So hello all and welcome to the fourth session of The Man Who Knew Nothing, From Neurodiversity to Practical Schizophrenia. We have two presentations today, one is from Max and one is from Juliet, and otherwise I'll just pass the microphone over to Reza. Thank you. So today I'm going to, I remember, please do remind me if I'm repeating this stuff, my memory is not really good. I'm going to continue with the idea of mental autonomy and why is it so important and it's actually the central theme of this whole seminar and essentially what we have tried to do is looking at different
versions, historical versions of takes on mental autonomy. Surprisingly, mental autonomy has been historically fleshed out in completely different ways. Sometimes mental autonomy means to live in accordance with nature. Sometimes it means to be fundamentally an artificial self, you know, the whole business of self-cultivation, self-determination, so on and so forth.
I think so if this is the case, then when we are now looking at the Stoics and also we looked at cynics, we should understand and elaborate what does it mean to live by nature? What kind of nature are we talking about? So when it comes, for example, to Epictetus, he says that our powers lie in nature, or those which give us self-determination and
mental autonomy. What does he really mean? So I'm going to first even forget about the story system kind of flash forward to the future sessions talk a little bit more about uh in in basically in continuation what i uh talked about at the end of last session uh what do we mean by mental autonomy and what does mean if we forget about it or we confuse it with something else right such as ego introspective powers of ego so I'm going to do that then I will come back briefly and touch on some of the main issues of stoicism and that
be it. So with that said maybe we should actually start with the presentations. So who would like to go first Juliet or Max? It doesn't matter to me. Max then you will start. So I was focusing on the spiritual exercise as it was kind of described in the cellars. I was kind of got interested in it right from the beginning because they talk about the spiritual
exercise or spiritual practice as the second step as coming after the philosophical principles or like which I felt a little unnerved by at first because the whole how just this sort of like two like two-step process with a separation between like the establishment of principles or theories and then their implementation seems a little bit dangerous where there's no kind of like coming back to the theoretical principles and maybe I didn't kind of get it all but what I was coming in what
it seemed like coming in but in terms of the spiritual practice it's talked about habituation and digestion as ways to kind of implement theory into everyday life and then to kind of create this new practical life through everyday practices. Habituation being the daily ingraining of new react or new ways of dealing with your immediate experiences, your opinions, desires, and then digestion is more related to not regurgitating the theoretical what you've been taught, not just spitting the words
right back out, but actually metabolizing and creating something through the theories. they used the example of a sheep growing wool which I thought was quite interesting as this and maybe they're kind of making this metaphor of this sort of other substance which appears after the grass is eaten but definitely not just like they definitely talk about sort of sitting with theories and letting like there's a time that's needed And then this other metaphor which also kind of has bothered me for a while, but maybe I'm kind of over now, so I'll try and go through a little bit why it bothered me, was this
metaphor of the apprentice and the master craftsperson. So an apprentice can be taught the principles, but they will need a lifetime to be an actual master of the principles. And I was definitely taking this maybe a little bit too direct at first, the metaphor. And most likely because I have a craft background and there's like, there's a lot of dogmas in like material crafts and it really, especially like you'll just be taught the weirdest things by people who say they're masters and who actually are masters, but they're so personalized
or like not really universal or all these things that after so many years someone has actually believed that that's how things work and the right way of doing something. So that was like kind of like what immediately I thought of when this metaphor comes up in it. But I, after kind of going through it more, I realized that it's actually not really principles. to continue with the craft metaphor it's not really principles that you would be taught that kind of come across as dogmatic but but interpretations of parts of nature and not actual actually the practice of kind of creating the
harmonies of nature. So I was having a really hard time like distinguishing between those two things of like someone who has created very distinct kind of rules for maybe what nature is as opposed to following a sort of practice of investigation. And maybe Reza can also separate those a little more. I'm not I'm doing a very good job at separating those but and in the end I like the craftsperson metaphor but at first I was kind of just reading it in this really like closed direction and one of my leftover questions from last session
which I was trying to look into a little more was the asceticism that Seneca specifically talks about and this like separation from life and what how that actually affects the practice of stoicism and the practice of exploring the nature as like this field of differences and I well Reza kind of put across a he's not you can be a stoic but a theoretical so it's not an aesthetic stoic which i'm still kind of wondering what that means then because it seems like the aesthetic way is
so you can um focus less on the way that your body is demanded in everyday life and your time is demanded in order to actually give time to thinking past your daily life, and to focusing outside the demands of society. But how, yeah, I still kind of have trouble with how this, is this an essential part of So, and like, can, how can you, or what is a different type of asceticism that can't, it doesn't have the privileges that maybe some Soate had of being able to withdraw or
not necessarily a privilege. I mean, you can go the whole cynic route and you don't need anything. You can become a dog. But so maybe I'm not holding on to too many of the thinking about wanting to hold on to many of the aspects of daily life. I'm wondering if there's sort of like, yeah, if it's not necessary to completely remove yourself from society. And I guess this kind of also comes, I have one question about the cynics and that how what is their kind of relation to the community because it's very much
talked about this sort of like self practice of of going through your experiences but also kind of in this one part talking a little more about arts and like Seneca is saying why can't we dream about this why can't we think about these things why can't we think about how the universe is put together and it some part of that seems like a teeny bit lonely and I wonder about like Lonely in what sense? Oh not not in the sense that well in the sense that it seems like with these writings he is sort of he's reaching out and I wonder why it isn't emphasized more that
as much as there is a sort of self-practice and if you can be in a space where you can reach out and and think um about the universe how how does that interact with other people then and and yes but don't you think that this is exactly the point of the stoicism that we are going away essentially why is that we are lonely? Because before we actually figured out the conundrums of self or ego, having a self or having an ego, we just rush into looking into the problems of worlds.
But what if that if we had thought more coherently about the idea of the self and how ego distorts the idea of the world, maybe we should be could be better. So loneliness is a kind of a recipe for stoics for prioritizing the problems of the self over the problems of the so-called outside world. And the great thing here is that they see the self as part of the world. It's just a great filter that can either distort or becomes speculative in a good old-fashioned
Hegelian sense. Yeah, I guess I don't see that that lonely. I guess I wasn't like a loneliness that I was seeing so much as a problem. I guess more in the sense of like this class sort of doesn't seem like it fits into this framework of stoicism in a certain way. But to me it does. So I'm like kind of wondering about like coming from those texts, like a sort of community where these things are talked about. I don't, yeah, I'm wondering if that,
is this a distraction sort of from the practice or the constructive space of loneliness? Yeah, that's a very good question. I think that there are not that much an improvement over cynics on the Hegelian ladder of a spirit or geist, of a spirit or geist of attaining self-consciousness as a matter of practical achievement. However, I do think that Stoics do have a better sense of community. However, the sense
of community is not yet concrete for them. It's not concretized. It is just a presupposition. So essentially, and that's really what undergirds their idea of nature. So the thing is that they don't think that experience alone can get you into the idea of nature. You just can't experience nature individually, right? Because experience is through and through that of a community. So that's how they start with their problems.
