What Sam Harris Was Missing (re: Jordan Peterson and "What is True?")
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- Опубликовано: 29 янв 2017
- Full text available at: blog.paulmckeever.ca/uncategor...
This is a recording of Paul McKeever reading his January 30, 2017 response to the January 21, 2017 conversation between neuroscientist Sam Harris and clinical psychologist and University of Toronto professor Jordan B. Peterson. McKeever asserts that the conversation between Harris and Peterson bogged down on a discussion of the nature of truth largely because Harris was unaware of a number of important philosophical underpinnings of the pragmatist theory of truth to which Peterson subscribes.
NOTE: In the event of a difference between McKeever's recording and what he wrote on his blog, the written version is the one that should be relied upon.
The conversation between Harris and Peterson is available on Sam Harris' youtube channel ("Waking up with Sam Harris) here: • Video (Podcast #62, titled: "What is True?".
Pitty this isn't on the evening news. Imagine our society where everyone cared about this.
John Boy , HAHA that made me lol way too much. But yes, imagine such a society...
+John Boy
I'm not sure I can think of a society that could be much worse.
LOL
Society doesn't need to think more about this because we already have a well-accepted definition for "truth" and a well-accepted definition for "moral". Peterson isn't actually introducing anything new at all, he's just insisting that we water down the definition of truth to the point of meaningless by marrying it with morality. This doesn't benefit anyone.
I love philosophy. I'm very interested in exploring morality. And I think it's important to take moral questions into account, and not just consider facts. But humanity can and does all of this without needing to redefine words and pretend complementary concepts are actually the exact same thing.
god no ty.
Unless I'm missing something, you don't even need to consider sensualist claim to understand Peterson's point. In fact, I'm actually surprised that Harris had problem grasping it. The "true-enough" concept is deeply embedded in scientific method itself, as science is explicitly designed to be adjustable in case of incoming observations contradicting currently adopted model.
but that doesnt factor in why peterson felt it necessary to conflate the idea of truth with morality.
I don't think "conflating" is the right term here. Peterson's concept of moral truth is not something new (in fact, it's older than scientific concept of truth). Thus, he makes a point that one can choose which one to call truth (without additional descriptors) by default more or less arbitrarily (as long as both stay within language, which they obviously do - you can still append "moral" if you choose scientific truth to be default, or vice versa), and then makes a value judgement that one *should* pick moral truth by default.
Really, this is a terminological argument (which of those truths does the word "truth" refer to by default), nested within value argument (what is a preferable choice for "default" truth, based on which truth is hierarchically more important, if any). Which is a shame, because both of them are smart enough to see that, settle terminology for the discussion and move on, but somehow they didn't.
NB: I apologize if argument seems to be pulled out of thin air: I'm at disadvantage of knowing Peterson's worldview relatively well after watching a ton of his lectures, and thus cannot properly differentiate between what's derivable from this particular talk vs. what I know he believes otherwise.
Essentially they had a 2 hour discussion about wether or not something can be true without a moral attachment or evolutionary perspective to it. For instance it can be true that I have 100 fingerprint lines on my thumbs, but according to Petersons theory this wouldnt be necessarily true because there is no evolutionary advantage to it. I feel like he was set on the idea that morals and truth are mutually exclusive by way of divine intervention. Sam really should have moved on, because trying get Peterson to come to terms with his idea of the truth is pretty much like an Atheist trying to talk a christian to stop believing in god. Chances are neither side is going to budge.
The thing is, though: Peterson understands concept of scientific truth perfectly fine. He's an academic, and a decent one at that (e.g. he's the first non-STEM person I heard speaking about statistics who made sense in the process). His argument is more about juxtaposition of conceptual (scientific, roughly) and procedural (moral, roughly) truth, and how, *if* they are put into contradiction latter should take precedence, because in the end, science is a (very sophisticated) tool that a hairless monkey uses to explore world around it (claiming more than that is a leap of faith, actually), and thus if the monkey dies as a direct result of that exploratory process, it was a wrong tool, or at least it was applied incorrectly (unless dying was monkey's end goal, which is doubtful).
+Dmitriy Korolevich Well said. I totally agree with your condensed explanation on what the two of them were trying to convey.
I personally agree with Peterson. At the start of the conversation I would have agreed with Sam, but after considering what Peterson was actually saying, I believe his more nuanced approach to truth has more historic validity.
I don't think that our concept of truth has any validity outside of the human experience, therefore that which propels humanity in a positive direction can possibly be more true than that which appears scientifically true, but causes humanity to suffer.
Peterson explained it very well with his Hydrogen bomb example.
Harris has a correspondence theory of truth. This is out of date by quite a few decades. Peterson has a pragmatic, quasi-Nietzschean theory of truth. This muddies the waters Or at least it did, until I recalled my epistemology. A coherence theory is susceptible to skepticicism.. However, it is far closer to the current state of epistemology and philosophy of science.
Absolutely correct.
PaulMcKeever Thanks. Except for my misspelling of "skepticism"
Harris often talks about "truth-tracking". I believe this is a reference to Robert Nozick's work, takes care of counterfactuals.
The coherence theory raises the problem of all our truth-claims cohering yet, if one is a metaphysical realist (I *think* Harris is, but it's hard to say), then there may be a gap between knowledge and "what there is" (ontology)
I wrote on this some time ago, following the death of philosopher Hilary Putnam. The semantic refutation of skepticism.
I admire both Harris & Peterson. Having read your analysis, it seems that you think a "rematch" may be worthwhile.
Both would need to clarify their positions and, perhaps, concede a point or two.
Very nice work. I'll be subbing and reading your blog.
