Alex O'Connor: Why You Feel Stuck in Life (#1 Question to Ask Yourself NOW)

1. 0:00 – 0:44

   Intro

   1. AOAlex O’Connor0:00

      Why do things exist? We have swallowed wholesale this idea that everything can be reduced to scientific explanations. I just don't think that's true.

   2. JSJay Shetty0:10

      What is the most dangerous idea people believe without questioning?

   3. AOAlex O’Connor0:13

      There are very few things that people can be certain of. Pay attention when you are convinced that you know why you're doing something.

   4. JSJay Shetty0:19

      What is a good life?

   5. AOAlex O’Connor0:20

      I would ask what they mean by good.

   6. JSJay Shetty0:22

      What do you think people are most afraid to admit about life?

   7. AOAlex O’Connor0:26

      That it comes to an end.

   8. JSJay Shetty0:29

      Alex O'Connor, welcome to On Purpose.

   9. AOAlex O’Connor0:31

      Jay, nice to meet you.

   10. JSJay Shetty0:32

       It's nice to meet you, mate. I've been looking forward to meeting you for a long, long time. I've been a consumer and fan of your content. Thoroughly enjoy watching you, whether it's debate, conversation, uh, very, very intriguing stuff. I wanted

2. 0:44 – 5:13

   What’s a Childhood Memory That Shaped You?

   1. JSJay Shetty0:44

      to start by asking you, I, I hope you've never been asked before, I don't think I saw this, but, uh, what's a childhood memory that you have that you feel defines who you are today?

   2. AOAlex O’Connor0:53

      My childhood is a bit unusual given the line of work I found myself in. I grew up, uh, just sort of south of Oxford City Centre in a place called Blackbird Leys. When I think of my childhood, what I remember is, like, acting up at school. In secondary school, kind of not showing up for class. I used to skateboard and I used to sort of wear jeans and, and the wrong shoes and have arguments with the teachers, like that kind of petty stuff. I used to like playing music, so I'd, like, skip class to be in the school recording studio, that kind of stuff. And, you know, somebody asked me recently, I was doing a talk with some, some school kids, and one of them asked, like, "Do you think your upbringing has affected your, your worldview?" And that's a difficult question to answer because we never know for sure. If someone asks, like, "Why are you an atheist?" There's one sense in which you could say, "Because I don't believe that the contingency argument is sound." And there's another in which you could say, "Because my parents got divorced when I was eight." You know what I mean? And those can kind of be both true, and so it's difficult to sort of psychologize. But I was thinking like, yeah, maybe the fact that I had this slightly sort of acting out rebellious attitude that meant that when I came across the New Atheist Movement, something about the, the debate, something about the theater attracted me to it because I had that kind of attitude as a child.

   3. JSJay Shetty2:07

      Mm-hmm.

   4. AOAlex O’Connor2:08

      My memory would be kind of, like, walking into school at, like, midday, wearing the wrong uniform and having somebody kind of say, you, you know, "You really should be wearing black shoes," and me just saying, "Oh, I'll sort it out tomorrow." And that kind of just being the kind of childhood I had. Which is maybe not what people would expect given how much I, I care about being a bit more, like, studious these days.

   5. JSJay Shetty2:31

      [laughs] Yeah.

   6. AOAlex O’Connor2:31

      And how I'm kind of associated, uh, with, like, academics. I'm not an academic myself, but I speak to them all the time and I've got a university degree and this kind of stuff. I find that sort of also kind of, like, helpful for people to hear sometimes because a lot of people listen to my stuff who are really interested in, like, philosophy-

   7. JSJay Shetty2:49

      [laughs]

   8. AOAlex O’Connor2:49

      ... or theology or whatever it is, but they, they don't like school. They don't do so well at school, and they're not interested. And I kind of want to say that, that's, that's okay. Like, don't flunk out. Like, do the best you can, but don't take school or your, your sort of desire to be in school or academia as a proxy for your desire to, like, learn about the world, you know?

   9. JSJay Shetty3:06

      So it sounds like there was a bit of a rebellious, anti-establishment pushing back version of you, but maybe not so strong-

   10. AOAlex O’Connor3:14

       Well, everyone wants to say that, right?

   11. JSJay Shetty3:15

       Yeah.

   12. AOAlex O’Connor3:15

       Everyone wants to sort of be, "Well, I was such a, I was a rebellious child and I used to sort of win debates with my teachers." So, like yeah, but you know, nothing super profound.

   13. JSJay Shetty3:22

       Yeah. Yeah.

   14. AOAlex O’Connor3:22

       Just like your normal kind of slightly annoying-

   15. JSJay Shetty3:24

       Yeah

   16. AOAlex O’Connor3:25

       ... kid in school.

   17. JSJay Shetty3:25

       But you were still great at school because you went to Oxford as well, so you would've got good grades.

   18. AOAlex O’Connor3:29

       Eventually, right? The first time I did what we call A levels in, in the UK, which is like the last two years of high school, I did further maths, maths, and physics.

   19. JSJay Shetty3:38

       Yeah, those are all hard subjects.

   20. AOAlex O’Connor3:39

       And I did critical thinking as a side sort of thing. And I got three Us, which is like... If you go like A, B, C, D, E, F, U stands for unmarked. It means it's so low that it doesn't even register. I actually overslept one of the exams, and I got a phone call from my mom, um, to waking me up, being like, "You... Like, I just had a call from the school." And the disappointment and evo- uh, it was horrifying, you know? But I just, I just didn't care. It was really only in like the last year I had to go back and redo A levels because you have to stay in education till you're 18 in the UK. And I thought, "You know what? Why not let's give this a crack?" So I got A, B, C doing humanity subjects. I remember I, I had some friends who, I still have these friends, who wanted to go to Oxford for the longest time, you know, since they were young, and they worked really hard at school. And I would sometimes joke, you know, about how I was gonna go to Oxford too. And then they would laugh, and I'm like, "Okay, I am joking, but why is that so funny?"

   21. JSJay Shetty4:31

       [laughs]

   22. AOAlex O’Connor4:32

       Why is that so funny, you know? And I kind of, I got a bit motivated by these, these friends of mine. Seeing that, like, ambition and drive-

   23. JSJay Shetty4:37

       Mm-hmm

   24. AOAlex O’Connor4:38

       ... kind of helped me in becoming their friends. It was just a good influence in that, in that very crucial period of, like, sort of motivating me to, to get the grades, which allowed me to go to, to Oxford. But then, then again, like, you know, if you're, if you're flunking out school right now, if you're doing your exams and you think it's like the end of the world, retake these exams. It's not the end of the world. And if you don't get into your dream university, there are all kinds of reasons why I might have preferred to have gone to a different university. It's just, like, nice to know that there are options. I think young people, uh, everything's so serious when it comes to, like, exams. And they are, you know, take them seriously. It's better if you do well, sure, but it's not the end of the world if you don't.

   25. JSJay Shetty5:11

       Yeah. And you can take them again.

   26. AOAlex O’Connor5:12

       Yeah, exactly.

   27. JSJay Shetty5:12

       Talk

3. 5:13 – 7:46

   Why You Feel Stuck Even When You’re Trying

   1. JSJay Shetty5:13

      to me about that flipping mindset though, because getting a U, not turning up to an exam, and then turning it around and being able to go, "This is important." Talk to me about that shift though, because I think at that age, we do place such a heavy weight on these things. Not showing up, not turning up, failing, feeling like it's not working out, but then being able to flip it around within a short period of time.

   2. AOAlex O’Connor5:36

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JSJay Shetty5:36

      It was such a long time ago, and you can't fully say, "This is exactly what I was doing." But talk to me about at least what it feels like when you reflect back and go why you felt, "I'm gonna change my mindset around this."

   4. AOAlex O’Connor5:47

      I think it was because I knew that I could do more. I knew that I could pass the exam. I knew that I could do philosophy and critical thinking and this kind of stuff. Just sort of flunking out of school in that way, for me it was a very intentional thing. I'm not interested in this. I want to be a rock star or a professional skateboarder or something like that instead.But I kind of got the feeling that people, like, didn't believe me, you know? They thought that the reason why I'm failing is because I, I'm not, you know, I, I don't have to do it, so I can't do this kind of stuff.

   5. JSJay Shetty6:17

      Mm-hmm.

   6. AOAlex O’Connor6:17

      And it wasn't just that. It wasn't like I just thought, "I need to prove a point now." But when I suddenly got this idea in my head that it would be fun to go to university, it would be cool, and I started admiring New Atheist figures like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, both of whom studied at Oxford. And I'd also started making YouTube videos. This was the other thing, right? I'm like 17 when I start making videos online, at least the videos I make today. And they were these kind of edgy New Atheist-type videos, and, like, they started doing quite well relative for the time. And I think there was also this feeling of, like, if I'm gonna be on the internet talking about, you know, God and religion and debating people and stuff, I better prove that I know what I'm talking about.

   7. JSJay Shetty6:56

      Mm-hmm.

   8. AOAlex O’Connor6:57

      It feels a bit weird to be doing that and then, like, failing school.

   9. JSJay Shetty7:00

      Yeah.

   10. AOAlex O’Connor7:01

       Um, and so I kinda knew that I could do it. I thought that it might be useful, and so I just sort of decided to give it another go. And it was very much a case of being like, "Yeah, see, I can, I can do this. I just didn't want to before." And I kind of regret that I didn't, but then having said that, if I'd have done further maths and physics, who knows what I'd be doing now. And I'd still be interested in philosophy, but I think that it was definitely a, a good thing that it went the other way.

   11. JSJay Shetty7:24

       Yeah. I appreciate you addressing some things about how young people are feeling today about college or not going to university or whether attending. When you think about it from that perspective, you said you knew you had the goods. I think a lot of young people today feel they don't have the goods. They, they don't actually feel confident in their ability academically, at school, or even otherwise.

4. 7:46 – 13:48

   Everyone Has Something They’re Meant To Do

   1. JSJay Shetty7:47

      What do you say to them? What do you think about for someone who's looking at that going, "Yeah, I don't, I don't even know what I would do. I don't know what I'd study. I don't really know myself"? You got interested in atheism early. You were making content. You were almost this... You were this self-starter it seems 10 years ago, which again, was pretty revolutionary for someone your age because there's not that many people that got started that early. What would you say to someone right now who's saying, "Alex, you know, I'd love to do something like you or my own thing, but I actually don't know what I'm good at. I don't, don't know what my strengths are"?

   2. AOAlex O’Connor8:17

      I think it's really rare to know what you want to do at, at any age, essentially.

   3. JSJay Shetty8:20

      True, 100%.

