Towards a Metapsychology that is true to Transformation w/ Gregg Henriques and Zachary Stein

In this six part series I am joined by Gregg Henriques and Zachery Stein as we work towards generating a metapsychology that integrates the multiple domains of psychology as well as integrates psychology with cognitive science and philosophy in order to properly and deeply account for the human capacity for transformation. We also explore how this deep appreciation of transformation has significant implications for education and our understanding of human spirituality. This series is a follow up to two earlier series, Untangling the Worldknot of Consciousness, • Untangling the Worldkn... , and The Elusive I: The Nature and Function of the Self, • The Elusive I - Part 1... , but it can also be watched as a stand alone series.
You can support my work on Patreon, with the proceeds going into the research I do at the University of Toronto on the Meaning Crisis and the cultivation of wisdom here: / johnvervaeke
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[@gregghenriques7657]

This was great fun to do. Many thanks to John and Zak for joining me in the dialogos on this important topic.

[@johnvervaeke]

Thanks to you Gregg.

[@raresmircea]

I like Zach Stein’s composed coherent discourse, i’ll search for more of him. Thanks for another great round!

[@Mystery_G]

These series' keep presenting themself as another blossoming of humanity's cultural lotus - from the muck to the flower. So grateful to you three and everyone's engagement be it large or small in the attempt to develop a viable and sustainable relationship with sacred space and the divine realm.

[@emilthiels6256]

Hello, thanks to everyone for this tri-alogue and the introduction of Zachary on the scene!

[@forscherr2]

I like your way of talking about religious symbolism and ritual as a form of serious play (and the "dog before child" example is great for understanding the concept). Piaget's/Kuhn's notions of how knowledge structures tranform (paradigmatic shifts) brings me to think about how my own knowledge has transformed and how I would not want to go back to an older version of myself, not because I am necessarily "happier" now but I feel like I have grown beyond my older self and am more in touch with reality (although still unfathomably ignorant), which is more valuable to me than merely being happy (but relatively ignorant/unconscious). To me it's also a bit daunting, yet also thrilling, that the way we do science right now is also not fixed but evolving and will eventually be quite different from what it is know. What gives me courage and optimism is that having faith in that the dynamcially self-organizing process (the part of my self that engages in self-transformation - which in my mind the symbol of the exploratory mythological hero represents) seems to work. I had an intense psychedelic experience 1.5 years ago and having trust into the part of me capable of successfully undergoing whatever transformative experience would be invoked was what brought me through the most challenging thing I ever experienced.

[@bonnittaroy]

This is fascinating... there is an analogous situation regarding civilization crisis and collapse -- I've been arguing that what is required is neither something we will know how to do beforehand, nor will it be something we will know how we did it afterwards -- and yet, it is something as a species we can learn how to do. Wondering where you three will go with this at the level of the self.

[@jacobckhippy]

Participating in a dialogos where I am in flow and connected with the shamanic kind of muse there feels like this kind of move. Something occurs and my capacity to respond and transform happens in a way I couldn’t account for but proves perfectly fitted to the moment.

[@leedufour]

Thanks Zack, Gregg and John!

[@johnvervaeke]

Thanks Lee

[@danielfoliaco3873]

I never got how deep were Piaget and the constructionist in psychology until now. Thanks you for sharing this ☺️😉

[@williamjmccartan8879]

Hi John, good to see you and Gregg working together again, Zach enters supplying a good enthusiasm for the project, thank you for posting this, if you could, please send a reminder out if you're going live. After both previous projects with Gregg, I'm looking forward for the continued collaboration of all of you, allowing for a new way to consider the fields of study your education and experience can bring to life.

[@lizellevanwyk5927]

beautiful teaser! no way I'm missing the rest of this series now :-)

[@calmstro]

I was so happy to hear Roy Baskhar mentioned! Finally. An understanding of what Bhaskar called the Epistemic Fallacy would, I think, clear up most of the confusion plaguing contemporary thought. I can never figure out why we don’t hear more from the Critical Realists.

