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Rebecca Goldstein on Gödels' incompleteness, Sam Harris' Landscape, and debate with Jordan Peterson
July 14, 2020
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I don't think we all want the same things. I think there are many
people who want their group, their tribe, however they define it, to win at all costs. And they will sacrifice the truth entirely to get what they want. And no, I don't think we all want. I think without the taming respect for the truth, yeah, that's what it descends to.
This next guest needs no introduction. It is the always charming, lovely, edifying Rebecca Goldstein, and in this conversation we talk about Gödel's incompleteness theorem, its relationship to truth, as well as the laws of physics potentially. We also talk about her views on Sam Harris's moral landscape,
I'm here with Rebecca Goldstein and we're going to talk all about Gödel's theorem, incompleteness theorem, as well as
progress, rationality, and the enlightenment. Okay, Rebecca, thanks for coming on. My pleasure. So tell me what does your day to day schedule look like? How are you productive? I feel very unproductive, actually. You mean as of late or? As of maybe 2016 when some
politics have become too interesting and I waste an awful lot of time, you know, politics and reading up on politics and doing whatever I can. So I sometimes wonder whether when historians, intellectual historians look back on this period,
whether they're going to see a dip in productivity, um, just because of, you know, how well consuming politics can get. So anyway, when I am productive, I am productive because I become obsessed. Um, and so I, you know, when I'm working on a problem, time just flies, you know, and I,
You know, I get right to work and I can work for 18 hours straight. In fact, when I was writing the book on Goodell's incompleteness theorems in particular, I kind of ruined my back because the day would just fly by and I hadn't moved from my desk seat for... So most of it is, do you write with a pen and paper? Do you write with your laptop? I'm getting into the details.
Yeah, I write with a laptop, you know, that was a slow process. I was very late to doing that. I thought I needed to do, I do diagrams and all of this sort of thing when I'm mapping out ideas, the structure of an argument is always extremely important to me. And you write the diagrams on the laptop or with a pen and paper? Yeah, that's what I do, pen and paper, but then the actual sentences are always composed on a laptop and
You know, it's terrific for someone like me because I revise and I revise and revise. I revise each sentence. I don't like write a whole book and then go back to revising, which I do anyway, but I go sentence by sentence and, you know, sentences can be rewritten seven, eight times. Yeah. So a laptop is good. Do you find that most of your work is reading or actual writing?
I remember I was talking to Pinker and he said something like 80% of his time is spent reading. Yeah, he reads a lot. I read much less. Um, I, you know, for my work, because he is, he's a great cattle. You know, he, he takes from this person from that person and he and then he puts it together and something that's greater than the sum of its parts. I think that's one of his tremendous talents. Um, but
I'm different. I sort of attack problems usually on my own. I mean, there usually are more amenable problems and I, so for me, it's thinking more than writing. I spend a very long time thinking and walking around. I walk around the house, you know, and I walk outside and I walk, you know, so our
Our processes are very different. I know this is going to sound like I'm getting so much of the details, but do you tell Pinker or anyone who else is around to not talk to you when you're walking and thinking? For example, for me, with my wife, when I think I look like I'm angry, so my wife always wants to ask if I'm okay, and I have to tell her, I have to bark at her and tell her, like, don't, please, if I look like I'm angry, I'm likely just thinking, so
I don't know that I've ever explicitly laid them out, but people can tell and they're respectful.
So I have also from a former marriage two children and they, you know, so they were little children when their mother was thinking. And I remember once I was, you know, cooking dinner and one of my daughters had a little friend over and a little friend asked me something. And my daughter said, don't bother her. She's thinking. And,
The friend said, she's cooking. And my daughter said, trust me, she's thinking. So that's when I knew that they could read my expression and they were extremely respectful of it. So I've been lucky. Okay. Let's get into girdles and completeness theorems. If you don't mind, why don't you explain to the audience, just a brief overview of what they are. Yeah. So that, yes, as you say, there are, it's, it's, it's in the plural.
There are two of them. And what they have to do with are the limitations of formal systems. And formal systems, which are very, very important in logic and in mathematics, are rule governed systems for proving things, are kind of proof mechanisms.
in which everything that you can do in the formal system is defined by a rule. Recursive rules are extremely important in formal systems and these are rules that you can apply to something and then you can apply that rule to the result that you got in applying the rule ever and ever and ever. So, for example, we can generate
The integers that way, just keep adding one to the results you got before and you'll have another integer. So this is a way you can, you know, define the integers. Completely rule burned. Just one second. It froze right after you said this is how you define the integers algorithmically. Yes. So this is how, you know, that, that,
Formal systems, they have rules, mechanical procedures, algorithms. These are all intertwined concepts. And they were very, very important in mathematics, particularly mathematics, because of the discovery of the paradoxes of set theory, which showed us that our intuitions in
mathematics were not trustworthy. You can derive certain paradoxes. And so the idea was, okay, we're just, we're going to reduce mathematics to formal systems, to just these mechanical rules that will eliminate our reliance on intuitions on what seems to us to be true and just have these mindless rules
that you don't even have to think about meaning, the kind of thing that can be programmed into a computer. And so, and actually from these notions of formal system, especially as it was refined, after ghetto, we did get computers, actually, so that this is
Anyway, so the incompleteness of theorems are about the limitations of formal systems. This is not a way to solve, it turns out, the paradoxes of set theory. It's impossible. What you want from a formal system is that everything you prove in it is true, for sure. You also want that everything that is true can be proved.
And that's what the first incompleteness theorem tells you cannot be true for arithmetic. Everything that we can prove in a formal system of arithmetic is true, but not everything that's true can be proved in a formal system. And then you can try to add an axiom to that formal system so that, you know, you can capture the thing you couldn't prove in the previous one. Well, you can derive other
propositions that won't be provable in that system and on and on infinitum. So that's the first incompleteness theorem. There are true propositions about the integers that can't be proved in any formal system. And so, and then the second incompleteness theorem is also kind of devastating because the
One thing you really, really want from your formal system is that it be consistent. That is that you can't prove a contradiction in it. You can't prove for some proposition P that both P and not P is true. And of course that would be contradictions are false. So that would negate, you know, the first thing, which is that everything you prove in a formal system is true, but it's much more serious than that because
Technically, in formal logic, from a contradiction, anything follows. So you can prove absolutely anything. I can prove that one equals three. I can prove anything in an inconsistent system. So the fact that when you're using a formal system, you cannot itself prove its consistency is
kind of devastating. You can go outside of the system, for example, giving a model for the system that will show that it is consistent. So it's not that we're, but within one of the things that you can prove within a formal system is the consistency of that system itself. That's the second incompleteness theorem.
Okay, so I'll make a synopsis just for people who are listening. In math, you have a statement like let's say that even plus even equals another even number. So you take two even numbers that equals another. How do you know that that's true for all even numbers? You have a proof. It's almost like the way that I like to explain it to people is like Sherlock Holmes. You have the dead body and then you want to say who killed and then you go step by step. There's other shoes here and the shoes can only belong to a man because of so and so and the dog didn't bark because they know that
So on, so on, so on. Okay, great. So now we've gotten step by step deductively, we've gotten to the conclusion. Therefore, this conclusion is true. Okay. Now the question is, does the reverse hold? Okay, well, if something is true, can you always prove that it's true? For mathematicians for a while, it was like, what does it mean for something to be true and not proved?
Okay, but then girdle said there are some truths inside a formal system you you fix a formal system There are some things that we can see from the outside that it has to be true But we can also see from the way that it's constructed that you can't prove it within the system Okay, so that's the first one. The second one is also that you can't prove in your own system You're the consistency of your own system. Otherwise would come inconsistent consistency just means like Rebecca You just said you can't prove a and not a at the same time
Yes. Okay. Yes. Why does that matter? Why does that matter to people? Like that just sounds so esoteric to most people who are listening. Yes, it does sound very esoteric. Well, it was, as I said, you know, we had always depended on these sort of, on these intuitions. Like if you have a predicate, you know, forming a predicate, you can form the set of all things that satisfy that predicate.
so the predicate of like being an American president you know there are how many people 45 right 45 people who for whom that is true I think I think Trump is 45th president anyway um according to some people yeah um so um you know and so there's that set that satisfies well now that just seems you know
Intuitive for every predicate, you can form a set of things satisfying that predicate. And set theory depended on that. Well, consider the following set. The set of all sets that aren't members of themselves. So is there such a set? Turns out there can't be such a set. Because a set of all sets that aren't members of themselves, if it's a member of itself,
Then it's not a member of itself, and it's not a member of itself. It is a member of itself. That's a classic paradox. It's a member of itself if and only if it's not a member of itself. That was a paradox discovered by Bertrand Russell, the philosopher Bertrand Russell. There were other paradoxes, but that's a classic paradox. That still sounds like it doesn't matter. So how does this matter to someone's day-to-day life, or does it not matter?
Well, let's see if it matters. So it is something about mathematics. It matters in terms of, as you had sort of indicated, what makes mathematics true. Mathematics is a little mysterious because it's not empirical, right? That's why mathematicians are so cheap for a university to hire, right? They only require blackboards and chalks and erasers, basically.
Yeah. And there's a joke connected to that, that philosophers are even cheaper because they don't require the erasers. You can never discover you've made a mistake in philosophy. Um, but, um, you know, whereas physicists and all the empirical scientists, they require laboratories and observatories and you know, all this expensive stuff, you know, accelerators and God knows what. So,
So what is it? And that's because, you know, mathematics, you know, the information is carried inside your cranium, you know, it's all here are the axioms work out the consequences. So this is a little bit mysterious and you know, what makes mathematics true? There are these two basic views, you know, one is that, you know, they're kind of a super sensible reality that we are somehow being able to access with our
little finite minds and being able to prove all these things about, you know, many magnitudes of infinity and, you know, wow, aren't we something. Or there's the few that look, it's just, it's like a higher form of chess. It's just some rules. It's a game. We lay down the rules and then we see what follows, right? And so mathematics is really just this side of mindless rule following.
We're surprised by the things just as we're surprised in chess, you know, what can ensue just from these finite set of rules. But, you know, but okay, you know, if we had infinite minds, we'd be able to see all the consequences of our rules. Goodell showed that first, there's something wrong with that first answer, right? It can't just be a matter of rule following, of mindless rule following. And he was a Platonist, and that's that view that, you know, mathematics is kind of
independently true, you know, the moons of Jupiter were spinning around Jupiter before we put the telescope to our eyes and so to mathematical truths, you know, that there's just an infinity of it. So, I mean, in that sense, it's interesting. Here's the other thing. People have claimed very large consequences from Gödel's incompleteness theorems about both mind and matter.
So, and Gödel also considered it about mind, if there were consequences. I have a little story about that, maybe I'll get to. But it was an argument that was first published by a philosopher, Lucas, John Lucas, in I think 1964, arguing that
Gödel's incompleteness theorems show that our minds can't be digital computers. That even in our doing mathematics, we're not doing it formally. That's how we know that these propositions that we can't prove are true. And that even our mathematical knowledge can't be programmed into a digital computer. Therefore, we are not
Right, right, right, right.
My then husband was at the Institute for Advanced Study, and Gödel was there. Oh, wow. Yes. Your ex-husband was a physicist, am I correct? Yes. Sheldon Goldstein, a most excellent physicist. And so, now Gödel was a famous recluse. He never, he
His best friend was Einstein. I mean, that predated my time. I think Dyson died in 1954. Anyway, they would only talk to each other, apparently. And once Einstein died, he really became very reclusive. And then I went to this party for newcomers at the Institute for Vance Study, my husband was a newcomer.
When I walked in, a bunch of logicians came running over to me and said, he's here, he's here. Goodell is here. And so, sure enough, it was, I learned later, there was this brief opening when he was a little bit more gregarious and that party just happened to coincide with it. And he was there kind of holding court. And I had, of course, read this argument and I was wanting to ask him,
what he thought of it. But I was too shy. Which argument? The John Lucas argument? Okay. Yeah, yeah, that this this argument, you know, that the mind can't be a digital computer. And I just kept putting it off. I'm putting it off. And then he was gone. And I always tell my students this. If you have a question, ask it. You can spend the rest of your life regretting. I did it. I have always regretted that I didn't ask him that question. You know, what
What do you think of this argument? You could have views on it. Okay, so that would be, that's a big important consequence, if it is a consequence. Right, right, right. Because people like Daniel Dennett would say that the mind is mechanistic. Well, I don't know if I'm straw manning him, but it's something akin to a computer. Yeah, it is a thing to say, we'd like to say it.
And it's certainly true. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I am I'm not a I'm not a reductionist when it comes to the mind. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Is Pinker a reductionist when it comes to the mind? Um, we are perhaps he takes reductionism a little more seriously than I do.
Yeah, one of my questions that I had that now I desperately want to ask is what are the ways in which you differ from Pinker ideologically in your beliefs? Well, maybe we can, I would say that, it depends what sphere. I think, you know, if it's political, I probably am a little more to the left.
But we are philosophically. No, I think that we're both very, very committed, as you know, to rationality. And I would say in the important ways where we're quite similar.
Okay, so does this mean when you say that you're not a reductionist, which by the way, that's one of the major ways that girdles and completeness theorem has implications, because if you think of society as being composed of brains, then that's composed of biology, which is chemistry, which is physics, which is predicated on mathematics.
It uses mathematics, but it is not itself mathematics. And if mathematics is on unsolid ground in some way, shape or form, then that has implications for all, for definitely all physics and then all of what's above. Well, even that is contested. So for example, I was interviewing someone named Sabine Hausenfelder,
who thinks Gödel's incompleteness theorem has nothing to say about physics. Although she said, who said that Sabine Haassenfelder? Well, I actually agree with her. Okay. Okay. Well, she said one of the reasons is that let's say that you came up with something that cannot be proven, whether or not it's that cannot be proven to be true. You can all in physics, you can just test it. And then if it is true, because it's experimental, then if it is true, you just put that as an axiom. But my response to that would be
that would go against the parsimony of science because if you have many of them, then you can just have a thousand axioms plus your physical theory or 10,000 axioms or 1 million. It's an in principle argument, but regardless, regardless. Yeah. I actually think that, um, although I'm open on this first question of whether mind, um,
Conclusions about mind follow from Goethe's Incompleteness Theorem. When it comes to matter, I actually don't think any of these metamathematical conclusions, and that's what Goethe's Incompleteness Theorem has to do with, has any implications for a final theory of everything. Right. So does, in your estimation, mind come from matter?
Um, excuse me. Does mind come from matter? Oh, yeah, this stuff is, this stuff is the stuff that is doing, doing it all. Right. Yes, of course. And where's the discrepancy? Why is it that girdles and completeness theorem doesn't apply to matter, but what matter and genders it applies to? Well,
What we want to know about mind is, is it a computer? Is everything that the mind is able to do, in particular, in doing mathematics, but all the other things that our minds do, is it, is this something that a computer could do? And there's reason to think because of what
The computers are, you know, everything that happens in a computer is computable, right? It's all working according to this, to these algorithmic rules that maybe that the powers of the mind exceed that. And that even the notion of truth itself, mathematical truth itself, and that's Tarski's undefined ability theorem,
The notion of truth itself can't be formalized in a formal system. It exceeds what we can get out of a formal system. Truth is enmeshed with the notion of meaning. That was the whole point of computability. Let's get out our intuitions about truth and about meaning.
entirely reliable and they are not entirely reliable but we can't get along without them you know we can't even do mathematics without them you know if we confined ourselves to doing what computers can do they're very very useful for solving many mathematical problems but if we confined ourselves to that we would not be able to do everything that we're able to do even in mathematics so it really does relate
Because of the whole notion of what a formal system is, what a program is, what a recursion, computable, algorithms, all of these tied up notions, and how truth and meaning are outside of that circle.
That's what Gödel showed us. I mean, that's big stuff. That's really big stuff. And Tarski really cashed out on it with his undefinability theorem. Right. As a historical footnote, did Gödel come up with Tarski's undefinability theorem before him? How did you know? Yes, he did. He did. He probably came up with it. He didn't bother to prove it. But yes, he came up, I think. I haven't checked dates, but I think Tarski
published it in 1936, the Undefineability Theorem. And, you know, Gödel had published his theorems in 31. And I think he saw the, yes, I think it was around 31 that he also had seen. Right. Okay. So let's get to Tarski's Undefineability Theorem.
Okay, so we didn't completely finish up with the other thing. So I mean, here's what I'd say about like a theory of everything, you know, which some extremely smart people have claimed is has been ruled out by Gödel's incompleteness theorem. Freeman Dyson, Stephen Hawking had changed his mind about this verse he thought it didn't and then he thought it did. So then it is that
Goodell's incompleteness theorem ruled out a theory of everything. So let's say you have a formal system of physics, right? And so besides, you know, besides all the arithmetic that is formalized in there, you also have, you know, things referring to, you know, velocity and mass and position and space time, all of this other stuff, which, you know, go beyond
mathematical concepts. I think the only thing that really follows from Gödel's incompleteness thing is that there will be arithmetical propositions within that formal system that you will not be able to prove. That's what follows. That's what Gödel showed. But this is nothing about the completeness or lack of completeness of the
in this formal system. So I don't think that this metamathematics actually has this implication. So that's anyway, that's my, that's my point. Right, right, right. Just so we're clear for the audience, what is Freeman Dyson's position on it and Stephen Hawking's? And then why do you disagree? Like where's the disagreement between you and him? So he says, I think now where did this come from? He hasn't written extensively on this. I think in the New York Review of Books, when? Okay.
