Naturalist psychotherapy. Also, Peterson practices antiquated, pre-modern Jungian psychoanalytical theory that was abandoned decades ago. Another not-so-regular poster made a really comprehensive and insightful post about that topic, but I can't for the life of me remember who it was (I thought maybe @Prokofievian but I think the poster was even more irregular than him). In short, he blends outdated early psychoanalytical theory with theology and naturalist dogma to make an incoherent, reactionary mess.
I just read both of those, and they were terrible. The first used the application of Occam's razor as the basis for criticism. Occam's razor is not a principle of logic and should not be the basis for any evaluation. The second was a philosophical puff piece that attacked statistical models on the basis of the moral evaluations of the obvious implications. This is the modern left people. They have completely abandoned even the attempt at rational evaluation as soon as it hurt their feelings.
Peterson is well within the framework of mainstream psychology which is a pseudo-science at best (although still leagues better then sociology which has become a true cult in many cases). There are many competing theories on the structure of human psychology and there is a significant difference in disagreeing on the philosophical underpinnings of the human psyche and presenting untrue statistics. I have never once seen Peterson present untrue statistics or interpret them in an irrational manner. I have seen his critics attempt to use his sometimes strange philosophical tangents to attack his use of metrics which is utterly dishonest but fully in line with the feminine mindset that his critics tend to display.
The only time I ever see Peterson is when I am seeing some "takedown", or "destruction", and I have left the experience thinking that his critiques are just plain dishonest shitty people every time.
Oct. 19-21: Responding to Peterson: An Intervention In Lieu of a Debate
Peterson pulled out from a debate with Douglas Lain one month before going onto the Rogan podcast to say no Marxists will debate him. Now it's time we had an intervention in lieu of a debate. Update: We found out Peterson's excuse for not debating Lain was that he is not popular enough. So we booked Richard Wolff, one of the most famous Marxist intellectuals, to come debate Peterson /at cost/. Peterson's response? His minimum speaker fee is $50,000. Now Wolff will also be presenting in lieu of a debate.
This conference provides a public* forum for leftist podcasters, journalists, activists, and academics to respond to Jordan B. Peterson as a cultural phenomenon in a mature and critically rigorous manner. Rather than ad hominems and cheap write-offs, we ask questions such as what does his popularity say about the state of the left, what sort of ideological function does he serve, and what kinds of opportunities present themselves for the left to reinvent itself or educate the newly interested. Specifically, because Peterson spreads this fear-mongering tale of a ‘neo-Marxist plot to undermine Western values’, the Marx-informed left has officially been given a pedestal to set the record straight. This conference is an opportunity to clear up common misconceptions for his growing fan base. If you are tired of talking about Peterson, but desire to make a definitive statement that will be heard around the world before closing the case, this is your opportunity.
*A note on “the public” nature of this conference. All panels will be recorded with high grade recording equipment, then shared on a variety of podcasts reaching diverse audiences. Essays and articles submitted will be considered for a publication by Zero Books that will be directed at Peterson’s fan base.
Presenters and panelists are taking Peterson to task on
The Anti-SJW Industry/Intellectual Darkweb phenomenon
'Neo-Marxism', feminism, or postmodernism
Psychoanalysis, myth, religion
Nostalgia and alienation
Socio-biology hype/'race realism'
Background
Jordan Peterson made his way from obscurity to #1 bestseller on Amazon by criticizing the the same reactionary factions on the left Mark Fisher addressed in his notorious Exiting the Vampire Castle piece. He’s struck a nerve, and now he’s been fully integrated into the vanguard of the self-proclaimed intellectual darkweb.
Campus and internet left responses to Peterson have fed the impression that we have no intellectual upper hand and instead must resort to rhetoric and silencing. This is fueled by the fact that Peterson only debates people who make him look good or who share his fundamental capitalist realist assumptions; and by spreading this falsehood that no Marxists will debate him while ignoring honest attempts to engage him on the level of ideas (e.g. Zero Books)(PEL). Per Slavoj Zizek’s recent input on the topic, it’s time the left, in Peterson’s already internet-classic terms, “put its room in order.”
Peterson wouldn’t be drawing this kind of popularity if there wasn’t a kernel of truth to what he is saying, or if it weren’t for the philosophically starved and isolated audience he is talking to. Let’s put things in order by responding, clarifying, correcting, and educating. Let’s discuss strategies for outgrowing this increasingly reactionary moment, or at least ways of exploiting this new attention.
Ok, now that you've gotten through all that text it's time we break the spell: We'll also have fun with this. Yes, the live-broadcast stuff is serious and speaks to his fan base, but off camera? We'll write a collaborative book called "___ Rules for Life" (however many we can come up with over the two days), finish an evening around a fire place with a BBQ, and have a couple of nights out on the town with live music and drink.
This could either be an echo chamber circlejerk shitshow or a raising of the bar for academic discourse and debate. I'm thinking about submitting an abstract myself - and not just for the Boise dimes - though that presents me with a dilemma: I don't know which would be worse, being part of an ignorant anti-Peterson event or not being part of an awesome event discussing Peterson's ideas (assuming, of course, that the fact that I've published an essay in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies criticizing poststructuralism and Marxism in the same terms as Peterson doesn't disqualify me from consideration for this avowedly Leftist gathering of Marxist academics ).
Speaking of Ayn Rand, I'm noticing a theme in academia. In addition to this "Peterson from the Left" conference, there's also going to be a conference on "Rand from the Left": https://aynrandfromtheleft.wordpress.com/about/.
The Peterson one is more respectable in its critical aims and has more productive potential, but either way, it's a good sign that academics on the left - which is to say, academics - are starting to take some tentative steps from out of their echo chambers and are showing signs of a willingness to have these types of conversations.
The IDW crowd does make a big deal about how the academic Left is hopelessly locked away in its own echo chamber and shows no interest in engaging in these important conversations. If this really is an emerging trend, then maybe all of the IDW crowd's academia bashing will have served the purpose it was meant to serve and will have turned the tide...
Well this is an interesting one. I saw this video pop up and I was intrigued by the title, and boy did it deliver! A few selections from it:
“Peterson is a leftist. He’s not on the right at all.”
“you see people like Peterson who have been elevated is because their whole job is to prevent, young men especially, from moving to nationalism. Everything that you see come out of their mouths is anti-nationalist.”
“Peterson is more clever than Shapiro. What Peterson does is that he criticizes things like the EU and the UN… His goals are exactly the same as George Soros… One of the things that he said (George Soros) is that he is non-ideological. Sound familiar? Peterson considers himself Post ideological.”
I got a kick out of this. The crowd I’m around is vehemently opposed to Peterson because he’s an alt righter, right win extremist, etc etc. It was interesting to hear a take on him that puts him firmly on the left. So, is there anything to this guy’s criticism? Are his goals “exactly the same as George Soros’s?” Is he a trojan horse type meant to drive people away from the Right – away from strong national structures and whatnot?
Personally, I’m not too interested in engaging with Peterson at any length. I put him in the category of “academic with an interesting idea which may or may not have merit to it” with his discussion about archetypes, their biological development, and their function in personal psychology and the preservation of the species as the interesting idea. Particularly the biological tracing of the archetypes is intriguing. I am not well versed in Jung, so I just go on the assumption that he’s telling a biological story to extend and flesh out Jungian theory. I may give Maps of Meaning a read one of these days.
I learned a bit about him because of the hysteria around him that suddenly sprung up, and I think his fame far outstrips his earned, through academic accomplishments, position. That being said here we are, and this man none of us would have ever heard of is a wildly popular and incredibly polarizing public figure now. I am not a fan of the guy’s politics but I do believe he is a legitimate academic. I also believe he oftentimes talks about things he is an expert on as a gateway to talking about things he is not an expert on. Even in his non-expert discussions though, I give him credit for being thoughtful and bringing his discussion into unexpected directions.
I did listen to some of his discussions with Sam Harris and I do have a bit of a bone to pick with his notion of Darwinian truth VS Newtonian truth. The mechanism of his Darwinian truth seems like it was taken, to a great degree, from Nietzsche’s Will to Power in the section “Biology of the Drive to Knowledge, Perspectivism.” This section starts off with the statement “Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.” (Aphorism 493) The idea behind this is that there is something we call truth which is, in reality, just an enshrinement of certain general conditions of existence into our sphere of ideas. The value which makes the idea check out is, at its base, “does this help preserve the species?” and not “is this an objective truth that is consistent regardless of its relation to human beings?” Peterson makes the claim that he is an extensive reader of Nietzsche and I have to assume that he knows that Nietzsche tends to invert terms like he does with the notion of truth presented in aphorism 493. For instance, Nietzsche will talk about “the real world” as something opposed to “the apparent world” and that “the real world” is the world of metaphysics, of transcendental creations of human valuation which are imposed on the world around us – a figment of human intellect imposed on what is actually out there – while “the apparent world” is the actual, present, world of becoming out there. The “real” world is unreal, and the “apparent” world is real. When Nietzsche says “truth is a kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live” he isn’t saying “that is truth” – he is saying that what we conceive of as truth is an error.