   4. AOAlex O’Connor8:20

      A lot of people just fall into what they do, but certainly at that age. And I think that you kind of have to either take a guess and realize that you can always change your mind, or you can do it later. You're gonna be good at something. There's gonna be something you're good at, and it might be something which isn't traditionally recognized as a form of intelligence. I mean, intelligence is a difficult thing to define, but it's probably something like the ability to perform particular tasks. It's the ability to, like, perform tasks with a particular goal in mind. That's why we call AI artificial intelligence, even though it might not be conscious or a person or anything. The intelligence is the ability to perform tasks. And there's something you can do. People who are musically talented, it's a very particular kind of, of genius. They might have absolutely no idea what the quadratic equation is, but they can just intuit musical feeling in a way that other people just couldn't even comprehend. There might be skills that you didn't even know were skills. Maybe you're, like, really good at architecture and your school just doesn't do arch... And it would take a long time for you to realize that that's the thing you, you're into. It took me a long time to realize architecture was even, like, a subject that existed to study.

   5. JSJay Shetty9:27

      I couldn't agree more.

   6. AOAlex O’Connor9:27

      You know what I mean?

   7. JSJay Shetty9:28

      Yeah, I love that point.

   8. AOAlex O’Connor9:29

      There's gotta be something you're good at, and if, if you're being told that you're not good at something, it may be that you're not putting enough effort in and that you're slacking, in which case try a bit harder. But if you feel like you are, you're doing your best, you're trying as hard as you can, and people keep telling you you need to try harder, it's probably just that they're not recognizing the things that you're good at. But we have no idea why some people are good at things and others not. It could be social, it could be genetic, it could be anything. Who knows? All that matters is that right now you're good at some things and bad at others. I think the best advice anyone can give on that regard, in that regard, is to figure out as quickly as possible what you're good at. That's the most important thing. What are you good at and what do you enjoy doing? And try to, try to pursue that. And then realize that you don't have to... Look, you don't have to go to university. Even if you want to be a physicist or a mathematician, eventually you'll probably have to, but you don't have to do it now. You can take some time out. You can think, "Is this really what I want to be doing?" You can go and travel the world or whatnot. If you really want to go down the academic route, it's, it... There are always options available for you. And there are so many now. You can do them online, you can do them virtually, you can do them part-time. There's always something available for you. It's so obvious to someone who's an adult. Someone who's, like, currently working in a cafe and doesn't really, like, know what they want to do with themselves, it's not gonna console them to say, "Hey, man, you don't need to worry about academia." Like, I didn't even think of that. But when you're a kid, academia is, like, the only thing.

   9. JSJay Shetty10:46

      The only thing.

   10. AOAlex O’Connor10:47

       Unless maybe you're, like, a particularly talented, like, footballer or a musician-

   11. JSJay Shetty10:51

       Yeah, musician

   12. AOAlex O’Connor10:51

       ... and then maybe... But even then, maybe your school doesn't encourage that kind of thing. And you will be told that the most important thing in your life are your exams. Don't get me wrong, those exams are important. Like, nail them. It will help you in the long run. But the, the idea that that is kind of what life's about is obviously insane. And I think kids, like, know that, but they haven't, like, felt it. They haven't internalized it. I speak to a lot of school kids, and they've heard this kind of stuff, you know, don't let exams rule your life and stuff. But some of them, I think, hearing that I literally did just completely fail and then changed my mind and turned it around and... It sort of relaxes them a little bit. It's, it's no guarantee that you're gonna be able to turn it around and then go to Oxford, right? It's obviously not the case. I feel very lucky in that regard. But, like, there are options, man.

   13. JSJay Shetty11:34

       I love the idea that you only discover subjects exist after you become an adult. I felt like that with so many things. I thought I hated science because it was biology, and then learned about neuroscience later on, and I was fascinated.

   14. AOAlex O’Connor11:48

       Exactly.

   15. JSJay Shetty11:48

       And I thought, "Oh gosh, if I didn't have to learn plant biology, if I... it was always brain biology, I think I would've been... that would've been something I would've wanted to study." And you can now. That's the point, right? You can.

   16. AOAlex O’Connor11:58

       Textiles.

   17. JSJay Shetty11:59

       Yeah.

   18. AOAlex O’Connor11:59

       But I think you can, you can get the, the kernel of, of what you might be into.

   19. JSJay Shetty12:03

       Yes.

   20. AOAlex O’Connor12:03

       Maybe you might find that you really enjoy your art classes.And you know you don't wanna be an artist. You know you, you're not gonna be the next, you know, Monet or whatever. But, like, you enjoy it. That should be enough to maybe think, "Okay, then I'll study that." And I don't know where it's gonna end up, but that's the kind of thing that opens up these worlds that you didn't know existed. That will help with being able to be an architect.

   21. JSJay Shetty12:19

       Yes.

   22. AOAlex O’Connor12:19

       'Cause you'll be able to draw images. It will help with doing textiles. It will help with set management. You know, you could be someone who designs sets for podcasts, a job that didn't even exist really-

   23. JSJay Shetty12:29

       Mm-hmm

   24. AOAlex O’Connor12:29

       ... when I was at school. And now it's a very specific, very niche thing that people are after. But the most important thing is the passion. It, it would always really upset me when at university there were people who would struggle a lot with the work and then also think, "I'm not even sure why I'm actually doing this."

   25. JSJay Shetty12:44

       Mm.

   26. AOAlex O’Connor12:45

       "I don't know if this was the right subject." That's just, that's nihilism, man. Suffering is one thing. Being aware that your suffering is kind of meaningless, that's what nihilism is, [laughs] and that's what can, can be brought out if you study something you're not passionate about, and then it gets hard.

   27. JSJay Shetty12:58

       Mm.

   28. AOAlex O’Connor12:59

       Because you've got this double whammy of the meaninglessness plus the difficulty.

   29. JSJay Shetty13:03

       And so many of us are stuck exactly there.

   30. AOAlex O’Connor13:05

       You know, if someone studies theology or philosophy, it's famously a very unemployable job. What are you gonna do except be a priest or a YouTuber?
5. 13:48 – 19:36

   What History Reveals About The Present

   1. JSJay Shetty13:48

      I've, I've heard you say, Alex, that you're fascinated by history.

   2. AOAlex O’Connor13:51

      Oh, yeah.

   3. JSJay Shetty13:51

      And, and I wanted to ask you, if you could go back in time and witness something personally, what moment in history would you choose and why?

   4. AOAlex O’Connor14:01

      I'm afraid it's gonna be boring in the sense that it is definitely going to be something biblical. Like, there's no question about that.

   5. JSJay Shetty14:05

      Really?

   6. AOAlex O’Connor14:05

      No question.

   7. JSJay Shetty14:06

      Any, any time?

   8. AOAlex O’Connor14:07

      There are certain things which might be sort of interesting to see. I'd love to see Stonehenge getting built. I'd love to see the pyramids be built, that kind of stuff. But when I came back and said, you know, turns out they used a pulley system, and everyone goes like, "Oh, cool." It's not the most profound thing in the world.

   9. JSJay Shetty14:20

      Yeah.

   10. AOAlex O’Connor14:20

       Um, for me, my line of work is so much engaged in worldview, and the worldview that I'm mostly engaged in talking about is Christianity. And some of the biggest mysteries about the Christian religion are about specifically the kinds of things that Jesus actually said and did, as opposed to what Orthodox Christians believe he did. The resurrection is an obvious example. Stand outside the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea and see if somebody gets up and walks out. But also the baptism. I'd love to see the baptism of Jesus, because I want to know why was Jesus being baptized? Who was John the Baptist? Why did Jesus seem to be some kind... I mean, historically, some people think he might have been a disciple of John the Baptist, which Christians won't want to accept. But I'd love to know that fact. It's the moment where Jesus' ministry really begins, and the Gospels tell us that the heavens open and there's this voice from heaven, and that, um, this is where Jesus sort of picks up some of his initial disciples from as well. I would love to see what happened there. Because if I showed up and John the Baptist said, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world," then I would say, "Gosh, okay, Christianity's maybe got something going for it." But if you showed up and Jesus bowed down and said, "Master," you know, then I think it would totally upset Orthodox Christianity. And I think that's, like, a really important question. What's the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist? So I'd love to see them meet.

   11. JSJay Shetty15:41

       Mm.

   12. AOAlex O’Connor15:42

       But it's, it's hard to know. I mean, you've surely got an answer to this question yourself.

   13. JSJay Shetty15:45

       Sometimes I find myself being fascinated by so many moments in history, and mainly it's about human decision-making. So I d- I don't know if you saw this movie recently. It's, uh, called Nuremberg.

   14. AOAlex O’Connor15:54

       I haven't seen it.

   15. JSJay Shetty15:55

       It's all about the Nuremberg trials and post-World War II, how we make decisions on morality, how we make decisions on how we evaluate what the Germans did. And you've got Göring, who was leading the Germans on behalf of Hitler, versus his therapist, played by Rami Malek, who, who's unbelievable in the movie. But I look at a moment like that and I go, wow, like, humans had to really sit down and think about... Because for the first time ever, how do you truly go to court for post-World War II and the actions that were taken against the Jews? And I'm like, that's a fascinating moment to be a part of. Now, that's not that long ago.

   16. AOAlex O’Connor16:34

       Yeah.

   17. JSJay Shetty16:34

       So then you go, okay, where were those other moments in history-

   18. AOAlex O’Connor16:37

       Yeah

   19. JSJay Shetty16:38

       ... where big decisions were made by groups of human beings after groups of human beings went through a certain amount of suffering, turmoil, or subjugation?

   20. AOAlex O’Connor16:47

       And when you don't have documents. I mean, 'cause when history is recent enough, you can kind of put yourself there by reading the books. Obviously, there's, there's gonna be bias and misreporting and stuff like that, and you've got to be careful. But, like, if you go far back enough, especially into ancient history, y- you've got, like, one little shred. Some of our most well-known famous historical figures from antiquity, we only know they exist from, like, maybe one, maybe two sources. It's like a scrap of papyrus somewhere with a name scribbled on it. And yet these people were, were so important. So I think it would have to be, it would have to be an ancient event.

   21. JSJay Shetty17:19

       Yes, yes. Yeah. I think I'd go back.

   22. AOAlex O’Connor17:21

       For a time machine.

   23. JSJay Shetty17:21

       I would genuinely want to go back to the point at which the Bhagavad Gita was spoken, which has always been my fascination-

   24. AOAlex O’Connor17:28

       Yeah

   25. JSJay Shetty17:28

       ... and my former study. But being at that mo- I wouldn't wanna be on the battlefield because I can handle myself, I'll tell you that.

   26. AOAlex O’Connor17:34

       [laughs]

   27. JSJay Shetty17:35

       I'd fail miserably at archery or anything like that.

