welcome everybody to 52 living
ideas um so firstly let me give you an
introduction here okay we're going to be
talking about
thomas aquinas cogitative sense and
mark parker is actually writing a book
about it so it's one of the best people
we could have here
to talk about it now
i'm telling you this is going to be very
tough okay
because a lot has happened
since aquinas did his work
okay aquinas is is like in a genius
class
for me because what he did was that he
took aristotle
okay all of aristotle his corpus
every part of philosophy of his and
managed to integrate it
into christianity i mean it is a feat of
tremendous proportions
but it's been a while and a lot has
happened since
and what we're trying to understand is
something very simple we're trying to
understand what a human being is
that's it okay but
we have the idea of what a human being
is
has transformed so much since aquinas
wrote
that there are so many layers and layers
and layers
of ideas about what a human being is
that you hold that you may not even know
of
but you take for granted and
in order to understand somebody like
aristotle somebody like
aquinas you kind of have to keep that
aside
for some time and actually here
at least give a hearing to what aquinas
has to say
about human beings and then you can
decide you have
a very powerful technology it's very
recent
but it's very very powerful and i
strongly recommend it you really need it
okay
i know some of you are not that high
tech but this was this was discovered
about 5000 years ago
okay pen and paper it's extremely
powerful what it does
what the writing does is that it allows
you to take your thoughts which are in
here
and put it out here so make
detailed notes make keep track of what
is it that you agree with
what is it that you have questions about
try to
prepare try to understand what is being
said
about the human being formulate all of
it you will have a chance to ask
all the questions that you have but the
only way you're going to be able to
process this
is to keep track of it externally
external memory as we heard from
uh marilyn donald external memory or
julian james
external memory is very very powerful
and
only way to process something like this
so i urge you to do that again you have
to understand it in your own terms so
please uh take everything in
give it a hearing and then ask all the
questions
that you have okay so with that let me
get started
again welcome everybody to 52 living
ideas i am
honored to have dr mark barker here
he's writing a book on the cognitive
sense of
thomas aquinas and he's going to be
talking just about that
today so welcome welcome mark well
thank you wonderful so
um so tell me a little bit about
yourself you you grew up in new york
that's right yes wonderful i'm i'm i'm a
new yorker so this is where i'm
this is very close to my heart how long
did you spend uh in new york
i i until i went to college so so yes i
wish we could all be up there together
someplace but
you know this is second best yes i i
think all good people need to be in new
york i'm
i'm very biased but uh the um
so when did you get interested in uh
thomas aquinas work
um about 20 years ago i guess
give or take 25 years ago
okay now tell me um you know
what is the difference if you want to
give like a 30 000 foot view
how does thomas aquinas or aristotle
look at human beings
and how does modern psychology look at
human beings
what's the difference so what
so the terminology that i would use or
most anybody would use i guess
is um so you have anthropology but you
have philosophical anthropology so what
you're talking about
we're talking about is philosophical
anthropology so we're familiar with
you know scientific anthropology
scientific use in the sense of you know
studying different cultures and
from aristotle's point of view which
thomas aquinas shares i just call him
thomas
those culture is important
and we certainly don't want to deny the
important role the culture plays but
there's
this great split between
thomas and aristotle and the moderns is
regarding the idea of nature
so for thomas and aristotle there's a
human nature that endures that's
basically no matter where you are in the
world right now whether you're an eskimo
whether you're in kenya whether you're
in a you know our society
cutting edge technology or whether
you're in the wilds of
amazonia where they don't even know
maybe
the technology exists there's still a
fundamental human nature that's
what they would say is universal and
and the uh that's so that's what we're
interested in then
is is that and so that's kind of the
difference
i hate to be critical but so early on
but unfortunately
please please feel free to be critical
or praising of anybody or anything that
you want go ahead okay yeah so i hate to
be critical but
so we talk about modern science and in
some respect
so what does that mean right in some
respects modern is good
right it's good that we have modern
science we um we have great progress and
knowledge of the world around us so
right as soon as you pick up thomas this
is the the the kind of
problem you might run into it is he's
for example he says there's four
elements right fire earth air and water
but then
actually that's obsolete so there's
obsolete science in thomas in aristotle
and really anyone before
1750 or even anyone before 1900
depending on what you're talking about
or 1920 or right i mean it keeps
advancing
but so so that's that's good it's good
that modern science
has those discoveries but the negative
side about modernity
is that it's also beholden to
philosophies
so beginning with galileo francis bacon
descartes
even before them montane that
deny the idea of a human nature and so
um
so that's so there's there's a the kind
of glory of modern
science with with all of its wonderful
discoveries but then there's the
the downside the detriment the the
negative of
of the modernity which is that denial of
um
one universal human nature that we all
share
and so that would be maybe the
fundamental difference and you see that
playing itself out in our society
on a daily basis um so so yeah so that
would be
let me just emphasize uh this point
because i think this is a huge point of
i think you put it very crisply it's
nature and culture
so aristotle and aquinas
say pay attention to nature that is
fundamental that is metaphysical
that's just what is
whereas a lot of modern thinking
most of the modern thinking about human
beings does not
give that it can give that it's due and
in a sense culture they would also agree
that there is culture but they would say
culture sits on the top of nature you
know you can't really
understand culture without understanding
nature so there is a hierarchy
of relationship between that whereas the
moderns
seem to kind of just look at culture and
kind of look at almost
i mean to put it in an extreme way they
they prime by looking at
culture as a primary and denying that
there is a nature
they would say that human being is
infinitely malleable because it's like
it's you you can make it whatever it
wants wants to be
and whatever you can be whatever you
feel feel like
right and so that's where um you get
into
so you know y'all yo
i'm speaking like a southerner now um
those of you who are involved in the
center for digital research right you're
interested in the impact of technology
on
on this question of human nature and
right claims about transhumanism that we
can somehow
transcend our humanity i could live on
in a computer i could
have an interface from my brain to a
computer and so so exactly because
there is no human nature we're just kind
of machines that are like you said
infinitely malleable
and uh but in contrast to that view
i think just in putting the original
interview in my own words would be
that um or actually i'll use thomas here
so
tom is just sometimes thomas just makes
very passing comments that are
extremely brilliant because as you said
he is kind of that genius class
and he just a passing comment somewhere
in one of his works
actually i think that they potentially
have the book on the power of god but
but he's not talking about the power of
god there but what he says is that
he says um the only thing he says
the most powerful thing well he he does
okay he says the most powerful thing is
god god's independence
but he says in creation the most
powerful thing is nature
and that's a pretty striking statement
he says there's nothing more powerful
than nature
and and really modern science or
contemporary science you know
isn't aware of that i mean there are
these natural laws that are just applied
right like
you can't get around the law of gravity
you can't get around the
gravitational field if you if you're on
the earth's surface it applies to you
and
you could think that i could tell myself
well you know it doesn't apply to me but
when i jump i still come down like my
reality it's all the other thing about
aristotle is realism right the reality
is prior to whatever goes on in my mind
and i the truth is conformity of my mind
with reality so i'm either in conformity
with it or in disconformity so
if i deny that gravity exists i can jump
up but it still applies to me it's just
there there's nothing i can do about
that like you said the metaphysical
um you know question or the metaphysical
issue just what exists
so so that's um but
yeah so that anyway okay the realism is
a big part of the picture
as well okay so let's do let's do this
um let's just dive into aristotle
and aquinas and paint out what
they think is human nature right you
know
how how would you right so that's that's
where you get into so
i unless you unless you've read thomas
you're
you're not gonna know about the codes
dude now now maybe a qualifier there is
um
there's this thing called the mystic
institute so fortunately people are
trying to bring
thomas back kind of into people's
awareness because there's really
a desperate need in our culture for
realist philosophy
and and aristotelian anthropology or
recently autonomous anthropology so the
domestic institute
they're putting out all these videos and
they have a video about you know thomas
on the soul and and there's the coaching
power so they're not going to leave it
out and they'll mention it in 30 seconds
just
so people you know that they're not
going to leave that out which is i
applaud them for that because some
thomas
um did leave it out in in the basically
the
mystic revival was in the mid-1800s and
so sometimes left out to consider power
they said oh that's obsolete
so that's the question but so the way
that thomas is going to send human
nature that
is going to be in terms of powers right
so we have well first of all that we're
soul body composite
so right plato had said well basically
the
let's go the pre-socratics the people
the first philosophers in in the western
world
um in ancient greece by and large were
materialists so before plato you could
call them the pre-platonics
if you want but traditionally they're
called pre-socratics
so some of them democrats for example
was a materialistic
most of them were materialists so for
them i'm just a i'm just
matter and democracy talk about atoms so
for democritus as
many of my students are surprised to
hear that but atomism dates back to
um you know 450 bc so so democracy says
we're just i'm just a bunch of atoms
and then he says i have a soul but he
says the souls just fire atoms
so when he says he has the so nowadays
we wouldn't even use that word we'd say
oh my consciousness relies on my neurons
so so there's my consciousness really is
my neurons it's not something
more than matter uh there's various ways
they would
parse that out but for simplicity's sake
so so you had materialism
with the pre-pre-socratics and then um
socrates says well we have a soul and
socrates says that you know his soul is
going to be judged after he dies and
he'll be happy after he dies or unhappy
depending how he lived
so socrates is defending a um there's a
not just a body but a soul as well and
living in
right most of us we have some idea of
what the soul means right that it's
immaterial and so on
and so plato is plato's view on human
nature is that
i'm just the soul so my my body isn't
really me
so that's called dualism because i'm two
separate things
i'm really a a body i'm sorry i'm really
a soul but then it's somehow attached to
a body
so i'm two separate things but the goal
is to free myself from the body
so that aristotle comes along he's
at 17 age 17 he enters plato's academy
he stays there for 20 years so until
he's 37
and then he finally left the academy but
so he knew plato's writings has thought
extremely well
and he comes up with an a different view
a really
contrasting viewpoint which is that
