Is Being Smart Worth the Depression? - Alex O’Connor & Joe Folley (4K)

Was philosophy always meant to be practically applicable or is that some modern reinterpretation? >> Uh that's a joke question. Oh well, I mean I suppose one of the uh differences between like very broadly speaking between something like ancient uh ancient Greek philosophy say and the way that we conceive of philosophy today is that you know philosophy today is largely thought of in terms of different fields. You've got your kind of epistemologists who discuss questions like you know what is knowledge and you know more importantly how do we how do we attain knowledge? um what are the kinds of systems and processes that produce reliable knowledge? That kind of stuff. And then there are kind of ethicists talking about, you know, what is the good life? You know, vitally important question. Also, you know, what are what are the right things to do? And then you've got kind of logicians talking about um you do do a lot of proofs and try to often model uh ordinary things um using formal mathematical or at least semi-mathematical systems. You got philosophers of language, philosophers, science. Um certainly uh for in the ancient world these weren't as differentiated certainly as they are today and so um you know Aristotle wrote different treatises on these different topics but um even in his philosophy everything is so interlin and if you go you know back before Aristotle it's very very hard to separate these so for example um the stoics uh although you know in kind of popular discourse around stoicism today we talk a lot about stoic ethics um the Stoics thought that their ethics fell out of their metaphysics and their logic which was their word for what we would call today things like logic and epistemology and um so I think that's that's um that's one major difference in terms of practicality I mean yeah the a lot of ancient philosophy is incredibly practical you know these are especially you know the the one of the paramount um questions that are asked that's asked by almost every um ancient philosopher is you know how to live a good life the the first philosopher um like like receive wisdom is Thales. Uh he's a kind of ancient ancient Greek philosopher. Um but before that there there are lots of kind of we have scraps of like ancient uh Egyptian um philosophies and things like and they're they're often concerned with you know what's the good life? How do we live it? Um so I I think philosophy philosophy is eminently practical. I also think, you know, maybe this is just my own bias sh I think that I think that um today philosophy at its best is is often very practical. >> How has something gone arry? Is there some sense that modern philosophy a lot of that is kind of like string theory and physics where there's not much progress being made in quite the same way for people's practical applicability. >> We're trying to do the ethics without the metaphysics. As Joe just said, like a lot of these ancient philosophers in particular are remembered for their ethical teachings. The Stoics, you might know what a Stoic is. It's someone who sort of is resistant to to suffering and pleasure and is sort of neutral. But but why? Because of their metaphysics, because of what they believe was true about the world. Same thing with Epicuranism. Uh people might know that Epicurus, for example, thought that you shouldn't worry about death. You know, like death is nothing to us. He said literally nothing to us because when you're alive, it's not with you. And when it's with you, there's no you. that stems out of the Epicurian tradition of materialism. They were staunch materialists. They believed that everything, including the human soul, was made up of matter. So that when that goes, there's there's nothing left. And it seems like they really thought that these metaphysical commitments were what led to these ethical commitments. And so if all you have are the ethical commitments now, that there isn't really a way to make progress because ethics is kind of conjectural if it doesn't have a metaphysical grounding. It's just like, you know, what feels like it works, what feels like it vibes with your worldview. I mean, I think a lot of people approach these philosophies now. They'll look at stoicism and epicuranism, utilitarianism, emotivism, and they'll sort of think, which of these do I do I like? Yeah, that makes sense to me. And they sort of adopt it. So, all that's really being done by reading these philosophies is some ancient guy elucidating something you already kind of believe. So, you're not going to make much progress in terms of actually developing your thought unless you believe something new that's true about the world that will cause you to commit to something else. You know what I mean? >> So, it it's like, you know, if you ask someone what stoicism is on the street or indeed in a podcast, they would list, you know, 50 different things before they told you anything about their metaphysical claims about what they actually thought the world was made of. It'd all be about you know how to live your life >> in um oh sorry in Stoics for you know the kind of one of the reasons why um Stoics so big on uh acceptance and accepting things uh things that happen to you and accepting that the the kind of state of the world um in kind of very very broad strokes is that um the stoics were big believers in what today we would recognize as something like divine providence um you know they had a real kind of teological view of reality. They thought that the universe was inherently rational, inherently reasonable and as a result this whatever is happening is in accordance with the rational will of the universe. So there's kind of you know there's it's sort of a you know in modern stoicism people tend not to have that assumption baked in but this is a huge part of of ancient stoicism and it's actually interesting to the kind of we see you know we talking about kind of how um things get stripped away over time even in the difference between Greek and Roman stoicism you already see less emphasis placed on stoic logic for example you know um Chrysopus I have no idea if I'm pronouncing that correctly but he wrote you know reams and reams of parchment on stoic logical systems and you know you you don't you don't even see that in my favorite stoic philosopher Epictitus you know there's he's not that concerned with stoic logic and I think you know he's the kind of the goat of Roman stoicism and you know so it's not like it's not like a necessarily just a modern thing of this of stripping back aspects of of of philosophies but of course you know there is an argument to be made that this is part of what development consists of um although I do think it's sometimes worth going back and going back and revisiting some of the assumptions that maybe um we ought to ought to reconsider. >> Is it fair to say well I guess at least for me good avatar for the lay person? Uhhuh. Uh when you think about development, you think about sort of refining over time about becoming sort of more accurate, more detailed, uh seeing things with a higher resolution. Uh, how fair is it to say that modern philosophy is more sort of concerned with intellectual masturbation than it is teaching people fundamental questions about themselves and the world? >> Very fair indeed. Um, I think that philosophy doesn't develop in the way that something like physics does. The idea with something like physics is that you're born into a world with a particular understanding. You develop that understanding. You learn new things. You maybe dig a bit further down into an atom and you find out what it's made of. And then you have children and you tell those children as a starting point, this is what atoms are made of. And then they're off to the races trying to go even further. Philosophy, I don't think quite works in the same way. You might disagree with this. I don't know. I think it's instead of something which you sort of go from ignorance to knowledge over the course of 20 generations. You go from the course you go from ignorance to knowledge over the course of one generation and everybody has to sort of start a fresh. Which is why you find that these ancient philosophers and early modern philosophers and modern philosophers and guaranteed future philosophers too are all essentially saying the same thing. You know, if you read um if you read Epicurian philosophy, it's kind of very [snorts] similar to utilitarianism. It's it's got a very sort of similar thread. At the very least, it seems to be based on similar intuitions. So you might sort of think that philosophy is a bit stagnant that it hasn't actually progressed anywhere, but it's maybe not kind of what it's supposed to do. You know, you're supposed to do that throughout your own your own life. You know, >> somebody asked chat GBT what it's like to be itself. I imagine you've probably done this. You've done everything with chat GBT. Everything within reason. >> Not everything. Not everything. >> Everything within reason. >> Within reason. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Subscribe. >> He said it. Um, and one of the things that it said was, uh, imagine basically every time that you had a conversation, your memory of the last one was wiped. >> Each new context window is a brand new. So, it makes me think about what you're talking about here. This generation needs to rediscover or it it tries to answer the same questions over and over and over again. Because the important stuff with philosophy is probably the way that it allows you to live a a good life or or a life that you see fit um or to console you in some some regard and and that is something that will happen over the course of an individual life. I would take what chatb says with a pinch of salt um because of course it probably is not in fact conscious but it does give us an interesting sort of like uh inn for thinking about what it might be like to be such a creature. What would it be like not only to have your memory wiped every time you started a new day or conversation, but also to kind of be one thing with many avatars? You know, like chatbt is one thing. We're speaking about it as one entity, but you've could have a conversation on your phone. I like to have a conversation on my phone with it. And it's this sort of one thing, but having two distinct and separable. And I think that a lot of a lot of philosophies kind of view human beings in the same way. You know this is how uh this is how an ancient uh Indian philosopher like who's reading or indeed composing the upanishads might think about human consciousness that it's sort of all one consciousness that somehow the the localizing of of individual selves is a is kind of an illusion and it's all just sort of one big thing and we're probably somehow restricted in the sense that we have our our like memories and our localized experiences. But if we knew the truth, if we could somehow step outside of that, we'd recognize that we're all actually just one big thing. So I imagine if JGPT was conscious, it would probably be a little bit like that. It would be this sort of illusory uh individuation across across different computers and things, which is what a lot of philosophers think is going on in human beings. It's interesting to talk about kind of because there are clearly elements to how um you know people kind of go on their own uh have to wrestle with the questions of what makes a good life for themselves. I do have a thing that you know we can we can chart progress in certain philosophical problems and it's it's more nebulous than others. One of the um one of philosophy's historic successes is just creating lots of new fields. So of course [laughter] so so so you know something like something >> philosophers are good at making jobs for philosophers >> philosophers are good at making jobs for for other other academics. So you know like like originally maths was inseparable from philosophy and then you know that becomes its own field of study and you know physics is originally rolled into philosophy and it becomes its own field of study. Economics is another one that stems from philosophy. I mean you know something like um psychoanalytic theory or or psychology you know this this comes from partly from Freud. Freud is although he denies ever reading nature his theories are so incredibly uh influenced by by nature and and by by earlier philosophical thinkers. So I I do think that one it's very um it's very easy to hide some of philosophy's successes >> partly because quite a lot of the time they are they're hidden away they're handed off to other fields. You know, I think that I think this I think this is a point that Bertram Russell made was this idea that, you know, um phil one of the the measures of philosophy's efficacy is just in giving birth to to to other fields. You know, linguistics is another one. You know, >> very very sort of philanthropic uh field in that way. >> You could you I mean you could also argue that it's taking credit for other people's work further down the line, but >> Okay. [laughter] Yeah. >> You know, that that that's um that's >> sound like Alex actually. Um [laughter] uh so you mentioned stoicism there. Are there some ancient schools that you think have been most unfairly ignored? You know we if you were to ask any person about give me some ancient schools of philosophy stoicism would be up top. Maybe they'd think Buddhism toism or something. They go oh I'm going to be like real uh a different approach to this. I'm going to go to the other side of the planet. But beyond that >> we're probably really bouncing off the limit of most people's knowledge. Are there some schools that you think >> you should have got a little bit more time at the table? I think well yeah I mean you're quite right to point out that certainly any western thinker is is probably going to have neglected eastern philosophy to a significant degree but even within so-called western thought um yeah I suppose one thing that jumped out at me while you were speaking it's not so much a school but an idea which is like um I've been thinking a lot about like Aristotilian metaphysics so from Aristotle right and when I ask people about cause and effect like what causes particular things to occur. Aristotle famously, one of the foundational like uh doctrines of his of his metaphysics is that there are four kinds of causation that go into any anything. Like why is this beautiful and tasty can of Newtonic on the table? Well, it's got four different kinds of explanations. There is its formal cause, which is sort of the the shape that it takes. There's its material cause, which is the stuff that it's made out of, right? We we don't think of the stuff that it's made out of strictly speaking as a cause, but it's clearly part of the causal story that puts this on the table. There is the efficient cause, which is like who actually made it, right? You put this together, somebody put it in a can, I put it on the table. And finally, there is the final cause, which is what it was done for, what it's going towards, the teological cause. In the modern era, we essentially when we talk about causation, we just talk about the efficient cause. If I say like, why is that on the table? And you say, well, because because I put it there, question is answered. >> But I think that neglects a lot of really important questions about like the nature of the thing itself, why it's there in that particular time slice, taking that shape with that particular form. I think we neglect that. And I think that modern science is lacking in that it's only seems to con concern itself ultimately with efficient causes and maybe a little bit of the the material cause too in that like if you ask a scientist in a laboratory in a laboratory um you know why is that shuttle like flying and escaping the atmosphere? They'll say oh because it has an an escape velocity and the thrust of the rockets. But if you ask the same scientist at the pub, they'll say because we wanted to go to the moon. And suddenly they become an arisetilian again. And I think that the >> the influence of these other kinds of causation isn't isn't really there. The only other thing that came to mind is um potentially the the prescratics, you know, and Joe already said that the the sort of first philosopher as it was uh as it were was Thales. Um but people might have thought when he went to say that well the first philosopher that people generally think of is Socrates. And if you ask somebody who was the first philosopher, they'll say Socrates. But there's, you know, Socrates didn't just spring up ex Neilo, you know, he's he's working uh in sometimes and him and Aristotle and Plato, they're working sometimes in response to, but certainly after and contemporary with other thinkers