And obviously, then they also fall back into some sort of, just like cynics, some kind of like a crypto individualistic idea of practice to say that okay you know we live we should live we ought to live according to nature and nature the idea of nature is that of a community rather than nature itself you know they are not materialist in any sense nor metaphysical nevertheless they their recipe to answer this question of how to live according to nature becomes
in a very subtle way non-community response. Essentially that you know they don't they are not still in that great realm of ethics, where you can say that no, ethics is a logic of community. They think that ethics is mostly, mostly, and not all of it, mostly of individual will, that practice self-mastery upon the self. So in that sense, yes, they are not fully what you
might call to be socialists, but the premise is good that there is no idea of nature as experienced by an individual. There is no originality of nature. No. Nature is an artifact of community. That's, I would say, the great move forward. Yeah, I guess I was, that was really, I was just asking, I was in the next step then, because I do think that there is very productive from their positioning of the self. But yeah, just that next question of how does the community
come back in, in the broader sense then? Yes, yes. Well, that is really the question that we want to answer at the end of this seminar. It's essentially that, okay, you know, how about this bad news for all of us? You know, we don't have selves, right? Ego is just a model of the world, a model that is not based on fact. It just fake facts about the world, right? So if that is the case, then how are we going to look into ourselves as social beings, social entities, and into the world?
Well, obviously, there is a problem here. How can you suspend the ego? The name for the suspension of the ego is self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is fully and through and through an uphill battle. It doesn't basically substantiate just because you have written some formulas or axioms for or assesses of self-cultivation, like Stoics or Cynics. No, it takes much more, not only practically but also theoretically.
You just cannot solve or respond adequately to such problems without the idea of semantic content, counterfactual scenarios, science, so on and so forth. So the problem is that it's very simple actually. Ethics was always trying to tell us how we should act with regard to certain kinds of
understanding that we have of ourselves and the world. What ethic lacked in the ancient time was the method of understanding, the method of practice. We are not that much better than the ancients, it's just that we know a lot of more constraints. To know a lot of more constraints is always good. They thought that their self is unconstrained. You can just simply miraculously turn a human into a god. No! A human can be turned into a god,
But only on this premise that we already know a lot about human constraints as an animal. That was kind of the end of my presentation. It wasn't super thorough. It was absolutely fantastic. Thank you. Thank you so much. So Juliette, and would you be able also to turn on your camera?
If it is okay? Sounds like Juliet may have been having some connection problems, so we'll see if her presentation will work here. Okay. We can't hear you right now. Still no. Maybe someone can read Juliet's comments as she mouths the words. So why don't we...
Can you hear me now? Yes, yes, yes. Okay. Something to do with my headphones. Sorry about that. I was resisting turning on my camera because I'm very sick, but here I am. I just came to New Zealand a few days ago, and so I'm very jet lagged and caught some kind of illness on the plane here. So you'll have to forgive my voice. No, I'll call you. So yeah, since there was no specifically new readings, I kind of just returned to Epictetus
and John Sellers. And then I also read the introduction to the Ego Channel, which maybe if I have some time at the end, I could say something about. the main thing that sort of yeah so I guess I'm just going to talk about some things that seem curious or I was sort of confused by so yeah in The Art of Living by John Sellers he discusses this or he says via Epictetus that philosophy does not promise to secure anything external for man, otherwise it would be admitting something that lies beyond its proper subject matter. For just as wood is the material of the carpenter, bronze, that of the statuary, or each of an
individual's own life is the material of the art of living. And I guess this whole question of, yeah, one's own life being the material of the philosopher, I guess that face value kind of made sense to me but then uh in reading further um I guess I sort of started to have questions about this in relation to Epictetus and Seneca's idea of like um the philosophy this yeah this not medical idea but this idea of the soul so like my understanding is that um yeah it was sort of inherited from Socrates the idea um that uh taking care of one's soul but
like I was, yeah, I'm wondering what is the soul to the Stoics. And here in my reading, um, although it's not, I don't feel it's like so explicitly stated, I felt like there was this, um, inclination towards, at least for the Stoics, the, the soul potentially being some kind of, um, how do you say, like, essential material or force that is, uh, somehow exists before or outside the contingencies of the world. So it's like a something that... Principles, universal or cosmological principles. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess this seemed kind of curious or kind of a bit confusing to me given that the Stoics are so invested in this, yeah,
in, you know, the self as nature and etc. So yeah, what I have next here is, yeah, yeah, so yeah, and John Sala's, I guess, also, I just, he says, the only plausible place where either philosophy or wisdom could conceivably have a physical existence is inside the material soul of its possessor. So in that sense, they do kind of posit this material soul, and I guess they wondered, is in their conception the soul mutable or is it immutable? Like is the soul philosopher, like if they're at the whim of nature, contingency, fortune, these things we discussed, then how to them could there be
the idea of this sort of immutable force within the philosopher? so yeah this was something that I kept coming back to and by it's mutable and immutable do you mean that one has say epistemic access to the soul in the event that it is mutable and in the event that's immutable, that they're barred epistemic access to it? Sorry, I think you're going to have to speak in more plain terms. I really know what you mean. That they have access to knowledge about the conditions that affect their soul in the event
that it is mutable and that they are able to affect change. I think what he's asking is that, okay, so if soul is immutable, it is that unchanging essence, right? It's a foundation, right? Yeah. So you don't see, you cannot gain knowledge about it, just like a kind of a nominal realm. but if soul is changeable then perhaps there would be a way to gain knowledge about it exactly yeah um yeah the same and this was sort of my one of the things that came up for me i'm not
so sure exactly more sort of even prior to that question is in my mind the question of yeah whether or whether yeah maybe whether you can answer this is like do do the stoics believe there is some type of immutable material soul right the thing is that's it's really hard to answer because there are so many just like so many cynics there are so many goddamn also stoics the thing is that I don't think that Stoics actually believe at the end of the day in the immutability of soul
they do however believe in the immutability of certain kinds of principles of nature not immutability of nature immutability of principles that undergird nature. That's very different. And essentially, the stoic mind, you see, the stoic ethics, and I'm going to talk about this, that there is a very serious tension in the stoic philosophy. So they want to be these kinds of Promethean rationalists at the same time and they are also kind of like naive materials or naturalists
because for them the origin of ethics right the origin of virtue comes not from the human mind but comes from the observation of certain kinds of phenomena that we can actually observe facts okay facts and from which we derive what is good what ought to be done and what ought not to be done like for example you know think about a pool
or a lake which is frozen and the layer of ice is not thick So when a human gets this funny idea to walk on this pool, you know, he kind of falls down. And this is the whole idea about Stoicism at the end of the day, that essentially they try to, for the most part, not completely, for the most part, they try to derive ethical
