Ep. 6 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Aristotle, Kant, and Evolution

Vervaeke's lecture traces Aristotle's break from Plato, his concepts of actuality and potentiality, and his biological view of change as growth, linking these to modern cognitive science.

Key Takeaways

Aristotle's concepts of actuality, potentiality, and form remain foundational to understanding how things become what they are
Growth and development are central to what people mean by a meaningful life
Living things are self-organizing systems that actively make themselves, unlike artifacts made by external agents
Modern dynamical systems theory provides a way to update Aristotle's insights about change and organization

What the video covers

Recaps Plato's account of wisdom as an agogic process that reduces self-deception and aligns the psyche with reality
Explains Aristotle as Plato's student who broke from him, claiming he loved the truth more, and who sought to account for change
Notes Aristotle's biological orientation, shaped by his physician father, contrasting with Plato's mathematical analogies
Connects Aristotle's term for change to growth and development, linking it to the idea of meaningful life as growth
Introduces Aristotle's concept of eidos (form) as structural-functional organization that makes a bird a bird
Uses the wood-into-chair analogy to explain actuality and potentiality, concepts the speaker argues are Aristotle's invention
Frames living things as self-making systems that impose form on matter, such as food being informed into bodily structure
Announces a transition from Aristotle to modern cognitive science, especially Alicia Juarrero's work on dynamical systems and feedback cycles
Discusses Newtonian causal grammar versus circular, self-organizing explanations of living systems
Suggests humans are distinctive in understanding themselves in contrast to other living things, tying this to meaning and wisdom

Chapters

How does Aristotle differ from Plato according to this video?

Aristotle studied with Plato for about twenty years but broke away, saying he loved the truth more. The video notes that Plato did not adequately account for change, which Aristotle addressed by focusing on growth and development.

What is the wood-into-chair analogy meant to illustrate?

It illustrates actuality and potentiality: wood is potentially a chair, table, or ship, and a particular form actualizes one of those potentials, giving the wood a structural-functional organization that makes it act accordingly.

Why does the video say living things are different from artifacts?

Artifacts like chairs are shaped by an external maker, whereas living things impose form on matter themselves, such as food being informed into bodily structure through a DNA code, making them self-making.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

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[Music] welcome back to awakening from the meaning crisis so last time we discussed the important and foundational work of Plato the grammar of Western civilization is basically made up of the the Bible and Plato will keep coming back to both of those repeatedly in

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certain ways and we talked about Plato's notion of wisdom and how it involved this process of aligning the psyche so as to reduce inner conflict and reduce self-deception by bullshitting ourselves and that how that enabled us to also

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achieve one of our meta desires the desire for inner peace but how we could also align that reduction in self-deception with getting more in contact with what's real and that as we practice tracking real patterns in the world we could then reflectively

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internalize that back on ourselves and there was an intimate connection between how we knew the world and knew ourselves and as we increased our ability to pick up on real patterns we could increase our self-knowledge reduce our self-deception increase our contact with

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reality and that would flow in the process of an agog a and that would bring about the satisfaction of our second Metta desire which is to be in contact with realness and so Plato has this idea of wisdom as this an agogic

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process and we talked about that in connection with his great parable the parable of the cave I then pointed out that he had just as Socrates was lucky to have a great disciple in Plato Plato was lucky to have a great disciple in

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Aristotle and Aristotle is pivotal for us because he lays the foundation for a further aspects of a scientific approach to wisdom and meaning and also for an important formulation of one of the ways in which we deeply connect the self to

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reality that we're going talk about when we talk about worldview attunement so as I mentioned Aristotle was a student of Plato he studies with Plato for about twenty years and then at some point he breaks away from Plato

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famously claiming that while I love Plato I love the truth more Aristotle remained and many people would argue this gearson for example and others that Aristotle remains in some very important senses of plate Ness but there was an

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aspect of Plato's work that Aristotle thought was lacking Plato did not really adequately account for change so Aristotle was deeply influenced by Plato's account of what made for something real for us but he thought that Plato wasn't could not really

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explain change very well and he was going to invent some very important concepts that are going to become integral to understanding of what it is to be meaningfully connected to reality now Aristotle is very influenced by his father who is a physician he's much more