Thank you.
P.S Harris constantly misuses the notion of "language games", following Wittgenstein.
This term is *not* a pejorative. Or perhaps I am missing something?
This was brilliant, thanks for your time & effort.
My pleasure. Thanks.
AndyDon here here, very illuminating. Thanks for helping me understand the whole issue.
+Elfenignis
Crazy.....no. But definitely seeking justifications, in the form of philosophical confuddlery, for his preconceptions and chosen beliefs.
+Elfenignis By 'all' you mean you. Even Paul doesn't seem to say that at all. For my part, I do not know but I am interested to understand more. It is a difficult argument that Peterson is making but, as he repeatedly stated, it is not incoherent. He had the intellectual flexibility to admit that Sam's is not incoherent either and was trying to have a discussion on their underlying assumptions. It was Sam that was lacking the humility to explore further. You can observe this tendency of his in the past. Only you would have to first resist the tendency as it exists in your own mind. Good luck :)
Elfenignis I apologise that I can not go into detail as the RUclips comment section is atrocious for debate. I would offer my assessment that you haven't examined you assumptions in sufficient detail and you have not studied the many videos of Peterson on RUclips. He might be wrong but he understands emotion, perception etc. To a really advanced level. I can say that with certainty and invite you to check for yourself. Also his understanding of the concept of 'belief' is similarly advanced so "believing in the fairy tale of religion" literally does not seem plausible to me. Faced with such an intelligent person I start by assuming that I don't understand in order to allow myself to change. Time will show.
From the perspective of this allegory, I think Peterson was on to something:
In Genesis, God tells Adam and Eve that if they eat of the fruit "in the day thereof thou shalt surely die". The devil then tempts eve telling her that "you will not surely die". Which was true? After partaking of the fruit, Adam and Eve did not die but lived on for just under 1000 years. It seems that God was not truthful. However, in 2 Peter we learn that man perceives time differently than God and a day to God is a thousand years to man. From this perspective, Adam and Eve literally died in the day they partook of the fruit and the devil was a liar. In a micro viewpoint the devil spoke "truth" but in the macro, expanded viewpoint the Devils truth was a lie.
Thank you. I've been boggling my mind over their conversation with my own interpretations and have heard a few reviews but your critique has really helped me to more fully understand the fundamental problem with the conversational conflict between Peterson and Harris. Hopefully they both hear this and the next conversation is more productive. Cheers.
I like what Robert Anton Wilson refers to in "Prometheus Rising": "Is modeled as." We, as humans, make maps and models to make sense of Our experience. Time will tell how right We are.
In a poll conducted in 1999 of professional philosophers working in US universities concerning which philosophical work was the most important of the twentieth century, Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations came top followed by Heidegger’s Being and Time.
I suggest the reader survey the two quotes below from the two publications and then evaluate whether Harris or Peterson has the best grasp of the significance of Wittgenstein’s and Heidegger’s remarks for grounding truth. Better still, read Lee Braver’s recent book (see below) to get a more extended view of what might constitute grounds for truth.
At the foundation/ground of well-grounded belief lies belief that is not grounded. (Wittgenstein)
Insofar as being essentially comes to be as ground/reason, it has no ground/reason. However this is not because it founds itself, but because every foundation - even and especially self-founded ones - remain inappropriate to being as ground/reason…… Being qua being remains ground-less ….. As what is to be thought. It becomes, from out of its truth, what gives a measure. The manner in which thinking thinks must conform to this measure.
Being ‘is’ in essence: ground/reason. Therefore being can never first have a ground/reason which could supposedly ground it….. Being ‘is’ the abyss in the sense of such a remaining-apart of reason from being. To the extent that being as such grounds, it remains groundless. (Heidegger)
Cited in BRAVER, L. (2014) Groundless Grounds: A Study of Wittgenstein and Heidegger, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.
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"The manner in which thinking thinks must confirm to this measure" that is a Phenomenological subject-object dynamic. This is unity and distinction is intrinsic to being.
This whole exercise is pointless until you have established that Sam and Jordan are actually talking about the same concept (and only disagreeing about the definition). ... or they are in fact talking about two very different concepts and just emphasizing the importance of them (and which should have the word "true" reverserved") differently.
More specifically:
The word "true" does not have a single meaning.
When I speak of whether a claim about the real world is "true" - like "2+2=4" or "Hydrogen has 1 proton", I'm talking about whether or not the claim is a factual description of nature/the real world.
However, I can also use the word "truth" as a singular higher entity for which to strive.. (and I can be "true" to my wife).
If I say I've gone searching for "the truth", I'm not using the concept as above. I'm talking about some (postulated) higher general state which I could aim to achieve understanding of.
That's fundamentally different. I'm not sure whether Jordan actually thinks in the terms of the latter concept - but if he does, I would say he derailed the discussion by not making that clear early on.
Feels like you are absolutely right.
Harris: too much believe into the reach of science
Peterson: using definition 2 of the word truth (THE Truth (tm)) and define it more as a religious thing about lifestyle guidelines
Not happy about both.
BarefootSamuraiX
Well ... as I said, - *IF* I'm right, then I would expect the person best in position to sort of the misunderstanding would have been Jordan Peterson, since I cannot really see how Harris should have guessed this was the case. ... but I don't feel like Jordan did attempt to clarify that. IF I'm right Jordan just let the misunderstanding play out.
Vinay N.K
I guess you totally missed the point of my post.
I agree with you that Jordan Petersons idea of evaluating the truth value of scientific claims is useless - if that was actually what he meant.
Vinay N.K
And I agree ...
