Soul, Ensoulment, and Meaningfulness

Jim talks with recurring guest and deep systems thinker Jordan Hall about the scaffolding of his worldview. They discuss the waking-up scenario as a window into consciousness and personal identity, Jordan's phenomenology of waking and the "latent potential of all possible memory," the soul as the binding of finite and infinite, Jim's counter-framing of consciousness as a fusion of perception, interoception, and unconscious memory, the infinite as genuinely real, the Platonic triangle as a concrete example of transcendentals that have no particular location in the causal field, Forrest Landry's distinction between being and existence, knowing with confidence vs. knowing with certainty, Jordan's basic ontological commitment to realism, the incoherence of simulation theory, Jim's "Minimum Viable Metaphysics," the incoherence of unmediated access as the meaning of the word reality, Father Stephen DeYoung's critique of Western substantive essentialism, Bonitta Roy's idea that reality is shareable and participatory, Michael Levin's pragmatic epistemology, how purpose collapses reality to a tractable slice, "begottenness" in Christian metaphysics and the generativity of relationships, Jordan's onto-epistemology as the register before ontology and epistemology are distinguishable, Jordan's recent adoption of "smorthodox" Christianity, the phenomenology of waking as evidence that space-time is secondary, prioritizing meaningfulness over causation as a metaphysical commitment, Updike as "still alive" in the realization of his work, the Greek preoccupation with legacy and honor after death, Eric Weinstein's desire for Einsteinian legacy as a category error, love as the real currency of legacy, the Mark Twain reading as an example of a soul genuinely present in a room, Jim's father as an ongoing example of realization twenty-six years after his death, noticing a parent's turn of phrase in oneself, the sweetness of impermanence, the good vs. abusive father and different relationships to a parent's memory, values and virtues as real, the distinction between courage and bravery, culture as the progressive discovery and embodiment of virtue space, the crab-in-the-bucket problem, fallenness as local optimization, and much more. Episode Transcript deepcode (Jordan's Substack) JRS EP 284 Jordan Hall on AI, the Commons, and the Church JRS EP 255 Is God Real? (with Jordan Hall) JRS EP 223 Jordan Hall on Cities, Civiums, and Becoming Christian JRS EP 170 John Vervaeke and Jordan Hall on The Religion That Is Not a Religion JRS EP26 Jordan Hall on the Game B Emergence JRS EP8 Jordan "Greenhall" Hall and Game B "Minimum Viable Metaphysics", by Jim Rutt JRS EP 341 Worldviews: Bonnitta Roy on Post-Formal Actors, Stage Theory, and the Character Void in Leadership Jordan Hall is the Co-founder and Executive Chairman of the Neurohacker Collective. He is now in his 18th year of building disruptive technology companies. Jordan’s interests in comics, science fiction, computers, and way too much TV led to a deep dive into contemporary philosophy (particularly the works of Gilles Deleuze and Manuel DeLanda), artificial intelligence and complex systems science, and then, as the Internet was exploding into the world, a few years at Harvard Law School where he spent time with Larry Lessig, Jonathan Zittrain and Cornel West examining the coevolution of human civilization and technology.