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of a biologist than a mathematician so all Plato is much more prone to using mathematical analogies aerosol is much more used to using biological analogies and the word that Aristotle uses for change is actually better translated as growth or development Aristotle was

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really interested in how living things grow how they develop and that should that should prick up your ears right away because part of I take it what we often mean when we say we have a meaningful life is that we are growing

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or developing in fact people will often use the word growth as a way of indicating an improvement in the meaning of their life and in some sense the developing of wisdom so Aristotle picks up on Plato's notion of the I das so if

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you remember last time we talked about this we talked about that a bird is much more than a set of its features it's not just a beak it's not just some feathers it's this Gestalt it's that structural functional

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organization such that all the parts function to get there was a hole and so what you have is something that acts as a bird and that pattern that logos that I toss is very hard actually to put into words but it's

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very much what does two things for us it's what makes a bird a bird and it's also the pattern by which we come to know what a bird is when we can grasp the structural functional organization that ID us then we understand what a

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bird is now Aristotle was very impressed by that but he wanted to give it a more dynamical approach he wanted to talk about it in terms of development and so he was very interested as I said in how

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things grow and he noted the role that form had in growth and development so he what he did was he first started what by an analogy so he would use the analogy of artifacts human-made things and then use that to try and understand

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biological things so for example I can have a block of wood right and I can make it into a chair or perhaps a table or if it's big enough amount of wood I can make it into a ship or a boat and

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Aristotle asked what makes the wood behave like a chair as opposed to a table or to a ship and this is where we get the notion of actuality from we often use the word actuality in fact as a way of talking about realness it's an

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actual something is a way of saying it's a real something as opposed to a fraud or simulation so what makes a chair act like a chair why does the wood act like a chair here act like a table here and

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act like a ship here and so Aristotle said well first of all this is important change and it's a good analogy for development when I'm making a chair that's somehow analogous for how an organism is growing so what is it that makes the would act

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like a chair here and act like a table here and his argument was well it's the forum again where this means i dot snot shape although you can use shape as an analogy this is the structural functional organization the wood is

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structurally functionally organized in such a way that it will act like a chair whereas here it will act like a table and here it will act like a ship now Aristotle's point is that this doesn't it's not that this doesn't play any role

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but he invents this really important idea he invents the idea that the wood is potential these terms actual and potential actually come from aerosol we use them every day we think they're just part of our natural grammar but they're

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actually an invention of Aristotle we're going to see how important they are so the idea is wood is potentially a chair what is potentially a table what is potentially a ship now when that potential has a particular form given to it then it starts acting

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like a chair it starts acting like a table and acting like a ship and this is where we get the notion of information from you put a form into something and you will actualize its potential namely you will give it a structural functional

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organization so it will start to act in a particular manner now that's really important and then what Aristotle argued is well what you see in living things is that they are basically doing this for themselves so if you'll use look I just

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mean this is an analogy a living thing is like a chair that is making itself a chair imagine that a chair could somehow start to impose a structural functional organization on wood so that it started to turn itself into a chair that's what

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a living thing does I mean you you food food is potential you you put food into you you inform it there is a code in your DNA that ultimately puts a particular form in it that gives it a

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structural functional organization that becomes you now of course this unfolds across time it's it's not it's not that doesn't happen like that and that's why we see it as change and development now this is really important as we'll see

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because it's going to be foundational to understanding a lot about how you connect to the world so how are we going to make use of this in talking about the way human beings are connected to reality the way they develop and grow as

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cognitive agents so what I want to do first is to step aside from Aristotle in the axial age and move into current cognitive science and talk about an important way of thinking about development and change especially the work of Alicia Arara that was directly

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and explicitly inspired by this Aristotelian framework so when we talk about how things change right we often have a model that we inherited from the Scientific Revolution a model we get from Newton and this is a model that

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change occurs because of causal impact so the standard thing it here's this marker right I press it why did it move it moved because I pushed it it seems so obvious and non-controversial right so we give an explanation what causes it to

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be because it was pushed it was and the idea of all change and development is there's an event a and it's some how right causes event B it causes event C event a precedes B makes B happen and

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then B precedes C and B makes C happen so as Newton was engaging in the Scientific Revolution this notion of how things happen was becoming prominent in him and for the people that was going to take up the Newtonian worldview and what

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was very interesting about that right is that this seemed to solve a lot of problems and this was brought out by a famous philosopher Immanuel Kant who the lessee Oro talks about Khan was interested in why was this Newtonian

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model becoming so successful the Aristotelian model had been around for thousands of years why was Newton's model overtaking it so rapidly and what Kant said is well this does something very wonderful for us because what it does is gives us a very simple account

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of how we explain things I explained C by showing you how it was preceded by an event B that caused it and he'll be was preceded by an event a that caused it very nice linear clean and we like it

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seems it really isn't that what's happening so obvious all right and again remember again and again I've tried to show you things that seem so obvious so natural are actually historical creations you have to pay attention to how we got where we are now why does

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this matter well because this prevents a kind of vacuous explanation that can occur this prevents what are called circular explanations this line right prevents circular explanations okay so circular explanation is when you assume the very thing you're trying to

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explain in your explanation so here's a standard kind of model people often use this without realizing you know there's a triangle out here in the world the light comes in into my eye that goes through new earth pulses that goes into

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my consciousness right it's somehow projected onto an inner screen and then there's a triangle there and then there's a little man inside and he goes triangle right and we have updated versions of this like the Central Executive and such right this is called

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a homunculus eerie homunculus means a little man now when you present it like that I hope you can all see why this is obviously useless because what you should then ask is well how does the little man see the little triangle

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inside and then what you go is well inside the little man's head there's an even smaller screen with a littler man going triangle but how does he see you you see what this is it's an infinite regress because you're actually using

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vision to try and explain vision now please remember this notion of a homunculus II cuz that's what this is because well it's easy to explain I need you to understand that we fall into it very often when we try and understand

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and explain ourselves okay that is a circular explanation because you're using the very thing you're trying to explain in order to explain it Kant said this Newtonian scheme is wonderful because if you stick to its grammar of you sticks to its rules the

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cars has to be an independent event that proceeds right then you don't fall into circular explanations that's amazing now you've got some problems here what started it all right right and you know maybe God and then Khan says no and he's

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got all his arguments when I'm not going to get into that right now suffice it to say that this became a predominant way of trying to explain how things work but then Kant encountered a very significant problem and it's it's and it's not a

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coincidence and it has to do with the kinds of things we were talking about with Aristotle the kinds of things that can grow living things because Conn went out and he saw a tree right and this was very

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problematic for him because trees don't follow this model readily because he was looking at it was saying okay well what's making the tree well it's the sunlight well how does the Sun like get in through the leaves so right what's

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making the leaves well the tree so the tree makes the leaves and the leaves make the tree so the tree is making the tree and he coined the term self-organizing the tree is self-organizing now the problem with that is right living things make use of

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feedback cycles in a feedback cycle the output from the system feeds back into the system the tree makes the leaves that gathers energy that goes into the processes that makes the leaves living things are self-organizing they use feedback cycles but when I try and give

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an explanation of a feedback cycle I fall into a circular explanation I fall into a circular explanation and so Kourt came to a rather startling conclusion he came to the conclusion that there could not be a science of living things the

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biology was impossible now Cantus one is a towering intellect is like he's a gene is a philosophical genius and so you can't just sort of dismiss that K well there obviously is biology what an idiot conscious no no you're the one who needs

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to step back and think where's the mistake in the argument because if there is biology and it's true that there is and I agree that there is right and that living things use feedback cycles which they necessarily do they're

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self-organizing which they necessarily are and when I try and trace out the causation I get into circular explanation which seems like a necessary thing and circular explanations are vacuous and empty then where's caught going wrong this is what your yer ro takes up and

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she said actually for a very long time we had no way of solving this problem and so there was a huge gap between our biology and our physics now again why are we caring about this because we need

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to if we're going to understand Aristotle if we're gonna deeply understand what we mean when we talk about that we are living things that grow and develop and that growth and development is integral to our meaning and our sense of who and

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what we are our personal identity that if we cannot give an answer to this problem we cannot understand fundamentally who and what we are and what the hell we are talking about when we talk about how important growth and

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development are to us because that language will forever be separate from any kind of scientific understanding so where's this going wrong this seems just like living things our feedback cycles self-organizing they grow they develop they they make themselves right so what

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what has to go well this now before you jump with it but that's just that's just what causation is think about the fact that we know we actually know that Newton's ultimately wrong right Newton doesn't work with relativity

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Newton doesn't work at the quantum level so we know that we shouldn't be absolutely committed to this view now your ro actually makes use of an important idea from Aristotle to solve this problem so she's going to use Aristotle in order to

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explain in a new and powerful way of talking about growth and development and self-organizing processes which is known as dynamical Systems Theory so aro first of all makes a distinction between causes and constraints so to get at that

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distinction let's go back to what seems so obvious okay here's the marker I push it why did it move and immediately the Newtonian grammar just comes into place it moved because you pushed it and then you might step

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out outside of physics and say well I wanted to push it and the Dodson that's not what I'm asking because it right it could also just be that some other object bumped into this and it moved why else did it move okay so think about

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what has to also be true in order for this to move there has to be empty space relatively empty space in front of the marker this has to have a particular shape to it this has to have a particular shape to

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it those aren't events right those are conditions causes are events that make things happen constraints right aren't events they're conditions they don't make things happen they make things possible and there's a big difference between a condition and an event the Newtonian way of thinking

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has us so fixated on this so foregrounded on this that we're not seeing this anymore BC Aristotle because of his platonic view actually considers this more important why because when I talk about a structural functional organization when I talk about a pattern

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I'm talking about this this is where you will find form this is where sometimes called the formal cause this is where you'll find the structural functional organization right conditions are structurally functionally organized such that motion for this is possible now this is

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important because this is of course actuality and this is where we get potentiality when I shape possibility that's what I mean when I say something is potential I mean that possibility has been shaped by constraints so that these

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events are more possible than these events okay so we're going to do more but let's stop here and let's see how this is already starting to solve the problem of talking about the tree and it's self-organization so in a tree

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you've got a bunch of events happening biochemical events what they're doing is they're actually causing a particular right form or formula or structural functional organization now think about it why do trees grow the way they do why do they grow like this why do they

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spread out their branches why do their leaves spread out because what they're trying to do is they're trying to change the possibility of a photon hitting a chlorophyll molecule the structure of the tree shapes the possibility of the

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events so the events right cause this structure and then right they cause it but this then constrains the events so look at me I'm a living thing I've got a bunch of events happening in me and that creates a structural functional

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organization that organization creates an internal environment in which the probability of events is dramatically altered so events that have very low probability happening out there have a high probability of happening in here and events that have a very high

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probability of happening out there have a very low probability of happening in here and that's what it is to be a living thing the events right cause a structure a structural functional organization and I das a form and then that constrains

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the events now this is not a circular explanation because I'm talking about two very different kinds of things I'm talking about actuality and potentiality now it's important to realize that the discussion of possibility many of you were saying oh this is like ah so

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abstract and what does this this is actually integral to science okay science depends on there being real potential the potentiality is a real thing all right so you know here's the object moving around all right it's on the ground look at all this

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kinetic energy look at it moving look at oh it stopped did I destroy all that energy where did the kinetic energy go you can't destroy energy well the kinetic energy has become potential energy if the principle of the

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conservation of mass and energy is real then potentiality is real look at this look at look at something from Newton force equals mass times acceleration is that an event is that oh that's happening over there right now was it is

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it that does it happen every Tuesday at 4 o'clock this isn't an event this is right how things are shaped it puts a limit on what's possible in the world talking about real potentiality is not talking fictional or abstract it's a

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it's a way of talking that's integral to our current science ok we're still not done though because your ro points out that there are two kinds of constraints so our explanations can become even more refined there are constraints that make a form of event a

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type of event more possible she calls those enabling constraints right and then there are constraints that reduce the possibilities reduce the options for a system these are the selected or selective constraints now this is going to give us a very

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powerful way of understanding development let's use it the way yarrow does to talk about one of the most significant theories of development and change one of the great hallmarks of science in fact it's a foundational theory for the science of biology which

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of course is the theory of natural selection its theory of Darwinian evolution because the theory of Darwinian evolution is probably the first dynamical Systems theory in science and it is a theory that is designed precisely to account for growth

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and development obviously they are not within an individual but across speciation ok so let's take a look at the theory so what you're looking for first of all there has to be a feedback cycle for right any dynamical system

