like, it's Socrates demonium. It's not telling [00:30:00] you what to do. It's only telling you what not to do. It's telling you when you, when you're erroring right on the point of where you can return to the two dialogues

[00:30:08] Christopher Mastropietro: with your error in effect, right?

[00:30:10] Christopher Mastropietro: Right.

[00:30:11] Dr. John Vervaeke: I think. Properly understood. Um, and this goes to, uh, some stuff that we were talking about with one of, uh, the crew [00:30:20] during the negative theology. Well, not, not just a negative theology. I'm proposing the geist as the persona for the virtue.

[00:30:26] Christopher Mastropietro: Ah, right. Yeah. The, and so it's a kind of gradual emptying out.

[00:30:32] Christopher Mastropietro: Yes. Right. And of course, that's what, that's what the D logos is, right? It's a, it's a gradual, it's a kinosis, it's a gradual, gradual withdraw and emptying of the [00:30:40] virtue unto itself. The more that the. The more that the error gives greater resolution and negative reference to it as it withdraws. So something like that.

[00:30:50] Christopher Mastropietro: I, I,

[00:30:50] Dr. John Vervaeke: yeah, I think we're saying the same thing. I, I, I, what I'm saying is I think the Geist. Provides the face for the virtue so that we can face it in an eye that [00:31:00] relationship, but like a persona, it is always properly presenting, but also

[00:31:05] Guy Sengstock: withdrawing. Right. That's in this negativity seems strikes me as super important.

[00:31:10] Guy Sengstock: Okay. Right. Go with that. I had this thought that I just had this thought the other day, it was about the logos. And I was thinking about like, is it really true that we address [00:31:20] the logos? And I don't think so. I think it's always true that the, we, the Logos addresses us. In fact, and then I started thinking about, well, that's, I started thinking about, well, what is it to have an address?

[00:31:35] Guy Sengstock: Well, I have an address. You have an address. You have an address. But [00:31:40] the, but, but does the Logos have the address? No, the Logos addresses, right? The ones who have the address. In fact, the fact that where I live and where you live and where you live is probably like through the interaction of the logos, right?

[00:31:55] Guy Sengstock: And our identities and where we are, but the logos itself, [00:32:00] right? Seems to withdraw. It doesn't have an address. It addresses it and we answer its call, but we don't know where it is. There's this kind of, there's this kind of constant relationship where, where it addresses us. We always hear the call of the Logos.

[00:32:18] Guy Sengstock: And I think this is what's going on [00:32:20] in the circling of the, in the circling of this is that we're always, we're hearing the ring of something, but it's a, it's got this negative, it's got a negative withdrawing quality to it. Right.

[00:32:32] Dr. John Vervaeke: I think this is good, but I want to play with it and probe it. Yeah. Right.

[00:32:36] Dr. John Vervaeke: Because there is a dialogical sense. Um. [00:32:40] So what I hear you saying is there's a sense in which we feel the Logos is voicing to us, speaking to us, right? But we don't speak. But of course, you have a whole tradition, Christianity, that claims that the face of the Logos is such that [00:33:00] it, we, we can speak to not just be spoken to, right?

[00:33:05] Dr. John Vervaeke: And this of course is Christ as the Logos, right? So sometimes The persona is at least in one tradition, maybe others, but this is the one I'm familiar with. Sometimes the persona is a person in the sense of hypostasis, not in the sense of a [00:33:20] human being. Right. Some, something we speak to, not only something that can speak to us.

[00:33:25] Dr. John Vervaeke: So do you see what I'm saying? Like how I'm challenging? But I, like, I, I, I, I'm not sure about that either. I'm bringing this into. Because we want to give people, like, we want to give people the [00:33:40] clearest possible way in which they can articulate this experience to themselves so it doesn't become confused or vague without being falsely precise.

[00:33:52] Dr. John Vervaeke: Yeah, yeah. Do you see the challenge I'm raising?

[00:33:55] Guy Sengstock: Yeah, yes, yes.

[00:33:58] Christopher Mastropietro: Yes.

[00:33:59] Dr. John Vervaeke: [00:34:00] Yeah. It's, yeah. So for me, this is part of the Socrates Kryptogon thing too. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:34:04] Christopher Mastropietro: Yeah, absolutely. Well, we've said it. We, so we've said at times that one way, and this is no less abstruse, but let's see what we can do with it. Is that. I like this idea that we're basically, we're basically tracking [00:34:20] with a withdrawal of the logos, right?

