The Elusive I - Part 2

Deeper into problematizing the self.

[@leedufour]

Thanks Christopher, Gregg and John!

[@johnvervaeke]

Thanks Lee

[@michaellezama1398]

The ability to participate in the perspective being presented to you by your bedroom is something Jordan Peterson would probably agree with. Clean Your Bloody Room! Loving this series so far. I had to watch over the first video 5 times to kind of understand it!

[@stian.t]

This is so nice! So interesting AND fun to follow. And to see how You all are so engaged in a joint adventure to bring light on such a topic, well, that brings joy to, and soths my soul. I am so looking forward to follow this! Thanks & thanks again. Luvly! :-)

[@knowledgeallah]

Ah dude you're helping me resolve so much confusion from my LSD journeys. You dont even fucking know. I thought I was nuts.

[@GrapplingwithReality]

Heard that lol

[@willgiorno1740]

Very satisfying thankyou - a note; respectfully and for what its worth - for someone like me, new to the lingo but engaged, John,s loud, excited exclamations (totally understandable!) while someone is speaking do momentarily interrupt the flow and my comprehension. But very enjoyable and appreciated

[@snakescantwalk]

Around 33:15 where Gregg Henriques was talking about the idea of "acute animism", it really touched on something for mySELF. A blip in the conversation, but I'd say there's something to that at least in my experience. Another fascinating discussion. You guys are great.

[@Dimitar997]

He said "impute animism", but it's interesting that you heard acute animism because it does kind of point to the spontaneous momentary generation (and it's continual repetition, in a way) of animism itself, at least in my opinion.

[@willgiorno1740]

Just listened to the rest...beautiful. Maybe I can just keep coming here rather than eating the mushroom🍄🍄

[@ericruiz4404]

John Vervaeke looks and sounds like John Favreau to me 😂 They’ve gotta be doppelgängers.

[@jgarciajr82]

It seems to me that the Self is not just a symbol but an archetype. I could see how some religious people see this as a sign of God. We are what we're looking for? Awareness?

[@mikelarrivee5115]

I have a problem with the idea that narrative is not intrinsic to the self and that problem is that if I ask who I am, what I do to answer that question is tell myself a story about the way my life has gone relative to foundational events

[@mikailmaqsood7291]

Hey John, looking forward to digging into the second episode! Just a suggestion: I feel adding youtube Chapters to this series would greatly increase both accessibility and retention (especially for people who can't make time to watch in a single sitting). They weren't necessary in the previous series I've watched (AFTMC and Cultivating Wisdom) because the content was inherently more structured, but I think the more freeform nature of discussion here could benefit from it

[@_ARCATEC_]

The Folding and the Unfolding. F fractality fold frequency . + Holding 🤔 wholding. Winding. The Frame of the Capsules of the Cases of the Being.

[@KarimaCynthiaClayton]

I wondered! Glad to hear it's a 12-week adventure in truth revealing tergiversation! The desired scope for the series given last week in Part 1, [which I listed in comments] was quite hopeful. I have not watched this Part 2 yet, but curious... Also, I noticed improved dialogos between them, John added clarity to scientific terms, and maybe 3 participants is better than 2 or 4? Thanks for carrying the torch on these subjects, noblemen!

[@matthewshorney268]

I'm getting the sense that John had something on his mind at the start.

[@brynjarespejord8867]

When you talked about narrative not being fundamental to human nature, and the possibility of living functionally without a narrative, I came to think about something I read in "After virtue" by Macintyre, and I couldn't get it to fit with what you were saying. Macintyre (as I understood him) criticizes behaviorism on the ground that it's not possible to understand understand (or infer, maybe) behavior by only observing the outer manifestation of behavior. For example, only seeing a man dig in the garden isn't enough to know what he is doing besides the obvious, which is digging. Is he exercising, is he pleasing his wife, or is he preparing a flowerbed? One cannot fully understand his behavior without mentalistic concepts, such as intention, and a narrative concept of life which makes his (inferred) intentional behavior intelligible (or maybe, makes it possible to infer intelligible intentional behavior during observation. I'm not sure what's the right way to see it). Here's a summarizing paragraph from chapter 15: " Consider what the argument so far implies about the interrelationships of the intentional, the social and the historical. We identify a particular action only by invoking two kinds of context, implicitly if not explicitly. We place the agent's intentions, I have suggested, in causal and temporal order with reference to their role in his or her history; and we also place them with reference to their role in the history of the setting or settings to which they belong. In doing this, in determining what causal efficacy the agent's intentions had in one or more directions, and how his short-term intentions succeeded or failed to be constitutive of long-term intentions, we ourselves write a further part of these histories. Narrative history of a certain kind turns out to be the basic and essential genre for the characterization of human actions." From what Macintyre writes, it doesn't seem possible to live functionally with other people if you don't have narrative(s), and from the same chapter I get the impression that he thinks of society as a communal project of building a grand narrative which is both a product of the meetings of individuals narratives and something that constrains individual narratives. What do you think of this? Does the narrative Macintyre talks about seem like the same kind of narrative you are discussing?

