A Conversation Between Philip Ball and David Bentley Hart

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3 ай бұрын

I spoke recently with Philip Ball, the prolific and extremely gifted writer on the sciences, principally about his recent Book How Life Works, but with occasional oblique references to other of his books, such as The Book of Minds and Beyond Weird. We discussed many things: a possible shift of paradigms in the life-sciences, Neo-Darwinian orthodoxy, cognitive systems in organisms, xenobots, batrachian epithelial cells, medicine--and even a little metaphysics.

Пікірлер: 41

@tripp8833 3 ай бұрын

I understood 0.3% of this conversation and still enjoyed it

@leavesinthewind7441 3 ай бұрын

Well, that was the best 0.3%.

@MikeFuller-ok6ok 3 ай бұрын

As light relief he wrote about the elements and alchemy! I couldn't even write a page about how levers work!!

@vanlaer101 3 ай бұрын

A terrific discussion. The question of agency at the molecular level is fascinating.

@cuddywifter8386 2 ай бұрын

This conversation reminded me of a quote from neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield 'Where is the subject, and where is the object, if you are operating on your own brain?' 🧠

@watermelonmanied 3 ай бұрын

Such a lovely background behind DBH. I'm going to guess Hiroshige.

@leavesinthewind7441 3 ай бұрын

Oh, dear me, not Hiroshige. (Please excuse my strong language there.) If you look at it, you'll see that it's not the sort of ukiyo-e woodblock printing of the age of Hokusai and Hiroshige. It's a picture called "Spring at a Hot Spring” by Yoshida Hiroshi, and is in the Shin-hanga style of woodblock printing; that was a style influenced by Western oil painting, which used dryer, thicker paper successively overlain with multiple layers of printing. Yoshida lived from 1876 to 1950 and was one of the great figures in both the recovery and the further development of the art of woodblock prints.

@watermelonmanied 3 ай бұрын

Oh I see. The tree branch reaching over in the foreground lead me to guess that it might be. Very nice in any case.@@leavesinthewind7441

@johnfrancis6360 2 ай бұрын

These two super brilliant persons are such a gift!

@colingallagher1648 3 ай бұрын

thanks for all of theses

@SchepersP10 Ай бұрын

56:20 I'd love to hear your thoughts on Sapolsky in more detail. I read his book, and found it quite unconvincing, but every time I try to explain why to one of his fanboys, they always seem to assume that I disagree because of emotional reasons, when I genuinely think there are some serious intellectual problems with Sapolsky's arguments.

@johnfrancis6360 2 ай бұрын

The locus of causation and agency were definite áreas that would be wonderful for these geniuses to explore.

@andrew_blank 2 ай бұрын

After watching this I grabbed a copy of Beyond Weird. Dr. Hart is correct that Dr. Ball is an excellent communicator of these concepts (not that that was ever in doubt). First time I’ve read someone who doesn’t continue to impose classical or intuitive images onto my mind as a way to “get” quantum mechanics, but instead is creating space between and clear distinctions around what it means to say that measurements can not tell us about the states of quantum objects. Even still, it’s interesting how I can’t help but continue trying to come up with images that make sense of it - fascinating and at the same time frustrating (but perhaps in a necessary way).

@LateMarch3 3 ай бұрын

Insightful talk. Have you written about Sapolsky? Of late, he’s been paraded around popular magazines and podcasts as presenting “science’s” answer to the question of free will (that we unquestionably don’t have it). I’d love to see someone push back on the specific claims he is making.

@leavesinthewind7441 3 ай бұрын

When I have a chance, I may. But a list of his basic logical errors would probably be longer than the book itself. It's an absolute disaster. And, as Philip says, even the science is very shady in many places.

@gor764 3 ай бұрын

@@leavesinthewind7441While I'd love to see you tear into his pop scientific claims, I can save you the time--from what I've seen, his case against free will is analogous to analyzing a game of billiards by examining the material constituents of the balls and mapping the physics behind the motion of each one, while fully ignoring that there are thinking agents determining their motion. That is, he arrives at the conclusion that there is no free will, by deliberately ignoring voliontal agency from the outset insofar as it does not neatly feet into bare material structures which, to him, are the pure fundament of reality.

@gor764 3 ай бұрын

@@leavesinthewind7441he essentially analyzes a game of billiards via its atomic structure and the physics behind the ball movement, while completely disregarding the fact that volitional agents are the ones determining the motion. This is what every materialist determinist does but on a cosmic level.

@ElPresidenteAndycito 2 ай бұрын

@@gor764great image describing the crux of the problem for materialist determinists.