injunctions from what is observable from what is factual by virtue of some underlying principles in nature um yeah i guess another question i have yeah further to that i mean this was sort of my understanding but there seems to be a very um strong uh Persuasion for the Stoics, they're sort of obsessed with like staying in their own lane. So when Epictetus says whether all existing things are composed of atoms or of indivisibles or the friar and earth, it is not enough to learn, like obviously they're like it's not enough to learn the true nature of good and evil. But then in the end they're kind of like what's, once they have to
you know cut out what is somehow relevant to them then then this seems to be this cutting off of any more pursuit of awareness of other things it's about finding what is in the you know what is the material of your life and the natural philosophy and that's it and I guess to me yes yes maybe coming back to what Max said this is this like sort of hyper sovereign sort of mode. What is actually the reason behind this? I mean, have you thought about this? Why is that some of the greatest philosophers of Stoicism actually think
that ethics can be derived from facts? Almost. Do you know the reason behind this? The reason behind this is that even though Stoicism was a great Stoics, were great philosophers of modal and counterfactual scenarios, counter to the fact nevertheless the logic of counterfactuality was very naive so you see the ultimate idea of
ethics is about possible worlds like i said possible worlds possible worlds like okay for example let me elaborate this uh briefly uh by way of a rudimentary example so you have certain facts about who you are and what the world is then the idea of ethics becomes the idea of constructing the self despite all these facts
for example if i wear a goat i just still can pretend that i'm a human as long as i have done a great deal of work, right? So the idea of counterfactuality and modality was of utmost importance both in the ancient ethics and particularly in Stoicism. The thing is that Stoics really did not have a good understanding of what it means to think about a possible world. For them, possibility was just plausibility. You know, is it plausible that I can, you know, basically,
even though tomorrow morning I have an execution date you know my head is going to be cut off is it possible or plausible that I can actually say that oh well my head will not be cut off for some reason but it is just plausibility the tension that i mentioned to you is that not all of all the stoics think like that i think that stoics vary not by virtue of for example their ethical injunctions or their ideas of nature
but by virtue of what they took to be possible. So the famous letter of Seneca to Lucius, where he says, you know, there is this man, tomorrow he's going to be executed, is going to be burnt and a stake, all good and fine. You know, it's funny. But how about this? You know, that we have seen, now you see, this is like what I said from the observed principles.
We have seen that, for example, there is a fire in a forest, but not all trees will burn. We have seen that, for example, a man whose head is going to be chopped on the chopping block actually did outlive his executioner. And then he says that, okay, how about this? we should not think about these kinds of possibilities as if they were actually happening for example
then he continues as his injunction to someone who is going to suffer a calamity, execution, or disease, or loss of life and property, even the future is fickle. Even bad fortune is fickle. But this should not actually led us to conclude that the students knew the idea of possibility or plausibility. You see, first of all, they get their idea of possibility from observed facts.
Two, they only see possibility as a counter to what can actually happen. These are all bad recipes for ethics. No, possibility should be thought in terms of what can actually happen. Like communism. Like abolition of race. Or gender. This is what ethics is about. Yeah, thank you. I mean that really kind of rounds out a lot of the points I guess I was
going to ask about. But yeah, I guess to maybe make a final, yeah, something. I guess I wonder about whether the Stoics, yeah, because of their belief that, you know, the observable world, yeah, it's sort of like what they create this internal philosophy by it. It's like, if they can observe more and more, does that, therefore, that internal life work philosophy then become bigger? Right, right. It's essentially the idea that, you know, the more we collect facts, the further we can basically make the self according to the good, according to the virtues.
But no, ethics is utterly counterfactual. You don't need facts. In fact, you do make yourself better counter to the fact, despite of the fact that you are an animal, that you are this or that kind of person. Because it's construction. Yeah, so I guess the only last thing I was going to say is I read this introduction to the ego tunnel where I guess this is the more neuroscience point of view of like a world
being this extreme awareness that one's experience is but a tunnel through, that one is but a tunnel and within a tunnel through a vast plethora of like possible external things happening and that where yeah it's like a hyper awareness that only some of those things are taken in whereas yeah the stoics were seem more delusional about what was being kind of computed through them and then therefore turned into their yes yes i absolutely i think that this is true particularly this manifests in Seneca's heroism that you know okay
this is what the world is this is what the self is and yeah it's we also have to make make a better self well you just cannot do that yeah that's it for me Really fantastic talk. Thank you so much. Should we have a smoking break? I mean, I can always smoke during the class, but for other of you. Sure, we can take a break for five minutes then. Yeah, sure. Sounds good.
Any questions before we move forward? Yeah, can I ask something? Yes, yes, please. So if we kind of like made this distinction between possibility, which would be something that is, let's say a bit more sedimented and limited, and then something that would be more of a potentiality, which could be a precondition for this possibility. So I wanted to know where does the role of imagination come into play, instead of just
constructing yourself from this pure counterfactuality? Yes, well that's a really good question. You see, the very idea of counterfactual scenarios or modal vocabularies only unfolds at the onset of the enlightenment. particularly with the idea that we finally see ourselves as not children of gods, but basically descending into an abyss which is called cosmos, and hence we risk everything
at every moment. So I wouldn't call it potency, Because potency, of course, I know that Schelling has a different idea of potency, but potency classically understood is something that comes or emanates from the essence of the human. But how about that? once you actually see that the human brute self-awareness is just merely a delusion, you know, a natural delusion undergirded by,
for example, neurophysiological processes, you also understand that it should not possibly interfere that much this is the constraint clause that much with the clause about self-consciousness the uphill battle of understanding myself and understanding the world within, you know, revisable, ever-revisable frameworks.
And that's what self-consciousness is. So, in that sense, you can say, what we are talking about here it's not really a discourse about possibility as ancients have it. It is not, because possibility is usually like, you know, in the ancient terms up to, you know, latest classicism. It's just simply the negation of actuality, right? with the advent of counterfactuality and modality we see that possibility is something else
possibility as you said is actually what can't call productive imagination which is a species of general understanding and you can do a lot with general understanding regardless of what is the case and isn't it the whole point of counterfactuality regardless of who we are animal so on so forth we can still use these constraints of who we are according to our theorizations and make something else.
This is why so many philosophers actually think that Kant's idea of productive imagination is not really completely about transcendental deduction, about the epistemic rights. Rather, it is about human freedom. is a practical idea, not just merely a theoretical idea. It's a question of ethics. So, Reza, I just wanted to clarify.