But we really won't find out why JBP insists on this nonsense before the next episode.
Vinay N.K
Ain't we all...
Is it not possible that both truths can coexist?
Dirk DigDuggler Sam's truth is a sub set of Peterson's.
John Boy I'll have to take your word for that until I've done a lot more thinking
John Boy no its not
John Boy
This guy gets it. Both truths can coexist, but as Harris is well aware, they will lead to very different viewpoints as they are applied.
Which is probably Peterson's point and why he confounds the conversation.
I see this is your first video in years, are you going to upload more? I would look forward to that.
Could someone point out the reading from which Peterson gets his interpretation of truth articulated by Nietzsche?
In Petersons mind.
Nihilism leads to Communism leads to Gulags (= Hell).
Beppe , yes and the commies and cultural marxists are alive and well and working on the deconstruction of society as we know it, ergo where jordan peterson's URGENCY to revive a discussion about truth/morality comes from.
Well, maybe not communism (since it is only one way to express nihilism) but to Hell yes. So far we see this historical playout every time
Nilism does not necessarily lead to communism any more than it leads ti fascism or capitalism. Dogmatism leads to nihilism. Dogmaticism leads to hell.
cant people just expect this from peterson? he is religious, so his world view of facts and what is true is different from someone who doesnt believe in nonsense. why does this shit require so much discussion?
Frank Castle
You don't have to be religious to accept JBP's theory of truth. In fact, it is possible that his theory of truth gave him a religious bias and not vice versa.
If you think this is some minor nitpicking discussion, then you haven't fully understood JBP's position. While I still favor something closer to a correspondence theory, I could not find any logical flaw with JBP's position.
In fact, many of the people criticizing his position are failing to even understand Paul McKeever's terrific explication of the discussion.
Petersen does not merely assume that Harris' truth is a subset of Petersen's version, but has extremely good reasons for doing so.
Do not assume, as I did early, that this merely a semantic squabble.
Tracchofyre
And you seem to have missed key parts of video. You're not wrong, but you have failed to grasp the different assumptions JBP is making.
You believe that there is really a "there out there". According to McKeever, this is not what JBP believes. As a result he has a vastly different metaphysics.
If you start with different assumptions, you can get vastly different results. Resting on the laurels of predictability does not justify your own metaphysics.
From wikipedia,
"Either the defender of the correspondence theory of truth offers some accompanying theory of the world, or he or she does not.
If no theory of the world is offered, the argument is so vague as to be useless or even unintelligible: truth would then be supposed to be correspondence to some undefined, unknown or ineffable world. It is difficult to see how a candidate truth could be more certain than the world we are to judge its degree of correspondence against.
On the other hand, as soon as the defender of the correspondence theory of truth offers a theory of the world, he or she is operating in some specific ontological or scientific theory, which stands in need of justification. But the only way to support the truth of this theory of the world that is allowed by the correspondence theory of truth is correspondence to the real world. Hence the argument is circular."
Tracchofyre
The Wikipedia section makes sense to me. You seem to be as flummoxed as Harris was.
I'm no philosopher, but the correspondence theory of truth is not widely held by modern philosophers. Maybe there is something to that, even if it is an appeal to authority.
Remember, JBP is not rejecting science. This is why he says Newtonian truth is a subset of Darwinian truth. You find that strange because it upsets your preconceived notion of truth. I also am uncomfortable expanding what seems like a reasonable view of truth into something that JBP uses.
However, just because JBP starts with different assumptions, doesn't make him wrong.
Trying to attack him the way Harris, who is brilliant, has, just doesn't work. This is because JBP wants to use more expansive tools in his analysis that seem necessary once he is no longer constrained to just Newtonian truth.
JBP's metaphysics and epistemology seem to compel him move behind limiting himself to Newtonian truth. As long as he doesn't deny the validity of the scientific method, I don't see a problem.
To me it's a bit like an atheist dismissing an agnostic. JBP is like an agnostic in this sense, and I think his research may be useful even if I don't currently accept all of his conclusions.
Tracchofyre
I wish I could say more. This video prompted me do some cursory research of the coherence theories of truth. I mean plural, because there appear to exist many different possibilities. So in a sense, you're not far off when you talk about different truths.
From my little understanding of coherence theories, logic still exists, but it is constrained by its propositions or beliefs.
In a way, and this is not novel, scientific materialism is just another coherence theory of truth. This is what we both referenced earlier. Adding a second "predicate" that specifies "a theory of the world" essentially outlines the system. The reason Newtonian truth is nested in JBP's Darwinian truth is because he accepts all of the axioms of Newtonian reality and adds at least one more.
Perhaps this might clear things up. You believe truth is related to some reality that we can know. This is an assumption. But coherence theories of truth have a different conception. They force you to specify your assumptions. Once done, a proposition is true only if it logically "coheres" to your fundamental assumptions. In this conception, there is no Truth, there are only truths.
Heres an example. One assumption science makes is that universal laws are constant throughout time. While there is a lot of evidence to support this, there is no way to prove this assumption, even if it appears unnecessary to do so.
So in summary, if you don't agree to the extra fundamental assumptions JBP makes, you wont agree with his conclusions even though he may make propositions that are coherent and thus true.
Listen again to the section of McKeever when he talks about Pragmatism. JBP has a different metaphysics and thus radically different conceptions of the mind.
I personally believe reality is subjective. Objective reality arises from intersubjective communication. Even scientists will reluctantly conclude that science never proves anything, but merely fails to disprove. So in all honesty, science is not Truth, it is method. The "Truth" will only arise when subjects discuss results.