   28. AOAlex O’Connor17:37

       Do you think if you went back you would find Arjuna on a literal battlefield being advised by, by an actual deity?

   29. JSJay Shetty17:45

       I would hope so. I mean, the place Kurukshetra exists, it's believed that that is where the battle took place. And so to me, I would hope. I would definitely hope so, that I would get to experience it as it's told, in, in the way it's told, as a historic piece.

   30. AOAlex O’Connor17:57

       If you went back and you found there were no such historical event, or maybe there were a historical battle, but, like, the conversationthat's had throughout the Bhagavad Gita is a fictional one, would that, like, trouble you? Because for me, I'd still quite like the Bhagavad Gita. I'd find it worth reading.
6. 19:36 – 26:24

   The Mystery of Consciousness

   1. JSJay Shetty19:36

      Talk to me about what reading you have done in Eastern traditions. It sounds like you have done a bit of exploration that I probably haven't heard about before.

   2. AOAlex O’Connor19:43

      Basically, it's really funny because I, I talk about religion all the time, and particularly Christianity. People say things like, "You know, you should talk about, you should talk about Hinduism." And I'm like, "Okay, I, I get why you're saying that. That's fair. I'd love to." But it's not quite as simple as that.

   3. JSJay Shetty19:58

      Of course not.

   4. AOAlex O’Connor19:59

      You know what I mean?

   5. JSJay Shetty20:00

      It's a, it's a really... Yeah.

   6. AOAlex O’Connor20:01

      Even when it comes to, like, people say, "Well, you should, you should have, you should have a Hindu on your show to talk to them." And I'm like, even that is tricky. Because firstly, I prepare as hard as I can for every guest that comes on my show.

   7. JSJay Shetty20:11

      Mm-hmm.

   8. AOAlex O’Connor20:12

      I can't learn Hinduism, and even so, it's not like you can just have a Hindu on the show and that become like, oh, you've done, you've done Hinduism now. It took me a long time, like, even sort of finding my feet as to, like, where to start looking for, for interesting stuff, and my way in ultimately came through my study of consciousness. I'm fascinated by the philosophy of mind, and of course, the Indian tradition has this a- amazing content essentially on the philosophy of mind that I hadn't really encountered before. Becoming convinced of some weird views about consciousness, about how it's not reducible to material and how it's not as simple as saying that brains just produce con- consciousness, that kind of stuff, sort of led me into learning about specifically the Advaita Vedanta tradition.

   9. JSJay Shetty20:59

      Mm-hmm.

   10. AOAlex O’Connor20:59

       Advaita Vedanta meaning like the Vedas are part of the, the Hindu scriptural canon. They're like the oldest religious scriptures in the world. I think like anta means... I think it's the, the, the addendum anta means like end. So you get like end of the Vedas, meaning like the latter part of the Vedas, which collectively are known as the Upanishad, and Advaita meaning like a, like non, and dvaita meaning dual. So in the philosophy of mind, if I, I think in philosophy generally, one of the biggest questions is how many types of stuff are there? Because there's this very weird sort of division of reality where we're conscious, we have subjectivity, like inner thoughts, and this mug over here doesn't. So there seems to be kind of two different kinds of things. You've basically got three options when it comes to explaining that. One is that there are just two types of things in the universe. There's mind and there's body. There's mental and there's physical, and they are just separate kinds of things, and somehow they interact with each other. Another way is to say, actually, there's only one type of stuff, and that type of stuff is the dead stuff. It's the, the matter, the atoms. This is the most popular view in the West today. The only stuff that exists is atoms that are dead, and it's just that if you put them together in the right way, you get this thing called consciousness, but really it's kind of just a manifestation of the atoms. There's a third option, which is there is only one type of stuff, and it's the mental stuff, and what we call physical, what we call the physical world around us, is a manifestation of mental stuff, which sounds super hippy dippy, but that's only because we're not used to it. I mean, the idea that, I... People think that, you know... They're just happy to accept that if you put physical matter together in the right order, it will produce thoughts. That is as weird to me as saying that if you put thoughts together in the right order, you could produce some physical matter. It seems like a sort of category mistake, right? But I think there's only one type of stuff. So there's this view which in the Western tradition is called idealism, which is kind of the view that everything exists as mental stuff. Some people have said that everything is kind of an idea in the mind of God. Some people think that nothing exists except insofar as it's being perceived. It's a very sort of complicated and quite deep philosophical tradition, but it's something that the Advaita Vedanta tradition had been banging on about for thousands of years prior to its development in the Western canon. The reason it's Vedanta is because the Upanishads are, like, particularly interested in the idea that kind of division is a, is a, is an illusion and unity is real, and it heavily implies that consciousness or, like, the soul, the kind of stuff that makes you yourself, is kind of one thing with everybody else's self and that all of that consciousness is kind of the same thing as the universe, that there's this great big sort of unity of, of stuff. I thought that was really cool. So it's a bit of a sort of long-winded way to say that I started looking into that, and then I, I had, uh, Swami Sarvapriyananda, he's the head of the Vedanta Society of New York or whatever it's called, on my show, and we talked about Advaita Vedanta. We talked about consciousness. We didn't talk about the Hindu pantheon of gods. I still don't understand how Brahman manifests in, like, hundreds of different deities. I, I still don't really get that at all. I don't know about the different traditions who see different deities as their main gods and stuff like that. I don't really understand that. ButI understand the philosophy of consciousness. We were able to have a great conversation about this particular Indian tradition. But the thing about Advaita Vedanta is it's not really a religious tradition. It's a philosophical tradition that comes from India. So when I do this show, yeah, I'm speaking to a Hindu, and people say, "Great, you're talking about Hinduism for the first time." It's like, no, I'm not really. I'm talking about a philosophical school that comes from India.

   11. JSJay Shetty24:40

       Yeah.

   12. AOAlex O’Connor24:40

       Which is not the same thing. I mean, the word Hindu is very unhelpful anyway because it's, it's, it's what's called an exonym, which is a word which is applied from the outside. People didn't call themselves Hindus. It's sort of got etymological roots with like the Indus River Valley, which is where a particular people were just doing their thing, just going about their business, and Europeans sort of label these people Hindus. But it sort of refers to the geography. Someone saying like, "Have a Hindu on," it's kind of a little bit like someone saying like, "Have a European on." It's like I, I can get why somebody, if you've never spoken to a European, would want me to speak to a European because there is a different flavor of, of thought that goes on there, but it's, it's such a rich and varied-

   13. JSJay Shetty25:20

       Yeah

   14. AOAlex O’Connor25:20

       ... sort of culture.

   15. JSJay Shetty25:21

       No, I appreciate the way you're looking at it.

   16. AOAlex O’Connor25:22

       You just can't do that. So when someone says like, like you're asking, what's your engagement with the Indian tradition? It's sort of like somebody saying, "What's your engagement in the Western philosophical canon?" It's like, that's a big question. I've, I've got to say I'm much more specific. You know?

   17. JSJay Shetty25:35

       Yeah, yeah.

   18. AOAlex O’Connor25:36

       I'm interested in this person or that person or this school. And so for me, the stuff that I love from the Indian tradition is, is their views on consciousness, which I think predates the, the Western stuff and does it a lot more sort of intuitively. Big news. Juni just launched at Kroger, and we're celebrating with a free can for you. Because most of us hit that point in the afternoon when our energy dips and our focus starts to fade. Well, that's exactly why we created Juni, a sparkling drink crafted with natural ingredients to lift your mood, sharpen your focus, and give you smooth energy, all without the crash. Now available at Kroger stores, including Ralph's, Fred Meyer, King Soopers, Smith's, and Fry's, where you can grab a free Juni on us. So head to drinkjuni.com/kroger to claim your free can in store so you can feel better

7. 26:24 – 31:02

   Inside the New Atheist Movement

   1. AOAlex O’Connor26:24

      and live better. Are there a lot of New Age atheists that are also fascinated in that way? Is that common, or is that quite rare? I, I don't think new atheists because the new atheist movement was, was a very... It's interesting how we talk about it in past tense now like it was ever existing.

   2. JSJay Shetty26:40

      Yeah.

   3. AOAlex O’Connor26:41

      It was a, a very sort of prickly kind of criticism, and it's indebted to the so-called Four Horsemen, mostly Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris. Daniel Dennett wasn't quite as fierce, you know. But these guys, you've got a biologist, an evolutionary biologist in Richard Dawkins, a journalist in Christopher Hitchens, a neuroscientist, although I don't know if he did anything further than his like studies, Sam Harris, and then you've got the philosopher Daniel Dennett. And notice that the philosopher is the one who's like the least-

   4. JSJay Shetty27:13

      [laughs]

   5. AOAlex O’Connor27:13

      ... you know, critical in that regard and outgoing. And although he had a lot to say about religion, the reason why these guys in other disciplines were getting involved is because like Richard Dawkins was annoyed that young Earth creationists were saying you can't teach evolution in schools. Christopher Hitchens was getting annoyed that religious justifications were being used for geopolitical terrorism. That was their kind of line of attack. And so to think that they would be talking about that kind of stuff, that Hitchens would be sort of standing up and complaining about the sort of the messianic undertones of the Israeli-Palestine conflict and then suddenly start going, "But you know, I think that Brahman and Atman are maybe the same thing. But I want to critique that idea by, you know, appealing to the rival school." It just seems ridiculous to me.

   6. JSJay Shetty27:58

      Yeah.

   7. AOAlex O’Connor27:58

      So, so I think new atheism, no. But that's because within Eastern religions you have the same kind of conflicts going on, which I don't think the West knows as much about. But also the kind of engagement I have is not about that. Like I say, I'm not interested so much in the, in the deities and the gods and the sects. I'm interested in the philosophical traditions. And I don't think the new atheists were even interested in the Western philosophical traditions. They were interested in the, the practical reality of religion. Religion is a force for evil. Religion causes wars and that kind of stuff. And that's all very well and good, but to me I've always compared that to saying like... It's like saying politics is bad.

   8. JSJay Shetty28:33

      Yes.

   9. AOAlex O’Connor28:34

      Sure. You know, politics causes wars and politics drives families. It's like that's true, but that doesn't mean we should be an anarchist.

   10. JSJay Shetty28:41

       Mm-hmm.

