Hello my friends, welcome to the 57th episode of Patterson in Pursuit. Today is going to be a breakdown of one of my favorite conversations in this series so far. It was episode number 33 with Dr. Jody Azuni. The topic was, do mathematical objects exist? And the first half of our conversation is what I want to break down, because we talk about the metaphysics of concepts. And the relationship between language and the world. It's directly related to the metaphysics of mathematical objects. Dr. Azuni doesn't believe that mathematical objects exist. Most philosophers of mathematics think that mathematical objects do exist and they exist separate of our minds. My position is a third option where I think, yes, mathematical objects exist, but they do not exist separate of our minds. Numbers and mathematical objects in general are ideas. When we stop thinking about them, they stop existing. They're mind dependent objects. And Dr. Azuni and I have a great conversation about this notion of mind dependent existence. If you've been following along with the show, you know I've been doing quite a lot of traveling and I am officially now, as of this episode, back in the States. I'm back home in upstate New York. I've got a few small destinations yet to go on the list, but I think things are going to be calm for at least the next couple of months. It's been a crazy journey. I obviously have lots to say, lots that I've learned over the last year, but that will be a topic for another time. Before we dive into this interview breakdown, I want to tell you about the sponsor of the show Praxis. This is all about you being able to take control of your own career. Not sitting around waiting for permission to create value for people. Not waiting for the credentials so that other people take you seriously. No, it's about getting your feet wet right away and avoiding the $100,000 of unnecessary college debt that most young people bind themselves to before even having any real world job experience.  If this sounds like something you're interested, go to stevedashpatterson.com slash praxis. So let's dive into the interview and analysis of my conversation with Dr. Jody Azuni. When we use numbers and we make mathematical claims, what are the actual objects that we're talking about? Is what is a number? When we say two plus two equals four, what is two in the first place? OK, I'm going to describe my position. My position is that numbers don't exist. I'm a nominalist. My position is that lots of things don't exist. All right, this is an excellent place to start. He's a nominalist, which means that in general, what we think of as objects are really just names. That's where the term nominalism comes from. In many circumstances, I am super favorable to nominalism because if you're a nominalist, it reduces the amount of existing things that are out there. So one of the areas in my own worldview where I'm very close to nominalism is with just the existence of ordinary objects. So if I have a water bottle in front of me, I like to say that, well, there isn't a water bottle per se that's out there in the world. What we mean by a water bottle is simply we're referencing bits of matter that are arranged in a particular way. There's no independent object that is the water bottle. The thing that is independent is just the bits of matter, the fundamental units of matter, which are arranged such that we call it a water bottle. Now, if you take that position, that means you can reduce your ontology quite a bit. In other words, you can reduce the list of things that you think exist. If there were no minds in my own metaphysics, there would be no such thing as water bottles. There would still be bits of matter and maybe even bits of matter arranged in the way that we call water bottles, but there's no independent object that is a water bottle. So Dr. Razzuni takes this type of logic and he simply applies it consistently. It says, well, maybe it's the same thing with numbers, that there's really no such thing out there as a number. Now, the first thing that I want to say about this is I'm very hesitant to say things like X doesn't exist and X doesn't exist in any way. Because if we're talking about X, then it seems like we're talking about something. Now, if I were to talk about a unicorn, let's say, you could, in unusual language, we say, oh, unicorns don't exist. But for being super strict, my position is, yes, of course, unicorns exist, but they exist in our minds. They're ideas. Those ideas that we have don't correlate to independent things in the world. There are no unicorns in the world. There's no spatially extended thing that is actually a unicorn. But of course, unicorns exist. That's how we can say true and false things about unicorns is because they're ideas on our heads. My first focus in my earliest work was mathematical objects. And I became very interested in the main reasons that philosophers were pushing for why they did exist, which was a kind of indispensability argument. Okay, so this is, I think, a pretty fair summarization. I actually ran into this argument when I was talking with Timothy Williams and at Oxford, which was what you could consider an indispensability argument. In other words, yes, mathematical objects exist and they probably exist separate of our minds because I can say things like 1.8 million years ago, there were dinosaurs, there were, you know, 448,000 dinosaurs that roamed the North America. I just made that, those numbers up. But that's the idea is we can describe things that happen in a quantifiable way a million years ago prior to our own existence or a billion years ago or whatever. The argument goes, the only way we can do that is if there's some kind of real existence to numbers. Now, Dr. Zuni doesn't find that compelling. I don't find that particularly compelling, but we don't find it compelling for different reasons. In natural language, I tend to have lots and lots of examples of statements that we make that are true, that use there is statements, but we don't commit ourselves and we don't give it to you. Give us a few examples of that. Oh, absolutely. There are as many Greek goddesses as Greek gods. There are cartoon characters and animators who resemble one another. Okay. And that particular one that there is is as it's sometimes put quantifying over both something I take to exist, namely animators and something I don't take to exist, namely cartoon characters. You and I might be in the peculiar position of dreaming of the same imaginary woman nightly. So we would say there is an imaginary woman. We dream of her when we might compare notes. Yeah, she was dressed and wearing the same thing the other night, blah, blah, blah. There are what are called hobnob puzzles kind of due to a geek, which say things like knob thinks that a certain witch has poisoned his pig and hob worries that the same witch has killed his cow, where the speaker doesn't think there is a witch. And so there's lots of examples like this where items that are playing these quantifier roles are nevertheless the sentences are non-committing, but true. And that's key. Excellent examples. In fact, I would probably use these examples if I were to make my own points in metaphysics because they're so good. So usually when we're talking about fictional characters, we're talking about the witch with the poisonous brew that poisons the apple, we say things like, oh, that witch doesn't exist. But that to me is just not philosophically precise. What we really mean to say is the idea that I'm talking about in my head has no physical correlation or independent existence outside of my head. That's what we mean by there's no witch, you know, witches don't exist. Well, that means the very clear concept and idea that I'm talking about that I could say true and false things about in my head does not correspond to the world. This is a very different perspective. I'm saying those ideas that we're talking about don't exist at all. You have to assume a kind of all existent things are physically your spatio temporally existent in order to make this nominalism work. So this forces you into positions like, well, ideas don't exist. Why is it that ideas don't exist when we can talk about them and we live in the world of ideas? Well, ideas don't exist because they don't have physical spatio temporal existence. I just find that a really weird use of the term exist. You can you can I'm fine if we want to give that word exist. But then what is the nature of ideas? What's the metaphysical ontological status of ideas? If we're saying, oh, they don't exist because they don't have these particular properties. OK, well, there's still some things and they still have to have some kind of properties. So what is the nature of those properties? There's a lot of philosophical flanks to fill here. How do these things get to be true if there's no objects that are being talked about and you have to tell a story? And how do these truths operate with with sentences that are this way? How can we have the kind of attitudes we have towards these things if they don't exist? Sure. So I tell stories about all these things. This is why I spend so much time writing philosophy because the nominalist position. If you go this route opens up a lot of other things you have to tell stories about. OK, so he gets this, right? He gets that it seems like when we're talking about things, we have to that those things have to exist. And so he says we have to tell stories. Now, this is kind of the first red flag where I'm don't I'm very skeptical of the idea of we have to tell stories. That's at least certainly not the way that I would put it. And something that I've noticed in the world of philosophy in the world of ideas in general, people love storytelling. They love there's a there's a kind of playfulness. There's a kind of almost childlike playfulness to a way to the way that a lot of philosophers and takers approach their subject matter. There's kind of a I guess you could call it a lack of seriousness. Now, my disposition is to say, don't tell me any stories. I don't want to hear the stories. Just tell me the facts. Tell me the arguments explained to me in a nonfiction way. But this is his his chosen method is to try to tell stories. So maybe it's just a stylistic difference, but it's not exactly my cup of tea. So there's something I call the aboutness illusion, which I think very powerfully drives not just the the need to believe in mathematical objects, but the need to believe in fictional objects. And the aboutness illusion takes the following form. Let's say you and I agree, there's no Hercules. And let's say you and I agree, there's no Pegasus. There's no object in any sense at all. So there's nothing