Continental Philosopher, deeply inspired by Actualized.org

[Nodar Bakradze]

Hello. My name is Nodar Bakradze. I am a 22-year-old Continental philosopher from Tbilisi, Georgia. Even though this is my first post on this podcast, I actually came across Actualized.org in my early teens. Needless to say, it completely revolutionized my entire life. Starting from age 14, by virtue of Leo's powerful videos, I have been engaged in disciplined, self-actualization work. Ranging from consistent meditation practice to systematic self-education and autodidacticism to dating, cold approach, and pickup, not to mention other life-changing practices Leo teaches.

Even though I discovered Actualized.org right around age 14, I only engaged in general personal development from my early to mid-teenage years. However, close to an end of my teenagerhood, at the age of 18, I committed myself to Leo's Life Purpose Course. I carefully watched all the lectures and did all the exercises. Owing to which I was able to get clear on my top 5 strengths, top 10 values, higher consciousness virtue, top 5 emotional states, and last but certainly not least, life purpose, with its zone of genius, domain of mastery, and ideal medium. 

After completing the program, I focused on consistently implementing numerous priceless insights Leo shared within his groundbreaking course. After completion of which, I created my life purpose. That I have been committed to since the age of 18.

Thanks to consistent implementation of Leo's priceless insights and absolutely groundbreaking life purpose course, coupled with my own independent research, contemplation, meditative practice, and overall self-actualization work, I became a Continental philosopher. Whose philosophical enterprise, Principia Ontologia, is phenomenologically, structurally, and genealogically competent fundamental ontological inquiry, designed to accomplish what my predecessor—and biggest influence on my thought—Martin Heidegger, in his 1927 tour de force, Being and Time, intended to but failed to accomplish. 

My philosophical project—deepened fundamental ontology—integrates each and every major breakthrough of premodern, modern, and postmodern epochs. And it is most profoundly influenced by, hence "transcends and includes," Husserlian phenomenology, Heideggerian philosophical enterprise, Derridean deconstruction, and Ken Wilber's Integral Meta-Theory, to say nothing of other brilliant Occidental thinkers, whose shadow falls on the project's every page. With that in mind, I am very grateful to announce that Volume I of Principia Ontologia—which follows the structure of Being and Time—is now complete. A three-division, 800-page treatise that catalyzes the emergence of authentically post-metaphysical fundamental ontology, in consequence, marking an advent of what can be described as the most post-metaphysically powerful Continental enterprise in the history of the canon that, in contrast with its brilliant predecessors, reveals itself—to use Ken Wilber's beautiful expression—as the first ever "all-level, all-quadrant" Continental project that equally honors the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, and the Primordial Ground of the entire display. 

Since the scope of this post won't allow me to elucidate the ins and outs of the project—if you are interested—you can learn more about my philosophical work on ResearchGate. Also, you can find me on social media platforms, such as Instagram and YouTube. 

Last but not least, in the wake of completing the first part of Principia Ontologia, I would be very thankful to engage in meaningful conversations concerning philosophy, fundamental ontology, Continental canon, the future of Western intellectual tradition, and other similar immensely important philosophical topics. Naturally, I would be very grateful to have an opportunity to have a discussion with Curt Jaimungal, who I already sent an email to right before writing this post. I feel like such discussions would be very helpful for everyone involved, as at the end of the day, authentic Continental philosophy is transformative; consequently, Principia Ontologia's novel insights, acumens, and breakthroughs are nothing short of transformative as well.

Besides wanting to get to know other self-actualizers, I want to use this post as an opportunity, in light of Curt and Leo being friends, to ask Leo—if he reads this post and wishes to do so—and likewise, members of this forum who know Curt, for help with regard to reaching him.  

Thank you. I deeply appreciate all the support. 

And please, if you haven't taken Leo's Life Purpose Course, stop everything you are doing and complete it. It is the most powerful personal development resource on planet Earth. 

[DocWatts]

Greetings! If you're tackling an expanded fundamental ontology, you're in good company. And if you managed to grok Heideggar at 22, I'm impressed. Back at the ripe old age of 30, 'Being and Time' was among the most difficult (but ultimately worthwhile) books I've ever read.

My own project pulls from Heideggar alongside Merleau-Ponty, Hubert Dreyfus, Ken Wilber, Fransisco Varella, George Lakoff and others. 'World disclosure for dummies' might not be a bad description, since I'm writing for a non-academic audience that may be ready for more advanced insights -- but doesn't speak phenomenological jargon as a second language.

Look forward to seeing you on the Forums!