   11. AOAlex O’Connor28:42

       Maybe we should, but it doesn't guarantee it. It doesn't mean there isn't a correct political position. And critiquing that kind of stuff doesn't mean that you know anything about political philosophy. You might not know anything about, you know, theories of justification of the state or whatever it is that political philosophers sit around talking about, you know. And I think the same thing's going on with new atheism. They couldn't recite Thomas Aquinas' causal arguments for God if you paid them to. Richard Dawkins does so in The God Delusion. He, he sort of responds to Thomas Aquinas directly. Thomas Aquinas is the most celebrated Christian metaphysician like in history, and he responds to Thomas Aquinas in about two pages. It takes more than two pages even to explain the terminology that Thomas Aquinas is using, let alone to list, explain, and then debunk. I think we have some evidence that there's just not this engagement with the philosophical tradition. I don't mean to insult these people. I like Richard. Richard's a friend of mine. I think he knows that I disagree with his philosophical musings. And he himself just admits, he says that he's just not interested in theology and philosophy. It's just not what he wants to do. He wants to do science. I think fair enough. But then maybe don't write a book with a chapter called Why There Almost Certainly Is No God. But he did it because he cared about science. He doesn't care about the Kalam cosmological argument or whatever. He cares about evolution being taught in schools and that kind of stuff. And so the idea that, that someone who cares about that and that's their way in is suddenly gonna become interested in the... Even in philosophy in the West is not very popular. The idea that these guys are gonna engage with that I think is, is untrue. And so that funnels down to modern day, the sort of teenage atheist like me on YouTube making videos. Took me years before I even encounteredIndian philosophy. And that only came after I sort of calmed down a bit. Everyone's almost arguing something from their very... Um, maybe narrows the wrong word, but ev- everyone's looking at something through their lens and, of course, preaching or sharing whatever that may be, whether you're religious or whether you're an atheist or, or whether you're agnostic. And it applies to everything in the same way as you can talk about entrepreneurship and someone could say, "Hey, if you don't how to sell, then you can't be an entrepreneur." And then someone else is over there going, "If you don't know how to negotiate, you don't know how to be an entrepreneur." It's almost impossible to get a 360-degree view on a belief and idea because there's so many different

8. 31:02 – 44:13

   Explaining Your Worldview to Others

   1. AOAlex O’Connor31:02

      thoughts and ideas. How would you explain your worldview to a 10-year-old so that they simply understood it? I would probably wait until this, this child was taking an interest in such things. And I might ask them, I mean, it might be a bit young, 10, to start talking about consciousness, but at some point, I might sort of say, "Don't you think it's weird that you are conscious, you have thoughts and feelings, you have an inner sense of self?" I'd use different words because they're 10. "And this mug and this table and this chair don't." And depending what they'd say, you'd ask a further question. So if they say, "Yeah. No, that, I guess so, but that's because, you know, you've got a brain." And then you might start asking about what they think the brain is and how. So you sort of ask questions.

   2. JSJay Shetty31:43

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AOAlex O’Connor31:44

      And in my view, I think we have just sort of swallowed wholesale this idea that everything can be reduced to scientific explanation. At least everything that is true about the universe can be scientifically explained, and I just don't think that's true. And I think it's, like, trivially untrue. I'm not making some profound, "What about love, man? You can't scientifically..." It's like, no, you can explain the chemicals that are firing. I mean something a, a bit more specific, which is that science isn't really in the business of explaining things. I'm no longer talking to the 10-year-old, by the way. You know, science is not in the business of explaining things. It's in the business of describing things mathematically. Galileo famously says that mathematics is the language of the universe. Fair enough. But maths on its own doesn't do anything. Maths just describes. All mathematical equations have an equal sign, and it describes some sort of fact about reality. It doesn't cause anything. Newton's laws of motion don't cause objects to move. They describe how objects move when they're in motion. Similarly, the example I love to give because it's so explicit is Newton's discover- discovery of gravity. What did Newton actually discover when he discovered gravity? What's the thing that he actually figured out? We had known for a very long time that objects fall to the ground, right? What's the thing that he realized? Well, Newton asked an interesting question. He looks up at the moon, and he asks like, like, "Why isn't the moon falling towards the Earth?" And his sort of profound realization is that the moon is falling towards the Earth all the time. It's just that if, if something falls towards my hand, it'll hit my hand. But if I knock it to the side a little bit, then it'll kind of do this. It'll kind of miss the Earth a bit and then crash into the side. And if I knock it a little bit further to the side, it will, it will sort of miss it even more and maybe crash into the bottom eventually. And if you knock it just the right speed to the side, it will keep falling towards the Earth, but keep missing it, and that's what we call orbit. And Newton realized that the same thing that makes objects fall to the ground keeps the planets in circulation, which is a profound realization. And then he took to the task of mathematically describing it. Calculus. Inverse square law. So he figures out that the distance between two things, if you square that distance, that is how much weaker the force of gravity is. So if something is two times further away, it's four times less attractive. And he does all of this, and it's brilliant in Principia Mathematica. But then there remains this question, like why? Not how do objects fall to the ground? Not what mathematical rules do they sort of do it by? But why do they fall to the ground? And in the scholium, which is like a, an addendum to the Principia Mathematica where Newton published these findings, he answers this explicitly. You can read this online. He says, like, as to what gravity actually is, as to why this stuff is happening, he writes, "Hypothesis non fingo" It's in Latin. It means, "I frame no hypothesis." He doesn't know. And he says it's also not the kind of question that science should be engaged in.

   4. JSJay Shetty34:44

      Wow.

   5. AOAlex O’Connor34:44

      Because it can't answer that kind of question. In other words, Newton has described brilliantly planets, orbits, objects falling to the ground, this force which he calls gravity, and he just... It's sort of a placeholder. It's like the word gravity is just a word for whatever is the thing that's making this happen. But he doesn't know what's making it happen.

   6. JSJay Shetty35:03

      Mm.

   7. AOAlex O’Connor35:03

      And it's so funny to me when people, like, look into the past and they say, "How silly are the beliefs that people used to have? They used to believe in, like, animism. They used to believe in spirits. They used to believe that, you know, angels were pushing around planets and stuff." But no, no, no. Since the Scientific Revolution, we're much more intelligent because we explain things in terms of forces.

   8. JSJay Shetty35:26

      [laughs]

   9. AOAlex O’Connor35:27

      Forces. Like, think about that word for a minute. You know what I mean?

   10. JSJay Shetty35:31

       [laughs]

   11. AOAlex O’Connor35:31

       We are so used to hearing it, but that's it. And if you ask a scientist what a force is-

   12. JSJay Shetty35:36

       Yeah

   13. AOAlex O’Connor35:36

       ... they'll either have to tell you that a force is just a des- a mathematical description of regularities that we've observed.

   14. JSJay Shetty35:43

       Mm-hmm.

   15. AOAlex O’Connor35:43

       Or they'll have to say, unjustifiably, "Well, it's the thing that makes things fall to the ground."

   16. JSJay Shetty35:48

       [laughs]

   17. AOAlex O’Connor35:48

       But what is it? You don't know that. You don't know why that's happening. Now, to be clear, some people will say, okay, fair enough with Newton. I pick Newton because he says it explicitly. This isn't an insult to science. It's not, it's not insulting to say that it, it's not really interested in the why question. It's interested in the how question. Some people think the why question just shouldn't exist. That's fine to say. But science itself is definitely in the business of describing. Scientists will happily tell you that anything which is, you know, true about physics can be described mathematically. But if you think about what maths is, it's equations. They don't do anything. Stephen Hawking at the end of A Brief History of Time, quite famously, I wish I could recite it from memory. It's so beautiful. He, he writes about-How he hopes that maybe one day our basic scientific theories will condense into one great big theory of everything. There'll be one beautiful equation that sort of governs everything about the universe. But he says we'll still be left with the question of what breathes fire into the equations. Equations don't make things move.

   18. JSJay Shetty36:42

       Mm.

   19. AOAlex O’Connor36:43

       They describe how things move when they're in motion, right? So we're left with this great big explanatory gap. If people are in any doubt about this, there's a wonderful clip of Richard Feynman. There's a BBC interview asking him about magnets. He says, "You know, when I push two magnets together, they repel each other. Like, what, what, what's going on there?" And Feynman's like, "Well, the, you know, the magnets are repelling each other." And he goes, "Yeah, no, I... But, but you know, what's, um, what's, what's happening there?" And Feynman's like, "What, what do you mean what's happening there?" And there's this sort of moment of confusion. And the, the interviewer says, "I- I've got to say, I think this is a reasonable question." And Feynman goes, "Oh, no, no, it's a very reasonable question. But what do you mean?" So if you ask a question like why, well, depends on your level of explanation. Like, why is Aunt Marie in the hospital? Well, because she slipped and fell on the ice. For most people, that would satisfy. But if you were like an alien who didn't know anything, you'd need to know why slipping on ice sends you to hospital.

   20. JSJay Shetty37:33

       Mm-hmm.

   21. AOAlex O’Connor37:34

       So you'd have to explain that. And then you'd have to explain, like, why is ice slippery? Well, because when you step on ice, it evaporates the, the top level, which turns into water. Notice we're just describing what's happening. Okay, but, so why does that happen? Well, now we're talking about the molecular composition of water and its, and its, um, sort of chemical interactions. But why, why does that happen? Feynman's just basically pointing out that if you ask the why question, you are sent into this regress down into the most fundamental questions of reality. And in fact, Feynman then says, "And if you want to know why Aunt Marie fell over, you'd have to know about gravity and why does gravity work." And that's where we just were a second ago, right?

   22. JSJay Shetty38:10

       Mm-hmm.

   23. AOAlex O’Connor38:10

       This thing, gravity, which science will describe but never, like, explain why it's, why it's occurring. And then [laughs] Feynman sort of comes back to magnets and says, "So, so for now, you know, it, it will have to be enough just to say that they are repelling each other." And that's, that's fair enough. And I think that's what's going on.

   24. JSJay Shetty38:24

       Yeah.

   25. AOAlex O’Connor38:25

       Science describes... Like, physics is the description of and theory of physical matter and its relations. It therefore presupposes the existence of matter and its relations. One of the foundational questions I don't think science will answer is where that physical matter came from. Like, it seems plausible. We say, look at the progress we've made.

   26. JSJay Shetty38:45

       Mm-hmm.

   27. AOAlex O’Connor38:45

       We used to think that we couldn't explain biological complexity, but now we have. We used to think that we couldn't explain why objects fall, but now we have. I want to point out that firstly, what we've actually done is describe those processes. But also, I think there's a categorical difference between explaining some kind of physical interaction at a deeper level and explaining the origin of physical matter and its interactions. I don't think you will mathematically describe the origin of the stuff which the mathematical descriptions apply to.

   28. JSJay Shetty39:14

       Mm-hmm.