that has properties, because if it doesn't exist at all, it doesn't have any properties. Nevertheless, we have a rather unavoidable cognitive impression that if I say Pegasus doesn't exist, I'm speaking of something specific that doesn't exist. And if I say Hercules doesn't exist, I'm speaking of something else specific that doesn't exist. It's not the same as the Pegasus. But if you're going to strictly say these things don't exist, that's not correct. OK, now that cognitive illusion, I think, drives a lot of very weird philosophical positions. My Nongianism views that fictional objects do exist, because how else could, or the hallucination, is that a dagger I see before me? He's thinking of a specific non-existent object that's floating right there. This is very powerful. Now, I don't actually see the problem here to say, yes, well, we have this overwhelming urge to say, you know, that the ideas do exist, the Pegasus does exist, because it's distinct from Hercules. But that only presents us with a problem if we accept, off the get-go, that existing things must physically exist. If we are non-physicalists, we say, well, some things can exist that aren't physical, this presents no problem, because, as I've said a couple of times already, Pegasus exists as an idea on our head, Pegasus does not exist as a physically-existent object in the world. There's no issue there. I don't know anybody that would disagree. I don't know anybody that thinks Pegasus actually exists independent of our mind, so this doesn't strike me as an illusion. The aboutness illusion doesn't strike me as an illusion at all, it just strikes me as a feature of language that not everything we're talking about has a physical correlate and yet we can still talk about it, because it has a mind-dependent existence. We have to ask you, what do you mean by exist? Because if we're talking about something, isn't a necessary part of something being a something is that it is, it is existent. How can you have something that isn't? Well, that's right, but keep in mind what's going on here is you need to say, how can I have something that isn't? I can't. How can I use the word something to talk about what doesn't exist? I can, but let's not put it that way. Let's put it a different way, a way that's going to push back on this temptation, which is let's just talk about the fact that some of our names don't refer and some of our terms don't refer, okay? So when I use the word Hercules and I use the word Pegasus, these don't refer to anything. Well, I won't grant that Pegasus and Hercules don't refer. I would say by virtue of the fact that they are terms that have meaning, they're referring to something. However, I thought it was reflective of his capacity as a philosopher when he said, well, we can't say that there is something that isn't. He said, that would be impossible, but what he's saying is, well, then how can we use the word something to talk about what doesn't exist? Now, while that I think is clever and he grasps the issue at play here, I think he just hides behind a word. So he says, how can we use the term, the word something, to talk about what doesn't exist? Another way you could phrase that is by saying, how could we use the term something to talk about things that don't exist? So obviously you can't talk about a thing that isn't because it wouldn't be a thing. So he says, well, how can we talk about what doesn't exist? Well, what is the what? Talk about non-existent what that still to me implies thing-ness. And now what we're really focused on is the question of how can a sentence like Pegasus is depicted in ancient Greek mythology as a flying horse? How can that sentence be true if there's a word in it that doesn't refer? And that's a different point. And now I have to tell a story. And I do tell a story which involves something I call truth inducing, which is we do fiction and we do mythology. And then we talk about the mythology. And in particular, we talk about the contents. And the way we do it is we formulate terms that don't refer to anything. And we give them a truth value based on the nature of the story. Okay, so he tries to get around this metaphysical problem by saying, well, what truth and falsehood have to do with in fiction is talking about whether or not our claims cohere to a story, not whether or not our claims cohere to some kind of objects in the world? Trouble is, what is a story? The story is not some physically existent thing and it still puts, I would say my resolution perfectly solves this. I also would claim that propositions about Sherlock Holmes aren't true or false based on whether or not they objectively cohere in a physical way to Sherlock Holmes that existed in London. Of course, that's not true. My claim is precisely the story in our head, the concepts and ideas that we're conceiving of. We can say true and false things about, but those concepts are themselves objects. When I'm thinking about a red elephant that speaks English, that concept is an object in my head. That's why I can say it would be false to claim that the red elephant speaks Spanish, because in my head, the red elephant speaks English, not Spanish, and he's not bilingual. This also satisfactorily gives you a metaphysical status of the story. If truth and falsehood are about coherence to a story, well, you still have to place the story as an existing thing somewhere, right? Well, this is very easy in my own worldview, stories are in our heads. Without minds, there would be no such thing as stories. There might be ink on paper, but there wouldn't be the concepts and ideas that we're talking about when we're talking about stories. So that we can say correctly, Sherlock Holmes is depicted in the Arthur Collin Doyle stories as a detective living in Victorian England, Victorian London, let's say. So we can say something like that. And now I'm talking about a sentence. I am not talking about an object. Now psychologically, we experience it a certain way. We're thinking about it just as we do with novels. We recognize these things don't exist, and yet we think about them. He said, so we're talking about a sentence, not an object. And again, what is a sentence? If we're talking about a sentence as a thing is distinct from other things, that strikes me as an existing thing. And again, sentences are my independent objects in my worldview. They don't exist outside of our conception of them, but they certainly do exist while they are being conceived. So would you say then you can't reference Sherlock Holmes outside of a sentence or outside of a story or that? Well, no, you don't reference him period. But there are sentences in which the word occurs, which have truth values. Okay. And those sentences get their truth values in some derivative sense from the stories. But you can compare Sherlock Holmes across stories. You can talk about Sherlock Holmes in movies. You can compare Sherlock Holmes. I can say Sherlock Holmes is depicted in all the fiction he appears in as far smarter than Donald Trump is depicted in anything that talks about him. Perfectly good sentence. One that's not true because of, as it turns out. Well, when you say stories that's depicted in stories, does a story have an existence then? For the sake of our conversation, let's take stories to exist. What they actually are might be words on paper, interpreted sentences, etc. So there you go. I think this position is kind of forced that you're kind of kicking the can down the road of what things exist. And he says, well, they might be interpreted words on paper. I say, okay, what is interpretation? In my worldview, at some point, you're going to bump up against the non-physical. You're going to bump up against, well, what we're talking about is an idea, as a concept, is some part in our mind and not some physically existing thing. And he wants to try to get around that and say, well, yes, stories are the things that exist. But what we mean by the stories is the ink on paper or interpreted words. I'm not quite sure. I'm not quite clear on the interpretation end of what he means by that. But to me, it just seems like kind of bending over backwards to explain away any type of mind dependent existence. I have very radical views about what ends up existing at the end of the day. Okay, well, I have a book, which unfortunately I don't have here, so I can't give it to you. But I can always send it to you if you can give me the address called Semantic Perception, How the Illusion of a Public Language Arises and Persists. So that also focuses on certain other class of what I call cognitive illusions. What's going on in semantic perception is the idea is you and I have basically language organs. I'm going to use Chomsky style language here. I'm very sympathetic to a lot of what Chomsky has to say about this. As it were, each of us has a faculty, a language faculty. What it produces is we end up competent in an ideolect, an individual ideolect. I have mine. You have yours. That's going on here. They overlap sufficiently that we enjoy successful communication, but they're not exact. But that's not our experience. Our experience is very different.  You have an involuntary experience of meaningful words on a page. There is no object like that in the world. There is design. There is just ink on a page here. Nevertheless, we involuntarily project that into the world. And we furthermore have the experience. I have the experience that this has a meaning as well as a grammar. But I'm really focused on its meaning. And I am experiencing you in the successful communication as having, as seeing the same thing that I am, just as I see you as seeing this pen, just as I do.  That, that object is not out there. Again, I think this is a really interesting position because I actually agree with a lot of it except that I think it implies non-physical existence.  