[@williamjmccartan8879]

Could it be that your separating the self, and the energy of the self, as you represent it in this talk as your self moves to your core, when you're practicing Tai Chi, intertwining the self back to our core. As both need to be understood in order to allow us invest both properties in our world.

[@_ARCATEC_]

I'm Here.

[@weltraumaffe4155]

So, you guys aren't going to help Gregg with his microphone? Why not?

[@MourningTalkShow]

That pliability shit is great.

[@MourningTalkShow]

This has interesting implications for religion/mythology as well.

[@lzzrdgrrl7379]

I need another spliff of that....'>.....

[@clintnorton4322]

Is it possible that the reason the Self seems to move around is due to which of the major subminds is taking the leadership role at that moment, which one is more prominent? The subminds are reported to be associated with different parts of the body.

[@MattFRox]

Could I please get the full name, and perhaps recommended books, of the person who keeps being referenced? The “Strauss” name that gets dropped?

[@johnvervaeke]

Galen Stawson in an anthology entitled Models of the Self.

[@MattFRox]

@@johnvervaeke thank you for all the hard work you do!

[@orsonwajih]

This paper is open access on research gate: Strawson, Galen (1997), ‘The self’, Journal of Consciousness Studies 4 (5-6), pp. 405-28. www.researchgate.net/publication/45941137_The_self

[@dasburke1675]

00:50:38 - though this isn’t the paper in question, I feel like this also might be pertinent to the convo - “Against Narrativity” by Galen Strawson, 2004: lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Paper/against_narrativity.pdf

[@liliszabo5335]

Amazing as always, thanks. Is there going to be a conversation on the evolution/genealogy of the sense of self ? It must be adaptive in a way. Would be so helpful to know when is it more helpful to have it..

[@MourningTalkShow]

Alright I'm in it now. How many of these will there be?

[@johnvervaeke]

Probably 12.

[@edgruchacz7707]

is there a link to the stroussen article you could provide? probably misspelling his name my apologies

[@wenzdayjane]

Wait did he just say "feed two birds with one scone"?

[@BookWorm2369]

I’m here to make sure I’m selfing as appropriately and effectively as I can be 🤣

[@asiaolson4683]

As a recovering addict and licensed chemical dependency counselor, I believe addiction often begins as a way to find “presence.”

[@fukkyouthatswhy]

hello! i was wondering if your course in torronto university covers these topics, i am a psych student from india currently applying to universities abroad for cognitve science and i am considering torronto university just because you teach there, thanks :)

[@fabiendekeyser]

Thanks to the three of you to share your knowledge like this. I didn't pick the name of the author who argues that narratives allow to pick up others' mental state (Udo ?)

[@johnvervaeke]

Hutto. Also Juarero

[@fabiendekeyser]

@@johnvervaeke Thanks for your answer. I am very curious to see you come back to this idea of narrative as Christopher Mastropietro promised you would. As I understand it, a narrative can have several meanings. It could be : - A story we build from our past that gives us a sense of identity; - A story that the the brain builds to justify our actions (as a spin doctor that works very hard to give us a sense of control of our unconscious mind (I got this idea from Steven Pinker); - A story we build to recognize patterns in the world and that allows us to learn from past experiences. I guess the way you use it is closer to my first definition. It is not clear to me how it overlaps with the second. I would have thought that the narrative that helps us to pick up someone else's mind is closer to the third definition.