Interviewer: Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Numbering: Issue 23.A, Idea: Outliers & Outsiders (Part Nineteen)
Place of Publication: Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Title: In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal
Web Domain: http://www.in-sightjournal.com
Individual Publication Date: May 15, 2020
Issue Publication Date: September 1, 2020
Name of Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Frequency: Three Times Per Year
Words: 9,080
ISSN 2369-6885
Abstract
Christian is a Philosopher that comes from Belgium. What identifies him the most and above all is simplicity, for everything is better with “vanilla flavour.” Perhaps, for this reason, his intellectual passion is criticism and irony, in the sense of trying to reveal what “hides behind the mask,” and give birth to the true. For him, ignorance and knowledge never “cross paths.” What he likes the most in his leisure time, is to go for a walk with his wife. He discusses: “mystical state,” “reminiscent” experience; other forms of anguish; comparative sense of everything else as slow; a cognitive generalist without cognitive singularism; a cognitive singularist without cognitive generalism; a healthier pivot than impatient and exasperated in awaiting others’ catching up; Greek culture, Humanism, and anthropomorphism; the things Christianity “demonizes” and “angelizes”; Humanism and Greek notions of life; belief in an afterlife; religious afterlives; understanding oppressor and oppressed; predatory systems; some killed to find the truths; noumenic identification; unbearable lightness of being; Hegelian synthesis thinking; Schelling’s obscurity; favourite Mozart piece; limits of human science; non-irrational postmodern position; the way empirical and rational hardly come together in this postmodern conceptualization; body with an idea about itself as the soul; the idea of the soul as “divine breath” or a “transcendent spirit”; this “floating condition”; the “staples” or the “parentheses” a spatio-temporal volume, so as to provide a theoretical object for study; “nothing” makes reality real; empirical and rational traditions represent modernity under the single banner rationalism; other externally induced internal factors besides guilt and notions of sin drive down the possibility of genius; more women in the middle range and more men at the lower and higher ranges of general intelligence; “higher value”; post-humanist sensibility as one extensive in its tensions and touches with the culture in which it embeds itself; propositions of trans-humanism; death; Hegelian notion of freedom; primary principles or ultimate principles; infinite intersect of knowledge and truth, or only first apprehension of the primary principles or ultimate principles; Schelling using such a hermetic language; Karl Popper; Kuhn; Lakatos and Feyerabend; extended meaning of the consciousness of being; post-modernism in a modified, extended and highly differentiated meaning of post-modernism; post-modernist Humanist; modern ‘religions’ or communal organizations; freedom of thought and expression; freedom of expression; a process of punishment of women and a reinforcement for men; meaning mostly directed sensibly in a communal sense; “trans-personal” values; differentiation of the egosyntonic from the common good; human beings as emds and as means; technology, the internal, the external, and the human being; techno-ethics; artificial intelligence; donkeys; Crowley and Thelemites; Jesus Christ/Yeshua Ben Josef and Satan/the Devil; theoretically defined constructs or study objects through delimits of spatiotemporal capacities, physics; biology; chemistry; ultimate principles or “principles of existence”; Verificationism and Falsificationism; Kuhnian notion of revolutions; simplify the linguistic landscape to make things less pompous, more accessible, and logically straightforward; to know that you know, to be in existence here-and-now; “rational post-rationalism”; a personalized post-modernist Humanist ethic; a theistic god; an atheistic absence of gods; an agnostic stance on gods; a deistic god; a pandeistic god; a pantheistic god; a panendeistic god; a panentheistic god; apatheism; henotheism; polytheism; monolatry; kathenotheism; omnism; transtheism; metaphysics; metaphysicalism differing from supernaturalism or extramaterialism; a world built on the metaphysical; a world built on the supernatural; a world built on the extramaterial; epistemology; ontology; knowledge; forms of knowledge; epistemology with ontology; aforementioned relation leading to different forms of knowledge; science grounded on metaphysical assumptions; theistic evolutionists, progressive creationists, Intelligent Design advocates, young earth creationists, and old earth creationists; pseudoscience and non science; medical quacks, guru charlatans, miracle men, or fringe cranks and crackpots; Lutheranism; and freedom of the will.
Keywords: Christian Sorenson, intelligence, genius, philosophy, traits.
An Interview with Christian Sorenson on God, Genius, and Intelligence (Part Three)[1],[2]*
*Please see the footnotes, bibliography, and citation style listing after the interview.*
1. Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What makes a “mystical state” mystical? What marks the reason for the belief in the “supposed” condition of an existence with eternal beings? What would be a synonym for the “reminiscent” experience?
Christian Sorenson: It is the experience of having lived, or felt in a “mysterious way,” that is without knowing under what condition of “existence” was it possible, “the union” with the “divine subjectively defined,” in a framework of confinement, since the sensation lived, is that of an “exclusive relationship” with a “great other,” which leaves everything that exists outside of it. There isn’t any reason that marks that belief, since there are “reasons” that not even the reason itself understands. A synonym would be the “experience of shadows.”
2. Jacobsen: What are other forms of anguish involved here?
Sorenson: What I would denominate as “vital anguish,” which from my point of view, would be a type of anguish that has no “object,” and consequently, since it cannot be “invested” or “cathectized” in something, it is felt with different intensity but permanently, and is equivalent to the sensation of “vertigo” and “nausea.”
3. Jacobsen: For a comparative sense of everything as mostly “extremely slow,” how much slower – quantitatively and qualitatively?
Sorenson: As slow as in “slow-motion” but not as slow as “being paralyzed.” It is to feel that a part of the “vital breath” is lost, when it is not possible to express a response because timing makes it impossible.
4. Jacobsen: What would be a cognitive generalist without cognitive singularism?
Sorenson: The closest thing to what a “divine intuition” could be.
5. Jacobsen: What would be a cognitive singularist without cognitive generalism?
Sorenson: A “realistic” thinker without “idealism.”
6. Jacobsen: What would be a healthier pivot than impatient and exasperated in awaiting others’ catching up, as a means of emotionally coming to terms with the intellectual pace of much of the rest of the species?
Sorenson: I think that being able to “sublimate,” that is, to channel the attention and intellectual energy towards something else that I consider of “greater value.”