It sounded like you might have been attributing this sort of thicker notion of of the philosophers, is that right? You think that they have a notion broader than that? They do, they do in fact. But unfortunately, as I mentioned, that there is a fundamental tension by virtue of their premises. And the premise upon which Stoicism is founded, even though it has all those thicker notions of possibility among some Stoics, it is about this simple fact that we can simply derive virtue by observation of basic principles
of nature. So they want to both have those kinds of lavish modal vocabularies, but also they want to have some sort of foundational principles which belong to nature and which are only observational, namely factish. questions, questions, heckling, swearing, jokes, none. It's a very boring class I must say.
Well, perhaps as a follow-up to that question by Alex, would you attribute the same idea to all the Stoics or only a particular set of Stoics? and perhaps at which point does it emerge? I think tension is real among all of the Stoics. Yeah. Yeah. I think that, you know, with different degrees, different Stoic philosophers do differ. But I think that tension is actually at the base of the Stoic doctrine. Would you say it has some kind of precedence in somewhere before the Stoics, or is it something that emerges with Stoic philosophy? No, I actually think that, you know, we can probably see the origin of this in cynicism.
because Stoicism is more like a kind of a more Promethean, heroic, rationalist ancestor I mean, not ancestor what do you call it in English the one who comes after someone helps me please descendant descendant descendant of cynicism yes yeah
I think that and that's why you get this tension in a stoicism rather than cynicism because you know they want to come off as this oh we are so rationalist you know and heroic but also they want to be cynics at the end of the day I would say that this is really great precisely because it is this very tension that turns a stoicism into a kind of a germ cell for the idea of ethics.
Being an animal, being a human, being a god at the same time. How are you going to handle that? Questions? Anything? Anyone? John? You have been drinking a lot of tea. Just trying to get up to speed. Yeah, I have a few notes, I guess. Can you hear me all right?
Yes. I guess thinking about the Stoics, trying to contextualize it, thinking about, I guess, the historical political climate, and how they're descendants of cynics, as you said. Someone like Cato, I think, was mentioned and kind of exalted. And he's kind of, it seems to me like he was seen as a link to an old Roman, maybe like republic way of life like a moral uprightness yeah yeah absolutely i'm starting
to i guess kind of see this like um theme emerge as like a um like uh like i guess a fear of exteriority that it kind of tormented or terrorized like greeks and romans as the roman empire is of expanding, I guess. So how would they morally deal with their naive understanding of counterfactuals? I guess, how would they morally deal with... Isn't it really the case then that you see it's really interesting that you brought up Cato. So yeah, of course Seneca glorifies Cato, right? The thing is that, so it isn't the case, what we were talking about, essentially.
So you have some sort of preconceived idea of polis or a great, what you might call to be society or civilization, right? by virtue of not politics in a today's sense, but by virtue of observing the simple facts of nature, however deluded they might be. And so then you go on and saying that Cato did actually do a right thing.
and he was a hero. He basically cut his veins for the sake of a better good, a polis, a polis, which was just basically a very diluted metaphor, overextended metaphor of egotistic nature, nature as seen by egos, nothing more. And I think that this is one of the very few places where Seneca actually shows his true face,
that he's after all the counsel to narrow. He says that, okay, we have a dictator on our hand, but what if that I can actually counsel him? No, you don't do that. that. This is the problem of a Stoic ethics. It is too passive with regard to social dilemmas and it is too active with regard to sell food problems.
What do you do with Nero? Do you just get his idea that, oh, well, you know, I actually allowed you to take your own life? No, absolutely not. Not under the ethical injunctions of a human who believes there can be something better. no I would say that how about this we are going to get rid of narrow we are going to instantiate something better
and I don't need to actually be this heroic figure anymore to cut my veins so many times and then my wife comes and gives me some opium that's okay, how about this? That your pain is now gone. Cut it once more. No. Revolution is a prospect of ethics. Ethics and revolution are absolutely one and the same thing.
There seems to be an element of the kind of like powerless resentment, I guess, that would come later in Christianity. Let's see in the Stoics. Christianity is just bad at Stoicism. Huh? Say that again? I said that Christianity is just bad with socialism. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I can see some of the foundations being laid. I mean, like a piece where he's talking, Epictetus is going to be beheaded by Vespasian, I guess. And he just, like you said, it's kind of like this impotent ethics where, yeah, you take the high road, go towards virtue, and let the emperor make his mistake or whatever.
And the virtue... Because you say that, oh, well, it is outside of my power. Right? Yeah. But ethics is the power. Ethics, understood coherently, is the very idea how to form power. a power that is as great as nature itself. Because do you really want to simply say that, oh, Nero is a good emperor, you know, he made a mistake,
but nevertheless he belongs to some sort of principles of nature and I have to listen to it. No, that's just passivity. That's just misunderstanding of what can possibly be the self. So you see, ethics at the end of the day is all about possibility in a full-blooded sense. Not as opposed to actuality or inferior to actuality, possibility is actuality. We can make different worlds as actual as the worlds we live in, the world of narrow and all
that kind of stuff. And this is it. I think that Stoics do actually believe in these kinds of stuff. It's just that their philosophical doctrine does not allow them to go beyond certain kinds of ends and goals. Questions? I wonder how you articulate your arguments about possibility and new worlds,
and the distinction between facts and counterfactual ethics. In terms of the distinction between imminence and transcendence, I wonder how transcendence is located in this picture and imminence. For instance, we just say that facts are transcendent pre-given entities and the counterfactual acts come from what you call mental autonomy. is an act coming from man's imminence and goes towards trans.
How do you understand the terms of entirety and exteriority? That's my question. This is really, I think, a multilayered question. perhaps I should not actually answer the last horn of your question with regard to transcendence and emanence, because I truly have not figured it out. But this is something that is very, very pertinent in our time.
So you can see possibility as something that is not yet actualized. But also, if you are in the business of mental autonomy, namely in the business of modal vocabularies and forming counterfactual scenarios, counter to the fact of who you are, where you have come from, so on and so forth, then possibility becomes almost synonymous to actual.
And this is what is basically the case with these ancient philosophers up to higher scholasticism. They don't have really an idea of possible worlds, possible worlds in the sense that these possible worlds are not possible because they are not actualized. No, they are actualized alternative words. The only reason that you can say that, okay, they are not really actual is because you have a certain kind
of, I would say, commitment, perhaps misguided or not. to what is fact, what is actuality, so on and so forth. With the advent of modal vocabularies and counterfactual scenarios, which marks the advent of enlightenment and perhaps science as a whole, you're in different business. Facts are no longer important. What is actually important is to create certain kinds of possibilities by virtue of which
we can extract more facts and not facts which are merely observable. So there is, in fact, I would say, a certain kind of ethical shift at the time of enlightenment, which we should preserve. Not all of it, not all the bloated, enlightenment stuff, but simply this idea that ethics is not about facts.