I think when he was reviewing Brian Green's book, he as in Hawking or, or Dyson, the Freeman Dyson. Yeah. Freeman Dyson. He said, look, Goodell's incompleteness theorem shows that there are an exhaustible number of true propositions in mathematics that can't be true. And because of that, that we can't show is true. I'm sorry. And, um,
Because of this, since physics uses mathematics, it follows that there are an inexhaustible number of physical propositions which can't be proved true. And I say... You're saying that that's a leap. I say that's a leap. I say that's a non-sequitur, actually. So, yeah.
Okay, let's get to Tarski. We could spend the entire hour talking about this stuff. It's extremely rich and extremely complicated. And I think for me always it's let's first look at the incompleteness theorem, see what they're proving, how they prove it. The limit, you know, the fact that they're proving something about formal systems of arithmetic. We can't prove, you know, and so in this
theory of everything, we will not be able to prove complicated views, complicated truths about the integers. But we don't need to do that anyway in doing physics. That's not the kind of math we use. Right. Although there's a generalization of Gödel's theorem, which implies Gödel's theorem and is easier to prove, and I think it was by Turing or Turing and Gödel about mechanistic. Just about any mechanized system. Now someone named Stephen Wolfram, who's a theoretical
He says that the base of our reality is computation. And I'm curious if that's the case, what he defines computation as and what Gödel's incompleteness theorem has to say about that. That's for me to ask him. Okay, so let's get to Tarski. What is this theorem? Oh, it is really what I just said, that the notion of an arithmetical
Truth, again, it's about arithmetic, right? Coming from Gödel's incompleteness thing, the notion of arithmetical truth can't be defined arithmetically. That's basically what it says, right? So again, this is quite a limit. So the notion of truth, the semantic notion of truth that is involved with meaning and all of this can't be defined syntactically, that is by these
rules of how you what are the symbols and how you can put the symbols together and which some which strings of symbols can fall from other strings of symbols that's what a formal system tells you right you can't get the semantic notion of arithmetical truth out of notes does that have in your estimation any implications on truth in the way that people will colloquially use it use the word truth like i believe that this is true or this is scientifically true or objectively true
But Tarski also wrote about semantic truth. That is the thing that we can't get out of syntactic truth, right? It's larger than syntactic truth. He also has, he has, and this is now we're talking about philosophy of language. We're not talking about philosophy of mathematics anymore. We're talking about meaning and truth.
So he has this classic paper on the semantic notion of truth and what he basically is proof arguing in there is that you can't
. . .
Hold on. It just froze after you said Tarski had a wonderful paper about the semantic notion of truth. In which he, in some sense, it claims that truth, the semantic notion can't really be defined either. You can have a big, interesting theory of truth.
that truth is baked into the very conditions of assertion, that when I assert anything, I'm asserting it's true. His example is the proposition, snow is white, is true if and only if snow is white. It sounds so prosaic, and in some sense that's what he's saying. Truth is prosaic, and that's why even if you want to
come up with some fancy notion of truth. I mean, even to understand your fancy, for us to understand your fancy notion of truth, we're just going to fall back on the old prosaic notion of truth, you know, which is just baked into the very conditions of being able to speak at all, and the very conditions of language. It's why we trust each other.
When people say things, we know that to say, to put forth the proposition is to say it's true. I don't have to say, um, the proposition, um, I'm going to stick with Trump, right? The proposition that Trump is, you know, it was elected. Um, let's make it the proposition that Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 is true.
All I have to say is, I don't have to say that, all I have to say is Trump lost the popular vote in 2016. I am already saying it's true. And that's more or less what, and that it's, you know, and it's tied up with meaning and it's tied up with the very conditions of language. And you just can't have any more interest. It's a deflationary view of semantic truth.
This is very interesting because people have put forth all sorts of theories
It deflates all theories of truth just because truth is too basic. You can't have a theory of it. It's just baked into what we do the most fundamental thing that we do with language, which is to make assertions, right? To make an assertion is to say that that thing that you're asserting is true. And that's the most basic thing that we can say about truth. Okay. Yeah.
You don't have to talk about its correspondence to reality. You don't have to talk about its coherence with other things. You don't have to relativize. I'm sorry, I don't want to get bogged down in truth like Peter said. I only study correspondence, coherence, a minor amount, pragmatism, a minor amount.
And deflationary, I know almost nothing about, but it sounded like when you were explaining a view, which is snow is white and it's true if snow is white or that particular snow is white. That sounds like a correspondence because you have a phrase and then you correspond to the external world. Is that not? Well, I mean, it's kind of like correspondence, but you don't have to... I just don't know. So please forgive my ignorance. Yeah. You don't have to reify states of... Hear that sound.
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There's, you know, that a proposition is true if and only if there's a state of affair that corresponds to it. It's just, it's really just pointing to, in a kind of Vickensteinian way,
What is it that we do in the most fundamental language game that we play, which is to make assertions so that we can share information with one another? I mean, this is the very roots, the genealogy of language. Why did language develop among the species of apes? You know, it's because some people are in a better position of knowing certain facts than others. And we develop language so we can pool our knowledge, basically.
So it sort of just comes right out of the very conditions in which the genealogical conditions in which language evolved. And it is that a proposition is true. To assert that this proposition is true is to assert the proposition itself.
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Right, right. The most interesting thing you can say about truth. Now, the postmodernists would disagree with that, so I'm curious, what do you feel like is correct generally about their sentiments, and where do you disagree, and why? So I guess postmodernism is one of those terms that links together an awful lot, right, and so there is postmodernism in literature, for example, and I'm very, I like it.
I find it interesting and there's, you know, you like it because it's interesting or you like it because you believe what it's saying is. No, I don't think so. Here's I think maybe in general what we mean by this term postmodernism wherever we apply it in intellectual domains where I think it's worthless or in artistic domains where I think, no, you can get some interesting art out of it, right? I think
In general, what postmodernism is about is, you know, there are certain conventions that govern these various domains. And postmodernism, and generally, they're invisible. You know, you do the domain and you don't think about the conventions that you're implying in doing this thing. So for example, you know, when a novelist tells a story,
You know, she's making it up and there are all sorts of conventions that pull in the readers and make the readers think to live this reality in the way that you have to live it in order for the novel to work. Well, what if, you know, the novelist calls attention to the fact that she is making this all up by putting herself into the story and so calling attention to the conventions.
That can be cool. That can, you know, that can be cool. What you're referring to is self reflexivity. That's not all that postmodernism is. Philosophical postmodernism is summed up with skepticism of grand narratives. So in doing intellectual work, there are certain, you know, conventions of
of truth, right? I think Torsky, that's part of what Torsky is talking about there. And what if we, you know, call attention to those conventions themselves, showing up their conventionality and therefore giving reason to doubt. I mean, the same thing is true wherever we call attention to the conventions,
One does it to call it into the fact that these are conventional and therefore open to doubt. What would it be like to doubt them? What would it be like to produce art that doesn't play by those conventions? Well, what would it be like to produce intellectual work that doesn't play by the conventions of, say, truth and meaning and all of these things? And there, I think, because of what Tarski is saying about truth,
You end up with a nonsense, you know, to assert is to assert that what you're saying is true. To put forth a theory that calls into doubt the conventions of truth that are baked into the conventions of assertion is nonsense. I'm going to have to believe what you're saying about truth using the old prosaic notion of
Is this something like I have a movie called Better Left Unsaid which is about when does the left go too far and I'm not saying that because I'm right-wing or
or center or alt-right. It's just because people like Pinker, who considers himself to be on the left, also see that there's an extreme left and they want to delineate themselves. So it's pretty much about delineation. In it, I found that Habermas, who's a social constructionist, which is extremely interesting, I thought he would just agree with the postmodernist, he critiqued the postmodernist by saying, you can't have these true statements. I mean, these two statements, which is, while you have two different truths, truth sub one is, truth is what
I forgot it but it but whatever it's the truth exists and then truth sub two is truth is whatever i say yeah that's right that's the social constructionist theory of truth but truth sub two depends on truth sub one so it's essentially saying there is no truth but that statement itself is a truthful statement at least you're asserting it is that what you're saying yeah more or less yeah yeah absolutely yeah yeah i mean if you um if these things are just making
And this is, again, I think this is the hashing out of the... What if they said this? What if they put an asterisk? There is no truth except this one. Well, what reason would I have? Why would I ever put that there, you know? So, and I'm sure, so there is, I mean, there is no truth
except this one. I mean, that there is no truth except this one. I'm sure you could generate other statements from that, you know, that that would also have to be true there. I mean, there's there's no way that you could restrict that to simply that. I see. I see. I see. What about the power play that comes hand in hand with, you know, it's also groups reign for dominance. Yeah. So without truth, look, I, we are,
We are, hmm, we're no angels. This species of ours, we've got better angels. We are no angels, right? And we are, we need something to rein us in. And I think it's one of our saving graces that we, we basically do recognize, truth, we recognize, almost everybody recognizes
that contradictions can't be true. I mean, thank goodness this is true because this is part of the way that we've made progress. I think this is one of the things that we would like to talk about how we've made progress. But you know, a lot of where we were self-serving creatures, where we're serving of our kin, of our tribe and all of these things, all of this is part of what we bring to the game, right?
How have we made any progress? Well, part of it is that, you know, when people show us implications of our various beliefs and show that they lead to contradictions, which is what Habermas and I would say about this theory of truth, needs to contradictions, most people, you know, the species of apes,
understands that contradictions can be true and you go back and you look at your premises and you see where the contradiction is arising and you give up something and we've a lot of progress has been made in this way you know or i mean science itself you know your your your theory makes a prediction the prediction is falsified i go back what's wrong with my theory i mean all of this scientific progress
moral progress, political progress. All of this has been made because we recognize fundamentally something about truth, right? Without that to rein us in, it's raw power. It's my group gaining dominance against your group. This is the very opposite
of progress, right? This is a world of, you know... So without a shared notion of truth, it's conflict. It's nothing but power. And you know, that theory of truth that should not, according to Tarski, that I take very seriously, should not exist, according to this postmodern theory of truth,
They come right out and say, yeah, without truth, it's one dominant group, you know, against the other. Tarski said that? No, that's where you end up. I see, I see, I see. See, some people that I was talking to say that what we need in this culture is more dialogue, but dialogue is predicated on a shared notion of truth. Because if you don't have that, then how do you know that you're making progress in the dialogue? What's the point of talking to someone?
Exactly, exactly. I mean, dialogue is so important because some of our most efficacious or operative presumptions are invisible to us. They're so deep down in us that they're quite invisible to us. And often, yes, we've gotten them from our group, from our culture and all of these things. So it's extremely important to talk to people
who may not share those presumptions because they're coming from maybe, you know, different circumstances. I can't tell you how the dialogue has changed since I entered philosophy and was always the only woman in the room. And now how it has changed because certain presumptions just weren't
apparent to people until, for example, that there is something I think it's really changed. There are certain ethical dilemmas that arise within families and you know, and who do you owe your allegiance to that are have been really strengthened
by women entering into the conversation because women, you know, are often pulled in very many directions and have, you know, family obligations or feel family obligations in a way sometimes men don't, right, for probably good evolutionary reasons. That's a politically important thing to say. Anyway, so it's changed the dialogue.
So speaking about progress, are you of the mind that we all pretty much want the same thing, we just disagree on how to get there and what we need to do is use rationality and reason to progress forward? Or just abandon what I said? I don't think we all want the same things. I think there are many people who want their group, their tribe, however they define it, to win at all costs.
and they will sacrifice the truth entirely to get what they want. And no, I don't think we all want, I think without the taming respect for the truth, yeah, that's what it descends to. But I think that an awful lot of, no, I really don't, I think that there are still many, many people who
See, for me, ideology means, to me, the word ideology is something negative. I think you use it somewhat differently than I do. I try to not use the term just because it's ill-defined. Many people mean different things, but I just used it when I was speaking about you and Pinker because I thought you might latch on to that word. Yeah, I mean, to me, it's negative.
word, it's a kind of sacred truth thing, you know, that there are certain truths that I'm just not going to ever give up, even if they're empirically dogmatism, you know, even if they're dogmatism. Is it different than dogmatism in your in your eyes?
different than dogmatism. It's almost the same thing, except that it's like a theory. It's a whole cluster of interlaced groups of truths or claims of truths, often politically motivated. I see. Why don't we define for the audience what you see as rationality and then progress?
Okay. Well, what I see of rationality is one tremendous respect for the truth, right? It's a sort of attitude towards the truth. It is a recognition of our own fallibility. I don't think you can be rational without recognizing our weakness, having that kind of
epistemic modesty, right? And not only recognizing this about one's species, which is very, very easy, but about oneself. And so developing self-critical attitudes towards one's belief and being willing to do everything you can to challenge those beliefs, which often involves talking to people who don't believe
as you do. I have changed my beliefs radically in my lifetime, often at great personal cost, right? I was born into a extremely religious family and I don't have those beliefs anymore. And that is something I didn't want to differ from my family. This was not a rebellion.
against my family and I am still extremely close to my family. Um, but it was, you know, an impossibility to believe in the way that I had been taught to believe. And it is, um, you know, I think that that is, you know, part of, yeah, maybe I'll change my mind someday. It's always open. This is always open. I've changed my mind about many, many things, but that was probably
you know, the deepest one, the one that cost me the most, um, and cost other people the most. So, yeah, I mean, so yeah, that, that, this to me, this attitude towards truth, towards our own fallibility, our own epistemic modesty, um, this is what I, what I consider to be a rationality.
Okay, you just said maybe I'll change my mind about that and that's a view that you hold for or you hope that you hold for all your beliefs. Now what about... See, to me that would lead to nihilism and I would like to know why you think it doesn't or maybe you think now nihilism is salutary or at least not non-salutary, but either way
what about saying that what happened in the Holocaust was great? Would you change your mind about? Yeah. And if someone said that and no, well, you hold the belief that it was horrible. And then someone said, well, aren't you willing to change your mind about anything? Are you willing to change your mind about that? I would hear their arguments. Yes, I would hear their, their arguments. Um, and, uh, I believe I could knock them down quite easily. Um, but yes, I would,
I would engage in a dialogue. I engage in dialogues with people who... Okay, how about this? Well, you have a self-correcting... Can I just say one thing? Yes. As Descartes actually showed us in his first meditation, we don't have to... In being open to everything and using radical methods of doubt and all of that,
We don't have to go through every belief one by one. I mean, there are an infinite number of beliefs that we have. Just looking out at the situation, I'm flooded with all sorts of beliefs about what things are existing right now in my vicinity and what conditions they're in. But there are beliefs that sort of are all joined together. So for example, so I have a view about the basis of morality, what makes propositions true.
I'm open, very, very open to people arguing with me about that. A consequence of my belief is that the Holocaust was an abomination. And, you know, so somebody would have to so fundamentally attack my view as to moral truths as to, you know, in such a fundamental way that the Holocaust being a good thing for humanity. Look, and you know what?
You know what, if you really don't believe, if you think that all that matters is dominance, you know, of one group, and you want to make your group as strong as possible, right, because that's all there is really, that's all that's left when you do away with truth, well, scapegoating is an extremely effective method of causing coherence
in your group, you know, when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in the 15th and 16th century wanted, having reconquered Spain from the Ottoman Empire, wanted to unify it. What did they do? They picked on the Jews, right? They expelled the Jews. This was a very effective means of unifying and giving a national identity
because of religious identity to their country. So, you know, if I would say it's this view of, you know, all there is is power and dominance and dog-eat-dog, that's going to lead to, you know, you could actually try to argue that the Holocaust was a good thing, right? It unified the German nation, right? Just the way expelling the Jews and, you know,
unified Spain. So I don't think, you know, I think there is, I think there, I think hold it, taking truth so seriously that you're always willing to look at arguments that, you know, against your premises and looking at the consequences of that. I don't think this leads to nihilism. Nihilism is the view that, you know, there is no truth, right? It is all power.
See, I'm always skeptical, because I saw it in myself, of
of people who say, I'm willing to change my mind about virtually anything. So please let me play devil's advocate just for a second. Even if you say, well, I'm willing to change my mind about, let's, let's take a more prosaic example about littering. Okay. I'm willing to change my mind about littering, that littering, littering is actually great. Littering, littering, like throwing garbage on the ground. Okay. So whatever the example is,
you have one view and then someone gives you a convincing argument and you want to change and then so you change your mind now that means you have an updating mechanism like you have some way of changing from belief a to belief b do you doubt that updating mechanism and then if you were to doubt that then that means that you change your belief based on something else so what is at the top and then why don't you doubt that because that would just lead to an infinite regress do you understand what i'm saying or should i just
Sure. I mean, I think we use the same mechanisms. We're applying the same sort of mechanisms. It's not a different mechanism for every belief. It's the same cognitive mechanism that we're applying for all of these things. You know, we first of all, you know, literate, littering, just like the Holocaust, you know, is not, you know, what you release about it or not. That's the first time the sentence is literally just like the Holocaust.