7. Jacobsen: Why did Greek culture exhibit more Humanism and anthropocentrism than Christian culture?
Sorenson: Because the Greek culture did not have the notion of “sin,” in the sense of “guilt and atonement” for a misconduct.
8. Jacobsen: Why did Christianity – well – “demonize” reason? What did Christianity – does Christianity – “angelize”?
Sorenson: They demonize it as a “defence mechanism” to protect its doctrine and dogmatism. “Angelizes” the “asexuality” of the sacred figures, since it was through “the flesh,” that the first sin entered into humanity, and therefore it is necessary to “retrace” that path, until an “immaculate woman” is able to “step on the head” of the snake that tries to “bite its heel.”
9. Jacobsen: How does a Humanism mix well with Greek notions of life and, probably, many notions of life for you?
Sorenson: I believe through a humanism “post-humanist,” capable of relativizing cultural principles and values in the sense of giving them a more “symbolic and interpretive” character, than of “univocal meanings,” and at the same time being able to reach more “eclectic and inclusive” elaborations with these.
10. Jacobsen: Do you believe in an afterlife? If so, why? If not, why not? What would comprise the content of this afterlife if any?
Sorenson: I “would like” to believe in an afterlife, because “I need to do it,” and I need it to be so, because I need to “perpetuate enjoyment” and the persons who I love, nevertheless, since my reason doesn’t always “understand my heart,” I am obliged to impose the “power of the will.”
11. Jacobsen: Any thoughts on proposed religious afterlives – hypotheses on the hereafter?
Sorenson: I feel that in general, they are forms of evasion to “numb the suffering” in this life, which often consist of “land sold in green,” that nourish hope and faith.
12. Jacobsen: What is your framework for understanding oppressor and oppressed here?
Sorenson: The dialectic of the “master and the slave,” in the sense that both need each other to exist, but that nevertheless have feelings with different valence, since while one feels “contempt and annoyance” the other has “resentment and hatred.”
13. Jacobsen: When life on Earth is made into a hell here-and-now, does this explain many of the predatory aspects of some political systems, religious belief structures, and human relations? They want to relieve the anguish of the aforementioned oppression.
Sorenson: They want to alleviate from the “punishment” that awaits them in the afterlife, for the hell they make this world, and in this way reduce the amount of anguish they feel for knowing what “awaits” them later. In my opinion, the problem is that it is not understood that this, is a “conflict” that is not called to be resolved in a “supernatural” world, but on the contrary, it is a “critical instance or period,” of individual evolutionary development, and that of the species itself, which must be resolved in this earthly world.
14. Jacobsen: Why were some killed for finding the truth? What is the threat of the truth to the political and religious authorities?
Sorenson: Doing a “double reading” to put aside the “obvious reason,” and stay with the “underlying” one, I would say that this arrived, since they put “the survival” of the system at risk. It is the fact of denouncing the “deceit of conscience” in which they maintained the population, and consequently, the loss of power to “subdue and exploit” people.
15. Jacobsen: Please elaborate on the “noumenic identification.” First, the term “noumenic” and, second, the term “identification” in context; together, the meaning of “noumenic identification” for a unity with the whole. Is this truly a unity or simply apparent unity with the whole?
Sorenson: I believe that the noumenic or “noumenon” is like the “substance” of an existing being, that is to say that it is “now existing,” and that acts as a “representative-representing” of an “ideal form” or “idea,” that has its own subsistence. In this context, the identification of the “noumenon” with the “whole,” would be something similar to “capture” in a precise moment and instantly, that is “without reasoning,” the response “came out” of something, as if it was “floating” in front of us in space. It is an identification with the “whole” since, besides me having the “apoptiptic certainty” related to the validity of the answer, which in turn is verifiable through a verification process. I also have in this experience, “the sensation of union” between me as an individual self or subject, and an other as “great other.” The latter, although this “other” is in a different place than mine, I feel that he “encompasses” me, because of the “synchronicity” that I lived at that time. From a logical point of view, if it’s possible to sustain that the “whole” itself is “unique,” since nothing else exists outside it, then it could be said, that the “whole” is equivalent to “number one,” and if this is true, then I could affirm that “unity” with the “whole” exists, because at the same time the “number one” is a “numeric unit,” and a “unity” in the sense of union.
16. Jacobsen: Why is existence an unbearable lightness of being for most or all of us?
Sorenson: Because we feel that we are not able to “escape” from our “instinctual determinism,” that always brings us to the same point, that identifies with “death,” and therefore we “struggle striving” to live, as a way to “evade” from that end.
17. Jacobsen: Continually, I see the synthesis thinking for you. So, I observe the Hegelian influence on you. Any other crucial elements of Hegelian philosophy for you?
Sorenson: His concept of “freedom” has influenced me, since I think that from this, I can develop a “theory of conflict.”
18. Jacobsen: Why Schelling, too, especially with the apparent obscurity of the philosophy?
Sorenson: I am struck by his “idealism” and the way he brings concepts such as world, self and freedom, to a transcendent level, through a “symbolically hermetic” language.
19. Jacobsen: Mozart! Any favourite pieces? I happen to be listening to him.
Sorenson: Die “Zauberflöte.”
20. Jacobsen: What are the limits of human science? What are limits of human philosophy? What could extra-terrestrial superintelligences develop past possible human sciences and conceive beyond the categories considered axiomatic in human philosophy?
Sorenson: The limits of science are given by its “method” that is necessarily inductive, while that of philosophy is given by “natural theology.” I believe that this superintelligence, dispensed with any method, and was able to arrive at the “ultimate” or “primary principles,” that did not require any verification process, as they were “self-evident” and therefore impossible to be “refuted.”
21. Jacobsen: What is the non-irrational “postmodern” to you?
Sorenson: It is a “post modernism” that well postulates that “knowledge” and “truth,” are like “two asymptotes” that only intersect in a point at “infinity.” And therefore, questions the “belief” in an unlimited advance of science, as modernity does, and in consequence, postulates at the same time, the demand for “empirical refutations” of “hypothetical knowledges.”
22. Jacobsen: Why can the empirical and rational hardly come together in this postmodern conceptualization?
Sorenson: It is hard but “not impossible,” since, despite the regrets, it is feasible to continue working with the “scientific method.”
