“Knowledge is about overcoming ignorance. Wisdom is about overcoming foolishness.”
— Professor John Vervaeke
John Vervaeke ( @vervaeke_john ) is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. He currently teaches courses on thinking and reasoning with an emphasis on cognitive development, intelligence, rationality, mindfulness, and the psychology of wisdom.
Vervaeke is the director of UToronto’s Consciousness and Wisdom Studies Laboratory and its Cognitive Science program, where he teaches Introduction to Cognitive Science and The Cognitive Science of Consciousness, emphasizing the 4E model, which contends that cognition and consciousness are embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended beyond the brain.
Vervaeke has taught courses on Buddhism and Cognitive Science in the Buddhism, Psychology, and Mental Health program for 15 years. He is the author and presenter of the YouTube series “ Awakening from the Meaning Crisis ” and his brand new series, “ After Socrates .”
Please enjoy!
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Overcast , Podcast Addict , Pocket Casts , Castbox , Google Podcasts , Stitcher , Amazon Music , or on your favorite podcast platform . You can watch the interview on YouTube here .
Brought to you by Wealthfront high-yield savings account, Basecamp refreshingly simple project management, and Eight Sleep’s Pod Cover sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating.
The transcript of this episode can be found here . Transcripts of all episodes can be found here .
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Overcast
#657: Professor John Vervaeke — How to Build a Life of Wisdom, Flow, and Contemplation
This episode is brought to you by Basecamp ! Basecamp combines everything you need to manage your team and projects into one simple platform. Optimize your business with Basecamp and cut your inboxes and calendars in half. You can save time and money. Right now, Basecamp is offering a free 30-day trial. Plus, listeners of The Tim Ferriss Show get an exclusive discount : get 10% off your first year’s annual subscription when you sign up at Basecamp.com/Tim .
This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep ! Eight Sleep’s Pod Cover is the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature . It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced (and user-friendly) solution on the market. Simply add the Pod Cover to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different temperature. Go to EightSleep.com/Tim and save $250 on the Eight Sleep Pod Cover. Eight Sleep currently ships within the USA, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia.
This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront ! Wealthfront is an app that helps you save and invest your money. Right now, you can earn 4.05% APY—that’s the Annual Percentage Yield—with the Wealthfront Cash Account . That’s more than twelve times more interest than if you left your money in a savings account at the average bank, according to FDIC.gov.
It takes just a few minutes to sign up, and then you’ll immediately start earning 4.05% interest on your savings. And when you open an account today, you’ll get an extra fifty-dollar bonus with a deposit of five hundred dollars or more. Visit Wealthfront.com/Tim to get started.
Want to hear another interview that ponders the nature of our relationship with reality? Have a listen to my conversation with Professor Donald Hoffman here , in which we discuss the science of consciousness, how perception may influence the physical world, the holographic model of the universe, panpsychism (and influential panpsychists), cosmological polytope, the use of hallucinogenic drugs to tap into deeper reality and interact with conscious agents, QBism, the probability of zero that humans evolved to see reality in full, and much more wild stuff .
#585: Professor Donald Hoffman — The Case Against Reality, Beyond Spacetime, Rethinking Death, Panpsychism, QBism, and More
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments .
SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…
SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE
Connect with John Vervaeke :
Website | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
After Socrates | John Vervaeke
Awakening from the Meaning Crisis | John Vervaeke
Consciousness and Wisdom Studies Lab (CWSL) | University of Toronto
John Vervaeke’s Brilliant 4P/3R Metatheory of Cognition | Psychology Today
John Vervaeke Summarising 4P (Clip) | Rebel Wisdom with Jonathan Rowson
Affordance Theory (Gibson) | Learning Theories
Dualism | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
How Semantic Memory Works | Simply Psychology
Flow (Psychology) | Wikipedia
Flow, Metaphor, and the Axial Revolution | Awakening from the Meaning Crisis #2
Daoism | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
T’ai Chi Ch’uan Philosophy | Wikipedia
Qigong | Wikipedia
Shiatsu | Wikipedia
Searching for Bobby Fischer: The Father of a Prodigy Observes the World of Chess by Fred Waitzkin | Amazon
Searching For Bobby Fischer | Prime Video
Josh Waitzkin: 2004 Tai Chi World Cup Highlights | YouTube
Josh Waitzkin — How to Cram 2 Months of Learning into 1 Day | The Tim Ferriss Show #375
Socrates, The Monstrous | After Socrates #2
Case Studies | Harvard Business Review
Flow as Spontaneous Thought: Insight and Implicit Learning | The Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought
Jazz Improvisation Made Simple: A Step-By-Step Guide
Christian Philosophy and Theology | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny | Amazon
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse | Amazon
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies | Amazon
Tai Chi and Qi: A Deep Dive by John Vervaeke | TaiChiUSA
The Buddha and “Mindfulness” | Awakening from the Meaning Crisis #8
Ecology of Practices | After Socrates #10a
Ecology of Practices | After Socrates #10b
Vipassana Meditation | Dhamma.org