we're both soul and body
so that i'm um i'm both a soul antibody
so that's called holomorphism because
hulei in greek means matter and morphine
means form so
the soul is my form and the body is my
matter
but these are analogical terms so
they're not just it's not like the form
like the shape of a circle
it's something different than that it's
something it's
it's also matter represents potency and
form represents act is the way that
you really i think can best understand
it act meaning here like actualization
and
uh what you call entertainment act so
it's it's not like me moving around that
kind of act it's an actualization of
something
so we could talk more about that later
if you want but um but that's like the
core of hilomorphism of aristotle which
thomas then
builds on so so we're i'm a unified
mark let me can you can you repeat about
holomorphism because this is a huge
point
if people get at least some direction of
this just
can you repeat it just one more time
right so
so aristotle's i mean it kind of takes
you back to arizona so aristotle says
that take an i he says it i without
vision
right he says the i is an organ but then
the power of vision
isn't you i can't put the i can i can
uh do experiments on my eye but i can't
do experiments on my power vision as
such
i mean it's not it's either it's either
operating or it's not but that's a
potency
that i can't put in the test tube and so
the same way he says that my he says the
i without the power of vision isn't
really an eye
so let's say that someone dies and then
you know you have their eye i mean when
i was at when i was in high school
i remember they gave us a sheep eye
and i was just looking at it well
aristotle would say that's not really an
i
it has the matter of an i but the soul
is not present there so it can't
it can't function as an i and therefore
it's not truly an
eye that this isn't a deonoma and he
says this so the same way that you have
matter and then you have a
power the greek word is dunamis if you
can translate it as power capability
capacity potentiality all those
different
different ways of translating the
dunamis idea which is where we get our
word dynamic in english
um so that's that's the potency and then
the act is in greek is energia that's
where we get our word energy so even
our the english language and the
language of science kind of enshrines
some of these aristotelian distinctions
so so on some level they are familiar to
us there's things in potential in
kinetic energy that that goes back to
aristotle you don't have that in
plato or in the pre-socratics so that's
his contribution so
that would be maybe an easy way to
understand it and
um so so so the same we have the eye and
then and like the
sheep by the way i was holding in my
hand the thing to meditate on or reflect
on
is how is that different from that a
living sheep i
in the living sheep that's seeing you
know seeing things
and there's something different there
and for
aristotle it's the difference between um
act and or
form and matter or i should say informed
matter and just
mere matter the eye you know that i was
holding my hand that's just mere matter
without the form of the soul which
actualizes it makes it alive
in the same way the cadaver has all the
structures and all the molecules and all
the
it's all there the instant after someone
dies right
all the matter is there um however many
cells how much water the hair
and yet there's something missing right
and that's the soul so the same way the
eye that i was holding my hand he says
it's not really an
eye the cadaver is not really a human
being that is beautifully put i think i
think this is a great way of of
uh you know it's aristotle so it's not
me
yes um so
the thing is they're not it's like i am
one thing i'm not plato has two things
i'm a soul which is like an angel and
then there's this body that i'm stuck
i'm stuck to and i want to get free from
and aristotle's thing is no i'm one
thing i'm one entity but i have two kind
of aspects i have my body and my soul
but
when i when you see me you see an insult
body or you see an embodied soul
you're not in a sense i'm not just a
body i'm i'm
i'm a composite i'm a combination of
these two
well there he doesn't call them things
that they're two um
aspects excellent excellent
okay so now let's look at the shall we
look at the human being
do you want to go along the line of
aristotle or
whichever way you want to explain it go
ahead yeah so so then
so now we've established you know at
least i've presented maybe
um higher morphism so now which is right
aristotelian
optimistic and so now the question is
what powers do we have
so um we share many powers with plants
and animals with
animals and plants share what our
so-called nutritive powers which are
and thomas calls them vegetative but so
growth
reproduction and then nutrition
so those are the vegetative powers and
then the animal soul
adds on to that um powers of sensation
and
and then appetite in a broad sense the
term
so we share those those powers with like
a gorilla for example
and uh the quotative is one of the
sensory powers
and then above the sensory powers we
have our intellect and our will
which animals lack so animals don't have
free will and i mean it is observable
you can you can deny it if you want but
commonsensically we see that animals
don't have free will that's to be
another conversation but
and that they don't have intellect the
most obvious sign of their lack of
intellect or
maybe the two most obvious signs are um
lack of language and lack of
absence of mathematical ability and any
kind of
beyond very rudimentary and even that
isn't
people often misrepresent what's the
achievements
the actual achievements that brood
animals are capable of
so so that's the the panoply of the
powers
of they're called the powers of soul i
mean they're really powers of the soul
and the body
um as i said right the power of vision
is without my eye there could be
you know no vision so it's both the soul
and the body
um so that's the outline of the powers
of the soul
okay now uh aquinas
takes it quite a bit further in terms of
kind of seeing
how things are put together you know we
went through this essay by
peg hair which is a you know great kind
of summary
of uh thomas's views
uh so he talks about the inner senses
i talks about the common sense the
imagination
memory cognitive science so
can we talk about how thomas
looks at the ecology of inner senses
right so um so what thomas is so so the
the triad the aristotelian triad
is the common sense the um they have
external senses which are obvious right
sight uh hearing smell taste touch
the common sense unites it allows me to
um
sense something as a unified sensory
object so when i have more than one
sense operating regarding the same thing
this common sense is how i'm aware that
it's the same thing
um so that's what the common sense does
among other things and then
so let's say the apple right so i i the
smell the taste the texture
the appearance and i guess the sound of
an apple when i draw when i drop it it
makes it kind of thud or i bite it it's
kind of like this
crackly sound so that's there's
technical
terminology called the phantasm so
that's all incorporated into the
phantasm
right my common sense is how i know it's
the same thing that
what i'm biting is what i'm tasting the
same which
i know that seems obvious but a lot of
what philosophers do is explain
at least every cell in philosophy it
explains what would seem obvious and
other philosophers are going to deny
that it's obvious so
it's important to do that so that's
incorporated into the phantasm which is
the greek word for image
so you could call an image the problem
calling images that when we think of an
image we think of a picture but the
phantasm of the apple is not just the
picture it's also the
texture the taste the smell so that's
all incorporated
and that's retained in the imagination
for aristotle and then
memory for him is how i'm aware that i
i uh you know i perceive something in
the past
so that's the triad right of common
sense
imagination and memory and um
that that was worked pretty well for
over a thousand years um so it's
aristotle in 322
i'd say and and then uh
that the arab speaking philosophers
are the ones who um were working on
aristotle let's say starting in
800-ish about a year 800.
so you had the whole greek
commentatorial tradition that went on
for
you know up until let's say 500
so what is that not quite a millennium
and then that segued into
um the arabic tradition because uh
right islam spread and it kind of
created an arabic speaking
empire over a large portion of the world
so that
took over the christian parts
and so the um the arabs started a
translation movement
translating arsenal to arabic because
for them right through islam arabic is
this you know special sacred language
so they're translating aristotle and
then they started commenting on
aristotle themselves
and um really i mean avicenna is the one
that we have to thank
for the quesadilla so his name is evan
sinha
in arabic so his major work
in the year 1021 he was writing his
ashifa which means
the cure so this is really not going to
be familiar to almost anyone
most people heard it played in aristotle
and um
he so he's familiar with the threefold
division
that's in aristotle's book on the soul
and
aristotle has a lot to say about
imagination
and aristotle writes in a very extremely
encapsulated way
and so i think um so aristotle writes
incredibly
incredibly terse that's part of why you
had
800 years of commentary on him and
really the commentary continued up until
the 1700s so i really have 2000 years of
commenting on aristotle and people are
still coming in ourselves so i guess
2 300 years of commenting on ours
because his his riot thing lends itself
to that because it's so
terse and even in the greek there's so
much that's he's it's like a puzzle that
he wants you to figure out that he's
leaving you to figure out
so i think avacena realized that it
would be helpful to kind of
break a resistant imagination up into
several
functions and therefore several powers
and so what he did was he had a
five-fold division of
the internal senses and he's the first
one to regularize the in the receiving
committee world tradition to regularize
the um term in internal sentences it's
my arabic unfortunately it's not very
good but it's hobas albatino
however you say that in arabic so that's
his term to call me internal senses
so he keeps the common sense and then
what he does is he i think he was
interested in
animal what's going with the animal soul
and so he introduces so you have you
still have the imagine the common sense
imagination of memory but he's going to
change the functions of the ladder too
and he makes this fundamental
distinction and this is
i'll just explain it people would always
ask me about it later but
um between a phantasm let's call it or
an image and then what he calls an idea
the word is
in in arabic and uh people have written
books about that word it's very
complex word but you could translate it
as meaning or idea
so the image and the meaning depending
how you want to translate that word
and so he says that animals can kind of
they have an idea of something being
harmful or
they see the meaning of it as being
harmful let's say so his example is the
sheep and the wolf
so it's one thing right the visual
imprint or the visual impression of the
wolf right
but then the the fact there's an
awareness sheep that that's the threat
on some level there's an awareness of a
threat and so that classifying or
perceiving the wolf as a threat
he calls that this meaning or idea
it applies or it sees it as a threat
that's so that's different from the
image
and so that the power that
perceives threats is called the
estimated power
so he introduced estimated power and i
think he was right to do that and so
it's
interesting it's impressive because for
well he wrote in 10 21 so for 1300 years
people just come to an aristotle debate
about it most people accepted that triad
as i said
but he sees the reason he's willing to
add a new power which is pretty
exceptional and then um he adds another
power
called the cogitative which is actually
which literally kind of means the
judging power and
so what he says that does is it combines
images and it combines
images and ideas and um
he says that it's this is you really
have to read the article to keep those
trackables in your head but i'm just
telling you what he says
so welcome to philosophy i never said
it'd be simple
no please this is this is this is very
clear as clear as it can get
yeah yeah the article is linked down
here so if you're
if you're not able to follow it just