[@MGHOoL5]

Such an informative dialogue! I will definitely rewatch it as the simple return for a quote showed me that a second run reveals what I wasn't able to hear at first. I guess I didn't know how much I needed a theory of transformation; it is literally a piece that seems to solve many personal and intellectuals issues I have!

[@KarlDietl]

I love how much noise Gregg and John are making whenever Zach says something they like xD

[@domenicmolinaro6580]

The "systemic insight" I've gotten from seeing myself and the world as dynamic and self-organizing has a transformation a brewin'. This might be my favorite of the three "cognitive science show" series' yet, and that's saying alot! Thanks all for this important work ☺️

[@Walkabout]

Very interesting directions of inquiry. Very much looking forward to learning from your ideas and discussions.

[@Graham-Christian]

Great discussion.

[@annemariesegeat9397]

I am feeling very enthusiastic about this new series. The 3 problems assessment, the why and when of transformation, the possibility of bringing your finding or the individual mind unto the cultural at large...So interesting. I am with you! You all have such a flow together! I look forward to seeing how the logos will keep on pulsing between you! I wonder if it's in the coming cards to acknowledge, deepens the possibility that a transformation could be more likely or less likely to happen if one another person has or not transformed around the child let’s say, or the ‘’learner’’. I like this image that is used often by Jordan, Jamie, Greg Thomas, of us humans playing our instrument. Giving the right notes, normal, healthy notes and the learner could also better tune his instrument. In other words, how much transformation is even possible without the equivalent of a diapason experience? And that experience being also grounded in a specific context just like music and diapason are experienced in a context of silence...as it wouldn’t be diapason without silence either, it would be cacophony. I have an affinity with the notion of relation as being fundamental. I think it is Hegel that sees what is not there? In order to transform, what if we need as much something to be there as much as we need something to not be? Ishh I am not sure I make sense here. Pretty vague, I wish I could bring more water to the mill! I ramble. But I had to share! I am inspired! I am in LOve!

[@elel2608]

43:40 serious play and transformation.

[@Juhziz]

40:00 Serious Play. 41:49 Imaginal. 44:39 Summary. 57:47 Neurotic control over development. Self-instrumentalization, rational optimization. 59:42 Role of religion in development and transformation. 1:10:32 Depressive realism. 1:13:57 There are many trues that will not be disclosed to you unless you go through transformation. 1:15:18 Cognitive maturity fallacy.

[@imogenrex6286]

Thank you guys - this is helpful. Pls keep giving us real life illustrations to your ideas. I'm a clinician but I've been away from the literature for decades!

[@ElijahLogozar]

Holy cow, you are incredible!

[@MrHwaynefair]

Great conversation- thank you!

[@coreybrown4921]

Perfecting timing. Just started a lifespan and development class in grad school

[@Matterful]

Thanks guys!

[@waynemcmillan5970]

Thank you John . All your videos are interesting and thought provoking.

[@JohnRiver490]

57:19 Zak "How do you weigh those decisions.." "contain and control our own development"

[@bonnittaroy]

Are you trying to create a "third category" i.e. quantitative, qualitative, transformational? Or is transformation a subset of qualitative? Can you give an example of a shift that is neither quantitative, or qualitative, but a third kind?

[@notmyrealpseudonym6702]

Wouldn't any 'meta' process be mediated by, or recognized comparitively through, quantities/categories and qualities/qualia but the mediation, recognition and comparative processes themselves aren't 'quantities or qualities'? Similar to a different 'manner' of thinking doesn't necesarily hold a qualitative or quantitive aspect but can be recognized as a different manner because the relationships between the qua(ntities and lities) is different? I wonder if it is related to our ability to differently semiotically process signs as types of signs and the process of 'transforming' abstract signs to meaning (alphabetical words) and process of icon compared to real (emoji smiley face to human face) and index compared to probable (deduct a bear by the pawprint in the mud) are all transformational processes? Please note - not statng it is, saying that was some of my own inferences in my framework.

