Enjoy this podcast with Dr. Zak Stein featured on the Brendon Graham Dempsey Podcast

Join Brendan Graham Dempsey in conversation with Dr. Zak Stein.

Philosopher Zak Stein joins me to discuss the “the great post-postmodern project, the reconstruction of value itself,” and get into the nuances of what his framework looks like as presented in his new co-authored book First Principles & First Values.

What does it mean to say that value is both fundamental and relational?

How does a metaphysics of value avoid premodern pitfalls (e.g., the myth of the given, a God’s-eye view/view from nowhere, etc.)? What are the challenges posed by language when trying to track value across discontinuities in the complexity stack?

Here we compare notes on our respective projects and try to clarify key points.

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:58 Summary Overview of First Principles & First Values
• 7:35 The Project: A Post-Postmodern Reconstruction of Value
• 12:44 Is Positing Value as Fundamental a Premodern Move?
• 32:24 “Value”: Avoiding Reification
• 39:11 Languaging the Reconstruction: Difficulties and Diversity
• 48:29 The Challenge and Importance of Modern Critique of Value
• 52:39 “Intimacy” or “Complexity”? Seeking Normative Terminology without Anthropomorphizing
• 1:03:07 Shifting the Paradigm: Translation or Equivocation?
• 1:06:25 Panpsychist vs. Emergentist Framings
• 1:10:26 Shifting Telos across Scales: E.g., Dissipative Structures
• 1:17:56 Value and Anti-Value
• 1:22:04 New God: Moving towards the Infinite Intimate
• 1:27:21 Building the Cathedral/Temple: Living with Sacred Purpose

Book available here: https://www.amazon.com/First-Principl…

FIRST PRINCIPLES AND FIRST VALUES

Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come

by David J. Temple

AS THE META-CRISIS DEEPENS, THE FATE OF CIVILIZATION AND HUMANITY HANGS IN THE BALANCE.

First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture.

Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next.

“The position argued for in this book is of vital importance . . . it needs urgently to be read.”
IAIN McGILCHRIST, author of The Master and His Emissary