Peterson’s notion of Darwinian truth, as I understand it, hinges upon whether something is “true enough” to allow for the continued existence of the organism or the species. Feel free to correct of nuance that – I am not a deep nor close reader of Peterson, and his position may be different when taken more completely. Anyway, the notion of truth which he brought to his debate with Sam Harris, his “Darwinian truth” is precisely the type of truth which Nietzsche, in a tongue in cheek manner, calls “truth” but means as a type of error we treat as true while the mechanisms which determines its truth is that of life preservation, not any objective notion of what is objectively true independent of our continued existence. In essence, Peterson comes into a discussion with a scientific realistic and starts talking about “truth” in terms of some contingent biological definition of the term.
The critique of Peterson here is, why call that truth? Or, at the very least, why trot it out in a discussion with a guy who is very much rooted in a scientific realist perspective, like Harris, without making it clear that the type of truth you’re introducing is an unorthodox one, and one subjective to a certain sphere of biological activity? And in particular, why try and oppose it to what he calls a “Newtonian truth” which, as far as I can tell, is some sort of materialist or objective truth. The level of truth each one represents is in totally different spheres of a discussion about truth. Listening to him and Harris play footsies over this was rather amusing as I don’t think that Sam understood that Peterson was importing this unorthodox notion of truth which was seemingly a “truth” defined by the conditions of survival for the organism or the species.
This stems into a slightly more broad criticism of Peterson – that he tends to use terms in unorthodox ways in discussion where the terms are generally used in a fairly conventional way. I know he prefaces any discussion of god/God with how complex the question of God is but, as I’ve listened to him, it has become pretty clear that almost any discussion he has about God is more about some sort of personal highest ideal which guides ones’ activities – which is often not in accordance with what one says one’s highest ideal is – and not actually any sort of divine being. The level of confusion this brings into discussions about particular topics and a general understanding of who he is rather confounding. I can’t help but think he could have approached his discussion of God/god better because most of the time his audience doesn't realize he is not actually talking about a divine being so much as the guiding principle behind ones’ activities.
I believe I've come across a few other instances in which Peterson is bringing in some exotic definition of a term central definition to a discussion in which a fairly conventional meaning is intended, and he definitely could have disclosed this in a better way. So, I guess that would be my broad criticism. Once you get down to what he’s actually talking about it tends to be interesting - but it's not what it seems to be initially, and he doesn't make that particularly clear.
Frankly, it’s nice to see someone with some intellectual acumen get popular like this whether his actual academic accomplishment warrants it or not. Peterson could be a lot worse, and he is an accomplished, credible academic, and he's *way* better than, say, Dawkins in areas which he's not an expert in. Hopefully he gets better at disclosing the oftentimes odd usage he has of conventional terms.
Well this is an interesting one. I saw this video pop up and I was intrigued by the title, and boy did it deliver! A few selections from it:
“Peterson is a leftist. He’s not on the right at all.”
“you see people like Peterson who have been elevated is because their whole job is to prevent, young men especially, from moving to nationalism. Everything that you see come out of their mouths is anti-nationalist.”
“Peterson is more clever than Shapiro. What Peterson does is that he criticizes things like the EU and the UN… His goals are exactly the same as George Soros… One of the things that he said (George Soros) is that he is non-ideological. Sound familiar? Peterson considers himself Post ideological.”
I got a kick out of this. The crowd I’m around is vehemently opposed to Peterson because he’s an alt righter, right win extremist, etc etc. It was interesting to hear a take on him that puts him firmly on the left. So, is there anything to this guy’s criticism? Are his goals “exactly the same as George Soros’s?” Is he a trojan horse type meant to drive people away from the Right – away from strong national structures and whatnot?
Personally, I’m not too interested in engaging with Peterson at any length. I put him in the category of “academic with an interesting idea which may or may not have merit to it” with his discussion about archetypes, their biological development, and their function in personal psychology and the preservation of the species as the interesting idea. Particularly the biological tracing of the archetypes is intriguing. I am not well versed in Jung, so I just go on the assumption that he’s telling a biological story to extend and flesh out Jungian theory. I may give Maps of Meaning a read one of these days.
I learned a bit about him because of the hysteria around him that suddenly sprung up, and I think his fame far outstrips his earned, through academic accomplishments, position. That being said here we are, and this man none of us would have ever heard of is a wildly popular and incredibly polarizing public figure now. I am not a fan of the guy’s politics but I do believe he is a legitimate academic. I also believe he oftentimes talks about things he is an expert on as a gateway to talking about things he is not an expert on. Even in his non-expert discussions though, I give him credit for being thoughtful and bringing his discussion into unexpected directions.
I did listen to some of his discussions with Sam Harris and I do have a bit of a bone to pick with his notion of Darwinian truth VS Newtonian truth. The mechanism of his Darwinian truth seems like it was taken, to a great degree, from Nietzsche’s Will to Power in the section “Biology of the Drive to Knowledge, Perspectivism.” This section starts off with the statement “Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.” (Aphorism 493) The idea behind this is that there is something we call truth which is, in reality, just an enshrinement of certain general conditions of existence into our sphere of ideas. The value which makes the idea check out is, at its base, “does this help preserve the species?” and not “is this an objective truth that is consistent regardless of its relation to human beings?” Peterson makes the claim that he is an extensive reader of Nietzsche and I have to assume that he knows that Nietzsche tends to invert terms like he does with the notion of truth presented in aphorism 493. For instance, Nietzsche will talk about “the real world” as something opposed to “the apparent world” and that “the real world” is the world of metaphysics, of transcendental creations of human valuation which are imposed on the world around us – a figment of human intellect imposed on what is actually out there – while “the apparent world” is the actual, present, world of becoming out there. The “real” world is unreal, and the “apparent” world is real. When Nietzsche says “truth is a kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live” he isn’t saying “that is truth” – he is saying that what we conceive of as truth is an error.
Peterson’s notion of Darwinian truth, as I understand it, hinges upon whether something is “true enough” to allow for the continued existence of the organism or the species. Feel free to correct of nuance that – I am not a deep nor close reader of Peterson, and his position may be different when taken more completely. Anyway, the notion of truth which he brought to his debate with Sam Harris, his “Darwinian truth” is precisely the type of truth which Nietzsche, in a tongue in cheek manner, calls “truth” but means as a type of error we treat as true while the mechanisms which determines its truth is that of life preservation, not any objective notion of what is objectively true independent of our continued existence. In essence, Peterson comes into a discussion with a scientific realistic and starts talking about “truth” in terms of some contingent biological definition of the term.
The critique of Peterson here is, why call that truth? Or, at the very least, why trot it out in a discussion with a guy who is very much rooted in a scientific realist perspective, like Harris, without making it clear that the type of truth you’re introducing is an unorthodox one, and one subjective to a certain sphere of biological activity? And in particular, why try and oppose it to what he calls a “Newtonian truth” which, as far as I can tell, is some sort of materialist or objective truth. The level of truth each one represents is in totally different spheres of a discussion about truth. Listening to him and Harris play footsies over this was rather amusing as I don’t think that Sam understood that Peterson was importing this unorthodox notion of truth which was seemingly a “truth” defined by the conditions of survival for the organism or the species.
This stems into a slightly more broad criticism of Peterson – that he tends to use terms in unorthodox ways in discussion where the terms are generally used in a fairly conventional way. I know he prefaces any discussion of god/God with how complex the question of God is but, as I’ve listened to him, it has become pretty clear that almost any discussion he has about God is more about some sort of personal highest ideal which guides ones’ activities – which is often not in accordance with what one says one’s highest ideal is – and not actually any sort of divine being. The level of confusion this brings into discussions about particular topics and a general understanding of who he is rather confounding. I can’t help but think he could have approached his discussion of God/god better because most of the time his audience doesn't realize he is not actually talking about a divine being so much as the guiding principle behind ones’ activities.