Brief Instructions for Loving-Kindness Meditation | Metta Institute
Sharon Salzberg, World-Renowned Meditation Teacher | The Tim Ferriss Show #277
Rapture | Wikipedia
What Is the “Unforgivable Sin?” | NIV Bible
Socrates and the Quest for Wisdom | Awakening from the Meaning Crisis #4
Platonism and the Platonic Tradition | Encyclopedia.com
The Axial Age: When the Greatest Minds Walked the Earth | Big Think
Buddhism and Parasitic Processing | Awakening from the Meaning Crisis #13
Parasitic Processing — The Cognitive Science of Overthinking | Dismantled Mind
No Free Lunch Theorem | Wikipedia
Newell, Simon, and Shaw Develop the First Artificial Intelligence Program | History of Information
Bounded Rationality | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
One of These Things | Sesame Street
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi | Amazon
Educating Intuition by Robin M. Hogarth | Amazon
Implicit Learning and Tacit Knowledge | Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Pattern Recognition | C8 Sciences
Stoicism Resources and Recommendations | Tim Ferriss
List of Cognitive Biases and Heuristics | The Decision Lab
Lectio Divina: A Beginner’s Guide | Busted Halo
Contemplation vs. Meditation (What’s the Difference?) | Mindfulness Box
Meditation and Contemplation with Dr. John Vervaeke | Consciousness & Conscience
Philosophical Fellowship: Demonstration of the Practice | Voices with Vervaeke
Positivity: Groundbreaking Research to Release Your Inner Optimist and Thrive by Barbara Fredrickson | Amazon
Christianity and Agape | Awakening from the Meaning Crisis #16
What is the Circling Method? | The Circling Institute
Contemplating in Togetherness from Our Inner Depth | Deep Philosophy
Omnipresence | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Ethics: With the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and Selected Letters by Baruch Spinoza | Amazon
Euclid’s Elements (The Thirteen Books) by Euclid | Amazon
Disbelieve It or Not, Ancient History Suggests That Atheism Is as Natural to Humans as Religion | University of Cambridge
The Religion of No Religion | Awakening from the Meaning Crisis #39
Dialectic into Dialogos and the Pragmatics of No-thingness in a Time of Crisis | Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture
Dialectic into Dia-logos | After Socrates #3
The Symbol, Sacredness, and the Sacred | Awakening from the Meaning Crisis #35
Plato and the Cave | Awakening from the Meaning Crisis #5
Religio/Perennial Problems/Reverse Eng. Enlightenment | Awakening from the Meaning Crisis #36
The Summa Theologiæ of St. Thomas Aquinas | New Advent
What Is Sufism? | Institute for Global Change
Corbin and the Divine Double | Awakening from the Meaning Crisis #48
What is Poiesis? | Poiesis
Embodiment and Auto Poiesis (Clip) | John Vervaeke
Plotinus and Neoplatonism | Awakening from the Meaning Crisis #18
Vedanta | Wikipedia
The Lost Way to the Good: Dionysian Platonism, Shin Buddhism, and the Shared Quest to Reconnect a Divided World by Thomas Plant | Amazon
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry | Amazon
Lonesome Dove | Prime Video
John Vervaeke: The Book That Changed My Life | Rebel Wisdom
What Is Ancient Philosophy? by Pierre Hadot | Amazon
Awakening From the Meaning Crisis Book List | John Vervaeke
Great Dialogues of Plato by Plato | Amazon
Ah, Not to Be Cut Off by Rainer Maria Rilke | The Living Room
Archaic Torso of Apollo by Rainer Maria Rilke | Vox Populi
Ascension, 1965 | John Coltrane Quartet
Agape and 4E Cognitive Science | Awakening from the Meaning Crisis #38
Cognition In the Wild by Edwin Hutchins | Amazon
Distributed Cognition and the Experience of Presence in the Mars Exploration Rover Mission | Frontiers in Psychology
Brain in a Vat — Making Philosophy Manifest by Steve Jurvetson | Flickr
Steve Jurvetson — The Midas Touch and Mind-Bending Futures | The Tim Ferriss Show #317
Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain by António Damásio | Amazon
Exaptations | Understanding Evolution
The Brain Evolved to Guide Action | The Wiley Handbook of Evolutionary Neuroscience
John Vervaeke: The Three Questions About Consciousness | Consciousness and Conscience Conference
Qualia | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Relevance Realization and the Emerging Framework in Cognitive Science | Journal of Logic and Computation Advance Access
Panpsychism | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Professor Donald Hoffman — The Case Against Reality, Beyond Spacetime, Rethinking Death, Panpsychism, QBism, and More | The Tim Ferriss Show #585
Property Dualism | Rebus Community
William Seager: How Strong Are the Arguments for Panpsychism? | Visualizing Minds
John Vervaeke: Jordan Peterson & the Meaning Crisis | Rebel Wisdom
Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans | The Tim Ferriss Show #560
Luke 15:11-32: The Prodigal Son | Bible Gateway
Pageau, Vervaeke, Peterson: Deeper Yet Into The Weeds | The Dr. Jordan B. Peterson Podcast #277
Nomology | Wikipedia
Postmodernism | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Marxism and Crypto‐Marxism | The New York Times
Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Relevance Realization Meets Dynamical Systems Theory | Awakening from the Meaning Crisis #30
Jordan Peterson on Rules for Life, Psychedelics, The Bible, and Much More | The Tim Ferriss Show #502
Return to the Source Seminar | Evolve Move Play
Other Minds | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Transjectivity: A Short Commentary on John Vervaeke’s Awakening From the Meaning Crisis (Episodes 31, 32, and 33) by Andrew Sweeny | Medium
Famed Explorer Wade Davis — How to Become the Architect of Your Life, The Divine Leaf of Immortality, Rites of Passage, Voodoo Demystified, Optimism as the Purpose of Life, How to Be a Prolific Writer, Psychedelics, Monetizing the Creativity of Your Life, and More | The Tim Ferriss Show #652
Epistemology | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
SHOW NOTES
[05:31] The four ways of knowing (4P).