It's about counter to the facts. How you can make facts by positing a counter to the facts idea. You have for so long taken yourself as a fact, but have you ever thought about this, that you can actually make yourself counter to the fact? Isn't this the very idea of good rationality moving from that which is the case to that which ought to be.
So just briefly, it seems that with this thicker notion of possibility, it seems like it must require something like a mechanism. so it's if it's just not just bare possibility and necessity uh which we sort of return to um when we come back to modal logic which is not the sort of modality that we're talking about i don't think uh but in this earlier thicker notion it seems like there should be some set of mechanisms by which i say that well if this does not happen there will be some reason that it doesn't happen say i'm going to be beheaded tomorrow but i won't be beheaded tomorrow because the executioner's axe slips or he sleeps in and he can't do the job or something like that.
Adam, do you think that these reasons are ratio assente or reasons as such? Reasons as enunciations of humans? Sorry, what's the difference between those two then? You see, ratio ascendant is that idea that stoics might actually agree with, that, you know, there is a reason, fundamentally entrenched in nature, that you do this or that. Right, okay. Then there is an idea of reason which is not natural, which is actually completely artificial, without even violating the principles of nature or laws of nature.
So which one are you talking about? Well, I think it's sort of difficult in this case to distinguish between them because if I'm saying that something should not or will not happen, it could be due to reasons of nature or could be due to reasons of somebody is responsive in a certain way that there's, you know, maybe I can convince the executioner and he'll decide not to execute me because I give him good reasons for doing so, say. So I don't know if you can quite make a global distinction between the two in this case. I think that you can make a global distinction between the two. And I should think, I think that you absolutely have to do that. But to make a distinction between the two is not the same as saying that we have a free
reason and a naturally constrained reason on the other hand. No. The whole point is that they always come together. that there is no such a thing as reason, as a free reign. And that is the whole point of a rational agent, an ethical agent. We understand that our reason is limited, historically speaking and to that extent we say that even though our reason is limited we are nevertheless moving forward with this idea that we can unbound a better reason.
Isn't it the whole idea of rationality? A good idea, old fashioned idea of rationality, like a good Michael Bay movie. You love your explosions. Any more comments? I want to make a question regarding ethics, the individual, and the community.
And this was like something that occurred to me while discussing this issue of the rational community with a friend. I was actually discussing one of your ideas in the labor of the inhuman regarding a normative community of reasons. And my friend objected and said, well, have you read Ibsen's book called An Enemy of the People? And I said, no. And he told me basically the premise of this doctor that arrives to this town and he basically runs counter to the facts of this self-proclaimed self-perfective community that is apparently
harmonious and he discovers that the waters are poisoned in the community, that it's causing a lot of diseases. So apparently... Excuse me? Is he American? No, he's actually Swedish. Because Americans always think that their water is poisoned. And I was wondering, like, probably the premise of this play is that the whole community turns against them. And I was thinking about this, like when you, let's say, turn against the facts, like let's say in a reasonable way, like use reasonable ethics to become counterfactual.
What happens then? Does the police go against you necessarily? Yes, absolutely. But isn't it the whole point that I mentioned earlier on? That, okay, for so many of these ancient philosophers, including in fact Plato, polis is extracted from fuses, right, the laws of nature and according to which we should have certain kinds of virtues and vices, right? But how about this, that we actually re-imagine politics as a counterfactual scenario. That even though
we are experiences of ourselves and the world are such and such, we can still go on and create a better policy. Isn't it a Marxist idea in German ideology? The very idea of communism? Communism, I don't think that is essentially a fundamentally political idea as so many people have talked about. I think that it is true and true, an ethical idea.
For two reasons. Briefly. One, there is no self separated from other selves, right? And there is no self that has either bits of delusions or mental autonomy. How are you going to make a new policy, a new society, if these are the real constraints?
but are you not simply sort of shifting the definition of of ethics closer to um to what politics might mean would you elaborate on that point yes i can i can i try to just it just struck me. No, but you say that ethics becomes something akin to imagining a better world. But what is then the objective of politics? Isn't that very much sort of, if we go back to Plato and the Republic or whatever, I mean, isn't the objective of politics always to sort of
first imagine and then try to implement a better world or a better society, how would you distinguish that from ethics? Or is this just the point where ethics and politics come inside? I would say that, okay, this is something that I would say aloud. I think they are both the same, okay, but they are different within the context of the history of philosophy, such that ethics, by virtue of its own history, tries to put this burden of imagination and so on and so forth on the individual, like
self-cultivation and so on and so forth, whereas politics tries to do it collectively and think about it collectively. I would say that if we really think about the base problem coherently, then there is actually no separation between ethics and politics in that sense. Because ethics is not about the individual. It is about the individual to the extent that the individual is being made by something which is collective and the collectivity of which is the object of ethics and the same thing can be said about politics
so so basically uh i mean the critique of the stoics and if we go back to the example of Seneca and as a counselor of Nero is simply that stoicism is apolitical and it's perhaps... I wouldn't call it apolitical, I would call them proto neoliberal, proto neoliberal or proto individualistic in a good sense not in a bad sense you know Like, you know, you just cannot, even though you already know that the idea of individual
is collectively conceived, but nevertheless, you put all of your money and investments and this idea of you know how to be a better self as an individual right does it really contribute that much to a better society to a better civilization no it doesn't Seneca's example is a good one you know if he was such a great Then he had perhaps dethroned Nero, but no, he actually chose to die peacefully.
Good. Excellent. So, one thing that... By the way, I actually decided that I'm not going to talk about the Middle Easterner stuff. No. That would be just bad. A bunch of mystics. I mean, look at it. Middle Easterners, bunch of terrorists, who also want to be mystics and good. No, no, no, I'm not going to talk about that. It's just like talking about myself.
So we are not going to talk about Middle Eastern ideas at this point. I will briefly will talk about them. What I want to talk about next session I want to jump right in the idea of how can you be a schizophrenic without becoming a jerk. Reza, can you assign us the readings today for that just so we can... Yes, okay. What is that text? 50 hours, something like that.
I forgot. Alex, do you know the text? I don't have a service. 50 hours? No, I don't. But this is something you heard. I think it's in the drive folder. It's called like the 50-hour day or something. Yes, yes. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Yes. So let's read that. It's a really good text. It is basically one of the greatest accounts of a schizophrenic who actually functions. Someone who is both on the side of pure counterfactuality, but also has a semblance of ego who can function in society.
