Ep. 26 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Cognitive Science

In this episode of "Awakening From The Meaning Crisis," Dr. John Vervaeke discusses the aftermath of pseudo-religious ideologies and the impact of historical events like World War I on the meaning crisis. He argues against solving the crisis through political clashes and proposes a scientific understanding of the "meaning machinery" via cognitive science. Dr. Vervaeke emphasizes the importance of addressing fragmentation and equivocation in our understanding of the mind, advocating for a philosophically astute integration of different disciplines within cognitive science. He explores various approaches to cognitive science, ultimately favoring synoptic integration, which bridges disciplines to address ignorance and causal relationships between levels of reality. He introduces the concept of plausibility, balancing multi-aptness with trustworthiness to create profound constructs, and defines cognitive science as the pursuit of profound synoptic integration to combat equivocation, fragmentation, and ignorance related to the mind. The episode concludes by framing intelligence as a general problem-solving capacity and setting the stage for analyzing problem-solving through the lens of initial states, goal states, operators, and path constraints.