Edited May 17 by DocWatts

[Nodar Bakradze]

On 17/05/2025 at 8:47 PM, DocWatts said:

Greetings! If you're tackling an expanded fundamental ontology, you're in good company. And if you managed to grok Heideggar at 22, I'm impressed. Back at the ripe old age of 30, 'Being and Time' was among the most difficult (but ultimately worthwhile) books I've ever read.

My own project pulls from Heideggar alongside Merleau-Ponty, Hubert Dreyfus, Ken Wilber, Fransisco Varella, George Lakoff and others. 'World disclosure for dummies' might not be a bad description, since I'm writing for a non-academic audience that may be ready for more advanced insights -- but doesn't speak phenomenological jargon as a second language.

Look forward to seeing you on the Forums!

Writing an accessible book on “world disclosure” is a very difficult task. I really respect that and wish you all the best in your project.

[zurew]

On 2025. 05. 17. at 6:47 PM, DocWatts said:

My own project pulls from Heideggar alongside Merleau-Ponty, Hubert Dreyfus, Ken Wilber, Fransisco Varella, George Lakoff and others. 'World disclosure for dummies' might not be a bad description, since I'm writing for a non-academic audience that may be ready for more advanced insights -- but doesn't speak phenomenological jargon as a second language.

I can say that the clarity of your writings (not just your book, but your posts on here in general) is easier to track compared how it was before (2-3 years ago)

I think the 'World disclosure for dummies' is a good description, because even I with low phil knowledge can track a good chunk of your stuff and can engage somewhat meaningfully with some of it.

[Nodar Bakradze]

I would be grateful for an advice on what’s the best way to reach podcasters and bloggers. Since this first part of my project is finished, I am now looking for a publisher while wanting to share my ideas in podcast, discussion, debate format. I feel like attending podcasts will help me find a publisher…

 

 

 

Edited May 19 by Nodar Bakradze

[DocWatts]

8 hours ago, zurew said:

I can say that the clarity of your writings (not just your book, but your posts on here in general) is easier to track compared how it was before (2-3 years ago)

I think the 'World disclosure for dummies' is a good description, because even I with low phil knowledge can track a good chunk of your stuff and can engage somewhat meaningfully with some of it.

Thanks! I'll chalk that up to the good 10-20 hours a week I've been spending on my book for the last two years - would be a bummer if I hadn't gotten any better at writing during that time! 

[Nodar Bakradze]

26 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

Thanks! I'll chalk that up to the good 10-20 hours a week I've been spending on my book for the last two years - would be a bummer if I hadn't gotten any better at writing during that time! 

I wanted to ask you, What are your thoughts on Jacques Derrida’s body of work?

[zurew]

1 hour ago, DocWatts said:

Thanks! I'll chalk that up to the good 10-20 hours a week I've been spending on my book for the last two years - would be a bummer if I hadn't gotten any better at writing during that time!

 Not just your writing, but your way of thinking is more clear and easier to follow (imo).

Some people can write good books ,but they are not necessarily good on their feet or they are not that good when it comes to dialogue.

Even though not everything can be simplified (because sometimes necessary nuance is lost or you point to such foundational concepts that cant be broken down any further etc) - The very fact that you can build some bridge and simplify these complex topics and express them in your own way means that you probably have a very good grasp of them and you dont just gibberate, or want to posture with big words or play language games, but you can actually meaningfully connect and engage.

[Nodar Bakradze]

2 hours ago, zurew said:

 Not just your writing, but your way of thinking is more clear and easier to follow (imo).

Some people can write good books ,but they are not necessarily good on their feet or they are not that good when it comes to dialogue.

Even though not everything can be simplified (because sometimes necessary nuance is lost or you point to such foundational concepts that cant be broken down any further etc) - The very fact that you can build some bridge and simplify these complex topics and express them in your own way means that you probably have a very good grasp of them and you dont just gibberate, or want to posture with big words or play language games, but you can actually meaningfully connect and engage.

And on top of that, the very intention to make something complex more accessible is nothing short of a very commendable intention, in my opinion. 

Edited May 19 by Nodar Bakradze

[DocWatts]

7 hours ago, Nodar Bakradze said:

I wanted to ask you, What are your thoughts on Jacques Derrida’s body of work?

Cards on the table: I've probably read more Thomas Pychon than I have postmodern academic philosophy.

Derrida is the type of philosopher I've learned about through osmosis rather than a deep dive of their work - ditto for Focault, Butler, etc. 

Postmodernism has just never excited me like phenomenology and more metamodern oriented philosophy has.

Here's a list of philosophers that I've been influenced by, which my work is to some degree an attempt to synthesize and make more accessible:

• Fransisco Varella
• Evan Thompson 
• Eleanor Rosche
• George Lakoff
• Mark Johnson
• Martin Heidegger 
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty
• Hubert Dreyfus
• Ken Wilber
• Alfred North Whitehead
• Jonathan Haidt
• Thomas Kuhn
• Julia Galef
• John Verveake
• Thomas Nagel
• Charles Taylor

I'd say the largest influence on my own work is a book called 'The Embodied Mind' by the first three authors on that list - with B&T-era Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Thomas Kuhn being close seconds. (The philosophy of science is near and dear to my heart).

Edited May 19 by DocWatts

[Nodar Bakradze]

11 hours ago, DocWatts said:

Cards on the table: I've probably read more Thomas Pychon than I have postmodern academic philosophy.

Derrida is the type of philosopher I've learned about through osmosis rather than a deep dive of their work - ditto for Focault, Butler, etc. 

Postmodernism has just never excited me like phenomenology and more metamodern oriented philosophy has.

Here's a list of philosophers that I've been influenced by, which my work is to some degree an attempt to synthesize and make more accessible:

• Fransisco Varella
• Evan Thompson 
• Eleanor Rosche
• George Lakoff
• Mark Johnson
• Martin Heidegger 
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty
• Hubert Dreyfus
• Ken Wilber
• Alfred North Whitehead
• Jonathan Haidt
• Thomas Kuhn
• Julia Galef
• John Verveake
• Thomas Nagel
• Charles Taylor

I'd say the largest influence on my own work is a book called 'The Embodied Mind' by the first three authors on that list - with B&T-era Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Thomas Kuhn being close seconds. (The philosophy of science is near and dear to my heart).

If philosophy of science is near and dear to your heart, I think you will enjoy reading Karl Popper’s oeuvre.

[DocWatts]

4 hours ago, Nodar Bakradze said:

If philosophy of science is near and dear to your heart, I think you will enjoy reading Karl Popper’s oeuvre.

Karl Popper's been on my reading list for some time now - both for his philosophy of science and his sociological takes.

I thought Kuhn did a pretty thorough job of demonstrating that theories aren't falsified so much as they are abandoned for a another theory with better pragmatic efficacy.

Evidence always underdetermines theory, because there's no such thing as an uninterpreted fact.

A theory that's out of step with observational evidence can always be modified in increasingly ad-hoc ways to 'save' a theory. The history of science shows that the old guard is often recalcitrant to change their views just because of pesky evidence - plenty of folks tried to 'save' the luminiferous ether, or objective space and time. The intuitions that theory selection is grounded in has a ton of inertia behind it.

Eventually the cost for doing so becomes enough high enough that it gets outcompeted by a newer theory that predicts and explains a wider range of phenomena while generating fewer anomalies - which is how we can still have 'progress' within a Kuhnian model of science.

Edited May 20 by DocWatts

[zurew]

44 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

Evidence always underdetermines theory, because there's no such thing as an uninterpreted fact

This is not related to popper, but when it comes to evidence I like the raven's paradox.

where for the hypothesis that 'all ravens are black' -  anything that isn't a raven and isn't black counts as evidence (so a green apple is evidence for the claim that all raven are black)

44 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

Eventually the cost for doing so becomes enough high enough that it gets outcompeted by a newer theory that predicts and explains a wider range of phenomena while generating fewer anomalies - which is how we can still have 'progress' within a Kuhnian model of science.

Do you have any special position on theory selection in general? (like what set of virtues should be taken account and how they should be weighed when it comes to theory selection  - by virtues I mean stuff like predictability , how many assumptions it has, how much it coheres with other scientific theories etc)

And my other question would be , what do you take theory selection to be? - do you think that the reason why we care about the virtues we care about, is because it simply reflects  our intuitions and psychology (aside from predictability) or there is something more going on?

Edited May 20 by zurew

[zurew]

20 hours ago, Nodar Bakradze said:

And on top of that, the very intention to make something complex more accessible is nothing short of a very commendable intention, in my opinion. 

Yeah, I agree.

[Nodar Bakradze]

Thanks for the excellent discussion guys. 

An imperative maneuver with reference to the Popperian falsifiability principle is the movement from narrow (empirical-sensory-only) to broad (experience as a whole) falsification principle. An acumen Principia Ontologia goes out of its way to install within deepened fundamental ontological inquiry and on that note, is excellently worked out by Wilber in his numerous pioneering contributions.

Edited May 20 by Nodar Bakradze

[DocWatts]

9 hours ago, zurew said:

Do you have any special position on theory selection in general? (like what set of virtues should be taken account and how they should be weighed when it comes to theory selection  - by virtues I mean stuff like predictability , how many assumptions it has, how much it coheres with other scientific theories etc)

I'll tackle the first question for now, since there's a lot that could be said on the subject, depending on how deep in the weeds we want to get. 

