Episode 38: Agape and 4E Cognitive Science
So last time I was making a proposal to you of how we could address the perennial problems, and I gave you a systematic set of things that could be cultivated in an integrated fashion for addressing perennial problems and then we saw how our attempts to ameliorate and alleviate the perennial problems interact with the historical forces and that we get the fundamental undermining of meaning in life and that problem set by Wolf and then I propose to you that there was a response to that in terms of the notion of Agape. Then I moved into directly addressing the historical forces, looking about for something like what the three orders did for us, and then I proposed to you that if we took a look at 4E cognitive science, third generation cogsci, and in particular some of the insights afforded by 4E cognitive science that were pointed out by Varela in his article, we can see a way in which we can get a worldview that strongly situates our meaning-making processes within it (legitimates it).
We talked about how we can recover something like the nomological order and the normative order and how we can move to something post-narrative, an open-ended optimization that is seeking for a depth of realization rather than a historical combination. I proposed to you bringing with that whole project of responding to the historical forces a new notion from Goodenough's work on 'transcendence into' rather than 'transcendence above or beyond', and how that is resonant and consonant with the picture that we've been working on together. A couple things remain that are central; one of course is to give a cognitive scientific account of wisdom.
As someone used to '4E' referring to, say, 'fourth edition', that the third generation of cogsci is called 4E is a bit confusing. But it stands for Embodiment, Embedded, Enactive, Extended; that is, human cognition is shaped by human bodies, happens in the physical world, is an action, and is extended through interactions with the world and psychotechnologies. [Consider how having a pencil and paper extends thought.]
The main upshot of all of this (besides being more current science) is that it's a devastating response to Descartes. Actually the mind and bo... (read more)
John Vervaeke has a lecture series on YouTube called Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. I thought it was great, so I'm arranging a lecture club to discuss it here on Less Wrong. The format is simple: each weekday I post a comment that's a link to the next lecture and the summary (which I plan on stealing from the recap at the beginning of the next lecture), and then sometimes comment beneath it with my own thoughts. If you're coming late (even years late!) feel free to join in, and go at whatever pace works for you.
(Who is John Vervaeke? He's a lecturer in cognitive science at the University of Toronto. I hadn't heard of him before the series, which came highly recommended to me.)
I split the lecture series into three parts: the philosophical, religious, and cultural history of humankind (25 episodes) related to meaning, the cognitive science of wisdom and meaning (20 episodes), and more recent philosophy related to the meaning crisis specifically (5 episodes). Each episode is about an hour at regular speed (but I think they're understandable at 2x speed). I am not yet aware of a good text version of the lectures; I also have some suspicion that some important content is not in the text itself, and so even if I transcribed them (or paid someone to) it'd still be worth watching or listening to it.
I think the subject matter is 1) very convergent with the sort of rationality people are interested in on LW, and 2) relevant to AI alignment, especially thinking about embedded agency.
Discussion: