Hello and welcome to the eighth and final session of The Man Who Knew Nothing. We have three presenters today. They are Sebastian, Nikita, and Shilpi. And now I'll hand the microphone over to Reza. Thank you very much, Alex. So today we are going to talk about one of the most curious puzzling factors. The puzzling factor is what you might call to be the incompatibility between phenomenological insights of the self and the scientific accounts of objects.
I'm not going to talk more about this until we hear from our good friends delivering their presentations. So who is the first? I read the beginning of the book so maybe I can start but I don't know what's best. Sounds good, Sebastian. Is that okay? Okay. So as I said, I read the beginning of the book Being No One by the German philosopher Thomas Metzinger. So maybe I just wanted to lay out a very rough and a framework that is probably also a tiny bit reductive of what Metzinger
tries to do or sketch out at the beginning of his book. And at the very start, he kind of like starts with this statement that nobody ever was or had a self. So his project seems to be to denaturalize the very idea of a self-possessed self or of a self that is transparent to itself. Metzinger attempts to do this by bridging the gap between philosophy and cognitive neuroscience. So he is basically doing philosophy but taking neuroscience very seriously. With the statement that there is no such thing as a self, Metzinger argues that instead of what
one perceives as a self, there is a conscious self-model. This self-model is active in our brain which represents self as a coherent whole, a delineated entity. This claim is at the very center of Metzinger's so-called self-model theory of subjectivity. Then obviously the The next logical question would be what are then the necessary and sufficient conditions for the appearance of a phenomenal self, meaning the self that is conscious and subjective self and that is kind of like grounded in the experience of the world and also is grounded
in the very experience that we do in fact possess a genuine self. also the first person perspective. So Metzinger's argument is that self model is not recognized as a self model because it is transparent. So that means that its operating mechanisms are somehow concealed to the phenomenal self. And it is precisely this transparency of a self model that allows for the subjective phenomenal self to emerge. In other words, the transparency of the self model is a crucial precondition under which the phenomenal self emerges. So roughly speaking and perhaps in a more concise way we could say that you can never experience the consciousness as such. You can only experience the contents of consciousness but not the
very system of the consciousness itself. So I also watched his lecture on YouTube that was very interesting and he compares consciousness to a window. You can see through it and with it, meaning with the window, but you can never see the window itself. You only see the birds flying by. So we are kind of like unaware, according to Metzinger, of the medium via which information reaches us. Because of this phenomenal transparency, only content properties of the representation representational structures used by the brain are available. And so this, what he calls the representational vehicles are employed by the system are transparent as already said they do not represent the fact that they are
representations on the level of their content so to put it again in a more concise way there could be this equation made that self-model plus transparency equals some kind of a selfhood so we operate under the condition that Metzinger calls what I thought it was an interesting term, a naive realistic self misunderstanding. We necessarily experience ourselves as being in direct and immediate epistemic contact with ourselves, but of course we are not. So as it might be clear by now, Metzinger believes that phenomenal self, the experience of being someone, can be scientifically and philosophically analyzed with what he calls sub-personal levels of
description. So it's a representation list and a functionalist analysis of what a consciously experienced first-person perspective is. And I think the following thing can be also very applicable to what has been discussed through this entire seminar, namely that according to Metzinger the phenomenal self is not just a thing but it's a process. It is a self in the act of knowing but it's continuously altering its inner representation of subject and object relationship but also a relationship between subject and perceptual object and subject internally represented action.
having a self doesn't mean that this self is somehow rigid or solidified or somehow. Yeah, on the contrary, it's very, it's the case is that we as a system are capable of dynamically representing ourselves as selves in relation to object or I already said this. Yeah, I think so. Well, the point would be that the self is dynamic, it's changing, it's continuously adapting to its self model. And another crucial question for Metzinger would be, how does phenomenal self model differ from other self models? And why does precisely the self model appear
as the fixed center? And he suggests that this self model is the only representational structure which is sedimented in the brain by what he calls persistent functional link, meaning a continuous source of internally generated input. And this is the input that we, of course, generate ourselves. So what does it mean to have a first-person perspective? It means that there is a possibility of an existence of a coherent but only temporarily stable model of reality, which is representationally centered around the single coherent phenomenal subject, a model or a system as experiencing. So whenever we have a conscious experience,
whenever we have this stable or integrated model of reality, we also need to be fed by this continuous source of input, of internal input. And in this same lecture that I watched on YouTube, He gives this relatively humorous example of what a self model could be. And he talks about astronauts in space that frequently cannot feel what up and down is in their body. And the astronauts know that they need to do it. And the astronauts know that what they need to do in order to avoid this or to feel in their body again, so to say, is to tap the sole of their shoe against something.
instantly they're able to perceive what is up and what is down. So what Metzinger deduced from this is that self-model is just a virtual model. It depicts a possibility as a reality but it means that self-model is just the best hypothesis that the system has about its current state. So it's one hypothesis among many but it's the best one at the current moment. And it's also if we think back of this just cited example, it means that it's also very highly context sensitive. Yeah. What else did I want to say? Maybe a brief note on the importance to, or maybe an emphasis that consciousness and phenomenal self and first person perspective have a representational
phenomena and have a very long and established evolutionary history. So they were their product of us adapting to some specific circumstances. So there has been no evolutionary selection pressure on the relevant parts of our of our functional architecture. Naive realism, as he calls it, or transparency has been a functionally adequate background Simon Ruiz- Assumption for biological systems in order for them to survive. So what is meant by that is that we didn't need need to distance ourselves from ourselves in the Simon Ruiz- Very moment of, for example, danger. We didn't need to analyze the way we perceive an external object. I don't know an animal in order to perceive it in a provisory manner.
Simon Ruiz- And the other reason that Metzinger names for Simon Ruiz- The systems that for the systems that don't become aware of their very construction, is that these data structures are being activated so fast and are so reliable that the system cannot recognize them as such anymore because of its very lower temporal resolution. So these are the, I think, very pragmatic reasons for such discrepancy between the perceived as well as I just said now between the self and the objects, external quote objects. Yeah, I thought that it would be perhaps, it would perhaps make sense to look at how
the implications of such thinking or theory or reality are for the undoing of the self that we talk about in the last lecture specifically, especially if we take into account that the self has always already been undone. Yeah, in the last session we also talk about unmaking and making, how unmaking and making of the self go hand in hand and are somehow reciprocal. And I think Metzinger's theory makes this visible on multiple levels and it points to the unfixity, I don't know know if this is the word, to non-fixity of the self that is grounded in cognitive neuroscience and less in discursive relativism. And Messinger self or the non-existence of self is also
type of a self that is the rational construct and it is unmade together with the existing world. In that case, existing preconceived notions or something similar. Yeah, that's Reza, are you awake? Yes. So, what is the question? My question? Oh, sorry. Please go on. Yes, please.
um my questions were mainly related to how do we how is metzinger's thinking related to the idea of unmaking of the self and yeah to be honest with you i think that metzinger can't answer this question thoroughly. He's a neurophysicalist and when it comes to neurophysicalism, you are essentially in a certain kind of what you might call to be catch-22.
you know, I want to say that norms are real, but norms are not real precisely because they're physicalists. But then physicalist stuff are a species of norms. So that's the catch-22 of these kinds of people. I think the only way to get out of these kinds of, what you might call to be hairy, stuff is to say that, okay, right.
you know when we are talking about for example about self the self is not just one thing it has different layers at some level is just basically physicalistic. At another level, it's phenomenalistic in the Marx sense, even in the Whassalian sense. And in another sense, then you get conceptual.
So at the end of the day, you get two versions, at the very least two versions of self or selfhood one is that can be reduced to physicalistic elements top-down another one is very much like a bottom-up search in the sense that even if all these physical constraints were in place there
is still a possibility, in fact a necessity, to think about self in terms of unnatural factors. So self should always be understood in terms of two things, naturalizing factors and unnaturalizing factors, causes and concepts. And the thing with these kinds of accounts that I have seen so many of them
is that they always want to go either way. But I think that we need to exercise a certain kind of modesty, epistemological modesty, and say that, hey, the kind of self that you are talking about is not either this or that, it is both. And this This is exactly what we have been trying to tap onto since the beginning of this seminar.
The self is not either causal or conceptual, it is both. And that makes our... encounter with the self much more complicated. Questions, answers, heckles.
But we do have a couple more presentations that we could go on to. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Would Nikita like to go next? Yeah, I could go next. Well, actually I've been reading the same, the next chapters in the beginning of the book. And while there, Metzenger proceeds with examining the qualia as the most simple
forms of phenomenal content. And he basically argues, well, he does it to kind of start from bottom up and say that if we can examine the most simple forms of phenomenal experience, then we could say something of, I guess, a broader notion of phenomenal self. So what here argues is that quality in the classical analytically strict definition do not exist actually. And from the experience we have and that he points out, we're not able to
recognize the vast majority of them. And we can never cognitively, no linguistically grasp them in their full content. So to do that he lays out kind of several different on what Qualer could be defined as and for that he also introduces the concept of global availability of a phenomenal experience and this global availability
kind of has cognition, attention and action control in it as functions and he describes like the classical quality by Lewis that fulfills all these three sub-constraints of global availability like attention, cognition, and action control like all of them. He also quotes Rathman and like names this Rathman quality as ones who once that only fulfill like the two sub-constrains of
global availability that would be like this discriminative behavior and the attention but not cognition and he kind of illustrates it with the with the constraints of memory and how we process like our experiences with our memory capacities we can say and get an experience of read but we won't be able to get a precise sub definition of like red number 32 and so that would be one
constraint that that would be available for us to fulfill here and like in what he calls a Metzinger qualia that would be like the simplest qualia of all I guess that only like true for they would be situated even like level below and would only have a kind of an attention span available but that would be so brief that they would not allow for selective motor behavior for instance.
So, out of that he kind of shows that the phenomenological content that he defines is described with several principles, which are the principle of presentationality, principle of reality generation, the principle of context sensitivity, and principle of object formation. So basically, Or we can say that for conscience experience the concept of representation in how Metsunga
puts it could be basically reduced to the concept of simulation and all those principles would be valid there. So indeed, in this first chapter, Metzinger offers like a philosophical apparatus to try and breach the gap between philosophical ideas and neuroscience. And he proposes that probably this is just the point where philosophical terminology could be handed over to the empirical sciences and be filled with empirical
content content well yeah I guess that is it and well what I was thinking about mostly was indeed this possibility of kind of exploring this neuro scientific apparatus in relation to what we have been discussing during the seminar and namely the possibilities of world building and world making for for a kind of a possible approach to
actually a kind of ethical change in reality if I'm getting it correctly and I think what it just still stays a little unclear to me is this process of production of ethics through this time-based, temporal-based action, which kind of feel, I feel that it makes sense, but I kind of don't see the precise mechanism. Thank you so much. Really, thank you. I think there are a couple of things here.
that we haven't talked about these kinds of stuff thoroughly. So, you know, I think Metzingerian idea is, for the most part, I think, conflates difference between conceptualization and phenomenalistic aspects of cognition. And that leads to a lot of problems. That's one.
Two, I think... If you are going to talk about ethics, as you have intimated, The question is that where should we begin with? Should we begin with reality? Should we begin with odds? Should we begin with other kinds of stuff? These are astounding questions. But yes, I think that Metzinger's idea of ethics is quite parochial, to be honest with you.
He, to the extent that he has already elided distinction between arts and empirical facts, He cannot arrive at what we should do or what we ought to do. do we have the last presenter? Yes. Yes. After that, we will have
a break and then we convene. Okay. I will not be starting my video because my internet connection may go out. no need to apologize so I'll be talking about neuro-phenomenological case studies that is chapter number 7 Metzinger theory of mind centers on self models the being of a conscious being supports the model of the real world it inhabits phenomenal self responsible for making us experiential creatures A self model is important in presenting itself to itself as an agent.
In this section, Metzinger explores deviant models of the self from the ordinary. If our representational model disagrees with active neuropsychological syndrome, Whenever we think something or feel something, these are ours. Here lies the idea of mindness. In ordinary states of experiences, there is always a someone who is having an experience, subconsciously experiencing himself as directed towards the world, the highly specific form of free content and this content process.
This act of appropriating one's own body on a conscious level of self-modeling generates the phenomenal mindness. We are unable to realize that our self-model is content, simulated by our minds. The experiential reality is a virtual reality as shared by Metzinger which is constructed by our own brains. An individual can generate a number of self models which may be functionally incompatible. They nevertheless could be internally coherent generating their own characteristics and behaviour patterns. This may also not always be a pathological condition.
of us take up different personalities and roles in different circumstances and sets of situation in our lives. Metzinger states, there are many states of phenomenal self-consciousness individual cannot experience as a healthy person, emotionally unable to run the respective self simulation. If the underlying integration of process is disturbed, various psychological syndromes of or altered state may occur. Schizophrenia where an individual perceives conscious, experienced thoughts as not his own anymore. Self model can lack information or can be
multiplied as in case of schizophrenia or multiple personality disorders. Anosognosia, this is a higher order denial of the existing deficit in the body, example blindness denial. Not a denial, it's what you might call to be an automatic self. instances of agnacea are literally when for some causal connection or lack of a causal connection you just can't relate cognition with memory processes
they are not actually voluntary most of the time sometimes they are but majority of them are not yes this section also discusses various neuropsychological syndromes and alter states like out of body experiences I will not be going into detail I would like to end with a question though Is death of an individual also a self-model or is it truly an end of the self? Can you repeat this question? Is death of an individual also a self-model or is it truly an end of the self?
I don't think that it's the end of self, but maybe other people can actually join. I think one of the things that we have been talking about in Sarp Rosa is that self is It's a very sneaky thing, the phenomenal self-model in a Mitzingerian sense. It catches up with you. What does it take to actually disassemble this kind of phenomenalistic illusion?
This is the point. So any idea? I have no idea right now. But I'm thinking about it. Please go on. Yeah, so this is where my presentation ends. I think what we have learned from this whole course is that It's something of like a protocol, a phenomenal logistical protocol that infects those who
have perceptions and cognitions. So if that is the kind of virus that infects that very kinds of sapiens we are, then how can we actually tone it down? How can we actually disinfect it? Well, there are so many other ways to disinfect it. None of them are quick fixes. And that's where philosophy begins, where ethics begins. To get rid of the illusion of self is not a matter of some sort of coming with an ultimate solution.
No. It takes time. takes a lot of work. And this is why we are having this discussion at this point, precisely because self as an illusion is not an illusion by virtue of our current cognitive apparatus. is an illusion that is entrenched historically. And to shed this illusion, one must invent instruments, tactics and strategies
that can shed out this illusion. Otherwise, you know, we are just basically talking about about the same thing. Selves. We all have selves. Well what does that mean? I mean, do we really believe that we have selves? Yeah, sure, we do. But when we look at it closely, we notice that that that self is actually a piece of illusion. This is the very idea of ethics.
The very idea of ethics is that we must, as a categorical imperative, disassemble the idea of the self by way of logic and axiology, the discourse about values and disvalues otherwise we are basically monkey flakes who thinks
that we have certain kinds of what you might call to be claim about ourselves and the universe. You see ethics is where anti-humanism and humanism join together. Thoughts? Ressa, does this kind of ethics that you speak about
of getting rid of the self be linked to the Slarcian thought of the manifest image and the scientific image and the linking of both? The linking of both, yes, yes. It's essentially something like that. Ethics is not about the fusion of the manifest self-image and the scientific image of the self no it's about integration in the sense that what Hegel would have
called the unity and opposition. This is what we want precisely because these images of fusing or reducing self to some other kinds of stuff or other kinds of stuff to self, they are all recipes for either religion or bad materialisms. Ethics is about integration.
It's not about fusion. I'm wondering like how this relates then to what comes up in the case studies about like what is it called enosognosia and Metzinger talks about he thinks this is some sort of maybe higher order filling in, in order like a general strategy for cohering of consciousness, when these sort of, these kind of lies are, come out of the patients. And he's talking about this,
to help avoid indecisive vacillations and serve to optimize resources allocations. To me that's kind of natural fusing and is that something we can get away from? Very good question. I think that people like Dennett and Metzinger unfortunately don't have a good grasp of the distinction between consciousness and self-consciousness. So consciousness is naturalizable. You can naturalize the hell out of it. It's essentially that of causal mechanisms.
But then there is something else. It is called self-consciousness or conceptual self-consciousness, to be more accurate. These two poles cannot easily be reconciled. Essentially, everything that in the history of science, in the history of analytic philosophy, philosophy of science, so on and so forth, neuroscience, have gone, has shown us that ultimate battle, the ultimate income and zero-ability, intellectual income and zero-ability, so to speak,
is between how we can integrate conceptual self-consciousness with naturalizable consciousness. in another word it is the battle between concepts and causes shall we have a little bit of thingy break? Five minutes break there.
So I think here an enigma happens. It's actually quite very troubling. We at once have some sort of immediate so-called, so-called immediate experience of ourselves as living agents, living experiencing agents. On the other hand, when we look at it scientifically, cognitively and more scientifically, we notice that the immediate experience most probably is bullshit.
we don't have an immediate experience of ourselves. In other words, the transparency of our experience is most likely a kind of epistemological con bequeathed upon us. So what do you want? This is a question of ethics and I'm not talking about it in epistemological terms.
So you might ask yourself that, what do I want? Do I want the hard work of goddamn epistemology of the self? Or do I want to have phenomenalistic access to the self, immediacy of the self, immediate knowledge of the self? It seems to me that a lot of stuff that are being put out there today in terms of identity politics, life experiences, so on and so forth, are of the latter.
And to be honest with you, I'm skeptical of these. Not skeptical in a deep sense, but just, you know, you simply don't get the privilege of considering your experience as something fundamental. that will be a hypothesis of experience. So this is why I think there is something good in Maxinger, even though I disagree with him you know uh for a good deal uh the mitzingerian scenario runs as follows
essentially it is about the idea that phenomenalistic transparency does not translate to epistemic transparency right so how can we make ethics of self based on epistemic transparency and not phenomenalistic transparency answers
you bunch of wussos give me some answers now I'm going to put my hands in the fire but is achieving transparency in the epistemological sense and politics and linkage with politics going beyond simply process, like going toward a goal, navigate toward a goal? Could it be
a possible answer? Can you a little bit elaborate on this? Probably like, because I've felt this septicism as well, regarding, let's say, contemporary politics that go aligned with process and ontologies. And it seems that they only work through affect, like through the politics of affect and bodies that gather, and they don't have like a particular goal. They're like, you know, land the end, land the end, swan machines that go, don't go anywhere at the end. I wouldn't even talk about bodies in a spinozistic sense, because the notion of body is quite
very specific, you know, in the canon of philosophy. But yeah, if you are meaning body as the index of lived experience yes yes yes yes definitely so so it's probably like going beyond this this gathering of the bodies and making the body do something you know like not not just gather like you know in a very let's say uh processional mode let's do this let's do that but let's do this in order to go to to a common goal that i think it's it's like something that is missing in this particularity of the process ontologies and contemporary
politics, I think. So do you think that, this is my question for you, do you think that there is a conception of self that can be rescued? And if yes, what would be that conception of the self? I think that yes, I mean, but not like as Sebastian mentioned in his presentation, like this fixity of the self, it works maybe just like an operator. Like, I think what can be rescued from Metziger is that he talks about the self as a system
that processes certain information, but it's not something fixed. It's like this window that can go toward other, let's say, other ways of self-transformation and it's not something fixed. I think that it's just like a ground. It's a needed ground in order to go toward the construction of other worlds or other possibilities. But I think that it can be rescued. The idea that selves is essentially a constructible edifice, which is a species of the counter to the facts. Counterfactuals. Yeah. I do think so.
I do think so. We do need the initial restriction of the self, but it can open to other windows or other possibilities. And it's needed in the ethics that you talk about that we do that. We always constantly move into other constructible directions, as you say. Yes, which brings us to the very title of our course. You know, let's imagine the self was not real. We don't need neuroscience to tell us so.
As long as we have ethics, ethics will tell us that self is unreal. But even though self is unreal, you can still make it. Make it by way of counterfactuals. You can cultivate it by way of counterfactuals, by way of risk, by way of modal vocabularies. And that's the way of ethics. Thoughts? I have a couple of questions.
Yes. And I think going back to the very beginnings of our seminar, I would sort of perhaps pose as a question of sort of what I found very interesting in the Stoics and the Cynics was sort of this idea that perhaps it is all in order of practice, a sort of ascesis that is perhaps not so much sort of caring about whether or not there is a self as such, but suspending that about the correct form of practice. And I wonder a little bit, because we're dealing with a lot of terms here in Metzinger in particular, and I mean, we have and psychoanalysis too about selves, phenomenal selves, subjectivity egos and so on and I wonder a little bit
what is, are we not perhaps dealing with a sort of a little bit of uncertainty in this movement from sort of Diogenes to Metzinger about sort of what the referent or the intended referent of these different terms are and if there isn't a bit of a slippage and sort of what exactly are we talking about when we talk about a self here and the possible construction of itself? Because it strikes me that sort of what we seem to be interested in, especially in sort of Federico's commentary, is perhaps more a form of subjectivity as something that has a form of agency than phenomenalistic sort of self-experience. Jesus.
Sorry. what the fuck okay that that was that was like really a good one um okay let me say this and i might be uh fundamentally unequipped to answer your fantastic question at this point. The idea is simply as that. You see, the self is not a subject. A subject is a fundamentally different thing.
Self is what you might call to be the necessary condition for having a subject. Under certain kinds of constraints in the sense that that self doesn't need to belong to anyone. Hence, Ray Bourziers' essay, The View From Nowhere. This is actually quite really interesting, in the sense that we can imagine a scenario where subjects, cognizing subjects,
I think that these kinds of selves should have certain kinds of principles of dissolving back into society in the sense that there is no concept of self if it is not coming from society. So the greater concept of self is the one that can dissolve smoothly back into society.
And then the second question would be, so what kind of society are we talking about? What kind of conglomeration of selves are we talking about? Well, I think this is the question of ethics. In the sense that we come across this idea that
We just don't know anything about the constitution of a society. That's where ethics start. I am an agnostic on this idea. I think that literally everything that I say about this point, this question that you asked, would be new and void. precisely because it is something that only time, the time of the human, can actually
make it right or wrong. I am extremely pessimistic about all sorts of humanistic heroism, scenarios about human heroism. Yeah, sure, I am a no humanist of some sorts. I believe in the human capacities, but I just don't believe in the pragmatics.
And I think that the very question that you asked me is more about the pragmatics of the humans rather than their ontology. I think it's turning out that I am more of a pragmatist or at least more interested in pragmatics than I myself would have thought. I find it interesting. The reason I'm asking the question is largely because it's very simple. I'm a little bit uncertain as to what sort of a self is. And I'm not sure if maybe I am succeeding at being a practical schizophrenic.
Isn't it the whole point that since the beginning of this seminar, we actually talked about this idea that there is no such a thing as a self. I mean, the title of the seminar was The Man Who Knew Nothing. Like, we don't know what the self is, but is it an impediment against constructing the self? No, I would not say so, but I think the point at which I am not entirely certain is sort of what exactly is the status of that
which is being constructed, where it's posited as being constructable. Sure, sure. Yeah, that is a good question. That is a good question. I think that, you know, the conditions of constructions of self, very much an open problem of the ethics and we have to answer them as long as we cannot answer them we are in the dark so yes you're completely right
questions and answers from other people. You know. Sorry. I have a question. So you spoke of two aspects of ethics. One is that you said ethics aims the integration of human and the integration of humanism and anti-humanism. And you also said that we need ethics in order to understand the constitution of society.
So I wonder how these two aspects of ethics relate to each other. So we have a lack of understanding how society is generated and that this creates the need for an ethics. And don't you think that this is actually the very question that, oh my, my, my, my, my apologies. Don't you think that this very question is something like the question of asking, so
So capitalism has this kind of Marxian impulse toward resolving its contradictions. But capitalism is also a paradigm that can become blind towards any sorts of contradictions.
One-on-one capitalism, we see it in Lent, in Lent's thesis. So, how can we basically commensurate between these two theses? Capitalism as a process and capitalism as something more like a telus, a cosmological keyless. Very much in the Lennian vein. I mean, I don't think the two are incompatible.
No, they're not incompatible, but unless we have to basically say, how can possibly these two fuse and become one? I mean, let's consider capitalism quite materially, right we have a process of increasing automation and decreasing inscribed knowledge according to you know like standard marxian terminology with the telos being full automation which could result in you know this ideal of fully automated luxury communism or result in something quite antithetical to that. This is probably the UACC position that it doesn't matter what we do, it is completely
a telos. But even the UACC prospect doesn't think that, you know, there is no processual rift and give, you know, there will be a Bernie Sanders slash Labour Party where we'll see. Yes, yes, that is true. But to be honest with you, do you really think that people who are outside, like the critics, the so-called critiques, critics can actually see this picture as transparent as you were talking about.