[00:34:22] Christopher Mastropietro: And the reason that error is necessary in that project is that it is being an error that tracks the withdrawal because it is everything that is not what we say of it. Everything that's not what we profess of it, everything that's not what we propose of it. But not just empty negation. But not just empty negation, right?

[00:34:36] Christopher Mastropietro: That it's, so, you know, one, one insight I [00:34:40] remember came up in one of our dialogues some time ago is that, The relationship between speech and silence in terms of its conveyance reverses in Dialogos, right? Or at least, by analogy, I find it very helpful to think of it that way. So that we're used to thinking, well, I convey by my speech and I listen with my silence.

[00:34:59] Christopher Mastropietro: Seems [00:35:00] to be inverse. It seems to be that the conveyance of the virtue is actually the silence. It's in the aporia. It's in the ringing. That follows the speech and that the act of the speech is actually an act of listening, right? The probing is in the speech. Yes, the probing is in the speech. The listening effort is in the speech.

[00:35:19] Christopher Mastropietro: And then the [00:35:20] spokenness of the virtue is actually in the silence that precedes it, that follows it, that braces it from all sides. Right, right, right. That's why it's negative, right? Not as a negation, but a pregnant negative, right? And so. That being the case, if we, if we think of every [00:35:40] act of speech in Dialogos as an instance of listening.

[00:35:44] Christopher Mastropietro: Yeah. And every instance of silence in Dialogos is actually the act of speaking forth the virtue. Yeah. Using one another's generalized error as the measure of listening, what happens to this?[00:36:00]

[00:36:03] Dr. John Vervaeke: I think what you said was very astute, and I'm trying to process it in terms of I'm trying to get who's the thou with, in the, the relationship to the virtue. [00:36:20] And, and this is, I'm trying to get the notion of the persona that the Geist is at, is something that is present and therefore it can take on the role of presentation, the speaking to us.

[00:36:31] Dr. John Vervaeke: It can be the persona, the mask, right? Um, and I, and I'm trying to connect that with what you've just said, like, right.

[00:36:39] Christopher Mastropietro: Because let me just [00:36:40] add one more thing, because you brought up, you brought up, you know, Jesus Christ as an example, right? The Logos, the Logos of Christ in the Christian tradition as being an example that,

[00:36:47] Dr. John Vervaeke: of...

[00:36:47] Dr. John Vervaeke: The Persona is actually a person. Right.

[00:36:51] Christopher Mastropietro: And I'm trying to think of, you know, uh, uh, um, I'm trying to think of examples, scriptural examples of interact, [00:37:00] the various interactions that Christ has. With people in scripture and there are, I mean, there are surely many that I, that I probably contradict this observation I'm about to make.

[00:37:13] Christopher Mastropietro: God knows it's not exhaustive, but in every example that I think of when I think about those [00:37:20] interactions, whatever is professed to him, whatever is spoken to him is always erroneous. Yes. Right. Always, right? I say something to Christ and Christ says, no, it's yep. Yes. Yes. Right. Christ. Nope. It's right. Yeah.

[00:37:39] Christopher Mastropietro: [00:37:40] It's always a shift away. He always withdraws from what is said to him and he always repositions it. And Socrates too, right? So he always, he always withdraws from the framing of what is said, he always reframes and repositions, and he always answers in ways that were not [00:38:00] anticipated by the formulation of the question.

[00:38:01] Christopher Mastropietro: Right. So take that. Analogy and shifted onto this example, right? We don't have Jesus Christ to talk to, but if we think of the silent presence of the virtue as doing something analogous to that, that every time we speak [00:38:20] into it, we speak and now we have to listen for it, right? We have to use our ear, right, to substitute, uh, uh, uh, so, right.

[00:38:31] Christopher Mastropietro: So, so, uh, I think it was a conversation you had to give him proper credit for this insight. I think it was, uh, O. G. Rose, you're one of your [00:38:40] conversations with him. He said something I thought was very insightful, which, which was an observation he made about this practice, which is that it often happens.

[00:38:47] Christopher Mastropietro: God knows I do this all the time. Um, uh, which is that, you know, we'll make a proposal. I'll make a proposal and I'll go. That's not right, right? I'll make a proposal and you'll go. What did it [00:39:00] feel like to hear that? Well, I felt wrong. I'll make a proposal. What did it feel like? Nope, it's wrong. I'm listening with my own ear.