Oh, dear. You probably hear that that is. That's all right. That's all right. Let's get to let's get to. Okay, let's get to the Jordan Peterson. Okay. Yeah, right. What did you what did you want to ask Jordan? What did you want to respond to Jordan Peterson that you didn't get to the chance to respond to him with
And what did you think about that whole debate with William Craig? Yeah. Oh, well, it surprised me very much. I don't debate people. I dialogue. I hate debates. You can understand. This is my whole approach. I don't enter into these things trying to win. You know, I mean, that's what it is. And
Want to know what are your reasons? I want to ponder them. I want to. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let me rephrase it. I know the title on the video. I believe it said debate. When I watched it, I felt like it was more just people conversing and asking each other questions. I don't know if you thought it was a debate, but it doesn't matter. What did you think of it? Okay. Um, so I had never heard of
either of them. And it was, it was sort of when I was asked to do this thing, it was like, we want three different views on the meaning of life. And so, and so, you know, I gave a sort of secularist, naturalist view about, you know, because it's often said, and in fact, was said by that other person who wasn't Peterson, whose name I can't remember. William. What was his name? William. William. Yes.
said something like, yeah, that, you know, if you don't believe in God, you can't have a meaningful or moral or purposeful life. You know, and so it's a pretty awful thing to say to somebody actually. But yeah.
So I've heard that kind of thing before, but anyway, yeah, so I was interested in presenting. Yeah, no, you can't. I hadn't realized that the place that I was speaking at was actually a theological. Well, it was the University of Toronto, so I was sort of very surprised by the audience. They had a home base advantage. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, and so, yeah, really surprised by it.
Um, I had never heard of Jordan Peterson either. Um, I think he had, he was just coming into sort of notoriety because standing up to, for, he would, he wouldn't be dictated to about, um, personal pronouns or, you know, something. Right. And in the Kathy Newman video that exploded him. Yes, right. And it just happened, you know, and I, I never know about these things. I'm thinking about girls in completeness in the arms or something completely unrelated.
So, um, so I was just really surprised. And then, you know, so we started talking and I was just trying to make sense what he was saying. I mean, because there was this whole long thing about suffering is the meaning of life. And it's like, I was just trying to understand what that meant. And it seemed to just come down to his belief, an empirical belief, you know, that, you know, terrible suffering can happen in life. That's,
undeniable, and maybe even the stronger belief, which I don't know is true or not. Again, it's an empirical belief that suffering, terrible suffering has to happen in life, you know, that I mean, I think that's what he was meaning by saying that it was the meaning of life and that we need something very strong to make us feel that life is nevertheless worth
living and that um he so there was that that you know that suffering is unavoidable perhaps he was saying and um that's what he meant by saying it was the meaning of life and um that uh we need something and rationality won't do thinking won't do don't overthink it i remember he said that people love to hear that
You know, people have to hear that. Go with the emotions. Go with what you know. And that's also what he was saying, that there is this kind of transcendence, this experience of transcendence when you feel yourself or know yourself to be something more than human. Human is suffering, but you know, you feel, you know, what is transcendence supposed to mean? And, you know, something takes you beyond, you're beyond the humans,
And it's not an intellectual thing. It reveals itself. These were the things I think that he was saying. That's what I was able to get out of that. I haven't read him since or listened to him since, but that's what I was able to get out in the moment of what he was saying. Right. Not to be Peterson or speak for him. I think what he meant when it comes to the meaning in life and the relationship to suffering is you can take meaning to mean
Either affect, so sensory data has a meaning, or implication for behavior. So this means something because it means, oh, there you go, because it means you can quench your thirst. And suffering is that. So suffering is a meaning of life. So when someone says there's no meaning in life, well, you do have a meaning. It's just negative. What you're truly asking is, is there a positive meaning to offset the negative? Okay. I mean, basically the same thing, you know, that is, um,
Oh, but the thing that I really disagree, disagree with is, look, he started out by talking about a really extreme case of suffering. Fortunately, most of us do not have to go through, you know, a child suffering in Auschwitz. I come from a family that was destroyed by that.
My Hungarian Jewish family was destroyed by that. So I grew up on these stories. I lived these stories. I heard them. Right. You said you were named after children who died. Yes. Every child in my generation and next generation was named after this very large family that was wiped out. So I am very... And I think maybe this has motivated me my entire life.
How does this happen? How does this happen? How does this happen in a civilized culture like German culture? My family revered German culture as so many educated Jews did, right? And so how can this happen? Genocide. Just one second. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, my my headphones just died. So I'm gonna have to take them off and listen to you from the speaker. Speaker. Because I value your time. You're a wonderful person. Thank you so much. Great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. So where were we? Okay, let me just let me just ask. I'll just make it a segue. Okay, so you were saying
You were talking about how you felt about the Peterson debate and you said, I think we just left off there. Yes. So, okay. So yeah, this conversation or whatever you want to label it. This transcendent kind of experience that just sort of reveals itself when you feel, you know, you're, you're, you are in touch with something transcendent that makes you transcendent, you know, that there's, you're, you're larger than life, something more.
than people who don't have this experience. This is, look, it's a very intoxicating feeling. I'm extremely wary of it. That because, you know, I think that in fact that that is partly, that that is a mechanism that can go very wrong, morally wrong, and people who
not to put, to find a point in it, the Nazis preach just such a thing. When you were at these, at these rallies and you were part of this, um, you know, greater, greater than, you know, the destiny of the German people, you know, and it's, it was just self revealing. And it says, you know, was such a powerful feeling. It's a kind of religious feeling. I mean, religion has, can have that as well. When you,
Feel yourself chosen by God or God is with you. You know, it is just a sort of self revelatory feeling. I mean, sometimes it can be in self lifting and you're an overmatch. You're more than human. I hate anything that makes us more than human. I'm very wary of it. I know it's enchantments. I know it's intoxications. I think human is enough.
really human enough understanding your humanity and the humanity of everybody else and how the same we are. That's a much safer way to feel and there's nothing grandiose, there's nothing self deceptive about it. So anyway, I
I, all of my alarms were going off between these two people, between these two men, both of whom, no, I think Craig realized that I was one, nevermind, I would not even go there. But, um, but, um, I don't have, I don't have
really sound grounds to me. So, um, but, um, you know, on the one side, you know, somebody saying, you know, believe it's I do or your life is you can't even be a moral creature. You know, you can have no meaning. You can't have no purpose. And, um, on the other side, this sort of like, you know, self, you know, this transcendence that reveals itself and,
And it reveals itself and the experience itself. So if somebody tries to talk you out of it or something and said, look, this is taking you in a wrong place. No, it is self-proving, self-authenticating. This is anti-rational and this is for me, danger. So both of these people, all my alarms were going off. Ah, this is precisely, these are the things I don't believe in.
Um, and I, and I see dangers in both of these sorts of things. I see suffering, suffering coming, uh, from, from trusting your feelings of self-transcendence or danger coming from thinking here, this way is morality. Other people can't be moral, right? Which makes them less than human. So either be more than human or you're less than human. Okay.
I think I've said enough, I don't believe, this goes against everything I believe in. I see, I see. Now, with respect to morality, are you more of the Sam Harris type that would say that we can derive morality from something objective or scientific or fact-based?
I am more with Harris than not. That is, I believe, morality is objective. Yes, I do. I don't think it is the same thing as science. I don't think that, and I'm not a utilitarian, as a matter of fact. I don't hold by that theory of morality. I think that perhaps Sam, I haven't discussed this with him. I would like to discuss it with him more.
is too hasty to go from morality has to do with human well-being to utilitarianism, right? That there are other alternatives, not where you dismiss human well-being. I think he says about Rawls, a Kantian theory that I take quite seriously, that it's us.
It's separate from, it doesn't think of human well-being. This is not true. This is certainly not true. But it does, you know, there are other alternatives. You can think that morality is objective, that it has to do with human flourishing, flourishing of all, and not being a utilitarian. And there are tremendous problems with utilitarianism.
I do think there's a way of deriving, you know, ethics and the fundamental fact of ethics, which is the equitable distribution of mattering over all humans, which is not to say that only humans matter, but it is to say that all humans matter, right? Other things matter, too. Other sentient creatures matter, too. The planet matters. Works of art matter. All sorts of things matter that aren't humans, but that
all humans do matter and that's where we get into some of the problems with utilitarianism. You know, can you sacrifice an innocent if it's going to be good for the, you know, in general, if it's going to maximize wellbeing for everybody or there's some things that just can't, you know, it's a fundamental fact of everybody's matter in the way that we know ourselves to matter and certainly the ones who that we love matter. Um,
then we run into certain problems with utilitarianism. But so anyway, that's basically all I would say. I'd say moral theory is very, very difficult. How does, how is it, how are morals objective? Like how does one make an objective case for morality? Okay. Um, there are certain fundamental justificatory principles that we use.
in logic, in the rules of deduction, in empirical thinking, the rules of induction and abduction that give us the concepts of evidence, right, in deduction that gives us the concepts of proving things, you know, of logical consequence, and also in practical reason, right, in
in pursuing our lives. And we cannot justify, this is a kind of Kantian argument, we cannot justify any of these justificatory principles because they are the means by which we justify in these various fields. If I try to prove logic, I'm going to have to use logic. It's going to be circular.
That's where Descartes got himself into the famous Cartesian circle. David Hume, great enlightenment thinker, showed us that empirical reasoning, you know, just thinking that the universe is lawlike and so using certain observable things as evidence for these laws on the basis of which we make predictions.
which we use in both induction and abduction, inference to the best explanation. That presumption that underlies all of this scientific reasoning cannot itself be justified because you can't justify it through deductive reasoning and you can't use empirical reasoning because empirical reasoning presumes
the nomological nature, you know, that nature is lawlike, you know, that there are laws, right? So if we find an anomaly, if Newtonian physics doesn't accord with our observations, we don't say, oh, well, maybe nature is just not lawlike. No, we go back and we fix our approximation of what the laws of nature are. These, so, you know, in all of our reasoning, in logic, in empirical reasoning,
we, there are certain things, look, we, these are the principles that we're using and we can't pursue a coherent life without using them. Right. In practical reason as well. I cannot pursue my life without thinking, you know, that I matter, you know, that my pain matters, you know, that if I'm
so you know it's if um i put my hand on a hot radiator and it hurts i've got reason right to remove it or i you know if something's going to be good for me in the future you know then i launch my plans and try to get there you know and and then and then all of my emotions as well you know it are all wrapped up you know when i feel frustrated or happy or gratified or
I'm hopeful or fearful or anything. All of this is all presuming, you know, my life matters. Hear that sound?
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Go to Shopify.com slash theories now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in Shopify.com slash theories. You know, in some sense, I can step outside of my life and say, yeah, does it really matter? Um, you know, maybe I'll decide it doesn't. And then I'm going to go into some sort of nihilistic funk because my mattering matters to me so much that even thinking that I don't matter,
you know, is going to, you know, get me into a funk, you know, because that itself is a testament to how much, you know, we, all our lives matter to us. We can't pursue them without that sort of the kind of justificatory mechanism that we use in pursuing our lives. We can't coherently pursue our lives just as without logic, without empirical reasoning. We can't,
I think you might think, well, what is it about me that makes me matter so much? I mean, it can't possibly be that I'm just me because everybody else feels the same way about them. Well, maybe it's because I belong to the right people, the right country, the right this. You talk to enough people who maybe have the right race, the right complexion, right?
Well, you know, slowly, slowly, those ideas have been knocked down, right? That's progress, right? And, you know, basically what you come into, look, I can't pursue my life without just the presumption that I matter. Same as everybody else, right? And so whatever
Whatever mattering I do have or don't have, it's equally distributed. That to me sounds more of a pragmatic approach. That is, I can't pursue my life if I don't have this as a grounding, as a justification, which I can't justify. But what does that say about the truth? It's in the same category with logic and empirical reasoning.
I can't justify logic, right, without presuming logic. I can't justify empirically, you know, are we going to stop doing science? Are we going to stop believing in causality and evidence and law likeness? I mean, these are fundamental, you know, to what it is to pursue a coherent life. It's the best we can do. However, you did say earlier you're willing to change your mind about anything. That means nothing is sacred.
I can't think myself outside the very mechanisms of thinking. If somebody can give me an alternate to logic that would require me to use logic in order to apply this alternate logic, which is, by the way, the great lesson of Lewis Carroll's
brilliant essay, what the tortoise and the hare are, right? Alternate logics won't work because we have to use our logic in order to apply that new logic. If these are the very mechanisms by which homo sapiens think, nobody is going to be able to get me to think outside them. They can get me to see, ah, I'm just
That's the basics. That's how we think. That's how we can pursue our lives without this. That's a kind of justification. We're entitled to anything that we need just in order to be able to pursue a coherent life at all.
I agree to some degree, but I'm just playing devil's advocate. So what if someone says the skeptic that maybe even the suicidal skeptic is like my life doesn't matter. And now you say, well, it matters because I'm, I'm self questioning, but that's not what I mean when I say matters. I mean, doesn't matter enough that I should go on or doesn't matter enough that pain should be stopped from
self-inflicted pain or me inflicting pain on others. Maybe, you know, it can happen that, you know, your life matters so much to you and your own suffering matters so much to you that you, you know, decide not to continue it, you know, if life is kind of that. And at the same time, so not everything can be taken off the rails, but mattering too much is narcissism and that can lead you to want to, you know, if you read the diaries of people who are serial killers, they're
They're egotists most of the time. Exactly. So the real thing to do, and you know, and so can this whole thing of, you know, self-transcendence and becoming an Uber mansion, you know, I think that this can also lead you to thinking and has in the history and the sad history of humanity has often led to, yeah, to atrocities. Yeah, I'm still trying to find the connection. This is a way of arguing
that would say, look, the very mechanisms that we all have in thinking about our own lives, and even in deciding sometimes to give up our lives for a cause or something, you know, that certainly happens, right? This doesn't entail that one... Sometimes the very reason you have to live can be a reason to die, Socrates,
demonstrating that to us in the very dawn of philosophy. So it's not an argument that, you know, life above all. But it is that none of us can matter any more than any others, just as you can't have all, you know, that this is the principles that we all have in just pursuing our lives or sometimes in deciding that our lives should not be pursued any further. But, you know, that we are invested.
In our life, there's a wonderful article by Tom Nagel called The Absurd. The philosopher Tom Nagel happened to have been my dissertation advisor, although I did totally different things than this. But it's called The Absurd and it's sort of about this gap, you know, when we're in our lives, we have to pursue our lives, right? I mean, we have to, our whole emotional apparatus is
all giving us feedback and how well this life of mine is going. You know, sometimes lives can go pretty terribly and people may actually even want to exit them. That's not the point. But the point is, you know, that we pursue our lives. I mean, who else's life are you going to pursue if not your own? There is a certain commitment to
this life. And then when you think about it, well, what justifies it? The only thing that can justify it are the kinds of grounds that would justify everybody's life to themselves. Everybody takes their lives seriously. That's enough. That's enough. That's enough to tell you that slavery is wrong, right? Those slaves' lives mattered as much to them as my life matters to me. The lives of their children mattered much to them. All of it was there. Everything that's there
When I introspect about my life, that makes me know how much matters was there for them, right? That richness. And so that is, you know, to actually just come to terms with what, what we are just in being human. That's why I say being human is enough. I mean, if we can really understand the full implications of that, that would be enough, right? This would be a good world, a better world. You know, once all, it wouldn't,
cure coronavirus, but it would tell us how important the cure is for everybody, right? Not, not more important for the rich, you can escape it or for, you know, in this country, there's anyway. Okay, to wrap up, you just use the word better, which implies progress. However, not every culture would obviously not every culture would believe that slavery is wrong for certain types of people, even within your own race.
Does that mean that progress is incompatible with multiculturalism? Yeah. Well, multiculturalism means not only, you know, different morality, different moralities in that sense, you know, that one doesn't accept the mattering, the equal mattering of all human beings. If that's an objective fact, which I think
It is, I think that's an objective fact, you know, that just comes out of how we practically reason in our own case and then have to universalize it to others. If that's an objective fact, yeah, they're making a huge mistake.
Does that mean that we can rank order cultures in terms of which ones are more progressive? And then if so, like this is extremely, I'm not trying to put a gotcha on you, but then if so, would you say that the West has the most progressive cultures? Well, it depends what you mean by progressive. Look, do I think that a culture that doesn't believe in genocide is
is morally superior to one that does believe in genocide? Yes, of course I do. I mean, that's what it is to believe in the objectivity of morality. So, I mean, as soon as you say, you know, you commit yourself to the objectivity of morality, which I put on the, yes, which I rank with the objectivity of logic and of empirical reasoning.
Yeah, of course you're going to say that certain cultures got things terribly wrong. Yes. And slave cultures get things terribly wrong. Even if, let's just do a thought experiment in this culture that said that genocide is great. They killed all the rest of people who thought that genocide wasn't great. And now going back to your argument about it's a human universal. Now they have as a human universal genocide is okay. And they can reason and say that, well, look, it's a human universal. This is the way our brains are built.
This is objective morality. So then we have two disparate accounts on what objective- No, that's because morality does not depend on how our brains are built, right? That it's not reducible. I think that Harris is wrong about this. I don't think that the neuroscience is at all relevant, you know, and the fact that consciousness is a brain process is at all relevant to this. No, they would still be wrong, even though it would be an
A purical fact that everybody, just everybody, a bird just flew into one of our windows. It was a big bird, so hopefully it survived. You know, even if it was a universally accepted fact that everybody believed that, yes, this subrace, you know, once tainted our Aryan purity,
and that was a worse world, they would be wrong. That was a better world. And what they did in order to get to this world of universal agreement was egregious and was objectively wrong. Those people mattered. Those people mattered. Their suffering mattered. Nothing will ever convince me that that is wrong.
you know, that their suffering did not matter. I agree. I agree. I'm just, I just, I'm hoping I was playing devil's advocate, but then we just found something that you said that you is immovable when you were willing to... Because I cannot think it is immovable because it derives from the very mechanisms by which I think about my own life in order to pursue it. It derives from that.