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theory because we're talking about a process that's self-organizing so what's the feedback cycle that evolution talks about of course well it's sexual reproduction where the dotes come from other goats goats are produced there's the product and then it feeds back into

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the system and becomes the producer makes more goats that make more goats that makes more goats that's why we call it reproduction it's a feedback cycle so what did Darwin realize well he realized that there were selective constraints

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operating on that there were conditions in the environment that reduced the options for organism that's right so what's those conditions scarcity of resources okay so I've been looking at some of the theories of early life and there's an

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argument by several biologists that there's no evolution for about probably eight hundred thousand years or so because there's no scarcity of resources with my first of all so life is static because there's no scarcity of resources scarcity of resources means there's

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competition scarcity of resources means not everything can live and so that reduces the options for the system okay so selection reducing options but that's not all that's going on right if that was the case everything would die evolution would end I mean you know and

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that can happen extinction events but there's something else there's enabling constraints that open up the system open up the options so look around look at me look at other people there's variation there's considerable variation variation increases the options

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so look what's going on here you've got this feedback cycle as its as it's cycling through you've got the selective conditions reducing the options that are available and then the variation opening in them up you can think of it almost

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like an accordion model the variation opens it up and then as it cycles the selective constraint pushes it down and then from there it opens up again and then it gets pushed back down and then it opens up again and gets pushed back

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down and as it cycles like this it's constantly changing in a way to be better fitted to the environment that's evolution right it's a kind of circular evolve is related to words like revolve it's this revolution with change now

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notice what I'm trying to get you to see is like first of all this is important I mean I wish I was Charles Darwin this is one of the great great theories he gets to sail around the world and what a life

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he gets to sail around the world go to some amazing places and then he comes back and makes a world-changing theory it's amazing but notice how much this Darwinian theory that is at the foundation of biology how much it is

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beholden to Aristotle how much it depends on Aristotelian ideas okay now your ro talks about this as a virtual governor so a governor is right there's any device that sort of limits what you can do on a system like if you have a

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governor on a steam-engine right it sets the range it limits the range at which you can cycle she calls it a virtual governor because it's not an actual machine it's the shaping of possibility she stops there and work

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that I've done with Leah Ferraro and Anderson Todd and Richard we think we should you should continue to finish the metaphor this is a virtual generator because it's a set of conditions that are generating off for a self-organizing system and here's

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the idea when you put a virtual governor systematically together with a virtual generator such that you are systematically regulating a feedback cycle this whole thing is a virtual engine because when you attach a governor to a generator you get a

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virtual engine so this is what a dynamical system theory is a dynamical system theory is basically a theory that lays out the virtual engine it shows you how there's a feedback cycle and why that's not just random and chaotic why

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it produces growth and development precisely because there's a systematic relationship between a set of enabling and selective constraints now all of this is very very Aristotelian so let's now take it back to Aristotle because Aristotle was interested now he he

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doesn't use this he doesn't use the dynamical systems language that's our language but this language too was directly inspired by powered by Aristotle so using it backwards to try and connect Aristotle to a current understanding I do not think is

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anachronistic so Aristotle is interested in our development he's going to add something that was missing from the Socratic notion of wisdom remember the Socratic notion was trying to overcome self-deception and then Plato adds a whole structural theory of the

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psyche to explain how we overcome self-deception how we become wise and achieve wisdom but what's missing in the account of wisdom and meaning according to Aristotle if I can use this language as what's missing is an account of

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growth and development how does wisdom develop how does meaning develop well this is where we get something that we talk about and we use as in our language but we don't I think get the depth of what Aristotle is talking about

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there's an aspect of who and what you are that's fundamentally connected to your projects of meaning and your project of wisdom you often it might have used this term or related terms but do you really know what you're talking

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about and this is the notion of your character now first of all your character isn't your personality because if we're going to use these terms strictly you're born with your personality personality is part of your just your general Constitution it's

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what's given to you by the biology and the environment that you have no choice over right but your character is that aspect of you that you can cultivate now you can either cultivate it unconsciously surreptitiously indirectly or you can cultivate it more explicitly

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but what is your character when we say that somebody's acting out of character we're usually making and this is important we're usually making either an existential or moral criticism of them when we say Peter is acting out of