My broad 'take' on theory selection is rooted in pragmatic efficacy and ontological pluralism rather than a correspondence model tied to an inferred mind-independent Reality.

Under this purview, a predictive theory is better than its alternatives when it's:

• A qualitative improvement in our problem solving capabilities - the newer theory solves problems that the older theory couldn't. For instance, GPS systems designed solely on Newtonian mechanics would fail to track our position with precision, since the satellites operate under conditions where relativistic time dilation becomes significant. Accounting for this requires the theoretical framework of general relativity.
   
• It should extend the scope of phenomena that can be mechanistically investigated. Our everyday lives are lived on the mesoscale - that comfortable, human-sized spatial and temporal scale that our perceptual systems are evolutionarily adapted to. A more powerful theory can show us how things that are invisible to us from our everyday vantage point can nonetheless affect us at the mesoscale. Germ theory being the classic example.
   
• Can predict and explain persistent anomalies that plagued earlier theories. For instance, Ptolemaic gravitation had to be modified in increasingly convoluted  ways when observational evidence repeatedly failed to align with theoretical predictions.
   
• Can offer a better economy of assumptions and theoretical constructs in relation to what it's trying to explain. 19th centuries of light posited a theoretical construct called the Luminiferous Ether, out of the assumption that light was a wave and thus needed a medium to propagate through. When Michelson and Morley tried and failed to detect this medium in their famous experiment, physicists began modifying the properties of the ether in increasingly contrived ways. Eventually, Einstein's theory of relativity made the Luminiferous Ether obsolete, replacing a web of convoluted assumptions with a simpler and more productive framework. 
   
• Theories are akin to gestalts which structure phenomena into a meaningful whole. Two people can look at the same observational evidence and 'see' different things from the same set of environmental stimuli, depending on their interpretative lenses. Gestalts are how a set of isolated elements coalesce into meaningful patterns that we can make sense of.

• Fruitfulness - a better theory should generate new research questions, suggest novel experiments, and lead to further discoveries. A theory that stagnates or closes off the path of inquiry is less appealing. It's not just about solving existing problems, but expanding the scope of problems that we can discover.

• Consistency - we want our theories be internally coherent and externally compatible with other well-established scientific theories. This is why a scientific theory that contradicts the 2nd law of thermodynamics (conservation of energy) is a non-starter. 

• A better theory recognizes that the territory they're trying to map will always carry some degree of indeterminacy. The paradoxes of quantum mechanics - like waveform collapse and uncertainty - arise from trying to force macroscopic concepts from classical mechanics onto a domain they weren’t designed for. Theories that remain clear-eyed about these kinds of framing limitations are preferable. Rather than denying indeterminacy, they acknowledge where their conceptual tools strain or break down.

• Theories that display meta-theoretical self-awareness are preferable - in short, they don't mistake the map for the territory. Meaning they don't reify their theoretical constructs into fixed features of a mind-independent Reality. A meta-theoretically reflective view of physics, for instance, holds that physics isn’t an objective inventory of “what is,” but an iterative model of how reality behaves, which reflects our practical interests (e.g., building functional machines, predicting motion, manipulating our environment)

Edited May 21 by DocWatts

[DocWatts]

9 hours ago, zurew said:

And my other question would be , what do you take theory selection to be? - do you think that the reason why we care about the virtues we care about, is because it simply reflects  our intuitions and psychology (aside from predictability) or there is something more going on?

I would say that theory selection is intuition driven, with our intellect largely serving as post-hoc rationalizations of these emotionally grounded starting points. The values that guide our theory choice are a reflection of our life experiences. Moreover, they're grounded in a broader human evolutionary context, and patterned in non-arbitrary ways by the various social and cultural contexts that we're embedded in. 

That said, these ingrained responses aren’t set in stone - they can be recognized, examined, and gradually reshaped through deliberate reflection and receptivity to the world.

I'd frame that this is something of a middle path between the perennial and constructivist camps - the former sees human nature as fixed and universal, and the latter sees human nature as fluid and malleable. I'd contend that our dispositions are neither wholly immutable nor infinitely plastic - they're responsive to experience, but not unanchored. We have influence but not control over the dispositions that shape theory choice.

 

Edited May 21 by DocWatts

[aurum]

@Nodar Bakradze Nice work! Very cool.

[Nodar Bakradze]

8 hours ago, aurum said:

@Nodar Bakradze Nice work! Very cool.

Thank you. I appreciate it. 

[Nodar Bakradze]

Regarding Thomas Kuhn, his work is brilliant. Nonetheless, was badly misinterpreted by the plethora of so-called “new paradigm” thinkers…