I think it's becoming more so. I mean, considering that like Andrew Yang's presidential candidacy was quite popular, more popular than people like Kamala Harris and people, you know, birthed from the Democratic Party. It means that there is a gaining, you know, populism, gaining popularity, this understanding of full automation, this outpouching of standard labor. I really don't think so. I think that all of these people, to be honest with you, are just parasites. My apologies. I don't disagree that there are parasites, but I do think that more common, you know,
it's becoming more common knowledge. They already know how the system works and they're parasites, parasitizing on that. You know, Ocasio, all of that, all of that, all of those kinds of people. No, no, no. I, to be honest with you, I have zero trust in these kinds of people. I don't think that there are good examples in what we are talking about. Well, if the question is, are people becoming increasingly knowledgeable about the telos of capitalism, which fundamentally becomes a radicalized dyad and
uniform with the processes that are taking us there. They are not. They are not. They are not. To be honest with you, they are not. They just make what you might call to be gestures. I don't know, gestures. Well, I, so Alex just said Yang was an artifact of startup culture more than any sort of accelerationist view of the transformation of means of production. And I absolutely agree. But I do think that regardless of, you know, whether it's symptomatic that these things are becoming discussed more, I will say that automation and the capitalist telos does seem to be something that's more widespread in daily discourse. So these ethical questions
are becoming more steeped in the populist rhetoric of politics today, just based on the small amount of campaigning and phone backing. They might, but unfortunately regular people don't pay attention to these countries. But when they live in post-industrial cities, you know, where there used to be factories, and those factories are now no longer apparent, there is like a material reason for it. Let me tell you this. How many people people know about the initiation of industrial age? What triggered industrial age?
Steam engine? Yeah, in the industrial age. What made it so popular? Steam and coal? No. Water. Water made it popular. Precisely because at the onset of the Industrial Revolution, they wanted to, you know, kind smuggle stuff out of the British Isle to other places, and they had to have
symbols. That was the real deal. That's exactly what it means to think about imperialism or colonialism today. You see, imperialism and colonialism are not evil as such. we should think about them as certain kinds of strategic decisions. Reza, what do you mean by not evil? I mean, of course there's different kinds of colonialisms,
but can you... These are evil, to be honest with you. No, I actually think that none of these are evil. Well, surely you don't disagree that the British going into India and all of the atrocities that were done, those are undoubtedly unethical, no? Whether that's colonialism or the mechanisms. Let me tell you this. Every single civilization has done a lot of shit. So we cannot merely say that, oh, British civilization did that, American civilization did that, Romans did that. No, no, no. Essentially, we have to go back to the causes. Why they did this.
you see anyway let's back let's get back to our crappy classroom questions and answers well I'd like to speak of Metzinger's you know the self-model theory of subjectivity
and sort of you know I mean I don't remember Habermas's article but I do know that there's a bit of a discourse there too perhaps you could speak to that but when Metzinger describes and explains the principle how normatively regulated social interaction between conscious selves supervenes upon unconscious sub-symbolic neurological processes and he does this by explaining the phenomena of selfhood, I do think that it makes quite a bit of sense that the first person's subjective perspective can be understood as arising out of sub-personal representational mechanisms. Now, whether this is understood between, you know, token, recognitive structures
or understood under unequivocally naturalistic methodologies, you know, that are uncompromisingly materialist and tenors such as Metzinger's. Well, I guess Metzinger doesn't, you know, he doesn't go for the reductionist strategy. This is what Brassier says, the one that's espoused by mind-brain identity theories. But this postulates a type of token of identity between psychologism and neurological states. And this has been sort of what, you know, John McDowell has been, his Stellarzean intervention has also tried to deal with. But yeah, I mean, I would be curious
if you could sort of speak to the representational state's supervenience upon neurobiological levels and this guiding hypothesis that there has to be a minimally sufficient neural correlate for every representational state because that's sort of the sense of stricto assumption that Metzinger's distinction between representing and represented deals with I would say all I can say is that you know
Yes, all of this neural stuff have a lot of clouds, a lot of basically what you might called to be stuff that we haven't looked at. But that doesn't really solve the problem. The problem is at the level of the conceptual.
When I say that such and such is such this, yeah there is always a causal connection, connection, but that causal connection can never be turned into a conceptual one. Conceptual connections can be turned into causal parts. And that's, I think, is the very, what I might say, the moral lesson at this point.
So this will, I'll be quiet after this remark and let others speak, but I do have something to say on this matter. So, you know, there's a question of the ineffability of qualia. And for Metzinger, we do not possess introspective identity criteria. Qualia, qualia, qualia. Just like, you know, any sort of shit. Our elite philosopher always goes for qualia. No, no, no. Qualia are actually far more complex than... I mean, that's what Metzinger says. He says that we don't possess introspective identity criteria from many of the simple states of consciousness.
And this is demonstrated by tests done on human capacity to identify just noticeably different shades of color in the spectrum. So since we can't distinguish between, say, one shade and another of red, or we cannot rather name them and discursively ascribe their difference to a nominal mark, For instance, when one is asked to discriminate between two just notably different color nuances or subtle nuances of touch, taste, sonic pitch, words fail to be accurately linked to sensation. Let me put an end to this. If Metzinger says that, you know, I'm kind of, you know, defending qualia, I say that,
well, my friend, he just don't understand what qualia is. I think every neuroscientist is something of a phenomenalistic magician. We should not trust. Well, what do you mean by not know what quali... Let's say I know that qualia that X is actually my sea fibers firing. This is the classic example and philosophy of mind. The sea fibers firing. But even if I know that it's my sea fibers firing,
this doesn't actually give me the picture of redness or the sensation of being in interaction with redness. Even if I have all the information about... Well, precisely because you haven't actually understood where redness is coming from. You are simply trying to recover the concept of redness from something utterly esoteric. Just like any sort of neuroscientist, which I truly hate. I mean, there are, to be honest with you, there are two kinds of people that I truly hate.
Architects and neuroscientists. Utterly, utterly stupid. They don't have any sort of understanding of how things in broad sense can actually be attached to other kinds of things. They are not scientists. A physicist is a scientist. A neuroscientist, for the most part, is a goddamn fucking charlatan.
Let me put it in the open. Okay, so let's go on. What kind of questions should we ask at this point? You know, ethical questions. Maybe even, you know, kind of racy, juicy questions.
Let's talk about these kinds of stuff instead of, you know, kind of pushing around, saying shit. People, people, people, people. Uh-oh, let me see. Oh, Sophie is there. Sophie? Hi. Hi, you hear me? Ask a question. Yeah, I don't know how to find an entrance in that.
What kind of, I don't really know, I mean, would it, you mean generally speaking of ethics or ethical, I don't really know how to, you know, the field of it. What I mean by ethics, it's very much like this idea that, you know, that we are living in a world and we have a semblance of ideas about this world and to that extent we issue certain kinds of odds should and should not.