You know, and anything I think that's a way of justifying a whole lot of propositions. We do it in logic, we do it in empirical reasoning, and we do it in practical reason as well as in moral reasoning as well. And I would equate all of them. So that's a different way of going about trying to justify these things, right? There is no coherence.
you know, without certain mechanisms of thinking. I can't think myself outside of them because they are what I think with. I see. So what's next for you? Where can the audience find more out, more about you? Well, I've written 10 books. So that's that. And they are, you know, both fiction, fiction and nonfiction. I often
In the past have used novels for fictional ends. I think there are certain things that one can do in fiction. Because you wrote a fictional book, that's actually how I found out about your husband, who's a physicist, because I saw you wrote one that deals with quantum physics and backgrounds in physics and math. And so I was wondering, well, you know, most people misuse quantum physics
It sounds like, well, let's see, maybe learn more about her. Oh, her husband at the time was, okay, great. So at least he could have corrected her if she was going off the rails like Deepak Chopra. I couldn't hear that. I said, at least then if you were saying something that wasn't comporting with the data when it comes to quantum physics or taking the metaphor too metaphorically, like Deepak might, your husband could have served as a correction mechanism.
Well, I actually studied physics as well. That was my first major. And so I actually come from a background in math and physics. Cool. Never thought I would do something like a novel. But yeah, I have here. So I went from physics to philosophy to physics. And so people who do philosophy physics usually have to know good geography.
Yeah, but yeah, I mean, I've always been interested in the foundations of quantum mechanics, which is, you know, philosophical, you can use this theory and know how to use this theory and disagree tremendously on the interpretations of quantum mechanics. And I'm also always been extremely interested in the not really contradiction, but the tension between relativity theory and quantum mechanics, you know, are two
most successful theories robust as far as predictions are made, but there is a deep tension between them. And so, you know, that is very interesting, you know, and that is that something and yeah, and the novel came out of that. Yes. And I'm, you know, I'm in being interested in interpretations of quantum mechanics.
I became very interested in David Bohm's interpretation of quantum mechanics very early on before, you know, sort of it caught on more. In fact, my ex-husband had a lot to do with it. Right, right, right. I saw that. And there's very few Bohm's out there. Yeah, he's a very strong Bohmian. And we knew David Bohm towards the end of his life. And he was a fantastic guy. And the whole thing that happened to him, I mean, it's
You know, it's very dramatic. It's a novelistic kind of thing. I mean, it was sort of inspired by Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics. I mean, so, you know. Yeah, I feel bad. I feel bad that I implied like the radical left would say that I was indoctrinated by the patriarchy to suggest that your book was correct because of your husband and not because of your own knowledge. My bad.
No, it's perfectly fine. And you know, most people who, you know, write novels, you know, don't have a background in the more technical stuff. It's too bad, right? Because I feel like, I think that they should feed off of each other, you know, the arts and the technical sciences. And both are extremely beautiful.
Um, and their beauty has a lot to do with structure. And so, I mean, to me, it just seems very natural. So anyway, yeah, I sometimes write novels. Okay. Any Twitter that you want to plug? Any website? Um, I don't have a website and I'm not on Facebook, but, um, when I published my last book, you know, I have a book. I have a book on Spinoza. I'll put all the links to your books in the description. Um, but when I, my last book was, um,
published my publishers or to beg me to get some sort of social media presence. And so I, I do have a Twitter feed, but I don't use it or check it often. Yeah, it's okay. I'll still include it. And I've last very, very last, you can answer this super, super briefly. It's about women in the STEM fields. We were talking about that. So do you feel like women are still discriminated against in the STEM fields or if they ever were or
Now it's less or now it's the opposite? You know, I'm outside of the STEM fields now. But, you know, I think, you know, there is in general a presumption of, there's often a presumption that women don't think as well. But, you know, and, you know, one of the, you know, men are often very
interested in very motivated to impress women and nerdy men try to impress women with their nerdiness. I mean, I've had, I've had Goodles and completeness theorems explained to me by, you know, OBGYNs, right? When they, you know, who, if they, I was once at a party and this woman introduced me to her, her
husband was a doctor and said, Oh, you know, Rebecca's very interested in Gödel. And he starts explaining to me Gödel's incompleteness theorems. And his knowledge had come from reading the review of my book in the New York Times book review. That was his knowledge. And then I kept trying to say, Oh yeah, that was of my book. He could not take it in that that was my book, right? He was so busy, you know, explaining it to me, you know, and of course explaining it wrong. So,
Look, you experience these things, you know, as a woman, you do. And it has to do with, you know, the psychology and whatever, you know. I will say this about, you know, I've been in a lot of fields, as I say, you know, I've been in technical fields, I was in philosophy, managed, I guess I still am. I've been in the arts. I think STEM, now this is my own personal experience, is the best.
For all of these things, there's always that sort of common attitude and all this stuff, right? You get used to this, right? And you calmly try to explain. It doesn't matter. But here's what math and the sciences have that the arts and even philosophy doesn't have to the same extent.
You can prove your results, right? You've got a good proof. You know, they can mansplain until the cows come in. It's not going to make a difference. You've got a good proof for a hard theorem, an elegant proof. It can be checked out. With the sciences, we've got reality. We've got predictions, you know. So I'm very good friends with a cosmologist, female cosmologist, and
who's went through all sorts of problems. She wasn't tenured and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She thought it, she thought it. And then she had made some radical prediction. The evidence just came in. Thank you, universe. That's what you have in STEM. Universe can give you data and can validate your
And you so if in the arts, it's all much more subjective. And I think women have a tougher time. I mean, there are certain kinds of women's subjects. You write novels about family dynamics and blah, blah, blah. You know, that's what you know, and you're going to do fine. But, you know, I do think that, you know, since there's really nothing like what you get in math proof or in the sciences, empirical evidence to show
Thank you so much, Rebecca. Appreciate your generosity with your time. Well, I appreciate your questions. They're good and
And, you know, they were, they're substantive and they're also very probing. So I appreciate that.
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"text": " The Economist covers math, physics, philosophy, and AI in a manner that shows how different countries perceive developments and how they impact markets. They recently published a piece on China's new neutrino detector. They cover extending life via mitochondrial transplants, creating an entirely new field of medicine. But it's also not just science they analyze."
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"text": " That silence is missed sales. Now, why? It's because you haven't met Shopify, at least until now."
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"text": " Now that's success. As sweet as a solved equation. Join me in trading that silence for success with Shopify. It's like some unify field theory of business. Whether you're a bedroom inventor or a global game changer, Shopify smooths your path. From a garage-based hobby to a bustling e-store, Shopify navigates all sales channels for you. With Shopify powering 10% of all US e-commerce and fueling your ventures in over"
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"text": " I don't think we all want the same things. I think there are many"
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"text": " people who want their group, their tribe, however they define it, to win at all costs. And they will sacrifice the truth entirely to get what they want. And no, I don't think we all want. I think without the taming respect for the truth, yeah, that's what it descends to."
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"text": " This next guest needs no introduction. It is the always charming, lovely, edifying Rebecca Goldstein, and in this conversation we talk about Gödel's incompleteness theorem, its relationship to truth, as well as the laws of physics potentially. We also talk about her views on Sam Harris's moral landscape,"
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"text": " I'm here with Rebecca Goldstein and we're going to talk all about Gödel's theorem, incompleteness theorem, as well as"
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"text": " progress, rationality, and the enlightenment. Okay, Rebecca, thanks for coming on. My pleasure. So tell me what does your day to day schedule look like? How are you productive? I feel very unproductive, actually. You mean as of late or? As of maybe 2016 when some"
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"text": " politics have become too interesting and I waste an awful lot of time, you know, politics and reading up on politics and doing whatever I can. So I sometimes wonder whether when historians, intellectual historians look back on this period,"
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"text": " whether they're going to see a dip in productivity, um, just because of, you know, how well consuming politics can get. So anyway, when I am productive, I am productive because I become obsessed. Um, and so I, you know, when I'm working on a problem, time just flies, you know, and I,"
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"text": " You know, I get right to work and I can work for 18 hours straight. In fact, when I was writing the book on Goodell's incompleteness theorems in particular, I kind of ruined my back because the day would just fly by and I hadn't moved from my desk seat for... So most of it is, do you write with a pen and paper? Do you write with your laptop? I'm getting into the details."
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"text": " Yeah, I write with a laptop, you know, that was a slow process. I was very late to doing that. I thought I needed to do, I do diagrams and all of this sort of thing when I'm mapping out ideas, the structure of an argument is always extremely important to me. And you write the diagrams on the laptop or with a pen and paper? Yeah, that's what I do, pen and paper, but then the actual sentences are always composed on a laptop and"
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"text": " You know, it's terrific for someone like me because I revise and I revise and revise. I revise each sentence. I don't like write a whole book and then go back to revising, which I do anyway, but I go sentence by sentence and, you know, sentences can be rewritten seven, eight times. Yeah. So a laptop is good. Do you find that most of your work is reading or actual writing?"
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"text": " I remember I was talking to Pinker and he said something like 80% of his time is spent reading. Yeah, he reads a lot. I read much less. Um, I, you know, for my work, because he is, he's a great cattle. You know, he, he takes from this person from that person and he and then he puts it together and something that's greater than the sum of its parts. I think that's one of his tremendous talents. Um, but"
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"text": " I'm different. I sort of attack problems usually on my own. I mean, there usually are more amenable problems and I, so for me, it's thinking more than writing. I spend a very long time thinking and walking around. I walk around the house, you know, and I walk outside and I walk, you know, so our"
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"text": " Our processes are very different. I know this is going to sound like I'm getting so much of the details, but do you tell Pinker or anyone who else is around to not talk to you when you're walking and thinking? For example, for me, with my wife, when I think I look like I'm angry, so my wife always wants to ask if I'm okay, and I have to tell her, I have to bark at her and tell her, like, don't, please, if I look like I'm angry, I'm likely just thinking, so"
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"text": " So I have also from a former marriage two children and they, you know, so they were little children when their mother was thinking. And I remember once I was, you know, cooking dinner and one of my daughters had a little friend over and a little friend asked me something. And my daughter said, don't bother her. She's thinking. And,"
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"text": " The friend said, she's cooking. And my daughter said, trust me, she's thinking. So that's when I knew that they could read my expression and they were extremely respectful of it. So I've been lucky. Okay. Let's get into girdles and completeness theorems. If you don't mind, why don't you explain to the audience, just a brief overview of what they are. Yeah. So that, yes, as you say, there are, it's, it's, it's in the plural."
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"text": " There are two of them. And what they have to do with are the limitations of formal systems. And formal systems, which are very, very important in logic and in mathematics, are rule governed systems for proving things, are kind of proof mechanisms."
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"text": " in which everything that you can do in the formal system is defined by a rule. Recursive rules are extremely important in formal systems and these are rules that you can apply to something and then you can apply that rule to the result that you got in applying the rule ever and ever and ever. So, for example, we can generate"
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"text": " The integers that way, just keep adding one to the results you got before and you'll have another integer. So this is a way you can, you know, define the integers. Completely rule burned. Just one second. It froze right after you said this is how you define the integers algorithmically. Yes. So this is how, you know, that, that,"
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"text": " Formal systems, they have rules, mechanical procedures, algorithms. These are all intertwined concepts. And they were very, very important in mathematics, particularly mathematics, because of the discovery of the paradoxes of set theory, which showed us that our intuitions in"
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"text": " mathematics were not trustworthy. You can derive certain paradoxes. And so the idea was, okay, we're just, we're going to reduce mathematics to formal systems, to just these mechanical rules that will eliminate our reliance on intuitions on what seems to us to be true and just have these mindless rules"
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"text": " that you don't even have to think about meaning, the kind of thing that can be programmed into a computer. And so, and actually from these notions of formal system, especially as it was refined, after ghetto, we did get computers, actually, so that this is"
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"text": " Anyway, so the incompleteness of theorems are about the limitations of formal systems. This is not a way to solve, it turns out, the paradoxes of set theory. It's impossible. What you want from a formal system is that everything you prove in it is true, for sure. You also want that everything that is true can be proved."
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"text": " And that's what the first incompleteness theorem tells you cannot be true for arithmetic. Everything that we can prove in a formal system of arithmetic is true, but not everything that's true can be proved in a formal system. And then you can try to add an axiom to that formal system so that, you know, you can capture the thing you couldn't prove in the previous one. Well, you can derive other"
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"text": " propositions that won't be provable in that system and on and on infinitum. So that's the first incompleteness theorem. There are true propositions about the integers that can't be proved in any formal system. And so, and then the second incompleteness theorem is also kind of devastating because the"
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"text": " One thing you really, really want from your formal system is that it be consistent. That is that you can't prove a contradiction in it. You can't prove for some proposition P that both P and not P is true. And of course that would be contradictions are false. So that would negate, you know, the first thing, which is that everything you prove in a formal system is true, but it's much more serious than that because"
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"text": " Technically, in formal logic, from a contradiction, anything follows. So you can prove absolutely anything. I can prove that one equals three. I can prove anything in an inconsistent system. So the fact that when you're using a formal system, you cannot itself prove its consistency is"
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"text": " kind of devastating. You can go outside of the system, for example, giving a model for the system that will show that it is consistent. So it's not that we're, but within one of the things that you can prove within a formal system is the consistency of that system itself. That's the second incompleteness theorem."
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"text": " Okay, so I'll make a synopsis just for people who are listening. In math, you have a statement like let's say that even plus even equals another even number. So you take two even numbers that equals another. How do you know that that's true for all even numbers? You have a proof. It's almost like the way that I like to explain it to people is like Sherlock Holmes. You have the dead body and then you want to say who killed and then you go step by step. There's other shoes here and the shoes can only belong to a man because of so and so and the dog didn't bark because they know that"
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"text": " So on, so on, so on. Okay, great. So now we've gotten step by step deductively, we've gotten to the conclusion. Therefore, this conclusion is true. Okay. Now the question is, does the reverse hold? Okay, well, if something is true, can you always prove that it's true? For mathematicians for a while, it was like, what does it mean for something to be true and not proved?"
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"text": " Okay, but then girdle said there are some truths inside a formal system you you fix a formal system There are some things that we can see from the outside that it has to be true But we can also see from the way that it's constructed that you can't prove it within the system Okay, so that's the first one. The second one is also that you can't prove in your own system You're the consistency of your own system. Otherwise would come inconsistent consistency just means like Rebecca You just said you can't prove a and not a at the same time"
},
{
"end_time": 1067.415,
"index": 39,
"start_time": 1039.189,
"text": " Yes. Okay. Yes. Why does that matter? Why does that matter to people? Like that just sounds so esoteric to most people who are listening. Yes, it does sound very esoteric. Well, it was, as I said, you know, we had always depended on these sort of, on these intuitions. Like if you have a predicate, you know, forming a predicate, you can form the set of all things that satisfy that predicate."
},
{
"end_time": 1092.517,
"index": 40,
"start_time": 1067.773,
"text": " so the predicate of like being an American president you know there are how many people 45 right 45 people who for whom that is true I think I think Trump is 45th president anyway um according to some people yeah um so um you know and so there's that set that satisfies well now that just seems you know"
},
{
"end_time": 1122.756,
"index": 41,
"start_time": 1093.268,
"text": " Intuitive for every predicate, you can form a set of things satisfying that predicate. And set theory depended on that. Well, consider the following set. The set of all sets that aren't members of themselves. So is there such a set? Turns out there can't be such a set. Because a set of all sets that aren't members of themselves, if it's a member of itself,"
},
{
"end_time": 1150.674,
"index": 42,
"start_time": 1123.08,
"text": " Then it's not a member of itself, and it's not a member of itself. It is a member of itself. That's a classic paradox. It's a member of itself if and only if it's not a member of itself. That was a paradox discovered by Bertrand Russell, the philosopher Bertrand Russell. There were other paradoxes, but that's a classic paradox. That still sounds like it doesn't matter. So how does this matter to someone's day-to-day life, or does it not matter?"
},
{
"end_time": 1178.353,
"index": 43,
"start_time": 1151.681,
"text": " Well, let's see if it matters. So it is something about mathematics. It matters in terms of, as you had sort of indicated, what makes mathematics true. Mathematics is a little mysterious because it's not empirical, right? That's why mathematicians are so cheap for a university to hire, right? They only require blackboards and chalks and erasers, basically."
},
{
"end_time": 1205.538,
"index": 44,
"start_time": 1178.609,
"text": " Yeah. And there's a joke connected to that, that philosophers are even cheaper because they don't require the erasers. You can never discover you've made a mistake in philosophy. Um, but, um, you know, whereas physicists and all the empirical scientists, they require laboratories and observatories and you know, all this expensive stuff, you know, accelerators and God knows what. So,"
},
{
"end_time": 1233.268,
"index": 45,
"start_time": 1205.862,
"text": " So what is it? And that's because, you know, mathematics, you know, the information is carried inside your cranium, you know, it's all here are the axioms work out the consequences. So this is a little bit mysterious and you know, what makes mathematics true? There are these two basic views, you know, one is that, you know, they're kind of a super sensible reality that we are somehow being able to access with our"
},
{
"end_time": 1260.623,
"index": 46,
"start_time": 1233.592,
"text": " little finite minds and being able to prove all these things about, you know, many magnitudes of infinity and, you know, wow, aren't we something. Or there's the few that look, it's just, it's like a higher form of chess. It's just some rules. It's a game. We lay down the rules and then we see what follows, right? And so mathematics is really just this side of mindless rule following."