[00:39:06] Christopher Mastropietro: I'm listening with my own ear, and we're doing that collectively in the space, right? We're listening for it, and the listening for it seems to take place in the abiding silence that accompanies whatever it is that we say, [00:39:20] right? So that sort of scriptural reference is just an analogy to say that if we're listening properly, Meaning if we're speaking properly, we hear the error in our own voice when we're listening on account of the virtue.

[00:39:35] Christopher Mastropietro: Yeah. So what's happening when we do that?

[00:39:38] Dr. John Vervaeke: So you're [00:39:40] proposing that we, although we're speaking, we're actually listening in the speaking. So it's still ultimately the virtue speaking to us through the persona of the Geist, of the Logos itself? That sounds right. Okay. Then I see. [00:40:00] Maybe I'm just being overly scientific here, but, um, Someone has to be.

[00:40:04] Dr. John Vervaeke: Well, I want to say, right, so the thing in the analogy is Christ as the person behind the persona, right? And he constantly is rejecting the wrong persona. [00:40:20] That's why the shift keeps happening. Yep. Right. But if the Geist is the persona, what is rejecting, right? What's behind it doing the rejecting? Is it something like the world or being?

[00:40:31] Dr. John Vervaeke: There's something, there is something that we are accounting ourselves to, but right, has a causal [00:40:40] impact on the conversation that is giving, that is giving that part of the I thou to the virtue. So I'm breaking the, the thou into right, the way it can face us. And that's the, the Geist, but I'm also saying the thou is that which withdraws.

[00:40:59] Dr. John Vervaeke: [00:41:00] That's your point. Yep. Okay. And what is it that's with, it's not the virtue, right? Like, so what is it that's withdrawing, but withdrawing in such a way that it is conveying to us the virtue? And is it something like the way we are [00:41:20] fitted to the world or the world is disclosing itself to us? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:41:26] Christopher Mastropietro: I do.

[00:41:27] Christopher Mastropietro: I understand. I think I understand that. I think you described that as being the logos. Yeah. If I recall. Yeah. Do you want to say

[00:41:31] Dr. John Vervaeke: something about that? So, but this may be important. This may be that there's. There's, maybe there's two senses of this word, or [00:41:40] maybe we should split it up into the Geist, which is the persona generated by the Wii Space, and then the Logos is something like the way the world, right, withdraws, or something like that.

[00:41:54] Dr. John Vervaeke: That's really vague. Is the

[00:41:55] Christopher Mastropietro: Geist the persona of the Logos? Is that the, is that the making? Because that's interesting. [00:42:00] That's an interesting way of formulating

[00:42:01] Dr. John Vervaeke: it. I'm just thinking of it now because I'm trying to, I'm trying to get a sense of the different intimacies. Yeah. So this is the Philea. Yeah.

[00:42:10] Dr. John Vervaeke: That's intimacy. Yeah. And then the intimacy with the Wii space is this relationship with the guys. Yeah. But then people get an intimacy with being itself. Right. And that seems to me the [00:42:20] fullest version of the logos. Right.

[00:42:24] Guy Sengstock: That seems to be, to me, to me, that seems to be the being, being itself seems to be something like.

[00:42:32] Guy Sengstock: The openness that, that the very whatever it accounts for us to be open to each other, to have this and all of [00:42:40] that. That very, the factor or the fity of that openness or not fity, the, the, the primordial illness of that openness shines through. Right. But, but,

[00:42:50] Dr. John Vervaeke: but yes, but I'm trying to get at, I, I'm trying like, persons have a suchness, like, like [00:43:00] want, okay.

[00:43:00] Dr. John Vervaeke: So yeah, the geist. The face to the virtue, that seems to be something where at least got a little bit of traction on, but right, there's something behind that does the shifting and it's got to be something that is specific to courage as opposed to [00:43:20] kindness. As opposed to Sofresen. Do you understand? Yeah.

[00:43:24] Dr. John Vervaeke: It can't just be the general withdrawal of a being.

[00:43:26] Christopher Mastropietro: Although, perhaps, but one of the things that we consistently hear when we do the workshops is that the deeper people get into the process and the further that the practice gets, even in a [00:43:40] single sitting, the more the interdependency between the virtues becomes manifest in the dialogue.

[00:43:46] Christopher Mastropietro: Yeah. So one of the things that I consistently hear, I think, right, we talked about this a little bit because it came out in the most recent one, which was very interesting, is that it seems to be that the, the, the more d logos actually [00:44:00] catches in the practice. The more that the virtue itself, that is under discussion when probed, when known, when intimated more and more and more reveals its interdependency with all of the other virtues.