23. Jacobsen: A body with an idea about itself as the soul. Any extended meanings of a soul here?
Sorenson: The soul, is an “idea” that has an “object” as a “thing in itself,” which is the body, and since this last is an “object-thing,” it is possible to have an idea of it, “the soul.”
24. Jacobsen: Why reject the idea of the soul as “divine breath” or a “transcendent spirit”?
Sorenson: Because if I accept it, I have a limit, since, in the analysis, I cannot go beyond a “condition of possibility” from a logical point of view, and then regardless of whether it is true or not, it does not become in an “irrefutable hypothesis,” in the sense of “truth provided with certainty,” and therefore I cannot even prove its “falsehood.”
25. Jacobsen: Why do you think you live in this “floating condition”?
Sorenson: Since I need to “problematize” everything, as a way to activate my adrenergic mechanisms, and feel the emotion of “finding flaws” everywhere.
26. Jacobsen: What defines the “staples” or the “parentheses” of a spatio-temporal volume, so as to provide a theoretical object for study?
Sorenson: It is defined by the “nature” of the “phenomenon” under study, the development of the “theoretical model” with which it is boarded, and the “scientific status” of the discipline from which it is being studied.
27. Jacobsen: If “nothing” makes reality real, and if things need delimiting for study as theoretical constructs, what differentiates the inner from the outer, the delimited from the delimiter?
Sorenson: The “consciousness of being.”
28. Jacobsen: Why do empirical and rational traditions represent modernity under the single banner rationalism?
Sorenson: Due to a historical matter, they have “reduced” rationalism exclusively to that, when in reality, rationalism is more complex and comprehensive than this. A way to test it, is for example by demonstrating that “post modernism” is not necessarily equivalent to “post rationalism.”
29. Jacobsen: What other externally induced internal factors besides guilt and notions of sin drive down the possibility of genius?
Sorenson: Religions and all forms of authoritarianism and dogmatism, since they inhibit “freedom” of thought and expression, which is the fundamental necessary condition for the existence of genius. The opposite would be “fear,” which is the common and necessary condition that makes possible the existence of guilt and sin.
30. Jacobsen: Why do we see more women in the middle range and more men at the lower and higher ranges of general intelligence?
Sorenson: In the case of women middle range and men who are located in high ranks, it is due to the process of “natural selection” which selects the “fittest” during individual development, being the “sociocultural conditioning” the force who regulates this process, through the practice of positive and negative “punishment” in women, and positive and negative “reinforcement” in men, in order to maintain this trend. In the situation of men with low ranges, are genetic and biological characteristics as pre-existing “endogenous conditions,” who determines it. In this sense from an “ontogenetic” point of view, men would tend to have the worst scores than women in low levels of intelligence.
31. Jacobsen: What do you consider “higher value”? What internal energies can be best sublimated towards singular aims?
Sorenson: What I will denominate as “trans-personal” values, since they would allow us to leave our “egosyntonic sphere,” and in that way, go beyond the simple needs of individual “self-recognition” and “self-realization.” Therefore, if at the same time, they are directed towards the needs of the community and society, by the search for the “common good being,” which is what makes understandable the “meaning” and “for what” reason they must be pursued as “an end,” then they are susceptible of being channelled.
32. Jacobsen: I agree with the notions of a post-humanist sensibility as one extensive in its tensions and touches with the culture in which it embeds itself. Is this truly post-humanist or more adaptation of Humanism to a native culture, whether Latin American, Aboriginal, Native American, European, Asian, or African?
Sorenson: Both forms, place man at the center with its “self-worth,” and share aspects such as equality, freedom and dignity. However, post-humanism manages to make a “qualitative leap,” since, although this, it is capable of relativizing their concepts, to “clearly and distinctly” differentiate them. Due to this, I feel that post-humanism successfully reaches to establish categorically, that “man should never be treated as a means, but only as an end.”
33. Jacobsen: Any thoughts on the propositions of trans-humanism?
Sorenson: “Futurologically” speaking, the change of the human condition towards “trans and post-humanity,” seems to me that although it is a feasible possibility, it demands our attention in relation to “technoethics,” and particularly with respect to the development of “artificial intelligence,” and the purpose of its use, since it easily could turn against ourselves.
34. Jacobsen: Is death final?
Sorenson: I think that death is a “change of state” in an energetic sense, that is to say, that “it would not be destroyed but only transformed.” This doesn’t mean that energy would necessarily be transformed into a form or something similar to how we currently know living things. In this sense, death would be “half the way,” between the life that arises from “emanations” of “transmuting energy,” that comes from some type of “vessel,” that acts as a container, and the return of it to that place of origin, until another “emanating” process occurs again.
35. Jacobsen: Does this Hegelian notion of freedom itself produce its own conflict with a singular resolution in the “determinism” of the single point for all: death? In that, freedom while in the world to “struggle striving” while all paths lead to the single numeric unity of physical annihilation.
Sorenson: Although it is possible to deduce it in a Hegelian sense, I feel that freedom is “conflicting,” since it’s the “delusion” of the “neurotic,” and the “one who pursues it, is a donkey.” I do not believe that death solves anything, because the “conflict” expressed in that or in something else, will be “re-edited,” in this or another “dimension,” perhaps indefinitely.
36. Jacobsen: Any thoughts on primary principles or ultimate principles? Rosner and I call them principles of existence, in a similar manner of thinking.
Sorenson: The fact of being “principles,” makes them evident, and therefore “indisputable,” since it is not possible to go beyond them. In that way, I relate these to “natural theology,” that is to say, to the study of God in those properties, that are “accessible” to reason, in what could be understood as the “preambles of faith.”
37. Jacobsen: Is there ever a reaching of the infinite intersect of knowledge and truth, or only first apprehension of the primary principles or ultimate principles and then the asymptote towards infinity at knowledge-truth merely fills in the details deriving from the primary principles or ultimate principles?
Sorenson: If I assume that “knowledge” is not equivalent to “truth,” but nevertheless the “ultimate principles” are, then it could be affirmed that “knowledge” and “ultimate principles” are not equivalents, and therefore “knowledge” would never intersect at one point not even in infinity with the “truth.” The aforementioned its possible, since, in Popper’s terminology, some are “refutables,” while others aren’t. Ultimate principles don’t admit any “confrontation,” because in my opinion, if they weren’t “true,” then “formal logic” couldn’t be able to operate, and neither could our “thinking” do.
