My best recent talk. 

I think this video should be added to the 'Awakening from the meaning crisis...' playlist as Episode 0: Overview. I'm around 30 videos into the series and this talk really solidified some concepts. Thanks so much. Profoundly appreciative of your time, energy, and wisdom.

1:00 Topics of the talk: Movement and mindfulness and how their work together afford transcendence. 4:30 Mindfulness, Embodiment and 4E Cognitive Science. 5:50 Key Idea of embodiment and Embodied cognition. 11:45 Old standards of cognition, difference of modern view. Enaction of cognition. 15:54 Recap. Encoupling of mind, body and the world. Movement is central to mind and cognition. 19:55 Modes of knowing. Propositional Knowing. (what is truth) 21:52 Procedural knowing. (how to do) 23:00 Perspectival knowing. (what it's like to be there, optimal grip on reality). Enacted/embedded on a perspective. 26:03 Participatory knowing. (Being an agent on the arena.) Affordance, belonging to environment. 29:58 Full pyramid of knowing. (recap) Inverted order of knowing. 32:38 Mindfulness as metaperspectival awareness. 35:08 Mindfulness as education in appreciating insight. 41:04 Dangers of participatory knowing. Reciprocal narrowing of cognition. 44:49 Reciprocal opening and love. What love actually is? Participatory movement and metanoia. 47:09 Self-conscious agency and meaning in life. What MATTERS for you? 49:48 Belonging. Agape. 51:50 Flow Phenomenon. At-one-ment. Existential insight. 56:28 QUESTIONS PART: 1:00:20 How to answer to meaning crisis? 1:01:41 What are the affordances? 1:04:41 How to live in a society where so much stuff is bad/wrong? (having/being mode) 1:11:14 Being in the world but not of the world. 1:14:44 What approach is better, Top-down or bottom-up? 1:18:43 What is the role of intuition/introspection during the flow? (intuition and bias) 1:26:02 Extended (networked) cognition.

My life has been so profoundly and magnificently improved by the work and practices of John Vervaeke that I find every one of his talks fortifying and brilliant... but this talk was indeed especially good... Thank you for showing me how to find meaning in my life... "continuity of practice is more important than quantity..."

John is the best contemporary phenomenologist I have found on youtube.

FIRE, ELECTRIFYING. So rich. Thank you

This was stunningly clear and concise John, thank you!

A brilliant video on the core ideas undergirding current cognitive science. To have it explicated by a theorist and practicioner in this manner is invaluable to anyone interested in this. Thanks.

Speaking of Flow... John was on freaking fire here. Amazing.

I'm a total groupie, he is the best. Totally agree, life-changing. Has transformed my work completely. I find the lucidity and structure of the thinking absolutely wondrous.

It feels like I've arrived early to a beautiful party.

Dr. Vervaeke, would you please offer voices with Vervaeke as a podcast? I’m trying to seriously cut back on my youtube usage, but don’t want to miss your conversations. In any case, thank you.

This was wonderful thank you both ❤️

The tumblers are starting fall in place, finally. 20 minutes in and for the first time, I've been watching JV and all the great minds he's conversed with for over 3 years, I've understood everything said. Maybe the longest stretch of time on these videos I didn't have to pause, ponder, grab pencil and paper for sketchs and/or google. Now that I've set myself up for utter confusion for the remainder I digress. (seriously, this is cool stuff)

After Watching it again and again. John Really pulled a Rock & Roll "Compact" Performance on bringing us up to speed on the meaning crisis, 4 E Cognitive science, Mindfulness and Insight. 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏🙌🙌🙏👍. Well done... I feel Baptized after watching this hehehe... (Pun intended).

This is great. What a succinct explainer on some of his most salient ideas.

"My best recent talk. " - I can tell from the thumbnail itself that this will be good :)

Jheez this better be accepted in full as 100% science fact because I dig it man

Hegel and Nietzsche salute you.

Random Book recommendation :From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species and Evolution by Etienne Gilson. I have always get the feeling with John that he treats Aristoteles as the lesser Platon. Like he doesnt appreciate Aristoteles the same way he loves Platon. And i think it´s unfortunate because even Cicero called Aristoteles" A river of flowing gold" compared to Platons "River of flowing silver " Just like the father of every spirtual person in the west is Platon. So is the father of every scientific minded person in the west Aristoteles.

Wow! Keep up the great , meaningful and needed discussion. Thank you :)

This is amazing... thank you...

25:09 - Optimal Grip/Participatory Knowing 28:33 - affordance of graspability 29:59 - shadow knowledge

The hands brought together at the stream were humanity's first "Cup". The drinking cup was an instrument created in order to keep the hands dry and to carry water away from the stream.