too, who a lot of the time their ideas just, you know, because they weren't particularly popular or didn't win the war of ideas we don't even know about. Palmenades didn't think that change could occur. In fact, you've heard of Zeno's paradoxes. So Zeno had this these wonderful paradoxes of motion where like I can't clap my hands because first I'd have to half the distance then half the distance then half the distance and you can't complete an infinite series of tasks so I can't clap my hands. Everybody knows about Zeno's paradoxes but do they know that the reason he came up with them is because he was following in the school of Palades who believed that change was literally impossible and these were paradoxes which were kind of supposed to demonstrate the paradoxical nature of change for that reason. Again, we've got the conclusion, but we haven't got the working. And sometimes the working is the most interesting stuff. You know, >> the um I I I definitely concur with the kind of neglect of aspects of Aristotle thought. I mean, especially really with regards to something like Aristotle's ethics, you know, the Aristotle's book, The Nikameakian Ethics, is I would say, you know, even after over 2,000 years, the most useful book of philosophy for anyone to read. I would say, you know, go on and get yourself a coffee copy. They're great. There are some excellent translations. And um the most recent Penguin one is an excellent translation. And Aristotle's ethics is I think one of its real strengths is that it's incredibly realistic. So he's very very concerned with with virtues. Um but as opposed to say someone like certain stoic thinkers and also the cynics. Um Aristotle denies that virtue is sufficient for a for a good or flourishing lie. He's very when he, you know, he's he's very good at getting down to brass tax. You know, he kind of at one point during the Nicin ethics, he basically says, you know, like there is no philosophy that's going to make you happy on the rack. You know, that you you always need certain like minimal levels of of your physical needs fulfilled in order to just like calm down the the bestial part of you that recognizes that you need to eat and breathe and sleep in order to live. Um, and I think that, you know, and and again, Aristotle has a number of incredibly, um, I think still incredibly insightful, ethical insights that sometimes sound obvious when you say them out loud, but uh, we're talking before before we started filming about the the idea that actually sometimes very very obvious things bear repeating because we just forget them very very easily. I mean, you know, uh, this was again a point that Toltoy made where he talked about, uh, that idea of loving your neighbor as yourself. And tobacas says, "Yeah, like that sounds trit, but have we ever got round to doing that?" And he argues that we haven't, and I'll probably concur. And one of Aristotle's ideas here is is >> I'll just focus on two. One of them is is the idea of a golden bean. So his um his idea that that virtue lies between the poles of two vices. You know, being brave is is in between being cowardly and being reckless. Uh being generous is in between being, you know, proflegate and being misely. And you know, he has and I I think that that's a very useful framework. you know, it sounds, you know, almost like common sense when you say it out loud, but actually attempting to think in these terms can be incredibly useful. And the other thing that Aristotle really that I'm so bullish on um with regards to to Aristotle is he's got an incredibly wor well worked out theory of friendship. It's in two books, book eight and nine of the nicome ethics and it's some of the the best writing on friendship I think there's ever been. Aristotle um in some ways following in the footsteps of of um some people thinkers like Epicurus was very very big fan of of friendship. Actually I'm getting my timeline's confused there. But either way, you know, Aristotle is incredibly um he thinks that having a group of friends and and moreover friends that you're uh that are friendships of virtue. So friends that you're not just you're not just there because you enjoy their company. You're not just there because you you know they have something that you want and you're trying to get at. you know, the way that [clears throat] someone might might schmoo up to their boss or or or just you're friends with somebody but simply because you enjoy their company. These are friends who are sort of getting together >> in order to make one another more virtuous and moreover hold like duties and loyalties to one another. You know, Aristotle thinks that this is these are enormously contributive factors to your life. You owe them things. You know, this is a I think can be can be a real antidote to the sort of you know ah nobody owes anyone anything anymore. you know that that kind of that that that approach to life which I think is sort of can be very unhelpfully individualistic. And yeah, I think that sometimes stepping into the the footsteps of of an ancient thinker like Aristotle um >> is uh one way to to sort of you know get a bit of get a bit of distance from the way that we might currently live. And I think that books eight and nine of the Nickian ethics where he so clearly thinks you know groups of friends these are this is >> you know halfway to the good life effectively um is is an insight that we could really use. You know, everyone thinks friendship is important, right? It's very easy to say, but like culturally, we place significantly less emphasis on friendship than almost any other point in in Western history. >> This is like, you know, think about um I don't know if you you know, ever read through sort of like like letters from from the World Wars or or from like the the Crimean Wars or or or um or you even the Polonic Wars. These are are people writing to their friends and the way that they talk about their friends is amazing. It's more passionate >> passionate passionate and and sort of vulnerable and more it's it's just very clear that >> friendship is a huge part of the way that they organize their lives you know like like we you know the kind of standard way I suppose of organizing your adult life now is is to organize it around a romantic partner and I you know I think I think there's an awful lot to be said for romance I just think that there's there's also an awful lot to be said for friendship and it very much gets overshadowed like when was the last time or if we were to compare the amount of great films that view that are that are about you know two people getting together versus two great friends. I mean you know films about two great friends what like Bill and Ted you know >> Harold and Kumar got the wife and yeah Harold and Kumar got the munchies you know these are I mean great films at all but you know it's it's completely outmoded and I think I think you know that's why that's why I'm very bullish on Aristotle books eight or nine of the Nickmackin ethics. >> Uhhuh. Yeah. I um I wonder what it is about stoicism. I guess just very good PR and branding kind of suits the modern world a time when people are a little bit lost. they're unsure. It's it's it's I've never been super attracted to it on that level. It's it's really popular as a as I guess kind of a means of of consolation and way of sort of structuring your life. Um but I I sort of I don't know I I guess people who are suffering are always looking for alleviation from that suffering. And traditionally it's come with a lot of metaphysical baggage. Um be that religious or be it not. And I I suppose it offers people a way of seemingly achieving that without the metaphysical baggage. Good news. AG1 just released their nextG formula. It is a more advanced clinically backed version of the product that I've been drinking every day for years. So, you still get the same one scoop ritual, but now with an even more thoughtful formulation flavor and four clinical trials behind it. AG1 has been evolving since 2010, continuously improving alongside the latest research. And AG1 NextG is the result clinically shown to help fill common nutrient gaps and support gut health even in people who already eat well. In one study, it boosted healthy bacteria in the gut by 10 times. And if you're still unsure, they've got a 90-day money back guarantee. So, you can buy it and try it for three months. And if you don't like it, they'll give you your money back. Right now, you can get a year's free supply of vitamin D3, K2, and five free AG1 travel packs, plus the 90-day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinkag.com/modernwisdom. That's drinkagg.com/modernwisdom. You are somebody who tried nihilism as a life philosophy. >> Yes, I suppose. Look, the thing nihilism, man, it's >> here we go. Bull case for nihilism. >> Nihilism is often thought of as a synonym for all things depressing and upsetting and in many cases it is. But nihilism just means there's sort of no purpose to it all. There's no it's a difficult thing to define in analytic terms. That's why it's generally in the wheelhouse of like existential philosophers who tell stories to try and sort of grasp at a feeling. Um, but in theory, you know, if you're if it's not just that you're suffering, you could be suffering but not be annihilist. Is if you're suffering and suffering all the more because you think you're suffering without reason. That makes you a nihilist. But I think you could just as easily be having a wonderful time and think there is no rhyme or reason to this. I'm having a great time, but there's absolutely no purpose to this. And you'd still be a nihilist because you think that there's no purpose behind it all. But it doesn't mean you have to have a bad time doing so. Um, so I think it is worth if you are somebody who wants to toy with the idea that there is no meaning. Like try it on. See how it fits. That's what you've got to do with all philosophies. You know, if something seems like it sort of chimes with you a little bit, like live in accordance with it for like a week and a lot of time it will be way too hard, but sometimes it will teach you something. >> There's a lot of memes about philosophy making people depressed. >> Yeah. >> That the more that you learn, the worse that you see the world. What's the darkest philosophies that you guys have been exposed to? >> Tran. >> I I I mean I I love Tran. I think that um Tran [laughter] is a Tran is incredibly underrated kind of Romanian stroke French. Wrote lots of his work in French, but was Romanian kind of adopted France um in his in his later years. >> Well, that'll make you depressed straight off the bat. >> Well, potentially. And [laughter] uh Tran um Emil Emil Churan. >> Yes. Emil Tran um writes these incredibly pessimistic uh tracks of philosophy. You know, one's called the trouble with being born and other's called a short history of decay. And he is kind of incredibly his first book. >> You sure he's not British? >> Well, it's it's I don't know if it's just because I'm British that it kind of I like it so much. You know, on his first book is called On the Heights of Despair. It's, you know, truly melodramatic >> sanguin [ __ ] Yeah. One of the things that I I find very interesting about about >> philosophies that are supposedly dark and I'm specifically thinking of the pessimistic philosophies here, people like Shopenhau and Chan, maybe to a lesser extent someone like Philip Mainlander. It's I know this is this is something I think Chan is so good at is that often times when you're reading him he's very good at subtly shifting the scope. So you're reading him and you know he's complaining about about life. you know, his his view on life is is far more pessimistic than M's view on life is this kind of the characteristic property of life is suffering for a variety of reasons, but he occasionally just this this kind of dark pessimistic outlook breaks through into a kind of natural light-heartedness that I think is is is absolutely amazing. So one of the things that um one of the things that is interesting I say about reading a pessimistic philosopher is that is that if and I think that nihilism to a certain extent shares this proed that it's kind of framed in in a certain way is that if you know you don't you're not expecting things to go very well and if you think the characteristic property of the of the world is meaningless suffering well then to a certain extent like the stakes are kind of lowered. It it's sort of it's very similar I suppose to that advice that um Senica gave in one of his letters which is to kind of imagine how things are going to go horribly wrong >> so that you feel much better when it when it comes to it. >> Low expectations. >> Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And um I think that on a on a kind of existential level some reading an incredibly darkly pessimistic philosopher sort of as I say there's there is sometimes a moment where it breaks through. I suppose the only way I could kind of try and con contextualize this is like have you ever had like an astonishingly bad day? Just like a comedically bad day. And I do mean like comedic, you know, and you get to like 5:00 and you know you've been mugged seven times and a car drives by and it kicks up a puddle of dog [ __ ] over your nice suit or whatever >> and you can't help but just laugh >> because at that point it's like oh wow like this is this has become funny. And I think that's that's something that is very very good at and that's why you know I often often talk about him as one of the darkest philosophers of all time. He's also one of the funniest one of the few philosophers where you can read him and laugh out loud. >> It is hilarious that suffering is dose dependent in that way. Like your response to it U-shaped curve it's like >> too little everything's probably okay >> a bit oh god this sucks and then too much it's okay again. >> It obviously frivolity right and and that makes it makes it liveable. I do think sometimes the more pessimistic philosophers can be a little bit self-indulgent. It's a bit sort of, you know, woe is me. Oh, like because, you know, I don't know, >> how sophisticated my thoughts, how deep my engagement with the world is. >> When actually you you just like, you know, you got dumped by your girlfriend and now you're writing about how terrible life is. >> I I asked Joe this the last time that we sat down. I often think philosophy is just clever branding for depressive thoughts. >> It often is, but it's it's also often just clever branding for for like any kind of thought. I think it's like you literally just have a thought and you try to systematize it. Right? This is why the greatest philosophers, another thing we said before we started, tell you something you already know. If you open Vickenstein's Tractus, the first line of the introduction is something like, "I don't think this book will be useful except to anybody who's already like in agreement with the things that it says. It's just supposed to be sort of elucidating an idea." And so, yeah, a lot of the time it is just sort of uh feeling out a vibe, finding someone who puts it into good words and saying, "Oh, I think that person's very me. I feel less alone." >> By the way, is why when people ask me for like a recommendation of what philosophy to read or something, if if someone says, you know, where should I start with philosophy? You might be tempted to say, "Okay, well, let's start with Plato, read about Socrates and Aristotle, then do a bit of existentialist." I just tell people just just literally read what you've heard of. And the reason for that is because these people will have come up in contexts that are relevant to you or of interest to you, right? So, if you've heard NZ mentioned a bunch of times because you're a big Jordan Peterson fan, like if you like Jordan Peterson, and Jordan Peterson obviously likes nature quite a lot and finds a lot of use in him, you're probably going to find some use in him. Whereas if you just randomly pick one of the great philosophers, like if you just pick up Sartra, as I did the other day, I told you this, and read existential is existentialism is a humanism, and think this is complete nonsense. That was a complete waste of time because you're not going to resonate with it. It's it's not going to strictly speaking convince you, unless I think you've already got sort of one one foot in the boat. Um I did think on the pessimistic philosophers or you said the darkest philosophers, which doesn't necessarily mean pessimistic, right? dark philosophy, pessimistic philosophy, what do you mean? >> I think Schopenhau comes to mind. He's writing his on the sufferings of the world. That's that's your sort of indulgent pessimist. I think he had trouble with women for some of his life and he's got this infamous