I believe I've come across a few other instances in which Peterson is bringing in some exotic definition of a term central definition to a discussion in which a fairly conventional meaning is intended, and he definitely could have disclosed this in a better way. So, I guess that would be my broad criticism. Once you get down to what he’s actually talking about it tends to be interesting - but it's not what it seems to be initially, and he doesn't make that particularly clear.
Frankly, it’s nice to see someone with some intellectual acumen get popular like this whether his actual academic accomplishment warrants it or not. Peterson could be a lot worse, and he is an accomplished, credible academic, and he's *way* better than, say, Dawkins in areas which he's not an expert in. Hopefully he gets better at disclosing the oftentimes odd usage he has of conventional terms.
This is a critic I can get behind. Maybe the first. I hate the abuse of language from any party. If you can't explain yourself with the colloquial definitions available in a language with more then 250 thousand words, then you probably don't understand it well enough to be talking about it. I take Chomsky's position on language which is that no idea can't be explained with small words. It irks me that the issue that caused Peterson's fame to explode is something he is personally guilty of, the abuse of language for political and rhetorical purposes. There is one truth, objective truth. That is the commonly understood definition of the word and there is no reason to reexamine it unless one is trying to manipulate the individual instead of relaying a message.
This is exactly what post modernists do constantly, attempt to shift language in order to bank on the conceptual associations the public has with certain words. Gender is a perfect example, gender means sex. Attempting to shift the definition of gender is a round about way of attacking the concept of biological sex. But for post modernists who consider their position the only valid one and are interested in instituting their viewpoint at all cost they don't even need to justify it only impose it.
Something that really irritates me about the entire issue is that Peterson's position on post modernism is shared by Chomsky who has himself said that it is a dangerous and insane philosophy and it disturbs him how widespread its become in academia, but nobody says boo about it. Steven Hicks has been attacking post modernism relentlessly for more then a decade at least creating the majority of the foundational arguments that Peterson uses, and again nothing. Dozens of other well known public academics could be named here and for some reason a clinical psychologist becomes the focal point? Its odd to say the least.
I was shooting people in a video game, and some guy was raving about listening to Jordan Peterson and how it changed his life. Now he works out and cleans his room!
Maybe he should have listened to his mommy instead of buying self help books.
This is a critic I can get behind. Maybe the first. I hate the abuse of language from any party. If you can't explain yourself with the colloquial definitions available in a language with more then 250 thousand words, then you probably don't understand it well enough to be talking about it. I take Chomsky's position on language which is that no idea can't be explained with small words. It irks me that the issue that caused Peterson's fame to explode is something he is personally guilty of, the abuse of language for political and rhetorical purposes. There is one truth, objective truth. That is the commonly understood definition of the word and there is no reason to reexamine it unless one is trying to manipulate the individual instead of relaying a message.
This is exactly what post modernists do constantly, attempt to shift language in order to bank on the conceptual associations the public has with certain words. Gender is a perfect example, gender means sex. Attempting to shift the definition of gender is a round about way of attacking the concept of biological sex. But for post modernists who consider their position the only valid one and are interested in instituting their viewpoint at all cost they don't even need to justify it only impose it.
Something that really irritates me about the entire issue is that Peterson's position on post modernism is shared by Chomsky who has himself said that it is a dangerous and insane philosophy and it disturbs him how widespread its become in academia, but nobody says boo about it. Steven Hicks has been attacking post modernism relentlessly for more then a decade at least creating the majority of the foundational arguments that Peterson uses, and again nothing. Dozens of other well known public academics could be named here and for some reason a clinical psychologist becomes the focal point? Its odd to say the least.
Interesting response. I actually hadn't considered that what I've observed Peterson doing is, effectively, re-staging language in a manner very similar to the post moderns which he holds in such distaste. I suppose he is doing that in the two examples I've given, though in the case of truth at least he frames it in terms of Darwinian truth VS Newtonian truth, rather than just dropping the term "truth" unqualified. The issue there was more that it left the two people talking for over an hour trying to figure out that Peterson's notion of truth was not a conventional one.
The issue of Peterson's God notion is a bit more sketchy, since he's constantly talking about it in terms of this guiding performative ideal and not as a divine being and he doesn't make that clear - but countless people are interpreting him as talking about god/God in the divine sense, particularly the Christian. He could stave off this confusion quite easily - though, I suspect it would instantly contest a lot of his support. I do hope that this isn't influencing the way he introduces his god/God idea.
I tend to favour being generous in my assessment of why he comes in to a discussion and uses these unorthodox meanings of terms but doesn't disclose that particularly well. I know how easy it is to be dealing with a particular sense of a term and get that stuck in your head, and then inadvertently import it into a conversation, leaving you and someone else talking about two totally different things. If Peterson has been thinking about this stuff as long as he says he has, he likely has just largely come to treat the more common meanings of the terms as secondary since it isn't what drives his world view. I'm not going to attribute it to nefarious intent so much as an oddity of long term academic discourse.
That being said, interesting point. Hadn't thought about it in terms of Peterson's being a bit willy-nilly with language. Good point about Chomsky too.
I do have a bit of a bone to pick with his notion of Darwinian truth VS Newtonian truth. The mechanism of his Darwinian truth seems like it was taken, to a great degree, from Nietzsche’s Will to Power in the section “Biology of the Drive to Knowledge, Perspectivism.” This section starts off with the statement “Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.” (Aphorism 493) The idea behind this is that there is something we call truth which is, in reality, just an enshrinement of certain general conditions of existence into our sphere of ideas. The value which makes the idea check out is, at its base, “does this help preserve the species?” and not “is this an objective truth that is consistent regardless of its relation to human beings?” Peterson makes the claim that he is an extensive reader of Nietzsche and I have to assume that he knows that Nietzsche tends to invert terms like he does with the notion of truth presented in aphorism 493. For instance, Nietzsche will talk about “the real world” as something opposed to “the apparent world” and that “the real world” is the world of metaphysics, of transcendental creations of human valuation which are imposed on the world around us – a figment of human intellect imposed on what is actually out there – while “the apparent world” is the actual, present, world of becoming out there. The “real” world is unreal, and the “apparent” world is real. When Nietzsche says “truth is a kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live” he isn’t saying “that is truth” – he is saying that what we conceive of as truth is an error.
As far as I can tell, this is spot-on. And I'd add that you can bump this back even further in the history of philosophy from Nietzsche to Kant, as what you're laying out here from Nietzsche's writings is a clumsier version (the clumsiness being Nietzsche's, mind you, not yours) of Kant's distinction between phenomena and noumena - which you could bump back even further to Plato's distinction between the sensible world and the world of Forms. Whoever is doing the talking - Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, etc. - and whatever the terms of the conversation - the sensible world and the world of Forms, phenomena and noumena, appearance and reality, etc. - what's being dealt with is the fundamental worry (IMO most eloquently worked through by Descartes) that there are not only things that we don't know but things that we can't know, i.e. that there is a limit to that which it is possible for us imperfect, finite beings to know.
Of course, this doesn't even begin to attempt to think through the paradox laid out by Wittgenstein in his Preface to the Tractatus to the effect that "in order to be able to draw a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought)," but then it's much easier to parrot Platonic/Kantian/Nietzschean crap than it is to actually work through the incredibly intricate subtleties and nuances of Wittgenstein's ideas and arguments
The critique of Peterson here is, why call that truth? Or, at the very least, why trot it out [...] without making it clear that the type of truth you’re introducing is an unorthodox one
I agree, and I think that he'd be well-served, sort of going off of your "Why call that truth?" question, to strive for greater conceptual clarity and parse such terms as "fact," "knowledge," "truth," "reason," "purpose," etc. I also think that the critique would be better pitched if it were a critique of the distinction that Peterson often tries to make - a false dichotomy as far as I can tell - between facts and values.
And in particular, why try and oppose it to what he calls a “Newtonian truth” which, as far as I can tell, is some sort of materialist or objective truth. The level of truth each one represents is in totally different spheres of a discussion about truth. Listening to him and Harris play footsies over this was rather amusing as I don’t think that Sam understood that Peterson was importing this unorthodox notion of truth which was seemingly a “truth” defined by the conditions of survival for the organism or the species.
I'm literally at this very moment editing a book on Nietzsche (well, technically, not this very moment, since at this very moment I'm procrastinating by posting on Sherdog instead ) and at one point the author cites an incident where, upon being asked a question about truth after having delivered a lecture on Heidegger, the Polish philosopher Krzysztof Michalski looked out the window and said: "The judgment 'it is raining' is true, but who cares?"