We project it. Well, what does that mean? First of all, how's that possible? I'd love to know the philosophy of mine behind this. But the idea that meaning isn't out there and yet meaning is certainly a word that has meaning to describe some difference in the universe. Well, doesn't that get you to the contents and goings on of our mind are not objective existent things out there, that there isn't meaning in the world. But there's certainly meaning and there's certainly meaning in our heads. So doesn't that imply this divide between what exists in the world and what exists in our mind? But to turn around and take this hard nominalist position and to say, the meaning that is in our heads is projected onto the world, but the meaning doesn't exist strikes me very, very oddly. Is your claim that what you could call concepts, maybe, that those don't actually exist? I was focusing specifically on public language. Concept, if we think of it as a mental entity, I mean, concept and philosophy, there's a use of it where it's a kind of public entity. But concept, actually concept is this mongrel concept that's used in all sorts of ways. But if you're thinking of it as a mental entity, there is this, we have a psychological theory, a folk psychological theory, which talks about all sorts of entities, images, etc., etc. If that theory actually refers to anything or not, I'm not prepared to say. I love this little comment. I've bumped into it a few times. Folk psychology, and whenever you're talking about ideas, beliefs, images in our minds, it gets called folk psychology, and he's not prepared to talk about it. This, I think, reflects a shortcoming in the theory that we're listening to, that there wouldn't be a position on folk psychology, namely, what are ideas, what are concepts, strikes me as a gross shortcoming. The reason, in my opinion, it's called folk psychology is precisely because it appears like the things we're talking about are non-physical. Therefore, if you're talking about non-physical things, you must be talking about some folksy superstitious theory that isn't scientific because everybody knows that all existent things are spatiotemporally existing. If you say otherwise, you're some kind of a religious or spiritual nut job that's talking about folk psychology. The more I dive into this, actually, I find it shocking just how dismissive a lot of intellectuals are. I'm not claiming this is Dr. Azuni, I actually found him quite reasonable, but so many intellectuals are skatingly dismissive of folk psychology. That is, if I were to say something like, ideas exist and they drive your behavior. Beliefs exist and they're the most important thing in your life. Folks, these are just folk talk here. What is a belief? Well, that's just this word that the simple bumpkin views to talk about some mental phenomena that's happening, but everybody knows ideas don't really exist because that would imply non-physical existence. The whole theoretical power of positing the existence of ideas and beliefs is overwhelming. I mean, to have a worldview in which ideas don't exist is to have a grossly stunted worldview. And yet that, when you push people who investigate this area and are a part of the orthodoxy, they don't like the idea that ideas exist or beliefs exist or beliefs drive people's behavior. My claim, maybe this is because I'm a folksy bumpkin myself, my claim is if you actually investigate folk psychological theories about what people report their mental goings on to be, well, actually that gives you a incredible theory about how the world and how the mind works. I think there's much more theoretical power in people describing their introspective experiences than there are these many times dogmatic scientists and thinkers who assume off the get-go that all existing things must be physical. I think that stunts their explanatory power of their theories. What I'm focusing on specifically here is that when you talk about a public language, which we do, and we talk about English, and we talk about the grammar of English and the meanings of words that are held in common, and we talk about, if we talk about the practices that we engage in where we defer to others sometimes on the meaning of a word, I had this tendency to think of a tomato as a vegetable, but in point of fact I'm wrong and it's a fruit, right? We're deferring to certain botanical, I'm not going to say that right, experts. That object does not exist is what I want to say. So when the sentence though, that object does not exist, makes me think, well then it isn't an object. It isn't an object, but we experience it as an object and we talk about it and we rely on it and we communicate with one another. And so we have certain experiences which we indispensable have to describe a certain way, but if I were to step back and do linguistic theory about this kind of public object or pragmatics or whatever, my theory would talk about public objects that would quantify over them just as if I were writing an essay on a novel of Dickens, I would talk about the characters and quantify over them. And in both cases those things don't exist even though I say the sentences will be true. And I mean that's the one theory that just strikes me as unnecessarily convoluted and it still doesn't solve the problems that I want to see solved. Why don't we just say tomato is a word that we use to describe a concept in our mind. That concept may or may not have an external referent in the physical world. If in our conception of tomato we have, you know, tomatoes are living creatures that like to go to amusement parks on the weekend and talk with one another, that concept exists, but it does not correspond to anything outside of our conception. It does not have a external referent. But if we think of a tomato as some assortment of particles that once assorted as the properties of being red, being slightly squishy, having seeds on the inside, being farmed by lots of people, being a staple in hamburgers, have to have tomato, if that's what I mean by the concept in my head, then that does have an external referent in the world. Were I never to exist and no minds were to ever exist, then the concept of tomato wouldn't exist. The taxonomic distinction of tomato would have no type of existence. But to the extent that tomato references external phenomena in the world, bits of matter arranged in particular ways, then that phenomena would still be there our minds. To me, I've run this theory by lots of people, both in the interviews and not in the interviews, haven't heard a good objection to that. Moving from fictional characters, do you also have the same perspective on something like government? Does government exist? Governments, countries, yeah, I have not yet started to write about social ontology. I'm approaching it. I'm intending to write about it very shortly. But the answer is yes. The situation is a little more complicated because there's a sense in which we, it's only a sense though, it's not absolute, in which we take countries or think of them at times as composed of people or constituting a territory. Again, it turns out it's a very complicated notion. In fact, just a notion of a city like London is very complicated. This is the sort of thing that Chomsky has pointed out, and that it's playing a multiplicity of ontological roles and it's very shifty. But in point of fact, and so when you analyze what we would be dealing with here, there's going to be the only way to put it now, just informally, is that there are aspects of it that exist and aspects of it that do not. This again strikes me as a bit unnecessary the way that I would put it. I don't find it difficult to say that government is a concept in our head. We have all kinds of abstractions that are unique to the individual. What I mean by government is not what you might mean by government, but those concepts should at any point be able to be brought back to their concrete reference and reality. This is actually one of the errors that people make, is they talk about government as a floating abstraction. That is some independently existing thing in the world separate from individual people and their behavior. Usually if I'm talking about government, I'm talking about the actions of actual individuals, or I'm talking about rules of the game. What are rules of the game? Well, I think they can be found in people's minds. Laws, for example, I think ultimately are beliefs. They're commonly held beliefs that restrict individuals' behaviors. At any point, you should be able to draw your abstractions back into grounded in reality. But to say some parts exist, some parts don't exist, I prefer the language of saying that the concept of government exists, some parts of my concept refer to independently existing things, and some parts of my concept surely don't refer. I'm sure part of my conception doesn't actually refer to parts in reality. I'm sure I don't have a perfect conception of government, but I think it's more philosophically precise to say that sometimes our concepts refer or don't refer versus saying exist or doesn't exist. Okay, so what I'd like to do is present to you something that I want you to tell me why I'm wrong, because I don't like the idea of Platonism, and I don't like the idea, well I like the idea of Dominoism, but I don't like sentences like we can say true things about non-existent. Right, well that's a misleading way of putting it. The right way to put it is that we have sentences that are true with terms in them that don't refer. Okay, so that is a much more precise way of putting it. Well it's not that the other way is imprecise, it's that the other way invites a position which philosophers have adopted that, well there are two kinds of objects. There are ones that exist and ones that don't, or there are ones that have being and ones that don't, or maybe then none of them have being, but then they are in some sense or have properties, even though they don't exist and don't have being. And I don't want to say any of this. All of this to me is crazy metaphysics. Okay, so, but I think there's another option here. Okay. This is my own position. All right.  