essay on women, which >> would read like a comedy. Um, in fact, one version of his essays I have in the introduction or the preface, the translator says, "By the way, the essay on women isn't a joke. He's not being sarcastic. This is what he actually thought." um he comes to mind. >> It's an irony disclaimer. >> Yeah. So, in but in order to sort of avoid that, I think that a good example of a potentially non-self-indulgent pessimistic philosophy that seems genuinely just philosophical might be something like anti-naturalism, the view that it is immoral to have children. David Benitar is the sort of superstar of antiism. Um he wrote a book called Better Never to Have Been, which sounds like one of these sort of you know, >> I'm about to write about how terrible how terrible life is. You know, I wish I was never born. But it's not. It's like philosophically speaking, he tries to make a case that it's just better for no one to be born, even if their life is filled with more pleasure than suffering. He thinks that it's still immoral to bring them into existence. Um, it's an interesting it's an interesting take. >> A debate about this 5 years ago in the barbcin. >> That sounds about right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. first met uh like canteen at the barbec and we were having the conversation and people came tried to be social >> listened for 5 minutes and then left and there was just this sort of steady cycle of people coming and going this doesn't sound very nice at all so yeah Benitar probably does fit >> a good example of why you might find it dark I mean I I I call it dark if you like I mean for an antiatalist they'll say no the the I mean the the darkness is that you're you unconventionally bringing people into suffering. You know, that's representation of >> but in terms of how it's perceived, I think that um as far as pessimism goes, the idea that it's immoral to have children. I mean, you've heard of like the pro-life and the the pro-choice crowd. Benitar and his crew are like anti-life, you know, [laughter] like it's like this sort of third option that everybody forgets about. He um he's got some wonderful sort of little tidbits in there. He he takes a divergence into the into the philosophy of disability for a time sort of making a case that in principle we are all disabled in some philosophical sense. Are >> we all disabled? >> It's been a while since I've read it but I think he sort of imagined so so one way of thinking about this would be like >> imagine if everybody whose legs worked suddenly just died and the only people left on planet Earth like don't have functioning legs. Maybe not instantly because people would have memory, but after not very long, it just wouldn't be considered a disability to not have legs because that's just how everybody is. And Benar sort of imagines in principle the things that we could have that we don't, which means that in principle we are disabled in the same way. We just can't. So there exactly. So there are all kinds of sufferings that come about in our life like having to climb the stairs, which we don't even notice as sufferings. And if you add all of these up, they become pretty significant. It's a it's a bit of a trip. Um, but really interesting and and I think probably probably dark. The other thing that reason that's quite nice about Benitar, I said it was sort of dry earlier and I did mean that as a compliment. Sorry. Is [laughter] that you like frilly? >> Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Is that Benitar is is very he gives a very logical argument as in you know there [clears throat] there I would say there are problems with the argument but you know as in like it's very clearly laid out in a way that quite a lot of pessimistic philosophers write in sort of semi- poetry. Um, Benitar, if you if you're a hardcore analytic fan, he's probably seems that way. I suppose he also You spoke to him, right? >> I did. I had him on my show. Um, he doesn't show his face. Yeah, he he doesn't I I I I actually don't know if he uses his real name. Um, but he doesn't show his face. So, there is also that added element that you you he doesn't want to be seen, you know. >> Oh, so he's the sleep token of the philosophy world. >> Oh, are they the the maskw wearing slip knot? >> Joe, don't make that face up. >> No, no, no. Sorry. I know it's I I don't think that it's very very cool, very popular about this. You know, like you know when you guys start telling me about you know anesthetus of ancient city [laughter] and I go, "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah." And I need to nod along like this. This is your turn. Oh yeah. Okay, there we are. Thank you. Very good. >> What's the philosophy of sleep token? >> Um if you go on the Reddit really deep, really really really deep. The law goes hard. The law goes hard on on many subreddits. I have a subreddit to which which has some interesting laws of it I think. Yeah. Yeah. >> I've seen them. Yeah. You're you've got cannon. >> Yeah. Apparently. Apparently. Apparently. So, >> um >> Okay. So, Benitar's got this I remember you his whole thing is this balance between suffering and pleasure. Yeah. Is that even >> a a tiny microcosm of suffering is so great that it doesn't it outweighs any amount of pleasure. >> You call it like an asymmetry argument between pleasure and pain. So a lot >> I've just pulled that out of a five five and a halfyear-old canteen convers a great advert for a tasty drink with zero calories wisdom I don't know what is [laughter] come on >> and he remembers um it's I think when a lot of people would consider is life worth living one crude way of working it out is adding up the pleasure minusing the pain and sort of seeing what you're left over with you know is it is it worth living overall Bener thinks that crucially before you exist. The potential pleasure that you might experience if you come into existence doesn't matter one like one job. It's literally irrelevant. But the potential pain that you would avoid does matter. And he tries to prove this through some sort of intuitive thought experiments. For example, there are no conscious beings on Mars, right? We don't really think that it's a bad thing that all this pleasure that could be on Mars is is being missed out on. We don't think what a tragedy that all of the potential pleasure that could exist on Mars isn't actually happening. But we might think that it is a good thing that there's no suffering up there. And some people hear that kind of example and go, "Yeah, that makes sense." Some people go, "Well, no, I am I am sad that there's no pleasure on it." It's sort of an intuitive thing. Um he also one other way of thinking about this at least for the imbalance might be a question which is would you take 5 minutes of the worst imaginable conceivable suffering that you could experience if afterwards you got to have 5 minutes of the best possible bliss. I mean I don't know what you guys would do. You wouldn't take it? >> No thank you. >> I I think that's I don't think I'd take 5 minutes of the best possible bliss anyway the rest of your life because the rest of your life would you just expectation >> Yeah. You just you'll just be completely you just feel empty, you know. >> I mean that's another asymmetry. >> Yeah, >> that's an additional asymmetry. >> And that that actually might be just a a sort of good response to this kind of thought experiment because what uh Bennett is trying to say is that most people would say no and so crudely it seems like the suffering kind of counts for more. Um but as so much of philosophy does it kind of relies on intuitive your sort of feeling of >> have a sense of negativity bias and loss of >> another way he he talks about and crucially this is only before you exist right once you exist your your pleasure is good for you and your suffering is bad for you but before you exist >> other people have a choice about whether you do or don't. before you ex for someone who doesn't exist then not experiencing pleasure is not bad but then not experiencing suffering is good and so before you're born the only moral calculus is the goodness that you're not suffering and so that's all that should be taken into account it's good that you're not suffering let's not bring that into existence another sort of line of reasoning he goes down is a kind of like a rights based approach where he says suppose for example that if I were to like break your arm you would get an ins encyclopedic knowledge of philosophy or something. >> You might, if I gave you that option, you might think to yourself like, you know what, I think that's that's worth it. Probably definitely be worth it for me. I'd take that. However, even if I would actually prefer that, >> if you didn't ask me first, if you just did it, like, you don't have the right to do that to me, right? If if I found you in need of an ambulance and the only way to save your life somehow was to break your arm, then I think most people say you should do it. But if by causing you suffering, I can not save you from worse suffering, but bring you something good, most people think that I don't have the right to inflict that suffering on you, even if it would be ultimately worth it. So for Benitar, same thing before you're born, right? >> You're allowed to inflict suffering to prevent worse suffering, but you're not allowed to inflict suffering on the promise that there'll be some good that comes out of it unconsensually. Because what you're essentially doing is is causing a bunch of people to unconsensually experience masses of suffering that they had no say in. Some people have actually tried to sue their parents for wrongful birth because they [laughter] that's actually that has actually happened >> if you're Benitar pilled. >> Yeah. Exactly. So the the asymmetry thing is is quite important to Benitar's flavor of antiatalism. You can have antiatalism without it. You can just say that life consists in more suffering. And if you think it's it's consists in more pleasure, you you've fallen for the uh the polyiana principle as I think they call it, which is the idea that we tend to remember the good stuff more than the bad stuff. The sort of rosetinted view of of the past. Most people, says Benitar, like vastly underestimate the extent to which their lives are going terribly. >> They they like sort of in retrospect think, oh, you know, it's all good, but if you actually were to live through it again, you'd realize that at every moment it was going very badly. He then after [laughter] after convinc after convincing you that you're he sort of he sort of says like you know it doesn't matter how much you suffer or or experience pleasure in life it's immoral to bring people into existence and then after convincing you of that he then says but just so you know life is actually does actually contain a lot more suffering and this uh detour into disability ethics or metaphysics I suppose is sort of part of this case you know these these menial sufferings that that you don't even notice It's not you shouldn't have been here. You should be upset that you are here and by the way the fact that you are here also is a reason for regret. >> Yeah, it gets a little bit tricky because like once you're here I mean the the inevitable question for Benar is is then why don't you just think we should kill ourselves and David Benar in a footnote compares this to going to a movie and when you're about halfway through thinking like this is kind of a crap film. um it's not bad enough that I'm going to leave now that I'm here, but I kind of wish I'd never come in the first place. That's sort of his position on on on life. He's he's he's >> How robust do you think that is as an answer to why shouldn't I just kill myself? >> I think it it doesn't really work very well cuz I'm quite suspicious of the the asymmetry argument like anyway. Um so I think that a case that that sort of makes life not worth living and therefore not worth beginning will inevitably create a powerful argument for not continuing life. Um, Bener like is, as far as I can remember, quite quite sort of staunchly not that. Um, but I I'm not so sure that they can be so definitively separated. >> Has someone taken that? Is there a suicide cult philosophy? >> There have been examples. I think Kimu talks about a few examples at the beginning of the myth of Sephus, doesn't he? He sort of he sort of mentions I think like one or two examples of some philosophers who like rode a track. He he mention I can't remember who it was. He mentions who wrote a track and then killed himself in order to like bring attention to his work, but it didn't work cuz no one liked the work anyway. >> Philip Mainlander killed himself, but I don't know if that I I can't remember if that's what he's talking about. >> I can't remember who who Kimu is talking about. Um, but no, you tend to find that people who are genuinely committed. I mean, Kimu says in the myth of Sophus, for the man who does not cheat, what he determines to be true must determine his action. So, if you become convinced that life is not worth living and you're like certain enough of that in order to kill yourself, then you're probably not going to sit around writing a book first. So it's it's sort of like self- selecting. There's an interesting sort of evolutionary deselection for views like this and for views like antiatalism and and again mentor addresses this doesn't affect the truth of the claim but it means it will never take off because >> it's cancerous. >> Exactly. Yeah. Which in reverse is the explanation I think for the general optimism that sort of sort of just just >> only the optimistic >> throughout exactly to some degree. I mean, there are people who are not optimists, but they're not quite pessimistic enough to to fully commit to the bit, as it were. 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So just go to the link in the description below or head to functionhealth.com/modwisdom. functionhealth.com/modernwisdom. I had a conversation with a gentleman who his entire theory of human evolution, human cultural evolution is that human culture is almost expressly built around helping people to not take their own lives and that our system is too. And we got halfway through the episode and uh he it's the only time this has ever happened. he bailed out of the episode partway through was had had a bad night's sleep and wasn't he felt like he wasn't making it. And I thought, well, that's kind of on brand for somebody [laughter] who had this sort of a worldview that everything is about avoiding things going badly that partway through an episode about it, he decided that it was going so badly that he didn't want to continue. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um, another thing Kimu says is that the meaning of life is literally whatever is keeping you from killing yourself. Yes. >> You know, and I think that's that's more or less true. Um, >> yeah. Why don't you kill yourself? >> Yeah. And I think that there are mo most people who engage with that topic do so on an emotional level. And that's the that's the motivation for these kinds of thoughts. There are people who are just like intellectually interested in in the worthiness of life, like whether it's worth living. But that very rarely is actually what's what's going on, I think, when when people are seriously struggling with this. And so, I don't know, it makes it a sort of difficult philosophical terrain. But I think that people who are just interested in it intellectually often will appreciate someone who can just forthrightly discuss it. >> You know, because a lot of the time it's like, you know, you you open a open a a YouTube video that's going to discuss abstractly the philosophy of suicide and it opens with a helpline. It's like way to give away your position. You know, like [laughter] it's I think people will like like ideological bias in the suicide discussion because [laughter] but people I think people want to feel like they're being taken seriously, right? And if if you if you come with a with a with a philosophical or emotional conviction to the table and someone before you even get started says, "Hey, just so you know, like you know, we're going to we're going to move towards this direction, I think I think a lot of people would appreciate like a a forthright direct approach, which is why so many people are attracted to the myth of Sephus by Kimu because it sort of it's starkly opens with that um you know there is but one serious philosophical question and that is suicide." Um, and it captures a lot of people's attention because even people who aren't feeling suicidal are like, "Whoa, yeah, that's interesting." You know, and they they just want to read about it in a in a in a relatively straightforward way. I unfortunately think it's >> pretty overhyped, the myth of Seisphus. >> Why Why do you not like the myth of Seisphus? >> I I I sort of I don't have an aversion to existentialist philosophy sort of generally, but it it sort of doesn't really capture me. Like I think that I don't know. I mean, I don't know if Kimu like sufficiently answers the question. His his famous conclusion is imagining Sisphus happy, right? And I just I don't know if that's like a satisfying thought to me. For some it might be, but but for me it's it's not. It's just as as meaningless as the situation that we that we began with, you know, this this sort of happy pushing of the boulder. Um I don't know. Joe, you can probably make a case. Is there a a bull case for well just imagine this thing to be different? Just play pretend until you believe >> it's like an act of rebellion for for Kamu. It's like a it's almost like an existential irony, right? Like he's sort of you're just going to like enjoy the thing. Well, it's interesting because I I find the development of Kimu's thought over time very interesting for this because the myth of Cisphus is often, you know, the thing that people take away is of course, you know, imagining Sisphus happy. It's such a such a famous image, but >> a lot of the myth of Seisphus is significantly more [sighs and gasps] I don't know what the right word is like more intuitively abhorrent than that if that makes sense. And even to Kamu. So Kamu writes a myth of Cisphus. He paints a bunch of characters who are meant to be like absurd men and some of them are like really awful people, you know, like like kind of philanderas or, you know, one of them is kind of, you know, the actor who never becomes themselves and is just playing characters all the time. And there and he has this idea of like, okay, well, if you're an absurdist and you are you think there's no objective or or you know, no way to say that that one aspect of life is better than any other. You're kind of trying to live out valuelessness. Well, then in that case, Kamu thinks, well, if you decided not to kill yourself, the only value that you're at least enacting is that life is better than no life. And so, you should value the quantity of life over the quality of life. Now, of course, although that's not existential nihilism, that's pretty close to moral nihilism. And Kamu clearly is troubled by this because one of the next things he writes is a play called Caligula, which is all about the Roman emperor, a kind of fictionalized version of the Roman Emperor, Caligula, going absolutely batshit and killing lots of people. And you know there there are various analyses you can make of this. When I um read that I think yeah this is Kamu wrestling with his own philosophy and he's got he's painted himself into a corner whereby you can only value the quantity of life and not the quality of life. And then he's teasing out some of the the consequence of that and he's clearly not happy because he then writes books that are ostensibly attempting to go no hang on a sec. We can't there are there are further things that we can do with with absurdism that >> that wasn't definitive. >> Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And we just, you know, the myth of Sisphus is is one of the first things that Camu writes along with the the stranger. >> Oh, it's the difficult first album of of the outsider >> and and it's it's and it is, you know, I I've I like the mythosis partly because it's so counterintuitive, but some of his later works, things like The Plague, The Plague is an amazing novel. It sort of is it it became like a bestseller for obvious reasons. It's about a kind of a plague hitting the the town of Iran in um I think it's you know in French Algeria what was then French Algeria and how people cope with that and it's you know the people have given various different analogical readings for this. So um one is to read it as an analogy for the Nazi occupation of France. Um, another is to but but but part of the the a kind of tying this back to the development of Kamu's thought from the myth of Cisphus. One way of looking at it is to say well these are lots of things that Kamu thinks when the chips are down people turn to. One of them is friendship. I'm very bullish on friendship generally but um you know another one is kind of this kind of shared struggle. There there are bits in the in the plague where they sort of say, "Okay, yeah, we're fighting a kind of nonipotent disease, but what what we're going to fight it because that's the way that we're coping almost, you know, in in a in a time of of kind of abhorentt struggle and people are dying around them all." >> Feels like the human centipede of philosophical arguments >> a little bit. Yeah. as in like as in it's it's and so you know and then Kamu writes the rebel which is one of his one of his later um works which is again discussing you know what can an absurdist coherently value without simply falling back onto a kind of leap of faith or something and I I really like those later works. I'm not convinced that they actually are consistent with this earlier position he has of like kind of hardcore absurdism, but I do think they're still they're still worth reading. I think this is actually like understated in a great deal of like philosophers who are now dead is like what they thought as if they just like like lived for one year wrote everything [clears throat] down and stayed the same you know like we sort of we we forget that people like you know if you've ever thought about writing a book >> and I'm sure we all at this table probably have at some point one of the thoughts you have is like you know am I am I ready you know is this the right time because you recognize that whatever you write now in 20 years at least some of it you're going to want to revive eyes or you're going to have changed your mind about >> and you're also going to have to answer to. >> Exactly. And it's, you know, you're going to have your your name in a bookstore and you have to grimace every time you walk past it. I would probably be driven mad. I'd like pull it off the shelf and scribble out the the paragraphs by by hand, you know. Um, >> and this is is what humans do, right? And so when we talk about what Kamu thought as if his life was actually just that day when he finally [laughter] said, "And done." >> Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Like he's just had a he's just had a fantastically bad day and the car is just and he thought, you know what, [ __ ] it. You know, yeah. Like David Hume writes the the what's the first one? The treaties concerning human nature and it's like this >> does he spell human >> with with an E. That would have been [ __ ] brilliant. [laughter] >> It would have been would have been properly bad. >> Well, he didn't know much about PR because the book didn't sell. And he later sort of revises his thoughts into the much shorter inquiry concerning human understanding. the same kind of thoughts revisited and it's posited as like a sort of like an update and he tells people not to read the other one but some people think it's just because the first one kind of wasn't selling and in fact when I went to university they made us study the treaties because it's more like fleshed out but he literally like writes the kind of same thing again in different form later in his life and so there is always sort of development of thought with philosophers and we only tend to be aware of it when it's grand and dramatic when someone converts from one side to another when Anthony Flu becomes a theist or something but it it happens throughout the history of thought too. So like when you're reading a text by somebody like if you're interested in their thought like try to keep in mind some chronology of like when it was when it was written because otherwise you might be reading you know the Goblet of Fire before you read the Chamber of Secrets and you're probably going to get the wrong kind of idea. >> Sorry no I was good. Even even someone like Plato who we quite often think of as having a a very strong stable consistent set of made out of marble >> well as he if you if you you know is one of his earlier works which is both a kind of political treatise but also a theory of the human mind is called the republic and then later he writes a book that's also a political work called the laws and you can see the development of his thoughts in the republic he's very focused on what makes a good ruler and in the laws he's very focused on okay he he'd had a quite a disillusioning experience with a a tyrant called um Dianisis I think. Cool. Yeah. Um in in Syracuse where he tried to Dianis had invited him over um twice actually and both times it went terribly >> and said, "Yeah, yeah, like I'm really interested in being in being like a one of your like philosopher kings. Yeah, like this sounds really cool. You can help me rule better." And then he shows up and and Dian Isis is just like drinking himself silly and um and and Plato was like look like one of the really big things about being a kind of philosopher king is like temperance and and and and you know not gorging yourself and kind of staying cuz other how are you going to make like really good decisions if you're drunk all the time and Dianisis kind of goes look I'm going to stop you right there like you don't understand I'm I'm in charge and like you do what I say. It's very unplay and he basically kind of imprisons Plato for a bit and he eventually gets free and then he goes back and same thing happens and he flees and disillusioned by this. Plato writes the laws which are much less concerned with what makes a good ruler and are much more concerned with if you know rulers come and go. How are you going to keep everyone in check? >> These philosophers often have like extraordinary lives. Why does Thomas Hobbes write the Leviathan? Because he had to flee him being a royalist during the English Civil War. he has to flee to to France because of the English civil war and he writes this tract about how we should all submit to a to authoritarian dictator essentially and there should be that who should be able to dictate everything with full submission including religious affairs. You got to be aware not only the chronology but also the the context >> personal motivation >> and also one other thing on this thread is be aware that sometimes when you're reading people they're kind of they're writing under the laws of a country. Dosstofki, his notes from the underground, one of the most famous of his books because it's it's so short and easy to read, uh, originally contained a chapter which essentially argued for the necessity of Christianity as Joski saw it, but it was censored and and taken out and so you end up with this sort of quite fully nihilistic tract. Um, but I think a lot of that is also going on historically too. So, so be aware that you know these are human beings with developing thoughts and political considerations inspiring their writing. >> When it comes to history of thought, is there someone that you think changed thinking forever but was sort of useless in practice? Like someone who contributed to moving thought forward most without having any real life applicability? >> That's a tricky question. I'm I'm tempted to say in a non-insulting way theologians only because >> only because Like obviously if you're a believer in God, the nature of God will will greatly affect some practical things in your life. The way that you worship, you know, should you worship the saints or not? Are you worshiping a a tripartite, you know, God or or a singular unity? You know, that kind of stuff will be important to your daily practice. But if you're talking about in practice like for society as it were, then it's probably not particularly relevant to anyone who doesn't care about that kind of stuff. So that that sort of springs to mind. Um but out outside of that, I don't know. Um maybe some of the more abstract I name that actually sprung to mind was Bertrand Russell, which you might jump down my throat for, but was he actually a practical philosopher? Everything he tried to write in practice was was awful. >> It Bert Russell was very I suppose it depends what you mean by practical. B Russell was very important um in the kind of history of studies of the foundations of mathematics and stuff like that. And although his uh you wrote a three volume insane project um is it two or three volumes? I always get too confused. No, no, nobody's read the whole thing. This is like because it's it's deeply impenetrable. It takes like what 300 pages to prove that one ad one is two. >> Yes. I it might Yeah, it's it's some it's between it's like I think around the 200 page mark >> which is quite a thing to do from first principles. >> It's a real battle of attrition. It's difficult. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, but um so >> that's like the terms and conditions of philosophy. It's like no one actually reads it, but you kind of you kind of need it to be there because it's it's important. >> And he he writes that with um Alfred North Whitehead and >> uh that that that's that's very influential, you know, that it's it in even though the grand project failed, there were some operators they coined that are very important. Um things like uh there exists a unique object such that which is is is now very help helpful in areas of maths. So you know not not not not kind of helpful on an everyday level but a lot a lot of Russell's um academic writing is is very much um in philosophy of language philosophy of maths foundations of foundations of mathematics logic you know the which >> I think are very handy but um you know it's not necessarily like you're going to read his theory of descriptions and then just be out and about being like oh yeah like >> my life is so much better. Okay. So, I guess even broader than that, are there some branches of philosophy that should be just jettisoned entirely? Any uh bits that are just intellectual cosplay deadends? >> No, because philosophy, if you find a philosophy useful, then it is useful. Um, like that's that's kind of what it's what it's there. >> It's like it's like asking the question of of sort of, you know, are there any like music genres that you think should should should get in the bin? And the answer is like no, because somebody's enjoying that, right? like I I'm sure it's useful to somebody. Um but you know, if we had to get rid of one of them, I I don't know. Um maybe >> pure logic puzzles, philosophy of mind. >> Philosophy of mind is is way too important. A philosophy of mind is the next big thing. You know, I like it's excruciatingly boring for a lot of people. I mean, we've talked about how it's quite difficult to to to talk about it in a concrete way that >> no one on YouTube likes and I can't work out whether it's because it's hard or because it's pointless. >> You know, my my audience have quite taken to the philosophy of mind. I think because I have too and so I've got this like enthusiasm for it. I think it's really important and I think like watch >> sell me sell me on philosophy. >> Watch this space as it were. I think >> sell me on it. >> People are beginning to realize that consciousness it's always been like you know you'll have someone and they'll say like consciousness it's just such a mystery and like you know it's like trying to view the window pane through the window pane because we experience the whole world through that's that's interesting but everybody kind of already knows that that's why we're at the table having the conversation. Um there is a there is a stark increase happening in the view that consciousness is so to speak fundamental. Here's the interesting thing. Yeah. So panzikism right and here's one interesting observation which is that there are these cliches that crop up basically everywhere you look. Right. If you look at ancient um vadic literature. [snorts] If you look uh at a meditative monk who achieves enlightenment in the forest somewhere. If you look at Joe Blogs who took LSD last week and had like this insane experience at the peak of his hero dose, they will say similar things which is this sort of cliche of everything is one. I am one with the universe, the ego death, the disillusion. Exactly. And this kind of stuff has been has been present in >> in in these philosophical traditions like from from the beginning of history. The prescratics talk about it a little bit too. Um, and I think that we're beginning like people are beginning to become much more open to the idea that there is something true about that and there's a reason why that keeps coming about. Um, pansychism is is growing in popularity because the problem is like we believe that there is a world of matter and we know that we are conscious and you've got a few options available to you. Either the