[00:44:12] Christopher Mastropietro: It opens, it fans out. Right. But it

[00:44:15] Dr. John Vervaeke: doesn't fan out into a homogeneous blob. Yeah.

[00:44:18] Christopher Mastropietro: No, it fans out into a, [00:44:20] into a multiplicity. It

[00:44:21] Dr. John Vervaeke: fans out into, like, what, you know, Plotinus thought of the noose. It fans out... It's the holographic relationship with all of the different, between all the

[00:44:28] Christopher Mastropietro: forms. Right, right, right, right.

[00:44:28] Christopher Mastropietro: But what I'm saying is you said, well, the thing that is withdrawing has to have something to do with courage, right? If courage is the virtue that is subject to the, to the dialectic, then the [00:44:40] withdrawal of the virtue has to

[00:44:41] Dr. John Vervaeke: somehow, Oh, so let me see if I understand this. So when the virtue, when we're getting that withdrawal into the holographic.

[00:44:49] Dr. John Vervaeke: The hologram of all the virtues, right? That is when the intimacy with being is coming. Is that what you're saying? I think so. Because that is sort of the grammar of intelligibility [00:45:00] itself, not the meaning of any particular virtue.

[00:45:03] Christopher Mastropietro: That's right. So as the persona, so the persona is the, the, the, the persona is the specificity of the virtue that we're trying to access and the withdrawal is something like the opening of that one virtue into.

[00:45:16] Christopher Mastropietro: The good itself, the thing that made

[00:45:18] Guy Sengstock: all of it possible in the [00:45:20] first, in the first place,

[00:45:21] Dr. John Vervaeke: but right. Yeah. Okay. So then we have sort of the two components for how we could enter into an either relationship with a virtue. We have the, we space taking on the role of the persona and giving voice to the virtue.

[00:45:36] Dr. John Vervaeke: And then we have the, we have right. Yeah. The [00:45:40] withdrawal into. You know, the, the, the system of intelligibility. Yeah. Like something analogous to the platonic forms. The wanting Yeah, the wanting, which acts as the mystery of a person. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:45:53] Guy Sengstock: There it is. There it is. Right. We're

[00:45:56] Christopher Mastropietro: so cartoonish. It's so, yes.

[00:45:58] Christopher Mastropietro: This, there's suchness in the moreness. [00:46:00] Exactly. Yeah.

[00:46:00] Dr. John Vervaeke: But articulated in, in this specific way. Yeah. Yeah. And so it might mean that theoretically we, we might. We, we've been using geist and logos interchangeably, but it might be that we want to actually differentiate them in order to pick up on these different layers of the phenomenology.

[00:46:16] Dr. John Vervaeke: Right?

[00:46:16] Christopher Mastropietro: No, no. I think this works much better. It works much better because [00:46:20] then the, the logos is properly a movement of with, of withdrawal away from the deal logos itself. Right? It's the movement of the park. Well see. I would wanna say not away from the D logos. It's within and around, and. But it's, we talk about the movement of Logos as being the gathering of Logos as being a movement from the part to the whole.

[00:46:38] Christopher Mastropietro: Right. And it makes sense [00:46:40] in that respect that the movement of a single virtue to virtue itself. I think it's both. Follows, tracks that exact pattern. I think it's both.

[00:46:46] Dr. John Vervaeke: It's the sentiment. I think the, the, the, uh, the accountability of the Logos It's not just the withdrawal, but also the fact that it faces us.

[00:46:58] Dr. John Vervaeke: And

[00:46:58] Guy Sengstock: what is, I just want to make sure that [00:47:00] I'm getting what you, what you just said is like it's the, the, I now establish I vow with the, with the virtue is established because As we, as we speak into and distinguish the virtue and it comes to present, that's like the persona, right? That's the face, [00:47:20] right?

[00:47:20] Guy Sengstock: But then at some point it, that would withdrawals, but yet shines through it and withdrawals is the intelligibility. Yes.

[00:47:28] Dr. John Vervaeke: Yes. But not a particular intelligibility. It's like generalizing. Into a network of intelligibility that gets us some of the profound. [00:47:40] Patterns and principles of reality itself. Yeah.

[00:47:43] Guy Sengstock: Right. And that, that starts to come through the, in the, through the persona, we start to see, Oh, through this virtue, all the other virtues start to speak. And

[00:47:52] Dr. John Vervaeke: I'm proposing that. I can face Chris because he literally has a face, but then he also has an enacted face, the persona, [00:48:00] right? And that's the, the, the, and that's how I can be, I need something to account to, but he is also, he, he is a, He's his, his, his Suké is the through line of all of his aspects, right?