So when we're talking about something like government or we're talking about something like Pegasus, Pegasus exists, but what I mean by that word is a mental unit in my mind. Don't want to say that. Okay, so why is that, why don't you like that? Why you don't want to say that is that sounds like what's called a use mention error. And so it goes something like this. Let's start with the keys on my desk over here. Okay. I certainly have a concept of them. I have an idea of them. And that's a mental entity and that's probably dependent on my mind in the sense that you're describing, although you know, I'm going to have problems with that. But let's not worry about that because that's not important. The crucial thing is that we want to distinguish the keys, the physical keys from the mental entity. So there's at least two things that we're talking about here. And when I say the keys exist, or the keys are heavy, or any other number of things about the keys, I am not talking about the mental entity. The mental entity has a different set of properties. So here's how I respond to that. Right. And so I want to say with Pegasus, you've got the mental entity, but you don't have the Pegasus. So that's the difference between the keys and Pegasus. Okay, so that's a position that actually I think Timothy Williamson said as well as a use-mentionaire. But here's my response. What do you think about something like this? That there are different types of existence. So you have a spatial existence. Yeah. The keys have the keys. Keys have spatial existence. Sure. And fictional objects have fictional existence. Or what I would say is they have a conceptual existence. They have a mental existence that is not spatially located. There are philosophers who at least sound like this. As I said, you'll find a philosopher for any position because logical space, surprisingly, logical space is as rare and expensive as apartments in Manhattan, for whatever reason. So you'll find every space you'll find some philosopher. I don't, I'm a person who thinks, and now I'm going to try to try to out linguistic evidence for this, that that's not how the word word exists works. Exists does not have many meanings. Exists does not have many uses. It has, it is not ambiguous. Now, well, from my perspective, that's not really a response. He's just saying, well, okay, yep, that that's a position that some philosophers have. I don't have that position because I think existence has one type of meaning. Well, first of all, I disagree that existence has one type of meaning. I think very few words have one type of meaning. And I very strongly don't use the term exist to reference only spatiotemporally existing phenomena. But second of all, okay, well, so I guess it's not a use mention error. This is the, this is the same resolution I wanted to bring up with. And I was talking to Dr. Williamson about it. This seems to me this position strikes me as perfectly logically consistent, explanatory of all phenomena makes a nice distinction between physical existence, non physical existence, mind dependent versus non mind dependent. I can explain fictional characters fine. I can explain concepts fine. I've yet to bump into the theory to the phenomena that I can't explain perfectly consistently well without much difficulty within this way of thinking about the world. There are multiple types of existence, spatial non spatial. So at the very least, I'm glad to see that he recognizes, okay, well, in this circumstance, not a use mention error at all. Recall the example I gave to you a little earlier where I said, there are cartoon characters and animators who resemble one another. One use of there are covering both two different kinds. And you can also say the same thing with exist. Yes, I totally agree. But, but what I would say is all that's reflective of is an imprecision of language that comes up in circumstances like this. So the way we clear that up is not by saying, oh, exist is intrinsically ambiguous. We just say, oh, well, we have to specify what we mean by the term. So if I say something like, you know, Harry Potter has square glasses, that's a false sentence. I could meaningfully say, no, that's false Harry Potter has round glasses. What I mean by Harry Potter seems like a very clear concept. It's some kind of a mental unit that I can describe in various true or false ways. Other people might share that concept in their own minds. They can, there's going to be this overlap between your concepts and my concepts. But we don't have to say Harry Potter doesn't exist. What I'd say is Harry Potter, that term has no spatial referent. That term is just a pure conceptual. Look, this is a view. This is a view. Okay. And you can even inoculate the view against the linguistic evidence. You don't have to call language imprecise, which seems mean. You can say, well, we're going to revise the language or regiment it. We're going to allow exist to work this way. Your metaphysics in a way is going to drive your revisions in language. That can happen. This is one of the reasons I said earlier. This is one of my favorite conversations I've had because he gets it. He's totally aware of these arguments. And he can say things like, yep, this is a coherent position what you're talking about. We know you've carved out a niche here. That is actually coherent. And he and I are both in agreement that we are not Platonist. He's even more strongly averse to Platonism that I think I would be because he's going even more extreme than I am in my own metaphysics. But it's nice to be able to say, okay, yes, your position is internally coherent, but I disagree with it for these reasons. I think I would say the same thing for the most part with his position that I don't think I've found any kind of logical contradiction here. It just strikes me as a very odd use of language. And it seems like a lot of our disagreement is about the use of language and its relationship with the world. I'm going the other way. I'm going to say, you know what, I can get by without messing with existence. Now, parentheses, I have other arguments about this. I have trouble understanding different notions of existence. To me, what you're describing is something that exists in the same way, but has different properties. It's mental or it's in space and time. And so I'm saying, you know, that's actually your position. Your position is actually just good old fashioned. You believe in different kinds of objects. Some of them are mental, some of them are, and some of them are numbers. And you're labeling it. Now, I want to, I, in my back pocket, I haven't mentioned this, I have a criterion for what exists, which is not is in space time, but which would sound like it would just blatantly beg the question against you. I have a position which is something like, if something exists, it's mind and language independent. We have to, we don't get to dictate its properties. It gets to tell us what its properties are and we have to find out. So you reject the category of fiction all mind, you say mind dependent existent is those things. Yeah, that's not, there is no such thing as a mind dependent thing, except in the following sense. And this is why I wasn't ruling out mental entities necessarily. Look, I make a chair. The chair is in a certain sense carpenter dependent. That is to say the chair would not have existed unless the carpenter would have brought it into existence. I don't think that makes its existence dependent in any way, except causally, in the same way, if there was no big bang, there would be no me. This is a pretty clear differentiation of our positions that he's saying, okay, well, mine, there might be something that is mind dependent in the sense that a mind is brought it about, but not that their existence is dependent on a mind. And my position is, yes, in a very explicit extreme way, lots of phenomena have a mind dependent existence, meaning they definitely exist when they are being conceived. When they exist in somebody's mind. And they definitely do not exist when they're not being conceived. So for example, my sensory experiences, sensory experiences are something sensory experiences exist. But they don't exist when they aren't being experienced, they only exist when they are being experienced. That's something like a mind dependent phenomena. I think there's quite a lot of mind dependent phenomena out there. He's kind of ruling that out as a whole category of thing, just straight off the get go.  And it may be, although I'm not positive, this will ever work out. I think it might not, that mental, the folk talk about ideas and in prayer, we'll all turn into episodic descriptions of episodes. And then that depends on what episodes are. So that would be the way I go. Now, when it comes to, therefore, fictional entities, again, I want to say what makes the Potter claims true or false is the movie and storytelling discourses that have been created. And then do these sentences describe things correctly or not that are taking place in them? Not do they describe Harry Potter correctly, because there is no Harry Potter, but do they correspond in the right way to the sentences which occur in the Harry Potter stories? That's the story I'm going to tell. So what I'm saying is that at the end of the day, I think you can tell your story, I can tell my story. Where I would want to apply pressure against you in argument would be with my criterion. Okay. All right. So that's kind of his position. You know, he tells his story, I tell mine. And then for the sake of this interview breakdown, this is the last segment that I want to analyze right here. Okay. So when you are thinking about creativity, human creation, because I have this wiggle room in my metaphysics for mind dependent things, I would say something like, you know, I can actually conceive of, let's say, a song that hasn't been written or a song that's in my head. Sure. And it's never been fully there, but I can almost in a sense hear it. Right. I can say all those things with a language of like, yeah, well, in some sense, that song exists. That's what I'm referencing. That's what I'm super fix, so pseudo hearing. But it's existence doesn't have any spatial referent yet.  Yeah, creative objects, it's going to depend on the object. Let's let's assume that an object is a certain the objects we're talking about here, there are such objects are are are time bounded, they come into existence at a certain point, they go out of existence at a certain point. And so, and let's say these are the things we create. This is a very simple toy model, because I think there are things we create that don't exist in a certain sense. Again, I'm speaking in this terrible way. But I can anticipate. And there are things we say, like, you know, the house I am going to build is one I can barely afford. Okay. And that's a statement about a future house. Okay, I am able to refer to there are real questions about am I actually referring to it, you know, because it exists in the future, let's say it really does exist. And then I maybe I'm able to refer to something in the future. At the present moment, that would be an actual object that I was referring to it, maybe the house never comes into being in that case, I'm not referring to something. Okay, but nevertheless, what I'm saying is true. Because one of the reasons the house never got built was because I couldn't afford it. Right? So what I'm going to do in these cases, and you know, if you think about the creation of fictional characters, which I treat as creation, those are the creation of things that don't exist. And what we're going to describe instead, if we say, well, what did the person create metaphysically? Well, it depends if it's a story, it's a bunch of sentences or it's ink on paper that's interpreted or whatever. And then it's something that we allow to accrue over time the way we would treat it. In other cases, we're just going to talk about a practice that we can carry on of a certain sort of way of talking. And that's what we're actually creating when we're creating these, okay, these objects. I do not think it's the case that writers ultimately metaphysically