38. Jacobsen: Why was Schelling using such a hermetic language? Is he pulling an Aleister Crowley coded language of a different kind?
Sorenson: Because I feel that due to his “romantic” tendency, he develops a philosophy that he tries to convert into an extremely “transcendental system.” I indeed believe that he influenced the thinking of “occultism and esotericism” as it happened with A. Crowley and his “Thelema” philosophy.
39. Jacobsen: Is Karl Popper an influence on you? If so, how? If not, why not?
Sorenson: I share his “critical rationalist” vision and his position regarding the “refutability” of scientific knowledge. Nevertheless, I think that he is wrong, from a “formal logical” point of view, when he says, regarding “irrefutable postulates,” that these aren’t “true” or that it is not possible to pronounce anything in relation to its “veracity.” I also believe that, among other aspects, the “inability to delve” into the connotation of “partiality” and “relativism,” regarding the “objects” of study in science. This last, question the “validity” of his idea, regarding that the “knowledge is always plausible.”
40. Jacobsen: Is Kuhn an influenced on you? If so, how? If not, why not?
Sorenson: I share his idea about “paradigms,” but I think that is an incomplete concept in relation to the notion of change, and revolution, and regarding to the possibility of “building new constructionist bases.” In this sense, I feel that rather than finding ourselves in the midst of “paradigms,” we live in a “post-paradigmatic era.”
41. Jacobsen: Any extensions into more recent thinkers like Lakatos and Feyerabend?
Sorenson: I consider that both not only don’t depart from Popper, but also aren’t able to achieve any kind of important goal. This is how Lakatos, in his attempt to make more rigorous what he calls Popper’s “naive falsificationism,” does nothing more than “turning around” over the same, like a “dog chasing its tail,” for remaining exactly in the point from where he started. And Feyeraband for his part, with his proposal of “methodological anarchism,” does little more than “sustain the unsustainable.” To claim what he says, it’s as “absurd” as believing that “by perceiving, reality is being created.”
42. Jacobsen: What is an extended meaning of the consciousness of being?
Sorenson: The fact, of “knowing that I know” about the “being in there.”
43. Jacobsen: Is rationalism extended beyond empiricism and rationalist discourses into post-modernism in a modified, extended and highly differentiated meaning of post-modernism?
Sorenson: What I consider as “post-modernism” in this context, it is equivalent to a “rational post-rationalism,” which is far from how the former is usually understood.
44. Jacobsen: Where does this post-modernist Humanist (as in post-humanian/post-humanist) context place ethics differentiated from transcendentalist religious discourses as in more human rights and humanitarian law-based morality
Sorenson: In my opinion, this “post-modernist Humanist” should based its morality on a “personalistic ethic.” What I mean with this, it is an ethic that focuses on the “intentionality” of the “human act,” in contrast to what the “act of man” is, since it sees the conduct, by a purely “formal,” and “normative” prism.
45. Jacobsen: What about modern ‘religions’ or communal organizations bound by principle including the Ethical Cultures/Ethical Societies, Humanisms, Sunday Assemblies, Secular Judaism/Humanistic Judaism, and so on? Do these perform an important function as non-dogmatic and non-authoritarian structures beneficial to the health and wellbeing individual members wanting community and the community too?
Sorenson: I feel it’s necessary to differentiate the fact of “having a religion,” from the one of “being religious of that religion.” Following the sense of the former, it could be said, that these as other similar systems, promote the moral development of men through values that are “ethical principles,” since they are “transversals” among all. It could be said, that they are the result on the one hand of the union between the innate and therefore “universal form” that constitutes the “practical moral reason,” that simply discriminates between “good and evil,” and in turn dictates in conscience “do good and avoid evil,” and on the other hand concrete behaviours.
46. Jacobsen: How do freedom of thought and expression help create better soil for geniuses to emerge, crop up?
Sorenson: Society is prepared, receptive, and positively values brilliants, and even highly and exceptionally gifted minds, to the point that generally positions them as “elites of power.” Nevertheless, something very different happens with geniuses and the “incommensurable geniuses.” Geniuses, need freedom of thought and expression to emerge, but any kind of freedom is not enough, since their “self-being” is necessarily linked to their intrinsically “revolutionary way of being.” Therefore, if they do not pursue any mode of change in society, but one that is radical and absolutely novel, freedom of thought as a condition of possibility for the emergence of genius, will always be conditional and relative.
47. Jacobsen: The international institutions harbour the freedom of expression in principle and, for the most part, apply these rights in most countries in the world. Are they on the right track with the stipulated rights of freedom of expression and freedom of opinion?
Sorenson: I feel, that the discourse of freedom of thought and expression that they have, is “hypocritical,” since it is only an “ideal-of-being,” that’s only and therefore, very far from putting it into practice. There’s no consequence between one and the other, and finally what operates is a “censorship,” that represses by “surreptitious punishments,” all conduct that departs from what should be the “must-be.”
48. Jacobsen: Why focus on a process of punishment of women and a reinforcement for men?
Sorenson: Partly, because society is essentially “abusive” of different forms of weakness. Woman historically, unlike man who is identified with the place of “father” or a “totemic figure,” has often been represented “mythically” with “evil and sin,” since Eva and Lilith, and as the subject of “castration” lived in her body, with which she should continue “symbolically” paying her “guilt” indefinitely, and therefore being worthy of “punishment,” as the only means for “expiation and purification.”
49. Jacobsen: In the aforementioned sense of a “for what” and community, can meaning mostly be directed sensibly in a communal sense? Does this apply to productions of genius as well?
Sorenson: If we see it backwards, what I meant by the question of “for what,” regards man as well as community, on their “search for meaning,” since for both is like a “first immobile motor” that mobilizes everything, but without which nothing can be moved, not even productions of genius.
50. Jacobsen: Can you unpack “trans-personal” values some more, please? I mean origin of the term and the current contextualization of its use in a post-modern Humanism.