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character we often will mean something like he's normally honest he's normally honest he normally has the virtue of honest notice the connection here by the way virtue and we've been talking about a virtual engine that is not happenstance when you're talking about a

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virtue you're not talking about an event you're talking about again a set of conditions that have been cultivated systematically in somebody now that points to something that we're talking about character I'm gonna suggest that what we're talking about is what is the

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virtual engine on a person's development what system of constraints have you identified with and what system of constraints have you internalized that regulate the development that's let's ask a Socratic question let's do something that Socrates would do we

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spend a lot of time on our appearance we spend a lot of time on our status how much time did you spend today on your character how much if it is the virtual engine that is regulating your growth and development

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you should be of course spending a lot of time on your character but are you now Aristotle proposed ways of trying to cultivate your character I I would argue that his method his famous method of the golden mean is a way of trying to get

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you to set up conditions to cultivate your character so for example what is courage we would all like to be more courageous they take it well Aristotle proposed that it falls it's the golden mean not the average that's a misunderstanding right because

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it's golden mean between two things of course you can be a coward you can somehow be defective by having a deficiency but you can also be foolhardy right just running into traffic doesn't make you courageous what you're always

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trying to do is you're trying to set up a system where you're paying attention when you lack the enabling constraints where you don't have enough generation and also conditions when you lack the selective constraints when you have your

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right you too broadly you have too many options that you're identifying as courage what you have to do is you have to train yourself if the cultivate your character by engaging in practices that will slowly over time create a virtual

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engine because you are look you are a self-organizing process you are the source of your actions that modify the environment that then feeds back into you and changes you and then you produce your actions and then the environment

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feeds back and changes you here's the question I ask you are you just letting that run or are you trying to rationally and reflectively cultivate your character structure a virtual engine so that that self-organizing process is growing and

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developing in an optimal fashion Aristotle takes the question and we use this we even use and we are not saying we use it trivially but we don't get the depth of what we saying what we're saying one of the most trenchant criticisms we

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can make of ourselves of other people is this listen listen to my language listen to it he's not living up living up to his potential part of what makes your life meaningful is that you have cultivated character that allows you to

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actualize your potential you've created a virtual engine that regulates your development in a way in which you grow up it's a constantly improves proof it's a confidence in which self-organization has been regulated and shaped into self-improvement so that your potential

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is fully realized so Aristotle brings in this notion then of development and growth as part of what it means to have a meaningful life he brings in a new aspect to the notion of wisdom wisdom is gaining the ability to cultivate virtues

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to create your virtual engine a set of right virtues that basically is regulating your growth and development so that you actualize your potential again think about it what are you doing to cultivate your character because Aristotle points out there's a deep form

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of foolishness that comes from a lack of character calls it a crazy which we poorly translate as weakness of the will because we're all post Protestants and we think the will is our central thing even though increasingly there's

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scientific evidence that the notion of will or will power is a defunct idea we should give it up right so what's a crazy the creature is when you know what the right thing to do is you know what the

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right thing to do is and we talked about this remember with the chocolate cake but you don't do the right thing and here's where we can sort of put Aristotle and Plato together Plato gives us the sort of story about how we have

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to structure the psyche but Aristotle gives us a much more penetrating analysis of what that structural functional organization is here's what era thought it would say why you're behaving foolishly ignorance is when you do the wrong thing because you don't

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know part of what foolishness is is when you know what the right thing is and you still do the wrong thing here's Aristotle's answer you do the wrong thing because although you have the right beliefs and notice the again the

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impotence of belief here you don't have the right you don't have sufficient character you have not trained things you've not trained skills you've not trained sensitivities you have not created a virtual engine that is regulating your development and growth

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such that you will live up to your potential you will actualize yourself and do the right thing so we're starting to see again the deep grammar of what we talk about when we talk about meaning and we notice now that there's this

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developmental aspect to it what is it to live up to your potential I mean that's a phrase we use what is it you're saying when you say that about somebody why does it matter so much so Aristotle would say let's go back to the

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analogy please always remember that Cinelli let's go back to the analogy of a man-made thing okay how is it when we know when something has been well made what makes it something a good knife right well when it has a structural

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functional organization right that allows it to fulfill its purpose no knives are for cutting if I've taken the potential in the metal and organized at the right way structure to the right way it will actually function to cut very