are creating ink on paper. I think that in fact completely misses the point of what these types of creations are. Stories are mental things going on in our head. When we talk about a story, we talk about a song, we talk about a painting, we're not really talking about ink on paper, paint on canvas, some squiggles on some bars, we're talking about the mental goings on to understand an incredible song as only sound waves and not the mental phenomena that happens once the sound waves are experienced, I think is to misunderstand what a song is, just like I think it's a misunderstanding of what a story is to ultimately try to metaphysically say it's actually ink on paper or ways of talking. But again, this is kind of coming from metaphysical position. I always want to reduce my ontology and he wants to reduce his ontology even more than mine but I think at the expense of a really powerful way of talking about the phenomena we experience human life I think is completely wrapped up and driven by all of these mental goings on. I think if you were to talk to any artist or any writer, they would have a very difficult time saying that fundamentally all they're doing is arranging ink on a piece of paper. And I don't think that's what they're doing. I think one way of bringing their creation into existence and into the minds of other people is by rearranging inked in a particular way. But it's so that that rearranged ink will elicit the concept in the mind of the reader. That's the whole point of the matter. But I think you guys get it. I won't beat a dead horse. This is the really only about half of the conversation. The other half we were talking about philosophy and metaphysics of mathematics which is also interesting but it's going to be a pretty hard change from the tone of this breakdown. So I want to end it here and someday hopefully I'll get around to breaking down the second part of our conversation. I hope you guys enjoyed this analysis. I think I love this conversation with Dr. Razuni. It's great to run into somebody that has even more extreme pare down metaphysical views than I do and somebody that has a clear grasp of language. I really appreciated a lot of his linguistic precision and his attempt and capacity to follow along and really make for a fantastic conversation. So what do you guys think? Do you think mental objects exist? Do you think there's such a thing as a mind dependent existence? When you think about the story of Harry Potter, fundamentally are you talking about words on paper? Are you talking about a film that's played in your head, if you will, and played in the heads of other people? If I were to say Pegasus is a blue walrus, I'm saying something false. In order for something to be true or false, does that imply some type of metaphysical existence and if so, what type of metaphysical existence? That's my analysis. If you like these breakdowns, you like the episodes, do make sure to leave a comment, subscribe. You can support the show at patreon.com slash Steve Patterson. Also feel free to shoot me an email about your thoughts about any of the episodes. I've run these metaphysical ideas by many people on my travels, even in lots of conversations, even if I'm just talking about mathematics. I think it fares pretty well, so I want to keep putting it to the test. That's all for today, guys. Have an excellent week.


Alright, so we're into the next session for today and we are moving on to Jude now. Thank you Dave for reading that entire passage. It's a really interesting and at the same time it is a common theme that we have seen so far Apostle John wrote about apostasy Apostle Peter wrote about apostasy now we have Jude who is also writing about apostasy. Apostasy is basically going away from God you know it is not holding on to the truth but deception and moving away from God to the extent of falling away so that is apostasy and it seems like in the early church the church was growing we saw that in the book of Acts and you know people were people were coming to know the Lord but then there was this whole thing about discipleship and maturing in God as well so seems like some people were growing in God but some people went away with their own interpretation of the scriptures and doing their own thing with the wrong attitudes and so even when Paul talks about the church in Acts 20 I think he's encouraging the efficient leaders he tells them there are going to be wolves that will come among you so please be careful because wrong teaching is very dangerous wrong teaching is very very dangerous we should never listen to wrong teaching and at the same time if people are being taught wrong things as leaders we have to warn them okay or we we've seen you know different things that should be done when there is wrong teaching we preach the truth clearly to God's people then God's people are able to tell that hey this is the truth and this is the deceptive teaching so so even Paul he warned that there will be such in the church who themselves will go astray they will take other people also with them so this is a this is a challenge this was a challenge in the first century church and it continues to be a challenge today and somehow you know there is a mention even when Paul writes to Timothy he says in the last days or the closer we come to the return of Jesus we will observe that there are a lot of false teachers false teachings and they call it Jesus and Christ but you know going away from the Lord so be very very careful so even Jude he is addressing this issue of apostasy so what does Jude say let's go to the book of Jude so a few things for us to understand this book was also written around the same time when Peter wrote so you could you could you know somewhere between 60 to 70 80 is when the book of Jude was written who is Jude Jude the original name is Judas there are many different you know Judas is in the New Testament but because Judas is carried had a bad testimony he went away from the Lord it is likely that the the the his you know the Bible scholars like who put all this together they've somehow avoided that name Judas instead of that they've shortened it and called it Jude okay but the original name is Judas and this Jude is a half brother of Jesus Jesus had four half brothers and and sisters so Jude is one of the half brothers and also James so the next book which we are going to study that was also written by the half brother of Jesus so it's you know you can think of it like a Jewish family in a Jewish family people traditionally are very close in it they they grow up with a strong sense of kinship so Jude would have been close to Jesus similarly James also he too would have been very close to Jesus but we see in the Gospels that the his brothers did not believe him okay so both Jude and James they were unbelievers they did not believe in Jesus when Jesus was alive it was only after the resurrection of Jesus that they joined the group they would have probably been in that 120 people in the upper room so they after the resurrection they understood that this brother who was with us he was not just a human being but he was the Son of God so you know they gave their lives to him to such an extent that you know you see even James like about James you when you study his life he was martyred he was killed for the sake of his faith but that is the extent of the commitment so both of these people Jude and James they became believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and they became leaders in the early church so no wonder you have an episode from Jude which is being written to God's people okay let's see now you know what he has in there alright yes yes so he starts off by saying Jude a born servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James so that don't you think that is so different he could have said I'm a brother of Jesus I if my brothers and sisters are there I'll just say hey I am the sister of this person but Jude recognizes that Jesus is the Messiah so he gives him that due respect and calls himself I am a born servant of the Lord Jesus Christ and also he says brother of James yeah excuse me then he addresses the people of God and he says those who are called sanctified excuse me class and preserved in Jesus Christ so this is a common way of addressing the believers by speaking of what has happened in Christ Jesus so called sanctified preserved okay so yeah I think I don't have to explain that we have studied all these terms in the in Christ course now he greets the people he says mercy peace and love be multiplied and then the next two verses here he is encouraging the believers to contend for the faith so he says concerning our common salvation so what is common salvation you know he looks at the community as a whole and says that everybody has been born again so what is that a common redemption individually people have been redeemed but the community has been redeemed by Christ so that is why he uses the term common salvation and then in the end of verse 3 he says contend earnestly for the faith so he's saying that as a believing community we have to protect the faith you know what is content content is when we are fighting for something we contend for our rights as the citizens of the country you know I should be given the voting rights so what what is happening you know year after year there are people they are fighting and saying this right belongs to us give it to us give it to us till you get it so that is contending so he's saying that I explained to us that there could have been many people within the congregation who were coming up with wrong teachings and wrong guidance so he's saying you are a believing community how is it that you can allow such wrong things to happen within you you have to put up a fight or contend he says earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints so you see the integrity of what we have received and I have spoken about this a couple of times to your class what we have received the true the doctrine which we have received we should not let that be mixed up okay that's where the danger lies so preserve what you have learned so far then he says certain men have crept unnoticed again you realize it's a very secretive way of entering the community of God where you know as if the right things are being taught these these apostates you know they come and they pretend they pretend that you are going to be benefited by these teachings but ultimately there is a great loss by listening to them so he says they have crept and unnoticed who long ago were marked out for this condemnation so you see what is the end of such people not honor because the the new testament says those of those who serve well they gain for themselves