I think Michalski's point, which is often a point that Peterson tries to make, is that "hard" materialism of the sort Harris prefers ignores the fact that, given the type of beings that we are, that which is true but which serves no purpose (i.e., that has no reason for being acknowledged, which there is no value in acknowledging), or that which is true but is said for no reason and with no purpose in mind, is in some important sense meaningless (and, given the fact that meaning is the key concept for Peterson, it's no wonder he takes issue with Harris on this point).
To demonstrate this, the first thing that popped into my head is this hilarious little moment from the glorious film Kung Pow
The statement "my finger points" in the absence of a reason for having pointed, or a purpose in so pointing, or a reason for/purpose in acknowledging the pointing, etc., is all but reduced to emptiness despite it being a fact stated truthfully. To Peterson's mind, for some strange reason, this kind of thing represents a philosophical crisis in the realm of facts and values (and can lead, as it did in his first discussion with Harris, to a goofy battle with people staking out sides where there aren't actually delimitable sides), whereas, to my mind, it's merely an indication that facts and values go hand in hand and that sometimes, in some contexts, a given fact may not serve any immediate purpose.
Interesting response. I actually hadn't considered that what I've observed Peterson doing is, effectively, re-staging language in a manner very similar to the post moderns which he holds in such distaste.
This is a slippery slope. I'm reminded here of what sometimes happens in discussions of what is known as ordinary language philosophy (anchored in the work of J.L. Austin) on the one hand and deconstruction (anchored in the work of Jacques Derrida) on the other. Because both Austin and Derrida deal with the minutiae of language, they are both in some sense "doing the same thing," thus ordinary language philosophy and deconstruction are, in some sense, "the same thing"...but it's only one, and it's a very small, sense. Peterson is, in one small sense, "doing the same thing" vis-à-vis language, but the only way that you could actually consider what someone like Peterson is trying to do and what someone like Michel Foucault was trying to do "the same thing" is if you excluded the myriad ways they're fundamentally antithetical.
The issue of Peterson's God notion is a bit more sketchy, since he's constantly talking about it in terms of this guiding performative ideal and not as a divine being and he doesn't make that clear - but countless people are interpreting him as talking about god/God in the divine sense, particularly the Christian. He could stave off this confusion quite easily
For whatever reason(s), for him, this is not easy. In fact, it's incredibly difficult. I don't know where I saw it, but in one of his more recent videos, he likened being asked "Do you believe in God?" in the sense of "Do you believe in an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent deity?" to being asked "What do you do in the bedroom?" To him, it's a very personal and intimate relationship and he's loath to talk about that sense of the question...which, of course, allows space for confusion and equivocation.
Then again, confusion and equivocation are part and parcel of beliefs in nonsense, so there's only so much clarity and coherence that you can reasonably expect on this point
This could either be an echo chamber circlejerk shitshow or a raising of the bar for academic discourse and debate. I'm thinking about submitting an abstract myself - and not just for the Boise dimes - though that presents me with a dilemma: I don't know which would be worse, being part of an ignorant anti-Peterson event or not being part of an awesome event discussing Peterson's ideas (assuming, of course, that the fact that I've published an essay in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies criticizing poststructuralism and Marxism in the same terms as Peterson doesn't disqualify me from consideration for this avowedly Leftist gathering of Marxist academics ).
Speaking of Ayn Rand, I'm noticing a theme in academia. In addition to this "Peterson from the Left" conference, there's also going to be a conference on "Rand from the Left": https://aynrandfromtheleft.wordpress.com/about/.
The Peterson one is more respectable in its critical aims and has more productive potential, but either way, it's a good sign that academics on the left - which is to say, academics - are starting to take some tentative steps from out of their echo chambers and are showing signs of a willingness to have these types of conversations.
The IDW crowd does make a big deal about how the academic Left is hopelessly locked away in its own echo chamber and shows no interest in engaging in these important conversations. If this really is an emerging trend, then maybe all of the IDW crowd's academia bashing will have served the purpose it was meant to serve and will have turned the tide...
I think you're willingness to give the benefit of the doubt is admirable but there is as close to 100 % chance as humanly possible that this is nothing but vitriolic attacks against not only Peterson but Harris, Ben Shapiro, Stephen Pinker, Jon Haidt and anyone and everyone involved in what is called the IDW. You could probably look up Zero Books and Michael Brooks on Youtube and see their videos on the IDW members and see it is toxic resentment all the way. They feel that Dr Peterson has no scholarly or intellectual ability of any kind whatsoever, and rose to be an associate prof at harvard and a tenured prof at a Duke/Michigan level school because his social status led to it being handed to him on a silver platter with no qualificiations. And that Sam Harris is a racial separatist, unscholarly fuckin loser who only has an audience because he has similar social status and panders to white male social misfits. That's the essence of what these people feel about Peterson as well as Harris.
As far as I can tell, this is spot-on. And I'd add that you can bump this back even further in the history of philosophy from Nietzsche to Kant, as what you're laying out here from Nietzsche's writings is a clumsier version (the clumsiness being Nietzsche's, mind you, not yours) of Kant's distinction between phenomena and noumena - which you could bump back even further to Plato's distinction between the sensible world and the world of Forms. Whoever is doing the talking - Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, etc. - and whatever the terms of the conversation - the sensible world and the world of Forms, phenomena and noumena, appearance and reality, etc. - what's being dealt with is the fundamental worry (IMO most eloquently worked through by Descartes) that there are not only things that we don't know but things that we can't know, i.e. that there is a limit to that which it is possible for us imperfect, finite beings to know.
I'm going to jump in here since its a good topic and I am currently reading about this. There are different levels of creativity in the cosmos and this is something that the thinkers you named, with the exception of Nietzsche, failed to realize. To a certain extent humans are a special species, but objects have agency as well. Plato said that only ideas are eternal (Kant and Hegel loved to jump on that bandwagon since its easy to claim and hard to refute) and Whitehead subverted Platos theory by claiming objects are also eternal (both Plato and Whitehead, however believed in God(s)). Descartes was another who remained with a belief in God and he espoused his mind-body dualism, but theres more to being than that (notably the mind-body dualism was replaced with body-brain-culture network of modern neuroscience). Nietzsche and Whitehead (to introduce a new name into the conversation) had much in common (besides the philosophy of becoming). There is attraction and repulsion, and that is an interaction based on feeling. There is also a will to power (domination of the strongest forces over the weaker ones) that is a congruent thought between them:
“every 'center of force' or 'actual entity' expresses a 'perspective' through which it receives and repels potential relations. 'It measures, feels, forms, according to its own force'.” William Connolly channeling both Nietzsche and Whitehead
Nietzsche criticized Newtonianism not because of it being a representative of materialism (it is a false materialism predisposed to a belief in God), but because Newton was an Arian (the religious sect counter to Trinitarianism - not the supposed biological order espoused by Gobineau and the Nazis). Quantum Mechanics (the discipline that destroyed Newton and made science more materialist instead of injected with theological remains) is keen to note entanglements and the process of self-organization of particles over time. Agency is therefore not a quality only humans possess for the assumed will to power (domination, according to Nietzsche), but rocks, trees, animals, bacteria, hurricanes, mist, water, etc all have agency to become something else (instead of being eternal). The key variables to understand reality are entanglement, self-organization, and time.
As far as I can tell, this is spot-on. And I'd add that you can bump this back even further in the history of philosophy from Nietzsche to Kant, as what you're laying out here from Nietzsche's writings is a clumsier version (the clumsiness being Nietzsche's, mind you, not yours) of Kant's distinction between phenomena and noumena - which you could bump back even further to Plato's distinction between the sensible world and the world of Forms. Whoever is doing the talking - Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, etc. - and whatever the terms of the conversation - the sensible world and the world of Forms, phenomena and noumena, appearance and reality, etc. - what's being dealt with is the fundamental worry (IMO most eloquently worked through by Descartes) that there are not only things that we don't know but things that we can't know, i.e. that there is a limit to that which it is possible for us imperfect, finite beings to know.
Now granted, I’m dusting off some rather dusty memory here, but perhaps you can clarify a bit for me.
What you’re describing as Nietzsche’s clumsiness I always took to be by design. I can see a clear progression of positions between the thinkers you’re referencing there, but not equivalence of positions in this case. For Plato, the forms/sensible world relationship is one of pure abstract idea to contingent materiality – sensibly perceived - with the forms operating as a sort of pseudo-divine informant, with the human intellect acting as a mediator between the realms. Of course, the forms are privileged in this informant role.