read the article and come back again
go ahead you have to so you have to kind
of i mean what can i say this is
medieval philosophy but
i think it has a lot to offer us in the
in the modern post-modern world so
so you have the common sense then you
have um the imagination
which is what um receives and stores
images
then you have the estimative which makes
a judgment about harm or benefit then
you have the memorative
which retains the the notion of harm or
benefits so
retains the idea his example is like i
think he gives example of a dog and the
stick
so when the dog the master picks up the
stick the dog
remembers that that's something harmful
and it reacts immediately
um he doesn't have to hit it again in
order for it to know that it's something
dangerous all right i like to think of
when i was a kid we had a cat
and when i take out the uh the uh tuna
fish
as soon as i took out the tuna fish the
cat would run up so there's no smell of
tuna fish coming from that can
but it remembered that that was
something good and so it's making a
connection there so that's
higher level than just remembering an
image
it's kind of a higher order so so that
common sense that the imag
imagination which retains images then
you have the estimate of power which he
says is the ruling power in animals
so he's going more into animal
psychology than aristotle did
then you have the power that can form
new images and he says in
animals that's called the imaginative
power and in humans it's called the
creosote of power
so it can do something more in humans
than it can do in animals because it's
in continuity of intellect
and then fifth you have the memorative
power which is
um what retains the uh associations or
those
like i said that the stick is is harmful
or that the tuna fish can is something
beneficial even though right now the cat
is not smelling or tasting
or seeing tuna so that's what happens
this is all abyssinia this is brilliant
right so it's it's interesting because i
mean most people
have never heard of avicenna but um and
and so what's in
so what's interesting is that thomas
right avicenna was transited into latin
in spain because in spain i was part of
under islam at the time
and um there we know the names of the
people a lot of people who did that
so there was a canon a priest in toledo
who
um remember the details correctly who um
who translated with i think the help of
a rabbi
who spoke arabic so they translated
arabic from
they translated episode from arabic to
latin and so that's how the latin west
uh got received the five-fold division
of internal census and it was quite
popular
so a lot of them accepted it the
translator did because he wrote he wrote
a book on the soul
and um because it it's less you can say
it's more fine-tuned
than what you had in aristotle so it's
not rejecting aerosol it's not denying
aristotle at all it's just
allows you i think you can do a better
job when you have those
five-fold division than just with
ourselves three-fold
so um yeah this is this is wonderful
this is wonderful i i mean the thing is
i did not know that all of this is done
by
everything i thought some of it was
uh you know thomas uh doing this so no
what is okay go ahead uh so that's why i
ended up working
that's part of why this book has taken
me i guess i'm going for
i'm going for a record the longest time
to write a book at this point
um i think it's a new kind of record
it's very valuable to kind of see how
these ideas develop
because you understand them much better
when you see that
prestigious yeah in a sense to do
philosophy
is that for thomas is also to do the
history of philosophy because if you
don't know the history of philosophy
you're just condemned to reinventing the
wheel like you're
going to come up with things that you
know like atomism oh well atomism
democracy talked about that in 450
bc so so even out of like we all talk
about atoms well that's several thousand
years old so
so if right it's important to know the
history of philosophy not just pretend
that that's all
irrelevant because to understand these
ideas i mean amazon
had thought about these things and i
consider him a genius too
so um he had a real contribution which
you know
influenced the aquinas adopted to a
considerable degree
wonderful so what did aquinas uh do
with what he got from well do you want
to hear about averages do you want me to
skip please
are you you you tell me you tell me all
right and so far
everything that you've said has been
completely to them
please tell me and for a penny and for a
pound right i guess i'll tell you about
her because it's not really they're not
too
so this is this is i mean this and i
have all this stuff this is the latin
translation
of various rarities were three
commentaries so
on each of aristotle's works major works
so it's kind of
um so avicenna right
like i said he was writing about the
year thousand and he died pretty young
i think in his 50s and he was in um
i think like modern day he was from like
uzbekistan and he was
from the eastern part of the islamic
area
in the western part you had um in spain
actually the the court
from in cordoba and cordoba uh you had
the
philosopher of heroes so
you know he's one of the big the big
three arabs arabic speaking would be
avicenna are very recent that al ghazali
and
um average in that order actually
chronologically
and uh averroes is a wrote commentaries
as i said
so he has on the dianama for example on
the soul he has a short a middle and a
long commentary the long commentary is
you know
whatever is quite long as his name would
would
imply so he and he changed his views
um in each of those but the long
commentary his mature account right so a
lot of times philosophers
you don't really know what they're not
you don't get their definitive until
maybe they're
you know in that case he was probably in
his 60s
so coming back to it for the third time
and um of course even though he's
commenting on aristotle of course he's
conversant right with the
arabic tradition so he wants to disagree
with uh uh so he's like well what is
this novelty you know aristotle's the
philosopher right
aristotle's the who can compare with
ourselves all right so
so he he disagrees he says we don't need
this estimate of power or you know
aerosol doesn't have it so i'm getting
rid of it
so so see how it already in within a
hundred years i guess of um
of avasana's death uh veroise
in la in arabic his name is evan rushed
but
he he rejects the um
the estimative and he says well the
animal imagination can handle that it
just remembers that you know this tick
is painful there's no need to invoke
these
uh this idea of you know threat and so
on
um so he of course gives the common
sense of course he gets the triad right
that's straight from aristotle so that's
only to be expected because after all
he's his whole way of
perceiving philosophy is that the best
thing you could do is to comment on
aristotle
but perhaps a little bit maybe i don't
know if it's surprising he
he keeps the consultative power so he he
for him there's four internal senses
so he has the common sense imagination
then
the co-stated power and then uh memory
and he keeps that so for humans he does
keep the idea of
something and i well this this
is some notion that's that's higher than
an image but lower than an intellectual
concept
and so for for individuals for example
so um
like an individual like socrates he says
you have you can't have a universal
concept for them but you have this
individual idea
and he says that's in the coaches of
power so he keeps it goes into power
but he rejects it so he keeps it for
humans but gets rid of it for animals
um and then uh so that's a virus and so
availabies is also translated
and like i said the precise details you
know
like there was it was in spain i mean
that much i'm positive about
um so he was also transit in the 1100s
but not long after he died because he
i think he died around 11 10 or
something like that he made it to the
eleven hundreds
and then he's translated so now you have
both avicenna in latin
and you have so you'll say the latin
epicenter and latin of arabic
and then you'll have so we have text
right um
you know we have text from people like
an anonymous some anonymous teacher
in paris in 1250 right that's still in
the library someplace and someone will
edit it
so you might have some anonymous teacher
who goes with average there's four
internal sentences you might have
another one who goes through the
epicenter there's five and then
another one just goes straight aristotle
and there's three you even have people
just say oh we don't even need three
let's just say there's one
so that's the situation where thomas
comes in all right
so what does thomas what does thomas do
with all of this
so basically and this is in the summit
theological right which you can find
online in a microsecond and then
in another couple of seconds you can
find it it's the prima par it's question
78 article 4. so that's the only
ex-professor treatment of the internal
senses in this whole corpus
that's the only the only time you ever
ask the questions you know what are the
internal senses
and what he says is that so basically he
kind of compromises between a variety to
have a set
up so he agrees with the variability
that there's only four so he doesn't
there's five
but he agrees with that vicente that we
should keep the estimated power so he
kind of
compromises and what that gives you then
is uh the four-fold internal senses the
common sense
um imagination which thomas usually
calls imaginative
power uh then in the shoot
animals the estimate of power and human
decoders hit a power
and then the memorative power which
retains
doesn't retain my pictures or sensations
at all it retains
um those associations of harm or benefit
on
an animal level which is where it gets
interesting for contemporary psychology
like
freud or jung and then it retains uh
like socrates
individual identities of people
so every person that you know that's
routine every every human being that you
can name or you can't recognize
that's all routine in your memory of
power can you
repeat how he uh integrates the four and
the five again
what does he do with uh so remember
average is like oh what is this novelty
estimate of power that's not aristotle
and it's true was it i mean
did aristotle kind of talk about that
but he certainly there's no
the arabic term is wachem w-a-h-m
or wamiya so that's avacyn avicenna's
contribution
um and so thomas wants to he keeps that
even though he's on aerosol so he's
willing to view the tradition as a
living tradition
and that's a that's a weird part of
that's what this dianetic
and what a con journal right we're
trying to keep that tradition alive
because it has wisdom
and when wisdom is lost right society
kind of veers off its bearings and if we
don't have wisdom in our lives we kind
of can go astray so
so thomas keeps the he takes the living
tradition approach and and keeps the
estimated power
um but he he does narrow it down to four
instead of five
so where um avicenna kind of split the
imagination in two he said you have the
retentive imagination which retains like
images like the phantasm of the apple
like i talked about
and then you have what he called the
imaginative power so the examining power
is what we would call creative
imagination
so creative imagination like amazon's
example is a gold mount
right i take the image of gold and i
stick
put that with the image of mountain and
now i have a gold mountain
so um thomas just says oh that's just
all imagination we don't need to slip
that into two different powers
so that's how he ends up with instead of
five four
got it so now i mean the the big one is
the question of power so now
i want to see how to approach it um do
you want to kind of quickly now
let's talk only about thomas now okay so
we'll take keep everything as a
background you know we built everything
very beautifully
so now can you crisply summarize the
powers
other than the competitive power well
right so
remember the codes of an estimator are
the same power for thomas
the difference is so in animals is
called the estimative
but because we have an intellect our
soul the powers of our soul are
my internal senses are in continuity
with my intellect
so therefore he says in 1784
um that the the essence of power
receives a new
name in humans it's called the
consecutive power because in us
it's in continuity with intellect which
episode had said too
um so so what the so what i do is
in in this article and really all the
way back in my dissertation because the
article is
somewhat based on my dissertation and
the book is based on registration
um and so i divide it into two
two the estimate of acts or the human