[10:15] Affordances.
[13:04] Semantic memory.
[13:37] Flow.
[27:03] Did John find Tai Chi, or did Tai Chi find him?
[29:46] Leaving Christianity.
[34:42] Wisdom vs. knowledge.
[36:54] Self-deception.
[41:53] When is logic the illogical choice for solving a problem?
[46:05] The powers and perils of intuition.
[55:05] Spotting patterns that need breaking.
[59:18] Meditation vs. contemplation.
[1:05:30] Misunderstanding love.
[1:06:36] Circling.
[1:12:28] “God is related to the world the way the mind is related to the body.”
[1:14:34] A non-theist in the no-thingness.
[1:24:03] Responsive poiesis and Sufism.
[1:27:31] Neoplatonism.
[1:29:16] Seminal moments.
[1:31:36] Pierre Hadot.
[1:32:43] Two books.
[1:34:38] Potent poetry.
[1:37:40] The four Es.
[1:42:38] Two bonus Es.
[1:45:24] Heretical beliefs.
[1:54:12] Panpsychism.
[2:00:56] Most unusual modes of cognition.
[2:02:37] Jordan Peterson.
[2:10:27] Opponent processing.
[2:13:53] How to support friends endeavoring to lead meaningful lives.
[2:17:50] After Socrates .
[2:21:44] Western words.
[2:25:11] John’s changing perspective of experienced reality.
[2:28:01] Something old, something new.
MORE JOHN VERVAEKE QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW
“Knowledge is about overcoming ignorance. Wisdom is about overcoming foolishness. So you understand wisdom by understanding foolishness, and you understand foolishness as not identical to ignorance.” — John Vervaeke
“Stop demonizing any faculty and stop deifying any faculty. Your intuition will lead you as much wrong as your reason, as much wrong as your emotions, as much wrong as your logic.” — John Vervaeke
“The very processes that make us intelligent problem solvers [and] make us so adaptive are the very same processes that make us prone to self-deceptive, self-destructive behavior.” — John Vervaeke
“We pick up on all kinds of complex patterns that are not real and we form intuitions around them, but when we don’t like our intuition, we don’t call it intuition, we call it bias or prejudice or racism or sexism or a whole bunch of other things.” — John Vervaeke
“Logic does not tell you how to go from a weaker logic to a stronger logic. I can do all the possible manipulations within predicate logic and it won’t get me to motor logic. I have to do something outside of that to actually increase my logical competence. So there’s no panacea.” — John Vervaeke
“Yes, your emotions can lead you astray, but try living without them and see how rational you can be.” — John Vervaeke
“I don’t like the argument that goes, ‘Consciousness is weird, quantum is weird, therefore consciousness is quantum.’ That’s just ridiculous. Now, panpsychism is a different thing. And you don’t have to be convinced about quantum stuff to be a panpsychist.” — John Vervaeke
PEOPLE MENTIONED
René Descartes
Josh Waitzkin
Socrates
Usain Bolt
Aristotle
Roger Zelazny
Hermann Hesse
Robertson Davies
Plato
Leonardo Ferraro
Allen Newell
Herbert A. Simon
Nelson Goodman
Jerry Fodor
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Robin M. Hogarth
Arthur S. Reber
Antisthenes
Guy Sengstock
Christopher Mastropietro
Barbara Fredrickson
Buddha
Ran Lahav
Baruch Spinoza
Martin Buber
Euclid
Maximus the Confessor
William James
William Blake