And that could be a juicy question. Yeah, yeah. Well, give me the juicy question now. Oh, God. I really think you should start it. So it's questions about the world, yeah? You go on, you go on, you go on. I still don't really understand what kind of... I mean, it would be very specific, no? Maybe. In terms of... I don't know. I mean, about... Going to rape people? Huh? Like, we are not going to rape people? Yes, that's very specific.
Okay. That's a bit too specific, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So then, I don't know how to ask these questions, maybe. I think that's, I mean, that's why I think it's good that we talk about it. Because I found it quite difficult when we talk about ethics, how to even think through it, you know, how to even formulate the question. Question. Okay. Let's, hypothetically speaking, you fall in love with someone. You know, I always loved these kinds of games. and that person is actually a good serial killer.
Yeah. So how are you going to handle it? It's very difficult. You have to give me something. What? You have to give me something. I mean it's a it's a I think firstly would probably we would be a process of oh god I mean of course I would try to I mean I don't know I mean it's very difficult Have you watched Don't Fuck with the Cats? No. Essentially, what I had in mind is that you, Sophie,
you are basically getting married with Luca Magnata. It's a very particular species being. So I want to know what you are going to do. I would ask you. No, I'm joking. I don't... I'm not gay. I'm bisexual. I'm bisexual. But I'm not going to entertain. But the theory killer question, no? What do you mean by... what? So imagine
that let me tell you this the very question of ethics that we have been talking for a very long time so okay we say that ourselves are suspended ideologically speaking okay we can actually understand Go for other people, entertain other partners, so on and so forth. Imagine Luca Magnata, a necrophiliac, a cannibalist, but an extremely, what you might call to be
attractive person contacts you? How do you reply to that email? These are real questions. We are essential in the business of ethics, real philosophy. I mean, you start to ask questions about, I mean, how, you know, how I can, could deal
with it or how the, how would it benefit? I mean, there's so many different kinds of questions, which, I mean. um so no all i ask is that luca magnata is contacting you but i don't i don't know him that's firstly happening he's i get who he is but i but so he contacts me but i know what he did i would probably not write back what is that or what is going to be the message what does he want from me I don't know him so it's difficult to but this is the whole point
that I wanted to bring to you so sure this is a serial killer maybe not a serial killer a murder right so unsupported But imagine someone contacts you who actually you're so attracted with. And that person is very much into fascism, noir reaction, all that kind of jazz. How do you answer to that?
I mean, I would probably not answer. I think you will answer. I think you will answer. But I don't, I mean, it's a bit difficult, it's very hypothetical. But Reza, just because he's sexy, I don't know if that would be enough to... I don't know, you know what I mean? Like, I wouldn't... I don't know. Yes, yes. To be honest with you, I think that you are pointing to a very good thing. but I would say that precisely because of the sexiness,
you initially will answer. But at some point, you just realize that, oh, maybe, you know, this is not the kind of stuff that I should actually communicate with. Yeah. Maybe I should actually give you an email. I hope I don't get cancelled for this kind of comment. Canceled? Yes. But isn't this a question of like interfering or trying with someone else's world
or their fermented manias and like the responsibility of the relationship between worlds? I think it's it is absolutely that's the same thing. The thing is that I have noticed that there is a certain kind of mutual understanding when it comes to these kinds of topics. That mutual understanding is actually not really mutual understanding, it's actually mutual sharing of taboos.
So does that mutual understanding, the impossibility of mutual understanding connect back, relate back to the this incommensurability of the cells that we were talking about before and the relationship between. Yeah, just the troubles that come when we try to analogize things. Yes, completely, completely true. You see, the idea of the self is probably the most dangerous idea ever put on the paper.
So, we have to look at this and treat this very carefully. Precisely, the self is something that is fundamentally out of what you might call to be, I don't know, ideas of selfhood and so on and so forth.
The thing is that the self is exactly like that. It is essentially a virus, utterly contaminated by so many stuff. We have to take that self carefully. And this is essentially a Metzingerian idea. You see, Metzinger has this idea that, you
know okay you know there's a phenomenal phenomenalistic idea of the self but we can actually talk about in a rational sense but nevertheless the rational sense is also connected to that phenomenalistic idea so how are we going to get out of this quagmire? Ideas, thoughts?
I mean, one answer is for all of us to become aware, not just of the processes, but of the environs, as you were saying, which is for all of us to become better educated in physics. This is a particularly scientific perspective, perhaps. But now we no longer have the question of qualia richness as based on some type of esotericism to a certain degree perhaps at least because there is no theory of everything right there is still a partial physics i quite like this view but i also quite like the churchland speaking to one another in uh you know algorithmic and i don't think most
would find this to be i think most would say you lose some type of semantic richness when we all become physicists and and ascribe that to our you know our communication but you know how the churchlands they spoke to one yeah so it works i mean it can work i think and then you don't have like these confusions or slippages and such there's actually like a politics to this we all know we're talking about the same business yes yes yes but the thing is that talking about the same business is not the same as sharing
what you might call to be warring people. Essentially, what we are doing at this point is that, yeah, sure, we have certain kind of understanding about, you know, this and that, but nevertheless, there are warring sections. like people who say that, oh, I have this, I have that, I have this, I have that.
I think that's what is important. We, for a very long time, have been extremely stupid. and what you might call to be headless with regard to what might actually happen. You see, this is the whole point with regard to these kinds of stuff yeah so we are talking about oh you know uh there is this kinds of
stuff going on reza said that was that is that there are these kinds of uh you know patterns which are unholy and so on and so forth. All of that shit is jazz. But the most curious question is that the
Are we prepared to recognize such a self, these kinds of patterns, these kinds of sayings? No, we are not. Essentially, this is what I think that is going to happen to us. So we have a lot of stuff about each other,
yes and no, so on and so forth. But nevertheless, the very moment that we actually talk about something really important, that's when we fail. We truly fail. Like, I would say that voting for the most democratic state, voting for going into a space. That's exactly where we fail. Because humans are just a bunch of monkey flakes.
They are nothing. But what is the alternative? Do we do the bashing one another over the head with the accepting that we are monkey flakes and we do the, what is it, the space odyssey beginning where- I really don't know. I really don't know. But to be honest with you, I think that I have become extremely pessimistic of human human beings have no goddamn power.
If they had a power, they would have done so much more. These people are like, I mean, look at them. They can't even change their own planet. What the fuck? Bunch of wuzzles. Bunch of wuzzles. But you are forgetting that there is no collective human action at a global level. What we have is the violence actions of the state of our system, right? I mean,
I mean, humanity doesn't act as a subject. We never encounter with the action of all human beings. Yes. But with the specific states. I think one of the greatest examples I can tell you about this is the novels of Cormac McCarty. So, Comrade McCarthy is essentially a state lover. He's very much in the vein of those people who think that a state is the only thing that
can save us. Right? so in that sense Cormac Barcardi might say actually that if you lose your society the scenario that will come against you would be something like the road.
I think, to be honest with you, it's actually quite serious. I think it's actually real. Yes, I would say precisely because to the extent that we haven't understood what society can be, the loss of society becomes a Hobbesian nightmare. everyone please please say something say something
Well, my pessimism arises not from an abstract and negative conception of humanity, but because of something much more concrete actually. The question I had in my mind is what are we going to do with this huge military apparatus, which is growing? What do you mean by the huge military apparatus? The armies?
Armies of what kinds of? the state armies with the weapons and all the flights and bombs and everything all the technology all the military technology what what the military technology produces. To pass with you Ebrim maybe I'm wrong and I hope that I'm wrong Let me tell you this very small piece of information. You see, my dad was general of Iranian regular army. So he was always talking about these kinds of stuff to me.
I think that the idea that you're talking about, like, you know, kind of what is the critical line, is never going to happen. it is always there but it is not something that can be substantiated. That's what exactly military critical line looks like. It's there, it never actually substantiate. That's what military is. Military crisis should never
actually substantiate. That's the whole point. But why is it there and why are we so weak in the face of it? This is a source of my own pessimism. Attributing a negative quality to human essence, I I think this is, I see no reason to attribute a negative or positive and to find the source of pessimism there. The point is that, you see, I really don't know the depths of this. It's something that
needs to be investigated fully. I think the idea of some sort of full military stuff in the way that you were talking about is always is what we call in Persia the second-hand option. Essentially, it is not going to happen.
It is only there for certain kinds of behaviors to actually generate. It is by itself does not create any source of what you might call to be prime behaviors, or stuff. I think this is really actually quite scary. It's even more scary precisely because what we are talking about here is that there is certain kinds of constraints.
And these kinds of constraints, we know about them and we talk about them. It's just that these kinds of constraints are not being employed as what you might call to be a prime ideological arsenal. they are more likely employed as stuff which can down the line create asymmetrical warfare.
thoughts, swearing, thoughts swearing you know we are getting close to the end of the last session because i'm glad i'm not i'm no longer going to talk to you people
It looks like Carl might have something to say there. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, I'm not entirely sure. I'm having a conversation in the sidebar with Alex about Alexandra, about agency. I'm not exactly sure where we started. So maybe I could be a little bit rude and sort of ask Alexandra to sort of explain her sort of point and then I can sort of see where
That's a good one. If you don't want to, I'll do my best. Alex! Do it. Have I been summoned? I was eating. Can you hear me? Yes, of course. I mean, I'm just going to read what I wrote because honestly, I'm just completely overwhelmed by the language that Metzinger employs. I mean, I was responding to Carl's question about a thesis and self-making through activity, through action, right? Through rational action in the world, which Metzinger doesn't seem to have
to me like a really satisfying, totally satisfying response to. But what he does say is in terms of agency, what he calls agency, as being a process of currently selecting our behavioral patterns or activity as... He really doesn't understand the notion of agency, to be honest with you. I think so as well. I was just rehashing his argument or his construction of it. And then also, because it is contradictory, he does contradict himself directly because later when he is talking about a deviant self model and that of the schizophrenic he says that as a schizophrenic you lose the functional properties associated with being an agent
because you're no longer able to consciously experience yourself as an agent and yet he previously had said that the moment of agency itself seems to be the moment when the phenomenal model of the intentionality relation, which is, this is ethics, right? Collapses. Yeah. Yeah. So this is a real problem in terms of how to interrelate action and embodiment to the self model. Yes. Don't you think this is exactly the outcome of him in aligning the distinction between agency as a rational agency so to speak and agency
as a phenomenological agency. Someone, something, or something that basically just, who encounters with the world. You know, I think that that is the whole point. I think that Metzinger really doesn't understand, the difference between self-consciousness as a conceptual and practical achievement, you know, a mission, a vocation, and consciousness as a kind of naturalistic, basically, system.
Yeah, I want to say one last thing because I can't, I feel like I really can't speak to him directly because he is very dry, except for that little bone he throws us with the Gerda quote on gray theory. It's very unlibidinal, this prose, but he does seem to me to kind of kind of recursively like re-enter into like a cartesian dualism almost even but just like a next level version of it when he talks about things such as like the existential quantifier um as being the pre-I that is posited in the naturalistic version of representationalism
Right. And yet he also seems to defend that. Yeah. In some sense. Right. So I've had a hard time distinguishing exactly where the phenomenological actually is in his model. To be honest, OK, here, please don't take my words as, you know, the ultimate words. I think that with Metzinger, there is something fundamentally wrong. In the sense that he actually confuses
between the phenomenalistic realm and the phenomenological realm. You see, the phenomenal phenomenalistic realm is something like you say that i saw a tree i saw a blue flower right these kinds of stuff don't actually hold any sort of what you might call to be epistemological higher stance. The second, what you might call to be criteria, is something like that
I saw a blue flower and I'm now going to talk about what the blue flower looks like. using my conceptual armament. You see, this is exactly what Eli Hosselle looks like. Eli Hosselle, essentially Eli Hosselle created this challenge against what you might call might call to be phenomenalistic tradition, which was handed to him by Ernst Mach.
So Mach is a phenomenalistic person. Horssell tried to do something else, going to the transcendental constitution, by saying that, you know, when I actually say that, okay, this rose is red, I have to explain why this rose is red. I cannot just say this rose is red. That was one of the greatest discoveries of philosophy given us
by Husserl, early Husserl. I think, and I'm not going to talk about phenomenology and these kinds of stuff, I actually want to talk about ethics. I think we are in a very under-equipped horizon. Like, me and Max are talking, you know, Max and I have talked a lot when I was in Cal
Arts and also with Alex. But the thing is that something needs to be addressed here. How can we actually talk about the same thing, about the same vocations, the same summons? You see, to talk about the same summons, that's where philosophy and ethics starts. Everything else is just bullshit.
Todd, Todd, Todd, Todd, Todd. Swearing. Alex, where are you? Which one are you calling? The other Alex, Alexandra. Well, of course you can contribute as well. Yeah, so I had a question that was coming up earlier,
which was addressed to a certain extent, but not completely, which is, we have these concerns about the epistemic versus the phenomenal self, construction of selfhood, etc. And those will relate to ethics in some way. But it seems strange to me to take those as the central or orienting question for ethics. Because it seems to me that the sorts of questions we care about in ethics are going to be ones which are much more related to a notion of somebody is harmed by this somebody has this expectation of me there is some sort of like social back and forth that's going on where the question isn't quite like if we're just going from
the the self then it might matter what i am in order to say what is it that i ought to do but what is it that i ought to do always happens in some particular situation somebody i owe someone five dollars and they, you know, should I pay them back, say. You know, there's always some sort of social constitution there. Alex, are you sure about that? You see, the idea of ethics is about possible actual worlds, you know, not in a model realist sense, but actualized possible worlds
in the sense that we ask ourselves what would have happened to us if we had made such an action. essentially what i'm trying to say to you is that i think ethics is not about the kind of stuff that you have been talking about ethics is about alternative universes
Knowing that we can knowing and that's what makes ethics ethics. That ethics is the idea that we can make causal connections between alternative universes. okay so let's grant that that's that's not particularly unreasonable we might say then that it's the sorts of decisions that we care about in ethics are the sorts where there's some counterfactual scenario involving actions that we take with regard to other people
that that seems like that should be fairly uncontroversial that there's this some action that i can take which is either with regard to myself considered as an agent or some other agent and there's various things that i can do do i pay the person back do i not pay the person back etc etc but those are those are counterfactuals which are constituted not on the basis of me having such and such type of self that's relevant in some respect but the the primary orienting question is what do I do given these different counterfactual scenarios regarding my responsibility commitments etc to other agents well isn't it then the question of how you should think
about counterfactuality in terms of the relation between worlds, that you thought that you have this kind of world and that world will give you certain kinds of, you know, addicts, dictums. But isn't it the whole point that that world that you were living in was not sufficient, and then you have to make more rewards where you can actually compare the
edicts of your world with regard to the edicts that can be in other kinds of worlds. So what about that necessitate starting with the cell? Sorry. What about that claim, the construction of fabricating different sorts of worlds, what about that necessitates that we start with an idea of the self? Why is that the central concept from which we build these counterfactual worlds?
Well, I think such a thesis is already predicated on what you might call to be a premise. The premise is that there is no such a thing as reality. Reality is shit. Literally, there is no such a thing as reality. Any person who talks about reality, talks about, confuses, confuses the structure with the stuff.
So this is the whole point that yes, essentially this is a Goodmanian thesis, you know, that we have to go on and make different world versions without, without basically taking the idea of reality seriously. Because reality, to be honest with you, I actually do agree with Goodman, doesn't give us anything. Anything. It's just like a barren field.
So the claim, yeah, no, go on, please. My question is, in so far as actual material ethics, if you think that there is one particular material imperative, the- What do you mean by material imperative? An actual- material imperative, material imperative. What do you mean by material? Nothing physically to put into an action. Some type of material change in the world that you think ethically should be an imperative. The most important or one of the most important, philosophically relevant...
In different worlds, you can employ different kinds of material imperatives. Right. And I'm asking for you to just give an example of one you think that it's highly, I mean, I think that the example that we all agree upon is the educational space being not one prescribed solely to academics, closure, but one opened up. That's why we're all new center students that's why we're all here right now and the certain type of you know philosophical outpouching that the academic the academy has resulted in but other than this which i already know your position on i'm curious about a certain actual you know legislative put into action
whatever it may be it doesn't have to be in the jurisprudential form but some type of philosophically relevant thing that we as thinkers and as living agents can actually put into action in our daily lives you know i mean we're closing out the simple the the seminar and i'm sort of curious what we can take away from this and put into this could begin from the stoics what we learned from you know all of our lessons what can we put into practice in our life uh aside from just reading and you know thinking which is highly important of course I would say that the only thing that we have to secure is a theoretical call theoretical
core of the practice practice we this is this is unfortunately my cynicism that no theory can help us i think that if we are going to win in any sort of way we have to take practice seriously what is a practice what is a pragma how can we employ it this is the kind of question that I have in mind
In any case, is there an example of what this would look like though? You know, like something even more concrete than this. in daily life or something, you know, what can I do with this pragmatism? Sure. Have you ever fallen in love? Yes, it's dangerous business.
Yes, I know that it's a dangerous business, but how have you handled? that. Usually in the end with you know destruction at the beginning with much openness and welcoming but in the end it's always been a bit destructive you know. You know that I'm no longer a delusion I used to be but this is what I think about this whole scenario you see See, okay, I'm falling in love, right? The thing is that I'm going to be masochistic
in the Delusian sense. I'm going to intensify. I'm going to actually make more intensities. This is the whole point, that with regard to these kinds of ideas, I think that we have to understand the context first and foremost. And then, basically, for example, in our case, in this case, say that okay yeah i'm going to basically
someone who basically uh doesn't know anything about these kinds of constraints. I am the person who works or who works through what you might call to be the ultimate way of
encountering and looking at things. The thing here, I have noticed that there is something, certain kind of fucked upness here that I think should be addressed. You see, so we have different kinds of versions of how the world looks like, right? But then, which one of them are correct?
Which one of them are more consistent? Some person might say that the more libidinal one is actually the more better one, but I don't think so. So what does it mean to look for a more internally consistent version of the world? Like literally speaking, you want to go after a girl, right?
This girl is literally your own target. You cannot simply put your mind off of this girl. So how are you going to after the scale? That's why we say the reason that we should take reason and libido both seriously because they are both of the same species.
Intensify, you say, intensify in love. Is this intensify also propensity to friendship? What I would say in your lived philosophy, Reza, as someone who knows you as something of a friend and mentor, is that you are exceedingly, despite being rather busy, when one has an encounter with you, it's generally you're quite generous as a friend, as a mentor. I know this is all very lugubrious and mushy, but I only mean this so far as intensify and lived philosophy not linked to just love as in libidinal love, but also friendship, no? Is this not part of the humanist core that sort of makes up your...
Yes, yes. I think that is exactly the core of what it means to be a human. You see, to be a human doesn't mean that you need to be boring. You can actually be transgressive. You can do literally some, utterly, you know, what you might call to be a stupidest stuff, cosmologically speaking. But nevertheless, that's what makes a human a human.
Yes, yeah, absolutely, yes. Our people. Max, Carl, Sophie. I'll just note that we're running over time now, so we can keep on going, but people may be drifting out at this point. Sure. So should we call it last session and then whoever wants to