   29. AOAlex O’Connor39:15

       Given what I've just said about how what scientific laws are, are observations of stuff that happens in the universe and then mathematically describing how they regularly, like, occur. I sometimes compare this, it's a bit of a crude analogy, but it gets across the point, to discovering a, a book of Shakespeare's sonnets. If we came across a book of Shakespeare's sonnets and we didn't know what they were, then we might start studying them. And suppose that you were really, really smart, and you said, "Okay, well, I've noticed that each of these letters comes in two kinds. There's a big one and a small one, and whenever there's a new line, they use the big one. That's interesting." And you call that the law of capitalization. And then you notice that there are all of these little symbols, unlike the letters, little dots and squiggles, and you realize that they show up in predictable ways, and, and you call that the law of punctuation. And you're able to predict. If you're really clever, you might notice that if you say it out loud, it follows a particular rhythm. Dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum. And you call that the law of iambic pentameter, because you're g- you're really clever now. And you can predict that if I turn over the page, I'm gonna see something that follows these rules. What you're discovering, of course, are the laws of literacy.

   30. JSJay Shetty40:22

       Mm-hmm.
9. 44:13 – 55:02

   The Limits of Science and Philosophy

   1. JSJay Shetty44:13

      would you even encourage people to live in the messy middle of not being certain about their ideas? Does that create a better human? I think that's what they do live. You think so? I mean, there are very few things that people can be certain of. In the sense of... I, I would argue that most of the people you debate with or most religious or scientific people in the world, at least in the form of how they live, are trying to live based on their beliefs. They have a very strong confidence, yeah. Yeah. Con- confidence meaning- Correct ... with faith. Certainty. Yeah, with faith. Fide. Yeah. The Latin faith. I think if you speak to most of those people, they will at least ostensibly say, "But I'm open to having my mind changed," particularly scientists. I mean, the whole thing about science is that it's open for correction. Like, no scientist believes that we've, like, completed science. Yeah, of course. Scientists are very much like one day they, they hope that Einstein will be proved completely wrong because it's exciting, and it would, like, sharpen what we understand about the universe. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so, like, I don't think anybody has that kind of confidence that they've got it all correct. But I think there is a confidence in the method, and fair enough. Have a confidence in the scientific method because it's great. And again, I love science. I'm not trying to insult it or anything. I'm just saying be very precise about what it's doing and what it's not. And I think we could avoid a lot of needless debate if we understand exactly the parameters of, like, each of our disciplines. Disciplines like interact and emerge and stuff. But, like, if you're talking about mathematical models, there are things that mathematical models just can't do. Mm-hmm. And if you're talking about, like, thought experiments in philosophy, there are things that thought experiments can't do. They cannot provide empirical proof of various phenomena. They can't provide scientific evidence for the Big Bang, that kind of stuff. But likewise, I think that the scientific method can't describe certain foundational aspects of reality and instead presuppose them. Mm-hmm. I would, of course, encourage people to, to recognize there's, like, lots of room to maneuver here. I think that's one of the things that I'm trying to do. And, like, it kind of splits people, like especially when I talk about either consciousness or I talk about the nature of science, it splits people. There's kind of three responses to the science stuff. Some people go, "That's a load of nonsense. Of course, science explains things." And then I have to spend a bit of time really drilling down what they mean by explain in the Feynman sense. Other people say, "This is really interesting. Yeah, cool. I've never thought about it that way. That's great. That's exciting." And some people sort of say, "Yeah, science doesn't explain in that sense. Like description is the same thing as ex-" They just sort of say it's like trivially true. Mm-hmm. It's not a very profound observation, but it has sort of some profound implications. If, if it is true that science only describes, then as long as you have an explanatory question left, it's one that science is not gonna be able to answer. So I, I sort of encourage people to at least explore that thought. It's totally fine to have confidence in your conclusions, but, like, recognize it's, it's about the method. It's this optimism about the progress of science because of what it's done in the past, which is great, but you have to be very precise about exactly what it's done in the past and what it might therefore mimic in the future. Mm-hmm. And answering foundational metaphysical questions about the nature of matter, why it exists in the first place, that kind of stuff, I, I just don't think it's, it's an appropriate tool. And people will be thinking in their head, but hold on, what about, like... You know, there are theories. What about, like, string theory? What about... I- I'm telling you that if you investigate these closely enough, you will realize that these are proposed descriptions of the nature of reality. They're proposed descriptions of what's going on. They don't answer the why question. And I think you're left with two options. One is to say the why question is bogus. Some people think that. Mm-hmm. And that's fair. Richard Dawkins has said, like, if you ask a question like what is the color of jealousy, it makes grammatical sense, but it's a meaningless question. And, and the why question might be the same. Why do things exist? If that's the case, maybe there is no why. Maybe there are only descriptions. In that case, I would slightly alter my thesis to say everything is... Maybe philosophy is description, right? When, when a Christian says that God is a trinity, they're just describing the nature of God, right? They're not explaining why he's a trinity. Fair enough. But they would not do so in mathematical, like, language. Mm-hmm. You can't run the ontological argument for God's existence as a series of mathematical equations. It's just a different kind of language that's being used. I would just say that the scientific language will not describe the things which some other philosophical languages can describe. And that's not a problem. That's great. It's actually not that profound. Yeah. So many scientists just are like, yeah, I mean, you could call it like functionalism or descriptivism about science, that what's going on is we're just describing reality, and that's great, and it's really useful. But I encourage people to just, like, reflect on what that means and what it

   2. AOAlex O’Connor48:41

      Should do to their confidence that science will answer these foundational questions.

   3. JSJay Shetty48:43

      Yeah.

   4. AOAlex O’Connor48:44

      I started talking about the origin of the universe 'cause it's, it's helpful when thinking about like Newton and Einstein to get across what I'm saying about science. But really, when you ask about what my worldview is, the reason I would bring that up is to talk about consciousness, and in a similar way, say that science will not explain, or at least will not tell us the nature of, of consciousness. For me, consciousness is the most foundational, like, mystery. It's probably the foundational fact of reality. It's the kind of thing which science can't approach because science, science sort of describes relations between things. Science uses the language of mathematics. It's like quantifying. Consciousness is a quality. It's qualitative, not the kind of thing that science can talk about. I did a panel not long ago that was hosted by Brian Cox. It was with some neuroscientists. Uh, one of whom was Anil Seth, a good friend of mine, and the other two whose, whose names I've forgotten. I'd only met them that one time. And they invited me 'cause it was a show called A Question of Science, and they did all of these episodes on different scientific topics, and they did one on consciousness. And I think they wanted somebody who, like, wasn't, I guess, like, a neuroscientist, more like a philosophical perspective. And I remember thinking, "Okay, sure, I'll, I'll do this. I'm very grateful to be here if, if you really think that I'm, that I'm an appropriate person." And I thought, "Well, what I can do is I can, I can come along and I can talk about some philosophical perspectives. I can talk about panpsychism. I can talk about other traditions and stuff." And I remember before we started, Brian sort of looked at the questions that had been submitted by the audience and was kind of wanting to get rid of some of them. He was like, "Well, you know, like, this stuff about, like, panpsychism and whatnot, I don't think we, we should really be spending any time on, on this, on this kind of nonsense." And I was there. It was really awkward for me because I suddenly had to be like, "Oh, that's actually [laughs] kind of what I'm, what I'm here to do." We had this sort of slightly awkward conversation where I was a bit like, "Well, you know, I'm probably gonna mention it." "Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's good to, good to at least, you know, hear the view," I said, kind of, kind of that kind of thing. Um, and then the show started, and look, I love these guys, you know, and, and they're obviously geniuses, and I know nothing about neuroscience. Well, not nothing, but you know, I, I'm not a neuroscientist, but it struck me. If you watch the first bit of this, the first question is what do we think consciousness is? Very difficult thing to define. I think it's impossible to precisely define, but a famous definition was given by Thomas Nagel in the '70s. To be conscious means there's something it is like to be you. There's something it is like to be this thing, therefore it's conscious. It's like an inward sense of subjectivity. And we went around the panel, and everyone agreed. Everyone was like, "Yeah, yeah, that's a great definition. I agree with that. That's fair enough." Then the first question came: Can we see consciousness in the brain? Great question. And one by one, each of the neuroscientists said some really interesting things, but I felt just hadn't answered the question.

   5. JSJay Shetty51:29

      Mm-hmm.

   6. AOAlex O’Connor51:30

      Anil actually said at one point, "Yeah, we can kind of put this question of, like, consciousness, like, to the, to the side or on the shelf or something like that, and we can talk about, like, the brain activity that's going on when the conscious experience happens." And there was someone else who was talking about, um, how when people have, like, hallucinations, it's like although to them they feel as real as, as actual sight, different brain activity is happening when they think they see something versus when they don't. That's really interest-- That's great. That's re-- This is all really interesting stuff about neuroscience. But it got around to me, and I turned to the question, and I was like, "I think the answer is no." And I think what we've, we've just heard has kind of proved that because what you're doing is you're talking about brain chemistry. You're talking about neurons. You're talking about the neural correlates of consciousness. You're not talking about consciousness itself. And I remember sitting there thinking, like, this is sort of quite strange to me because a lot of the sort of running threads throughout this one, I said that, like, what about the nature of what consciousness actually is? What about the explanation of, like, why we're conscious? There's sometimes this feeling of like, well, that's not really, really a legitimate question.

   7. JSJay Shetty52:32

      Yeah.

   8. AOAlex O’Connor52:33

      It's enough to just describe the neural correlates. It's enough to just describe the brain, brain activity. And I'm like, that's fair enough. If that's what you think, if you don't think that's an interesting question, then fine. But then why are we here at an event called What Is Consciousness?

   9. JSJay Shetty52:44

      [laughs]

   10. AOAlex O’Connor52:45

       It would sort of be like if we were at a, an event that was, like, talking about, like, football and somebody asked about why the offside rule exists, and somebody started talking about how like, "Well, you know, it's a bit like in basketball where this happens. It's a bit like in cricket, or it's a bit like..." And then I said, "But hold on. Like, I, I wanna talk about, like, actually football."

   11. JSJay Shetty53:06

       Hmm.

   12. AOAlex O’Connor53:06

       People might think I'm being a little unfair. I'd encourage them to just watch it themselves. Like, I, I don't mean to, to disparage these people. As I say, they are geniuses, and they do very important work. But I think it's quite clear to me that when we're talking about what consciousness is, we're just not talking about the same thing.

   13. JSJay Shetty53:22

       Yeah, yeah.

   14. AOAlex O’Connor53:22

       I'm talking about the experience. I'm talking about the redness of red. I'm talking about, like, the feeling of cold on your skin. I'm not talking about a neuron firing, and I don't think those are the same thing. So the, the common view amongst materialists is that experiences are just the same thing as brain activity. I understand that thought, but they can't literally be the same thing. I'll tell you why. There's a law, it's called Leibniz's Law, which says that if two things are identical, they share precisely the same properties.