Sorenson: Both terms, “trans-personal” values and “post-modern Humanism” are mine. With the first I intend to dismantle Maslow’s pyramid, and rebuild it, since I think that self-actualization needs, do not constitute the “apex” of the pyramid as Maslow indicates. From my point of view, they are values that have a scope that goes beyond the individual sphere, since they seek the “common social good,” and therefore are “trans-personals,” but that nevertheless constitute part of “individual needs,” insofar as they promote “individual spiritual development.” And therefore within a “pyramid of need,” they’re at a higher level than those indicated by Maslow. For this reason, also it is a “post-modern Humanism,” because places both, man and society, at the “center of concerns,” but at the same time, as “mutually interdependent” entities of development.
51. Jacobsen: What differentiates the egosyntonic from the common good (as in a co-egosyntonic positive relational dynamic)?
Sorenson: The dynamic of the relation, is between the “egosyntonic” and what I will denominate the “ego-dystonic” sphere, not the co-egosyntonic. Since individuals, by “leaving” outside and “emptying” themselves of their “own needs,” at the same time that they “fill” themselves with the “needs of others,” they will able to advance in a “personal spiritual correction.”
52. Jacobsen: What makes human beings treat others as means? What makes human beings treat others as ends? What are the inevitable ethical outcomes in either case?
Sorenson: “Egoism” and “the inferiority complex,” is what causes human beings to be treated as a means. Being able to “empty ourselves of our selfish desire for ourselves,” to fill it instead with the “desire of the other,” makes us capable of treating the human being as an “end in itself.” The former, takes us on the path of “pain and suffering,” from which it is not possible to escape, while the last, leads us on the path of “completeness and happiness.”
53. Jacobsen: Human beings seem like technology to me. What we create, it looks like technology to me. All part of the same comprehensive system with different timelines of emergence. To deny this, it would seem as if a denial of souls in animals seen in the past, as for a justification to abuse and kill them. Similarly, the removal of this – what seems like an – illusion, to me, could pre-empt and reduce the possibility of the mistreatment of constructed or synthetic (non-carbon) intellects in the future. In many ways human beings harbour an entirely different form of technology, but, in many other ways, the same, the idea of a trans-humanism future as proposed often as a trans-human – beyond or after human – future seems unreasonable if not on principle false. In that, any outcropping will become part of humanity or an extension of current human forms in thought and action and, thus, in all cases, or in all futures, a future is a human future co-extensive with the human present into all possible futures. The idea of trans-humanism, as such, seems completely unreasonable and illogical to me; whereas, post-humanism makes sense as this acknowledges, incorporates, and naturally develops the current human systems and extends them outward in a multidimensional way. So, in a post-humanist vision rather than logically untenable trans-humanist vision, how could these technological entities and yonder-present technologies lead to the annihilation of humanity or the nature of human beings in general with these as outcroppings of the same beings, the same nature, and the same proclivities of thought and form? Fundamentally, with technology, we speak of aspects of our extended selves killing its original patterns and, thus, would remark on another human condition, psychology and behaviour, of self-murder or suicide rather than a murder from some outside force, as the “outside force” represents our extended selves, i.e., a derivation of post-Humanism rather than trans-Humanism. If one wants to stretch the argument as much as possible, then it’s both an extrinsic manifestation of some other force while an internal representation projected outward into a functional manifestation with an internal made into an external other and an internal-represented-external with human extinction by these forces as a form of murder and suicide at the same time. But that is long-winded and annoying.
Sorenson: Due to the development of technology and specifically of artificial intelligence in the future, the “post-humanism” that will exist, in the sense of “after man, but not beyond man,” It’s probably going to be given, by a humanity in which “humans” and “humanoids,” endowed with thoughts, emotions and will, will be autonomous as we are, and identical to us. Therefore, we are going to relate in every way as equals with them, at the point that they would represent “artificial human species,” but “human species” as well. Perhaps at the beginning, we will develop these beings first, nevertheless maybe in a second stage, they are going to have the capacity to develop them too. I feel that the “quid” in this point, is how it’s plausible to project that novel humanity, in order to have a harmonious and collaborative coexistence. One of the keys necessary for that purpose, I believe is to develop entities with similar capacities from the qualitative and quantitative point of view. The risk, would be to “lose proportions” by the development of superintelligences, and “losing sight” also of a “normal distribution of population,” since this could feasibly break the “balance,” and in that sense, could transform into a threat for the survival of the “natural human species.”
54. Jacobsen: Following from the last question, on techno-ethics, and if the distinction between technologies becomes artificial in the end, should any generalized ethic then apply to ‘technology’ and humanity at the same time? ‘Techno-ethics’ as bound to an ethics of consciousnesses, i.e., of those that know they know and have a sense of being in themselves.
Sorenson: It depends because in an eventual “post-human humanity,” where we could coexist harmoniously with humanoids, it would be essential to verify, in order to apply an eventual “generalized ethic,” the existence of “consciousness,” in these beings. Since this property, probably has a nature analogous with something close to “spirituality,” therefore if it is not certain that they possess it, it would not be possible to apply an “inclusive ethic.”
55. Jacobsen: Is artificial intelligence truly artificial or more constructed intelligence as opposed to evolved-by-natural force intelligence? In that, human thought patterns evolved. Those evolved and constructed thought replication in devices for different processing and similar output. Both remain part of the natural world, the hermetically sealed natural world, known by noetic consensus with the noetic consensus itself influenced by these constructed intelligences, so-called ‘artificial.’ Our evolved human thought patterns reflected in some processing and more in output of the constructed intelligences makes them an extension of us with substance differences, carbon versus silicon.
Sorenson: It seems to me, that what makes artificial intelligence “artificial,” is the fact that there’s an “intervention” and “manipulation” on it, in contrast to what it would be for it, to follow a development or a course without the action of any external agent. In this sense, artificial intelligence would be “artificial,” not always because develops an intelligent being, but also if it intervenes in any way on the intelligence of a “natural intelligent being.”
56. Jacobsen: Are we all donkeys in some sense?
Sorenson: No, since “obedient individuals” certainly would not be.
57. Jacobsen: Any thoughts on Crowley and Thelemites, or on offshoots in the Temple of Satan, Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Temple of Set, Church of Satan, the LaVeyans, demonology, and the like?