a good standing or honor honor comes when right word of God is taught but when deception is propagated the end result is condemnation okay or shame shame will come upon such people he also describes them as ungodly men who turn the grace of our God into lewdness no lewdness is sin so it seems like there are people in the church at that time or the congregation who say that you know now we are not under the old covenant we are under grace so it's okay you know God is a very gracious God he's a very kind God he will forgive you and he says they go to the extreme to talk about the grace of God in such a way that it is promoting sinfulness lewdness is sin okay and even sin which has to do with sexual immorality and so when there are wrong teachers and teachings what does it promote it promotes wrong believing it promotes wrong lifestyle wrong behavior and therefore the result which is condemnation and dishonor so he's saying they even turn the grace of God into lewdness how how can you you know even think about that God's grace what does it do it's God's kindness it leads us to repentance and it makes us holier but the false apostles and teachers they are preaching the grace but moving people into deeper and deeper sin and he also says to deny the only Lord so by that teaching people are also denying the real Jesus the real messiah God our Lord Jesus Christ so he says okay I want to remind you brethren like be careful of such people so now he brings up some examples so from verse 5 to verse 7 he has three examples there he says one is the people who came out of the land of Egypt they did not believe so he's talking about the unbelieving Israelites then second group is he says angels who did not keep their proper domain now they are in chains third category he says Sodom and Gomorrah the remember the old cities that Abraham interceded for Sodom and Gomorrah similarly because of their sexual immorality okay they also are condemned so he brings up the examples of these three categories of you know not people people and angels and he says we have to take a lesson from the attitude so what was the attitude of the Israelites they were unbelieving what was the attitude of these angels it says they did not keep their proper domain so what did they try to do they tried to take more power than what was already given to them we understand right that satan lucifer and one third of the angels they rebelled against God and what God told them to do they were trying to look for something else they were trying to look for their own greatness so they behaved with arrogance first is unbelief second is arrogance they were arrogant so now what is the result of that they are in everlasting chains or God has punished them so there are that set of angels not all of them are in chains but you have some of them in chains and you know some demons are there you know in the world they are moving around so that is what we have seen and the third category is Sodom and Gomorrah okay what was the problem with Sodom and Gomorrah they were all about their fleshly desires so they went for sexual immorality and all these people therefore they will suffer vengeance of eternal fire so there's unbelief there is arrogance there is fleshly lusting these things are not good among God's people and especially who he is talking about those who are bringing in such teaching so leaders leaders apostate leaders false teachers false apostles and people like that now he moves forward let's look at verses 8 to verse 11 here so now he gives some qualities of such apostates he says they are dreamers dreamers what is dreamers dreamers are like you know they they come up with some new new understanding and new teachings which don't have their root or anger in the word of God so that's when you have to be very careful there are many such teachings it'll be something you you've never heard you know Enoch how much do we know about Enoch in the bible very little no we read about Enoch in Genesis also in Jude there is a mention little something little bit but beyond that we don't read anything much but what do people who are called as dreamers they might come up with a preaching which says okay the the five key principles of intimacy with God from the life of Enoch and then you know there can be something about the life of Enoch this and that but how do you verify if Enoch's life was like that only or because it's not there in the bible so we can't confirm so we would say speculation speculation is we can't confirm something is said but we can't confirm or we could even have people dreamers would be like okay I had an encounter with Moses I met Moses Moses gave me his staff and we had we spoke about the end of the world and Moses told me that I'm going to it sounds so nice isn't it but how can we confirm it it's so hard to confirm things like this so he's talking about examples and teachings and philosophies that don't have a solid firm anchor in the word of God he says dreamers because they we don't know maybe they really had an encounter maybe they didn't only the fruit of their life will show that to us for that we have to wait and see but there's no way of confirming so he adds all these qualities and says he look look for these qualities if you see these qualities among the the teachers or the apostles then be very very cautious because we're not sure what they're talking about so he says dreamers defile the flesh defile the flesh is lead into sin reject authority like those angels God told them you stay in your position of authority I gave you authority as an angel you're supposed to serve God but what did they do they wanted greater power so they reject authority speak evil of dignitaries speaking evil of dignitaries is to dignitaries is leadership so maybe there were people at that time who were teaching false philosophy they were rejecting what the apostles were teaching and and you know they were also speaking evil of the apostles at that time so then he goes on to explain to the people and he says look Michael the archangel in contending with the devil when he disputed about the body of Moses did not bring against him a reviling accusation but said the Lord rebuke you so again you see this incident here we don't know too much about this incident so there are many teachings about the body of Moses but there is no proper confirmation from God's word okay but what can we take from this one verse keep it simple the only understanding the few things that we can understand here is that Michael stayed in the authority which was given to him so Michael is a warring angel you see his name whenever there is wars happening so there is a time for some reason there is a war about the body of Moses at that time the devil comes to fight with him or satan comes to fight with him so Michael can rebuke satan if he wants but it's not in his zone of authority so Michael says the Lord rebuke you so in this we just understand that Michael is staying within his boundaries that's all so we should also stay within our boundaries what has God called us to do just do that don't try to covet covet is I look at somebody they're called into the office of a prophet and I covet it all right I desire it I say I wish I can be that prophet or God you make me that give that position of the apostle to me so but my motivation is not correct so these are the kind of things which are not right okay that brings that makes people move in the wrong direction and that is why Jude is saying look at Michael he was in his own position and he did not even rebuke satan on his own he knew that only God can rebuke satan so he said the Lord rebuke you so stay within your boundaries and then you know he goes on to describe more about these apostate people he says but these speak evil of whatever they do not know and whatever they know naturally like brute beasts in these things they corrupt themselves so speaking evil and passing judgment not having sufficient understanding these are all features of false apostles so be careful about such people so and then he again brings a rebuke and condemns he says war to them or they are condemned for they have gone in the way of Cain so what did Cain do? Cain is an example of unbelief again because you remember Cain went and gave God an offering Abel gave an offering God was impressed with Abel's offering reason faith in Hebrews 11 we talked about Abel because his offering was made with faith which means the offering of Cain was made with unbelief so the Jude is warning us and he's saying unbelief is not good stay away from unbelief okay so you learn from the example of Cain next he says Balaam Balaam is there in Numbers 22 so what is Balaam's example Balaam was a prophet a mighty prophet of God but the problem with him is you know the the king at that time told him I will give you money you curse God's people and he was ready to curse God's people for the sake of prophet so he was a prophet for prophet going after money greed greed is the issue here so be careful because what is it could it is the motivation of these apostate leaders they want money they want to enjoy the pleasures of this life and greed will also lead us away from God so unbelief greed and then he mentions one more name called as Korah Korah is in Numbers 16 now Korah is the person who resented Moses and Aaron God gave leadership position to Moses and Aaron but Korah what did he try to do he tried to you know fight what God did and he was speaking ill of Moses and Aaron God did not like that God was very upset so he you could say he rejected God given authority and that is again something which we we see like the angels who are put in chains remember they went beyond their boundary and they rejected authority so in the same way Korah also rejected God's authority and God was not at all happy with Korah so unbelief greed covetousness rejecting authority rejecting dignitaries speaking evil of you know people in leadership all these things are not good qualities and which is what Jude is warning the people about and he's saying please be away from such things because it will destroy you and it will destroy others you know who are going to follow this example so he's coming to verse 12 again he's adding little more qualities about these apostate leaders he says these are spots in your love fees while they feast with you without fear serving only themselves so he's pointing out to their quality of self being selfish being self-built so in leadership I think you people would have studied you know it's a very sacrificial thing when we are leaders because we have to think about the people see if Moses was to think only about himself then how can he lead tens and thousands of people he has to make some sacrifices to