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lecture2019

Awakening from the Meaning Crisis

Summary

50-episode YouTube lecture series by cognitive scientist John Vervaeke (University of Toronto, 2019), tracing the meaning crisis from Socratic Greece through Neoplatonism, Christianity, Descartes, and Romanticism to the present, proposing a 4E cognitive science of participatory knowing as a contemporary response.

Core Contribution

Comprehensive genealogy of Western meaning-making and its collapse; integrates cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and contemplative practice into a proposed framework for addressing endemic modern meaninglessness via relevance realization.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • meaning crisis
  • cognitive science
  • Neoplatonism
  • participatory knowing
  • relevance realization

Historical Influences

Plato Plotinus William James Francisco Varela Evan Thompson Heidegger

Intellectual Lineage

No conceptual lineage found.

Allied Works

Zombies in Western Culture After Socrates podcastVervaeke's relevance realization papers

Contemporaries & Peers

Jordan Peterson's Maps of Meaning lecturesIan McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary

Minds Influenced

post-rationalist discourse meaning crisis communityVervaeke's students and collaborators

Intellectual Posterity

No conceptual posterity found.

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