Sorenson: All start from a common principle in which the only law is to do one’s “own will,” and likewise they identify love with that law, as long as it is under the exercise of “will.” However, I believe that Crowley’s position is not completely equivalent to the others, since he identifies more with Luciferian’s postulates, while the rest do so with Satanist or demonological ones.
58. Jacobsen: Christianity and Islam comprise about half of the population of the world’s minds. Two big figures in their theologies as philosophies. One is Satan/the Devil. Another is Jesus. Both believe in the former in the same way. They believe in the latter as the Son of God/Son of Man in one manner (acceptance of the resurrection) and then a great prophet in another (denial of the resurrection). What do these figures represent to you? How do these philosophies spread so much, so fast, among so many human beings? What is Jesus Christ/Yeshua Ben Josef? What is Satan/the Devil?
Sorenson: I feel that the figure of Jesus, represents that of a misunderstood revolutionary who fought for the poorest. The devil is a figure basically distorted by the Christianity from the figure of the “fallen angel,” Lucifer. For me represents both, Lucifer and “Baphomet” which are in some way, “humanistic and earthly god,” since they demonstrate in some degree, concern for what happens to man and its destiny. Though it could be identified in a negative sense with the יצר הרע, the “inclination towards evil,” in my opinion is more related with the figure of “Adonay.” I believe that these philosophies spread so much and so fast, because they are a “breeding ground,” that ignites strong in “ignorance” and “foolishness.”
59. Jacobsen: We talked about theoretically defined constructs or study objects through delimits of spatiotemporal capacities relevant for study objects for human beings. Let’s focus on sets of theoretically defined/confined constructs or study objects for fields of study or disciplines devoted to particular scales of spatiotemporal delimitation and types of patterns in this hermetically sealed world, some point to “physics,” “chemistry,” and “biology” as the foundational fields of the sciences with everything following from them, especially when one considers mathematics or “maths” as a form of science/natural philosophy defined as the “mathematical sciences.” Within some of the conversation before, what is physics?
Sorenson: For me, it is “cosmology.” Therefore, would be the study of all natural entities, including those that could be derived from them.
60. Jacobsen: What is biology?
Sorenson: In my opinion, it is the science that studies living beings, or those endowed with some activity equivalent to this.
61. Jacobsen: What is chemistry?
Sorenson: For me, it is the science that studies the composition, properties and transformations of matter, in relation to elements already known or not yet known.
62. Jacobsen: For the ultimate principles or “principles of existence,” we have them, for the sake of argument, as a knowledge-truth 2-dimensionality attempt at infinite intersect developed through growing experimentation databases of facts about the world and little theories to tie them together. In this extensive example of physics, biology, and chemistry, those three points of contact merely exist as the manifestation of the knowledge-truth 2-dimensionality with the fundamental basis for any dimensionality whatsoever bound in the penultimate rules of the universe. Where does this place thinking critters like us?
Sorenson: In this context, the “primary principles” don’t take place in this double dimension of truth/ knowledge, since they are postulates of a “metaphysical” nature, they are not empirical, in consequence do not represent any knowledge, and therefore it is not possible to pronounce on their “veracity” not either its “falsity.”
63. Jacobsen: How are Verificationism and Falsificationism different manifestations of the same underlying principle fundamental to the empiricist-scientific endeavour?
Sorenson: “Verificationism” is not equivalent to “validationism,” since the first one only allows us to affirm that a postulate is “not false” at the moment, but it can never tell me anything about its veracity. At the same time, it is “falsificationism,” because the intentionality must always be to try to “demonstrate the falsity,” and not the veracity of a postulate. In that sense, it is analogous to what should happen between a “null and investigative hypothesis,” when intentionality seeks to demonstrate that both are equals, due to the fact that there are “no significant” differences between them.
64. Jacobsen: The Kuhnian notion of revolutions in science has a hidden premise, too. The idea of human revolutions in science. As we become less dominant in the thinking sphere of the conducting of science, revolutions will be partially post-human. I can agree with the post-paradigmatic view in one way; I can see an argument for partially post-human paradigm shifts making the paradigms not-so easily perceptible or definable in precise terms now. Demarcations become opaque. What’s next?
Sorenson: In my opinion, the next that will arrive, since it is not a matter of “opacity of demarcation,” is a simultaneously situation of “post-humanian” and “post-paradigmaticism,” in relation to what strictly explains the meaning of the second. For this goal, it’s fundamental to recognize as a fact, that today main theoretical systems and paradigms, have collapsed. If in turn, there are “no novel revolutions,” not even on the horizon, then it’s expectable that neither “really new theories,” will emerge. Therefore, it’s conclusive, in function of the aforementioned, that in a following stage, the theoretical bases which are supposed to be available, won’t be enough in order to construct future paradigms. Maybe not even for “an everlasting time.”
65. Jacobsen: I agree on both remarks about Lakatos and Feyerabend. Also, I find the terms “philosophy of” annoying and redundant. Science was defined as an extension of philosophy; scientists were defined as practitioners of philosophy. In that, science is natural philosophy; scientists are natural philosophers. In this sense, scientists do philosophy via natural philosophy, where philosophy extends into natural philosophy, and vice versa, but with philosophy containing natural philosophy, by history and definition, and not vice versa. All these Nobel Prize winners and developers of redundant fields with “meta-” this and “philosophy of” that miss the point entirely. It’s all philosophy while the contraction of focus brings them more to practical elements of the field or the application of the principles for economics, statistics, mathematics, biology, physics, and so on. How could we simplify the linguistic landscape to make things less pompous, more accessible, and logically straightforward?
Sorenson: It’s simple, “they lose their way” by doing so, since what occurs is that from the origin itself, they start their search from a wrong point of view, and afterwards they continue to enlarge the error, and lose more and more the “route” of what is being looked, as they try to get closer to the goal they are pursuing. What I mean, is that all particular sciences, always and forever, because their objects of study and their methodologies determine it, will respond to only one and the same question, the question “about how,” while philosophy, does it respect to “what.” The former, refers to “phenomenon” of things, meanwhile the last is going to refer to the “being” or the “thing itself.” Consequently, as one response to what I will denominate “intermediate” or “second causes,” the other answers to causes that are “ultimates” or “primaries.” If the latest is correct, then one would belong to the “physical” plane in the sense of “nature,” while the second should correspond to the “metaphysician,” and therefore between both, there will never be a “continuity” or “unity” in any sense.