be their leader think about Jesus Jesus died on the cross and now we talk about the glorious church of the Lord Jesus Christ but how did that glorious church happen there was a sacrifice and an example we look at Jesus and say oh this is our example the Lord Jesus Christ and we follow him so that is true leadership but what is false leadership selfish self-willed so he says you find such people enjoying themselves in your feasts so they just want to have a good time and they're all about themselves serving only themselves so pleasure money riches fame those are the things that interest these false leaders and then he says they are clouds without water what is clouds without water no substance you know when they talk we want to get the word of God from them they say okay I am a leader oh great come on share God's word with me build me up impart the anointing of God into my life and then they start sharing there is nothing in it for us to draw closer to God so that is why he says it's a zero clouds without water there's no substance and he says obviously there's no substance gone about about by the winds late autumn trees without fruit similar and you expect fruit on the trees like how Jesus expected from the fig tree but there was no fruit so similarly you know there is nothing in these leaders and don't follow them so they he says they are twice dead pulled up by the roots raging waves of the sea forming up their own shame wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever so basically he says there is nothing to learn from such people they are selfish and he says what is their ultimate end basically condemnation or judgment remember we talked so much about judgment in first period chapter 3 sorry second period chapter 3 he says it's coming and they will experience that now he says verse 14 he says now Enoch you see another mention of the man Enoch the seventh from Adam prophesied about these men also saying behold the Lord comes with 10 thousands of his saints to execute judgment on all to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an ungodly way and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him so judgment he says God is going to come back and these verses are very encouraging because verses 14 and 15 it shows the image of our Lord Jesus as coming back like a warrior king so far we've seen him as the meek lamb of God slain on the cross of Calvary but here is the picture where you see the king warrior king coming back he's coming back with all his people okay and together with his people he is going to judge these ungodly people who are now living for their own pleasure so verse 16 again more features he adds about these people he says they are grumblers complainers walking according to their own lust and they mouth great swelling words flattering people to gain advantage so you notice I don't think I have to explain it's explaining itself these are all ways in which they talk verse 17 he says this is how ungodly people are but this is what I want you to know people of God but you beloved remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ how they told you that there would be mockers in the last time who would walk according to their own ungodly less these are sensual persons who cause divisions not having the spirit so he's saying that many of these people it's possible that they're not even believers okay so you know some are the ones who were believers and they went away because they did not take God's word seriously but he also says there are some who were never believers in the first place and they were they don't have the spirit or what does a believer have the Holy Spirit every believer has the Holy Spirit so there are people who who talk about the Bible who talk about biblical things but they don't have the Holy Spirit which means they were never born again but he reminds God's people that you are already warned everybody has warned you you know all the apostles John spoke about Peter spoke about it now I'm Jude I'm talking to you about it Paul wrote about it so please be aware there are going to be such people mockers you know there'll be no use listening to their destructive teaching it doesn't glorify God but instead of that what should the believers do he says you build yourself up in the most holy faith praying in the Holy Spirit so he's calling the believers to a place of strength and he says it's your responsibility as long as you know you are here you have to maintain your spiritual strength so how are you going to do that one key he gives here he says pray in the spirit so pray in tongues pray by the Holy Spirit now we know first Corinthians chapter 14 it tells us that when somebody prays in tongues what do they do they edify themselves so our spirit man is becoming stronger and stronger and stronger so spend a lot of time in the word meditate on the word pray and pray also in the Holy Spirit and that will keep us strong even when such things happen in the body of Christ we will be able to pick it up quickly and you know be safe from such teachings and then he says keep yourselves in the love of God looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus unto eternal life and on some have compassion making a distinction but others save with fear pulling them out of the fire hating even the garment defiled by the flesh so he talks about working with you know some who have gone astray from God so he says there will be some with whom you can deal in a gentle way but with some people you may need to be strict and like it's helpful because even if you are strict what are you going to do you're going to pull them out of the fire or you're going to bring them back on track and so do this now bring back those who have gone away from God and help them to continue following God and towards the end you know he just gives a blessing to the people and he says now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling so again you know he's talking about an empowering God our God will protect us he will help us stand till the end so now unto him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you faultless so we know in Ephesians we've seen all this why has God chosen us he wants to present us blameless and spotless before the Father and that is his heart for us so before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy to God our Savior who alone is wise be glory and majesty dominion and power both now and forever amen so it's like a blessing and you know giving glory to God giving glory to who God is so that is about the book of Jude here basically it's one only one chapter but it is a warning about apostate people leaders they've gone away from God you recognize them by their grumbling by their selfishness by their empty words and and also there are certain attitudes we saw we saw unbelief arrogance then what else did we see self beings fleshly having fleshly lusts and also rejecting authority not staying within our boundaries these are all attitudes that we have to be careful about and if we see somebody wandering away from God you know it says okay come on who do your part to bring them back some people with compassion but some people with strictness but you know that way we are really helping and blessing the body of Christ so I hope it's okay everyone you've understood Jude any questions any thoughts so it's very similar no okay no questions they very similar to first Peter chapter 2 also where Peter talks about apostates yeah okay great thank you thank you happy to know that very clear great let's now just enter James the book of James and James also is is fairly simple very practical book and I you know we should be able to complete it well in time I will go on till your last class okay I need till your last class so don't mind but we will finish it at a comfortable speed now coming to the episode of James so a little bit about James I told us that Jude is a half brother of Jesus similarly James is also a half brother of Jesus and about James he too was an unbeliever just like Jude but after the resurrection of Jesus he started believing in Jesus Christ then we observe about what else can I say about James okay another thing about James is that he became see Apostle James there are two James when we read about the life of Jesus so there's an Apostle James who is part of the 12th that James is killed do you remember Herod put a sword to him his neck and he was killed and then Peter later on Peter later on he is he spared but then Peter sends word to James who is this James when one James is killed who is the other James who's there this other James is the brother of Jesus who became a notable leader in the acts of the apostles and we see that he was the pastor of the Jerusalem church and even in acts 15 the council you know he has a very major role to play there he's the one who declares that that final decree about Gentiles not required to be circumcised and also he became a notable leader we also recognize that this book he wrote in AD 45 so it is the earliest episode which was written and he being the leader of the church he addresses certain issues that existed in the church so when we go through the book of James you'll see that you know he's jumping from subject to subject but his intention is to address you know different matters within the church and at some point you know he also for the gathering of God's people instead of the Greek word Ecclesia which is the understanding of the church local church he uses the word a synagogue which also tells us that the church was sort of emerging and evolving and Pete Paul you know their ministry all that was going on you know simultaneously so that current picture of Christians and church it was still emerging so even James did not have that understanding when he wrote the book of James so these are all some facts about the book of James and James was martyred for the sake of Jesus and one theme that runs through in the book of James would be faith okay faith and faith in daily life so if you want to summarize the book of James you would say that James is asking a believer who says I have faith to live a life of faith if you say you have faith then please demonstrate that faith in the life that you live so practical very practical and you know just a believer should be like a believer that's the point that James has so now let's go to the first chapter here of the book of James now James introduces himself he says James a born servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes which are scattered abroad greetings so a born servant of God that is generally how an apostle introduced themselves okay so a born servant is also to show their commitment those days a slave was called a born servant so when