estimate of acts so thomas
basically he used that idea even though
he doesn't use precise that terminology
um but there are certain scholars that
had kind of pointed that out so i'm um
you know kind of building on they kind
of mentioned in passing and then i
one of that's how a lot of scholarship
works right they mentioned in passing
and then i decided to like make a big
deal on her
so um so the
human estimated does the same thing as
the brute estimators
those there are two acts that it has and
this is my dissertation
goes into this which is on online on my
website the codeuserpower.blogspot
if you want to you know read a couple
hundred pages
at some point it's um so so the human
estimated does
it it perceives those notions
of harm or benefit
like the sheep and the wolf which can
also take place in humans right we have
instinctive reactions as well
so the example that thomas gives is
the infant and like nursing
so the infant doesn't have to be taught
to seek its mother's uh breast it
doesn't have to be taught to nurse it
just knows that so that would be like
the estimate of
recognizing that as beneficial without
any prior experience right
and then um the other one is individual
ideas or notions
and so that's like socrates and so on
so notions of individuals so
um because certainly like even your pet
right you can tell that your pet can
tell you
from maybe your wife from your son that
pets
animals can distinguish individuals and
that's obvious i think
so those are the two acts of the human
estimative
and then so what i do is just kind of
right as a scholar i'm i'm reading
thomas
but i i don't want to just parrot thomas
because then you could just read him
yourself i could just give you a list of
excerpts from thomas
so i'm trying to think of something you
know that's may be helpful so
so the code has three different names
which is another reason that
um the scholarship scholarship on it has
kind of gotten left by the wayside and
it tends to get forgotten and overlooked
not infrequently because he does he
actually
as often as not he doesn't call it the
cruiser power he calls it either
the particular reason or he calls it
passive intellect
both of which terms are from aristotle
all right so thomas is still very much
i was saying he's not really you know
he's using avicenna's contributions and
have everybody's contribution to some
degree but he's really you know
it's all under the aegis of aristotle
so because aristotle had talked about a
passive intellect he calls it that he
calls a particular reason and that that
is definitely
i think generated a certain amount of
confusion because when people hear
passive intellect they're like oh that's
my intellect but no it's not your
intellect
and but i mean you can't really blame
thomas because aristotle himself called
it that so
so that's just uh you know aristotle was
writing really fast
like i said it's very dense but um
so so what i do is i just call it
particular reason so i say okay there's
a human estimate
and then let's talk about particular
reason for the other four acts
and um those acts well uh so it forms
the minor in a practical syllogism so i
watched a little bit of the videos of
y'all had you guys had conversations
about this before
that you guys recorded so i watched a
little bit of those and i saw you know
you were
talking about that the practical
syllogism so it forms the minor
practical syllogism um
it plays a role in reflection so
it's basically the interface between my
intellect and my my
imagination um then i'm trying to think
i'm just doing it offhand here uh then
it plays well any kind of particular
reasoning so not just
a practical syllogism but i would argue
even um any kind of syllogism that
a syllogism is a reasoning process in
your mind any reasoning process in your
mind that involves a single a singular
entity
a singular just means like a particular
individual
and we could maybe talk about that more
later but
but the code here is required for that
so yeah so that's okay that it does
that's particular reason
absolutely so let's go into details of
this because this is really the heart of
the whole thing
because the way i i see it you know
again i'm very new to this
so when i read you know the
beggar's paper and learned about
because you know about the ecology of
inner senses i said
the lynch pin is the question if you
understand the quantitative you have
everything because everything else is
kind of either feeds into it
or you know right product of it that's
it's like the
center of of our our
kind of uh our faculties in our
faculties
um so let us spend a little bit of time
on it so
um so one of the things that i've really
found fascinating is that
it kind of takes in stuff
from the senses
and the imagination which has combined
those things
and it is able to kind of form patterns
you know use kind of pattern
in order to connect them to abstractions
so it's like
it's like a top-down as a bottom-up kind
of a process going on
at the same time it is taking general
principles
and general concepts and it is seeing
its applications to particulars it's
also taking kind of it's also at the
same time
a moral faculties on so on one hand it
is epistemological it's doing a lot of
epistemological work
of uh you know kind of taking things uh
almost like
is is involved in the inductive process
it's also involved in the deductive
process
at a psychological level it's also
involved at
in the moral right you know it is taking
all the moral principles and it is
applying so it is
like it is like that like combination it
is keeping track of all the metaphysics
which is guiding it
so it is using it is the way in which we
are actually
living using the philosophy that we have
i don't know but that's that's that's my
sense of it
it's a huge thing if you understand that
we understand a lot
right right yeah that's you put it very
well exactly
and um so so that's why right there's a
lot
that one could say about it and it so
the thing is it tends to get forgotten
so after aquinas
so albert also his terminology is
different
but without worrying about that so his
terminology is completed from thomas is
he basically it's much more like
avocados but that being said um
albert the great was thomas aquinas
teacher and he also had a kind of
rich you know account of the internal
senses
and then after aquinas they kind of the
estimate of codes they have kind of
disappeared
rather quickly so the dominicans will
still talk about them
so followers of thomas um there's a
whole tradition right to mystic
tradition
but other than that they really kind of
they pretty much disappear
an estimated and people go back to
either common sense imagination of
memory like in aristotle or they
they just sometimes they'll say well
there's just imagination and that
does everything it's my memory and it's
my common sense
so for example um the big three latin
medievals are aquinas dunscodus and
occam
scotus mentions the estimated in passing
once or twice um
but he doesn't really have anything to
say about it as far as i know
and then occam just gets rid of it
entirely so occam gets rid of the
smoothie of entirely and he's one who
just says i just haven't you just have
an imagination
you don't need a common sense you don't
need a memory that's all just
imagination
so and then that sets things up for the
moderns you know where
the cosmetic messengers just are gone
and so what happens in outcome
is the intellect takes over all that
so a big issue here in terms of right
epistemology
is the question of whether the intellect
can know individuals
so for thomas following he reads
aristotle and i think he's
basically right about this i mean he
says the intellect object is universal
so like the nature of a human right
human nature
the word human the word cow dog those
are universals
but then socrates are vital those are
individuals
and so for aristotle it was my
imagination that recognizes those things
and for thomas my um my co-detains what
recognized individuals
and then alkam says
that um my intellect can know
individuals directly
so the franciscan tradition um right
alchemin scottish dublin
uh franciscans skoda says and scotus is
born
i mean scotus is writing like only 30
years after aquinas
done scotus right obviously from
scotland right
and scotus says that my intellect can
directly know individuals
and then so he still mentions the
estimate if he never mentions the
question i'm sure he got rid of it but
what what purpose would it serve the
cozy stated because my intellect can
know individuals directly
so therefore there's no need for the
coach to either and then alchem but he's
still meant to estimate it for like a
sheep like that the standard sheep and
wolf example
and then alchem just says that um only
my intellect can form judgments
so like the judgment that you know
socrates is is human you know
and he says that's my intellect that
does that so there's no need for any
coaches to power at all and then that's
it it never came back after that so so
that's what happened to it so
someone who wanted to disagree with
thomas they'd say oh well this is
unnecessarily complicated why not just
get rid of it
and i would say the reason you can't not
to get rid of it is because
it just it's gonna lead to a kind of
dualistic anthropology so
occam's anthropology is
that we have two souls
i have an intellectual soul and i have a
sensory soul
so hopefully it doesn't take too much
imagination but this is dualistic right
i have two souls
that are really distinct not just like
mentally because big thing of the
medieval is you know you have different
distinction real distinction mental
distinction and so on
but he says these are two really
distinct souls
and he says that i can only know i have
an intellectual soul by faith i can't
know that by reason so the whole
optimistic edifice of this kind of like
a huge cathedral where everything fits
and faith and reason all fits together
oligum starts to kind of demolish that
so i can only know that i have an
intellectual soul by reason
um by by faith by reason i would think i
just have a sensory soul just like an
animal i would think that when i die
i don't there's no afterlife so that's
kind of a step
in the direction of protestantism where
you know the intellect the human reason
it can't really discover
truth anymore without at least about god
and soul
without faith so you used to be seeing
the lead up
to thomas and albert and then the
aftermath
is um scotus rejecting the code because
your intellect can know
individuals just fine and then outcome
rejecting
really for him there's just one internal
sense which is your imagination
and any judgment that you make is just
has to be your intellect
so your imagination is just like the
words and the pictures but
um so so that's where and then the
moderns
you know they tend to be very de facto
they're following outcome
whether or not they know that so um so
that's why it disappeared and that's why
if you
if you any of you who are listening you
know if you've never heard this before
until maybe
if you watch the timeless music
institute little videos you'll hear of
it
like what's that well i had the same
reaction because outcome is in the 1300s
so 700 years ago
i can you know founded a school and
scotus rejected it so
the three medieval schools in like the
1400s were optimistic
scotistic and alchemist so pretty much
every major
european university had a chair in each
of those schools with like
those three competing views you know and
um
and so the thomas you would have heard
about it but not from the others and
then in modernity
you know they're following occam so
mark this is exceptionally clear
picture thank you that you painted
because the thing that i really like
about it
is kind of linking it back to
duality versus you know aristotle versus
plato
that's that's what it comes down to
right i mean it's kind of separation
of the intellect completely from
from from the census and so i think the
so the again putting it from okay why
cogitative faculty quantitative faculty
is the thing that is making it one
right right it keeps us from being a
ghost in a machine
uh gilbert ryle famously used that
expression to caricature
um cartesian dualism and that's the
tendency is for a lot of philosophers
you're either materialist or there's a
spirit that's somehow attached to the
machine which is descartes viewpoint
and the code sort of allows you to avoid
that um
because you know it's so so if i format
a sentence or if i say socrates is human
it's a joint activity of my co-stated
power that
my memorative supplies my notion of
socrates
my quote my quotative is forms that
sentence
that that judgment so it's not my both
my code