In the beginning of the talk I couldn't stop thinking about how our "virtual entities" like 'money in capitalism' , is doing these adaptive self replicating moves, which is an old thought, right both for me and collectively. I decided to jot it down here because I don't know where to put it yet. I see it simply as an expression of our mass embodiment and our relationships to ourselves, nature, each other, and society. Calling something a virtual entity becomes a strange abstraction when looking at it from an embedded cognition perspective, and it kind of gives the agency to that entity/that meme rather than to the individuals/system reproducing it. I have this imagination that this type of shift towards EC, and creating a language for it, is super important in order to move our agency into our own life, also as big groups in movement. I am very much desiring to be able to talk about and move with group/society as intelligent swarming that can be conscious and constructive rather than just reactive. Lots of old thoughts trying to find a way still.

Ilya prigogine won the nobel prize in chemistry for his work on dissapative structures I love your comparison of a paramecium and a tornado The paramecium seeks the conditions for its continued survival

As comprehensively in depth and insightful as this is, I believe the goal for the ability of these revolutions to solve the meaning crises is limited in the same way as the rest of philosophy and ultimately not possible. I don't see how the understanding and participation at all levels of knowing that you define are self sustaining in providing motivation of there pursuit without there basis in a higher purpose. Here it is similar to the sense of lacking embodiment, to borrow in your use of the concept.

I prefer to say "create you own culture" which is what Terrence McKenna advocates. And if you create a better culture people will follow...although they shouldn't...because they should create their own culture aswell. It's paradoxical but works for me.

I've barely read about psychology, but did read something by Robert W. White just recently. Having read so little I felt surprised by how much overlap there was between this talk and his book.

Thanks Rafe and John .

Does anyone know the music at the beginning???? Who is it? It is sooooooooo soothing!

This talk is a tour de force, the very embodiment of an excellent hormany between four kinds of knowing -- propositional, procedural, perspectival and participatory.

Really need to have a talk with ken wheeler!

The problem here is the mixing up of descriptive words and the mechanical words. It is from mechanical which we understand temporary until another mechanism is uncovered. Descriptive words are like the software programs of a computer. Mechanical words are the machine codes for running the computer. We want to increase the mechanical abilities of the computer: making it operate faster, hold more memories, have more functions, etc.! Descriptive word is the bacteria paramecium adaptive seeking for survival: searching for food. Mechanical word is the bacteria drawn to chemical that fuels the bacteria. Descriptive is: knowing consciousness by being conscious. Mechanical is: the vibrations from sensory inputs automatically stimulates neurons and different vibrations (from the environment outside the neurons) will stimulate different neurons; the stimulated neurons will have been physically changed (temporary or long-term depending on number of times being stimulated: creating memory); difference of speed between incoming inputs and stimulated neurons is the feedback loop if the system got it right or wrong (more or less optimal grip). I could continue into the mechanism for consciousness, but I wish not to bore the reader any further.

I was listening to a lecture on Daoism and the concept of De before this. It seems some of what's said here also relates to the Daoist notion of 'De', which, simply put, is the intrinsic character or virtue of something. Virtue not in a moral sense but in the sense of a tool or any living thing fulfilling its promise and doing what it's made for. Of course, the 'De' of something can extend beyond the object's characteristics and functionality (for example, readymade's where a found object, when put into a different context, becomes an art piece).

Is the salient difference between mindfulness and phenomenology that the former is participatory and the latter, perspectival? How might the two disciplines complement each other?

I mean the music from the meaning crisis videos!

Someone please fill me in on one thing. I have heard you mention in several different videos, including this one, "communities" of people engaging in a ecology of practices, and so forth. Are there physical communities being brought into existence where people are living a certain type of lifestyle (for example the Amish)? Or are you just using "community" in the sense of like, people who share a set of ideas gathering to discuss them?

Hey John! Do you still consider it as your best talk ? ;) (Interested to see how your thoughts evolved)

It should always take a while to get you to transcendence. [Boom]

Thank you John and Rafe. Rafe how can I get involved with your online community? What is the appropriate channel? Many thanks from Cornwall, UK. Charlie

You see what you aim at-Jordan Peterson.

Amazing

John, what do you think about the TV show the Twilight Zone?

Look at everyting and judge for yourself what is meaningful.

8:33 cognition is the ability to adaptively seek the conditions that are needed for existence in the world i dont know if this is out of context but what about suicide and something like bugchasing (people actively chase HIV + people to infect them)

Theta frequency.