For Kant – and my understanding of the three is weakest here - the noumenon/phenomenon distinction was in the relationship between something independent of human presence and there merely sensible and, again, contingent. He uses noumena, with things in themselves at the root, to solve the problem of things being mere contingent appearance through and through, and argues that our sensible perception of phenomenon is tied, through intellectual intuition, to the noumenon/thing in itself (I realize they’re not directly synonymous, but they are closely related/partially synonymous for Kant). This gives a transcendental grounding to our perception of the phenomenal world and maintains this metaphysics/physicality binary that Plato is also operating with. So basically, what we see with the first two is a progression within the metaphysical/physical binary, with both being very much interested in maintaining that distinction.
Nietzsche is playing a different game, though one could say that he is doing so within the same arena. Whereas Plato and Kant operate in a binary sense with an attempt to provide mediation between the binary of the metaphysical abstraction and the sensible world, Nietzsche’s long term project – of which Biology of the Drive to Knowledge is a small part – is to strip the metaphysical underpinnings from the binary and leave us operating in the merely sensible, which for him means reducing all of the transcendental categories of the former into the merely sensible. Whereas Kant and Plato both privilege the forms/noumenon as a sort of non-divine-divine informant of the world around us, Nietzsche’s strips them of their privilege as transcendental while maintaining their relationship as informant. So, forms, noumenon, categories, things in themselves – no longer metaphysical and instead based in the sensible.
Where Plato and Kant will both maintain that the truths of the forms/things in themselves are the absolute metaphysical substructure beneath/informing the sensible, Nietzsche strips them down and makes them merely contingent things with sensible origins – hence his opening with “truth is a kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live.” He goes from this to cast them as mere products of a biological drive.
I take you saying that Nietzsche’s clumsiness is in his binary of “appearance and reality” – my apologies if I’m reading you wrong – but I don't think Nietzsche is genuinely operating within that binary, so much as mentioning it as an artifact of metaphysics which he fundamentally denies. He is stripping the binary and saying “appearance is reality” – and as such, he’s departing from the forms/material world, noumenon/phenomenon binary that Plato and Kant are invested in. I can see a progression between the three, but I see a radical departure in Nietzsche – and I don’t take it so much as clumsiness rather than a rejection of a fundamental premise.
Of course, then there’s the “fundamental worry” element you raised. It’s a good framework to tease out a lot of the metaphysical action of Western philosophy. I do think it’s another way in which Nietzsche is going in a notably different direction though. As you say:
“what's being dealt with is the fundamental worry… there are not only things that we don't know but things that we can't know, i.e. that there is a limit to that which it is possible for us imperfect, finite beings to know.”
For Kant and Plato, there is a way in which we are structurally – fundamentally – unable to know the metaphysics. We can’t know their transcendental otherworlds (Nietzsche’s terms) because we’re 3d creatures trying to understand a 4d world, and we’re just not built that way, always engaging in flawed mediations with a greater transcendental reality. For Nietzsche we also can’t know everything, but the not-knowing is fundamentally different since even his infinity is material, sensible. We’re not 3d creatures trying to understand a 4d world – we’re 3d creatures on an endless 3d road, all of which is accessible to us in our native mode of interacting with the world, with a limit that is not transcendental, but quantitative. We can never know the whole road because we’ll die first – but the road is knowable. It’s a spectrum shift, a rejection of the transcendental/metaphysical, and it is intentional.
This of course falls into the debate about Nietzsche as the last metaphysician vs the first non-metaphysician, but that’s a whole other ball of wax. I tend to disagree with Heidegger on that, and I think he’s attributing the breakaway from metaphysics to a re-instantiation of metaphysics. It’s obviously quite messy though.
Of course, this doesn't even begin to attempt to think through the paradox laid out by Wittgenstein in his Preface to the Tractatus to the effect that "in order to be able to draw a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought)," but then it's much easier to parrot Platonic/Kantian/Nietzschean crap than it is to actually work through the incredibly intricate subtleties and nuances of Wittgenstein's ideas and arguments
This is fair. Whether or not I think Nietzsche was the last metaphysician or not, I think post-Nietzschean thought has become more much sophisticated in dealing with the world stripped of the metaphysical/physical binary.
I agree, and I think that he'd be well-served, sort of going off of your "Why call that truth?" question, to strive for greater conceptual clarity and parse such terms as "fact," "knowledge," "truth," "reason," "purpose," etc. I also think that the critique would be better pitched if it were a critique of the distinction that Peterson often tries to make - a false dichotomy as far as I can tell - between facts and values.
I’d have to know the terms in which Peterson is drawing a line between facts and values in order to discuss it. Though, I think you’re getting at that in the next section…
I'm literally at this very moment editing a book on Nietzsche (well, technically, not this very moment, since at this very moment I'm procrastinating by posting on Sherdog instead
) and at one point the author cites an incident where, upon being asked a question about truth after having delivered a lecture on Heidegger, the Polish philosopher Krzysztof Michalski looked out the window and said: "The judgment 'it is raining' is true, but who cares?"
I think Michalski's point, which is often a point that Peterson tries to make, is that "hard" materialism of the sort Harris prefers ignores the fact that, given the type of beings that we are, that which is true but which serves no purpose (i.e., that has no reason for being acknowledged, which there is no value in acknowledging), or that which is true but is said for no reason and with no purpose in mind, is in some important sense meaningless (and, given the fact that meaning is the key concept for Peterson, it's no wonder he takes issue with Harris on this point).
We’re actually on the same page here, I believe. Don’t misunderstand me – in critiquing Peterson’s choice of language in the arena he uses it in. I am not critiquing his idea as having no merit. Actually, I think his Darwinian truth – “is it true enough for us” – speaks to a much more relevant line of inquiry about how people are driven. Harris’s scientific realism leads to a lot of “Wow, fascinating… But who cares?” that only actually grips us at the point where it becomes useful to us - so, in a Darwinian sense, as Peterson poses it. It's still a weird way to put it, but the idea has some explanatory merit.
The irony of a Harris type approach to truth is that it is only something we value because we put it into a long-game framework of what Peterson describes as Darwinian truth – basically saying “The truths Harris reveals might be valuable to us one day, so we’ll carry on a seemingly unimportant path of discovering such truths.” If Harris were to say “It is raining,” as a Newtonian truth, Peterson would say “That’s true, in a Darwinian sense, because it will help me get and umbrella and avoid getting sick.” What Peterson needs to do is do some work to preemptively explain the relationship of truth to value in his notion of Darwinian truth, whereas Harris can just keep on babbling about otherwise irrelevant truths. Harris's notion of truth is fairly self evident even if it is not always of interest to us without further context.
Honestly, I find the whole scientific realism thing and the pursuit of what is perceived as “objective knowledge” to be a bit of a holdover from the metaphysical underpinnings of the West – truth for truth’s sake, an attempt to find the thing in itself as a value unto itself… But where does the valuation actually come from? Oh, that’s right – from contingent biological drives, quirks of particularity, etc. Truth for truth’s sake is a bit of metaphysical nostalgia that is still holed up in our intellectual landscape.
To demonstrate this, the first thing that popped into my head is this hilarious little moment from the glorious film Kung Pow
The statement "my finger points" in the absence of a reason for having pointed, or a purpose in so pointing, or a reason for/purpose in acknowledging the pointing, etc., is all but reduced to emptiness despite it being a fact stated truthfully. To Peterson's mind, for some strange reason, this kind of thing represents a philosophical crisis in the realm of facts and values (and can lead, as it did in his first discussion with Harris, to a goofy battle with people staking out sides where there aren't actually delimitable sides), whereas, to my mind, it's merely an indication that facts and values go hand in hand and that sometimes, in some contexts, a given fact may not serve any immediate purpose.
Hrm… I wonder if I can put this to use somewhere… Neat section.
Anyway, I agree with your thoughts about the relationship between facts and values. That being said, the relationship is just that – a relationship – and not an equivalence. This is where a preamble about something like Darwinian truth would be helpful – to establish it as a system of relationship between truths (meaning this as facts in Peterson's Newtonian sense) and values, rather than just talking about abstract, and ultimately meaningless, truths.