If you still can't see things from the coherence point of view, even if you don't agree with its conclusions, then you may be disingenuous. This is not a semantic issue.
Tracchofyre
I figured you would go there. I'm not disputing that I will duck if you throw a fastball at me. I doubt JBP is disputing it.
But you make claims about the world that are assumptions. I only have the humility to assume that my conception of reality may be incorrect. This is what science does. You go further, you claim a metaphysics and epistemology of scientific materialism and will dismiss anything that falls outside of those limits as nonsense. There is nothing wrong with this.
This is basic stuff. Einsteins theories expanded those of Newton. You likely see this as a small improvement on a large body of knowledge. You likely assume that any further scientific advancement will similarly be a small improvement. These are assumptions. Just because the Sun rises everyday, doesn't guarantee it will repeat. JBP isn't denying your reality. He just sees the world differently.
What if some human being teleported around the world? Is this likely? Not based on our experiences. But what if they told you they could teleport around because they were projections from a differently reality. You could go ahead and sic your Lion on them and watch them die. In your reality, they are then just a corpse. Is that really reality.
What if Jesus actually returned. I don't believe for a second this will happen, but I don't dismiss it as impossible. If it did happen, I would question my reality.
None of this stuff is new. You just claim that knowing every nook and cranny of the inside of a box means you're not trapped in that box. I just can't make that claim and neither does JBP.
String theory is considered science even though it has yet to be proven. There is a possibility that it could be correct and at the same time forever unverifiable.
I'm not denying your knowledge of reality, but you could never prove a tree falls in the forest if no sentient being can record or observe it. It's silly to claim we know reality when science has shown again and again that those conceptions of "reality" were misplaced. To dismiss subjects is to dismiss the only thing that solidifies your reality.
If you were the only human being on the planet, you could run as many experiments as you want and interpret the data as you see fit. Your theories would only be as good as your assumptions. You could die and your "reality" could have nothing to do with Reality.
Conceding this is quite easy for many people.
In a weird way, could you make a metaphorical connection between their disagreement of truth and the gap between relativity and quantum mechanics? Micro versus Macro?
Regarding round two: what should their goals be? Harris seems committed to changing Peterson into a proponent of correspondence theory. What would he do instead in round two?
Why did you not offer the correct answer I know you understand?
"Truth is the product of the recognition (i.e., identification) of the facts of reality. Man identifies and integrates the facts of reality by means of concepts. He retains concepts in his mind by means of definitions. He organizes concepts into propositions-and the truth or falsehood of his propositions rests, not only on their relation to the facts he asserts, but also on the truth or falsehood of the definitions of the concepts he uses to assert them, which rests on the truth or falsehood of his designations of essential characteristics."
aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/truth.html
Hello mughat: I didn't want to push my own/Miss Rand's view. I just wanted to explain why Dr. Harris didn't understand Dr. Peterson. Many would have ignored my analysis if I'd offered up what I regard to be the correct theory of truth. Cheers, Paul.
you're all crack-pots of the highest degree. and so am i.
"Truth is the product of the recognition of the facts of reality" Lots of things to define there : Reality, Fact, and most importantly, the act of Recognition, which entails the entity who recognizes, the thing that is recognized (in this case the supposed "fact") and the means by which this process happens.
I am afraid that if we can learn something from particle physics even without understanding a lick of mathematics is that certainty or in this case "Truth" is a very big problem.
The even bigger problem is on us humans that are forced to live a life in this way, knowing all the time in the back of our heads that we cannot "really" be "certain" of anything, which might be the first and most real psychological drive we have. Not sex or power or death or even meaning.
The perspective that you are giving which reflect Ms Rand ideas seems to leave all this complexity outside, rendering it a bit superficial. (Please do not misunderstand that statement with a lack of respect to you or Ms Rand or any of the ideas being discussed here.)
Martin Musaubach are u high?
"Truth is a very big problem" - you're psychologically disturbed, you've tied yourself in an epistemological knot, that's why you think there's something that you yourself define to be outside of our capacities, yet there and worth pursuing nonetheless. that thing is what you call 'Truth' - capital T because it's ultra rare.
"...knowing all the time in the back of our heads that we cannot "really" be "certain" of anything..." - you'd rather believe that certainty is something real and ubiquitous yet unattainable, rather than imagine the other way around.
Consider that maybe, instead of everything being bullshit compared to this fabled 'Truth', that maybe the only bs in your head is this idea of 'Truth'?? and that literally everything else is AS REAL AS CAN BE.
"which might be the first and most real psychological drive we have." - yeah i totally agree with this. we put truth beyond our capacities so that we have something inexhaustible worth striving for.
any wallsocket the personal attack on me being psychologically disturbed already disqualifies all this conversation, that was free and there was no need for it. Nevertheless, it is clear that the aggressiveness in your choice of words might come from the fact that you see this problem that I am talking about.
Either way, my question to you would be this, given the fact that we are a part of Nature, and all our Reason is a product of it, and not something granted to us by any external being, isn't safe to assume that as an ant is blind to the fact of our existence we might probably be as blind in regards to something as true as we are, a truth that escapes the ant cognitive skills. And as such, this truth you assume in the "Fact" of "Reality" might be partially true and good enough for us to work with but not Total.
Please, don't be aggressive in the response so we can keep a conversation that I find intellectually very stimulating.
Gracias! :-)
Peterson is absolutely right to advocate for morality to be part of the decision making when ascertaining truth and applying said truths to reality, but it cannot be conflated with truth.
You conflate truth with a false dichotomy. The most important TRUTH is. . what should I do. Moral truth. Scientific truth is trivial..