[00:48:15] Dr. John Vervaeke: And they, they form like what we're doing with all of the virtues that they have to [00:48:20] do. So he withdraws into that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. There's a through line that is incompletable and it's not any one of his aspects. That's the mystery. Right. Right. And so I, I. I come into an I thou relationship with something when I can do that, and I can do it most properly with people for the [00:48:40] persons, for the reasons, and I'm trying to get at, how could we possibly do it with, uh, with an entity that is in some ways only an abstract entity, a virtue.

[00:48:49] Dr. John Vervaeke: And I'm trying to say, we get this, we get this error systematicity, this, this self organizing of error. In the Wii space. So the Wii space can give us [00:49:00] feedback. It can be the face, the persona of the virtue, and then the way the virtue has, is multi aspectual with all the other, like, right? That, that, that's, that's, that's analogous at least to the mystery of a person.

[00:49:15] Dr. John Vervaeke: And that's how we can enter into a deep I Thou relationship with a virtue. [00:49:20] Yes. And then what that might mean is we could give better guidance, better pedagogical instruction to people if we, if we try to break up the phenomenology. Cause we've, we've been noting this, these sequence of intimacy for quite some time and we've just been sort of noting it.

[00:49:35] Dr. John Vervaeke: But if we could, if we could properly give people a framework and then [00:49:40] attach. Well, this is how this is, this is how this is experienced and how it's functioning. We might be able to make them more fluid and fluid as they move into the process. That's what I'm proposing. Right.

[00:49:49] Christopher Mastropietro: Right. Right. Right. That's so interesting because it's consonant with the sort of anagogic symposium.

[00:49:54] Christopher Mastropietro: Right? It's the withdrawal of the

[00:49:56] Guy Sengstock: beloved. Yes. Right? Yeah.

[00:49:58] Christopher Mastropietro: The way it's, [00:50:00] the Socratic era, the eros directed towards Socrates. Is basically left. It's, it's sort of, it, it's, it's, it's basically led into a poria because of the withdrawal of Socrates as the beloved. It's the beloved object of the Eros, but he's the thing.

[00:50:16] Christopher Mastropietro: That's what the virtue is doing.

[00:50:18] Dr. John Vervaeke: Right? But remember what about [00:50:20] Socrates? He's like one of those statues, right? There is the persona that you try and open it up and then there's something different inside the treasure. Yeah. Right. But you, right. Yeah. I'm trying to get that Socrates, and this is part of the Socratic irony, is Socrates properly faces his interlocutor.

[00:50:38] Dr. John Vervaeke: In fact, he's famous [00:50:40] for being able to shift his persona. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, and you, you pointed about how Christ shifts away, but Christ also shifts into. Christ also could adapt himself to say the right thing

[00:50:53] Christopher Mastropietro: to the person in that situation. Yes, yes, that's true. So there's a bi directional movement.

[00:50:56] Christopher Mastropietro: Yes, yes. Which is exactly, I think, what you've been trying to say, right? There's a bi [00:51:00] directional movement here, right? There's sort of an infinitizing movement away. Yes. Right? There's sort of inexhaustible open endedness that's opened by the withdrawal. And there's also a kind of binding.

[00:51:09] Dr. John Vervaeke: Yes, a religio.

[00:51:12] Dr. John Vervaeke: Right. That's what I'm... So if we can more promptly articulate... The dimensions and the moments, I mean that in a [00:51:20] phenomenological sense of this, and perhaps be a little bit more precise in the terms we're using for different moments and dimensions. I think we could give more helpful pedagogical advice to people who are undertaking the, undertaking the

[00:51:35] Guy Sengstock: practice.

[00:51:35] Guy Sengstock: I think we can, you can say, we can start to use this, you know, poetically [00:51:40] and technically use this language where it's like. Can we start to see the face of the virtue? Is it coming? Yep. Yes. Right. Are we putting skin on the ghost in some sense, on the ghost? Yeah. That's great.

[00:51:50] Dr. John Vervaeke: Great way of putting it. And that how we, the we, we like, like I, I said, but let's not forget the original [00:52:00] gem that started it.

[00:52:01] Dr. John Vervaeke: It's not the content of our error. Right. It's the way the error has a systematicity. Yeah. Right. Well it has a logos to it. Aveva and a canus. Yeah. And get that. Right. That, that gets constellated in the Wii space as something that is giving us guidance that we, no one of us can give to [00:52:20] ourselves, or we can't even give to each other diatrically.