I mean, don't you want to be that kind of person? A mad person who can actually function? Sounds brilliant. So, sorry, I forgot. One of the things that we can do actually talk at this point is that something that Alex actually posted on my Facebook page, you know, we were supposed to read it, Seneca's
letter to Lucius about suicide. Why is that death is important to you? That is the question that every agent should always ask. Is death really important? Is it less important? Or it's important But even though it's important, we can do still some other kinds of stuff while we are not dead. Remember Seneca's story.
there is this gladiator, you know, who's a slave, and he has gone into the arena for so many times. He's just tired. He doesn't want to go through this kind of torture yet again. So he just excuses himself to go to the restroom. He uses this sponge, which Seneca says a sponge that is used for the foulest means, you know, wiping yourself. And he has
a wooden stick. He shoved the sponge down his throat with a wooden stick. And then Seneca says that, oh, look, you know, he used an object which was of the foulest for the greatest means and he concludes, the foulest death is preferable to the cleanest slavery. So I wanted to know what you think about that moral lesson and it is a moral lesson.
It's also somewhat, you know, it's become aestheticized, right? It's a subject of a lot of painting. Yes, of course, suicide is always a suicide. But particularly Seneca's suicide, something about the stoic and calm nature of it has made it into a sort of a visual beacon of suicide, an index of suicide, or maybe a certain type of suicide. Yeah, sure, but I think that the point of Seneca is that, you know, what if the terminal point
where we can actually claim our ultimate autonomy as human beings is to choose how we are going to die why would this be more autonomous than any other decision though if we are imposing some type of determinist schema this is just as much you know cause and effect uh chain reaction prior to it um more because as you said it already it's because it's more aestheticized because because it gives a better vibe
you know who doesn't want to die in a better way in a more flashy way. Maybe just to draw a sort of naive comparison, it somehow makes me think of the promise of, well if you you know toil hard work hard in your life and you will receive eternal suffering once you've gone like i don't know is there not a comparison there the prospect of well even if
you can't live well at least you can choose to die well isn't that comparable somehow yeah yeah Absolutely, it is, it is, it is. And I think that here is when I say Stoicism, particularly Seneca, displays himself as someone who does actually believe in autonomy. That autonomy is a matter of practical exercise, right? You can think about your life as being autonomous, but for example, just like what you said or in this example, what do you do then when
are confronted with such problems do you simply carry on the toils or do you like Seneca's hero basically put an end to your life isn't it the very case that For Stoicism, death is actually not the end of life, but the marker of human autonomy. I think that this is a really great idea. But this then poses the question of what is the rightful way of exercising this autonomy
and when should one choose to die? And this is, as I recall, something that Seneca struggles with a little bit. I do recall a footnote note or something to the extent that... Yes, surely that is the case. Surely that is the case. But then, of course, we should also realize that all the examples of Seneca give with regard to suicide are extreme. You are going to get executed. You are going to be burned at a stake. You are going to basically go into the arena and fight tigers and other gladiators.
So there is in fact, I would say there is a presumption that what he understands by a rational suicide as the marker of autonomy, of human autonomy, is the idea of epictetus. the moment that you truly see that you have become victim to external factors and powers, then it's perhaps not a bad idea. Not a bad idea.
It doesn't condone it. It doesn't condone it, actually. It's perhaps not a bad idea to kill yourself as a symbolic act. How many of us, you see, this is what I actually think about Seneca, and I have read Seneca for a great number of years. You see, Seneca is not someone who is naive, who is pro-suicide.
No, no, no, actually, he is pro-life. However, with Seneca, the formula is actually quite simple. I think of such and such things about the world and myself, and I judge such and such and things as imprisoning me, you know, putting constraints, high limitations upon me. And I actually want to die as a person, as an autonomous person. And suicide then becomes
my signature of mental autonomy. Who doesn't want to do that? Do you really go through the charade of tortures, of molestations by the real world, while telling yourself that, you know, I can be something better? I can change this. No, sometimes you can't. I think this is where the pessimism of Stoicism kicks in.
Stoics think that certain kinds of stuff cannot be changed. And if things cannot be changed, if, for example, there is a dictatorship, if there is this kind of dictatorial idea of nature, then how are you going to navigate these kinds of things? How do you react when you get caught off guard?
To continue asking naive questions, wouldn't the point of having a philosophy that places the individual so highly be in... I don't understand where they draw the line saying, well, you have the capacity to make so much of yourself, but certain things you cannot transcend. I mean, what I'm... Yeah, that's essentially what I actually said earlier on. You see, their idea of individuality
is not actually individualistic, it is collective. So they understand where the individual is coming from, namely the collective. But when they actually talk about, you know, self and so on and so forth, They unfortunately do all the individualistic things and we should explain why is that? Why is that person who has already knew that the individual comes from the collective, his or her ethics is all about survival of the individual by any means possible.
That unfortunately is the bane, the curse of the stoicism I would say. I think Hegel was great on this point. Soicism really does not give you a happy conscious. With understanding the happy conscious always comes from the other and not you. Can you elaborate that a little more on how the happy conscious comes from the other?
I don't really... I don't... Yes, you see... Oh, isn't it? The problem of ethics is a problem of self-consciousness, not naturalistic consciousness. Self-consciousness understands that we do form scenarios about what ought to be done, rather than what is the case. Consciousness is about what it is, and it is completely entrapped within the idea of what it is, what is the fact, and so on and so forth, which might be diluted.
Self-consciousness is a different thing. It's a practical matter in the sense that what we ought to do, even though that was the case, but what we ought to do always comes not from our egos, from our individual psyche, but from the collectivity in which we live. It is something that is collectively decided. Ought is collective. True and true. Practically, ethically and theoretically. And to that extent, when I say,
I need or I ought to act this way or that way, I am actually already presupposing that I am a member of a community, even though that very idea of community might be very implicit. My task, and this is a task of ethics, is to turn the abstractness of this presupposition
into a practical concreteness. To understand that every moment that I say something, that I make an injunction, I actually do live with other people. I do include their ideas and so on and so forth. There is this idea in Simon Don of pre-individual funds which this also seems to be quite close
to actually. Can you talk about this a little bit? Yeah, so pre-individual funds is something that is collectivized, it's transgenerational, intergenerational. It's sort of like the social scaffold that top down exerts influence, but it's also in a sense, while shaped by language, pre-linguistic. It's what we inherit. and it's shaped into language, shaped into artifacts, but exists through socialization
and it exerts its influence, therefore, as an intergenerational circuit, transgenerational circuit. The history of history in a way. I see. I see. I see. A couple of things that I want to say. My apologies.