You should really have the texts on screen so we can pause to read them.
thank you very much, so my question is what would each gentleman get out of the session number two?
If im not mistaken Peterson stated that his goal is to advance the conversation and ultimately unite religion and science, science nested inside religion/beliefs/morals. So he can certainly benefit, even if he doesn't fully agree with Harris, but the discussion continues.
What about Harris? He has risen in the atheists' ranks to a solid #2, why would he agree that his view is insufficient or incomplete?
what's in it for both at this point???
you should have started the video at 17:00 rather than rehashing the entire discussion
Kc Daugirdas, composer - I disagree, I thought it was very useful to have the original conversation. That way it will never get lost in translation, when it’s verbatim. Proper reporting 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
@@thegoodthebadandtheugly579 yeah cause I haven't watched the discussion in a while so it definitely helps
The idea of the coherence theory of truth is very helpful to me, especially when it comes to making sense of my past. I used to be a materialistic nihilist and when I look back on my views I realize that my logic was entirely sound within the framework I was using. I believed that the big bang was the first cause, and that everything that came afterward was an effect of that cause, thus there was no free will. I also believed that there was no life after death, and so without free will or life after death, the world appeared utterly meaningless to me. I was working under a darwinian model of the universe that was nested inside the newtonian model of the universe, so of course I came to the conclusions I came to. And over time I realized (painfully, very painfully) that such a model was antithetical to living a healthy life. I thus discard the theory as false on the same grounds Peterson does. It is not to my darwinian advantage to see the universe that way, thus it is not true, or at least it is not true enough.
This way of thinking really sounds a lot like you simply don't like the consequences of thinking about the nature of the universe in a nihilist manner so you reject them. Or rather, you reject thinking of it as true because if it were true, it would be depressing. But you can't think a truth into existence. Whether you know of the actuality of the truth or not, the truth is out there. It was out there before you considered it. I simply don't understand how you can essentially invent your own more positive worldview in order make you happy and healthy. It seems to me that you're essentially saying "ignorance is bliss, and I'd rather not think about things that make me depressed and makes the world seem meaningless. In fact, I'd rather just call them not true enough because that way, I can have my cake and eat it too".
Who says truth owes you a healthy or meaningful life? It’s up to you to make that for yourself, after accepting truth.
Oh boy, came to the SAME conclusions. Especially the no free will/nihilism part. The problem of this tyranny of the objective is that it completely leaves out the subject as meaningless and inconsequential.
I think it really is a sort of a hyper rationalist imbalance that invalidates majority of what even makes us human, it is impossible be hyper rationalistic and even at the same time even consider validity of emotions, sensations, intuition.
So there obviously has to be some balance between the objective and the subjective. "Newtonian truth" is a good servant but a terrible master. The moment you think it is the only truth there is at cost of your humanity, you might know there is something false about that truth...
Otto Frinta I will disagree with you and the original commenter on one point:
I don’t think you can be coherent as a human in that framework.
Wittgenstein (at least the early Wittgenstein) would explain away our referral to ourselves as “I” and others as “You” (in the same sense that we are subjects denoted by “I”) as a mere language game. But, be that as it may, we do refer to ourselves as I and mean something by it - there’s a phenomenological experience of I. The phenomenological thus is in constant battle with the epistemological, which leads to the internal conflicts that led the two of you to change your positions. This is in part something Thomas Nagel emphasised in an essay on moral responsibility. I mean, take Sam Harris. Listen to how he speaks to people when he discusses things he considers meaningful. He refers to others as subjects and himself as well - he extends his internal view of himself unto others. How he can coherently do this while remaining within his metaphysical/epistemological framework, though, is not clear.
You take the idea of a “private world” within seriously - and I think you should, because it’s likely the most immediate sensation we have.
Another way to put it:
The sensation of a private world and the idea of the private subject “I” is a universal quality across humans. The main argument to accept empiricism as an epistemology seems to be some sort of social agreement on it (along the lines of Russel’s the problems of philosophy). If we suggest that the common experience of the subject “I” is an illusion, on what grounds do we not make the same claim for the common empirical sense data? How is the evaluative judgment between the phenomenological commonality and the (supposed) consequences of the empirical commonality justified?
There’s an inevitable conflict buried there - it’s one Harris glosses over, while Peterson addresses it.
Anyhow, those are my current thoughts on the matter, would be interested to hear your thoughts.
It's too true
Thanks for taking the time to compile this analysis Paul. Clearly written, and seems to be a very plausible account of what happened.
What confounds me is this:
If Peterson really is a die hard pragmatist, then why didn't he make this more explicit? When Sam Harris first started explaining how he (Sam Harris) argued with Rorty, walked out of a lecture by Derrida, etc., that would have been the time for Peterson to say "hang on a minute". Instead, Peterson almost seemed to be acknowledging his agreement with Sam by abstaining from any objection. I certainly got the impression that Sam Harris was misled here.
Also, based on your account, it seems that pragmatism is not something that one arrives at naturally. Rather it seems that the default epistemology that we are "born with" or that our culture seems to operate under is one associated with the correspondence theory of truth. If that is the case, then surely the onus is upon the pragmatist to make painstakingly clear where they are coming from right from the start, especially when it is clear that their partner in discussion is a die hard correspondence adherent. To anyone who is aware of these two schools of thought, it should have been obvious to Peterson what was going on; yet based on his comments, it's clear that Peterson was unclear on the source of confusion.
In other words, it almost seems as if Peterson was as unaware of Sam Harris' correspondence style of thinking as Harris was of Peterson's pragmatist style of thinking.