},
{
"end_time": 1289.855,
"index": 47,
"start_time": 1260.913,
"text": " We're surprised by the things just as we're surprised in chess, you know, what can ensue just from these finite set of rules. But, you know, but okay, you know, if we had infinite minds, we'd be able to see all the consequences of our rules. Goodell showed that first, there's something wrong with that first answer, right? It can't just be a matter of rule following, of mindless rule following. And he was a Platonist, and that's that view that, you know, mathematics is kind of"
},
{
"end_time": 1320.077,
"index": 48,
"start_time": 1290.401,
"text": " independently true, you know, the moons of Jupiter were spinning around Jupiter before we put the telescope to our eyes and so to mathematical truths, you know, that there's just an infinity of it. So, I mean, in that sense, it's interesting. Here's the other thing. People have claimed very large consequences from Gödel's incompleteness theorems about both mind and matter."
},
{
"end_time": 1345.811,
"index": 49,
"start_time": 1321.323,
"text": " So, and Gödel also considered it about mind, if there were consequences. I have a little story about that, maybe I'll get to. But it was an argument that was first published by a philosopher, Lucas, John Lucas, in I think 1964, arguing that"
},
{
"end_time": 1373.677,
"index": 50,
"start_time": 1346.834,
"text": " Gödel's incompleteness theorems show that our minds can't be digital computers. That even in our doing mathematics, we're not doing it formally. That's how we know that these propositions that we can't prove are true. And that even our mathematical knowledge can't be programmed into a digital computer. Therefore, we are not"
},
{
"end_time": 1404.241,
"index": 51,
"start_time": 1374.241,
"text": " Right, right, right, right."
},
{
"end_time": 1432.022,
"index": 52,
"start_time": 1405.06,
"text": " My then husband was at the Institute for Advanced Study, and Gödel was there. Oh, wow. Yes. Your ex-husband was a physicist, am I correct? Yes. Sheldon Goldstein, a most excellent physicist. And so, now Gödel was a famous recluse. He never, he"
},
{
"end_time": 1459.548,
"index": 53,
"start_time": 1432.415,
"text": " His best friend was Einstein. I mean, that predated my time. I think Dyson died in 1954. Anyway, they would only talk to each other, apparently. And once Einstein died, he really became very reclusive. And then I went to this party for newcomers at the Institute for Vance Study, my husband was a newcomer."
},
{
"end_time": 1489.787,
"index": 54,
"start_time": 1459.923,
"text": " When I walked in, a bunch of logicians came running over to me and said, he's here, he's here. Goodell is here. And so, sure enough, it was, I learned later, there was this brief opening when he was a little bit more gregarious and that party just happened to coincide with it. And he was there kind of holding court. And I had, of course, read this argument and I was wanting to ask him,"
},
{
"end_time": 1520.35,
"index": 55,
"start_time": 1490.384,
"text": " what he thought of it. But I was too shy. Which argument? The John Lucas argument? Okay. Yeah, yeah, that this this argument, you know, that the mind can't be a digital computer. And I just kept putting it off. I'm putting it off. And then he was gone. And I always tell my students this. If you have a question, ask it. You can spend the rest of your life regretting. I did it. I have always regretted that I didn't ask him that question. You know, what"
},
{
"end_time": 1547.79,
"index": 56,
"start_time": 1520.52,
"text": " What do you think of this argument? You could have views on it. Okay, so that would be, that's a big important consequence, if it is a consequence. Right, right, right. Because people like Daniel Dennett would say that the mind is mechanistic. Well, I don't know if I'm straw manning him, but it's something akin to a computer. Yeah, it is a thing to say, we'd like to say it."
},
{
"end_time": 1572.892,
"index": 57,
"start_time": 1548.575,
"text": " And it's certainly true. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I am I'm not a I'm not a reductionist when it comes to the mind. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Is Pinker a reductionist when it comes to the mind? Um, we are perhaps he takes reductionism a little more seriously than I do."
},
{
"end_time": 1600.674,
"index": 58,
"start_time": 1573.746,
"text": " Yeah, one of my questions that I had that now I desperately want to ask is what are the ways in which you differ from Pinker ideologically in your beliefs? Well, maybe we can, I would say that, it depends what sphere. I think, you know, if it's political, I probably am a little more to the left."
},
{
"end_time": 1627.995,
"index": 59,
"start_time": 1602.142,
"text": " But we are philosophically. No, I think that we're both very, very committed, as you know, to rationality. And I would say in the important ways where we're quite similar."
},
{
"end_time": 1648.951,
"index": 60,
"start_time": 1630.52,
"text": " Okay, so does this mean when you say that you're not a reductionist, which by the way, that's one of the major ways that girdles and completeness theorem has implications, because if you think of society as being composed of brains, then that's composed of biology, which is chemistry, which is physics, which is predicated on mathematics."
},
{
"end_time": 1678.37,
"index": 61,
"start_time": 1650.657,
"text": " It uses mathematics, but it is not itself mathematics. And if mathematics is on unsolid ground in some way, shape or form, then that has implications for all, for definitely all physics and then all of what's above. Well, even that is contested. So for example, I was interviewing someone named Sabine Hausenfelder,"
},
{
"end_time": 1707.551,
"index": 62,
"start_time": 1678.643,
"text": " who thinks Gödel's incompleteness theorem has nothing to say about physics. Although she said, who said that Sabine Haassenfelder? Well, I actually agree with her. Okay. Okay. Well, she said one of the reasons is that let's say that you came up with something that cannot be proven, whether or not it's that cannot be proven to be true. You can all in physics, you can just test it. And then if it is true, because it's experimental, then if it is true, you just put that as an axiom. But my response to that would be"
},
{
"end_time": 1735.742,
"index": 63,
"start_time": 1707.807,
"text": " that would go against the parsimony of science because if you have many of them, then you can just have a thousand axioms plus your physical theory or 10,000 axioms or 1 million. It's an in principle argument, but regardless, regardless. Yeah. I actually think that, um, although I'm open on this first question of whether mind, um,"
},
{
"end_time": 1766.374,
"index": 64,
"start_time": 1736.698,
"text": " Conclusions about mind follow from Goethe's Incompleteness Theorem. When it comes to matter, I actually don't think any of these metamathematical conclusions, and that's what Goethe's Incompleteness Theorem has to do with, has any implications for a final theory of everything. Right. So does, in your estimation, mind come from matter?"
},
{
"end_time": 1790.981,
"index": 65,
"start_time": 1767.739,
"text": " Um, excuse me. Does mind come from matter? Oh, yeah, this stuff is, this stuff is the stuff that is doing, doing it all. Right. Yes, of course. And where's the discrepancy? Why is it that girdles and completeness theorem doesn't apply to matter, but what matter and genders it applies to? Well,"
},
{
"end_time": 1821.374,
"index": 66,
"start_time": 1794.343,
"text": " What we want to know about mind is, is it a computer? Is everything that the mind is able to do, in particular, in doing mathematics, but all the other things that our minds do, is it, is this something that a computer could do? And there's reason to think because of what"
},
{
"end_time": 1850.384,
"index": 67,
"start_time": 1821.886,
"text": " The computers are, you know, everything that happens in a computer is computable, right? It's all working according to this, to these algorithmic rules that maybe that the powers of the mind exceed that. And that even the notion of truth itself, mathematical truth itself, and that's Tarski's undefined ability theorem,"
},
{
"end_time": 1877.278,
"index": 68,
"start_time": 1850.811,
"text": " The notion of truth itself can't be formalized in a formal system. It exceeds what we can get out of a formal system. Truth is enmeshed with the notion of meaning. That was the whole point of computability. Let's get out our intuitions about truth and about meaning."
},
{
"end_time": 1903.848,
"index": 69,
"start_time": 1877.654,
"text": " entirely reliable and they are not entirely reliable but we can't get along without them you know we can't even do mathematics without them you know if we confined ourselves to doing what computers can do they're very very useful for solving many mathematical problems but if we confined ourselves to that we would not be able to do everything that we're able to do even in mathematics so it really does relate"
},
{
"end_time": 1920.981,
"index": 70,
"start_time": 1904.411,
"text": " Because of the whole notion of what a formal system is, what a program is, what a recursion, computable, algorithms, all of these tied up notions, and how truth and meaning are outside of that circle."
},
{
"end_time": 1951.323,
"index": 71,
"start_time": 1921.408,
"text": " That's what Gödel showed us. I mean, that's big stuff. That's really big stuff. And Tarski really cashed out on it with his undefinability theorem. Right. As a historical footnote, did Gödel come up with Tarski's undefinability theorem before him? How did you know? Yes, he did. He did. He probably came up with it. He didn't bother to prove it. But yes, he came up, I think. I haven't checked dates, but I think Tarski"
},
{
"end_time": 1974.633,
"index": 72,
"start_time": 1951.766,
"text": " published it in 1936, the Undefineability Theorem. And, you know, Gödel had published his theorems in 31. And I think he saw the, yes, I think it was around 31 that he also had seen. Right. Okay. So let's get to Tarski's Undefineability Theorem."
},
{
"end_time": 2005.23,
"index": 73,
"start_time": 1976.135,
"text": " Okay, so we didn't completely finish up with the other thing. So I mean, here's what I'd say about like a theory of everything, you know, which some extremely smart people have claimed is has been ruled out by Gödel's incompleteness theorem. Freeman Dyson, Stephen Hawking had changed his mind about this verse he thought it didn't and then he thought it did. So then it is that"
},
{
"end_time": 2034.991,
"index": 74,
"start_time": 2005.657,
"text": " Goodell's incompleteness theorem ruled out a theory of everything. So let's say you have a formal system of physics, right? And so besides, you know, besides all the arithmetic that is formalized in there, you also have, you know, things referring to, you know, velocity and mass and position and space time, all of this other stuff, which, you know, go beyond"
},
{
"end_time": 2062.09,
"index": 75,
"start_time": 2035.384,
"text": " mathematical concepts. I think the only thing that really follows from Gödel's incompleteness thing is that there will be arithmetical propositions within that formal system that you will not be able to prove. That's what follows. That's what Gödel showed. But this is nothing about the completeness or lack of completeness of the"
},
{
"end_time": 2088.78,
"index": 76,
"start_time": 2062.619,
"text": " in this formal system. So I don't think that this metamathematics actually has this implication. So that's anyway, that's my, that's my point. Right, right, right. Just so we're clear for the audience, what is Freeman Dyson's position on it and Stephen Hawking's? And then why do you disagree? Like where's the disagreement between you and him? So he says, I think now where did this come from? He hasn't written extensively on this. I think in the New York Review of Books, when? Okay."
},
{
"end_time": 2117.927,
"index": 77,
"start_time": 2089.138,
"text": " I think when he was reviewing Brian Green's book, he as in Hawking or, or Dyson, the Freeman Dyson. Yeah. Freeman Dyson. He said, look, Goodell's incompleteness theorem shows that there are an exhaustible number of true propositions in mathematics that can't be true. And because of that, that we can't show is true. I'm sorry. And, um,"
},
{
"end_time": 2143.387,
"index": 78,
"start_time": 2118.2,
"text": " Because of this, since physics uses mathematics, it follows that there are an inexhaustible number of physical propositions which can't be proved true. And I say... You're saying that that's a leap. I say that's a leap. I say that's a non-sequitur, actually. So, yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 2171.783,
"index": 79,
"start_time": 2144.002,
"text": " Okay, let's get to Tarski. We could spend the entire hour talking about this stuff. It's extremely rich and extremely complicated. And I think for me always it's let's first look at the incompleteness theorem, see what they're proving, how they prove it. The limit, you know, the fact that they're proving something about formal systems of arithmetic. We can't prove, you know, and so in this"
},
{
"end_time": 2202.21,
"index": 80,
"start_time": 2172.551,
"text": " theory of everything, we will not be able to prove complicated views, complicated truths about the integers. But we don't need to do that anyway in doing physics. That's not the kind of math we use. Right. Although there's a generalization of Gödel's theorem, which implies Gödel's theorem and is easier to prove, and I think it was by Turing or Turing and Gödel about mechanistic. Just about any mechanized system. Now someone named Stephen Wolfram, who's a theoretical"
},
{
"end_time": 2232.227,
"index": 81,
"start_time": 2203.387,
"text": " He says that the base of our reality is computation. And I'm curious if that's the case, what he defines computation as and what Gödel's incompleteness theorem has to say about that. That's for me to ask him. Okay, so let's get to Tarski. What is this theorem? Oh, it is really what I just said, that the notion of an arithmetical"
},
{
"end_time": 2260.981,
"index": 82,
"start_time": 2232.398,
"text": " Truth, again, it's about arithmetic, right? Coming from Gödel's incompleteness thing, the notion of arithmetical truth can't be defined arithmetically. That's basically what it says, right? So again, this is quite a limit. So the notion of truth, the semantic notion of truth that is involved with meaning and all of this can't be defined syntactically, that is by these"
},
{
"end_time": 2291.681,
"index": 83,
"start_time": 2261.852,
"text": " rules of how you what are the symbols and how you can put the symbols together and which some which strings of symbols can fall from other strings of symbols that's what a formal system tells you right you can't get the semantic notion of arithmetical truth out of notes does that have in your estimation any implications on truth in the way that people will colloquially use it use the word truth like i believe that this is true or this is scientifically true or objectively true"
},
{
"end_time": 2320.93,
"index": 84,
"start_time": 2291.988,
"text": " But Tarski also wrote about semantic truth. That is the thing that we can't get out of syntactic truth, right? It's larger than syntactic truth. He also has, he has, and this is now we're talking about philosophy of language. We're not talking about philosophy of mathematics anymore. We're talking about meaning and truth."
},
{
"end_time": 2341.544,
"index": 85,
"start_time": 2322.125,
"text": " So he has this classic paper on the semantic notion of truth and what he basically is proof arguing in there is that you can't"
},
{
"end_time": 2371.903,
"index": 86,
"start_time": 2346.067,
"text": " . . ."
},
{
"end_time": 2406.681,
"index": 87,
"start_time": 2377.056,
"text": " Hold on. It just froze after you said Tarski had a wonderful paper about the semantic notion of truth. In which he, in some sense, it claims that truth, the semantic notion can't really be defined either. You can have a big, interesting theory of truth."
},
{
"end_time": 2437.5,
"index": 88,
"start_time": 2407.619,
"text": " that truth is baked into the very conditions of assertion, that when I assert anything, I'm asserting it's true. His example is the proposition, snow is white, is true if and only if snow is white. It sounds so prosaic, and in some sense that's what he's saying. Truth is prosaic, and that's why even if you want to"
},
{
"end_time": 2463.66,
"index": 89,
"start_time": 2437.705,
"text": " come up with some fancy notion of truth. I mean, even to understand your fancy, for us to understand your fancy notion of truth, we're just going to fall back on the old prosaic notion of truth, you know, which is just baked into the very conditions of being able to speak at all, and the very conditions of language. It's why we trust each other."
},
{
"end_time": 2492.875,
"index": 90,
"start_time": 2464.326,
"text": " When people say things, we know that to say, to put forth the proposition is to say it's true. I don't have to say, um, the proposition, um, I'm going to stick with Trump, right? The proposition that Trump is, you know, it was elected. Um, let's make it the proposition that Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 is true."
},
{
"end_time": 2520.026,
"index": 91,
"start_time": 2493.865,
"text": " All I have to say is, I don't have to say that, all I have to say is Trump lost the popular vote in 2016. I am already saying it's true. And that's more or less what, and that it's, you know, and it's tied up with meaning and it's tied up with the very conditions of language. And you just can't have any more interest. It's a deflationary view of semantic truth."
},
{
"end_time": 2540.503,
"index": 92,
"start_time": 2520.981,
"text": " This is very interesting because people have put forth all sorts of theories"
},
{
"end_time": 2566.749,
"index": 93,
"start_time": 2541.237,
"text": " It deflates all theories of truth just because truth is too basic. You can't have a theory of it. It's just baked into what we do the most fundamental thing that we do with language, which is to make assertions, right? To make an assertion is to say that that thing that you're asserting is true. And that's the most basic thing that we can say about truth. Okay. Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 2586.067,
"index": 94,
"start_time": 2566.988,
"text": " You don't have to talk about its correspondence to reality. You don't have to talk about its coherence with other things. You don't have to relativize. I'm sorry, I don't want to get bogged down in truth like Peter said. I only study correspondence, coherence, a minor amount, pragmatism, a minor amount."
},
{
"end_time": 2615.077,
"index": 95,
"start_time": 2586.664,
"text": " And deflationary, I know almost nothing about, but it sounded like when you were explaining a view, which is snow is white and it's true if snow is white or that particular snow is white. That sounds like a correspondence because you have a phrase and then you correspond to the external world. Is that not? Well, I mean, it's kind of like correspondence, but you don't have to... I just don't know. So please forgive my ignorance. Yeah. You don't have to reify states of... Hear that sound."
},
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"text": " That's the sweet sound of success with Shopify. Shopify is the all-encompassing commerce platform that's with you from the first flicker of an idea to the moment you realize you're running a global enterprise. Whether it's handcrafted jewelry or high-tech gadgets, Shopify supports you at every point of sale, both online and in person. They streamline the process with the internet's best converting checkout, making it 36% more effective than other leading platforms."
