IAM’s Director of Research, Brendan Graham Dempsey, recently gave a talk in the seminar series of the Center Leo Apostel (CLEA) at the Free University of Brussels (VUB). We’re sharing the recording here.

The talk lays out the core argument of The Evolution of Meaning, Brendan’s three-volume account of meaning-making from the physical cosmos through life, mind and culture. Its central claim is that meaning is not something humans add to an indifferent universe. Open systems that draw on energy flows to build and keep improbable organization have to learn about their surroundings to stay viable, and that learning produces meaningful information and value. On this view, evolution and learning are two sides of one process, unfolding across a nested series of emergent strata.

In human meaning-making, that complexification can be measured directly. Using the Lectical Assessment System, Brendan presents data on how individual meaning-making structures grow more complex, then applies the same scale to representative texts from six major worldviews: Tribal, Archaic, Axial, Modern, Postmodern and Integrative. Measuring individuals and cultures on one scale lets psychological and cultural development be compared directly. The talk closes on what this suggests about the present moment: the metacrisis, the search for an integrative worldview, and the arrival of artificial intelligence as part of a new layer in the evolution of meaning.

For more on the Lectical findings, see our white paper Measuring Altitude: Empirically Grounding Developmental Levels with the Lectical Scale.

Recording courtesy of CLEA. Watch on CLEA’s YouTube channel or read more about CLEA’s seminars.