So, I mentioned that there is this great tension in a stoic system. to the extent that they want to at once commit to counterfactual scenarios, namely modal scenarios, and also be behaving in accordance to nature. And by that I mean principles,
undergirding principles, which of course they are not Kantians, they are not transcendentals at this point. What they mean by principles of nature is more like this idea that, okay, we have looked at such and such events, phenomena, and we have extracted a certain kind of sets of principles as how nature works. so how can a stoic
and this is really the cornerstone of a stoicism so how can you engage in self-betterment and in a better and also come up with a better image of the world. right so the thing is that a stoic's idea of the self
is fundamentally part of nature The bad news for Stoics is that what if self, I'm flash-forwarding now, what if self is actually a kind of model that distorts your interaction with the world such that at the end of the day you neither know anything about yourself
or for that matter about the world. How are you going to get out of this crap? The thing is that the Stoics do believe that practice in the ethical injunctions and ethical you know, routines, exercise, assesses, can somehow get rid of the bad residues of the self,
such that you can actually reconstruct yourself. And that self can become ever more closer to nature, to undergirding principles. But there is, of course, a problem here. and I want you to talk what would be the problem, what are the consequences of this problem for a stoicism. Can you do that? Truly?
Solipsism seems to be one. despite sociability as you know and what we've discussed in terms of you know the top down influence of sociability or socialism there is you know the problem of the pre-Kantian philosopher and the yeah I mean like cognition Essentially, like, making value judgments or conflating phenomena with noumena. Either one is, like, either one has to commit to a solipsistic worldview.
That I and only I and only that which I experience is real. or that everything is, you know, this sort of like hylomorphic panpsychism. That's a good one. That's actually a really good thing. The way that I actually want to go about this problem is that, you know, okay, so, you know, self is a model, okay? Right, it's a model. a model that basically gives us certain kinds of, you know, what you might call to be premises about who we are and so on and so forth.
but to the extent that it is a model it is not really what you might call to be an apposite or effective apparatus for looking into the world so self is not really a good lens into the world. It is in fact the worst. And of course, you can think about such scenarios that how about this?
That so myself is a model. And how about that this model modeling the world isn't it really good oh it's so exciting you know but then in conjunction with today's computer science and neuroscience you find yourself with a very I would say lethal problem. So how can a model model itself as modeling the world?
Isn't it the very idea of recursion that basically if that was the case, then literally we could not actually evolve as homo sapiens. Because the computational cost of such model that models it modeling would be too costly. So we don't have that.
All we essentially have is a model, a model that distorts the outside world and a model that deludes us to take for granted the model of the self as something fixed, as something extremely, what you might call to be reliable. but it is not the case. So how are we going to go around about this problem? Isn't it a problem of ethics? Yet the premises of the problem are now given to us not by ancient philosophers
but by neuroscience and computer science. This is a problem of complexity to some degree, because if you consider when computer science first dealt with this problem, this is the modeling problem of the modeling of the modeler or second-order cybernetics try to deal with information as such. And once you, of course, have conceived of this model, you can conceive of all recursion thereafter. The bottleneck is getting through recursion number one
to the recursion number two. Once you've got the recursion number two, all the rest are infinitely modelable within that scenario. But what you lose is richness. I mean, there are models of modeling agents. This is the way that second order of cybernetics, Shannon Ashby theorem of noise. This is how these conceptions existed. But of course, yes, you don't capture the, I mean, it is a logical impossibility, a paradox to do this. Yes. Yes. I can't. What happens here is that the very moment that we do actually recognize that the model of the model is not the model of reality,
the moment that we see ourselves as merely egos we project the undergirding principles of the ego and not of the reality that's where we are stepping into that nitty-gritty business which is called self-consciousness. We understand the history of awareness of artifacts, of experience, that just because we experience the world as such,
it doesn't mean that that world is real. And this is something that Stoics have already warned us. I think that is one of the greatest points of the stories. You know, you can experience the world in any sort of way. But to suspend immediate experience is a different thing. And that requires a lot of work. That's what Stoicism, I think, at the end of the day is about, regardless of its shortcomings.
Thanks. So I'm glad here that you're addressing this question of artifice, but it seems to me that you might be to some extent confusing the notion of self-model with the notion of self two-core. um such that sorry self what two core just like self qua self essentially oh i see like a kind of a dual uh uh dual dual psyche uh thesis dual psyche i'm not sure if i follow but like like in in the sense that the dual psyche thesis is about that so you are always and please do correct
me if I'm basically incorrect. It's the idea that, okay, that every individual, every self has a kind of a dual psyche. So you have certain kinds of upstream and downstream introspection. Is this dual coding theory? kind of like that kind of like that not exactly so essentially in the dual psyche theory awareness emerges from you having two dual two two main streams of consciousness
Consciousness. Essentially, in that theory, consciousness is nothing but the comparison of different streams of consciousness or awareness, not in any sort of Kantian sense, but consciousness, rudimentary consciousness. Is this what you are talking about, Adam? No, it's not. What I was trying to address was more so that we can have this sort of neuroscientific Metzinger idea of phenomenal self model. That might account, let's say, for how self is manifest in consciousness.
Okay, let's accept that. But that still doesn't necessarily tell me what exactly the self is, because the self is something that is discursive and recognitive and responsive. You know, somebody says, hey, Alex, and I say, hello. There is no such a thing as a self. So, okay, in what sense is there not such a thing as a self? That's what I'm asking, essentially. Okay, literally, can you, okay, the whole point is that can you give me an empirical example of the existence of the self? No, you don't. No, I cannot. but self is not an empirical notion. But then, isn't it also lacking the idea of giving an evidence for the existence of
empirical self does not really a new self. So self is a constructible edifice. And isn't it the whole idea of self-consciousness that we understand self as that which is a matter of practical construction? A representation. No, it's not represented. But think about Husserl and then what Heidegger repeats. the problem that phenomenology deals with in regards to subjectivity is, and this is even in Descartes, that when ergo cogito sum, when is subjectivity or self constituted, when self is
representable in the mind. The only time that this conception of self is evaded, and maybe this is why next week you bring us to psychoanalysis, is when it's through the drives, for instance, with Freud or Nietzsche. No, I actually don't believe in those kinds of stuff. I think that Stoics and Cynics were ultimately right. A self is a matter of counterfactual construction. Let us begin ethics, not with the fact that we actually have a self, but let us pretend
as if self was actual in the full-fledged possible scenario, possible world scenario. This is what they are trying to do. It would be so, I would say, trivial if self actually existed. No, it is better that self doesn't exist and we are going to construct it, despite the fact, counter to the fact. it? The whole jazz about ethics, what makes ethics cool at the end of the day?
No. So, I mean, I think this is true that self is something constructed, but I also don't think that the argument from this sort of neuroscientific non-existence of, you know, I can't point to somewhere in my brain and say, oh, there's the self. Of course I can't do that. But, you know, There's something that responds. But that's the whole point of neuroscience, you know, like Metzinger. You see, essentially, you just cannot go and say that, oh, this is a cell. That would be just introspection. What if, you see, neuroscience, in the way that Metzinger talks about it, is not just empirical science. It's actually a model science.
