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Philosophical ideas around sacredness and spirituality

7 min read

From: jimruttshow8596

This article explores various philosophical concepts related to sacredness, spirituality, and the human search for meaning, drawing from a conversation with John Vervaeke.

The Nature of Relevance and its Connection to Spirituality

Relevance is fundamentally a process, not an entity with a fixed essence [02:20:00]. This idea is rooted in Wittgenstein’s observation that many categories, like “game,” lack an Aristotelian essence (a set of necessary and sufficient conditions shared by all members) [02:33:00]. While some scientific categories, like “gold,” do have essences (properties that generalize with systematic import) [03:07:07], relevance does not [06:17:00].

Instead, relevance is similar to Darwinian “fittedness” or “fitness” [07:41:00]. Just as there’s no single definition of what makes an organism “fit” (it could be big, small, fast, slow, complex, or simple) [07:58:00], there’s no essence to relevance [08:09:00]. Darwin proposed a universal process, natural selection, by which fittedness is continually redefined [08:47:00]. Similarly, relevance realization is a dynamic, evolving process, constantly redefining what is relevant without a fixed perfection or final definition [09:00:00]. It’s a key tool for cognition in a “combinatorically explosive and constantly changing world” [09:35:00].

Sacredness as Inexhaustibility

The concept of sacredness can be understood as the “inexhaustibility of our reality” [10:03:00]. This builds on the idea of relevance realization and its deep connection to spirituality [10:17:00]. In spiritual experiences, what is felt as sacredness is a profound enhancement of one’s “relevance realization connectedness” – how one is connected to oneself, others, and the world [10:44:00].

Given that there’s no perfection or finality to this cognitive fittedness, sacredness isn’t found in a static, perfect state [11:17:00]. Instead, it’s experienced as an ongoing process of discovery and “self-transcendence” [12:07:00]. This aligns with the Neoplatonic Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition’s notion of epictasis, where the sacred is the “ongoing affordance of our continual self-transcendence” [11:55:00]. The flow experience, for instance, is characterized by an “ongoing sense of discovery of ever deeping connectedness” [12:36:00].

An object or relationship that affords this “ongoing fount of new intelligibility” will be experienced as more meaningful, transformative, and spiritually deep [13:11:00]. This “inexhaustibleness” is key to understanding the experience of sacredness, distinguishing it from trivial experiences that can be easily “finished out” [13:51:00].

The Role of Symbols and Cultural Meaning

Symbols, in a rich, literary sense (beyond Peirce’s icon, index, symbol) [14:32:00], are “culturally and cognitively indispensable” [15:05:05]. This means a symbol can be crucial for an individual’s or culture’s cognitive agency, similar to how language is indispensable for a monolingual person [15:49:00]. However, indispensable does not mean “metaphysically necessary” [16:40:00]. Just because English is indispensable to one person’s cognition doesn’t mean all cognitive agents must speak English [16:21:00].

This distinction is crucial: while people may feel they “can’t live without” certain symbols, validating their personal experience [17:11:00], it does not license the conclusion that “everybody needs this” [17:22:00]. Conflating cultural indispensability with metaphysical necessity is a common pitfall [17:27:00], leading to the loading of “metaphysical claptrap” onto useful cultural artifacts, as seen in the evolution of Buddhism after Gautama [18:35:00].

The Concept of Religio and Perennial Problems

Religio is defined as “the realization… of the fundamental connectedness fittedness that is at the core of our cognitive agency” [20:50:00]. This realization encompasses connectedness to oneself (as autopoietic beings), to others (as sociocultural beings), and to the world (as dynamically evolving cognitive systems) [22:01:00]. It’s a positive, motivationally and functionally beneficial experience [21:44:00].

Religio is central to addressing what are called “perennial problems” [22:20:00]. These are inherent vulnerabilities in human cognition that lead to self-deceptive and self-destructive behavior [22:41:00]. Examples include:

  • Modal confusion: Confusing the “being mode” (experiential presence) and the “having mode” (possessing and controlling) [22:59:00].
  • Absurdity: The clash between cosmic and local perspectives, where the former can undermine the latter [23:10:00].
  • Alienation: The tension between individuation and participation in groups [23:31:00].
  • Parasitic processing: Self-deceptive and self-destructive patterns of thought and behavior [23:40:00].

These problems can lead to feelings of despair and disconnectedness, making reality seem “thin and vaporous” [24:53:00]. Religio helps us escape these problems by fostering connectedness and allowing our inherent relevance realization to be guided in healthy ways [25:06:00].

The “Religion of No Religion”

The “religion of no religion” (RNR) is a proposed framework that seeks to address the meaning crisis without relying on outdated “two-worlds mythologies” or traditional religious doctrines [01:05:57]. It aims for a proper theoretical integration of cognitive science and a “reverse engineering of enlightenment” [01:06:00].

The RNR proposes to:

  • Exact from the past: Respectfully draw on effective practices and wisdom from existing philosophical and religious traditions, while leaving behind their “decadent two-worlds mythologies and metaphysics” [01:06:15].
  • Integrate with science: Be compatible with a scientific “one-world worldview,” acknowledging the multi-level complexity of reality [01:07:31].
  • Cultivate wisdom: Offer a coherent and collective way to cultivate wisdom, ameliorate foolishness, and afford flourishing, especially for those who find traditional religions irrelevant [01:08:15].

Credo, Mythos, and Religio

The RNR emphasizes a dynamic relationship between three core elements:

  1. Religio: The core experience of connectedness and cognitive fittedness [01:00:00].
  2. Credo: The use of propositions and conceptual frameworks to distinguish genuine transformation from madness or self-deception, akin to “setting the criterion” in signal detection theory [01:11:00]. Any particular credo is not metaphysically necessary, and should constantly evolve and self-correct to better serve religio [01:12:39]. The problem with traditional religions is often “creedal tyranny,” where belief becomes central and rigid [01:12:47].
  3. Mythos: The use of rich symbols, stories, rituals, and celebrations to imaginally augment and enhance the realization of religio [01:16:18]. Mythos helps align different kinds of knowing [01:17:38]. Critically, mythos should serve religio and be wary of merging with a rigid credo [01:18:37].

The RNR envisions a constant feedback loop: religio serves as an “experiment in applied credo,” providing mechanisms for adjusting credo to make religio better [01:15:40]. This mirrors the self-correcting nature of science and democracy [01:14:41].

Reverse Engineering Enlightenment and Cultivating Wisdom

Instead of relying on historical or cross-cultural claims of enlightenment, Vervaeke proposes “reverse engineering enlightenment” [01:00:00]. This means setting the goal as “overcoming the perennial problems and enhancing religio in a way that’s wise and transformatively effective” [00:50:46]. Then, using cognitive science, one can reliably and systematically ameliorate problems and foster flourishing [00:51:01]. This approach aims to make enlightenment “ultimately realizable by human beings in a lifetime” [00:52:57], stripping away mystique and metaphysical claims that render it unattainable for most [00:51:52].

Ecologies of Psychotechnologies

A core component of this reverse engineering is cultivating “ecologies of psychotechnologies” [01:29:46]. These are dynamical systems of practices that leverage complementary strengths and weaknesses through “opponent processing” to achieve massive recursive self-correction [01:29:56]. Examples of psychotechnologies include:

The goal is to intentionally craft and coordinate these practices within communities to ameliorate foolishness and enhance flourishing [01:32:51]. This also connects to cyber technologies and raises a moral obligation to guide their use towards wisdom, counteracting “bad faith actors” who might use them for nefarious purposes, such as creating emotionless soldiers [01:33:36].

Wisdom, Rationality, and Virtue

The proper use of psychotechnologies requires the development of wisdom and “meta-virtue” [01:35:37]. While intelligence (g) may be relatively fixed, rationality is highly malleable [01:42:42]. Intelligence is a necessary but not sufficient condition for rationality [01:43:21].

Wisdom is crucial for making people “more insightfully rational and more rationally insightful in a systematic and systemic way” [01:37:14]. This includes:

  • Insight: The “systematic seeing through illusion and into reality” [01:38:21].
  • Active Open-mindedness: A cognitive style that involves deliberately seeking evidence to disconfirm one’s own propositions, and actively counteracting cognitive biases [01:45:56]. A key practice is “steel manning” an opponent’s argument – formulating it as strongly as possible, even if one disagrees, and then trying to move towards that position with integrity [01:47:36]. This fosters “dialogical movement” and “real thinking,” leading to shared insights neither party could have reached alone [01:51:10].
  • Epistemic Humility: Acknowledging the vastness of one’s own ignorance, even about seemingly simple objects [01:46:53].
  • Virtues in Science: Scientists need intellectual virtues like balancing humility with courage, being open to self-correction while boldly proposing hypotheses [01:39:11].

By cultivating these aspects, humanity can pursue a form of spirituality that is deeply respectable, transformatively effective, and continuously evolving in alignment with scientific understanding [01:09:29].

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