Hello MD: I suppose it's possible that Dr. Peterson was under a mistaken impression re: Dr. Harris' metaphysical assumptions. It just to me seems unlikely because the correspondence view is sort of the every-day understanding of truth. In other words, yes, I think pragmatism is something one has to read and learn about, rather than having it as one's understanding of truth from the outset. So, I would expect that, even if at a not-conscious level, most people grow up as people who think of truth on the coherence model, and who would find no difficulty understanding Harris fully, right down to the idea that there is a real world 'out there'.
And this is what confounds me. Peterson should have known exactly what the source of the confusion was, and yet did not take any meaningful steps to address them. I think he's a decent, open minded individual, so I'd like to think he wasn't playing coy.
I reject the notion that this was not a profitable or enlightening experience. This topic represented one of the most important & fundamental differences between the two men & Harris treated the topic like a waste of time & was in a hurry to move on & play by his rules. In contrast, Peterson showed unlimited curiosity & engagement with the subject. The starting point is always the most important & interesting part of any line of reasoning.
Truth is objective. The idea that truth is subjective is in part what had allowed for the rise of SJWs.
Not in my opinion (about the latter of that at least), what leads to the SJW nonsense is to decide that subjective things are in fact _objective_ ("I deserve respect"; "I have the right to be validated"; "I am neither gender"; "I identify as an attack helecopter, respect my identity").
An relevant idea I heard - as far as I understand - in Peterson's most recent debate (on his YT channel that is), in paraphrase: you are not the master of your identity, your identity is the collection of what _other people_ know about _you_.
We often hear about SJW's denying things that we normally call objective, which is certainly true, however there isn't one person who doesn't partake in this act.
In other words it's not only that they are denying objective truths (which they are, and anyway, people do this _all the time_ in any case) - it's that they are demanding their subjective whims become "objective" to the rest of us!
Their personal demands are not truth claims, they are unmet expectations. That's just the result of spoiled children not getting what they want. The claims was referring to are ones like "Transgender women are exactly the same as real women" and definitions of words from "feminism" to "racism." They bend reality to suit their viewpoint, rather than the other way around. I'd say their demand for us to accept their views as self-evident reality really encapsulates the point I was making.
ViNcEnT RoSs , SJWs dont ever care about truth (subjective or objective), what only matters to them is group identity and conformity, which is the OPPOSITE of anything related to truth.
ViNcEnT RoSs. Thank You for stating this. Thought I was going mad for a second. You hit the nail on the head.
+ViNcEnT RoSs
"they bend reality to suit their viewpoint" - this is what I mean. They think that their viewpoint is obviously true (we _all_ do this, there is no getting around that), but they not only want us to know it, they may force us to!
For someone who makes a career out of arguing, I find it stunning that Harris seemed unaware of, and incapable of dealing with theories of truth other than the simple correspondence theory that forms the basis of his entire thought. He's not quite as well-read in philosophy as I was hoping.
Great analysis PaulMcKeever. I think you have it spot on.
how do you determine what it is true in Jordan's sense? something might be true for the next 100 years, then it causes destruction, so it becomes untrue. You didn't address any of the topics or justify Jordan's position. Your comment didn't say anything at all really. Harris is using 'truth' as pretty much everyone uses it, and Jordan decides to change the meaning of it. So how can you consider Harris of being unaware? He understood what Jordan was saying, but he was clearly trying to get Jordan to admit what he was trying to do.
Thank you for the explanation of JBP's metaphysics; I really wasn't understanding where his arguments were coming from. I don't agree with them and I find that pragmatism sounds quite similar to solipsism, but what you've said here makes sense in the context of their discussion.
If I understand this, then Peterson's Pragmatism are useful to, and encouraged by, his role as a Clinical Psychologist. He doesn't just study the mind or just listen to his patients. He directs them to a course of action for problems.Correct?
The second conversation sucked. In my opinion Jordan is way more helpful on your personality matters and equal to Sam in intelligence. Harris is a seasoned heavyweight and better still an atheist and therefore.more deeply rational...but again not as helpful in matters of the personality
No. Harris was correct. I also believe that Harris DID understand the points that you are making and that you are wrong in your assertion that he did not. Harris demonstrated over and over again that his points were correct. Peterson an wrap his ideas in all the jargon that he wants but it is still flawed beyond redemption.
Hi PaulMcKeever,
Thank you for your analysis.
Your blog post echoed my thoughts exactly, however I do have one small contention...
You wrote: "At this point, it should be clear to the reader that Harris seemed unaware of the foundations of pragmatism" then you went on to repeat "Harris wrongly thought" for a few other contentions.
Do you think it is possible that Harris was aware of these issues, yet did not want to bog down the conversation with questions like: "Do you think it is possible for one to obtain any knowledge about what causes our sense experience?".
There is a common belief out there that because truth is a matter of objective fact that it is possible to be right and for someone else to be wrong. Somewhere in the Bhagavad Gita it says It is easier to overcome an army of ten thousand than it is to overcome the self. Is it not true that the human mind appears like a window onto reality to its owner? And is it not true his thoughts arise before his vision and are not put their by him?
Harris should have said "You want the truth?. You can't handle the truth!"