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"text": " There's also something called Shopify Magic, your AI-powered assistant that's like an all-star team member working tirelessly behind the scenes. What I find fascinating about Shopify is how it scales with your ambition. No matter how big you want to grow, Shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level. Join the ranks of businesses in 175 countries that have made Shopify the backbone."
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"text": " of their commerce. Shopify, by the way, powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States, including huge names like Allbirds, Rothies, and Brooklynin. If you ever need help, their award-winning support is like having a mentor that's just a click away. Now, are you ready to start your own success story? Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com"
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"end_time": 2716.527,
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"text": " There's, you know, that a proposition is true if and only if there's a state of affair that corresponds to it. It's just, it's really just pointing to, in a kind of Vickensteinian way,"
},
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"end_time": 2746.8,
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"start_time": 2717.039,
"text": " What is it that we do in the most fundamental language game that we play, which is to make assertions so that we can share information with one another? I mean, this is the very roots, the genealogy of language. Why did language develop among the species of apes? You know, it's because some people are in a better position of knowing certain facts than others. And we develop language so we can pool our knowledge, basically."
},
{
"end_time": 2767.841,
"index": 101,
"start_time": 2747.159,
"text": " So it sort of just comes right out of the very conditions in which the genealogical conditions in which language evolved. And it is that a proposition is true. To assert that this proposition is true is to assert the proposition itself."
},
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"text": " Razor blades are like diving boards. The longer the board, the more the wobble, the more the wobble, the more nicks, cuts, scrapes. A bad shave isn't a blade problem, it's an extension problem. Henson is a family-owned aerospace parts manufacturer that's made parts for the International Space Station and the Mars Rover."
},
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"text": " Now they're bringing that precision engineering to your shaving experience. By using aerospace-grade CNC machines, Henson makes razors that extend less than the thickness of a human hair. The razor also has built-in channels that evacuates hair and cream, which make clogging virtually impossible. Henson Shaving wants to produce the best razors, not the best razor business,"
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"text": " So that means no plastics, no subscriptions, no proprietary blades and no planned obsolescence. It's also extremely affordable. The Henson razor works with the standard dual edge blades that give you that old school shave with the benefits of this new school tech. It's time to say no to subscriptions and yes to a razor that'll last you a lifetime."
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},
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"end_time": 2877.91,
"index": 106,
"start_time": 2849.77,
"text": " Right, right. The most interesting thing you can say about truth. Now, the postmodernists would disagree with that, so I'm curious, what do you feel like is correct generally about their sentiments, and where do you disagree, and why? So I guess postmodernism is one of those terms that links together an awful lot, right, and so there is postmodernism in literature, for example, and I'm very, I like it."
},
{
"end_time": 2905.845,
"index": 107,
"start_time": 2878.2,
"text": " I find it interesting and there's, you know, you like it because it's interesting or you like it because you believe what it's saying is. No, I don't think so. Here's I think maybe in general what we mean by this term postmodernism wherever we apply it in intellectual domains where I think it's worthless or in artistic domains where I think, no, you can get some interesting art out of it, right? I think"
},
{
"end_time": 2933.814,
"index": 108,
"start_time": 2906.049,
"text": " In general, what postmodernism is about is, you know, there are certain conventions that govern these various domains. And postmodernism, and generally, they're invisible. You know, you do the domain and you don't think about the conventions that you're implying in doing this thing. So for example, you know, when a novelist tells a story,"
},
{
"end_time": 2963.456,
"index": 109,
"start_time": 2934.241,
"text": " You know, she's making it up and there are all sorts of conventions that pull in the readers and make the readers think to live this reality in the way that you have to live it in order for the novel to work. Well, what if, you know, the novelist calls attention to the fact that she is making this all up by putting herself into the story and so calling attention to the conventions."
},
{
"end_time": 2988.063,
"index": 110,
"start_time": 2963.865,
"text": " That can be cool. That can, you know, that can be cool. What you're referring to is self reflexivity. That's not all that postmodernism is. Philosophical postmodernism is summed up with skepticism of grand narratives. So in doing intellectual work, there are certain, you know, conventions of"
},
{
"end_time": 3012.073,
"index": 111,
"start_time": 2989.411,
"text": " of truth, right? I think Torsky, that's part of what Torsky is talking about there. And what if we, you know, call attention to those conventions themselves, showing up their conventionality and therefore giving reason to doubt. I mean, the same thing is true wherever we call attention to the conventions,"
},
{
"end_time": 3040.691,
"index": 112,
"start_time": 3012.875,
"text": " One does it to call it into the fact that these are conventional and therefore open to doubt. What would it be like to doubt them? What would it be like to produce art that doesn't play by those conventions? Well, what would it be like to produce intellectual work that doesn't play by the conventions of, say, truth and meaning and all of these things? And there, I think, because of what Tarski is saying about truth,"
},
{
"end_time": 3070.776,
"index": 113,
"start_time": 3041.664,
"text": " You end up with a nonsense, you know, to assert is to assert that what you're saying is true. To put forth a theory that calls into doubt the conventions of truth that are baked into the conventions of assertion is nonsense. I'm going to have to believe what you're saying about truth using the old prosaic notion of"
},
{
"end_time": 3093.2,
"index": 114,
"start_time": 3073.695,
"text": " Is this something like I have a movie called Better Left Unsaid which is about when does the left go too far and I'm not saying that because I'm right-wing or"
},
{
"end_time": 3123.08,
"index": 115,
"start_time": 3093.695,
"text": " or center or alt-right. It's just because people like Pinker, who considers himself to be on the left, also see that there's an extreme left and they want to delineate themselves. So it's pretty much about delineation. In it, I found that Habermas, who's a social constructionist, which is extremely interesting, I thought he would just agree with the postmodernist, he critiqued the postmodernist by saying, you can't have these true statements. I mean, these two statements, which is, while you have two different truths, truth sub one is, truth is what"
},
{
"end_time": 3155.606,
"index": 116,
"start_time": 3127.142,
"text": " I forgot it but it but whatever it's the truth exists and then truth sub two is truth is whatever i say yeah that's right that's the social constructionist theory of truth but truth sub two depends on truth sub one so it's essentially saying there is no truth but that statement itself is a truthful statement at least you're asserting it is that what you're saying yeah more or less yeah yeah absolutely yeah yeah i mean if you um if these things are just making"
},
{
"end_time": 3181.357,
"index": 117,
"start_time": 3155.845,
"text": " And this is, again, I think this is the hashing out of the... What if they said this? What if they put an asterisk? There is no truth except this one. Well, what reason would I have? Why would I ever put that there, you know? So, and I'm sure, so there is, I mean, there is no truth"
},
{
"end_time": 3212.602,
"index": 118,
"start_time": 3182.739,
"text": " except this one. I mean, that there is no truth except this one. I'm sure you could generate other statements from that, you know, that that would also have to be true there. I mean, there's there's no way that you could restrict that to simply that. I see. I see. I see. What about the power play that comes hand in hand with, you know, it's also groups reign for dominance. Yeah. So without truth, look, I, we are,"
},
{
"end_time": 3243.302,
"index": 119,
"start_time": 3213.865,
"text": " We are, hmm, we're no angels. This species of ours, we've got better angels. We are no angels, right? And we are, we need something to rein us in. And I think it's one of our saving graces that we, we basically do recognize, truth, we recognize, almost everybody recognizes"
},
{
"end_time": 3271.254,
"index": 120,
"start_time": 3243.865,
"text": " that contradictions can't be true. I mean, thank goodness this is true because this is part of the way that we've made progress. I think this is one of the things that we would like to talk about how we've made progress. But you know, a lot of where we were self-serving creatures, where we're serving of our kin, of our tribe and all of these things, all of this is part of what we bring to the game, right?"
},
{
"end_time": 3299.889,
"index": 121,
"start_time": 3271.442,
"text": " How have we made any progress? Well, part of it is that, you know, when people show us implications of our various beliefs and show that they lead to contradictions, which is what Habermas and I would say about this theory of truth, needs to contradictions, most people, you know, the species of apes,"
},
{
"end_time": 3329.462,
"index": 122,
"start_time": 3300.572,
"text": " understands that contradictions can be true and you go back and you look at your premises and you see where the contradiction is arising and you give up something and we've a lot of progress has been made in this way you know or i mean science itself you know your your your theory makes a prediction the prediction is falsified i go back what's wrong with my theory i mean all of this scientific progress"
},
{
"end_time": 3360.026,
"index": 123,
"start_time": 3330.043,
"text": " moral progress, political progress. All of this has been made because we recognize fundamentally something about truth, right? Without that to rein us in, it's raw power. It's my group gaining dominance against your group. This is the very opposite"
},
{
"end_time": 3384.531,
"index": 124,
"start_time": 3361.493,
"text": " of progress, right? This is a world of, you know... So without a shared notion of truth, it's conflict. It's nothing but power. And you know, that theory of truth that should not, according to Tarski, that I take very seriously, should not exist, according to this postmodern theory of truth,"
},
{
"end_time": 3412.671,
"index": 125,
"start_time": 3385.043,
"text": " They come right out and say, yeah, without truth, it's one dominant group, you know, against the other. Tarski said that? No, that's where you end up. I see, I see, I see. See, some people that I was talking to say that what we need in this culture is more dialogue, but dialogue is predicated on a shared notion of truth. Because if you don't have that, then how do you know that you're making progress in the dialogue? What's the point of talking to someone?"
},
{
"end_time": 3441.169,
"index": 126,
"start_time": 3412.91,
"text": " Exactly, exactly. I mean, dialogue is so important because some of our most efficacious or operative presumptions are invisible to us. They're so deep down in us that they're quite invisible to us. And often, yes, we've gotten them from our group, from our culture and all of these things. So it's extremely important to talk to people"
},
{
"end_time": 3468.473,
"index": 127,
"start_time": 3441.408,
"text": " who may not share those presumptions because they're coming from maybe, you know, different circumstances. I can't tell you how the dialogue has changed since I entered philosophy and was always the only woman in the room. And now how it has changed because certain presumptions just weren't"
},
{
"end_time": 3494.531,
"index": 128,
"start_time": 3468.831,
"text": " apparent to people until, for example, that there is something I think it's really changed. There are certain ethical dilemmas that arise within families and you know, and who do you owe your allegiance to that are have been really strengthened"
},
{
"end_time": 3522.637,
"index": 129,
"start_time": 3494.735,
"text": " by women entering into the conversation because women, you know, are often pulled in very many directions and have, you know, family obligations or feel family obligations in a way sometimes men don't, right, for probably good evolutionary reasons. That's a politically important thing to say. Anyway, so it's changed the dialogue."
},
{
"end_time": 3553.268,
"index": 130,
"start_time": 3523.268,
"text": " So speaking about progress, are you of the mind that we all pretty much want the same thing, we just disagree on how to get there and what we need to do is use rationality and reason to progress forward? Or just abandon what I said? I don't think we all want the same things. I think there are many people who want their group, their tribe, however they define it, to win at all costs."
},
{
"end_time": 3581.834,
"index": 131,
"start_time": 3553.66,
"text": " and they will sacrifice the truth entirely to get what they want. And no, I don't think we all want, I think without the taming respect for the truth, yeah, that's what it descends to. But I think that an awful lot of, no, I really don't, I think that there are still many, many people who"
},
{
"end_time": 3605.111,
"index": 132,
"start_time": 3582.227,
"text": " See, for me, ideology means, to me, the word ideology is something negative. I think you use it somewhat differently than I do. I try to not use the term just because it's ill-defined. Many people mean different things, but I just used it when I was speaking about you and Pinker because I thought you might latch on to that word. Yeah, I mean, to me, it's negative."
},
{
"end_time": 3625.162,
"index": 133,
"start_time": 3605.35,
"text": " word, it's a kind of sacred truth thing, you know, that there are certain truths that I'm just not going to ever give up, even if they're empirically dogmatism, you know, even if they're dogmatism. Is it different than dogmatism in your in your eyes?"
},
{
"end_time": 3655.043,
"index": 134,
"start_time": 3626.288,
"text": " different than dogmatism. It's almost the same thing, except that it's like a theory. It's a whole cluster of interlaced groups of truths or claims of truths, often politically motivated. I see. Why don't we define for the audience what you see as rationality and then progress?"
},
{
"end_time": 3684.889,
"index": 135,
"start_time": 3656.51,
"text": " Okay. Well, what I see of rationality is one tremendous respect for the truth, right? It's a sort of attitude towards the truth. It is a recognition of our own fallibility. I don't think you can be rational without recognizing our weakness, having that kind of"
},
{
"end_time": 3714.65,
"index": 136,
"start_time": 3685.589,
"text": " epistemic modesty, right? And not only recognizing this about one's species, which is very, very easy, but about oneself. And so developing self-critical attitudes towards one's belief and being willing to do everything you can to challenge those beliefs, which often involves talking to people who don't believe"
},
{
"end_time": 3741.015,
"index": 137,
"start_time": 3715.077,
"text": " as you do. I have changed my beliefs radically in my lifetime, often at great personal cost, right? I was born into a extremely religious family and I don't have those beliefs anymore. And that is something I didn't want to differ from my family. This was not a rebellion."
},
{
"end_time": 3770.606,
"index": 138,
"start_time": 3741.51,
"text": " against my family and I am still extremely close to my family. Um, but it was, you know, an impossibility to believe in the way that I had been taught to believe. And it is, um, you know, I think that that is, you know, part of, yeah, maybe I'll change my mind someday. It's always open. This is always open. I've changed my mind about many, many things, but that was probably"
},
{
"end_time": 3796.459,
"index": 139,
"start_time": 3771.101,
"text": " you know, the deepest one, the one that cost me the most, um, and cost other people the most. So, yeah, I mean, so yeah, that, that, this to me, this attitude towards truth, towards our own fallibility, our own epistemic modesty, um, this is what I, what I consider to be a rationality."
},
{
"end_time": 3823.183,
"index": 140,
"start_time": 3797.875,
"text": " Okay, you just said maybe I'll change my mind about that and that's a view that you hold for or you hope that you hold for all your beliefs. Now what about... See, to me that would lead to nihilism and I would like to know why you think it doesn't or maybe you think now nihilism is salutary or at least not non-salutary, but either way"
},
{
"end_time": 3851.305,
"index": 141,
"start_time": 3823.541,
"text": " what about saying that what happened in the Holocaust was great? Would you change your mind about? Yeah. And if someone said that and no, well, you hold the belief that it was horrible. And then someone said, well, aren't you willing to change your mind about anything? Are you willing to change your mind about that? I would hear their arguments. Yes, I would hear their, their arguments. Um, and, uh, I believe I could knock them down quite easily. Um, but yes, I would,"
},
{
"end_time": 3879.718,
"index": 142,
"start_time": 3852.159,
"text": " I would engage in a dialogue. I engage in dialogues with people who... Okay, how about this? Well, you have a self-correcting... Can I just say one thing? Yes. As Descartes actually showed us in his first meditation, we don't have to... In being open to everything and using radical methods of doubt and all of that,"
},
{
"end_time": 3910.009,
"index": 143,
"start_time": 3880.094,
"text": " We don't have to go through every belief one by one. I mean, there are an infinite number of beliefs that we have. Just looking out at the situation, I'm flooded with all sorts of beliefs about what things are existing right now in my vicinity and what conditions they're in. But there are beliefs that sort of are all joined together. So for example, so I have a view about the basis of morality, what makes propositions true."
},
{
"end_time": 3940.043,
"index": 144,
"start_time": 3910.299,
"text": " I'm open, very, very open to people arguing with me about that. A consequence of my belief is that the Holocaust was an abomination. And, you know, so somebody would have to so fundamentally attack my view as to moral truths as to, you know, in such a fundamental way that the Holocaust being a good thing for humanity. Look, and you know what?"
},
{
"end_time": 3970.828,
"index": 145,
"start_time": 3940.828,
"text": " You know what, if you really don't believe, if you think that all that matters is dominance, you know, of one group, and you want to make your group as strong as possible, right, because that's all there is really, that's all that's left when you do away with truth, well, scapegoating is an extremely effective method of causing coherence"
},
{
"end_time": 4000.708,
"index": 146,
"start_time": 3971.152,
"text": " in your group, you know, when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in the 15th and 16th century wanted, having reconquered Spain from the Ottoman Empire, wanted to unify it. What did they do? They picked on the Jews, right? They expelled the Jews. This was a very effective means of unifying and giving a national identity"
},
{
"end_time": 4030.896,
"index": 147,
"start_time": 4001.135,
"text": " because of religious identity to their country. So, you know, if I would say it's this view of, you know, all there is is power and dominance and dog-eat-dog, that's going to lead to, you know, you could actually try to argue that the Holocaust was a good thing, right? It unified the German nation, right? Just the way expelling the Jews and, you know,"
},
{
"end_time": 4059.701,
"index": 148,
"start_time": 4031.698,
"text": " unified Spain. So I don't think, you know, I think there is, I think there, I think hold it, taking truth so seriously that you're always willing to look at arguments that, you know, against your premises and looking at the consequences of that. I don't think this leads to nihilism. Nihilism is the view that, you know, there is no truth, right? It is all power."