This is a slippery slope. I'm reminded here of what sometimes happens in discussions of what is known as ordinary language philosophy (anchored in the work of J.L. Austin) on the one hand and deconstruction (anchored in the work of Jacques Derrida) on the other. Because both Austin and Derrida deal with the minutiae of language, they are both in some sense "doing the same thing," thus ordinary language philosophy and deconstruction are, in some sense, "the same thing"...but it's only one, and it's a very small, sense. Peterson is, in one small sense, "doing the same thing" vis-à-vis language, but the only way that you could actually consider what someone like Peterson is trying to do and what someone like Michel Foucault was trying to do "the same thing" is if you excluded the myriad ways they're fundamentally antithetical.
It is a slippery slope but it’s a step reasonably taken, I think. I think I need to provide some context. When I say “I actually hadn't considered that what I've observed Peterson doing is, effectively, re-staging language in a manner very similar to the post moderns which he holds in such distaste” I do still acknowledge a significant difference. I think that one could say that Peterson is restaging language here in a manner very similar to the Postmoderns he dislikes so much, but his end is very different. Ironically, Derrida and Peterson both cite Nietzsche as inspirations, and they’re both thinking in the wake of Nietzsche’s stripping away of metaphysical underpinnings, so Peterson and the Frenchies are confronting similar problems. Derrida’s (and “the French intellectuals”) response is to embrace the mantra of “appearance is appearance all the way down” and just keep digging deeper into Nietzsche’s world as becoming, and nuancing out the absolute dynamism of that world. Peterson’s aim, in the post-metaphysical world is quite different, and he’s trying to re-instantiate “truth” on biological grounds - or, bring back the non-divine-divine informant, but through different means. He’s trying to find something to fill in for the forms, the thing in itself, as a font of credible value. His answer seems to be to embrace a contingency that is particular, and in some sense necessary, to humankind and this is where his focus on archetypes and their biological origins comes in. It gives him credible grounds to say “Yes it is appearance all the way down, but we are fundamentally rooted in this iteration of appearances (Nietzschean sense – world of dynamic becoming, contrary to static world of being) and they reliably and consistently structure our existence.” In the absence of a “thing in itself” or world of forms style anchor for reality, he has chosen an anchor from a series of contingencies which are not contingent as they relate to the physical makeup of our being – a sort of truth that is contingently true given a certain set of parameters, and the parameters given are the particularities of our existence. I won't even get into the obvious nihilistic critique of this type of contingent grounding though...
As such, he’s restaging language, yes – but his aim is to find a stopping point, an anchor. Derrida, Foucault, Rancière, Lacan, Latour, Butler, Spivak, and so on – they’ve jumped ship and are working on their swimming technique. There’s no stopping point for them, merely reading the currents in the water.
For whatever reason(s), for him, this is not easy. In fact, it's incredibly difficult. I don't know where I saw it, but in one of his more recent videos, he likened being asked "Do you believe in God?" in the sense of "Do you believe in an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent deity?" to being asked "What do you do in the bedroom?" To him, it's a very personal and intimate relationship and he's loath to talk about that sense of the question...which, of course, allows space for confusion and equivocation.
I think he has to make it easier, if even to give a brief distinction between his notion of “Punk rocks is your god” VS “the divine being in the sky.” He can, and does, openly discuss the former, and he should make it more clear that he has some sort of intensely personal, Kierkegaardian relationship with the latter and won’t get in to that.
Then again, confusion and equivocation are part and parcel of beliefs in nonsense, so there's only so much clarity and coherence that you can reasonably expect on this point
Hah. That’s why I always liked Kierkegaard best out of the Christian philosophers… It only took 1800 years for someone to finally admit “faith begins precisely where rational thinking leaves off” and just run with it.
Just to warn you, I only post in found time. I’ll keep an eye out and get to any responses when I can. Let me know what the book is you’re editing and I’ll give it a look when it comes out – Nietzsche is still a thinker I use quite a bit. Also, I’m not proofing this – please forgive any cut off sentences. I need to get back to work.
Well this is an interesting one. I saw this video pop up and I was intrigued by the title, and boy did it deliver! A few selections from it:
“Peterson is a leftist. He’s not on the right at all.”
“you see people like Peterson who have been elevated is because their whole job is to prevent, young men especially, from moving to nationalism. Everything that you see come out of their mouths is anti-nationalist.”
“Peterson is more clever than Shapiro. What Peterson does is that he criticizes things like the EU and the UN… His goals are exactly the same as George Soros… One of the things that he said (George Soros) is that he is non-ideological. Sound familiar? Peterson considers himself Post ideological.”
I got a kick out of this. The crowd I’m around is vehemently opposed to Peterson because he’s an alt righter, right win extremist, etc etc. It was interesting to hear a take on him that puts him firmly on the left. So, is there anything to this guy’s criticism? Are his goals “exactly the same as George Soros’s?” Is he a trojan horse type meant to drive people away from the Right – away from strong national structures and whatnot?
Personally, I’m not too interested in engaging with Peterson at any length. I put him in the category of “academic with an interesting idea which may or may not have merit to it” with his discussion about archetypes, their biological development, and their function in personal psychology and the preservation of the species as the interesting idea. Particularly the biological tracing of the archetypes is intriguing. I am not well versed in Jung, so I just go on the assumption that he’s telling a biological story to extend and flesh out Jungian theory. I may give Maps of Meaning a read one of these days.
I learned a bit about him because of the hysteria around him that suddenly sprung up, and I think his fame far outstrips his earned, through academic accomplishments, position. That being said here we are, and this man none of us would have ever heard of is a wildly popular and incredibly polarizing public figure now. I am not a fan of the guy’s politics but I do believe he is a legitimate academic. I also believe he oftentimes talks about things he is an expert on as a gateway to talking about things he is not an expert on. Even in his non-expert discussions though, I give him credit for being thoughtful and bringing his discussion into unexpected directions.
I did listen to some of his discussions with Sam Harris and I do have a bit of a bone to pick with his notion of Darwinian truth VS Newtonian truth. The mechanism of his Darwinian truth seems like it was taken, to a great degree, from Nietzsche’s Will to Power in the section “Biology of the Drive to Knowledge, Perspectivism.” This section starts off with the statement “Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.” (Aphorism 493) The idea behind this is that there is something we call truth which is, in reality, just an enshrinement of certain general conditions of existence into our sphere of ideas. The value which makes the idea check out is, at its base, “does this help preserve the species?” and not “is this an objective truth that is consistent regardless of its relation to human beings?” Peterson makes the claim that he is an extensive reader of Nietzsche and I have to assume that he knows that Nietzsche tends to invert terms like he does with the notion of truth presented in aphorism 493. For instance, Nietzsche will talk about “the real world” as something opposed to “the apparent world” and that “the real world” is the world of metaphysics, of transcendental creations of human valuation which are imposed on the world around us – a figment of human intellect imposed on what is actually out there – while “the apparent world” is the actual, present, world of becoming out there. The “real” world is unreal, and the “apparent” world is real. When Nietzsche says “truth is a kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live” he isn’t saying “that is truth” – he is saying that what we conceive of as truth is an error.
Peterson’s notion of Darwinian truth, as I understand it, hinges upon whether something is “true enough” to allow for the continued existence of the organism or the species. Feel free to correct of nuance that – I am not a deep nor close reader of Peterson, and his position may be different when taken more completely. Anyway, the notion of truth which he brought to his debate with Sam Harris, his “Darwinian truth” is precisely the type of truth which Nietzsche, in a tongue in cheek manner, calls “truth” but means as a type of error we treat as true while the mechanisms which determines its truth is that of life preservation, not any objective notion of what is objectively true independent of our continued existence. In essence, Peterson comes into a discussion with a scientific realistic and starts talking about “truth” in terms of some contingent biological definition of the term.
The critique of Peterson here is, why call that truth? Or, at the very least, why trot it out in a discussion with a guy who is very much rooted in a scientific realist perspective, like Harris, without making it clear that the type of truth you’re introducing is an unorthodox one, and one subjective to a certain sphere of biological activity? And in particular, why try and oppose it to what he calls a “Newtonian truth” which, as far as I can tell, is some sort of materialist or objective truth. The level of truth each one represents is in totally different spheres of a discussion about truth. Listening to him and Harris play footsies over this was rather amusing as I don’t think that Sam understood that Peterson was importing this unorthodox notion of truth which was seemingly a “truth” defined by the conditions of survival for the organism or the species.
This stems into a slightly more broad criticism of Peterson – that he tends to use terms in unorthodox ways in discussion where the terms are generally used in a fairly conventional way. I know he prefaces any discussion of god/God with how complex the question of God is but, as I’ve listened to him, it has become pretty clear that almost any discussion he has about God is more about some sort of personal highest ideal which guides ones’ activities – which is often not in accordance with what one says one’s highest ideal is – and not actually any sort of divine being. The level of confusion this brings into discussions about particular topics and a general understanding of who he is rather confounding. I can’t help but think he could have approached his discussion of God/god better because most of the time his audience doesn't realize he is not actually talking about a divine being so much as the guiding principle behind ones’ activities.