[@_ARCATEC_]

Morphic field 🤔 wish I could find a word that started with Q.

[@_ARCATEC_]

I got it..... Quintessence! Thanks 💓 for your question

[@kingofaikido]

This was Kool. Nice to have the problem stated so clearly. The lack of a clear ontology-epistemology and therefore normative rules and ethics for transformative change in psychology. It just occurred to me to add that Eastern praxes may have tackled this to a degree, such as in China when and where Buddhism was wedded to Taoism and Confucianism in the holistic cultivation of the individual, who is thereby placed in a social nexus, a state nexus, and a cosmological one, under the term 'self-governance.' I mean, it's as though the weakness of Buddhism, let's say, in not addressing social positioning, a social self (given its doctrine and realization of no-self), leads it to combine with Confucianism which allocates responsibilities and obligations via ritual (enactions-'serious play') from the ritually socialized self in an ascending order encompassing the other orders. Taoism, particularly yinyang theory, and the cultivation of 'chi' (or 'ki' in Japan... as practical ontological reality of a field of potentiality, informing action-vitality/silence-passivity) as the 'dynamic ground' (in your terms), as the bridge between these two doctrines to create the notion of harmony, which diffuses throughout that civilization and culture. Resonates, I think, with the cycles of cognition-development you mention. The link to "de-cision"-making is less clear though ('cutting off' an argument? Choosing among a set of options?). Rituals like push hands in taiji, kata (or form) practice in the martial arts, vinyasa (sequences of postures) in yoga all involve elements of play, via their opposites, meditative grounding, mindfulness, and number-ratio, respectively. Vitality is generated from the energetic ground which allows for variations, creating new patterns 'within' the forms, much like Deleuze's take on Leibniz in his book on Folds (see chapter on 'harmony'). Becoming familiar with these changes generates greater cognitive flexibility. Thus, the more practice (mindfully enacted), the greater the learning. Kohlberg's sixth stage of moral development seems to be what these disciplines aim at and aligns with feminism as well. I wonder if the knowledge-wisdom divide can be solved and reframed by talking about 'insight' instead of 'decision' or rather 'insight as decision.' Decision suggests an ending, a random choice, it would have to be, among a set of disorganized, irrational, heteronomous choices, none of which give us any sense for 'the best.' But insight suggests a new beginning, a wider view, coalescing experiences together under a new way of seeing, a new holistic perception, encompassing the past (as in the endosymbiosis of the eukaryote cell, the past develops a membrane, thus organizing its contents in a new way). Decisions, important ones, where we plunge into the unknown cannot be fully unknowable, are not, in fact, fully external either, but are frames built around other smaller units of wholeness and strike us, via insight, as having sometimes a transcendent quality to them. I am not sure whether 'the irrevocable' is a necessary part of 'insight' if insight can be viewed as an ongoing process. Isn't 'learning' per se 'insight'? If a kid doesn't know the solution to 2+2, the yearning and frustration is a form of suffering in darkness. Once the solution is understood (a mini-insight), the frustration is gone and a corresponding satisfaction at 'getting its is reached. Just so, with the more profound experiences no..? Think of the insight parents get ten or twenty years into parenting: 'Ah, so this is what my parents went through in bringing me up..!' and the feeling of recognition, gratitude, understanding. Can such moments be induced? Planned? Staged..? I wonder what you guys think of Bohm's notion of memories always active in the background of conscious awareness and so, when a connoisseur encounters a new performance, the differences of this new performance from all past performances are instantly apprehended, constituting the aesthetic delight in the difference they experience. If, so, insight might be similar in as much as we, in encountering something genuinely new for us, are able to distinguish this from all that went on in the past. When we apply this to moral norms, the proof is whether suffering is reduced and in its place vitality flows in. Isn't that the qualitative shift underpinning moral and ethical principle? That is, all other possible norms, proscriptions, choices will recede into the background and/or act as scaffolding for the new principle of 'the good' to emerge.

