E6: The Truth Project | We Have Forgotten Who We Are

Ask what marriage is, and most people describe a form you sign at the courthouse. Warren Edick spends this episode showing what that answer costs — and what's buried underneath it.Episode 6 opens with a question Alex can't put down: if the transcendent isn't real, on what grounds is a person worth more than a stone? Getting to an answer means going through language first. Warren argues that the nouns in a sentence are pure social convention — we agreed to call it a rock — but the words between the nouns are not. "Or," "if," "then," "and" are logical operators, and they were discovered, not invented, the same way the Pythagorean theorem was discovered. Meaning doesn't live in the words. It lives in the space between them.That opens onto what Warren calls semantic space — the world behind behind your eyeballs, where mathematical objects, moral objects, and concepts exist without being anywhere in physical space or time.Then he takes a single word and runs it all the way down. Matrimony. Through a symphony, through the architecture of a cathedral, through thirty-two years of his own marriage, through the meta-narratives of Western civilization, and finally to a burning bush and the strangest sentence a person can say about himself: I am Warren.Along the way: a Sufi in India who stopped him cold with one question, a nineteen-year-old at Baylor whose little toe refused to get out of bed, and why materialism doesn't just end in nihilism — it ends in a government's boot on your throat, and it doesn't matter which boot.This is Episode 6 of a ten-part conversation. (00:00) Recap — the immanent and the transcendent(04:10) If we can't value a baby over a stone(09:20) Empiricism is a method, not a theory of knowledge(11:40) Immanent and transcendent, defined(17:20) Does data mean anything on its own?(20:50) What is language?(21:40) A string of nouns is not a sentence(24:30) "Or" is a conjunction, not a disjunction(33:30) Semantic space — the world behind behind your eyeballs(43:40) We have forgotten who we are(46:20) India, and the question a stranger asked(53:50) Matrimony — sign the paper, the end?(1:09:40) Symphonic action(1:16:20) What matrimony actually is(1:21:40) The burning bush and "I am"(1:23:20) "I am Warren" — which word is me?(1:42:10) Eliminativism and totalitarianism(1:47:50) The left boot and the right bootWarren Edick is the author of The Clearing in the Wood.Watch the video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e51fLV9WZ5I