   15. JSJay Shetty53:50

       Mm.

   16. AOAlex O’Connor53:51

       If X and Y are identical, that is, they are the same thing, then all of the properties of X are shared by Y. You can't say that two things are the same, and I don't mean the same kind of thing, I mean literally the same thing, but one of them is red and one of them is blue, or one of them is five-sided and one of them is two-sided. That would mean that they're different things. Even spatial location. They have all the same properties except this one's in China and this one's in France. That means they're not identical.

   17. JSJay Shetty54:15

       Yeah.

   18. AOAlex O’Connor54:16

       Let's think about the content of your, like, mental experience, right? You can imagine a triangle in your head. I'm told that the triangle that I can literally see in my head right now is the same thing, the same thing as some neurons firing. I don't think so, because they don't have the same properties. The triangle has three sides. That's a fact about the triangle in my head. The neurons firing that correlate with my experience of that triangleDon't have three sides.

   19. JSJay Shetty54:44

       Mm-hmm.

   20. AOAlex O’Connor54:44

       Meaning that you've got two sort of things with different sets of properties, meaning they can't literally be identical. Maybe one causes the other, maybe one emerges from the other, maybe. That's fine.

   21. JSJay Shetty54:55

       Mm-hmm.

   22. AOAlex O’Connor54:56

       We're, we're not saying anything too crazy at the moment, but the idea that they are literally the same thing I think just doesn't

10. 55:02 – 56:49

    What Makes a Good Life?

    1. AOAlex O’Connor55:02

       make much sense.

    2. JSJay Shetty55:03

       With everything you just mentioned, how do you then explain what is a good life to a 10-year-old?

    3. AOAlex O’Connor55:09

       I think one of the reasons why I wouldn't have a child at the moment is because I don't know how to answer that question.

    4. JSJay Shetty55:16

       You love that answer, yeah.

    5. AOAlex O’Connor55:17

       It's a very serious question. If you don't have an idea of what makes a good life, then it's gonna be very difficult to raise a child. I mean, people say that when you choose your life partner, who's going to be the other parent to your child, so the, the mother or father of your child, depending on who you are, one of the most important things is that you're aligned on, like, core values and stuff. Why? Because when it comes to raising children, you'll have to have the same idea of what a good life is, right? So in the same way why you, you might not want to get married and have children with someone with whom you haven't aligned your fundamental values, I almost sort of am not married to myself in that way because there's too much internal conflict. I sort of, I, I disagree with myself too much to, to have a good answer to that question. But also, I'm not confident that I ever will.

    6. JSJay Shetty56:03

       Mm-hmm.

    7. AOAlex O’Connor56:03

       And so I think ultimately what people typically say is either they have a particular worldview and they say, "Well, son, the, the good life is to do what God commands." And that's kind of fair enough as well because that still leaves room for the kid to go and work out who is God and what does God command, right? It's actually quite broad. But I think if I were forced to say something, I'd ask what they mean by good, you know? I'm not sure if this is the kid asking me, but the word good is a, is a, is a difficult thing to unpack, you know? There's morally good or there's good in the sense that this is a good table because it holds things up. And some people think that's the same thing.

    8. JSJay Shetty56:34

       Mm.

    9. AOAlex O’Connor56:35

       But I think there are probably indicators of, of, of a good life that include, like, contentment and calm and lack of stress and that kind of stuff, confidence in the decisions that you've made. But I find that a very difficult question to answer.

    10. JSJay Shetty56:48

        Mm.

11. 56:49 – 1:13:32

    Are You Living by Your Beliefs?

    1. JSJay Shetty56:49

       Do you find that the way you think about life and the world stops you from living practically or can? Or how do you balance the two? How do you allow yourself to be someone who qui- because that's what I was trying to get at earlier is that when you have even somewhat of a false conviction in your belief, whatever that may be, life somewhat is easier to live-

    2. AOAlex O’Connor57:09

       Yeah

    3. JSJay Shetty57:09

       ... because you just get on with it. And, and I consider myself to be someone who's, who lives more in the middle and thinks things through too, but I realize that that comes with a lot of uncertainty in the sense that you could totally have a 180 spin moment in your life because you're like, "Oh, well, wait a minute, I kind of believe that's true and that's kind of not." Now, I prefer living like that because I think it leads to new learning and curiosity and-

    4. AOAlex O’Connor57:33

       Yeah

    5. JSJay Shetty57:33

       ... change and transformation, which I think are actually better than just pretending to agree with something. But I guess, where does your philosophy fail you in practical life?

    6. AOAlex O’Connor57:43

       I think that most people don't live strictly according to philosophical principles. I think they develop philosophical principles based on how they live.

    7. JSJay Shetty57:51

       Mm-hmm. Agree.

    8. AOAlex O’Connor57:52

       And it's kind of the other way around.

    9. JSJay Shetty57:53

       I like that. I like that.

    10. AOAlex O’Connor57:54

        And I think that the best... Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Tractatus, which is like a, a sort of very sort of mathematical, quite short work, has this introduction and the first words he writes are, "This book may only be of use to people who already agree with its contents."

    11. JSJay Shetty58:15

        [laughs]

    12. AOAlex O’Connor58:16

        And I think that's so fair enough.

    13. JSJay Shetty58:18

        Mm-hmm.

    14. AOAlex O’Connor58:18

        This might seem like a weird thing to say in response to your question, but, like, I don't think people just read, like, a philosophy and become convinced by it. I think they hear somebody put something they already kind of think in the right words and they go, "Yes."

    15. JSJay Shetty58:31

        Hey, I like that. I agree.

    16. AOAlex O’Connor58:32

        Yeah, that's what I, that's what I think.

    17. JSJay Shetty58:33

        Yeah.

    18. AOAlex O’Connor58:34

        Which is why I think people are sometimes a little bit confused. If they want to get into philosophy, they look up the hundred best philosophers and they think, "Okay, let's go and learn about it." And just out of the blue it says, "Oh, you should go and read, like, Jean-Paul Sartre." And it's okay, so they pick it up and they read it and they're like, "I, I'm not, I don't really get this," you know? Or, "This doesn't make much sense." You know, they read Spinoza and they're like, "What's he talking about? I don't... It's a bit mathsy. I don't really understand," right? And it's because that's not how philosophy is supposed to be done. People sometimes ask me where would you recommend I start? Have you got any recommendations for, like, how to get into philosophy? And my advice is always very simple: Just read whatever you've heard of. And the reason for that is because if you've heard of someone, it means you've been in contexts where they have come up, right? Like, if you listen to loads of Jordan Peterson, you'll have heard him talk about Nietzsche. Now, you might never have read Nietzsche, but the fact that you are so attracted to Peterson and the fact that he's so attracted to Nietzsche means it's likely if you read Nietzsche, you're gonna find something that you like in there, right? Likewise, if you listen to Christian apologists on YouTube, you might have heard them talk about the Church Fathers or Augustine or people like this, and in which case just read that because there's a reason why you're attracted to the people who are attracted to those bits of content, right? Because to some degree you can read a philosophy and go, "That's an interesting argument. That makes sense." But you're not gonna read it and, and it sort of wash over you with this wave of conviction, I think, unless you've already got one foot in that worldview, and it's just somebody has finally put into words what you were thinking this whole time. And so I think that we're very intuitive creatures, and I think that our philosophizing often gets in the way. I think that we act according to our intuition and our emotional impulses all the time, and then we rationalize them after the fact, and then we debate about who was right and wrong. And there's so much to be said about this. For example, ethics. Really important branch of philosophy. What is right and what is wrong? You've got metaethics, which is like defining what goodness is. You've got practical ethics, which is like particular case, like, studies. You know, what do we do in a case of abortion, euthanasia, that kind of stuff. And if you look at how people do ethics, it's extremely interesting. They'll come up with a theory, say utilitarianism, right? The, the right thing to do is, is to bring about the least suffering for the least number or the most pleasure for the most people. The fewest number, I should say. And-Someone says, "Okay, that sounds good." And how, how would you test that theory? Well, you think of a, a scenario. Okay, okay, but hold on. What if, what if there was a, a healthy person who walked into a hospital and there were five people who needed organ transplants, and you could kill that innocent person, steal their organs, and, and most people go, "No, no, no, that would be wrong." Okay, then we need to go back and revise our theory. Hold on. Why? I thought the whole point of having an ethical theory was to tell us what right and wrong are. But now you're saying if you don't like the conclusion, you just go back and edit the theory? What's going on there? It's because we already have intuitions about the outcome, and we have certain intuitions about the input. It's not as simple as like we're gonna rationally work out what the standard of ethics is, and then that will tell us what to do. It's like we're gonna come up with a kind of theory that captures how we already behave, and if it doesn't capture how we already behave, then we're gonna edit it slightly. And so the process of metaethics or practical ethics, coming up with these theories, is in many cases actually just working out what we already believe, but doing it precisely. It's like, you know, most people care about animals. They love animals. But then they pay for factory farming. Okay. And, and you could have a discussion about this, and you could say, "Well, actually, you know, I'm not sure." So their theory might be, I think you should not cause unnecessary harm. And then you say, "Yeah, but you're farming animals in factory farms." And they go, "Oh, okay, yeah. Maybe then, well, we shouldn't," and they'll go and edit the theory, because what you're doing is you're precisely working out what you already believe.

    19. JSJay Shetty1:02:18

        Well, you're protecting your worldview. You're allowed to have your version of the situation, yeah.

    20. AOAlex O’Connor1:02:22

        But it's not just, it's not just a ca- ... You're not just, like, protecting it defensively. You're just like, "No, this is what I believe, and so I'm gonna edit the theory." John Rawls, the political philosopher, had this concept of the reflective equilibrium. So he thought that what happened, you can sort of imagine this, like, machine, right? And we have inputs, which are our theories about what's right and wrong, and those theories give us outputs. So we input a theory which sounds plausible, we should minimize suffering, and it gives us an output like, well, then you should kill everyone instantly. And actually, don't. Hold on. That's not quite right. So then you sort of, you adapt the inc- It's like, okay, we, we actually need to minimize suffering without killing people. Also, you know, have some kind of pleasure. And then it spits out other outcomes. And you sort of got this back and forth, and the machine in the middle like, you know, mixes it all up and gives you the output. And Rawls kind of says that the way this works is you come at it from, like, both sides. You've got intuitive, like, outcomes, and you've got, like, intuitive theoretical suggestions. And you sort of do this back and forth, this tug of war between them until they kind of balance out a bit and you get this reflective equilibrium and that that's what we're doing when we're coming up with theories. It is never as simple as somebody, like, writing a book and saying, "Right, I'm gonna prove to you from first principles that abortion is wrong, specifically from the eighth week." That's never going to happen, ever. They're gonna rely on intuitions that you already have about people and the worth of humans and bodily autonomy, and they're gonna convince you that way. So if you become really learned in the traditions of philosophy, that can be really interesting. But you'll notice that a lot of philosophers can talk about these big ideas with absolutely no personal investment in them. They'll be like, "Oh, you know, like, so Nietzsche thought that God was dead and that this was a great tragedy," and they're sort of talking as this historical aspect. They've got zero personal sort of input in there. And so they're obviously not gonna use that to, like, guide their life in any way. And if they did, it would just lead to confusion. There's, like, a skit I saw once, I think, like, uh, someone's on an airplane and they've... they're dying, and, you know, they're like, "Is, is there a doctor on board?" And someone shows up and says, "I'm, I'm a doctor. I'm, I'm a doctor of philosophy." And they're like, "Oh, well, what should we do? We need to save this man." And it's like, "Well, you know, the utilitarian would say that we should take resources from other people, but then the deontologist would say that that would, that would upset their rights. And then, well, if you're a Christian, maybe we should..." And then they just die, right?