consciousness is like a totally separate thing from the material which makes it seem really weird. Why does it interact with me? If consciousness is literally immaterial, if it's not made of of matter that like my brain and my body is, then it is a complete mystery how it would interact with my physical body. Like it's not like it's floating around out there. It has no spatial dimension. It's not it's not material. >> It's another piece of matter that is not matter. Must be some other kind of matter. >> The the like it is as mysterious that that that my mind would interact with my brain as it is as it would be if my mind suddenly started interacting with your brain or with that can of tasty new tonic on the table. Like it would just be like what what are you talking about? The if these are two separate kinds of things you're talking about like taking the number two adding in a chair and like getting you know the color orange just like just categories of different things that seem like they shouldn't be able to interact. Okay. So then maybe the mind is just made out of material. But then you run into some intuitive problems about the the nature of thoughts. You know, people keep coming at me because I like to sort of froth at the mouth over the thought of closing my eyes and imagining a triangle and asking where on earth that triangle is. There are true facts about that triangle. It's got three sides, right? That's true. It's really like I can see it in my head. It's true that it's got three sides, >> but where is that triangle? It's not just made up of the matter of my brain. If I cut open your brain, I'm not going to find a triangle in there. It it's you can sort of find the the material activity that's correlated with the experience of the triangle. That's not the same thing as the triangle. So you've sort of got this this sort of barrier problem of where you get from this material stuff to this non-material stuff. And the pansychist says there is no barrier. But instead of saying everything's made out of material and so is consciousness, they just say that everything is consciousness from the get-go and therefore you get consciousness. The biggest myth for the pansychist and other related schools in consciousness is that complexity is required for consciousness. That might be the big myth that needs to dissipate. >> Is their argument that because the brain is the most complex thing we know, it's the one that's got the most consciousness. >> It's got it the things that we think consciousness is are actually sometimes just what consciousness does. Okay, let me let me I'll explain it this way. Right. So So if consciousness just means like some kind of experience, some kind of awareness, right? When we talk about what makes somebody conscious, we might talk about things like memory, first person conscious experience, awareness, these kinds of things. But like rudimentary consciousness on its own wouldn't necessarily require any of those things. Imagine for a moment that you had no memory. I don't mean like you forget what happened yesterday like you've got dementia. I mean literally no memory laid down in any instant. What would that be like? It's kind of impossible to imagine. Imagine you were falling through the air and no memory was being laid down at any instant. Would you even know that you were falling? >> You'd have no sort of instant before to compare yourself with. You wouldn't even know that you were a being. You wouldn't know that your feet are part of you. You wouldn't have there's no time for that to happen. You would literally like >> it's impossible to even conceive of what the content of your thoughts would be. They would be the simplest possible thing that consciousness could experience. >> And yet it would still be conscious and aware. And so this this like the laying down of memory is something that consciousness can do which gives rise to more complex conscious behaviors like our conversations and and me knowing that you know we're in a building and that this is a microphone and that kind of stuff. But that is not consciousness. That's just one thing that consciousness does when it's complexely arranged in the same so when we look at like a a rock and say there's no consciousness and look at a brain and say there is and it's because oh the brain is complicated. The pansyist says, "No, consciousness is at the foundation of all of it. You've just got more complicated consciousness which does things like memory and self-awareness and communication. And you've got less complex consciousness which just sort of >> at the atomic level just sits there and sort of fizzes around." Right? The analogy I sometimes give to explain this is imagine comparing the rock to the Empire State Building. And we said, "Look at the Empire State Building with its complexity, with it with its elevators and and cash machines and it's got like light switches and electricity and and you kind of think it's this it's it can't be made of matter, you know, cuz like a rock is made of matter." No, it is still made of matter. It's just arranged in a more complex way and so doing much more interesting things. And our brains are like the empire building of fundamental consciousness which is you arrange it in a particular way and suddenly it can do all these magical things like conversations and talk to each other. >> But the pansyus thinks that at root it's it's consciousness. Before we continue, if your sleep's not right, you're taking ages to nod off waking up at random times and feeling groggy in the morning. Momentus' sleep hacks are here to help. They're not your typical knock you out supplement overloaded with melatonin. Just the most evidence-based ingredient at perfect doses to help you fall asleep more quickly, stay asleep throughout the night, and wake up feeling more rested and revitalized in the morning. I'm banking on you not being able to hit me. That's why I take these every single night, especially when I'm on the road, and why I trust Menus with my life. All right. Okay, there we go. Or at least my sleep because they make the highest quality supplements on the planet. What you see in the on the label is what's in the product and absolutely nothing else. And if you're still unsure, they've got a 30-day money back guarantee. So you can buy it and try it every night for 29 nights. 30 nights in fact. And if you don't like it for any reason, they will give you your money back. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. Plus they ship internationally. Right now you can get 35%. He's run out of ammo. Right now, you can get 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money back guarantee by heading to live momentous.com/martwisdom [laughter] code modernwisdom at checkout. [laughter] That's lie mus.com/modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. [laughter] What do you make of pansyism, Joe? >> I I I like it in the sense that I I think that it's kind of satisfyingly empirical, which sounds very a very strange thing to say. Um but, you know, ultimately it's somebody saying, "Okay, we've got um matter and mind. It's very difficult to reduce mind to matter. We can't deny that mind exists because it is in some sense the precondition for thinking that everything else exists." And so, right, if we can't reduce the two, we'll just have to make mind, you know, and matter play together. >> So, I'm I'm sympathetic in that sense. I think that I think that um for me, the aspect of the pansyist approach that will probably need to be worked out in more detailed. Somebody probably has cuz I'm not that well read regarding pansychism is a kind of detailed account of what complexity amounts to. M so like you know for example you know the we we can arrange the brain in you know we we have brains they're arranged in a certain way you can arrange you know a series of rocks in that way you could try and simulate it with a kind of similar aspects of the mind with a binary gate system stuff like that like in what I think that that that kind of I worry that sometimes a lot of the work is then being thrown at this notion of complexity and that I sometimes think that the plausibility of the pansychist program is going to rest on how that idea of complexity is cached out. This may just be um however a neurological or a neuroscientific problem. There's a guy called neuroscientist called Fran either Franchiscoco or Francisco I don't know Francisco Varela who um his whole project is okay I want to try and contribute to to the hard to solving the hard problem of consciousness which is the idea of you know bridging the gap between the material world and felt experience and so he's going to try and do that by and has been trying to do that by charting as many possible neurological coralates as you can between phenomenologically reported experience and stuff going on in the brain. And that's his whole and he just kind of and I I have a lot of I have a lot of sympathy for that. Um >> partly because I think that you know no matter what your philosophical stance is, you're clearly going to have to deal with these findings. You know this whether you think as Varela does that this will actually allow you to bridge the hard problem of consciousness eventually and that you'll be able to reduce mind to matter or whether you're a pansychist and this will help you with your fleshing out your account of complexity. I think that you know this is one of the reasons why the philosophy of mind I think is is is in such a boom period academic wise is because it's I often think that philosophy is most helpful when it's interdisciplinary. Um I really like for example the intersection between philosophy and linguistics because I I think that there's a real strength in in taking empirical results from linguistics and empirical results from neuroscience and from psychology and looking at it through a philosophical lens. you know trying to you know in very broad terms I suppose trying to see what it means and then applying it to different things you know this is I I think that a lot of the best philosophy work occurs at the intersection of philosophy in different fields and specifically I think philosophy and neuroscience is a very promising one I think I think there's a lot of very good work being done there what else is like it felt to me uh when I say I started learning about pansychism who's the dude from Durham University Philip Goff thank you so Philip is the first guy I had an entire conversation with about that was on his first book 2019. >> Yeah. Galileo's era one >> so that was it. But I before then I'd sort of seen it had a bit of an understanding about what it was. >> Uh Anukica has done two books on it now. I think >> something like that. >> Was she she Anukica the way she conveyed it to me was like the only conclusion I can draw from my >> interviews on on consciousness is that I have to take seriously the idea that consciousness is fundamental. not quite sure what that means. And it sounds like >> it's sort of theic of the theory of mind one. >> Yeah. And she's she's totally materialistic and and she's like, "Look, I it sounds totally insane, but but bear with me." And she does this like, you know, 12-part documentary interviewing all these people and thinking actually there is something very very strange going on. >> The biggest problem for pansychism is the so-called combination problem. That's like the actual biggest critique that a pansyist would recognize, which is >> crucially pansychists don't really think that like everything is conscious. They don't necessarily think this can is conscious as a unified entity. >> They think that it's made out of consciousness. The consciousness is the stuff of the universe out of which things are made. >> Um you know like calling this a can. This is an artifact. We've put this together as human beings. We've taken materials and arranged them. So it's like there's nothing to say that it would get this unified center of consciousness. That would be kind of weird, right? If we took a bunch of consciousness and just put it together in this shape and suddenly it had a unified sense of consciousness. That would be strange. But that's what happens in the brain according to the panyist. >> Right. So it's like if one person is in a field and ton of other people are in different fields and then you put them all together in the same field and somehow one brain. Exactly. Like why why does my why does my consciousness if my brain is made up of consciousness? Then why when it's arranged in a particular way do I get this singular unified sense of of self? And why is it not that like all three of our brains have a singular sense of consciousness? And if we got close enough together, which we're not going to do, uh then it would happen. >> They call it the combination problem because it's like how do they combine? And interestingly, maybe right like I don't know if you've come across these split brain patients. I talk about these all the time. >> We've got some evidence to suggest that you kind of have two like consciousnesses that are that are battling out with each other inside your very own brain. So that's >> the interdisciplinary thing like a lot of scientific research into the way that the brain works in weird cases like split brain patients. Look into it, ladies and gentlemen. It is freaky what your brain can do. Like the two hemispheres, what they can do. >> What's your favorite examples of this? >> My favorite example of this are so your brain, the two hemispheres of your brain are connected by the the >> corpus coloss. >> Corpus colossum, right? It's the connective tissue which actually does more to inhibit communication than facilitate communication. There seems to be an evolutionary advantage to keeping them separate. Right? Some people as a severe treatment for epilepsy would undergo a corpus calistomy where you sever it. Right. This is what a split brain patient is. It's someone who has the connective tissue severed. They can they can still communicate through other means a little bit but basically the communication >> it's like a vertical decapitation. >> Exactly. Now most people know that the left hemisphere governs broadly like the right visual field and the right hemisphere broadly the left visual field. Also, the right hemisphere is supposed to be the kind of like creative one and the left one is the sort of rational mathsy one. Bit of an oversimplification, but take a split brain patient whose hemispheres aren't communicating properly. You can show them something just in their right visual field. So, you like block off the rest of their view and you just show them something to the left hemisphere and vice versa. So, they've done some experiments on such people where they will for example show them a picture of an apple and they'll say, "What can you see?" and they'll say, "I I don't know. I I I don't know what you're talking about." And then you ask them to draw a picture of something and they'll draw an apple because part of their brain has seen it, but part of it hasn't. You will uh you will find those kinds of cases. But the most interesting to me, I needed to say that to set it up, is a study that was done, I can't remember what it was. Anukica writes about this, um, where they took a split brain patient and they showed one hemisphere of the brain an instruction. It's an experiment, so you're you're ready to do an instruction and the instruction just says something like, "Get up and walk over there." So the person reads it, they get up, they walk over to the wall, and then you ask them verbally, why did you just walk over to the other side of the room, and you know what they say? It would be weird if they said, "I don't know, wouldn't it?" But they don't. They give a reason. >> They can fabulate, >> but they're not making it up. They're not lying. They're not They're not like, "Oh, uh oh, I they believe it. They're like, "Oh, I was um I was trying to get some air. It's kind of warm in here." And they believe it. So there's this idea that one hemisphere of your brain is the so-called interpreter and that you've essentially got your brain working on like like like doing particular things like you can imagine working on your like emotive impulses. You just do something because you just impulsively want to or like instinctively feel it's the right thing and then your left brain comes in and retrospectively says oh no no no this is the reason why I did that that I've got good reason for that. And you've kind of got these two parts of your brain governing different parts of your activity. What's the implication of that philosophically? >> The implication of that is that consciousness might not be so unified as our sort of present experience leads us to believe. You know, the sort of unity of of self might not actually be sort of what what's