@pamarks 3 ай бұрын

I'm more convinced every day that curriculum centering the history of ideas and the detailing of paradigm shifts should be the primary way of doing public education. His books would have been infinitely better than the shitty textbooks i learned from in school. If I get the opportunity to homeschool my son, I'll be assigning his books.

@doug_sponsler 2 ай бұрын

Just noticed that three of Ball's bookshelves are keyboards :)

@jonyspinoza3310 3 ай бұрын

🌞

@samrowbotham8914 3 ай бұрын

I have a couple of Philip's books and they are well written. The problem I have is in biomedicine and other disciplines such as psychiatry the scientific method is not being followed and certain scientists and philosophers have pointed this out.

@auggiemarsh8682 3 ай бұрын

Hmmm. I question the comprehensive use of the scientific method when dealing with the psyche. Please enlighten me.

@samrowbotham8914 3 ай бұрын

@@auggiemarsh8682 Do see if you can find the documentary Run from the Cure it is very enlightening.

@thebasis1704 3 ай бұрын

Interesting. Do you have any reading recommendations on how one might follow the scientific method in, say, psychiatry?

@samrowbotham8914 3 ай бұрын

@@thebasis1704 According to the psychiatrists in the documentary I mentioned earlier, psychiatry is a pseudoscience because there is no test for mental illness. If they have not worked out how to apply the scientific method to psychiatry then I would be unable to do so. My training is in Law.

@Crime_Mime 2 ай бұрын

What scientific method in particular? I think I'm not mistaken in saying that there are multiple different "scientific methods" as different fields require different approaches (even within the hard sciences). Has there ever been one definitive "scientific method"?

@harlanmueller7499 3 ай бұрын

Perhaps I misspoke. The agency he proposes transcends nature, but I think it’s argument would apply either way, to something transcendent or something imminent in the natural order.

@leavesinthewind7441 3 ай бұрын

Again, he imagines that agency as one that explains what looks like mechanical complexity in a material order that he believes is not capable of order in se. He's right about the presence of rational agency, but seeing the question is not the same thing as understanding its logical contents. It still constitutes a dualism, even if that dualism is in some sense "immanent." And a dualism is always a failed solution.

@harlanmueller7499 3 ай бұрын

Yes, I would agree with that. I favor a non-.dual Solution myself, having been employed by Indian thought. But I think a solution still awaits us. We have traditional models on the one hand, and we have contemporary scientific models on the other integrating. These may take some time and effort beyond my 78 year old brain.

@SamuelDean-lz5gf 2 ай бұрын

Hello Mr Bentley-Hart, I was wondering on how existential a threat you think Chat-GPT combined with cooperate capitalism is? Also similarly what do you think of the tech-bro’s claim to be able to make super human intelligence. Thanks !

@leavesinthewind7441 2 ай бұрын

In a comment box? I have a book coming out in the fall that you might want to read.

@jasonegeland1446 2 ай бұрын

Wish I'd had the ability this whole time to communicate with you in a better fashion than I have previously. I could make the argument that God predestined our conversations, but many would then view me either as a heretic or as someone who wants to rock the authoritarian boat. Hopefully, I'm neither of the two possibilities. I get it, though. I'm not fond of titles, just as many others have told me, but being a fellow Universalist matters to me, in the general idea of Christ saving all, so the end result means the most for myself. I'd like to interview you at some point, even though, I'm fairly overwhelmed by the thought of it. I do hope and believe in a much better world and for us eventually, in that, I think we will ultimately understand one another without all the heartache, confusion, and self deprecating state of our human condition. Perfection will never be a full reality, but I view that as a perk rather than not. If you've gotten this far, then I must be saying something important (dependent upon who you speak to, of course)!

@wilsontrygg7928 Ай бұрын

Promo*SM 🍀

@harlanmueller7499 3 ай бұрын

My guess is that you objected to the theology of someone like Stephen Meyer, rather than to his scientific argument, that it requires intelligence to explain evolutionary developments of DNA. I don’t share his religious beliefs myself, but I do think he makes a cogent argument for the presence, in the natural world of some sort of purposeful, intelligent agency.

@leavesinthewind7441 3 ай бұрын

The basic insight is right, but the arguments as well as their metaphysical premises are all mechanistic, which leaves a vast metaphysical lacuna in the picture.

@pamarks 3 ай бұрын

@@leavesinthewind7441Couldn't agree more. Even Aquinas, the daddy of scholasticism, recognized that the argument from the appearance of natural teleology isn't mechanistic.