    21. JSJay Shetty1:04:34

        [laughs]

    22. AOAlex O’Connor1:04:34

        Because you, you're spending too much time sort of going back and forth. I don't think that's how people actually behave, right? And I think there's some, there's some, like, neurological evidence for this to do with the two hemispheres of your brain, which is another thing I'm fascinated by. I think the most significant fact perhaps in the world is that your brain is divided into two hemispheres.

    23. JSJay Shetty1:04:53

        Why do you think that's the most significant fact in the world?

    24. AOAlex O’Connor1:04:55

        Because if you are essentially your brain, which, okay, I don't think consciousness is the same thing as the brain, but they're clearly connected, right? And the thing that at least gives you selfhood, I don't think it produces consciousness, just to be crystal clear, but I think selfhood, the thing that gives you your unified sense of self, is essentially your brain, and maybe the rest of your sort of neural system. And the fact that everywhere we look, every neural system we find, there's some kind of asymmetrical division in the brain. There's some evolutionarily strong reason to keep two separate hemispheres, has to be super significant. That's like the nature of you, right? That's, that's your nature. Your nature is fundamentally lateralized. Your two hemispheres are kind of involved in different ways of thinking. It's never quite as simple as people think. I mean, Iain McGilchrist is the person to read on this. In culture, it's like the right brain is creative and intuitive, and the left brain is mathsy and, and rational. It's not as simple as that. McGilchrist likes to say that the two hemispheres sort of attend to the world in different ways. The left brain is about sort of manipulation, and the right brain is more like big picture, right? And we know that this is, this is the case. I mean, McGilchrist's theory is that the reason this occurs is because as an organism, you need to be simultaneously looking out for, like, prey, you need to be manipulating your environment while looking out for predators at the same time. And there's some evidence to suggest that this is the case. Uh, birds have eyes on either side of the head, or lizards, which have eyes on the sides of the head, are really useful because the right eye feeds the left hemisphere and the left eye feeds the right hemisphere. With us, it's complicated 'cause they're on the front. So with animals on the side, it's much easier. And there's evidence of birds, for example, if they're, like, building a, a nest, they will favor using their right eye even when it makes it more difficult because the left brain is en- engaged in the manipulation stuff. And likewise, you know, you can put a lizard in a room and put a predator, and it will look at the predator with its left eye. Even if you cover up its left eyeIt will still try to look at it with the left eye, right? So there's some evidence to suggest this is the case, and the same kind of thing is going on with us. We've got these two brains, and they, they kind of do different things. And so have you ever come across split-brain patients?

    25. JSJay Shetty1:07:05

        Mm-hmm.

    26. AOAlex O’Connor1:07:05

        This was my favorite thing to discover ever in history, is really famous, um, within, like, brain science, I suppose. The two hemispheres are connected by this tissue called the corpus callosum, this k- sort of bundle of tissues. There used to be this treatment for extreme cases of epilepsy called a corpus callosotomy, which is where the connection is severed. Epilepsy is like an electrical storm in the brain, and so one way to try to minimize it was literally just to cut the two hemispheres, like, at their connective tissue. And so people who'd had this operation done were known as split-brain patients because the hemispheres had been disconnected. They still-- They can still communicate slightly through other means, but their main source of communication is, is inhibited. If you met one of these people, you wouldn't know. They're just perfectly normal. They'll speak to you like I'm speaking to you now. Everything's totally fine. But in experimental conditions, you can prove some really weird things. For example, speech and language communication is, broadly speaking, governed by the front left part of your brain, left hemisphere. Remember, the left hemisphere controls, like, the right-hand side of your body, and the right hemisphere controls the left-hand side of your body. So with humans, because our eyes are on the front, our right visual field goes to the left brain, and our left visual field goes to the right brain. So in a split-brain patient, they look at a screen. You can watch this experiment on YouTube, by the way. They're looking at a screen, and on the right-hand side of the screen, it'll flash a word. So it goes to their left hemisphere, and it'll say, "Umbrella," and they'll say, "Umbrella." "Car," "Car." "Chair," "Chair." Then they'll flash a word on the left-hand side of the screen, so just the right hemisphere, and it will say, "Cowboy hat." And they'll say, "I didn't see anything. I didn't see anything. I don't know what you're talking about." And then the experimenter gives them a pencil in their left hand and tells them to draw something, and they draw a cowboy hat because the right hemisphere saw it.

    27. JSJay Shetty1:08:57

        Yeah.

    28. AOAlex O’Connor1:08:58

        And so the left hand can draw it. But if you ask them, they'll say that they didn't see it.

    29. JSJay Shetty1:09:02

        Wow.

    30. AOAlex O’Connor1:09:03

        Because the left hemisphere, which controls speech, broadly... That's a bit of an oversimplification, but broadly speaking, didn't see it, and so they can't tell you that they saw it. So they saw it and they didn't see it at the same time. So fascinating, right? Means you've kind of got these two brains that are both doing different things. And I think the most significant experiment of this kind is where-- And bear in mind, these people are agreeing, and, and thankfully so. They've already been through a traumatic experience, and now they're agreeing to do these experiments. They're awaiting instructions, right? So you can flash an instruction to the right hemisphere of the brain, and the instruction will say something like, "Uh, get up and walk over to the window." So the patient stands up, and they walk over to the window, and then the instructor says, "Why did you just do that?" And do you know what they say? It would be weird enough if they said, "I don't know," right? But they don't. They make something up, and they believe it. It's called confabulation, right? Like, they, they, they say something like, "Oh, um, I was getting a bit warm, and I just wanted some fresh air."
12. 1:13:32 – 1:16:32

    Left Brain vs. Right Brain Thinking

    1. AOAlex O’Connor1:13:32

       a lot of people realize."

    2. JSJay Shetty1:13:33

       Is there anything that we can do to activate our right brain more?

    3. AOAlex O’Connor1:13:36

       That's a question for Iain McGilchrist. But I mean, I, I don't know, but I would guess that, like, tuning into the way that the right brain is supposed to attend to the world, and, and read McGilchrist on this, and just try to tune into that part of your self. Just try to recognize that there is a part of reality that consists in that kind of stuff that escapes the sort of hyper-rationalization of left brain ways of thinking, and I think a lot of that comes through. Like, people are said to be a bit more left-brained or a bit more right-brained, and in culture, that, that tends to manifest as like if you're right-brained, you like sort of music and art and poetry. Left-handedness was associated with-

    4. JSJay Shetty1:14:14

       Yes

    5. AOAlex O’Connor1:14:14

       ... creativity for a long time.

    6. JSJay Shetty1:14:15

       Yes.

    7. AOAlex O’Connor1:14:16

       Al- although that would be a quite fun fact, I think that's actually not true.

    8. JSJay Shetty1:14:19

       [laughs]

    9. AOAlex O’Connor1:14:19

       That's not connected in that way.

    10. JSJay Shetty1:14:20

        Yeah.

    11. AOAlex O’Connor1:14:20

        But, like, culturally, we have these sort of associations, and I think that they, they don't give you at all a very good picture of what's actually happening with the brain. But I think it can be a sort of good way of thinking about the kinds of practices and ways of thinking that you might want to engage with to, to stop being so hyper-rational. And also, pay attention when you are convinced that you know why you're doing something. Just step back and, and really think about what might be going into it. It's literally what I said at the beginning of this conversation when I said, you know, "Why are you an atheist?" It's because the contingency argument for God's existence is unsound, or it's because my parents divorced when I was nine. The first of those is a very left brain answer. The second of those is a very right brain answer. And so if you're having an argument with your wife, you know, C.S. Lewis in the, in The Screwtape Letters, which is a wonderful little novel where there's this, like, demonic undersecretary, like this sort of demonic civil service, and this demon has been tasked with a particular human who he's trying to make into an atheist. And one of the instructions that he has is like when this person has an argument with his wife, convince him that they're arguing about the dishes when they're not really.

    12. JSJay Shetty1:15:24

        [laughs]

    13. AOAlex O’Connor1:15:24

        So he's gonna come home and he's gonna say, you know, his wife's gonna say, "You didn't do the dishes today." And he's gonna go, "For goodness sake, I've had a long day at work." And she's gonna go, "Yeah, but you never do the bloody..." And he's gonna, "Really? You wanna, you wanna raise your voice at me right now because I didn't do the dishes this morning?" But this is not about the dishes. She's not saying, "You didn't do the dishes." She's saying, "I feel like you don't pull your weight around the house and you don't listen to me. I don't feel heard." Now, this is very sort of like self-helpy type stuff, you know. You sit on podcasts like this and you sort of go like, "You know," and like, "Really, you need to, like, listen to him." But, like, I think very specifically, we are literally becoming convinced that, like, we know why we are acting and behaving in particular ways when we're not because our left brain is rationalizing things for us. So just take a step back. Think a bit more intuitively about, like, what's going on in a, in a very sort of non-rational, abstracted kind of way. Don't try to think about this individual case and go, "Okay, let's, let's trace the logic." Just, like, step back and, like, feel for a minute, you know? Like, like reintegrate feeling into your life. That's, that's probably a, a helpful starting point.

    14. JSJay Shetty1:16:22

        Yeah. Alex, thank you so much. What a joy talking to you. I feel like I've totally had my mind expanded today and stretched in so many different directions. Yeah, both, both, both sides.