and amma intellect can judge against
alca who said only my intellect can
judge
what my intellect provides for thomas is
the is the meaning of the word human
because that's a universal concept
remember we're talking about human
nature
but only my intellect can grasp human
nature but for thomas only my
quotation can can deal with singulars
so um so there's it's basically a joint
activity which
of two things at once yeah wonderful
powers
so i want to do two things now i want to
go through this list that you have of
six
quantitative functions in enough detail
so people can grasp
what each of those are because i what i
want to do is
i think we have established what the
cogetative faculty is but i want people
because it is so
foreign to people today okay
i want to take time to kind of talk
about this six function
and then we will close with something on
kind of you know
taking it to the modern conversation and
see kind of
different modern things and how to what
extent they capture or don't capture
what we've been talking about and then
we'll open it up to questions so folks
if you have questions keep track of
questions uh ask your best question okay
so
we're coming to question answers soon
all right
so what are these six cognitive
functions
of the quantitative faculty so the first
one perceives the notions of horror
benefits so that's the famous sheep and
wolf example right
it's why does it run away right there's
a brown
furry uh object i mean if you if you
describe it
strictly in terms of the visual
impression of the visual field
why does it react to that right um and
the answer is for for alexander and
aquinas that
it's it's able to perceive um either
innately
right um so an example of that is
if you have mice that mouse that's never
been exposed to a cat and smells a cat
it will seek shelter
so that's innate right it's just born
that way but
it it doesn't just smell it it
associates danger with that
so the association of danger that's
that's the first one
um it could be a nate required as i
talked about before
that perceiving individual notions like
socrates or in the case of an animal
distinguishing different um you know
members of the family or other animals
in a non-linguistic fashion
and then particular reason prepares a
fantastic attraction well like you were
saying right
good it's patterns that that would be a
good way to put it you know
um in order to prepare for like you
don't just
leap into knowledge of human nature
recognition of different
um natural kinds there's a gradual
process
in uh infancy and even for us as adults
there can be
especially with something like
metaphysics like the notion of substance
and accident there can be a gradual
process so you're you're coaching is at
work
trying to to put things together in a
way that makes sense which is also why
it's it's fatiguing right intellectual
work
well it's also your code i guess not to
gently
um so then the fourth one instrumental
role in
knowledge of the singular so so remember
i said that
for thomas there's no direct
intellectual knowledge of the singular
but there is indirect knowledge of the
singular so
if i know socrates i can i have
my intellect has indirect knowledge of
that by reflecting
on my image of socrates
so it reflects on that um and so it kind
of knows
indirectly which would be kind of a
whole nother topic conversation but
but the point is that my it's not like
my intellect is completely unaware of
singularities because then that would be
a kind of dualism or duality
right within the human person and we
would
look more like outcome with the two
souls right
so there's a continuity between insects
and the quotative and the intellect
reflects
on um on the lower
uh knowledge and then so so that sense i
mean has to do with my
my consciousness right my conscience of
myself
and so on um that forms the minor of the
the practical syllogism so you know the
example comes from aristotle right
uh if all sons should honor their
fathers this
this man is my father therefore i shall
honor him so
um the first the the major premise of
any of you
one begins ideal one begins the study of
philosophy with logic
the major premise is universal because
right it has the word all in it
and then uh the minor premises are
singular because they're dealing with
singular
they have singular terms and so that's
the code
that forms both of those and that that
does tend to get overlooked a lot um
not always maybe less so in recent years
by scholars
and lastly reasons from one single thing
to another so i think that's just
broadening it out to whether it's
because i just gave example of a
practical syllogism the conclusion of
which is something that i should do
right an action i should take in the
world
as opposed to all humans or language
users socrates is human they're for
soccer as a language user
like you said that's a deduction and the
code is there would be responsible for
the
second two steps okay wonderful
wonderful all right now what i want to
do uh
is let's see we are about an hour into
this
so i want to give a chance for people to
ask questions
because there's some really incredible
people here uh and i want to make sure
that we have we get them involved too um
and
i don't you know we'll we'll figure out
how to proceed from there uh we will
have time for breakout rooms afterwards
so folks it's time for uh questions uh
we have four rules as always
go ahead and type exclamation mark if
you want to ask a question or raise your
hand and zoom
number two keep on topic number three be
brief and number four
speak your mind feel free to disagree
with any uh
on anything with anybody and do so
courteously
uh first up is uh give me just a second
let me go ahead and enable this
um first up is mark mark go ahead
afrikaan thank you so much uh for
inviting uh mark barker good to see you
again
uh mark i was actually recounting to
some people today that when you and i
first met in 2016 that was a real
milestone
uh in my of early education
uh on these topics i learned a lot from
you in huntington
and i'll i'll always be very grateful
for that thank you very much
and also thank you for agreeing to uh to
send
along to us uh your uh your essay
so we could publish it um in diane
wedecon
my question for you is neuroscience
um as i understand it um the inner
senses
or internal or interior depending on
who's speaking
we like to call it the inner senses the
inner senses
are material they are
expressed in brain tissues
and in general these are going to be uh
as you may have uh
enjoyed i don't know if you'd seen ruth
harvey's
presentation at warburg before we
published it
but um there's a long history
of trying to locate in the neuroanatomy
um not in the in the neocortex
but in all the various uh structures and
uh ventricles
uh beneath that there's a long history
of trying to
locate these uh inner senses
so my question for you is are you aware
of anyone
uh or uh if you're not uh
what do you think we need to do to get
some modern neuroscientists
to look at these questions um
i believe that uh uh daniel de haan
at uh uh oxford has taken a look at some
of this
uh we've recently been in conversation
and i don't feel father uh ezra sullivan
at the angelicum uh he is a dominican
uh who is looking very seriously at
these things
but i have yet to find anybody who is
uh actively involved in neuroscience
um and engaged with with these uh
questions
um have you heard of any of that and if
not what can we do to
accelerate it well um
so uh in my dissertation i i
there's one article by magda b arnold
who i know you know about and
um you had told me about some of her
books that i wasn't aware about but i
had just seen that one article
and then her co-author on that article
um the internet is called the internal
sentences functions are powers and it's
in two parts
and that would be kind of a seminal i
guess article because to my knowledge
that's the first person to really try to
tackle that
question um head on and and take the
codes
seriously and us seriously but still
look at the
neuroscience uh is neurophysiology right
what brain centers are responsible
um so that would be that's what i know
of and then um
beyond that right you'd have to have a
kind of cooperation there between
someone who knows what
um it's what these powers are and then
which
brain centers are responsible for them
um
and uh i mean honestly i i don't know if
it would be too hard to figure out
but um yeah i'm not really
that's not really what i've worked on so
so yeah i don't know but i i know
dan did han has has maybe worked on that
a bit more so maybe you could
yeah ask him or someone else but and i
haven't heard of this other dominican
you talked about so that's good if some
people are working on it
as you as you also probably know um
there's an enormous conversation about
these
topics in spanish um primarily
being conducted by opus dei
and and so that's another avenue for
this but i'm just
indicating that the next step for the
center for the study of digital life
in terms of looking at this will
probably be to try to
encourage some neuroscientific
examinations
thank you very much for your
presentation sir wonderful thank you
both
marks next up is brian peter
and franklin brian yes um
i'm fascinated by this uh anytime i hear
the word dualism
because i'm not formally trained in
philosophy but it seems to me
that dualism is at the heart of a lot of
key philosophical debates when it comes
to mind
and humanity's attempt to understand
what mind is
uh certainly since um uh uh
the the classical greeks so so you said
something
uh uh cognitive allows us to avoid
dualism
so i'm curious if you could just uh
briefly uh explain
uh what that means i give you an example
or two
sure so um so what you tend to have is
an over
well from thomas's perspective and over
emphasis on intellect so that the
intellect just
does everything so if you're stunned
scotus
is to take right people after thomas um
who's
you know the medievals are extremely
sophisticated in their epistemology and
anthropology and so for scotus my
intellect does all that so there's no
need for the codes there anymore but
then it's it's um it's minimizing um
kind of the body's role so the causative
is an embodied power
right so like mark stone was saying it's
a it's localized i use the word
localized not located
it's localized in your brain so all the
inner senses are and um so we're giving
a lot of
importance to like what your brain does
in your cognition
and it means like after we die our
intellectual soul lives on but we don't
really know what that will be like
because we won't have an imagination
anymore and we won't have
code anymore so it will think in a very
different way
whereas for um someone like scotus well
my brain already my
can mindset my intellect already knows
individuals and then you just kind of
see the end point of that dualism with
uh
falcon will go so far say i have two
soul two
different really different or distinct
souls
so i mean it's almost like at that point
well then are there two
me's or am i two persons or am i one
person
um so it's it's a more holistic
holistic approach right where um it's
it's a both and equation that like i
said before if i'm
when i as i make my way through the
world right um
existentialists speak about that kind of
thing people like heidegger
heidegger was trying to go back to
things themselves right following
husserl and the sense
that's what the code said it was doing
the quotation of is is um
it's talking about how i make my way
through the world because the world is
filled with
concrete individual things and entities
not just abstractions
so it's it's kind of giving
the due to to the concrete if you will
which is a kind of move that you had in
the post-modern period
um with like i said heidegger and the
existentialist sartre
the whole bunch of them that whole
movement so it in that sense it
it the code matches up with um kind of
anti-intellectualist features of uh the
existentialists
and so that's uh in that sense it's
it can has something to contribute to
contemporary conversation
in a way that intellectualists don't
because because existentialists are
rejecting
cartesian you know rationalism and their
their def
heidegger is definitely rejecting any
kind of intellectualism and
he wants to focus on kind of our
experience of the world around us and
how do we actually experience the world
which is so far removed from the whole
rationalist or modern approach um
so so that's how right it kind of plays
out um
the holistic approach would play out
wonderful uh thank you next up is going
to be peter
franklin laura and kevin peter go ahead
uh hello uh thank you so much for your
presentation i
think this may be the first time we've