66. Jacobsen: To know that you know, to be in existence here-and-now, is this an implication of a time-sense as first-principles knowledge?
Sorenson: Not really, because at the very moment that I want to “capture” the experience of what is here-and-now, I immediately “lose it.” Therefore, the only thing that I can reliably demonstrate in that experience, as a time-sense and first-principles knowledge, is that it doesn’t exists in my “conscience.”
67. Jacobsen: Can you expand on “rational post-rationalism”?
Sorenson: What I mean with this term, it is that I place rationalism with “its feet on the ground, while pointing towards the sky.” In this sense I believe empirically speaking, that it is possible to “advance” with the “truth,” as long as it is “partial and relative.” Since what “ties” it, it is the object that is “not real,” and is always “constantly changing.”
68. Jacobsen: How would a personalized post-modernist Humanist ethic become both universal and individual?
Sorenson: I rather would denominate it as a “personalistic” ethics, and therefore focused on the sense behind the “human person,” more than in the individual as such. Through these notions, I synthesize the meanings both of “post-modernist Humanistic ethic” and what regards “universal and individual.” In this way, the concept of “human person” comprehensively encompasses this last two, since the “personal being” of each individual, on the one hand represents what is “universal” with our human nature, and that is replicated in all, by “investing” ourselves with a “dignity” that makes all uniques. And on other side, “individualizes” everyone, to the extent that it transforms us, in specific subjects endowed with an “identity.”
69. Jacobsen: Any thoughts on a theistic god?
Sorenson: It sounds like paternalism and “totemic veneration.”
It is more related to the Islamic, Jewish and Christian religions, within which the “paternalistic” need, is emphasized, has to be fulfilled, and transferred to that of “government,” and “intervention” of God with what is created.
70. Jacobsen: Any thoughts on an atheistic absence of gods?
Sorenson: It is equivalent to believing in the existence of “chance,” which is more or less to believe in the god “of the absurd.”
I think that from a “practical” point of view, it is logically sustainable, but not “theoretically” speaking.
71. Jacobsen: Any thoughts on an agnostic stance on gods?
Sorenson: If not, god wouldn’t be god.
From a point of view that regards divine “transcendence,” it is reasonable for god to remain on a “mysterious,” and “inaccessible” plane.
72. Jacobsen: Any thoughts on a deistic god?
Sorenson: A “watchmaker” god, seems more logical for me.
It seems logically unsustainable, to postulate a divine “transcendence,” without making a distinction between “substance,” and “matter.”
73. Jacobsen: Any thoughts on a pandeistic god?
Sorenson: It is made with the same “deistic sponge cake.”
In relation to “immanence,” it is coherent, but since there is no “delimitation” and “distinction” between god, and the universe, it is difficult to “signify” his “name.”
74. Jacobsen: Any thoughts on a pantheistic god?
Sorenson: It sounds to me like a “veganian” god.
In a way, it represents an energetic “circularity,” and the Platonic idea that god or gods, in their “wisdom,” knew how to change their positions.
75. Jacobsen: Any thoughts on a panendeistic god?
Sorenson: So, who’s who?
The distinction of “immanence” and “transcendence” is not clear enough, and neither the reason why the interaction with god, would be reduced to contemplation of nature, meanwhile “thought” is excluded.
76. Jacobsen: Any thoughts on a panentheistic god?
Sorenson: There is “no need” to believe in this type of god.
If god supposedly “intervenes” in the universe, it is not understood how this is possible.
77. Jacobsen: Any thoughts on apatheism?
Sorenson: It is the abbreviation of “apathy” and “theism,” sounds like “child oppositional behavior.”
It seems to me more like an “emotional predisposition” of opposition towards “theism,” however its theoretical foundation, is not sufficiently understandable.
78. Jacobsen: Any thoughts on henotheism?
Sorenson: It’s like equivalent to a “perverse object fixation.”
I believe it is one of the most basic expressions of religiosity, since it divinizes “beings from nature,” to explain “metaphysical phenomena.”
79. Jacobsen: Any thoughts on polytheism?
Sorenson: It makes me noise with Anubis, my dog, and “animalists.”
In my opinion it is the most basic expression of religiosity in the symbolic sense, regarding its “belief system,” and the use of “images.”
80. Jacobsen: Any thoughts on monolatry?
Sorenson: Christianity and “idolatry.”
I feel that it is equivalent to what happens with Christianity, in the sense that it “sanctifies” worldly images, in order to “venerate” and “adore” them.
81. Jacobsen: Any thoughts on kathenotheism?
Sorenson: It is like an “object fixation” but with “symptom displacement.”
It is found within the naturalistic expressions of religiosity, but I believe that it is even more rudimentary because is heavily invested with “irrational superstitious beliefs,” since it cyclically invokes divinized meanings, depending on the “situational context.”
82. Jacobsen: Any thoughts on omnism?
Sorenson: It is equivalent to the “negation sign.”
It is to pretend to achieve a “religious eclecticism,” from theoretical assumptions that in many cases are “irreconcilables,” therefore beyond being a “utopian thought,” and constituting a position on the practical plane, I do not see how it could be achieved “conceptually” speaking.
83. Jacobsen: Any thoughts on transtheism?
Sorenson: It is a synonym of “meaningless transcendence.”
It tries to transcend “atheism” and “theism,” into a kind of “meta-religiosity,” however what is verified is that the transcendence of which it is spoken, “lacks” or even is “empty” of content.
84. Jacobsen: Metaphysics, what is it?
Sorenson: In my opinion, it is “theology,” since it studies the “non-visible” properties of being, which in turn coincide with those of God. Therefore, in a certain way, they are “supernatural,” but at the same time, they are studied through “reason,” and in consequence, it is “natural.”
85. Jacobsen: How would metaphysicalism differ from supernaturalism or extramaterialism, or some other formulation?
Sorenson: I feel that it does not necessarily differ from these, it may even coincide perfectly. What is going to disagree, will be the means by which are studied, since it can be through faith that is “irrational,” or reason that is “reasonable.” Being the latter, always the one used by “philosophical metaphysics.”