13. 1:16:32 – 1:33:07

    Alex O’Connor’s Final Five

    1. JSJay Shetty1:16:32

       I wanted to end with you on what we do on the show called The Final Five, but I've kind of edited it for you because I felt there were a few more questions I wanted to-

    2. AOAlex O’Connor1:16:39

       Okay

    3. JSJay Shetty1:16:39

       ... sneak in there. So it might end up being a Final 10. These questions have to be answered in one sentence maximum.

    4. AOAlex O’Connor1:16:44

       Sure, okay. That's fine.

    5. JSJay Shetty1:16:45

       And so Alex O'Connor, these are your Final 10 only made for you, brought to you by State Farm. What's the hardest question you've ever asked yourself?

    6. AOAlex O’Connor1:16:55

       What is consciousness?

    7. JSJay Shetty1:16:57

       If you're wrong about everything you believe, which belief would hurt most?

    8. AOAlex O’Connor1:17:02

       That my friends and family love me.

    9. JSJay Shetty1:17:05

       Great answer. What do you think is the most dangerous idea people believe without questioning?

    10. AOAlex O’Connor1:17:12

        That we can have certainty about the will of the creator of the universe, and that it's engaged in the peculiarities of human affairs and human political affairs. Is that one sentence?

    11. JSJay Shetty1:17:28

        Mm-hmm. That, that counts. That counts.

    12. AOAlex O’Connor1:17:30

        [laughs]

    13. JSJay Shetty1:17:30

        You got it all out in one breath. That counts. What do you think people are most afraid to admit about life?

    14. AOAlex O’Connor1:17:37

        That it comes to an end.

    15. JSJay Shetty1:17:38

        I wanted to talk to you about that as a final theme. Why does death feel so unnatural? You've talked about consciousness. What have you learned about death?

    16. AOAlex O’Connor1:17:47

        Well, there are a few answers to that. You said why does death feel so unnatural, which is a weird way of putting it, but I think like-

    17. JSJay Shetty1:17:52

        It is. It's a weird way

    18. AOAlex O’Connor1:17:53

        ... for many people, death is, is a part of nature. But it's interesting to hear you say unnatural, 'cause there are philosophical traditions. Like, if you're someone who believes that life exists after death, you'll either believe that because you think that we're going to, like, heaven and this mortal realm is sort of a purgatory realm of sorts, or maybe you think that we're all made of consciousness and we're all going to sort of reintegrate into Brahman, you know. Either way, that would mean that our true nature is Brahman, for want of a better term right now, and that the divided physical biological selves that we currently inhabit are not our real selves, right? This is one of the, the biggest teachings of, of Advaita Vedanta is that your, your self is an illusion. There is one self, the Atman. It's one self, and the Atman is the same thing as Brahman. There's just one great big thing such that the thing that comes to an end when you die is not your self. It's, or rather it's the illusion of your self, but it's not the self. The self persists. The self is eternal. It's another sort of-Huge, uh, theme of, of the, of the Hindu scriptures. And so to hear you describe death as unnatural is kind of interesting because these people would say that's because it's not natural, because your true nature is eternal. The self is eternal, and what you're calling yourself is actually unnatural, and that's the thing that will come to an end. So some people might argue that. For me, like, death is terrifying, and it can be terrifying for two reasons. One is that you think it's lights off and everything comes to an end. The other is that you think there is something after death and it's bad, [chuckles] right? People are, are genuinely terrified of, of concepts of hell and divine torment for the behaviors that they engaged in while they were alive. And a lot of that comes from, like, religious upbringings, in particular doctrines about the nature of hell, which I think are not very biblical, to say the least. But there's sort of two flavors of fear there. On the hell stuff, it requires essentially a metaphysical investigation into the nature of God and whether that God would allow such suffering for finite crimes. But with the lights off kind of thing, which I think more people are kind of freaked out by, you know, some people say, "Oh, but it's, you know, it's like before I was born, you know? Like, I was, I was dead for thousands of years before I was born, and it never bothered me." In fact, that helps some people because it at least makes you realize that you're not gonna experience it, you know, if the lights were to go off. And Epicurus famously said, you know, like, if, like, when is death bad? It can't be bad now because I'm not dead, and it can't be bad for me when I'm dead because there's no me. So there's no point at which it can be true. Like, Epicurus kind of wants to say if something is true, there has to be a time at which it's true.

    19. JSJay Shetty1:20:31

        Mm-hmm.

    20. AOAlex O’Connor1:20:32

        There has to be some time at which this fact is true. So if the, if the fact is death is bad for me, my death is bad for me, when is that fact true? Can't be true now because I'm not dead. Can't be true later because there's no me. And people hear that and they go, "Oh, very clever." But they don't really, it doesn't really do much, right? [chuckles] Because again, that's a very Left Brain way of being. They say, "Very clever, but I'm still kind of concerned," right?

    21. JSJay Shetty1:20:50

        Yeah.

    22. AOAlex O’Connor1:20:51

        Because of my convictions about the nature of consciousness, I'm at least agnostic enough about sort of experiences, by which I mean like experiences with an apostrophe, experiences connection to physicality. I'm agnostic enough about that, that I'm kind of not super worried about the death of my physical body. I have no idea what's going to happen. I do know that if I, if I do die and it all just sort of shuts off, then I won't be around to, to worry about it, and I'm only around to worry about it now. But I, you know, I think about it like, like everybody does. But in some way that I can't quite explain, and it's w- a reason why I wouldn't really talk about it except to sort of hint at it in a situation like this, is to say that these investigations into the nature of consciousness and the nature of the brain and split brain stuff, in some way I can't quite describe, this has consoled me a little bit about the fact that one day my physical brain is going to, like, end.

    23. JSJay Shetty1:21:42

        Mm-hmm.

    24. AOAlex O’Connor1:21:43

        You know? Because I don't know if, if that's quite the same thing as what, as what I am exactly, you know? Well, it is the same thing as what I am as a self, and I am worried about the self coming to an end. But I guess one way of thinking about it as well is that, like, the thing that's scary about death is not the cessation of biological, like, function, right? You could have a biological machine that has no consciousness. It's not worried about death. The thing that death really... People think about death in terms of the end of life, but really death is kind of the end of consciousness.

    25. JSJay Shetty1:22:10

        Mm.

    26. AOAlex O’Connor1:22:10

        That's what people are scared about. Maybe consciousness has to manifest physically, in which case when you die, your consciousness sort of ends, and that's a bad thing, right? What's really ending there is not your biological makeup. It's not the fact that your, your leg and your arm start disintegrating. It's the fact that your experience, your unified sense of self has come to an end. And one slightly naive approach to this might be to say that, like, I'm not convinced that the self exists, not just because of the sort of weird esoteric, you know, Indian philosophy and stuff, but also because of the split brain stuff. I, I think all of this kind of stuff points to the idea that the idea of the self, as we commonly understand it, is a bit of an illusion. And it is interesting to me that this is the same kind of truth that is discovered by ancient authors of the Upanishads and, like, a modern teenager who's never read a word of Sanskrit who takes LSD, and they sort of have these similar... I think that might have something to do with the usage of psychedelics in the, in the, [chuckles] in the formulation of the Vedas. That's a whole other subject. With soma, you know, the, the, the mysterious substance that brings all of these profound spiritual truths that are uncannily similar to the profound spiritual truths that people find today when they take psychedelic drugs. But one of the foundational things that people discover in this regard is that the self is an illusion. The self does not exist. Even Sam Harris, the New Atheist, doesn't believe in a self. And so if death is not just about biological function, it's the cessation of the self. There's something about the fact that I don't think the self exists even now [chuckles] that gives me some consolation, you know? If the fear is what happens when the self comes to an end, like the self never came to a beginning, so I don't even know how to answer that question. [chuckles] But I don't, I don't say it... That's not gonna help people.

    27. JSJay Shetty1:23:51

        Yeah, yeah.

    28. AOAlex O’Connor1:23:51

        Like, it's not gonna... I was asked about this recently at, at one of these schools I was talking about as, as well. Like, this, this kid sort of asked me, and I can always tell sometimes when people ask certain questions, they mean different things. Like, if someone says, "Should we be afraid of hell?" I can tell in their face they're asking that because they're interested in the philosophy. They want to hear about Epicurus, or they're asking that because they're scared of death. If somebody asks me, "Do you think hell is biblical?" They're either asking that because they're interested in New Testament studies or because they're staying up at night and afraid of death and afraid of hell. To the person who's afraid, I find it quite difficult to approach except to say, "Take heart that there are philosophical schools available to you that you should look at at least first before you sort of lose your mind with worry." If I'm not trying to help other people and I'm just telling you about myself, like, yeah, it, it opens up as well. But I think it's saying, like, I would encourage people to investigate some of the Indian philosophical traditions, not because... There's this kind of idea in, like, Western thought that there's this sort of spiritual kind of thing over there. It's this kind of like cool mystical thing and like, oh, there's all these profound truths. Like, actually, they're talking about the same stuff that we're talking about. They're just doing it in a different way that might make things click a little bit. And also talking about the Indian school of philosophy is, is like talking about the Western-canon of philosophy. The Western canon is like, you know, Kant or maybe John Stuart Mill and people, and it's not like all Westerners are running around in accordance with those principles, right? But I do think it's uncanny that somebody will say to me, "I've looked everywhere I can. I've, I've, I've studied philosophy. I've, I've tried to... I've looked at religious traditions and I've prayed and I've gone to church and I still don't have these answers and I'm still afraid of death." And it's like, okay, hear me out. Have you ever tried reading a word of any kind of non-Western philosophical canon? And if the answer is no, I'm not promising you're gonna find it there, but I'm saying there is so much more for you to do before you can confidently have even a view, I think, on the nature of self, the nature of death, because most of our philosophical convictions are so culturally embedded with it without us realizing it, that if you don't step outside of that for a moment, you might just be following a thread that you are not the author of. And so I'd recommend stepping outside of that. And I'm not just saying that. I think people have noticed that over the course of, of my recent trajectory and the things that I'm talking about. This is just something that I've done. There's a lot to say about that. I spoke to a guy called Thomas Metzinger on my show about this. And so if people want to kind of really know what I'm talking about when I say all that, I'd recommend they go and watch that. If you're worried about it, also just realize that you're, you're not alone. This is like the foundational question of, of human existence. I think it's weird not to be worried about it. It's sort of strange to me that people aren't talking about it all the time. We also have a sort of cultural reticence to talk about death. You know, death used to be much more present. Dead bodies in the street, plagues, all this kind of stuff. COVID sort of brought that back into sharp focus for a lot of people. But death is a bit of a taboo and we don't really like to talk about it in polite society and I think maybe that's also part of the problem.

    29. JSJay Shetty1:26:43

        Yeah. Last three, uh, one sentence each.

    30. AOAlex O’Connor1:26:46

        That was more than one sentence.

Episode duration: 1:33:07