met even uh digitally although maybe i'm
mistaken
but uh yeah i i i'm just so
so happy that there is somewhere on
youtube now
where uh this this has really been
elaborated at the level that it really
needs to be
so uh first off i just want to thank you
uh and again srikant for for hosting
this
um the the question that i have
um is sort of a bit of a historical
one um i was curious
how you see um
you know how so we talked about the
development of the cognitive power
as it came from the arabic world into
the latin world
via spain and then eventually at the
university of paris where it
was housed in all these schools um
you know i i wanted to mention that
historically uh
there's a you know bishop nemesis in
syria
uh wrote a book called on the nature of
man
where uh to bring the neurology in he he
talks about these ventricles
as far as i can tell for the first time
in these terms he uses the word
excaditiva
uh instead of cogitative but um
this premise of there being uh
ventricles in the brain that are
assigned these various powers
um with all the implications i suppose
of
humoral action of wetness and dryness um
why do you think it is that in the
15th and 16th century uh
these became um
sort of not even on the table uh to be
debated
rather than being on one side or the
other how do you think it disappeared
altogether
well so so you're right to bring in
nemesis and um
wolfson harry wolfson harry a wilson has
an article
that's another kind of classic read
article on this
and he mentions on the mesius and he
goes much much more into the history
than i did
that's kind of the thumbnail sketch
i'm in the book i do talk more about the
history um and so i do
mention the mises is very important and
all that um but uh
um so as far as i mean as far as it
so remember i mean for for the descartes
still accepts three internal senses
so he does accept um so suarez for
example
said there's just one internal sense um
and just the imagination usually people
just say it's just the imagination and
then he
views the other internal sentences all
subfunctions of imagination
so descartes was familiar with that and
yet he's still in a sense he's more of a
statillian on this because he
uh he accepts three internal senses the
common sense imagination of memory so he
accepts the resilient triad
and he views that as having different
brain centers so so he
they're still talking about um they're
still talking about the internal senses
like the
hume all the models talk about the
internal senses
the difference is how they conceive of
them so
for like hobbes for hobbs he'll talk
about your imagination and your memory
right there different but they're j
they're all they are is
he's a materialist so in in a
materialist setting
the internal senses become nothing but
organs
and or they become functions of organs
we should say you know
with functionalism so that's all they
are as a function of an organ and then
people will read that back into
aristotle
which in the book i'm actually trying to
do a lot of work to disagree with that
as best i can
um so so if you're a materialist they're
just organs
and um although alcohol kind of makes
them move in that way because occam says
that
so occam says do your two eyes have one
power vision or do they have two
his answer is that each eye has its own
power of vision
each ear has its own power of hearing
well thomas never says that
if anything thomas really doesn't say
that
and so already with occam um it's kind
of like the the soul's powers and the
soul itself are just being subsumed
back into the body like they're not the
sensory soul doesn't transcend the body
he says it's co-extensive with the body
he says that
if if i cut off my finger i lose a part
of my sensory soul so my sensory soul is
like almost quantified in my body
so that if if you cut off a piece of my
body you caught a piece of my soul well
if you know aristotle that's not how it
works
if you lose your hand your hand is not
sold anymore but you don't lose part of
your soul
so the way that occam talks about the
soul is and the power is
already kind of veering off into
materialism so
so they also have the language of
internal senses and like hobbs
but now they're just functions of powers
a part of me of organs and then for
descartes in a sense
it's the same thing because um the uh
common sense imagination and memory are
they're not
powers of this of the mind they're
powers of the body
so they're just part of the machine uh
maybe kind of like the computer you know
they're like the computer side of us
and then our intellect is the the
spiritual side of us
so so even though the language of
internal senses remains in the moderns
it's
whether you're a part of me whether
you're a materialist or a dualist
they just become part of the body
machine
and then with the um the post-modern i
basically think of the trends the first
postmodern like nietzsche at that point
he just completely gets rid of power as
a soul
entirely including the internal census
so then
in post-modernity let's say i think of
1831 is the stock endpoint of modernity
because that's when hegel died
so anything after 1831 you could pretty
safely call postmodern
or contemporary philosophy and they're
getting rid of the powers of the soul
entirely as just there are no powers of
the soul at all
um so so it's really that's why i guess
it is still
you keep coming back to that problem of
mechanistic materialism because even
descartes even though he's a dualist
as far as the body is concerned he's a
mechanist and so
that's such an i would say an
impoverished anthropology um
and um yeah anyway
thank you uh next up is going to be
franklin laura
kevin and mark franklin yes thank you
uh a great great topic
uh probably over my head but i'm i have
the impression that there was something
like the eighth
council of constantinople when pope
theodosius
uh established the aristotelian
dualistic metaphysic
as as catechism and
in the process sidelined the soul the
imagination
that the imagination was no longer an
essential
part of a three-part universe
and and with that we we we get the
we begin to lose the soul of the world
which you know is like we're like a
little drop of the ocean
of the soul of the world we have the
ocean in us we're like the soul of the
world but we're only a piece of it
but with this dualistic metaphysic
the soul is lost or begins to fade away
okay um so any comments on that or yes
please i wish you would
and does this ring any bells there's
pope theodosius and the uh
council of constantinople i don't know
unfortunately it doesn't now the world
soul does so that that's platonic
um and so certainly plato and the
neoclateness are going to have that and
i mean neoplatonism is all through the
middle ages that's a
major trend and if anything it
reversalism was in the minority
um some people will use the word dualism
for aristotle so they'll say well
because he says there's a soul in the
body
there's a dualism there i prefer to re
reserve it for platonism because
the soul and body are one thing so um
so therefore they're one thing with two
aspects so i prefer to call it
hylomorphism
and um yeah i mean aristotle doesn't
really directly address the world soul
any place
um so i guess what we i would say is
that in terms of
he does say that the soul intellectual
soul comes from
god in the book on generation of animals
i think it's book two chapter one
thereabouts
but he does have a different perspective
i
the world soul makes me think more of
failies i mean a lot of my
work has been from failies up to
aristotle and
and then the you know aquinas and the
arabs
um but so for for aristotle
he has a kind of clear picture of a
transcendent
um divinity whereas in thales
thales had said all things are full of
gods all things are full of soul
so i think that when um plato introduces
the world soul in the timaeus i think
he's kind of
integrating or synthesizing that idea
from thales that
you know everything has a soul and uh
certainly he's successful that with the
the kind of you know use of the the
world soul but
that's definitely a major divide between
neoplatonism plato
and and aristotle which is healing those
two traditions
uh thank you uh next up uh laura what's
your question
laura you need to unmute yourself
go ahead this may be hitting at a
pedestrian level of some degree but you
were talking about
um areas where these things lie and i
was thinking about how we often talk
about
people having um either
they're a a artistic
um or logical thinkers you know the
areas of the brain where they
reside um and so
i started thinking about that with
respect to what you're talking about
and is that the case i mean do we take
it down to that level
where we're either a or b
or d
okay um
so i mean um is there anything else you
wanted to add to that or
no that she's just asking whether you
know this distinction that many people
think in terms of you know okay
we are artistic versus scientific uh
temperament uh do you have any comments
about that
um so i guess
i mean on some degree you know each of
us as thinkers right
we're uh i think we're the product of
our influences
and um so i mean i'm i'm
but i definitely am kind of i hate to
label myself but
it'd be hard to say that i'm not it's a
mystic versatilian because i think that
would just be not
accurate but i did do my master's degree
on heidegger so i have
i spent a lot of time with an
existentialist
so so certainly heidegger is um trying
to get away from an over
emphasis on logic because in the 20th
century philosophy you had this logical
positivism and so
the current division of philosophy is
you have analytic philosophy which is
extremely logical
for the most part and then you have
continental philosophy right which is
existentialist or postmodern which is
kind of
basically the opposite i mean heidegger
never uses the syllogism i mean he's
he'll quote a poet before he'll quote um
you know a logician so you have that
kind of divide and
21st century philosophy that's as strong
as ever and
every once in a while there'll be a book
about an article about it about that
divide and how to try to bridge it and
that's this like
in 2021 that's the division within
philosophy where
the analytics will say that the
continentals aren't doing philosophy at
all and then the continentals
think the same about the analytics so
it's a quite a i don't know if there's
ever been quite that strong of a
division
within amongst professional philosophers
and just philosophy in general
so there are artistic versus logical
thinkers and
um i think the quotation can apply to
both because as i said
if i wa like i've been speaking as a
reception
and thomas here i'm focusing on the
logical aspect i suppose
but um heidegger is doesn't work that
way
and my master's station was called
heidegger's criticism the four causes
but
basically the priest who helped me with
this because i was having a hard time
with heidegger
which if you read him i think you'll be
able to relate
and and i said what is he getting at
here and this preset to me well he's
rediscovering the internal senses and
and that
made a lot of sense because like that's
why i was talking about the concrete
so even though you know the tendency
might be to think well like
you know i know um mark stallman's big
fan of uh marshall
mcluhan and mcclellan is more on the
literary side of things less on the
logical side of things
and i think we have we have things to
learn from both people
you know um the logicians shouldn't
dismiss
people the more literary types the
literary types shouldn't dismiss the
logicians which is what naturally tends
to happen
but i'm certainly you know um the
quotative can apply in either case
because
you know i think uh you were quoting the
um the peg air the last paragraph of the
big air in one of the previous videos
where he's he brings that in the kind of
cogitative as applying to
srikant you were reading that paragraph
from one of the other videos
where he uh pegare says like this is the
faculty of artists because artists are
dealing with the concrete so
so that's where there's a lot of
interesting thought about the quotative
and
thomas doesn't talk about that at all
right because really thomas doesn't have
a lot to say about i mean that's
maybe another reason that i'm going to
get the award for the world's
slowest writer because he has so little
to say about it that i end up
my book ends up going into a lot of
other things like anthropology because
he yeah he he's quite terse about it
but so that would be um the artistic
aspect of the code the logical he calls
it particular reason so
he's certainly that's obvious i mean
right
um that it applies in logic but the
artistic i don't
really know of any place no place comes