I believe I've come across a few other instances in which Peterson is bringing in some exotic definition of a term central definition to a discussion in which a fairly conventional meaning is intended, and he definitely could have disclosed this in a better way. So, I guess that would be my broad criticism. Once you get down to what he’s actually talking about it tends to be interesting - but it's not what it seems to be initially, and he doesn't make that particularly clear.
Frankly, it’s nice to see someone with some intellectual acumen get popular like this whether his actual academic accomplishment warrants it or not. Peterson could be a lot worse, and he is an accomplished, credible academic, and he's *way* better than, say, Dawkins in areas which he's not an expert in. Hopefully he gets better at disclosing the oftentimes odd usage he has of conventional terms.
"I also believe he oftentimes talks about things he is an expert on as a gateway to talking about things he is not an expert on."
"This stems into a slightly more broad criticism of Peterson – that he tends to use terms in unorthodox ways in discussion where the terms are generally used in a fairly conventional way. I know he prefaces any discussion of god/God with how complex the question of God is but, as I’ve listened to him, it has become pretty clear that almost any discussion he has about God is more about some sort of personal highest ideal which guides ones’ activities – which is often not in accordance with what one says one’s highest ideal is – and not actually any sort of divine being. The level of confusion this brings into discussions about particular topics and a general understanding of who he is rather confounding. I can’t help but think he could have approached his discussion of God/god better because most of the time his audience doesn't realize he is not actually talking about a divine being so much as the guiding principle behind ones’ activities."
First I think you did a great job with your whole post. I see the same things as I quoted from you in italics but I take a slightly different and more negative tac to it on Peterson.
It is probably OK for Peterson to be doing what he is doing and having the opinions he has BUT I think it is downright dishonest the way he segues from areas of expertise into areas where he is just offering opinion without qualifying that.
I make my living teaching contemplative prayer from the Christian tradition and have given many talks classes etc over the years. I have found it to be very important when teaching that tradition to make certain people know when I am coming straight from the tradition and when I am offering my own insights and perspectives on that tradition. I feel it is a matter of integrity and honesty to do so and I have become more careful over time to ensure I am doing that. I dont think Peterson takes much care at all in this way and feel he is smart enough to notice that so I have to think it is intentional. I dont like this because it is a form of lying.
The way in which he links the Christian tradition seemingly inextricably with HIS politics, cultural ideals, and psychology is all fine IF he were to make certain that people knew when he was entering into opinion territory and not expertise territory.
The second comment on your post is around how vague he is being on the subject of God. Here I do not assign any perceived motives to it but just observe the same thing. In one of his podcasts he speaks of having a pretty intense mystical experience and I feel that the language he used was quite clear that he in fact DOES believe in some kind of objectively real power "out there". In another video he even talked about the possibility of the resurrection of Jesus as being what happens to an individual who is aligned to this highest good and truth in extreme ways. That is quite a distance from God just being an ideal.
Not sure why he is so vague though. It could be just to avoid people being able to form effective arguments against his which are too vague to define (this seems to be part of it) and then also because he is approaching this whole subject from a realists perspective in his relationship with the public at large and that is also a useful way to come at it. I think he believes in a higher power or reality but wants to make good solid cases for why this belief is not just stupidity and gullibility.
I think he does a pretty damn good job at this. In fact if you read the comment section under some of his videos there will be more than a few from former atheists who have changed camps due to Peterson's lectures. I think that is a really good thing personally as I like Peterson have found religious tradition to be filled with wisdom and power that is life changing but have not heard many who can explain to an atheist why that is. This is a good thing.
For all you atheists out there. I am not saying you will one day come to the light. I dont even care what you do and the atheist movement has helped religion in my opinion by calling out a ton of bullshit in religious traditions. I am just glad Peterson is shedding light on the deep well of wisdom contained in religious tradition although I wish he were doing it a bit more honestly.
I'm shutting it down for the night, then tomorrow I need to finish editing that damn book, but hopefully I'll be able to respond to your posts this weekend. However long it takes, though, I'll definitely be back to respond to your posts, to @Pupi's post, and probably also to @franklinstower's post if for no other reason just to make this thread more atheistically awesome, which I know he'll appreciate...
Well this is an interesting one. I saw this video pop up and I was intrigued by the title, and boy did it deliver! A few selections from it:
“Peterson is a leftist. He’s not on the right at all.”
“you see people like Peterson who have been elevated is because their whole job is to prevent, young men especially, from moving to nationalism. Everything that you see come out of their mouths is anti-nationalist.”
“Peterson is more clever than Shapiro. What Peterson does is that he criticizes things like the EU and the UN… His goals are exactly the same as George Soros… One of the things that he said (George Soros) is that he is non-ideological. Sound familiar? Peterson considers himself Post ideological.”
I got a kick out of this. The crowd I’m around is vehemently opposed to Peterson because he’s an alt righter, right win extremist, etc etc. It was interesting to hear a take on him that puts him firmly on the left. So, is there anything to this guy’s criticism? Are his goals “exactly the same as George Soros’s?” Is he a trojan horse type meant to drive people away from the Right – away from strong national structures and whatnot?
Personally, I’m not too interested in engaging with Peterson at any length. I put him in the category of “academic with an interesting idea which may or may not have merit to it” with his discussion about archetypes, their biological development, and their function in personal psychology and the preservation of the species as the interesting idea. Particularly the biological tracing of the archetypes is intriguing. I am not well versed in Jung, so I just go on the assumption that he’s telling a biological story to extend and flesh out Jungian theory. I may give Maps of Meaning a read one of these days.
I learned a bit about him because of the hysteria around him that suddenly sprung up, and I think his fame far outstrips his earned, through academic accomplishments, position. That being said here we are, and this man none of us would have ever heard of is a wildly popular and incredibly polarizing public figure now. I am not a fan of the guy’s politics but I do believe he is a legitimate academic. I also believe he oftentimes talks about things he is an expert on as a gateway to talking about things he is not an expert on. Even in his non-expert discussions though, I give him credit for being thoughtful and bringing his discussion into unexpected directions.
I did listen to some of his discussions with Sam Harris and I do have a bit of a bone to pick with his notion of Darwinian truth VS Newtonian truth. The mechanism of his Darwinian truth seems like it was taken, to a great degree, from Nietzsche’s Will to Power in the section “Biology of the Drive to Knowledge, Perspectivism.” This section starts off with the statement “Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.” (Aphorism 493) The idea behind this is that there is something we call truth which is, in reality, just an enshrinement of certain general conditions of existence into our sphere of ideas. The value which makes the idea check out is, at its base, “does this help preserve the species?” and not “is this an objective truth that is consistent regardless of its relation to human beings?” Peterson makes the claim that he is an extensive reader of Nietzsche and I have to assume that he knows that Nietzsche tends to invert terms like he does with the notion of truth presented in aphorism 493. For instance, Nietzsche will talk about “the real world” as something opposed to “the apparent world” and that “the real world” is the world of metaphysics, of transcendental creations of human valuation which are imposed on the world around us – a figment of human intellect imposed on what is actually out there – while “the apparent world” is the actual, present, world of becoming out there. The “real” world is unreal, and the “apparent” world is real. When Nietzsche says “truth is a kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live” he isn’t saying “that is truth” – he is saying that what we conceive of as truth is an error.
Peterson’s notion of Darwinian truth, as I understand it, hinges upon whether something is “true enough” to allow for the continued existence of the organism or the species. Feel free to correct of nuance that – I am not a deep nor close reader of Peterson, and his position may be different when taken more completely. Anyway, the notion of truth which he brought to his debate with Sam Harris, his “Darwinian truth” is precisely the type of truth which Nietzsche, in a tongue in cheek manner, calls “truth” but means as a type of error we treat as true while the mechanisms which determines its truth is that of life preservation, not any objective notion of what is objectively true independent of our continued existence. In essence, Peterson comes into a discussion with a scientific realistic and starts talking about “truth” in terms of some contingent biological definition of the term.