},
{
"end_time": 4089.241,
"index": 149,
"start_time": 4060.452,
"text": " See, I'm always skeptical, because I saw it in myself, of"
},
{
"end_time": 4116.988,
"index": 150,
"start_time": 4090.009,
"text": " of people who say, I'm willing to change my mind about virtually anything. So please let me play devil's advocate just for a second. Even if you say, well, I'm willing to change my mind about, let's, let's take a more prosaic example about littering. Okay. I'm willing to change my mind about littering, that littering, littering is actually great. Littering, littering, like throwing garbage on the ground. Okay. So whatever the example is,"
},
{
"end_time": 4146.817,
"index": 151,
"start_time": 4117.483,
"text": " you have one view and then someone gives you a convincing argument and you want to change and then so you change your mind now that means you have an updating mechanism like you have some way of changing from belief a to belief b do you doubt that updating mechanism and then if you were to doubt that then that means that you change your belief based on something else so what is at the top and then why don't you doubt that because that would just lead to an infinite regress do you understand what i'm saying or should i just"
},
{
"end_time": 4176.817,
"index": 152,
"start_time": 4147.193,
"text": " Sure. I mean, I think we use the same mechanisms. We're applying the same sort of mechanisms. It's not a different mechanism for every belief. It's the same cognitive mechanism that we're applying for all of these things. You know, we first of all, you know, literate, littering, just like the Holocaust, you know, is not, you know, what you release about it or not. That's the first time the sentence is literally just like the Holocaust."
},
{
"end_time": 4202.039,
"index": 153,
"start_time": 4178.524,
"text": " Oh, dear. You probably hear that that is. That's all right. That's all right. Let's get to let's get to. Okay, let's get to the Jordan Peterson. Okay. Yeah, right. What did you what did you want to ask Jordan? What did you want to respond to Jordan Peterson that you didn't get to the chance to respond to him with"
},
{
"end_time": 4225.845,
"index": 154,
"start_time": 4202.432,
"text": " And what did you think about that whole debate with William Craig? Yeah. Oh, well, it surprised me very much. I don't debate people. I dialogue. I hate debates. You can understand. This is my whole approach. I don't enter into these things trying to win. You know, I mean, that's what it is. And"
},
{
"end_time": 4251.459,
"index": 155,
"start_time": 4226.254,
"text": " Want to know what are your reasons? I want to ponder them. I want to. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let me rephrase it. I know the title on the video. I believe it said debate. When I watched it, I felt like it was more just people conversing and asking each other questions. I don't know if you thought it was a debate, but it doesn't matter. What did you think of it? Okay. Um, so I had never heard of"
},
{
"end_time": 4280.009,
"index": 156,
"start_time": 4253.285,
"text": " either of them. And it was, it was sort of when I was asked to do this thing, it was like, we want three different views on the meaning of life. And so, and so, you know, I gave a sort of secularist, naturalist view about, you know, because it's often said, and in fact, was said by that other person who wasn't Peterson, whose name I can't remember. William. What was his name? William. William. Yes."
},
{
"end_time": 4300.282,
"index": 157,
"start_time": 4281.032,
"text": " said something like, yeah, that, you know, if you don't believe in God, you can't have a meaningful or moral or purposeful life. You know, and so it's a pretty awful thing to say to somebody actually. But yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 4330.674,
"index": 158,
"start_time": 4301.561,
"text": " So I've heard that kind of thing before, but anyway, yeah, so I was interested in presenting. Yeah, no, you can't. I hadn't realized that the place that I was speaking at was actually a theological. Well, it was the University of Toronto, so I was sort of very surprised by the audience. They had a home base advantage. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, and so, yeah, really surprised by it."
},
{
"end_time": 4360.299,
"index": 159,
"start_time": 4331.135,
"text": " Um, I had never heard of Jordan Peterson either. Um, I think he had, he was just coming into sort of notoriety because standing up to, for, he would, he wouldn't be dictated to about, um, personal pronouns or, you know, something. Right. And in the Kathy Newman video that exploded him. Yes, right. And it just happened, you know, and I, I never know about these things. I'm thinking about girls in completeness in the arms or something completely unrelated."
},
{
"end_time": 4389.582,
"index": 160,
"start_time": 4360.606,
"text": " So, um, so I was just really surprised. And then, you know, so we started talking and I was just trying to make sense what he was saying. I mean, because there was this whole long thing about suffering is the meaning of life. And it's like, I was just trying to understand what that meant. And it seemed to just come down to his belief, an empirical belief, you know, that, you know, terrible suffering can happen in life. That's,"
},
{
"end_time": 4420.435,
"index": 161,
"start_time": 4390.623,
"text": " undeniable, and maybe even the stronger belief, which I don't know is true or not. Again, it's an empirical belief that suffering, terrible suffering has to happen in life, you know, that I mean, I think that's what he was meaning by saying that it was the meaning of life and that we need something very strong to make us feel that life is nevertheless worth"
},
{
"end_time": 4449.684,
"index": 162,
"start_time": 4420.52,
"text": " living and that um he so there was that that you know that suffering is unavoidable perhaps he was saying and um that's what he meant by saying it was the meaning of life and um that uh we need something and rationality won't do thinking won't do don't overthink it i remember he said that people love to hear that"
},
{
"end_time": 4479.872,
"index": 163,
"start_time": 4450.367,
"text": " You know, people have to hear that. Go with the emotions. Go with what you know. And that's also what he was saying, that there is this kind of transcendence, this experience of transcendence when you feel yourself or know yourself to be something more than human. Human is suffering, but you know, you feel, you know, what is transcendence supposed to mean? And, you know, something takes you beyond, you're beyond the humans,"
},
{
"end_time": 4508.029,
"index": 164,
"start_time": 4480.35,
"text": " And it's not an intellectual thing. It reveals itself. These were the things I think that he was saying. That's what I was able to get out of that. I haven't read him since or listened to him since, but that's what I was able to get out in the moment of what he was saying. Right. Not to be Peterson or speak for him. I think what he meant when it comes to the meaning in life and the relationship to suffering is you can take meaning to mean"
},
{
"end_time": 4536.886,
"index": 165,
"start_time": 4509.189,
"text": " Either affect, so sensory data has a meaning, or implication for behavior. So this means something because it means, oh, there you go, because it means you can quench your thirst. And suffering is that. So suffering is a meaning of life. So when someone says there's no meaning in life, well, you do have a meaning. It's just negative. What you're truly asking is, is there a positive meaning to offset the negative? Okay. I mean, basically the same thing, you know, that is, um,"
},
{
"end_time": 4562.739,
"index": 166,
"start_time": 4537.91,
"text": " Oh, but the thing that I really disagree, disagree with is, look, he started out by talking about a really extreme case of suffering. Fortunately, most of us do not have to go through, you know, a child suffering in Auschwitz. I come from a family that was destroyed by that."
},
{
"end_time": 4592.398,
"index": 167,
"start_time": 4563.439,
"text": " My Hungarian Jewish family was destroyed by that. So I grew up on these stories. I lived these stories. I heard them. Right. You said you were named after children who died. Yes. Every child in my generation and next generation was named after this very large family that was wiped out. So I am very... And I think maybe this has motivated me my entire life."
},
{
"end_time": 4620.333,
"index": 168,
"start_time": 4593.695,
"text": " How does this happen? How does this happen? How does this happen in a civilized culture like German culture? My family revered German culture as so many educated Jews did, right? And so how can this happen? Genocide. Just one second. I'm sorry."
},
{
"end_time": 4650.265,
"index": 169,
"start_time": 4620.674,
"text": " I'm sorry, my my headphones just died. So I'm gonna have to take them off and listen to you from the speaker. Speaker. Because I value your time. You're a wonderful person. Thank you so much. Great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. So where were we? Okay, let me just let me just ask. I'll just make it a segue. Okay, so you were saying"
},
{
"end_time": 4679.565,
"index": 170,
"start_time": 4650.913,
"text": " You were talking about how you felt about the Peterson debate and you said, I think we just left off there. Yes. So, okay. So yeah, this conversation or whatever you want to label it. This transcendent kind of experience that just sort of reveals itself when you feel, you know, you're, you're, you are in touch with something transcendent that makes you transcendent, you know, that there's, you're, you're larger than life, something more."
},
{
"end_time": 4709.531,
"index": 171,
"start_time": 4680.077,
"text": " than people who don't have this experience. This is, look, it's a very intoxicating feeling. I'm extremely wary of it. That because, you know, I think that in fact that that is partly, that that is a mechanism that can go very wrong, morally wrong, and people who"
},
{
"end_time": 4738.985,
"index": 172,
"start_time": 4710.538,
"text": " not to put, to find a point in it, the Nazis preach just such a thing. When you were at these, at these rallies and you were part of this, um, you know, greater, greater than, you know, the destiny of the German people, you know, and it's, it was just self revealing. And it says, you know, was such a powerful feeling. It's a kind of religious feeling. I mean, religion has, can have that as well. When you,"
},
{
"end_time": 4767.756,
"index": 173,
"start_time": 4739.428,
"text": " Feel yourself chosen by God or God is with you. You know, it is just a sort of self revelatory feeling. I mean, sometimes it can be in self lifting and you're an overmatch. You're more than human. I hate anything that makes us more than human. I'm very wary of it. I know it's enchantments. I know it's intoxications. I think human is enough."
},
{
"end_time": 4797.568,
"index": 174,
"start_time": 4768.456,
"text": " really human enough understanding your humanity and the humanity of everybody else and how the same we are. That's a much safer way to feel and there's nothing grandiose, there's nothing self deceptive about it. So anyway, I"
},
{
"end_time": 4825.333,
"index": 175,
"start_time": 4798.592,
"text": " I, all of my alarms were going off between these two people, between these two men, both of whom, no, I think Craig realized that I was one, nevermind, I would not even go there. But, um, but, um, I don't have, I don't have"
},
{
"end_time": 4853.848,
"index": 176,
"start_time": 4827.193,
"text": " really sound grounds to me. So, um, but, um, you know, on the one side, you know, somebody saying, you know, believe it's I do or your life is you can't even be a moral creature. You know, you can have no meaning. You can't have no purpose. And, um, on the other side, this sort of like, you know, self, you know, this transcendence that reveals itself and,"
},
{
"end_time": 4882.756,
"index": 177,
"start_time": 4854.155,
"text": " And it reveals itself and the experience itself. So if somebody tries to talk you out of it or something and said, look, this is taking you in a wrong place. No, it is self-proving, self-authenticating. This is anti-rational and this is for me, danger. So both of these people, all my alarms were going off. Ah, this is precisely, these are the things I don't believe in."
},
{
"end_time": 4911.715,
"index": 178,
"start_time": 4883.063,
"text": " Um, and I, and I see dangers in both of these sorts of things. I see suffering, suffering coming, uh, from, from trusting your feelings of self-transcendence or danger coming from thinking here, this way is morality. Other people can't be moral, right? Which makes them less than human. So either be more than human or you're less than human. Okay."
},
{
"end_time": 4935.333,
"index": 179,
"start_time": 4912.022,
"text": " I think I've said enough, I don't believe, this goes against everything I believe in. I see, I see. Now, with respect to morality, are you more of the Sam Harris type that would say that we can derive morality from something objective or scientific or fact-based?"
},
{
"end_time": 4965.282,
"index": 180,
"start_time": 4936.34,
"text": " I am more with Harris than not. That is, I believe, morality is objective. Yes, I do. I don't think it is the same thing as science. I don't think that, and I'm not a utilitarian, as a matter of fact. I don't hold by that theory of morality. I think that perhaps Sam, I haven't discussed this with him. I would like to discuss it with him more."
},
{
"end_time": 4995.026,
"index": 181,
"start_time": 4965.674,
"text": " is too hasty to go from morality has to do with human well-being to utilitarianism, right? That there are other alternatives, not where you dismiss human well-being. I think he says about Rawls, a Kantian theory that I take quite seriously, that it's us."
},
{
"end_time": 5022.602,
"index": 182,
"start_time": 4995.435,
"text": " It's separate from, it doesn't think of human well-being. This is not true. This is certainly not true. But it does, you know, there are other alternatives. You can think that morality is objective, that it has to do with human flourishing, flourishing of all, and not being a utilitarian. And there are tremendous problems with utilitarianism."
},
{
"end_time": 5052.534,
"index": 183,
"start_time": 5023.063,
"text": " I do think there's a way of deriving, you know, ethics and the fundamental fact of ethics, which is the equitable distribution of mattering over all humans, which is not to say that only humans matter, but it is to say that all humans matter, right? Other things matter, too. Other sentient creatures matter, too. The planet matters. Works of art matter. All sorts of things matter that aren't humans, but that"
},
{
"end_time": 5082.039,
"index": 184,
"start_time": 5052.773,
"text": " all humans do matter and that's where we get into some of the problems with utilitarianism. You know, can you sacrifice an innocent if it's going to be good for the, you know, in general, if it's going to maximize wellbeing for everybody or there's some things that just can't, you know, it's a fundamental fact of everybody's matter in the way that we know ourselves to matter and certainly the ones who that we love matter. Um,"
},
{
"end_time": 5111.22,
"index": 185,
"start_time": 5082.534,
"text": " then we run into certain problems with utilitarianism. But so anyway, that's basically all I would say. I'd say moral theory is very, very difficult. How does, how is it, how are morals objective? Like how does one make an objective case for morality? Okay. Um, there are certain fundamental justificatory principles that we use."
},
{
"end_time": 5141.681,
"index": 186,
"start_time": 5112.022,
"text": " in logic, in the rules of deduction, in empirical thinking, the rules of induction and abduction that give us the concepts of evidence, right, in deduction that gives us the concepts of proving things, you know, of logical consequence, and also in practical reason, right, in"
},
{
"end_time": 5170.401,
"index": 187,
"start_time": 5142.039,
"text": " in pursuing our lives. And we cannot justify, this is a kind of Kantian argument, we cannot justify any of these justificatory principles because they are the means by which we justify in these various fields. If I try to prove logic, I'm going to have to use logic. It's going to be circular."
},
{
"end_time": 5199.224,
"index": 188,
"start_time": 5172.056,
"text": " That's where Descartes got himself into the famous Cartesian circle. David Hume, great enlightenment thinker, showed us that empirical reasoning, you know, just thinking that the universe is lawlike and so using certain observable things as evidence for these laws on the basis of which we make predictions."
},
{
"end_time": 5229.377,
"index": 189,
"start_time": 5199.718,
"text": " which we use in both induction and abduction, inference to the best explanation. That presumption that underlies all of this scientific reasoning cannot itself be justified because you can't justify it through deductive reasoning and you can't use empirical reasoning because empirical reasoning presumes"
},
{
"end_time": 5258.08,
"index": 190,
"start_time": 5230.145,
"text": " the nomological nature, you know, that nature is lawlike, you know, that there are laws, right? So if we find an anomaly, if Newtonian physics doesn't accord with our observations, we don't say, oh, well, maybe nature is just not lawlike. No, we go back and we fix our approximation of what the laws of nature are. These, so, you know, in all of our reasoning, in logic, in empirical reasoning,"
},
{
"end_time": 5283.985,
"index": 191,
"start_time": 5258.507,
"text": " we, there are certain things, look, we, these are the principles that we're using and we can't pursue a coherent life without using them. Right. In practical reason as well. I cannot pursue my life without thinking, you know, that I matter, you know, that my pain matters, you know, that if I'm"
},
{
"end_time": 5311.681,
"index": 192,
"start_time": 5284.718,
"text": " so you know it's if um i put my hand on a hot radiator and it hurts i've got reason right to remove it or i you know if something's going to be good for me in the future you know then i launch my plans and try to get there you know and and then and then all of my emotions as well you know it are all wrapped up you know when i feel frustrated or happy or gratified or"
},
{
"end_time": 5319.923,
"index": 193,
"start_time": 5312.346,
"text": " I'm hopeful or fearful or anything. All of this is all presuming, you know, my life matters. Hear that sound?"
},
{
"end_time": 5346.988,
"index": 194,
"start_time": 5320.845,
"text": " That's the sweet sound of success with Shopify. Shopify is the all-encompassing commerce platform that's with you from the first flicker of an idea to the moment you realize you're running a global enterprise. Whether it's handcrafted jewelry or high-tech gadgets, Shopify supports you at every point of sale, both online and in person. They streamline the process with the internet's best converting checkout, making it 36% more effective than other leading platforms."
},
{
"end_time": 5373.029,
"index": 195,
"start_time": 5346.988,
"text": " There's also something called Shopify Magic, your AI-powered assistant that's like an all-star team member working tirelessly behind the scenes. What I find fascinating about Shopify is how it scales with your ambition. No matter how big you want to grow, Shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level. Join the ranks of businesses in 175 countries that have made Shopify the backbone."
},
{
"end_time": 5398.848,
"index": 196,
"start_time": 5373.029,
"text": " of their commerce. Shopify, by the way, powers 10% of all e-commerce in the United States, including huge names like Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklyn. If you ever need help, their award-winning support is like having a mentor that's just a click away. Now, are you ready to start your own success story? Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash theories, all lowercase."
},
{
"end_time": 5427.039,
"index": 197,
"start_time": 5398.848,
"text": " Go to Shopify.com slash theories now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in Shopify.com slash theories. You know, in some sense, I can step outside of my life and say, yeah, does it really matter? Um, you know, maybe I'll decide it doesn't. And then I'm going to go into some sort of nihilistic funk because my mattering matters to me so much that even thinking that I don't matter,"
},
{
"end_time": 5453.951,
"index": 198,
"start_time": 5428.49,
"text": " you know, is going to, you know, get me into a funk, you know, because that itself is a testament to how much, you know, we, all our lives matter to us. We can't pursue them without that sort of the kind of justificatory mechanism that we use in pursuing our lives. We can't coherently pursue our lives just as without logic, without empirical reasoning. We can't,"
},
{
"end_time": 5480.043,
"index": 199,
"start_time": 5454.821,
"text": " I think you might think, well, what is it about me that makes me matter so much? I mean, it can't possibly be that I'm just me because everybody else feels the same way about them. Well, maybe it's because I belong to the right people, the right country, the right this. You talk to enough people who maybe have the right race, the right complexion, right?"