[00:52:22] Dr. John Vervaeke: Yeah.

[00:52:24] Christopher Mastropietro: Yeah. Something, something's bothering you? No, no, no. I just, I, this, there's some, some intuition that something about the way that, like, Let's think about error in terms of finitude for a moment, right? Error is, is, it [00:52:40] evidences the way in which we're circumscribed and finite. That there's a lot that we don't have access to, right?

[00:52:44] Christopher Mastropietro: That we're confined to perspective and don't have an infinite array of them at our disposal. And our aspectualization of virtue itself into a particular virtue. Has something to do with those constraints. Right. So the way that [00:53:00] there were generalizing or modeling on our own error, I think, has something has a correspondence to the way that we're aspectualizing virtue itself into something in particular.

[00:53:10] Christopher Mastropietro: Right. And so, oh, that's good. Right. And so there's something about accounting for one's error. That realizes a person as being exactly the [00:53:20] kind of person that one is, right? Well, that's what

[00:53:22] Dr. John Vervaeke: I meant earlier, but the systematicity in the error can actually disclose to you the constraints that are largely transparent

[00:53:30] Christopher Mastropietro: to you.

[00:53:30] Christopher Mastropietro: That's right. That's right. So, so I'm just trying to find a, uh, I'm trying to repeat this so that we better understand the move that we're making. [00:53:40] So that something about the generalized model, that the Geist that emerges as a reflection of the collective we space, which is really a reflection of our collective error, is basically it's a facing of one's own error.

[00:53:52] Christopher Mastropietro: But that's what I want to

[00:53:53] Dr. John Vervaeke: say. That's why I wanted to intervene. It's not just collective error, because the collective error... [00:54:00] Afford something like the notice invariance heuristic, which tells you what you might want to change in order to reduce the error. Remember you could, the more multi aspects I bring.

[00:54:12] Dr. John Vervaeke: So I get all of these aspects and they're all in error in some way. Then what I can look for is what is not changing across all [00:54:20] the aspects because it's doing one of two things. It's showing me something beyond that. I don't understand. Warm. Very often, what it's showing you is a constraint that you have built in that needs to be given up in order to stop making the same mistake over

[00:54:36] Christopher Mastropietro: and over again.

[00:54:36] Christopher Mastropietro: Right. That's when, that, and it's in that, that the [00:54:40] possibility opens back up. Exactly.

[00:54:41] Dr. John Vervaeke: So that's what I want to say, that the Geist is not just a collective error. It's a collective error and something like the collective affordance. Of the notice invariance heuristic application that none of us are capable of individually.

[00:54:55] Dr. John Vervaeke: So we, like, we can, we could open up how many [00:55:00] perspectives are in error so that we have a greater chance of finding the deeper invariant that we need to challenge. Right.

[00:55:06] Christopher Mastropietro: Right. Okay. So then it's in the process, it's, it's in the process of collectively accounting for the error that opens up a kairos of passing beyond it.

[00:55:15] Dr. John Vervaeke: So I'm basically saying, like, if we could. What we're doing [00:55:20] here, and we could continue, is if we could sort of more articulate the phenomenology of what's happening, we could... Give more pedagogical help so that the proper functioning is more and more afforded. That's what I that's what I'm suggesting

[00:55:36] Christopher Mastropietro: Yeah, yeah, this is sort of synchronizing with something I was one of the [00:55:40] things we've been trying to do is understand How the project of coming into relation with a virtue is related to the project of self knowledge, right?

[00:55:47] Christopher Mastropietro: That's that dimension to the Socratic project right because it's in virtue of knowing what not in any final or exhaustive way But it's in part in virtue of coming to know the [00:56:00] kind of thing that you are, that you understand where you end and where everything else begins. And there is something about the confirmation of, not the confirmation in the, in the, in the, uh, logical sense, but the confirmation of error or the embodiment of error.[00:56:20]

[00:56:20] Christopher Mastropietro: That brings you into coherence, the coherence of error. Sure. Yeah. The sort of the coming into consciousness of error brings you consciously into resolution for yourself. And it has, I mean, there's, we were talking about that in respect of Kierkegaard, right? That the giving account of yourself in the form of [00:56:40] confession brings a kind of lucidity to yourself and the constraints that bind you to being exactly the kind of thing that you are.