The critique of Peterson here is, why call that truth? Or, at the very least, why trot it out in a discussion with a guy who is very much rooted in a scientific realist perspective, like Harris, without making it clear that the type of truth you’re introducing is an unorthodox one, and one subjective to a certain sphere of biological activity? And in particular, why try and oppose it to what he calls a “Newtonian truth” which, as far as I can tell, is some sort of materialist or objective truth. The level of truth each one represents is in totally different spheres of a discussion about truth. Listening to him and Harris play footsies over this was rather amusing as I don’t think that Sam understood that Peterson was importing this unorthodox notion of truth which was seemingly a “truth” defined by the conditions of survival for the organism or the species.
This stems into a slightly more broad criticism of Peterson – that he tends to use terms in unorthodox ways in discussion where the terms are generally used in a fairly conventional way. I know he prefaces any discussion of god/God with how complex the question of God is but, as I’ve listened to him, it has become pretty clear that almost any discussion he has about God is more about some sort of personal highest ideal which guides ones’ activities – which is often not in accordance with what one says one’s highest ideal is – and not actually any sort of divine being. The level of confusion this brings into discussions about particular topics and a general understanding of who he is rather confounding. I can’t help but think he could have approached his discussion of God/god better because most of the time his audience doesn't realize he is not actually talking about a divine being so much as the guiding principle behind ones’ activities.
I believe I've come across a few other instances in which Peterson is bringing in some exotic definition of a term central definition to a discussion in which a fairly conventional meaning is intended, and he definitely could have disclosed this in a better way. So, I guess that would be my broad criticism. Once you get down to what he’s actually talking about it tends to be interesting - but it's not what it seems to be initially, and he doesn't make that particularly clear.
Frankly, it’s nice to see someone with some intellectual acumen get popular like this whether his actual academic accomplishment warrants it or not. Peterson could be a lot worse, and he is an accomplished, credible academic, and he's *way* better than, say, Dawkins in areas which he's not an expert in. Hopefully he gets better at disclosing the oftentimes odd usage he has of conventional terms.
Good and interesting writeup. As a liberal who agrees with a lot of what Peterson says (and also is totally against other things he says): I will say that he's not alt right at all, as some liberals think. I can't even label him as part of the right. In fact, in one lecture he talks about how stupid it is for white people to be proud of being white (or anyone to be proud of their race).
As far as I can tell, this is spot-on. And I'd add that you can bump this back even further in the history of philosophy from Nietzsche to Kant, as what you're laying out here from Nietzsche's writings is a clumsier version (the clumsiness being Nietzsche's, mind you, not yours) of Kant's distinction between phenomena and noumena - which you could bump back even further to Plato's distinction between the sensible world and the world of Forms. Whoever is doing the talking - Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, etc. - and whatever the terms of the conversation - the sensible world and the world of Forms, phenomena and noumena, appearance and reality, etc. - what's being dealt with is the fundamental worry (IMO most eloquently worked through by Descartes) that there are not only things that we don't know but things that we can't know, i.e. that there is a limit to that which it is possible for us imperfect, finite beings to know.
Of course, this doesn't even begin to attempt to think through the paradox laid out by Wittgenstein in his Preface to the Tractatus to the effect that "in order to be able to draw a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought)," but then it's much easier to parrot Platonic/Kantian/Nietzschean crap than it is to actually work through the incredibly intricate subtleties and nuances of Wittgenstein's ideas and arguments
I agree, and I think that he'd be well-served, sort of going off of your "Why call that truth?" question, to strive for greater conceptual clarity and parse such terms as "fact," "knowledge," "truth," "reason," "purpose," etc. I also think that the critique would be better pitched if it were a critique of the distinction that Peterson often tries to make - a false dichotomy as far as I can tell - between facts and values.
I'm literally at this very moment editing a book on Nietzsche (well, technically, not this very moment, since at this very moment I'm procrastinating by posting on Sherdog instead ) and at one point the author cites an incident where, upon being asked a question about truth after having delivered a lecture on Heidegger, the Polish philosopher Krzysztof Michalski looked out the window and said: "The judgment 'it is raining' is true, but who cares?"
I think Michalski's point, which is often a point that Peterson tries to make, is that "hard" materialism of the sort Harris prefers ignores the fact that, given the type of beings that we are, that which is true but which serves no purpose (i.e., that has no reason for being acknowledged, which there is no value in acknowledging), or that which is true but is said for no reason and with no purpose in mind, is in some important sense meaningless (and, given the fact that meaning is the key concept for Peterson, it's no wonder he takes issue with Harris on this point).
To demonstrate this, the first thing that popped into my head is this hilarious little moment from the glorious film Kung Pow
The statement "my finger points" in the absence of a reason for having pointed, or a purpose in so pointing, or a reason for/purpose in acknowledging the pointing, etc., is all but reduced to emptiness despite it being a fact stated truthfully. To Peterson's mind, for some strange reason, this kind of thing represents a philosophical crisis in the realm of facts and values (and can lead, as it did in his first discussion with Harris, to a goofy battle with people staking out sides where there aren't actually delimitable sides), whereas, to my mind, it's merely an indication that facts and values go hand in hand and that sometimes, in some contexts, a given fact may not serve any immediate purpose.
This is a slippery slope. I'm reminded here of what sometimes happens in discussions of what is known as ordinary language philosophy (anchored in the work of J.L. Austin) on the one hand and deconstruction (anchored in the work of Jacques Derrida) on the other. Because both Austin and Derrida deal with the minutiae of language, they are both in some sense "doing the same thing," thus ordinary language philosophy and deconstruction are, in some sense, "the same thing"...but it's only one, and it's a very small, sense. Peterson is, in one small sense, "doing the same thing" vis-à-vis language, but the only way that you could actually consider what someone like Peterson is trying to do and what someone like Michel Foucault was trying to do "the same thing" is if you excluded the myriad ways they're fundamentally antithetical.
For whatever reason(s), for him, this is not easy. In fact, it's incredibly difficult. I don't know where I saw it, but in one of his more recent videos, he likened being asked "Do you believe in God?" in the sense of "Do you believe in an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent deity?" to being asked "What do you do in the bedroom?" To him, it's a very personal and intimate relationship and he's loath to talk about that sense of the question...which, of course, allows space for confusion and equivocation.
Then again, confusion and equivocation are part and parcel of beliefs in nonsense, so there's only so much clarity and coherence that you can reasonably expect on this point
Right, but the variability should clue you in that environment is crucial whether for IQ or height, especially during formative developmental years.
Genetically South Korean and North Koreas couldn't have diverged too much, yet we see the average height in SK rise drastically with a change in environment (or culture), part of which is quality nutrition and less stress on the mother for example.
That is not to say that if you take a 60 IQ Somalian and throw him in Singapore as a child, he'll develop into a 110 IQ person. But generationally that will be the case if the culture is conducive to such a development (as in Singapore's educational system).
Right, but the variability should clue you in that environment is crucial whether for IQ or height, especially during formative developmental years.
Genetically South Korean and North Koreas couldn't have diverged too much, yet we see the average height in SK rise drastically with a change in environment (or culture), part of which is quality nutrition and less stress on the mother for example.
That is not to say that if you take a 60 IQ Somalian and throw him in Singapore as a child, he'll develop into a 110 IQ person. But generationally that will be the case if the culture is conducive to such a development (as in Singapore's educational system).
You are speculating (don't take this the wrong way -- I generally like your posts). Nevertheless, the research on heritability of IQ is extensive and sound. It controls for confounds like nutrition and other factors that do influence IQ. There are separate studies on nutrition and IQ that control for heritability. The end result is that heritability is between 0.7 and 0.8 in US adults.
Incidentally, height has a heritability of about 0.8. Probably slightly higher than IQ.
You are speculating (don't take this the wrong way -- I generally like your posts). Nevertheless, the research on heritability of IQ is extensive and sound. It controls for confounds like nutrition and other factors that do influence IQ. There are separate studies on nutrition and IQ that control for heritability. The end result is that heritability is between 0.7 and 0.8 in US adults.
Incidentally, height has a heritability of about 0.8. Probably slightly higher than IQ.
Wouldn't you say it has some merit seeing as since the Enlightenment entered the Western culture, the average IQ has risen (along with better methods/timing to improve it), just as since South Koreans got the environment with better nutrition and less stress (just as an example) their avg height also started increasing as opposed to their genetically very similar neighbors?
It seems like the genetic constraint itself is malleable enough through generational alteration of genetic expression to yield increasingly better results.
Pretty good points raised in this video about the absurdity of his views RE redistributive politics.
He talked himself into a corner on Rogan's podcast while he was whining about that NYT article that took him to task for being sympathetic to the incel "community."
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