Guest Profile

Justin McSweeny

Justin McSweeny is a philosopher of mind and host of an interview series dedicated to exploring how we make meaning in a chaotic world. His work draws on third-generation cognitive science, philosophy, and systems thinking to reimagine what self-development and spiritual practice can look like in contemporary life.

He investigates how humans sense-make—from raw sensory data to the cognitive loops that help us find relevance in what we encounter. His inquiries move through identity construction and “selving,” the tentative process by which we come to know who we are, and into how belief structures can be loosened through apophatic reasoning and dialogue.

Justin’s approach bridges science and mysticism. He speaks fluently about epistemic and ontological primitives, second-order cybernetics, and the profilic self—the abstracted identity we curate in digital and social ecosystems. He’s drawn to the tension between the practical and the transcendent, what he calls the “will to spirit”: humanity’s drive to touch the ineffable through ritual, disruption, and dialectic.

Although nontheistic and ignostic, Justin finds deep resonance in late-medieval Sufic and Low-Country Christian mysticism, the Neoplatonism of the 13th century, and the reciprocity between so-called Eastern and Western wisdom traditions. Across all of it runs his central thread: an ongoing dialogue about what it means to thrive and stay human in an increasingly complex, contrived world.