So the scenario that he has in mind is like something like this, that, okay, I can introspect. And I said that, oh, by virtue of this introspection, I can touch on something that is basic. Well, what if I actually go through this introspection through some sort of illusory model, which is called the self? You see, that's a very tricky idea. It's a good idea.
So we just have a few minutes left in the session now. I don't know if anybody else has last comments or questions. Any person? I just don't understand why none of you have talked about suicide. Isn't it the greatest idea of human beings? There's a contingency there that when, you know, upon death, upon suicide, the conception of self evades. that it breaks down, it no longer subsists.
Because suicide is not about self. Suicide is about person. You see, you are good as long as you are a person. Your personhood is in the wrath of dangers, then perhaps suicide is the best course. So then this is personhood is not equal to self. Suicide is the end of personhood? Suicide deals with personhood? Suicide is actually a proof of being a person for Stoics.
I think that Alex, if I remember correctly, he did write some really fantastic comments on Facebook about this. Alex, would you be able to repeat that? I can repeat part of it, sure. So I guess the problem that I was having is that suicide, it seems like the reason it looks autonomous is because I'm epistemically limited. If I kill myself, I don't know what happens afterward. So then that looks autonomous because don't have access to the outcome of this process. But that seems like a mistaken idea of autonomy to me. So you are essentially, what you are trying to do is to pit
two versions of Seneca's letters against one another. So in one letter Seneca says that even bad fortune is fickle. Like, you know, tomorrow you are going to be executed, you are going to put in the arena with wild animals, but why are you going to actually take your life? But then in another letter, he says that, okay, you know, that gladiator who took his life in the face of calamities, in the face of imminent threat to his personhood, was truly a great hero.
That's essentially what you are trying to do, isn't it? So the two senses would be then? that essentially we should not base our acts on the future for precisely because future can be anything right even bad fortune is a fickle so that's one and two is that when the threats are so imminent, then perhaps you should reclaim your personhood
by taking your life. Okay, but the question of when the threat is imminent, that doesn't really seem to tell me about why suicide would be so paradigmatic about autonomy itself. That's maybe a reason why I would kill myself, but it's not a reason. That's a really good point. To be honest with you, I have read that passage from Seneca many, many number of times. I think that how Seneca wants to talk about this is that, okay, you see, future is uncertain.
And we should not simply base our acts on what might happen tomorrow. But... The problem of induction, they're saying. Yeah, the problem of induction wholeheartedly, yes. But then we can do something better, that even if the future was not about these kinds of stuff, we could still take our own life at our free will. You see, suicide for Seneca, I think, is not actually a kind of reaction to what might
happen or what might not happen. It is really a limit case about what we can actually do as autonomous people. Is there then such a thing as a bad suicide in Seneca? Because I do remember some sort of comment about a case where some Jews had killed themselves and Seneca did not exactly approve. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, there are certain kinds of suicides that Seneca absolutely didn't approve. I think that for Seneca, suicide was always a limit case. You know, to take one's life
is not really a reaction to the limitations of the society, to reality, so on and so forth, to whims of time, and so on and so forth. It is actually a choice, a choice that only a rational agents can make and any suicide that is not responsive to this very idea of rational choice or basically determination in face of some dangers
even though those dangers might not be actually dangerous enough, for Seneca that kind of idea would be, I would say, a bad suicide. For Seneca, suicide is just the idea of how to demarcate in a counterfactual scenario
What Asianhood means? Questions? before we say goodbye. So the other thing that we ought to do just before wrapping up is to Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So we're reading the Robert Lindner, is it Jet Propelled Couch? Is that the section?
Yes, yes, yes. Okay. It's really good. Fantastic. Any other reading or just that one? I think that, no, let's just talk about that. So would anybody like to present on this? This is, do you want to describe it? Because I think it's pretty interesting and maybe people aren't familiar. The thing is that, you know, we always think of ourselves as these heroes of a schizophrenia in a Deloitte-Gatarian sense, but well, perhaps you haven't seen schizophrenia. Healthy, good hearty schizophrenia yet.
This is the story of a man. And this man is actually quite really interesting. He is, he has a surname. People have actually speculated that this very person was none other than, who is that? Cordwainer Smith? Yes, Cordwainer Smith. Other than Cordwainer Smith. And you should understand who
Cordwainer Smith was. He was the grand son, not really the grandson, the godson, the godson of Sunayat Sen. He was also happened to be one of the most high-ranking CIA officers at his time. He was also one of the top diplomats of the USA in China. So we are talking about this kind of person.
You know, what happens when you have too many lives? You're a CIA officer, you're a diplomat, you're a sci-fi writer, you're also a psychiatric patient. What does it happen to you? Obviously, he comes to this psychiatrist and the psychiatrist doesn't want him at first, but he insists. upon his insistence and the insistence of his bosses, the psychiatrist accepts
to get him and basically talk to him. The reason that they actually convinced the psychiatrist to take this kind of person was actually quite funny. And that's basically what you might call to be the theme from which we are going to launch our next session. So So his boss telling this psychiatrist that there is this really fantastic physicist.
He's working for top secret stuff. Like literally you can't know his real name. But hey, for the past few months, this person who is extremely anal about his output and his work hasn't delivered anything. Every time that we actually do ask him about, oh, so what happened to your work, he becomes so apologetic. He says that, I'm so sorry, I'm going to actually deliver it next week. He never does that. Then the boss asks him to come to his office.
And he comes. He becomes, as usual, apologetic about his underperformance. But then the boss forces him to confess. And he says that, you know, boss, I am so sorry for all these underperformances. I have been living on another planet. I wish and I promise to work hard on this planet now. Now, this is the very premise of this story.
Imagine a person who is not living on this planet, for he or she has made different worlds and lives in them, as emperors with robes, as a vagrant, as an alien, what does it feel to be that kind of person? So do we have any volunteers to present on that text? I'd be happy to present on that. Who's speaking right now? Andrew. That's Andrew?
Yeah. Excellent. So the other thing to know is that we do not have a class for these next two weeks, obviously Christmas and then New Year's. So the next session will be January the 8th at the same time. Oh, okay. Okay. That's good though. Are you traveling anywhere, Reza? No, I only travel in my own house. Is it snowing there yet? It snowed a little bit here in New York, but not too much yet. Yeah, it's actually frozen rain. Okay. Alex, are you getting snow in Canada? Oh, no, there's never snow in Vancouver. Like once every few years.
Really? Yeah, yeah. Okay, my betters. we shall reconvene like what two weeks from now? It's three weeks according to the schedule at least. Yes. I hope you a great Christmas, a great new year. Please do take care of yourselves. Yes, you as well. Thank you so much for a brilliant time. Thanks Reza. Bye everyone. all right bye bye much love bye everybody bye bye bye