A Metaphysical Dialogue with John Vervaeke

What does the meaning we experience in our lives reveal about the nature of reality?

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This is a generative dialogue about the metaphysics of consciousness and meaning with the cognitive scientist and philosopher John Vervaeke.

Rough timestamps:

3:00 - Can our capacity to draw coherence into experience afford insight metaphysical process itself?
6:40 - What role does consciousness and transformation play in John’s metaphysics?
7:50 - An ontology of real relations. Meaning as transjective not subjective.
11:20 - Problems with strict emergence and emanation metaphysics, and a more sophisticated grammar of cognition.
16:40 - The relevance of goals to metaphysical transformation
19:30 - Are we trapped in an ironic cycle of becoming, or do we accept it with love and transcend it? A pattern of loving transformation.
22:10 - John pushing back against teleology
26:40 - The God-image in the psyche
28:20 - Realising the one within, and how it affords insight into the operating principles of the world

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John Vervaeke PhD is an award-winning lecturer at the University of Toronto in the departments of psychology, cognitive science and Buddhist psychology. He has published articles on relevance realization, general intelligence, mindfulness, metaphor, and wisdom. His abiding passion is to address the meaning crisis that besets western culture.

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