to mind where he mentions that so that'd
be the kind of thing that
there's still work to be done and
there's still thoughts to be had about
or conversations that he had about they
could
bring in the quotative so the artistic
one would be one of those conversations
thank you our next up is going to be
kevin followed by mark and then we're
going to do
breakout rooms for 20 minutes so we can
talk about these ideas amongst ourselves
and then we'll come back
to talk about our takeaways uh kevin
what's your question
yes thank you uh i understand dear limbs
the one corner of two side
it's they co-exist one side is so
another side is the body so
my question is can uh duralism
be compared to yin and yang
thank you okay
yeah um i don't know much about the
oriental tradition
of the the eastern tradition um but i do
know i mean i've read the the dow de
chang you know that's not
and i think there's a lot of wisdom in
it it's actually
very similar the yin and yang and the
dao de ching is
actually similar to um some of the
pre-socratics it was written about the
same time if any of you've heard of the
axial age which i forget
casser ernst kasser and she said you
have an actual age how it's fascinating
how at the same time the greek
philosophy was developing you had
buddhism
in india and you had the dow diching in
china
so it is i think that's a valuable idea
how there was this great kind of leap
forward
simultaneously um although there was
some cross
fertilization there and there's a book
on that i mean
he's buying books i mean i'm not i'm not
saying i agree with beckwith but
he's a skeptic but he has a book called
the greek buddha where he actually um
talks about how the greek skeptics
because alexander the great had gone to
india
they they met some of these um indian
philosophers
who were skeptics so there's actually is
a direct connection
um with eastern western skepticism where
um western skepticism goes back
so certainly in the east you do have a
lot of skepticism with buddhism
and i think right there can be more of a
dualism
and and that's why i think aristotle has
a lot to offer to the east
as well and of course they have their
own beautiful culture
and traditions but i know i think it was
mark stallman who might have told me
that that um
they were translating thomas's uh suma
they they translated the sum into
chinese for the first time
so that that's all one would hope that
you know
thomas would catch on in china
next up is mark mark go ahead
oh yes yeah uh
uh mark barker is correct
the chinese have gone crazy over the
classics
east and west
five years ago uh maybe a little longer
than that
they began teaching all of their top
cadres
in the central party school in beijing
the chinese classics they had actually
gone to the university of chicago
and met with the people who were
teaching great books
to try to get some ideas about how to
teach that i have actually met
professors at pku beijing university
one of their jobs is to teach the polit
borough which is the equivalent
of the senate and the standing committee
of the borough which is the equivalent
of the cabinet
they are being taught these are these
are obviously
older people um live through
a mao era where none of this was talked
about
they're being taught um yi jing
uh all the way up to the top but in
addition to that
my understanding is that all across
china
classics departments western classics
departments
are opening up and so this recent
translation
there may have been earlier translations
but indeed there's a new
uh complete translation um from the
ground up
of of aristotle and i presume others it
is working its way into this so that
the chinese fascination with these
topics
east and west is uh quite remarkable
just imagine a situation where you could
not be elected a senator in the united
states
if you hadn't passed the test on arizona
wonderful my question for you though
mark is uh so so uh we're in agreement
uh of the importance of these
relationships amongst these senses and
as is
often the case when something
interesting and
elaborate and historical presented like
that like this
the question becomes well that's
wonderful
what could go wrong
uh and and so i'm wondering if in your
book
or in your other readings
you run across people who focused on
that subject
so once we have an architecture of the
sort that you're describing here
there's a number of ways that that could
break down
and in particular it is the view
as you know the center the television
uh completely over emphasizes the
um imaginary part of this
eliminating any of memorative
components of this so you wind up with a
population
that is more or less running on fantasy
and whether uh non-functional tokens uh
count as an example
uh whether um uh invading the capital on
january the sixth counts as an example
but there's a there's a lot of wacky
things going on uh
fantasy type things going on so uh and
and as you know it's our view
that digital technology because of the
architecture of digital technology
inherently shifts the balance of the
inner senses
from fantasy to memory and i'm not
saying that that either of those
are uh categorically good or bad
but it does seem to us at least that the
what could go wrong is now in some sort
of transition
um and so i'm i'm curious as a scholar
of all of this
uh what aristotle have ever imagined
that we would sit down for hours a day
watching a blinking light puppet show
or mikey had said because his teacher
plato
had his teacher socrates um
i believe uh murdered uh for his
opposition to the election mysteries
and you wind up in the republic with the
parable of the cave
which is clearly in greek terms that
there was no other
festival where people sat around
watching a blazing fire
that's the alassanian mysteries and
socrates is the guy
who escapes and then is murdered from
all of that
i'm just wondering if if uh given that
what we have are aristotle's class notes
and he didn't sit down and write a
extensive treatment of all of these
things um
but did anybody did that akham or
anybody else who you studied
did they try to list out how this whole
thing
could go sideways how this
arrangement we have here could wind up
with some really
uh serious problems right so
so that's um that's a good question
there's there's a tradition
of i think it's a dominican tradition
i'm not sure where else it would be from
but
that's we need a you need a dead master
and a living master
so aristotle aquinas are
dead masters right they have we can read
their writings but they can't explain
them to us and
we can't ask them how to make sense of
television
or the information revolution or the
industrial revolution or any i don't
know
the stirrup i mean there's so much
that's happened since the
so like we're saying at the beginning
the beauty is that what thomas what they
say about human nature is still
i think as valid as it was as today as
it was back then
and that's why we should look at it but
it is up to us
to to make those application
developments so i'm glad that
you know you all are doing that um
because that's what we need to do
because uh i totally agree with
the thomas doesn't talk about it but
20th century thomas we'll talk about the
judgment of existence existential
judgment and
and that's one thing i've been working
on and i i need to write something about
at some point
you know maybe 30 years from now but um
but the existential judgment is missing
in a
like just when i'm sitting in front of a
screen all day so
so we have a realist epistemology
and so right you're we're right to bring
in the the cave allegory that in a sense
we're like those people trapped in a
cave
staring at a screen like it's kind of
prophetic there's these strange
prophetic things in plato
remember plato says in the republic he
says well if someone would be really
really good
if someone would be the most just person
they would capture and crucify well he
wrote that in
400 bc or 380 bc
like and so some of the fathers of the
church said that he was there's a kind
of prophetic
quality to plato and um i mean without
speaking as a philosopher
regarding the cave allegory if nothing
else he's
it's there's something so brilliant
about these greek philosophers that that
there are still provincial applications
of their ideas so yes and
and tom i'm sorry aristotle and thomas
are realists so i mean they
their epistemology is that see in a
sense for
it is that we're encountering reality
for the moderns i can't get past the
veil of perception so for the moderns
they're
called richard ward's term is
representational so everything i
experience
for kant or for descartes for the count
everything i experience is all just like
it is like a tv screen i can never get
behind the screen
so the pro in some sense the technology
has taken
kant's error and made it reality and
then we have i think a
huge you know political social etc
crisis
on some level because of that and i
agree about the non-possible tokens
thing i i've come across that and
it's i guess it's just it's just the
logic of modernity playing itself out
where reality doesn't matter anymore and
everything becomes digital and
and we don't want to be luddites and
just reject technology out of hand like
right now we're meeting on zoom which we
couldn't do
but the problem is right it um mcluhan
was right about that you know that
it it ends up having effects that people
aren't aware of
and i think the last year we've seen
that on a lot of ways so
um so as far as going wrong yeah and um
and that's where precisely
that's where it's up to us to make those
applications because
yeah there's nothing like that and and
thomas and aristotle really i mean
um yeah that kind of analysis that we
could provide in the 21st century
so wonderful um so folks uh now it's
time to discuss these ideas
uh in small groups uh for 20 minutes and
then we'll come back here to talk about
our takeaways and maybe we'll have
a little bit of time for the questions
all right it's time for
takeaways and questions further
questions
um let's try to keep it brief so we can
get to as many as possible again the
same rules
uh type exclamation mark to provide your
takeaway or a question
uh number that's number one number two
keep on topic number three be brief
number four speak your mind feel free to
disagree with anything on any uh you
know with anybody
and do so courteously barry what's your
take away our question
uh barry you need to unmute yourself
okay there you go um my takeaway was
when i was a teenager i was into science
fiction i wrote read a book by a.e van
bark
and it was called the world of nalay
uh anybody familiar with that book uh
barry you need to be
brief you know we have we yeah the next
step is coming up soon go ahead well
yeah i'm being brief uh and so the the
question i have
is uh is the world of malay
a mechanistic world where you see humans
as machines
and i i guess the other thing i have a
question of
is there is a book written by edith hall
called the aristotle way are you
familiar with that book and it's
treats aristotle philosophy as a
self-improvement
philosophy and if you would comment on
that i would be real interested
um okay um so yeah the first book
unfortunately i haven't heard of that
book so i can't really speak to that
um as far as the other book yeah i think
that's right that
self-improvement is a a good way to
describe his
his worldview and um so
i mean that gets a bit more into his
ethics
and here we're focused on his kind of
philosophical psychology and and the way
it developed
um so um
so yeah i mean i i guess i would grab
but since i don't know the book i can't
really
i guess i can't say too much beyond that
okay next up is donna
so in our breakup room we um started
this question about artificial
intelligence
and um ethics comes into question i'm
curious
to know it's going to be wild to see
what do we do with self-driving cars
the trolley experiment who who's going
to die and who's going to live
i mean that's going to be the real
challenge we haven't even gotten to the
challenges of artificial intelligence
it really will be quite wild
okay um yeah that's a good point right
the famous trolley
you know if it's headed for five people
do you put on the track to kill the two
people who are also
it's gonna kill um that's that's kind of
utilitarian way
um i mean i guess yeah i think that
at first i was i was a skeptic about
self-driving cars and then i just saw
that chipotle and you know and then
chipotle said that there's some
it's called nu the new car and it's sort
of driving around
i actually have a friend who uh is
working on
that technology and he was asking about
it he was asking me if the coach data
had something to offer
because he he's aware right the pattern