[@brendantannam499]

I’m reading a fascinating book atm called The Poetics of Conversion by John Freccero. Apparently, Platonists believed that knowledge was the same as virtue, which sounds somewhat like Locke. I came to this from Mr. Gradgrind in Dickens’ Hard Times. The scholastics believed that the will was the issue, not knowledge, and the will was fragile so humility was a key to transformation. In Dante’s poem, which is Freccero’s subject, humility is proposed to be the acceptance of the need for a guide, Virgil being Dante’s first guide on his road to ultimate transformation. This is very much a Christian proposal but I wonder if there could be an alternative vehicle for transformation in the secular world. I also wonder if there is a secular equivalent to anagoge. Where or what might we progress to?

[@lynnlavoy6778]

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Helen Keller

[@jgarciajr82]

Will you guys eventually be talking to Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman?

[@piddlepond]

You guys are on your way to fixing Samsara.

[@fk_6671]

i love u guys

[@michealwalli7324]

what does a cognitive science career look like? never before have I been so immersed in a topic as I am with consciousness.

[@olivercroft5263]

1:17:20 Hi, could someone please tell me who are the writers or theorists whom Zachary is talking about here?

[@CecileGreen]

Thank you so much, gentlemen, I so appreciate this exploration and mutual transformation you are sharing with all of us. I was delighted to hear a potential definition of 'spiritual' in this episode and am curious a) if you would please define it? and b) what you think of my current definition of spiritual as 'active engagement with matters of greatest importance?

[@johnvervaeke]

I would perhaps add “that require personal existential transformation for their resolution/improvement.”

[@CecileGreen]

​@@johnvervaeke Thanks John! that makes sense and helps clarify what I think I'm implying by 'active engagement.' What is your working definition of spiritual?

[@Orthodoxi]

I'm curious, do any of you, John, Greg, et al, know how to do this as a living embodiment or are you still just working on a theory? If yes, you can do it, when do you do it rather than just theorizing how it is done? If no, why do you think that is? What is preventing this active embodiment?

[@DeepTalksTheology]

Hey John, will these be available as an audio-only podcast anywhere too? Paul

[@johnvervaeke]

I will check Paul. Hope you are well. And thanks again for your series on my work.

[@johnbeton4058]

Use youtube converter to convert from this video to mp3 then you got audio only 👍

[@merlepatterson]

O.o - ah yes

[@NotIT777]

Please have a dialog with ken wheeler @TheoriaApophasis

[@_ARCATEC_]

3:00 Quintessence , embodiment 12:43 6th dimensional Function of the Morphogenic field , number e . Beyond the reach of the elusive I , where I is 5th dimensional. •d6(d5(d1d2)d5(d3D4)d5)d6• 25:33 I am experiencing such perspectival shifts and through such have made decisions unfathomable to me before. Something about the falling away of the classical sort of decision tree validates some sort of personal responsibility. In so I'm thinking this is where the participatory part becomes. 42:55 •(🌊(🐜💓)⛲(🌏🐙)🌀)•

[@FG-fc1yz]

5:00 zum Begriff Metapsychologie 8:42, 10:25 Ausgangspunkt 23:08 26:08,,- 42:25 was ist schon real?

[@shamanverse]

Transformation without a definition of ongoing well being, psychological health, maturation, and so forth is a deficient psychology.

[@gammaraygem]

I get the impression these guys are talking about the landscape of a continent they have only heard about, (lets call it America) while they still are floating around on a dingy in the middle of the ocean figuring out how to get others there...

[@christopherhamilton3621]

Let’s NOT call it America. It needs to be a place people REALLY want to get to….