Personally I don’t hold high hopes for Harris being either willing or able to do a better job in the follow-up podcast. In fact, I doubt whether Harris has ever been interested in having a fruitful conversation with Peterson. Harris: “I realised, perhaps belatedly, that I went into science and got a PhD really very much in the spirit of wanting to be a philosopher who was very well grounded in the relevant science of the mind,” he tells Cosmos Magazine, “I needed to know about the brain in order to think about the problems that I wanted to think about.” cosmosmagazine.com/society/brain-according-sam-harris Either Harris still doesn’t know enough about the brain to think properly with it, or else he just isn’t interested in philosophizing on any other concept of truth other than his own. Perhaps if Harris had conducted more substantial research in neuroscience than he has done so far, the “conversation” with Peterson would have been more fruitful. If Harris really is interested in having a philosophical discussion on the nature of truth I suggest that he, before the follow-up podcast, lets a professional (perhaps even a prominent) neuroscientist do some imaging and further research on his brain. Hopefully, he will then know enough about his brain to think about the nature of truth. If he doesn’t feel enlightened enough after this research, perhaps the neuro imaging results will at least provide him with an answer as to why he is not able to think about what he wants to think about. I have commented extensively elsewhere on Harris’s various failures in his “conversation” with Peterson, so I won’t repeat myself here. However, I would like to recommend some other people’s opinions and comments on Harris’s willingness and ability to have interesting conversations with people who hold opposing views to his own. shadowtolight.wordpress.com/2017/01/24/sam-harris-just-wont-admit-he-is-closed-minded-2/ / Maria Sederholm, Sweden
The article doesn't surprise me a bit. Sam has gotten very rich off his dogma. He has a vested interest in being narrow minded, and aside from that, he's arrogant and intellectually dishonest in his arguments.
Alien spotter yes
Harris joined a team years ago. Because of this he is not even able to concede that a difference exists between "scientific fact" and "truth"
If he concedes that, the whole house of cards falls.
Now- this is all obvious to thinking people.
The real question is- what or who caused Harris to want to live inside this house of cards?
Front Office Money for sure. He gets very rich off his status quo, science worshiping shtick. He's even virtue signaling for globalists now and did a documentary advocating so called moderate muslims that will help reform Islam in our countries. Just a way to put the famous guru that so many love as a reassuring face to get the sheep to go back to sleep while muslims flood our countries. But it's ok, because Sam, of the fab 4, is the savior that will help reform them.
Please tell me what this difference is. Cus I don' really see how there is a difference. It's like saying thumbs aren't fingers.
What the FUCK are you doing bringing identity and drama into this. It was a candid conversation between intellectuals, not a clashing of political forces like you're probably used to.
Yes I think Peterson was saying viciousness exists in all forms in society and taking away religion will not make people rational all of a sudden
isn't this argument similar to wether moon is there even if we dont observe it or is it there because we observe it?
I like Jordan Peterson and have learned quite a bit from him, but I have detected a flaw in his logic regarding morality and religion. In one of his classroom lectures, and in other venues, he repeatedly states that if one didn't believe in the moral underpinnings instantiated by religion, then that person would use evil tactics to pursue one's self-interest. But lying and cheating comes with a cost. You will be discovered, identified and you will pay a social price. It's one of the primary uses of language. One needn't ground this in religion. If i'm cheated by someone, you better believe I'm going to be angry and do what I can to exact some kind of revenge, even if that is only warning others to avoid the cheater.
What's more, we are a highly social animal and although we have a selfish side, we also see the benefits to our own self-interest by playing by certain rules. Everyone benefits and society functions. That is true at the most primitive levels in the village and clan level.
Read some Aristotle or Mortimer Adler.
I'm afraid on this particular issue, Peterson is just playing games with himself. You can't layer morality onto scientific truth no matter how hard you play the game, and it's unnecessary to layer this morality problem onto investigative science. How would one undertake the project of building a chair for example, when morality might lead you to conclude that a chair could be used to beat someone to death? The chair would never be built. Peterson's morality science would eventually get bogged down in such philosophic wonderings and come to a stop.
Ya ..you can and must ..just as you are insisting. Its natural law. Natural law IS us and Peterson is showing the limited but real psychological / moral dimension of this greater truth of the MIND that creates the cosmos.
DJ Waterman I think you proved Peterson's point. Harris was the one trying to use science for morality.
+J C, That's not what DJ is saying here at all. He's saying that Peterson is trying to make the entire foundation of all scientific understanding, objective truth, a function of morality, whereas Sam is trying to derive morality from our scientific understandings. You can't take science, the pursuit of what objectively "is", and ground it only in what "aught" to be. For us to consider specific utilizations, we first have to understand the neutral objective truth of what is to be studied before a value statement can be made about it. Humans first had to understand, in at least a basic sense, how smallpox virus interacted with human physiology before white people could put it on blankets and give it to Native Americans to eradicate them.
The weird thing about Peterson's view is not that it was just about utility, it's a subset: survival, so 1+1=2 in all known cases is useful, but the survival value seems pretty hard to measure here and not clear whose survival we are talking about.
I listened to it all, but I'm still struggling with understanding pragmatism
I understand the words and the examples, but I can't make myself think from that viewpoint, like a disconnection..
I don't know why anyone expected anything other than what happened. I knew that Harris would grab some point and refuse to let go, I just didn't know what that point would be. Atheists have to do what Harris did. Atheists need to frame religious discussions in a materialistic framework. Once the religious advocate cedes that territory and talks in a materialistic framework, they have already lost the argument.
Though I'm a non-believer, I think it has become self-evident that humans need religion. It seems to me that when the masses let go of religion, they slide into nihilism. The wide scale loss of Christianity and the mealy mouthed Christianity that remains has allowed Europe to invite in their destruction. This is one of the reasons Eastern Europe is not falling into this trap and Western Europe is inviting disaster.
+SaysRobert.. That's all well and good, but we haven't found that thing yet. Left wing political activism seems to be a big replacement for religion in America. Radical politics is worse than religion.
tarstarkusz -Wow , I shit you not ---I too told my brother , prior to listening to the show , that Harris would "grab" some arbitrary point and hold on for dear life .
