Gregg Henriques on the new unified theory of psychology | Thing in itself w/ Ashar Khan

Gregg Henriques is a professor of psychology at James Madison University and the creator of the unified theory of knowledge (UTOK) system. UTOK is a system of eight key ideas that interconnect to solve "the problem of psychology" and offer a new theory of reality, the human condition, and our scientific knowledge of both.

0:00 intro
3:15 the problem of psychology
16:12 the enlightenment gap and the philosophical roots of the problem
23:09 what is the psyche?
26:27 introducing UTOK (unified theory of knowledge)
31:01 emergence and new sources of causality
44:53 clinical psychology
53:05 behavioural investment theory and the architecture of the mind
1:05:00 justification hypothesis
1:18:16 John Vervaeke // towards a definition of cognition
1:23:08 modern and post-modern views of science
1:31:54 paying attention to history
1:34:10 depression and the behavioural shutdown model
1:51:25 the fifth joint point
2:00:50 AGI systems and the future

Gregg Henriques' book:
A New Unified Theory of Psychology (2011)

Gregg's links:

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Podcast

[CrossRoadPhoto]

This is amazing. It jives so nice with zen practice and philosophy.

[Achrononmaster]

@22:00 Gregg set-up the history very well. Except for one thing, which is the Newtonian clockwork universe is wrong, and even if true would not be physicalism. You cannot have a physical system of any kind we know about without initial/boundary conditions. Where do these come from? No physicist can say. The physicists have not been able to establish the metaphysical thesis of materialism, they failed. It looks like materialism is true because the nomic structure is quasi-deterministic (QM, not CM) but the boundary freedom is still available to a dualist. Dualism can be true provided there is a "hook" onto spacetime, and that exists at boundaries. (Hawking's No Boundary proposal notwithstanding, which is an intrinsic geometric proposition, not extrinsic.)
There is at least one physicist/compsci guy who has put it "out there" that all the freedom of causal agent lies at the boundaries (Scott Aaronson). But Aaronson is more right than he thinks. Modern Gauge/Gravity duality also says all the physics takes place on the boundary.

[Achrononmaster]

@33:00 this is wrong, or incomplete from Gregg... chemistry cannot be reduced to physics due to the "measurement problem." No matter how you cut it (Many Worlds, or Decoherence, or Copenhagen collapse) the macro influences the micro in proper spacetime quantum mechanics. Proper spacetime QM means macroscopic measurement processes cannot be described by field theory, since in a superposition there is no definite measurement apparatus. In modern terms, or Ads/CFT/Gauge/Gravity duality paradigm, all the QM or QFT takes place at the boundary (or in dS space at asymptotic infinity). What this means is that the atom, the basic unit in chemistry, is not well defined in QM. You need measurement processes, so macroscopic structures, to define the atoms to do chemistry proper, or even to do basic density functional theory.
So there is top down causal influence even before we get to psychology, it is right down there in simple chemistry. The puzzle is that such top down causation requires advanced causation, due to the out-of-time-order correlators in QM. At present this is a raw postulate of QM (the measurement postulate, or in MWI the branching postulate). However, if you ask me, there is a very conservative way to derive all this, in plain old general relativity: all you need to resolve the top down causal situation implied by the measurement postulate and the OOTOC's is non-trivial spacetime topology (i.e., closed timelike curves at the Planck scale or thereabouts). This yields genuine top down causation = the macro influencing the near past time order of the micro. There is no other sensible non-mystical way to get genuine emergence in any known physics, afaik.

[fineasfrog]

It may be that the mind, as we know it, is incoherent and for it to understand what it is studying it needs to be at least as coherent as the subject matter it is studying. We know through structures, a special case of this is our scientific models. Unless the coherence of the mind structures are at least up to the level of wholeness or coherence of what it studies, it will fall short of complete understanding of the subject matter under consideration. As long as we are limiting ourselves to the functioning of the mind that is under the impression of "I am in here" and what I'm studying is "out there", we limit our understanding. If we limit our way of knowing to subject-object knowing where the subject is assumed to be completely separate from the object, we can only understand relative levels of wholeness or coherence.

[paxdriver]

What a wonderfully peculiar man lol great conversation

[MegaSudjai]

To use Ockham's Razor on the nature of Depression and Anxiety: they are both evolutionary self-destruct mechanisms- as are all pathologies. All intelligence (higher order cognitive functionality) does is exacerbate the underlying ontological conditions within an organism.

[annodell]

The hi-jacking of science as reality vs a justification theory for reality has propagated so many disparities that we have for centuries suffered from & still do...also giving rise to drastic polarization...imagine how many more people would be more tolerant of, as well as interested in science, or of alternate philosophies/worldviews other than just the primary religions, as just one example:
-MAN VS NATURE
-GOD VS SCIENCE
-QUANTUM VS PARTICLE PHYSICS
-MIND VS MATTER
-EMPIRICISM VS MYSTICISM
-OBJECTIVE VS SUBJECTIVE
-INDIGENOUS VS MODERN SOCIETY
-YOUR TRUTH VS MY TRUTH

And these justification theories, that have completely shaped the world we live in for past 300yrs, have been developed completely by the MALE PSYCHE EXCLUSIVELY. Imagine if they had been dominated by WOMEN?

And admittedly the science 'we've suffered' from the rigid Enlightenment view did bring us better than what we had in the Dark Ages.

Also it has to be that Jungian Archetypes are tied to chemical make up, biologically. 
One person’s bag of chemicals is different from another’s hence > I am a Sage vs you are a Ruler.

I was riveted by this concept & exchange…thank you…transcribed the whole thing. A rewarding 8hr exercise.