somebody of their own free will says that I am a born servant of a person they are saying I am a slave I'm I'm sold out for the Lord Jesus Christ so you notice how a brother is talking about his own brother he grew up in Jesus why didn't he say James the brother you would be so proud to say that you know we had the same dad but James doesn't do that because he recognizes that Jesus was more than a man he was God and so humility same with Jude he says Jude a born servant of the Lord Jesus humility once you know the more we know God the normal response will be humility we'll begin to understand oh my goodness this is the savior of the world I must respect this person Jesus so that attitude is coming forth in both Jude and James okay and then he also says you know to the 12 tribes which are scattered abroad so he addresses the Jewish Christians through the book various parts of Jerusalem and also you know the they say that he wrote it to those who were scattered outside of Palestine places like Mesopotamia and all that so all you know different regions and he's basically addressing the believers there one more thing I want to tell all of us is you know here currently at APC we are doing a study on the book of James in fact it just got over so all the notes are available on the website for for us so you can just download the notes and the whatever I'm sharing there are many more details available for us in the notes so that will also be helpful for you to understand so the first topic which James touches is he says trials okay when you go through trials my brethren or people Jewish believers when you go through trials he says count it all joy what is the joy that he's talking about he's asking the people to rejoice or be cheerful have a calm and calm delight in various trials okay trials are afflictions difficulties and you know adversities that one goes through so he says when all these things happen I want you to have a different response as compared to the world what will people of the world do they will grumble they will be sad but you count it all joy why because he shows the nature of trials to build us up so in verse three he says knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience so he's saying that when our faith is tested or when we go through trials what happens we have to hold on to God right so that holding on is not easy it's like a test of our faith what will it produce patience okay patience is a part of our character it is the ability to withstand in hope and know that no God will come through for us and so he says when we go through trials you be happy because your character is being built up and he also goes on to say in verse four that patience have its perfect work that you may be perfect and complete lacking nothing so he's saying that as long as we let patience develop within us our character will be strengthened that we may become perfect and complete nothing but mature we become more mature for the Lord okay so that is what one should do when they are in difficulty or they are in they're going through tribulations now one more scripture I just want to refer to over here is Romans five Romans five verses three and four because that passage it says that and not only that but we also glory in tribulations similar Paul is saying something similar be happy when you're going through trials he says tribulations knowing that tribulation produces perseverance what did James say it produces patience patience perseverance you know similar similar attributes and perseverance character and character hope so what he's saying is when we have gone through difficulty what is the end result yes patience it's doing its work in me but when somebody has gone through the test of their faith and develop patience they also have a sense of hope inside them okay it's not going through difficulty thinking oh when is this when is this building going to crash I'll wait till the building crashes hopelessness not with a hopeless attitude but in Romans Paul points out and he says that when we have endured when we when we have perseverance it is going to produce character and character will produce hope so there will always be a sense of hope in somebody who knows how to go through tribulations trials difficulties and so you know James is saying you be happy I know it's not easy but it is going to be helpful you will develop patience and patience will ultimately lead to hope so now he is coming to the next subject here he says if any of you lacks wisdom so in the trial situation what do we need when we are going through a tough time no we need God's intervention and God intervenes by providing wisdom for that situation so he says if any of you lacks wisdom then you ask God who gives liberally to all so in this passage you know you must be familiar with it it basically says let him ask in faith with no doubting and he who doubts is like the wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind for let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord he's double-minded man unstable in all his ways very simple what James is saying is in difficulty pray okay when we pray what happens we are asking God for wisdom and when we ask God for wisdom he says ask with faith how should we pray that is also told to us in faith don't be double-minded double-minded is like saying God may help me God may not help me I don't know you know what is going to happen double-minded is to not be firm in making a decision so James points to that and says if we are people of faith in a difficult time we can ask God for wisdom and be confident that God will answer you he talks about the characteristics of God and he says you know God who gives liberally so God is generous to provide his counsel to us and he says God gives without reproach that means you know when we ask for something maybe we would have asked our parents give me more you know I want more I want more notebooks go buy more notebooks for me sometimes what have used to happen parents would be like what is this you're troubling me you're asking so again and again you're asking me the same things how many notebooks should I give you so they give us but with a rebuke that is with reproach but he's telling us about the character of God and he's saying see God is so generous and happy when we say God help me give me wisdom God will give wisdom and he's not going to scold you for it okay so that is the way in which God will give wisdom so that you can go through your time of difficulty and become stronger through it okay so let me just stop here I'll continue from here and let's hope I'm hoping to finish till chapter 3 next week and then the last week we'll do 4 and 5 okay so let's close with the word of prayer okay I see the comments yeah thank you I would request somebody to please pray so that we can wrap up today's class Kiran can you pray yes ma'am see it yeah yeah pray Father God we come before one second you're thrown and we want to say thank you Father God for all things Father God thanking you for your grace mercy and your understanding Father God thank you Father God for your revelation thanking you Father God to to the subject Father God that we are understanding and help us Father God to apply to our life and kingdom work also Father God give that life manner Father God that we can understand every step Father God and help us to the journey Father God submitting to submit to your hand rest of the day Father God and all his children and ma'am also Father God take care of every side thanking you Father God Almighty Jesus name we pray amen amen amen thank you thank you Kiran thank you everybody God bless you and yeah take care we'll connect next Monday thank you ma'am yeah thank you bye thank you ma'am thank you Thomas bye


A bat origin for SARS-CoV-2 has been proposed. Here, by sampling wild Rhinolophus ecuminatus bats from Thailand, the authors identified a SARS-CoV-2 related coronavirus, SC2R-CoV, designated as IECC-S203, with 91.5% genome similarity to SARS-CoV-2, and show that SEHA obtained from bats and Malen pangolin neutralized SARS-CoV-2. This article was authored by Superpawn Wetraplucidae, Chi Watan, Atrapolmonian, and others.


If we're studying chemical reactions that are in equilibrium, those reactions must be reversible. Let's explore what a reversible reaction is. When you're learning about chemistry in junior science, you usually think of chemical change as irreversible. You bake a loaf of bread, and the bread can't be turned back into its ingredients.  However, all chemical reactions are in fact potentially reversible. Whether they're reversible in practice depends on several factors, including the conditions under which they occur and whether the products escape. But one of the most important factors that affects the reversibility of a reaction is its activation energy. Imagine a reaction that has an energy profile like this. The activation energy is quite small, but the enthalpy change is large and exothermic. Remember that the rate of a reaction is determined by the probability of successful collisions between the reactant molecules, and that in turn depends on the activation energy. So this reaction, with a low activation energy, goes quite fast, and the reactants are easily converted into products. If the reaction were reversible, it would mean that it could also proceed in the reverse direction. For this reaction, that would mean turning the reds back into the blues. But look at the energy profile in this direction. To get from red to blue, a much greater activation energy has to be met. This means the reaction would be very slow, possibly so slow as to be unmeasurable. A reaction with a very asymmetric energy profile like this is effectively irreversible, because it's much more likely that all the reactants will be converted into products than it is for any of the products to be converted into reactants. This is the case for most of the chemical reactions that you're familiar with, and we tend to class them as irreversible reactions. If instead we have a reaction where the activation energy in either direction is relatively small, then the chances are that there will be some product molecules with sufficient energy to undergo the reverse reaction and turn back into reactants. This means that two reactions are happening simultaneously, the forward reaction and the reverse reaction. If you were to start with only blue molecules, then after a sufficient time, the sample would contain both reds and blues, since the forward and reverse reactions are both occurring. And this remains the case indefinitely. This type of reaction is called a reversible reaction. And it's these reactions that we study when we're looking at the phenomenon of equilibrium.