86. Jacobsen: What would a world look like built on the metaphysical?
Sorenson: Something similar to be sitting in a “powder keg,” that can explode at any time, since with metaphysics there is a “risk” of dispensing with the use of reason, and because it generally arises where it is “felt” that reason is not capable of reaching, it is therefore easy to arrive at explanations full of “superstition,” and loaded with dogmatism and fanaticism.
87. Jacobsen: What would a world look like built on the supernatural?
Sorenson: Like a world built on the metaphysical, but with “saving doctrines,” that is to say with “religions.”
88. Jacobsen: What would a world look like built on the extramaterial?
Sorenson: As a “spiritualist world,” where everything that exists, would be part of the “same” and “unique” spirit.
89. Jacobsen: What is epistemology?
Sorenson: It is something like a “knowledge” about “knowledge,” with “inquisitive” traits.
90. Jacobsen: What is ontology?
Sorenson: It is the study of being, in relation to the “substance” and “matter” that constitute it.
91. Jacobsen: What is knowledge?
Sorenson: For me, it is to “remember.”
92. Jacobsen: What are the forms of knowledge?
Sorenson: They are the ways, in which the “identification” between the subjective form, and that which allows a certain thing to be what it is, is “mediated.”
93. Jacobsen: What relates epistemology with ontology?
Sorenson: The cognizant subject.
94. Jacobsen: How does this aforementioned relation lead to different forms of knowledge?
Sorenson: Depending on where the “abstracted form” will be located, regarding the intellectual intuition, and the reasoning or rational discursive process.
95. Jacobsen: Does science need a bit of metaphysics? Is science grounded on metaphysical assumptions?
Sorenson: I guess that in relation to science with a capital, yes. But with respect to the “particular sciences,” no. Since the sciences as we currently know them, do not work with “noumene,” and therefore do not respond, about the question that regards “the what” of being.
96. Jacobsen: Any thoughts of theistic evolutionists, progressive creationists, Intelligent Design advocates, young earth creationists, and old earth creationists?
Sorenson: In my opinion, they all lack the same element. That is, the “missing link.”
97. Jacobsen: What makes pseudoscience and non-science pseudoscience and non-science? How does these differ from science properly understood and practiced?
Sorenson: What makes “pseudoscience” and “non-science” what they are, is fundamentally the inability to have their own “research method,” and the lack of “criticism,” in order to be able to constantly review themselves, in relation to their achievements. While what gives science its “proper status,” it is the ability to reach theories and laws, through empirically verifiable “research hypotheses.”
98. Jacobsen: Any thoughts on medical quacks, guru charlatans, miracle men, or fringe cranks and crackpots?
Sorenson: I feel, they owe their existence to a “dialectical process,” opposed by educational, social and intellectual poverty. Which lastly, it is the engine to seek “saving responses,” to the feeling of loss of existential meaning, and the “fear” of eventual punishment to come.
99. Jacobsen: Is Lutheranism still influential on you?
Sorenson: I think that Lutheranism does not, but Luther’s personality in part yes, in what refers to his rebellious character and his idea of predestination.
100. Jacobsen: Do we have freedom of the will (if so, how, why, etc.)?
Sorenson: I feel we have the “power of will”, but not the “will of power”. What I mean with this, it is that we have freedom in the sense of “self-affirmation” as individuals, that in turn is the only power of which we cannot be dispossessed, not even with the deprivation of physical freedom. Nevertheless, at the same time, we are predetermined at least in an instinctual, and unconscious sense, in some manner, we have no way to escape from it. And our instinctive drive, in one way or another it is neither accessible nor controllable.
Appendix I: Footnotes
[1] Independent Philosopher.
[2] Individual Publication Date: May 15, 2020: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/sorenson-three; Full Issue Publication Date: September 1, 2020: https://in-sightjournal.com/insight-issues/.
*High range testing (HRT) should be taken with honest skepticism grounded in the limited empirical development of the field at present, even in spite of honest and sincere efforts. If a higher general intelligence score, then the greater the variability in, and margin of error in, the general intelligence scores because of the greater rarity in the population.
Appendix II: Citation Style Listing
American Medical Association (AMA): Jacobsen S. An Interview with Christian Sorenson on God, Genius, and Intelligence (Part Three) [Online].May 2020; 23(A). Available from: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/sorenson-three.
American Psychological Association (APA, 6th Edition, 2010): Jacobsen, S.D. (2020, May 15). An Interview with Christian Sorenson on God, Genius, and Intelligence (Part Three). Retrieved from http://www.in-sightjournal.com/sorenson-three.
Brazilian National Standards (ABNT): JACOBSEN, S. An Interview with Christian Sorenson on God, Genius, and Intelligence (Part Three). In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 23.A, May. 2020. <http://www.in-sightjournal.com/sorenson-three>.
Chicago/Turabian, Author-Date (16th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott. 2020. “An Interview with Christian Sorenson on God, Genius, and Intelligence (Part Three).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 23.A. http://www.in-sightjournal.com/sorenson-three.
Chicago/Turabian, Humanities (16th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott “An Interview with Christian Sorenson on God, Genius, and Intelligence (Part Three).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 23.A (May 2020). http://www.in-sightjournal.com/sorenson-three.
Harvard: Jacobsen, S. 2020, ‘An Interview with Christian Sorenson on God, Genius, and Intelligence (Part Three)‘, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 23.A. Available from: <http://www.in-sightjournal.com/sorenson-three>.
Harvard, Australian: Jacobsen, S. 2020, ‘An Interview with Christian Sorenson on God, Genius, and Intelligence (Part Three)‘, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 23.A., http://www.in-sightjournal.com/sorenson-three.
Modern Language Association (MLA, 7th Edition, 2009): Scott D. Jacobsen. “An Interview with Christian Sorenson on God, Genius, and Intelligence (Part Three).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 23.A (2020):May. 2020. Web. <http://www.in-sightjournal.com/sorenson-three>.
Vancouver/ICMJE: Jacobsen S. An Interview with Christian Sorenson on God, Genius, and Intelligence (Part Three) [Internet]. (2020, May 23(A). Available from: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/sorenson-three.
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