[00:56:50] Christopher Mastropietro: And it's the gathering together of that consciousness of error that binds you to yourself as you are necessarily. And that seems to be a [00:57:00] precondition for being able to participate in everything that's beyond you, right? So that's part of that bi directional move, right? You're coming into clarity. Yes.

[00:57:10] Christopher Mastropietro: Right? Not exhaustive clarity, but graduating clarity about yourself. And that's also allowing for and affording a movement in the other direction, [00:57:20] which is to say, I can't be everything. But if I can understand the kind of thing I am and be it wettedly, committedly, I can participate

[00:57:28] Dr. John Vervaeke: in everything. That's excellent.

[00:57:31] Dr. John Vervaeke: So that's really good. So does that mean that confession, I'm going to have to [00:57:40] twist the meaning of the word, but I want to twist it to bring out a contrast, like I've sometimes done with other words. The confession is a practice for the cultivation of humility. It is a kind of humiliation experience. Oh yeah.

[00:57:54] Dr. John Vervaeke: And the fact, even the fact that that word has become negative, purely [00:58:00] negative, means it's very difficult for us to pay attention. To, to gather together in a logos, to gather together. So they belong together, our errors so that they cohere and we find ourselves accountable to them. Yes. Right. And so that, that, so I'm trying to get the word humiliation to be the act of [00:58:20] like encouragement.

[00:58:21] Dr. John Vervaeke: Right. Right. Yeah. Here's that reversal. Yes.

[00:58:23] Guy Sengstock: That, yes, yes. That through line with the, with the logo or the, uh, the virtue. Yeah, exactly.

[00:58:29] Dr. John Vervaeke: That significance line. Right, exactly. And so, but I. Yes. Yes. And that's amplifying what I'm saying. And then, do you then see [00:58:40] confession as the practice of humiliation? Yes,

[00:58:45] Christopher Mastropietro: I do.

[00:58:45] Dr. John Vervaeke: In the sense I'm now twisting it to. Twisting it back to what it

[00:58:48] Christopher Mastropietro: originally meant. I do. And it, cause, and it's a humiliation and it's a sensitization. It's a disposing of oneself and vulnerability. It is what allows one to willingly become a thou. [00:59:00] Yeah. Right? So if I were to convert that back into its Christian language, it would be something like.

[00:59:05] Christopher Mastropietro: Sensitizing myself to receive the solicitous son, the love of God, right? Which is the, which is in that tradition, one of the, one of the, right? The greatest sin, which is to not be, which is to refuse to be a thou before the [00:59:20] one.

[00:59:20] Dr. John Vervaeke: Right, right, right, right, right. And this is all through Dante.

[00:59:24] Christopher Mastropietro: Of course, yeah, yeah, absolutely, right?

[00:59:26] Christopher Mastropietro: To refuse to be a thou before the one, to refuse the love of being so known, and thus to be forgiven by him.

[00:59:33] Dr. John Vervaeke: Because you're refusing the call to personhood. Yeah, yeah. Which means you're fundamentally, you're fundamentally [00:59:40] undermining the capacity that is fundamental of agape, which is the constitutive call to your

[00:59:46] Christopher Mastropietro: personhood.

[00:59:46] Christopher Mastropietro: That's right, that's right. Refusing about Agape. And so confession, different understanding confession is a preparation confession in some sense. We talked about this with Ki Confession is a Socratic preparation [01:00:00] to receive agape, right. It is a Socratic self-knowledge and preparation to receive agape.

[01:00:08] Christopher Mastropietro: Right. It's a, it's a bringing into vivid lucidity. Yeah. The. In order for the possibility of being beyond it, being known beyond it. Because when it becomes [01:00:20] the measure of all that's real, you have to be known away from it. Right? And you have to become a thou for that to happen.

[01:00:32] Dr. John Vervaeke: So,

[01:00:37] Dr. John Vervaeke: I mean, I want to, I don't want to completely [01:00:40] lose what Guy said. There's this reversal and there's this, you're starting to track the through line of the soul in an important way. That's what you were referring to. And that is tracking the through line of the soul. Or the SUKE, right, is a way of participating in the tracking [01:01:00] of the through line of rea of external reality as well.

[01:01:03] Dr. John Vervaeke: And so you're coming into a proper participatory relationship. I'm trying to get a cognitive Uh, aspect to the affective aspect that you're bringing up with the Gopik. Does that track? Those two go together? I think so. Cool. That's really, really interesting. [01:01:20] Um, because it reminds me of work of Jaspers and others about the limit situations being the, and this all ultimately I think comes from Kierkegaard, the limit situations being the ones where we really get the self knowledge that is usually.