},
{
"end_time": 5501.067,
"index": 200,
"start_time": 5480.606,
"text": " Well, you know, slowly, slowly, those ideas have been knocked down, right? That's progress, right? And, you know, basically what you come into, look, I can't pursue my life without just the presumption that I matter. Same as everybody else, right? And so whatever"
},
{
"end_time": 5528.183,
"index": 201,
"start_time": 5501.288,
"text": " Whatever mattering I do have or don't have, it's equally distributed. That to me sounds more of a pragmatic approach. That is, I can't pursue my life if I don't have this as a grounding, as a justification, which I can't justify. But what does that say about the truth? It's in the same category with logic and empirical reasoning."
},
{
"end_time": 5558.899,
"index": 202,
"start_time": 5530.35,
"text": " I can't justify logic, right, without presuming logic. I can't justify empirically, you know, are we going to stop doing science? Are we going to stop believing in causality and evidence and law likeness? I mean, these are fundamental, you know, to what it is to pursue a coherent life. It's the best we can do. However, you did say earlier you're willing to change your mind about anything. That means nothing is sacred."
},
{
"end_time": 5584.838,
"index": 203,
"start_time": 5559.241,
"text": " I can't think myself outside the very mechanisms of thinking. If somebody can give me an alternate to logic that would require me to use logic in order to apply this alternate logic, which is, by the way, the great lesson of Lewis Carroll's"
},
{
"end_time": 5612.671,
"index": 204,
"start_time": 5585.589,
"text": " brilliant essay, what the tortoise and the hare are, right? Alternate logics won't work because we have to use our logic in order to apply that new logic. If these are the very mechanisms by which homo sapiens think, nobody is going to be able to get me to think outside them. They can get me to see, ah, I'm just"
},
{
"end_time": 5631.374,
"index": 205,
"start_time": 5613.37,
"text": " That's the basics. That's how we think. That's how we can pursue our lives without this. That's a kind of justification. We're entitled to anything that we need just in order to be able to pursue a coherent life at all."
},
{
"end_time": 5661.578,
"index": 206,
"start_time": 5631.749,
"text": " I agree to some degree, but I'm just playing devil's advocate. So what if someone says the skeptic that maybe even the suicidal skeptic is like my life doesn't matter. And now you say, well, it matters because I'm, I'm self questioning, but that's not what I mean when I say matters. I mean, doesn't matter enough that I should go on or doesn't matter enough that pain should be stopped from"
},
{
"end_time": 5692.022,
"index": 207,
"start_time": 5662.227,
"text": " self-inflicted pain or me inflicting pain on others. Maybe, you know, it can happen that, you know, your life matters so much to you and your own suffering matters so much to you that you, you know, decide not to continue it, you know, if life is kind of that. And at the same time, so not everything can be taken off the rails, but mattering too much is narcissism and that can lead you to want to, you know, if you read the diaries of people who are serial killers, they're"
},
{
"end_time": 5722.193,
"index": 208,
"start_time": 5692.875,
"text": " They're egotists most of the time. Exactly. So the real thing to do, and you know, and so can this whole thing of, you know, self-transcendence and becoming an Uber mansion, you know, I think that this can also lead you to thinking and has in the history and the sad history of humanity has often led to, yeah, to atrocities. Yeah, I'm still trying to find the connection. This is a way of arguing"
},
{
"end_time": 5750.452,
"index": 209,
"start_time": 5722.483,
"text": " that would say, look, the very mechanisms that we all have in thinking about our own lives, and even in deciding sometimes to give up our lives for a cause or something, you know, that certainly happens, right? This doesn't entail that one... Sometimes the very reason you have to live can be a reason to die, Socrates,"
},
{
"end_time": 5780.162,
"index": 210,
"start_time": 5751.152,
"text": " demonstrating that to us in the very dawn of philosophy. So it's not an argument that, you know, life above all. But it is that none of us can matter any more than any others, just as you can't have all, you know, that this is the principles that we all have in just pursuing our lives or sometimes in deciding that our lives should not be pursued any further. But, you know, that we are invested."
},
{
"end_time": 5810.333,
"index": 211,
"start_time": 5780.503,
"text": " In our life, there's a wonderful article by Tom Nagel called The Absurd. The philosopher Tom Nagel happened to have been my dissertation advisor, although I did totally different things than this. But it's called The Absurd and it's sort of about this gap, you know, when we're in our lives, we have to pursue our lives, right? I mean, we have to, our whole emotional apparatus is"
},
{
"end_time": 5838.899,
"index": 212,
"start_time": 5810.913,
"text": " all giving us feedback and how well this life of mine is going. You know, sometimes lives can go pretty terribly and people may actually even want to exit them. That's not the point. But the point is, you know, that we pursue our lives. I mean, who else's life are you going to pursue if not your own? There is a certain commitment to"
},
{
"end_time": 5869.172,
"index": 213,
"start_time": 5839.241,
"text": " this life. And then when you think about it, well, what justifies it? The only thing that can justify it are the kinds of grounds that would justify everybody's life to themselves. Everybody takes their lives seriously. That's enough. That's enough. That's enough to tell you that slavery is wrong, right? Those slaves' lives mattered as much to them as my life matters to me. The lives of their children mattered much to them. All of it was there. Everything that's there"
},
{
"end_time": 5899.326,
"index": 214,
"start_time": 5869.565,
"text": " When I introspect about my life, that makes me know how much matters was there for them, right? That richness. And so that is, you know, to actually just come to terms with what, what we are just in being human. That's why I say being human is enough. I mean, if we can really understand the full implications of that, that would be enough, right? This would be a good world, a better world. You know, once all, it wouldn't,"
},
{
"end_time": 5928.336,
"index": 215,
"start_time": 5899.804,
"text": " cure coronavirus, but it would tell us how important the cure is for everybody, right? Not, not more important for the rich, you can escape it or for, you know, in this country, there's anyway. Okay, to wrap up, you just use the word better, which implies progress. However, not every culture would obviously not every culture would believe that slavery is wrong for certain types of people, even within your own race."
},
{
"end_time": 5957.534,
"index": 216,
"start_time": 5928.814,
"text": " Does that mean that progress is incompatible with multiculturalism? Yeah. Well, multiculturalism means not only, you know, different morality, different moralities in that sense, you know, that one doesn't accept the mattering, the equal mattering of all human beings. If that's an objective fact, which I think"
},
{
"end_time": 5972.398,
"index": 217,
"start_time": 5957.944,
"text": " It is, I think that's an objective fact, you know, that just comes out of how we practically reason in our own case and then have to universalize it to others. If that's an objective fact, yeah, they're making a huge mistake."
},
{
"end_time": 6002.193,
"index": 218,
"start_time": 5973.183,
"text": " Does that mean that we can rank order cultures in terms of which ones are more progressive? And then if so, like this is extremely, I'm not trying to put a gotcha on you, but then if so, would you say that the West has the most progressive cultures? Well, it depends what you mean by progressive. Look, do I think that a culture that doesn't believe in genocide is"
},
{
"end_time": 6029.019,
"index": 219,
"start_time": 6002.671,
"text": " is morally superior to one that does believe in genocide? Yes, of course I do. I mean, that's what it is to believe in the objectivity of morality. So, I mean, as soon as you say, you know, you commit yourself to the objectivity of morality, which I put on the, yes, which I rank with the objectivity of logic and of empirical reasoning."
},
{
"end_time": 6058.916,
"index": 220,
"start_time": 6029.309,
"text": " Yeah, of course you're going to say that certain cultures got things terribly wrong. Yes. And slave cultures get things terribly wrong. Even if, let's just do a thought experiment in this culture that said that genocide is great. They killed all the rest of people who thought that genocide wasn't great. And now going back to your argument about it's a human universal. Now they have as a human universal genocide is okay. And they can reason and say that, well, look, it's a human universal. This is the way our brains are built."
},
{
"end_time": 6089.753,
"index": 221,
"start_time": 6060.299,
"text": " This is objective morality. So then we have two disparate accounts on what objective- No, that's because morality does not depend on how our brains are built, right? That it's not reducible. I think that Harris is wrong about this. I don't think that the neuroscience is at all relevant, you know, and the fact that consciousness is a brain process is at all relevant to this. No, they would still be wrong, even though it would be an"
},
{
"end_time": 6116.937,
"index": 222,
"start_time": 6090.367,
"text": " A purical fact that everybody, just everybody, a bird just flew into one of our windows. It was a big bird, so hopefully it survived. You know, even if it was a universally accepted fact that everybody believed that, yes, this subrace, you know, once tainted our Aryan purity,"
},
{
"end_time": 6141.698,
"index": 223,
"start_time": 6117.227,
"text": " and that was a worse world, they would be wrong. That was a better world. And what they did in order to get to this world of universal agreement was egregious and was objectively wrong. Those people mattered. Those people mattered. Their suffering mattered. Nothing will ever convince me that that is wrong."
},
{
"end_time": 6169.821,
"index": 224,
"start_time": 6141.903,
"text": " you know, that their suffering did not matter. I agree. I agree. I'm just, I just, I'm hoping I was playing devil's advocate, but then we just found something that you said that you is immovable when you were willing to... Because I cannot think it is immovable because it derives from the very mechanisms by which I think about my own life in order to pursue it. It derives from that."
},
{
"end_time": 6199.906,
"index": 225,
"start_time": 6169.991,
"text": " You know, and anything I think that's a way of justifying a whole lot of propositions. We do it in logic, we do it in empirical reasoning, and we do it in practical reason as well as in moral reasoning as well. And I would equate all of them. So that's a different way of going about trying to justify these things, right? There is no coherence."
},
{
"end_time": 6228.217,
"index": 226,
"start_time": 6200.503,
"text": " you know, without certain mechanisms of thinking. I can't think myself outside of them because they are what I think with. I see. So what's next for you? Where can the audience find more out, more about you? Well, I've written 10 books. So that's that. And they are, you know, both fiction, fiction and nonfiction. I often"
},
{
"end_time": 6254.753,
"index": 227,
"start_time": 6229.462,
"text": " In the past have used novels for fictional ends. I think there are certain things that one can do in fiction. Because you wrote a fictional book, that's actually how I found out about your husband, who's a physicist, because I saw you wrote one that deals with quantum physics and backgrounds in physics and math. And so I was wondering, well, you know, most people misuse quantum physics"
},
{
"end_time": 6284.616,
"index": 228,
"start_time": 6255.725,
"text": " It sounds like, well, let's see, maybe learn more about her. Oh, her husband at the time was, okay, great. So at least he could have corrected her if she was going off the rails like Deepak Chopra. I couldn't hear that. I said, at least then if you were saying something that wasn't comporting with the data when it comes to quantum physics or taking the metaphor too metaphorically, like Deepak might, your husband could have served as a correction mechanism."
},
{
"end_time": 6313.046,
"index": 229,
"start_time": 6284.872,
"text": " Well, I actually studied physics as well. That was my first major. And so I actually come from a background in math and physics. Cool. Never thought I would do something like a novel. But yeah, I have here. So I went from physics to philosophy to physics. And so people who do philosophy physics usually have to know good geography."
},
{
"end_time": 6342.21,
"index": 230,
"start_time": 6314.974,
"text": " Yeah, but yeah, I mean, I've always been interested in the foundations of quantum mechanics, which is, you know, philosophical, you can use this theory and know how to use this theory and disagree tremendously on the interpretations of quantum mechanics. And I'm also always been extremely interested in the not really contradiction, but the tension between relativity theory and quantum mechanics, you know, are two"
},
{
"end_time": 6369.121,
"index": 231,
"start_time": 6343.558,
"text": " most successful theories robust as far as predictions are made, but there is a deep tension between them. And so, you know, that is very interesting, you know, and that is that something and yeah, and the novel came out of that. Yes. And I'm, you know, I'm in being interested in interpretations of quantum mechanics."
},
{
"end_time": 6397.671,
"index": 232,
"start_time": 6369.172,
"text": " I became very interested in David Bohm's interpretation of quantum mechanics very early on before, you know, sort of it caught on more. In fact, my ex-husband had a lot to do with it. Right, right, right. I saw that. And there's very few Bohm's out there. Yeah, he's a very strong Bohmian. And we knew David Bohm towards the end of his life. And he was a fantastic guy. And the whole thing that happened to him, I mean, it's"
},
{
"end_time": 6424.991,
"index": 233,
"start_time": 6398.507,
"text": " You know, it's very dramatic. It's a novelistic kind of thing. I mean, it was sort of inspired by Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics. I mean, so, you know. Yeah, I feel bad. I feel bad that I implied like the radical left would say that I was indoctrinated by the patriarchy to suggest that your book was correct because of your husband and not because of your own knowledge. My bad."
},
{
"end_time": 6453.831,
"index": 234,
"start_time": 6425.503,
"text": " No, it's perfectly fine. And you know, most people who, you know, write novels, you know, don't have a background in the more technical stuff. It's too bad, right? Because I feel like, I think that they should feed off of each other, you know, the arts and the technical sciences. And both are extremely beautiful."
},
{
"end_time": 6484.497,
"index": 235,
"start_time": 6454.548,
"text": " Um, and their beauty has a lot to do with structure. And so, I mean, to me, it just seems very natural. So anyway, yeah, I sometimes write novels. Okay. Any Twitter that you want to plug? Any website? Um, I don't have a website and I'm not on Facebook, but, um, when I published my last book, you know, I have a book. I have a book on Spinoza. I'll put all the links to your books in the description. Um, but when I, my last book was, um,"
},
{
"end_time": 6513.507,
"index": 236,
"start_time": 6484.804,
"text": " published my publishers or to beg me to get some sort of social media presence. And so I, I do have a Twitter feed, but I don't use it or check it often. Yeah, it's okay. I'll still include it. And I've last very, very last, you can answer this super, super briefly. It's about women in the STEM fields. We were talking about that. So do you feel like women are still discriminated against in the STEM fields or if they ever were or"
},
{
"end_time": 6543.831,
"index": 237,
"start_time": 6514.138,
"text": " Now it's less or now it's the opposite? You know, I'm outside of the STEM fields now. But, you know, I think, you know, there is in general a presumption of, there's often a presumption that women don't think as well. But, you know, and, you know, one of the, you know, men are often very"
},
{
"end_time": 6573.541,
"index": 238,
"start_time": 6544.548,
"text": " interested in very motivated to impress women and nerdy men try to impress women with their nerdiness. I mean, I've had, I've had Goodles and completeness theorems explained to me by, you know, OBGYNs, right? When they, you know, who, if they, I was once at a party and this woman introduced me to her, her"
},
{
"end_time": 6603.695,
"index": 239,
"start_time": 6573.951,
"text": " husband was a doctor and said, Oh, you know, Rebecca's very interested in Gödel. And he starts explaining to me Gödel's incompleteness theorems. And his knowledge had come from reading the review of my book in the New York Times book review. That was his knowledge. And then I kept trying to say, Oh yeah, that was of my book. He could not take it in that that was my book, right? He was so busy, you know, explaining it to me, you know, and of course explaining it wrong. So,"
},
{
"end_time": 6631.937,
"index": 240,
"start_time": 6604.326,
"text": " Look, you experience these things, you know, as a woman, you do. And it has to do with, you know, the psychology and whatever, you know. I will say this about, you know, I've been in a lot of fields, as I say, you know, I've been in technical fields, I was in philosophy, managed, I guess I still am. I've been in the arts. I think STEM, now this is my own personal experience, is the best."
},
{
"end_time": 6660.06,
"index": 241,
"start_time": 6632.978,
"text": " For all of these things, there's always that sort of common attitude and all this stuff, right? You get used to this, right? And you calmly try to explain. It doesn't matter. But here's what math and the sciences have that the arts and even philosophy doesn't have to the same extent."
},
{
"end_time": 6690.247,
"index": 242,
"start_time": 6660.555,
"text": " You can prove your results, right? You've got a good proof. You know, they can mansplain until the cows come in. It's not going to make a difference. You've got a good proof for a hard theorem, an elegant proof. It can be checked out. With the sciences, we've got reality. We've got predictions, you know. So I'm very good friends with a cosmologist, female cosmologist, and"
},
{
"end_time": 6719.718,
"index": 243,
"start_time": 6690.589,
"text": " who's went through all sorts of problems. She wasn't tenured and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She thought it, she thought it. And then she had made some radical prediction. The evidence just came in. Thank you, universe. That's what you have in STEM. Universe can give you data and can validate your"
},
{
"end_time": 6748.951,
"index": 244,
"start_time": 6719.991,
"text": " And you so if in the arts, it's all much more subjective. And I think women have a tougher time. I mean, there are certain kinds of women's subjects. You write novels about family dynamics and blah, blah, blah. You know, that's what you know, and you're going to do fine. But, you know, I do think that, you know, since there's really nothing like what you get in math proof or in the sciences, empirical evidence to show"
},
{
"end_time": 6778.456,
"index": 245,
"start_time": 6749.616,
"text": " Thank you so much, Rebecca. Appreciate your generosity with your time. Well, I appreciate your questions. They're good and"
},
{
"end_time": 6786.561,
"index": 246,
"start_time": 6779.411,
"text": " And, you know, they were, they're substantive and they're also very probing. So I appreciate that."
}
]
}No transcript available.