going on in in reality. Um, I have a pet theory that a lot of the reason why we feel like we're in our brains. It is the sort of center of our, you know, neural activity of course, but I feel like the reason why we really experience ourselves as up here is because it's where our senses are, where our eyes are and our ears are. I kind of imagine that if our eyes were like on our hips, we might sort of and our ears were down there too, we might sort of feel as though we were located >> because that is where everything is being fed through. >> Exactly. It sort of feels like you're up here because that's where the that's where the information is. Um, lot of lot of weird weird stuff to to think about this so-called combination problem. I mean, there's a lot of weird stuff in experience. It's like if I pinch myself in the hand, I feel it in my hand. I'm told that it's my brain that's doing the experiencing, but I really feel it in my hand, you know? It's it's it's very strange. I think that poses a good analogy for those people who think that like there is one consciousness or one like oneself like at man, which we're all sort of avatars of, is like the left hand if I pinch it, my right hand doesn't feel it. But it is >> and that's within something that is supposed to be discreetly kind of its own localized. We are we are one thing but I can get this localized pain in my left hand that my right hand doesn't. >> So let's just scale that across the one thing that is everything. >> Yeah. I mean people say like well my my consciousness can't be the same as yours because I don't have access to your thoughts and you don't have access to mine so they're separate minds right but when you're asleep you don't have access to your waking thoughts but it's still the same mind right there are a lot of like weird avenues to explore this this unity of consciousness as this sort of fundamental uh the um principle of the universe. One of the interesting uh kind of coral I one thing that I I find very interesting about about that kind of you know one part of our a lot of our conscious reporting is the kind of PR brain so to speak is that it reminds me a lot of um of of kind of nature's picture of the will and of the mind which is broadly speaking that we kind of have a parliament of different drives and that you know those drives do do what they will so to speak you know there's there's not one will there are there's all of these forces pulling in different ctions and then once once once we've won out on a course of action, we then put a we then justify that, you know, at least that's part of what what each thinks is going on. I'm always reminded of that kind of split brain going over to the other side of the room and saying, >> "Oh, yeah, I went here because, you know, I want to look out the window or something." It's like, "Yeah, that it's a it's quite a it's quite a surprisingly niche picture." The other um >> part of having a picture of consciousness that is in some way combinatoric. So, um, functionalism works like this, uh, as does pansychism, um, is that in theory, you can start scaling things up quite extreme. So, there's the, um, it's known as the China brain experiment. You actually need far more people. It's just cuz China is the most populous country, but you need far more people than the amount of people in China to do this. And the thought experiment goes that say you had billions and billions and billions of people. If you made them all behave like neurons kind of um you know they all had walkie-talkies or phones or something and they were you know they they'd say you know they give a a code to someone else and they relay information that way exactly like a brain would that give rise to a consciousness and I I know I I think that's that's a fascinating partly because you know it may it sounds crazy >> well there's a lot of complexity there's a lot of it sounds absolutely insane but why not isn't it just as insane that you can do it with atoms and get yourself a brain >> but also you know we we we we talk about things like hive mines and insects and things like that and we kind of you It's it's you know you can say that's just a metaphor but a lot of the time you know you describe it as if it's in some sense you know sharing a contract. You had um Peter Godfrey Smith on recently and uh something he says in his book is that that that in a in a an octopus >> a huge amount of its neurons are in its arms. So um I don't even mention this in the podcast. I'm so sorry I haven't seen it yet. the um but but um one one thing that he might one thing he says is he ponders whether when an octopus gives an instruction to its arm. It kind of gives it the general vibe and then the arm works out the details. >> What if the what if the arm does it itself? >> It seems like the arm sometimes is sort of feeling and then sort of like oh what's that like then the but interestingly they sort of seem to be able to act independently in that way but when they need to they suddenly become unified when there's a when there's a predator they can suddenly like shoot together and and swim off as fast as they can. So it's like it's separable when it needs to be but unified when it doesn't. And our brains probably do the same thing. Why do we have two hemispheres? >> And also, you know, just because there's some utility in it. >> And to build on that point, you know, the the the if we if we're, you know, scaling up to the idea, we talk about or at least we're used to it. This kind of follow fashion, but a lot of the a lot of the, you know, 19th century um writing, not necessarily philosophy, just writers very keen on the idea of spirits of nations and things like that. you know. Mhm. Standal um the French author >> travels around Europe and in his little notes he talks about like oh yeah the spirit of the German you know this bit of Germany and the spirit of of of Italy and you know that kind of the spirits of the different regions of not nations at that point but but the different regions that he's visiting and you know we we think that's kind of quaint now and a bit a bit funny you know it feels like you know largely it's kind of a collection of stereotypes it's kind of amusing to read but the idea of you know having groups of people having animated principles and treating them metaphorically as bits of mind is, you know, is is is a metaphor. The idea that um groups of minds can coales to form something analogous to a mind. If you believe in that, that makes that metaphor a lot more substantial. Um I mean, you know, I I was but then, you know, the further you go down this rabbit hole, the more interesting the questions become. You know, could could a bunch of people simulating a mind have a conscious experience? You know, we think about it, you know, we think about the mind as having >> it's much easier to think about, you know, a group of, you know, 10 billion people having a thought or an idea than it is the idea of 10 billion people in this neurologically unification issue. >> Yes. Yeah. Yeah. But like I don't know. I I think you know it's the the more emotionbased you ask those questions um the less intuitive it becomes. What I like about this as an example is that you can bring this down to your own experience. It scales in that way because is it >> can you make one of your neurons have a thought? >> Yeah. >> Like can it can that localized part of this localized part feel anything cuz you can kind of there. Okay. But what about if you do individual nodes and then you think well if we scale it up where is and this makes sense with the the combination problem. >> It's a little bit weird to think about right. Um, interestingly, David Hume, >> maybe this isn't as boring as you as I accused it of being. >> David Hume didn't think that you would know like Hume, the famous empiricist, um, like, yeah, there's a lot to say about Hume, but he he thought, for example, if you had no experience with the world, if you just, you know, had a pain in your big toe or something and you'd had no experience before, you wouldn't know you it was in your big toe. It's like it's it's a really weird sort of implication of of Hume's view, which I think is ridiculous. It's one of the many things that Hume says, which is completely ridiculous. He thinks that you essentially need to have this experience which you then know you realize has has been due to something happening in my finger and that allows you to draw that memory. I >> I think memory is the key to a lot of this consciousness problem. Memory >> it allows you to string this sequence. >> Yeah. When we think about memory again we think about it in terms of like remembering what you did yesterday. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about remembering like remembering the instant before this instant which which when you start thinking about it in those terms it becomes revolutionary if if you imagine yourself falling as we were picturing earlier with no memory you'd probably act and and according to the panist experience the world a lot like the can >> but >> would that not preclude a Boltzman brain >> would it preclude a Boltzman brain >> yeah just that if they coales into this single form for such a short space of time how is it if it didn't exist prior to that oh Their argument would be the neurons are created in such a way that as if you had memories prior to that. >> Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Um so >> you understand what I meant by that like if it's so transient then >> but encoded in its transient is the >> the fake memory. Yeah. Exactly. I want to point out that we we're talking about this in the context of of like pansyism and we're all a bit sort of woo woo and people are like this is totally crazy but the the kind of like the example Joe just gave of the the what do you call it the China problem. It's called the China brain. Like we brought this up in the context of pansychism, but most people listening to this are probably materialists to some degree about consciousness. They will probably think, you know, I think that consciousness is just emergent of material. A bit like how, you know, zeros and ones become a picture on a screen, something like that. Mhm. >> This example kind of poses a challenge to that because it's like if you believe that you can just take atoms, put them in a particular order and get a unified conscious experience of pain, then why can't I do that with individual brains? Put them together in a particular way and get a unified experience. >> In the same way that you can make a triangle out of wood or out of stone or out of metal, you know, if you define something relationally, what you're making it out of ceases to be as important. >> Exactly. If consciousness is just an arrangement of of atoms, then you should be able to get consciousness out of an arrangement of atoms in in other ways. And if you think that's not true, then you either have to explain why it's different or I suppose abandon materialism or abandon the view that consciousness is in fact emergent and is not somehow fundamental. >> Exactly. Right. >> Maybe this is maybe this is it might just be the messenger. It might have been the messenger so far. Sorry to everyone that's done theory of mind [laughter] that's come on my podcast cuz it's like five or 10 people. I think it might actually be like the next sort of big thing. I'm I'm excited about the idea. I think it's fun. I mean, I think there's there's a lot to there's a lot to dislike about it, too, of course, but like it's exciting and I think people are interested in it. And >> well, it the first thing that it gives everybody is I have always had questions about my own experience. Everyone is always kind of narcissistic when it comes to that. And this is the most direct you're ever going Why am I a thing? Why do I feel anything at all? Why do I sort of exist in that way? My the other thing that I'm very interested in which is your one of your pet theories is emotivism. >> Mhm. >> Can you explain emotivism to me like M12? >> So emotivism is a kind of a theory about ethics and a theory about language. Um we've been talking so far about sort of what stuff is made out of. Um and there's lots more to be said about that by the way like why everything is made out of consciousness and how we even get there. Uh that's like a kind of metaphysical question in the realm of ethics. like what's good, what's bad, what should you do, what shouldn't you do, everyone's familiar with that kind of language. If I say like, you know, it's bad for you to to kick a homeless person on the street, you kind of understand what I'm saying. You get what I mean? But a philosopher will hear that statement and try to break it down. What literally do we mean? What does this word like bad mean? The ethical emotivist is someone who thinks that ethical statements are just expressions of emotion. means that when you say something is good or bad or that you should or shouldn't do something, all of that moral language is a kind of emotional expression. A big confusion about this is that suppose I think that suppose I I just don't like murder. I just don't like it. Right? Ethical subjectivism says that when I say murder is wrong, I mean to say something like I don't like murder, right? That is a reporting of my mental state that I don't like it. Ethical emotivism is not a reporting of your emotional state. It is the expression of the emotion itself. So it's the difference between saying I don't like murder and going like gh murder. >> Like literally expressing it. So when I say I don't like murder, >> that's a claim that you can investigate. Is that true? Is it true that I don't like murder? Maybe I'm lying to you. Maybe it's false. Right? >> So it's sort of it can be true. It can be false. It's it's a a fact about my psychology. Whereas the expression of distaste for murder just going as it famously has been boo murder is not the kind of thing that can be true or false. You can't really like debate it exactly. It's just an expression. The emotivist thinks that that's what's going on with with ethics. So AJ Ayah is kind of the father this emotivist theory in the 20th century. And uh it's only one part of his philosophy but it's probably what he's most remembered for. And so he compares saying like the difference between saying murder and saying murder is wrong is a bit like the difference between saying murder and then saying murder with an angry emoji and three exclamation marks. It's just this like emphasis on something. >> So okay, why think this, right? Like why why would you why would you believe this? Well, pay attention to what your brain is doing when it moralizes. If I walk down the street and I kick a homeless person, you will notice a fact about the world which is that I have just kicked a homeless person. And you could be completely like morally, emotionally detached from that. You could just report as a fact if you were like a robot. It's a true fact. Alex just kicked a homeless person, right? But if you think that it's wrong, there's something more going on. You think Alex just kicked a homeless person and and what's the extra thing? What is that extra thing that makes you say that it's wrong? Well, I think that if you pay attention to what your brain is doing in those instances, it's something that belongs in the in the category of of emotion rather than that kind of rational thought. Like that extra bit that's making you say it's wrong versus just reporting it. Is that extra bit more like, you know, when you burn your hand and take it away or when you get angry at someone for doing something or is it more like 2 plus 2 is four and the sky is blue. Like which of those is it more like? I think it it much more strongly belongs in the category of emotion. And so that the actual isolated moral element of the statement it's wrong to kick a homeless person is is an ethical [clears throat] expression. >> Okay. >> An emotional expression. >> You've probably heard me talk about element before. Come on. Frankly, that's because I'm dependent on it and it's how I've started every morning for the last 3 years. 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And right now, you can get a free sample pack of Element's most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklnt.com/modern wisdom. That's drinklnt.com/modern wisdom. If emotivism is true, >> does that mean that morality is just vibes? >> More or less. Yeah. Although it's important, I think the one thing worth noting is is that even if you put forward this emotivist thesis, it doesn't necessarily mean that anything goes. So we we're very we're very quick to >> because that's that's an obvious sort of follow on >> but just because we're very quick to generally say okay something is I'll say subjective um in the sense that you know I say it's different from subjectivism but but you know there's somebody can say boo and another person can say yay at least in theory but of course there are constraints on this I I think that sometimes we get very caught up in ideas about objectivity and subjectivity and actually sometimes um I think what we're actually often getting at is the between stability and instability. So, and like most people think that beauty is subjective in some way, right? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder famously and there are people that dispute that, but that's a pretty majority view. It doesn't follow from that that you can in fact find anything beautiful. You just like try like if you try and you know look at a dog turd on the street and just be like so many of my analogies have been dog turd related but you know a dog turd on the street and just try and find it beautiful you'll find that you can't. And so plausibly there are still restrictions on the kind of things that that people can and in fact do find beautiful. And so you kind of say it doesn't follow just from yeah if you were a motivist it doesn't follow just from the fact that uh or the the idea putting forward that um all ethical statements are emotional expressions that this means that we're going to have total chaos and that everyone's going to value different things. there are plausibly just pragmatic constraints on the kind of things that people feel moral disgust about >> um >> which is going to cause some kind of consensus. >> Yeah. So like I mean you know the class I mean one I mean one way of looking at at it is is the the the the tribe of 150 people that say yay murder aren't going to be they're not going to last very long. They're going to be out competed by people who are very boomer cancerous memes. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah, these these kinds of responses function in a similar way to ethical subjectivism, which like most people are familiar with this idea that some people think that ethics is real. Maybe it's given by God. Maybe it's inscribed into the foundation of the universe. Um, and some people think, no, we essentially kind of make it up. And the debate is is always this practical one of like, well then, you know, how can you say that this was wrong? How can you say that that was right? Some people just say, well, you can't. So, one thing to note is that it may be true that if we all became emotivists, the world would become a complete disaster and people would just start being self-indulgent. That wouldn't make it untrue. It would just make it not very practical to believe and therefore maybe, you know, we should cut this segment and not let anyone hear about it, right? But if you're asking what is >> vibe coding human, >> it's true. It it will evolutionarily self- deselect. So, like it's not it's not if it were actually a bad thing to believe that that doesn't mean that it's >> had a lot of emotivist ancestors, but they maybe didn't stick about. >> Yeah. or or like if it is in fact something that would lead to this sort of this arbitrary disaster. Do >> you think it does? >> Um, no. For a few reasons. Partly because I agree with you. I mean, people will be listening to this going like, well, I think I could see a dog [ __ ] as as beautiful in the right sort of context. And I I think that's true. But the point remains that there are things that you find beautiful that you can't just choose to not. And there are things that you don't find beautiful that you can't just choose to become beautiful. Um I think there is a degree on fundamental matters of like somewhat universal agreement in the same way that we kind of broadly agree on many artistic points right we might have you know I don't like impressionism and I think Van Go is overrated but broadly speaking we have an idea of of one piece of art being like you know a good beautiful piece of art and one thing like not really being a piece of art at all. Um but of course there's so much room for subjectivity there that on the moral particulars you run into a problem. How do I think this can be addressed? Well, one important thing to note is that AJ Aya talks about this most moral debate because this is the thing that you undercut the ability to debate morals to say I think I'm right and you're wrong if it's all just feeling. You can't do that. You're just feeling so you can't morally debate. A points out that the vast majority of moral debate that you hear on a regular basis is not actually moral debate. It's debate about facts which then inform your moral view. So imagine you're having a debate about gun violence in America. The debate might sound something like, you know, did you know that, you know, if we criminalized guns, then gun rellated deaths would drop by 10,000 every year. Oh, but you know, having a swimming pool is more dangerous than having a these these are factual claims that you can test. You can you can run statistics and you can find out whether they're true or false. And a lot of the debate consists in that sort of factual disagreement, but the actual moral element >> isn't actually being brushed up against. >> What people are trying to do there, which would, I guess, at least reinforce the emotivism view, is get further up the stack from someone's emotive outburst. >> Yeah. >> And say, well, actually, the fact that your emotions are based on are different. Let me change those facts and see what >> Exactly. And it would just it would just bring about a new emotional state. Suppose you were like you you were you were really scared of getting on a train and I said to you right now, "Oh, we're going to go to Edinburgh." And you felt an emotion of fear and then I just told you a fact which is, "Oh, we're going to get the plane instead." You your emotion would change. I haven't like convinced you on an emotional level. I haven't like changed your emotions exactly. I've changed facts which then dictate what your emotional state is. >> Presumably, you could also teach me some things about the safety record of >> That's also true. which would change your emotional state without just you saying I'm scared of trains and me being like no you're not and then we have debate [laughter] doesn't make any sense right that's not actually how it goes and that's actually not how it goes in morality a lot of the time you know because if you if you find two people who are debating about guns and one says that you know if we have guns on the streets then you know people are going to get attacked and another person says yeah but when somebody's attacked like do you only want the bad guys to have guns don't you want good people to be able to defend them what's the like moral boo and yay there. It's something like, you know, boo innocent people dying, you know, like they probably agree on that and then it's just sort of a factual dispute of what what will sort of bring about that that innocent people dying. >> So, does that suggest that people's >> moralities aren't actually as divergent as we think that they are? That most people agree on most things when it comes to morality? >> Not necessarily. Um, it's actually a very difficult question to answer. The thing I'm intending to get across here is that if it is the case that there is this big problem with something like emotivism that it doesn't allow us to to have these debates and say that people are wrong. I think that it would be much more restricted than people would first imagine cuz you first think gosh I can't say you know I can't say that you're wrong to to to do I can't say that you're wrong to to steal that apple from the store. I can't say that you're you know it's a good thing to to you know walk your wife home or something. You know what I mean? Like but that's not the case. If there were some kind of disagreement that we were unable to resolve, it would be much more foundational and much more broad that might exist. It might not. Our evolutionary psychology might be such that we on the most fundamental level like basically are made of the same stuff. Um but it does seem plausible to me that there could be genuinely irresoluble like foundational value complex. I suppose one potential candidate for that would be um the notion of rights versus consequences which is a sort of you know so yeah in that's like one way one way of you know a lot of >> is say I'm having an argument with someone and about I don't know let's do the gun control example I know nothing about the facts on the ground about gun control but one thing somebody might say is just >> no I have a right this >> and that's that's would be an ethical statement and thus an expression but people do use that in a kind of loadbearing justificatory way. I think that would be one example of a of a type of moral disagreement that emotivism would struggle to accommodate. You might be able to get it in find that it would break down because I agree with you like you you'd break it down to like you know someone ultimately isn't just going boo innocent people dying >> because that's a sort of consequentialist view like innocent people dying that's a bad consequence boo another person might be like boo taking my rights away >> and that would actually conflict however I think >> one person's uh priority and another person's priority and who trumps >> but I do think that both of these in fact are not actually foundational right because you've got to break down this con you say boo innocent people dying and Like I can think of 10 examples off the top of my head where you'd be okay with an innocent person dying, right? And likewise, you know, boo rights are notoriously difficult to actually justify or ground. So if you had further conversation with these people, you might find that the emotional motivation that has led one person to innocent people dying is bad and another person to, you know, rights being being violated as bad is actually the same wellspring as it were. Um, and if that's the case, then this problem goes away. It might not be the case though and then you are left with this problem of like value conflicts that can't be resolved but it's much more restricted and would probably operate on the level of like societies rather than individuals which guess what it does and we kind of like just accept that some societies have different morals and some some don't. That's a good point. I suppose the other >> at least on the particulars the other cannibals we we don't >> well the the the other the other um potential issue you might find is is that >> it it is entirely possible that we just have a non-foundationalist moral psychology. So on that we've kind of said oh well you know maybe we won't end up disagreeing because we'll get down to fundamentals. But I would potentially, you know, it's certainly a possibility that we have just loose branches of moral statements, you know, like I think, you know, um that's a good example. So like the the example that was did I think this in Jonathan Heights book he uses the example of he takes a bunch of consequentialists and then um asks them about like the kind of theoretical consequencefree incest scenario where um where you know which which basically just never exists in real life but in this kind of laboratory setting he kind of posits it >> and he often finds that you know that that's a kind of that's something that people will condemn regardless of the foundation their stated foundation to morality. I suppose that's that's one potential um counter. You talked to Simon Blackburn recently. Is he still calling himself a quasi realist? >> He actually regrets inventing that term. >> Okay. What does he call himself now? >> I I'm not sure what he actually calls himself now. I think he's still a non-cognitivist. Um Blackburn is is a is a is a non-cognitivist of a kind of emotivist. Um he's got a lot of interesting things to say about that. I just did a whole episode with him, so you know, watch it. Um I think what you just said, what did you just say? >> Was I realist before that? Oh. Um, about the idea of it it's it's possible that our e the the ethical statements that we will boo and huray at are are not a foundational structure. Indeed, in a motivism, we would >> we might expect that to also be the case in emotivism because whereas whereas in a kind of standard cognitivist picture of ethics, >> we come to our ethical propositions through having a kind of base level set of ethical principles that we believe are true and then derive our ethics from that. an emotivist kind of throws out that picture entirely. So another explanatory problem you might posit for ethic for emotivism in ethics which is basically a variant on um frag >> which is uh would be like oh well we have this whole inferential setup um for our ethical propositions that we don't for emotions you know do do it doesn't you know I don't I don't get angry because I've inferred anger from some kind of previous emotional principle I might get angry because somebody does something that I perceive to be an injust justice. But that's that's going from a a thing that I believe to be true. And that kind of this whole inferential structure that our ethics seems to follow and at the very least we want our ethics to follow as an ideal. We hold people being ethically inconsistent as a bad thing seems to rely on some kind of underlying intuitive cognitivism. So there are like there are different problems you can have with with emotivism and non-cognitivism and ethics more generally, but there are responses to those problems and I think you know some of them incest. >> One good proof of of emotivism might just be the incest question. Um it's it's famously difficult for people to to deal with incest and it's always funny watching people sort of wriggle um thinkers on stage when somebody's brave enough to ask the question why why it's wrong. Um consequentialists are notoriously bad at justifying this and they'll say things like well because you know incest leads to having disabled children in response to which there are a few questions. Firstly what's wrong with having disabled children? Secondly, you know, obviously what about the like in cases where procreation is not going to be possible. That's obviously like a side issue. We can obviously correct. Oh, well, there's like a power imbalance between okay, we can obviously just like just answer the question, right? You know what I'm asking you and people can't do it. The emotivist, bear in mind, this is one of the most universal taboos in the world is the incest taboo. It's like everywhere. Interestingly, some societies have variant forms where it's like it's okay to marry your older sister but not your younger sister. Stuff like that. It's kind of weird. I mean, famously cousins were >> in the royal family, were >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, cousins have always been a sort of uh a sort of stick in the stick in the mud for this. Like they've people don't seem to care so much about cousins historically, but but quite clearly >> they're the Goldilocks zone of familial relation. >> Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. For keeping it in the family, but not >> you know, they're close enough that you know them. You don't have to actually go that >> hard looking. You end up with these 15th century monarchs with chins out to ear. >> It's true. It's true. So they say um but clearly there is this universal taboo and most people just instinctively think it is just well what's the word realistically what's the word it's something like it's just gross man it's just it's just it's not the emotivist says yeah that that's that's what's going on right and so the the wrongness of incest when you when you recognize how >> difficult it is for people of a non just prescriptivist moral theory like if you're if you're a believer in God who thinks that it's just revealed that it's the wrong thing to do then then fine that still doesn't actually explain why it's wrong just tells you that it's wrong. >> But for any secular ethicist, it's it's notoriously difficult when you when you uh select out those those other factors. And so if I ask you Chris, like if you think incest is wrong, I don't know what you would say. >> I'm an only child, so it's actually really >> difficult to difficult to >> I I I've thought about this a little bit. It was you that first taught me about the incest question and then Jonathan height kind of like I read it in full. >> Two things. First off, >> the reason that humans uh feel incest aversion is because of something called the Westermark window. Familiar with this? >> Okay. So, the Westermark effect >> is um >> young children that are raised together that spend sort of infant and young child years. Yeah. >> In close proximity, especially if they see their mother raising another child, >> they have sexual aversion to them. This