[01:01:34] Dr. John Vervaeke: Hidden under our autobiography in profound ways and you can see a lot of therapy about trying [01:01:40] to get people Um, to that humiliation such that they get underneath the, or their autobiography to find the actual through line in their error.

[01:01:49] Christopher Mastropietro: Augustine, right? You brought it up already, right? Augustine's confessions is somehow doing that.

[01:01:53] Christopher Mastropietro: It's not about the autobiography. It's about tracing the through line of error through the autobiography. So he can [01:02:00] see the hand of God. So that he can see the hand of God. Exactly. Yes. Exactly.

[01:02:04] Guy Sengstock: Right. So in this, and it brings us back to dialectic and theologos. Yes. So. So this, this, um, tracing of air, so I'm getting this, I'm getting this, [01:02:20] this, these two, these two shapes emerge emerging.

[01:02:23] Guy Sengstock: There's the shape of the airs that I make in my propositions that are like, uh, almost not right, but you're putting skin on, on the virtue. It, it becomes persona in that sense. But what I'm doing is I'm confessing sins with every [01:02:40] single. I keep confessing, right? And it keeps saying, Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope.

[01:02:45] Guy Sengstock: But as it's doing that, it's becoming this negative image, right? In some sense. And that starts to shine through the, the more

[01:02:54] Dr. John Vervaeke: facets

[01:02:55] Guy Sengstock: being starts to shine through. Sin, right, my [01:03:00] own shape, all of that kind of comes together. Yeah,

[01:03:03] Dr. John Vervaeke: that's why I'm playing on face and facets. Yeah. As we give more facets to the face, we get more access to the holographic

[01:03:14] Dr. John Vervaeke: system. Yes. Of intelligibility. We have different. Right. It's like the compound eye of a fly or something like that. Right, right, right, [01:03:20] right. Very

[01:03:21] Christopher Mastropietro: much. Yeah. Yes. And more access to the patterns of our own relationship. Yeah. That we brought in the exercise.

[01:03:29] Guy Sengstock: This, this, and here's the, and here's the bring you back to the vulnerability and the humiliation.

[01:03:34] Guy Sengstock: Yeah. Right. It's a very different feeling. You're right. It's like this [01:03:40] making a proposition going through the dialectic. Is this in some senses continually making this error, right? The through lines through that, but also is this confession, which is somehow, as you were saying, giving me my own shape. In some way.

[01:03:57] Dr. John Vervaeke: Yes. Yeah. And [01:04:00] think about how this tracks with the, one of the most reliable reports we get from people. They come into awe. Yeah. And awe is a situation, and this is measurable in experimentation. One of the few situations where the sense of self is diminished, but it's not experienced as [01:04:20] threat. Yeah. It's experienced as what we're talking about here.

[01:04:24] Dr. John Vervaeke: Right. And it's experienced as something like, right. Uh, uh, uh, uh, a sensitized vulnerability that opens you to reality in a way that you were not previously capable of. Yeah. And people's regularly say. They always had been thinking they, [01:04:40] you know, they often care about or think about honesty, but now they're in awe of the virtue.

[01:04:45] Dr. John Vervaeke: They'll say things like that very reliably too. Yeah, totally.

[01:04:53] Dr. John Vervaeke: I think this is awesome. Yes. I think this was awesome and not awful, thankfully. And um, [01:05:00] so I want to thank everybody again for watching this. Uh, we're going to move, uh, the next two episodes, uh, Taylor's going to be joining us again. And one of the, the first thing we're going to do in the next episode is we're going to do dialectic into Dialogos.

[01:05:19] Dr. John Vervaeke: And the [01:05:20] virtue we're going to do it on is dialectic itself. And these two episodes serve as the framework for that, for you to following it. And then the following wrap up episode will be a discussion about Again, what do we mean by the logos? How is it different from just dialogue or discussion or [01:05:40] conversation drawing this all together and trying to really clearly articulate it as a way of launching the four of us into.

[01:05:47] Dr. John Vervaeke: A collective, hopefully flowing reflection on why are all of these dialogical practices and communities emerging spontaneously all around the world right now. [01:06:00] So thank you very much, as always, for your time and attention. And thank you, Chris. Oh, my God.

[01:06:09] Christopher Mastropietro: We are had by the dialectic when the dialectic is actually taking effect.

[01:06:15] Christopher Mastropietro: And that's what makes it participatory, right? It's not something that we have in hand, but [01:06:20] we are had in its hand.