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well right I noticed that this is a word that's also deeply associated with our sense of what it is to have meaning so Aristotle asks well what can we do with this analogy human beings aren't made the way knives are made we're self

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making and here's here's an important idea we're self making we're not just self organizing the term that's Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson have generated to talk about this is we are autopoietic we are self making things so you're different from a tornado a

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tornado is self organizing but a tornado will move its behavior can be rapidly self-destructive it will move into conditions that destroy it your self organized in such a way that you have a structural functional organization that allows you to seek out

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conditions so the tornado does not seek out the conditions that will protect and promote its own self organization it's not self making you are self making so here's the interesting thing in and this is a brilliant idea that Eric pearl

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brings out in his book thinking being right in living things right the purpose of the thing is its structural functional organization it's a it's a self making thing so what your what your purpose your function is is to enhance

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your structural functional organization it's like oh well let's this is a problem you'll say with philosophy there's also abstract what does that mean specifically well for Aristotle it means paying attention to the fact that you are a rational reflective creature

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you're unlike a plant a plant has this but all it basically does is actualize its ability to sort of digest so let's take a look at this we have in organic matter right and then it gets a particular it's informed and that makes

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like a living thing and that living things can get a more complex structure that make them self moving that's what an animal is an animal isn't a mammal an animal is a self moving thing and then some of those self moving things have

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structural functional organizations here's in here for example that take that self moving and really actualize it remember we talked about that the word psyche where we get our word psychology mind originally meant your capacity for self moving and we claim to apply to the

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mind because the mind is that part of you that is the cell most self moving the most self making your mental thing a psychological thing but is that enough no we're getting from Socrates and Plato and Aristotle you can

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optimize that you can take charge of that you unlike other organisms you can do the actual revolution on yourself you're capable of cultivating your own character rationally and deliberately you can become right a rational thing to live up to your potential is to make

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sure you have cultivated a character that takes you as high up this hierarchy as you can go that's how you live up to your potential somebody who lived only as a plant would be a debauched failed degraded human being somebody that lived

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only as an animal unreflective Lee impulsively would be a debauched failed human being but the argument continues you say of course of course but all the way up here you must cultivate your character so that you as much as possible actualize

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your potential for being a rational moral human being that's the hallmark of for Aristotle you become a good person if you actualize if you inform your being with a virtual engine that really realizes those things that are distinctive of our humanity what makes

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us different from the plants the animals the other creatures that just have Minds what makes us different we understand that we have always and we still do understand understand ourselves in contrast to the other things we find around ourselves

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how are why am I more valuable than this table what is it why do i matter more because there are things that can be found in rational beings things that we find intrinsically valuable and important that cannot be finding in

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merely mental things and all the way down what are those characteristics that are unique to us well here's where Aristotle gives the actual revolution answer your capacity for overcoming self-deception your capacity for cultivating your character for realizing wisdom and for enhancing the structure

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of your psyche and your contact with reality that's what rational means this sounds if I hadn't said all this what I'm going to say now it sound trite your purpose is to become as fully human as possible how are you cultivating your character

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to do so this is what era stalls going to ask you again and again how much of your life is dedicated to creating a virtual engine that realizes your rational capacities those things that make you most human in contrast to all

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the other things around you so Aristotle has developed this very impressive theory of wisdom character growth and development one of the things we could use today is to go back and make use of this so we can reanimate rejuvenate

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these terms that have become tired and superficial we have no alternative terms to for describing our lives for the meaning in our life we talk about purpose and living up to our potential and growth and development and which

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blahblah because we don't have any depth to these terms one of the things we can use Aristotle to do is to go back and deepen what those terms mean for us rejuvenate what they mean for us but I

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want to continue on and to talk about this development that was occurring in the actual revolution and I want to talk about how Aristotle helped further the historical process by which he contributed to our cultural grammar of what it is when we're talking about

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meaning purpose wisdom self transcendence and so what I want to look at next time when we're together is I want to look at Aristotle's account of a worldview and what a worldview is and why it matters so deeply to our self

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understanding and our existential meaning thank you very much for your time [Music] you [Music] you you

Topics:AristotlePlatomeaning crisiswisdomactualitypotentialityeidosself-organizationcognitive scienceAlicia Juarrero

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