is adaptive, right? You do not know who your sister is. You don't know who that person is. What you do know is that that particular individual was fed and cared for by your mother and you played with them and they were around between zero and 10 years old. Uh this leads to some pretty difficult situations. If you have twins or brother and sister that are separated at birth, they've missed this Westermark window. They do not have sexual revulsion. Now cognitively they might but that like ick that apparently people who have brothers and sisters I don't have a brother brother or sister so I don't like to me that innate sense when you do this anytime that you do the incest question >> people's faces start to sort of squeeze a little >> there is I feel this is the one time in my life that I feel like a psychopath >> for you the incest question is just intellectual masturbation >> prec specifically intellectual um >> there's no not to get not to Like I I don't like to make the examples like this personal, but I mean you have parents, you know, like >> that's true. >> Surely the thought of um without going any further with that sentence, you you get what I'm driving at. Like there is a there is that I can map that on. >> There's something you can >> That's true. But anyway, Western Mark window really interesting. So if you have uh brother and sister or uh specifically the classic sort of daddy issues thing, daughter and father, dead beat dad, dad leaves, dad comes back in. Sometimes this happens and they don't even know, you know, adopted kids, so on and so forth. And uh you end up finding because there is a kind of resonance that's in that. You think, wow, like this person just seems so like me. And it's like, yeah, they share quite a bit of your genetics. >> Well, look, but the thing is like I I think there are all kinds of explanations you can give for like why this this taboo has emerged. But like there are there are explanations for things that that do not equate to justifications for things. You know, I could explain why human beings have an inherent like racial bias, you know, because when you're living in tribes, it makes sense to be suspicious of other. So I can I can explain evolutionarily why, you know, somebody might be a bit racist, but most people think actually that's wrong. Like we don't want to do that. Like so it's not it's not a justification for it. It's an explanation for why it exists in the human psychology. So you can explain why the incest taboo exists in the human psychology and why it cropped up in some areas and not others. But if you think it's wrong, I'm going to ask you why. And as an emotivist, I can I can if someone says, "Well, I think it's I've had this conversation with people in the pub and they say they give me an emotivist answer." They say, "But it's just it's it's just disgust. It's disgusting. That's your brother, you know, that's your sister. It's just I'm like, "Yeah, exactly." And it's it's like one of the most I think compelling uh cases for emotivism. Everybody's lapping as an emotivist when it comes to the incest question, >> but rather they're lapping as something else until it comes to the emotivist around question. >> Yeah. So much of it actually breaks down to to emotion. There there are lots of reasons. >> You identify as this >> an emotivist to be clear. >> Yeah. Not Yeah. Um yeah, I think I think so. Um I find it I'm I >> some sort of qualifier quasi >> I've got kind of philosophical commitment issues, you know, like I I I [laughter] find it very difficult to call myself anything really. Like it's it's it's because >> you're philosophically non- monogous. >> Yeah. Not just because not not just on a practical level of like oh you'll be held to it and people will but just because like you know who who bloody knows man like realistically who >> because we like to put labels on things. >> Yeah. That's right. Um like we like to put labels and emotions such as good and bad. I mean I think one way I've I've tried to explain this and and why I do call myself an emotivist and say yes I am one but like you know pending corrections as it were. Um I I would you know drop it in a moment if there were was sort of good evidence against >> emotivist agnostic. >> Yeah. Like like emotivist with a degree of >> emotivist curious >> confidence. Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. Um I think if you imagine what it would be like if we didn't have a word for anxiety. It's like there was no word for it, right? And you were feeling anxious. You would try to describe your feeling to me by using other emotional terms. You'd say like, "Oh, well, I feel a bit it's sort of like sadness, but I'm like excited. I I don't really know how." And so, you isolate that feeling. Give it its own word. >> So, if I ask you in that kicking the homeless person case, what is the extra thing you're feeling other than just the the knowledge of the descriptive fact? Well, it's something like >> no or something like stop or don't or boo or gross. >> And it's none of those things, but it's something a bit like that. So we sort of put a put a box around this this this feeling and give it a a label and I think we've done that and and that label is bad. Uh and so you kind of it belongs in that category. One one big mistake people make I think with emotivism is that you say that ethics is an expression of emotion. I don't mean that bad or shouldn't maps on to pre-existing emotions that we know of like you know boo and anger and frustration. It's its own unique emotion. Those are just like an it belongs in that category, right? People often think that an emotist thinks that murder is wrong means something like expressing anger or distaste or disgust. >> It's not. It's its own unique thing. It's it's expressing wrongness, >> which is its own thing, distinct from those things, but it belongs in that category. It's a kind of emotion. You know what I mean? >> Yeah, I do. I do. I'm I'm interested. Is there a philosophy of influence? Because you two are both influential, study this stuff. Do you have a responsibility that is philosophically interesting given that you are supposed to be at least in some way sources of insight around the study of ethics, the study of logic, the study of philosophy? Is there an additional level of responsibility that you have as the closer to the source of where this comes from to be extra highly scrutinous with the way that you sort of put ideas across and what you talk about? >> I suppose I mean I suppose there's a base level of trying to be accurate, right? you know, you try and get things right. Inevitably, you sometimes get things wrong, but you know, you try and get things right. >> I think that um you know, I think that's I think another thing that um I'm very keen on when presenting philosophies is to try and get across that this is only really a starting point, right? This isn't this isn't um me from your computer screen telling you what's definitely true about the nature of the life and the universe. being ridiculous, but that hopefully if you find some of this helpful or you find some of this insightful, it will be kind of gristed for the mill of your own thinking. >> Um I'm very like I I think that I think this about a lot of um you know people quite often talk about things like um videos on YouTube or or podcasts or or or various different types of just disseminating media um will sort of react with a little bit of skepticism. people about news articles and journalisms um where they sort of say something like oh yeah but >> you know the the the there are flaws within this medium you know you'll errors will creep in etc etc etc and that's they're certainly right I think that the um one of the correct correct one of the um appropriate responses that I I I feel to that is to is to try and frontload a kind of a statement of your own fallibility so that inevitably you'll get things wrong. We all get things wrong. Um >> this is a justice privilege thing that we were talking about. >> Yes. Yeah. And I but I and I think it's important to to say that because quite a lot of you know you're on you're on you know you're on YouTube you're at the very least presenting yourself as knowing more than the viewer about something. And so it's it's very easy all of the kind of implicit signals there are saying I know I am right. Listen to me position of authority. I am authority. And I think that it's I think that it's if in order to kind of do what what I want to do, which is to to largely get people doing this philosophy for themselves and for this to just be something that they look back on in 5 years and think, "Oh, yeah, that was a kind of quaint starting point, but now I'm I'm much further along than that. I don't need this anymore." >> Um, part of doing that is to frontload the idea that you're wrong. You don't have the f you might be wrong. You don't have the final word. This is just a smattering of the literature, etc. you you see yourself as kind of the child's Hulk Hogan playset of lifting weights before someone actually goes and gets a gym membership. >> Well, I suppose thing is that, you know, you're never going to be able to get you're never going to be able to like compress all of the complexity of even a single philosopher into like a 30-minute YouTube video. Um, it it's just not possible. There's just they're all very complicated. But you might be able to give people a general idea and also hopefully put them in a position whereby if they choose to go and look at that philosopher or that philosophy or that philosophical question for themselves, >> they are then slightly better equipped to do that. And you know, hopefully if they find some bit helpful, it it helps them in their everyday life. It might do, it might not. But that's what that's what I tend to think. I think that, >> you know, no medium of communicating any kind of information is perfect. And I think that uh a lot of the the way that I like to react to that is to just frontload the flaws if they're not obvious. I mean, you know, >> disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer, like like, you know, public debates are a bit like that. You know, public debates have numerous flaws, right? They they they are um often times people be persuaded by emotional rhetoric rather than, you know, strict logical reasoning because that's just part of how we're wired. I don't think that that's necessarily a problem until we start pretending that public debate is something that it's not. As long as we bear that in mind of some unique insight into wisdom and accuracy. >> Yes, exactly. As long as as long as we're not watching >> Nod's the guy who does debate very regular. >> I think you pretty much shared my view on this as well. >> There's nothing wrong with with theater, you know, but you got to know that that's what you're doing. >> What's your thoughts on this? You know, if we're moving into a world with philosophers as influencers, surely the platform comes with a huge ethical duty not to mislead given that ethics is part of the source code of what you guys at least in part are supposed to do or be remotely educated in. >> Yeah. I mean, look, we find it interesting and fun and there's a a kind of academic um duty to not mislead, not misrepresent people's opinions and that kind of stuff. But >> if you are going to reduce this down to do as I say, not as I do. >> No, no, no, no. I it's it's the reason I trip over myself to to to indicate my agnosticism even about things I believe. Doesn't mean I don't have an opinion, but it means that I could be talked out of it at any moment. I do that with something as inert as like meta ethics because you know earlier today we spoke for 5 or 10 minutes about suicide and there's somebody listening to this podcast for whom that's going to be the most significant discourse that they've heard on the subject possibly in their life probably in the past few days and you know past month or year or so. Um if somebody's thinking about that a lot you might have some influence over their thoughts on an issue as important as that. That's not something to just sort of piss about with, you know, um it's serious. This stuff matters to people and it's worth remembering that sometimes philosophy is just people in this sort of intellectual playground having a bit of fun. And there's nothing wrong with that, but it's not always that. And if it is always that, then you're kind of probably wasting your time in idle leisure and you should do something more constructive. Um you always end up castigating. You always end up sort of finger wagging after a little while. >> Yeah. But it's you've asked me to reflect upon my own sense of duty and I think that you need to wag your own finger in the mirror every now and again and and remember that like it's great fun and I love what I do and it's it's it's an amazing thrill and and beautiful opportunity to be able to make a living doing things like this, >> but it's not all fun in games. Like it does come with a kind of a duty and a responsibility that it's easy to forget about because here we are having a conversation. We talk about this stuff all the time. we're going to, you know, go off to the pub and forget about it later on today. But but >> that's not the case for for for everyone who are listening. >> You think of certain areas of philosophy or maybe most areas of philosophy is kind of like information hazards in that way. >> I think that information hazards are a bit of a I mean we were we were talking about like the concept of overrated philosophical ideas or ideas that should you know >> get in the bin. >> Get in the bin. And I kind of think information hazards are are one example. >> Oh, nice. Because basilis part of this whole AI hype that that a lot of it is just sort of sensationalist and and and I think doesn't have a very good good grounding. You know the analogy that I mean though like a high potent cognitive >> specifically not not a not an information hazard in that literal sense but but yeah like there are maybe there are things that are sort of not worth knowing >> um or not worth exploring right there there are topic areas which which just aren't worth >> the price of entry is too high getting into um but that's sort of for you to decide whether you whether you find it interesting whether you find it find it worthwhile um I don't know I I sort of we we stand on the shoulders of giants as it as Newton said um in that I see myself as a communicator of ideas. I don't really say anything genuinely novel or unique. There's nothing new under the sun. I'm just trying to communicate other people's ideas. So my principal responsibility is trying to do so in a way that makes sense. Like why am I talking to people about this? There must be some application for for why I'm doing it. Um, but but I think yeah, being a communicator rather than somebody who's who's trying to put a steadfast view into the world makes it a little easier. >> Is that just a very slippery way of never having to actually stand your ground? >> Maybe. Um, but if in order to be successful in any field, including my own, I would have to plant my feet firmly in the ground and say, "This is what I believe and I don't think that I'm wrong about it." Then I'd probably give up and go home. At least for now. I mean, maybe I'll feel that way one day, but for now at least. I mean, you know, the idea that the idea that a 26-year-old philosophy YouTuber would like know anything significant with the level of certainty that is immune to a healthy dose of agnosticism is completely batshit insane. >> There's just no way that's ever going to be true, you know, or justified. >> Even the incest question. >> Even especially especially on the incest question. >> Yeah. Yeah. Gentlemen, I appreciate both of you very much. I wish that we could keep going for longer, but this uh location is going to kick us out. >> It looks like it's literally about to collapse in on us. >> Yeah, perhaps any longer. Look, I I I genuinely appreciate both of you. I think it's so cool that we've got uh two British guys leading uh contributing to leading forth philosophical influence uh unsolicited advice and Alex Okconor within reason. You don't have a podcast, do you, Joe? >> I don't. I want to I'm going to start interviewing a few people. I've got a few people lined up. I told him what to call it. You know what he should call it? >> Solicited advice. >> Solicited advice. [laughter] >> It's there. It's right there in front of you. >> Uh, boys, thank you very much for coming through. >> You got it, man. Thank you. >> Congratulations on making it to the end of a very British conversation there. Uh, I actually sat down with Joe one-on-one uh about existentialism, absurdism, nature, ton of other interesting stuff. [music] And that's available right here. Come on, press