recognition idea and
he was asking to help him
[Laughter]
um and i guess uh yeah it's it's
that's programming and um
i guess that's the order of efficiency
right like we have such an efficient
world and it seems to me sometimes right
like our world is going nowhere fast
like we've lost
what is the meaning of life right
aristotle tells us what the meaning of
life is
right we want to be virtuous he says
that god is the one
everything came from god and that
basically we should try to serve god
but the moderns don't have a clear
vision of that so i mean
the danger is with all this technology
we're able to
process so much information and share so
much information but the quality of the
information is what really matters and
and you know having wisdom and um
so i think both aristotle and aquinas
have a you know a special place
in that with regards to that
so so even as the i guess there's things
you can make between the order of
efficiency and the order of
um fecundity so
as the order of efficiency increases and
this goes back really to francis bacon
who went about the year 1600 is saying
well you know he's
saying we need to get rid of all this
aristotle stuff of there being purposes
in nature there's no purpose to nature
there's no forms in nature there's just
matter and that's the the modern
um world view of nature right as nature
is just
atoms it's just there's there's no
purposes in it whereas for aristotle
each kind of animal had its own purpose
each organ had its own purpose
which i think is self-evidently true or
obviously true on some level and then
what ethics flows from that how should
we live our lives based on that
so um yeah i guess i'm glad that the
there's people other than you know just
a couple of scholars talking about the
coget data because
um you know if we want to get back to
holomorphism that kind of sophisticated
automorphism that people just won't
dismiss the coaching that does have a
role to play there and
a complete recovery or retrieval of
um pylomorphism you know not just uh
meaning kind of how more than at its
best in some ways which is
includes thomas because um pico de la
merandola
you might have heard him he wrote the
original dignity of man he's another
renaissance philosopher
and um he himself was more of a new
playedness we talked about the world so
he was more of a near platonist but
but he did say that um cena toma
aristotle
which means without thomas aristotle
wouldn't you
so he was a kind another genius he died
very young i think he and he
there is evidence that he was poisoned
but um
even he who was not even really an
aristotelian per se um he said that you
need aquinas to help you understand
aristotle
and i think uh there's a lot to be said
for that so
so so yeah so um hopefully we can you
know
help spread some of that return to
realism and
everything ethics uh thank you
uh folks if you want to share your
takeaways or ask questions you can go
ahead and type exclamation mark next up
is mark stallman uh thank you srikant um
uh this is fascinating that a friend of
yours is working on
on self-driving cars and had the
presence of mind
to recognize that the cognitive power
implied pattern recognition well
remember this is someone who i taught
for several years so
you know he's gonna um he's gonna know
about that
and and um yeah i mean
he didn't use the language pattern
recognition
i'm using that's that's i'm getting that
more from you mark
that precise terminology but he was
explaining to me how
he was saying how the car has the car
you know
the car the computer program has a very
hard time telling
one thing from another and he's trying
to write a computer program
and he was like they're having a really
hard time and he was saying well
you work on the qualitative right how
can you help me with that and i was
saying well
not really because i mean i guess i i
guess i've never thought about from that
angle and
ultimately i'm more interested in ethics
i feel like the order of efficiency
we're like
the problem is we sometimes i feel like
we have we have space age technology and
stone age philosophy
in our society that would be a simple
way to put it that's a beautiful
beautifully put i
i i love that as to um
uh add a little bit to this um it turns
out that the
current field of artificial intelligence
is focused on the problem
that they describe as the common sense
that that is the the big holy grail
today for artificial intelligence
recognizing
that a three-year-old child knows
whether an elephant can fit through a
door or not
but it but an ai uh does not
right that's that's what he said too
about he said how do they tell that that
there's a drunk pedestrian because
most pedestrians are not a threat but a
drunk pedestrian could
you know be a threat a threat that there
being an accident
and so he says how do you how do we
teach it that that's a drunk pedestrian
as opposed to one that's not
and right as a human i mean i it's
there's all kinds of
cues that i would rely on for that i
mean and so exactly yeah
so that my point here is just that ai is
struggling
with what they are calling common sense
but they of course haven't got that
elaborated
understanding of the inner senses so
the problem they're actually dealing
with is is cognitive power here
without knowing that's what they're
dealing with but there's a
tens of millions of dollars being spent
at the allen institute in san fran
and seattle and others trying to solve
the common sense problem here
and and just in case i don't speak again
for those who
here may have some interest or
understanding of in particular
uh chinese approach to all of this i
have had an opportunity to speak with
the president of university
in beijing whose uh goal is to try to
train an ai to do the ijing
the iching is a is a very sophisticated
quantitative power test
he doesn't have the language he doesn't
know what the arrangement is here but
i'm quite confident inevitably
in the next five plus years we will hear
about people trying to build artificial
souls
and in the process they will be coming
to mark barker and others
to try to figure out what a what an
actual soul
is like we're inevitably heading in that
direction at the same time
the other side of that coin if you will
is the
human beings finally coming to recognize
that this whole
robotic exercise really has to be
brought under control
and building artificial souls may be the
tripping point on that
thank you mark uh next up is going to be
kevin followed by
peter kevin yes i tried to be quick
uh we just mentioned the theoretical uh
what's the current problem we use
monument or
binaries rhythm it's a kind of
illustrated world binary the movie
maybe even have an active meaning what's
the problem like a current uh
thinking society thank you i don't know
whether i got the terms or what two
things are you talking about kevin
uh monizer monism
yeah and the binary rhythm okay talk
about that thank you
yeah so well that's that's his basic
terminology
so um so i mentioned thales
right daley's the first philosopher
slash scientist in the western world
that
that um that's where it begins i mean
there could have been people before him
but
that's where it begins as far as we know
about 585 bc
and he was a monist so so the question
of you know what is everything made of
he just says everything is water so he
takes one there's four elements and he
picks one he says it must all be water
so it's a starting point right at least
he's asking
the question why like and what what the
why and what questions of philosophy and
to some degree science
so he's a monist because everything is
one thing everything is just water
and even the soul is is water and if
there's gods they're water
so so that's that's monism and then we
don't use the word binaryism
um we would use the word dualism so
monism is that everything is one thing
dualism is everything is two things so
normally spirit and matter like plato
and then you finally have pluralism so
pluralism is everything is more than two
things
so uh in terms of pre-socratics that
would be ambidoculese who said that
they're all they're
all four elements are ultimate um so
that that's how that would apply in
terms of philosopher nature
um and uh so yeah anyway
well uh peter
hi yes thank you uh so uh
just first quick a comment on the uh
drunk pedestrian how do you how do you
know it's drunk
my guess is that um google's robots with
recaptcha
every time that you try and log in
instead of clicking
what's a crosswalk you you might find is
this a drunk person
check check all the drunk people so uh
i look forward to that in the coming
months but no uh
i i just uh my takeaway uh i don't
necessarily have a question
is um i i just want to say uh since we
were in the breakout room together
um in this to the group i'm i'm just
absolutely blown away
that you got to this topic um
not just of the interior senses and
their importance but of
particularly st thomas's understanding
of the cogitate of power
um how you got to that from a question
about heidegger's attempt to
make any of this clear uh and that your
your priest uh mentor helped you
get to that point i thought that's
amazing
and um something i just want to repeat
here is that i mentioned in the breakout
room
is i think um who knows what sparks will
fly
when uh that question is asked about
romano guardini
who was heidegger's senior peer at
freiburg
and actually did become a priest unlike
heidegger who abandoned his theology
training
uh what happens when the inner senses
are brought to bear on
guardini's thought which has not even
begun to be uh discussed in english so
uh thanks again uh to you dr mark
barker and uh to shri khan again so
thank you
uh thanks peter um so mark
i think this was very remarkable okay
this is
uh so firstly um i mean not just so one
part of it is just your scholarship
which is incredible uh you know being
able to show very clearly
you know you know aristotle the arabic
philosophers
and aquinas to present day
with kind of the obstacles in between uh
you were able to do that uh
secondly you are actually able to
communicate that
in a fairly clear term to
pretty much anybody who wants to know
okay
so i am now i want your book out
soon and i don't think the world needs
to wait for your book
out because you are what you already
have both in terms of knowledge and
ability to communicate it is at a level
where
today you know for example this video
that people are watching
people can get the essence of it
and maybe we can do more of these to get
the word out
which will not only help uh you know
help the world but it will also help
your book whenever it comes out so
i don't want to push you on the book but
i would love to have you talk
you know more about this because this is
something which is
really critical yeah and that's
that's kind of why i did it because i'm
usually very research oriented as
you probably are able to see but um
i've just found myself listening to
things on youtube lately i i guess
um like you were talking about nfts and
and technology i try to keep up on that
a little bit and
and um i'll just listen to it i don't
even necessarily have to watch it so i
realized like so much of
that there's really an oral culture now
it's kind of funny
because we're such a written culture you
know where knowledge was really by
the written word so much but i think so
many people now like podcasts and things
they'll just maybe they don't have any
time to look at a book at all
but maybe when they're driving to work
they'll listen so maybe if someone hears
about the codes of power and they
youtube it and they could listen to this
when they're driving to work
you know so that's why i thought let's
get some of this out i wanted to
cooperate in getting some of this
out there in an oral spoken form so that
that's why i
did it wonderfully because usually i'm
pretty strict about
about just keeping research oriented
because that's the nature of my work but
but so i i agree and i appreciate the
opportunity and the conversation
yeah no the other thing i would say is
that one remarkable thing i noticed that
the way you answered questions where you
commented on things
even when you were not you did not know
much about things you were able to kind
of give people historical context
so that you they could use that to
figure it out so i think you're able to
not only
you know stuff you're able to
communicate as a presenter but also
able to interact with people uh
where they are and relate the knowledge
that you have which is actually
from a long time ago to what they are
thinking so it's these are all these are
tremendous assets mark so thank you very
much
tremendous it is just incredible honor
as well as just share delight
thanks thanks a lot