I knew Harris would make this about him "winning" or , at the very least , not losing ...
Shame .... This podcast could have been fun ---instead it was tedious
just because you are an atheist does not mean you can not hold dogmatic beliefs of the world.
The Czech Republic is the most atheistic nation on earth and they haven't fallen for this "invitation of destruction".
+Christian... You're right. The whole 'let's all be atheists and be rational etc' thing is just another utopian ideal. We ALL do it. We are all irrational on at least one particular subject and nearly all of us are irrational on many subjects. Most of these anti-theists, like Sam Harris, have some other goal where anti-theism is just a step in that direction. These people have other motives.
So Peterson has confused "true" with "good" and "false" with "evil" or at least "wrong". Regarding the example he gave about the hydrogen bomb it was true at the micro-level but "wrong" at the macro-level, aka false, aka non-existent. Apparently he called hydrogen bombs wrong rather than false, in order to avoid the above absurdity, but his idea of truth literally boils down to evil => wrong => false => non existent. So actually no hydrogen bomb exists. It appears that Peterson, in his futile effort to make "scientific truth" a subset of "moral truth", merely resorts to absurd sophistries.
False does not mean non-existent. He's not claiming hydrogen bombs don't exist, he's claiming they are false in the sense of moral truth.
your explanation and breakdown of the Harrison/Peterson conversation was very productive for me, thank you very much .
Now I think about it, it's basically "if a tree falls in the woods and no-one hears it", did it fall?
What is truth? Truth is based on REALITY and according to Philip K. Dick "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away".
In Jordan Peterson's case, he has religious beliefs that keep him from accepting reality.
Reality (physical existence) is not good or bad, it's just indifferent to what we wish or believe in.
I respect Sam Harris for not allowing the discussion to proceed until both parties agreed
on the meaning of words.
+rog nad
It's also VERY telling to me that the religious always seem to want to move on to the discussion as if an agreement on definitions isn't necessary.
+Dudeist Pianist
The beliefs of the source of a quote change the meaning of a quote? I'm going to need you to define ignorance for me in this context please.
+Dudeist Pianist
So you've abandoned your claim of ignorance and now wish to pretend you meant something else all along to hide your own ignorant comment.
Well done. Top work.
_"and would be thereby himself be guilty of going against the virtue of his own quote as it is used here"_
Indeed. Would you like to commit a tu quoque fallacy or would you like to back peddle more? Your choice.
There are many types of subjectivist philosophical systems that arent religious, mate. Please dont slander a good thinker with such broad statements.
Sam Harris has petulant close minded view of human philosophy and social constructs and all human religions= he just sells his bullshit on basis of his ideology which is mostly a Neo-Con hawkish barbaric propaganda carefully and coherently articulated in terms of moral relativism and some borrowed terms from much wiser and cognizant men than him- He is a hack and total time waste for any wise person looking for a proper understanding of human endeavor and basis of morality or even basic meaning or purpose of life- He should go back to studying neuronal impulse transmissions in human brain- he belongs in a lab and not on a mike /stage because he has got nothing new,useful,productive or even moral to say.
Sam Harris wasn't "missing" anything in their discussion. He simply refused to allow Peterson to dictate the "semantic terms" of the argument. Of course Harris was not going to agree to Peterson's back-door theism...
+razorfistforce1
You nailed it.
Harris also denied Peterson to put forward arguments against his own truth claim position. Both positions have their strengths and weaknesses, but Harris didn't seem to want to move forward the discussion even though both positions could be understood. Either that, or he simply didn't understand Peterson which in such case is a failure from his part.
basically
"Reality" does not have a "strength" or "weakness"; it just "is"
+EnEvighet7 No, there really is no advantage to Peterson's concept of truth over Harris's. Sam Harris's concept of truth (the _actual_ concept of truth) allows us to acknowledge that there are things that are true but are bad for us to know, and still allows us to set up a framework where we only seek after truths that can help us. But such a notion is unintelligible under Peterson's notion of truth, because it simply doesn't allow for anything to be true and bad for us to know, purely by definition. And it makes everything we want to know about the universe completely hostage to the possibility that it doesn't help the survival of apes on this little rock. It is an extremely claustrophobic view of the world, and it offers absolutely no advantage, because the _real_ version of truth still allows us to abstain from making discoveries that can harm us.
i'd like to ask Sam if he's ever read either of these: 1. Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill, or 2. Varieties of Religious Experience by William James?
#1 is long but the 1st chapter covers this topic very well ( Chapter 1 is "The Point of Departure").
if Jordan was talking about ideas, then the problem was that Sam wasn't talking about ideas. He was talking about the reality about which ideas are formed.
I don't understand why Peterson was trying to change the definition of a word. It was frustrating to listen to because I completely sided with Sam. Peterson was just playing word games and trying to be difficult in my opinion.
+shugo104
Too big my eye. Peterson was deliberately obfuscating because he knows that having the discussion on Harris' ground would see his position torn to shreds.
shugo104 no need to claim the intellectual high ground by dissing this user. If you listened to the whole podcast you can clearly see how it bogs down and becomes impenetrable to the listener. I nearly chewed off my arm listening to Harris and Peterson because they both wanted to move on but seemingly couldn't. Pragmatically the bigger guy would have just let it go and move on to the next topic - their differences in defining truth would have emerged I'm sure, but with with one of Henderson's 'macro examples' rather than the 'trivial' examples of Harris. I think the conversation would have moved forward or at least shifted sufficiently to make it more of a informative, thought-provoking blog rather than a conversation between two university professors arguing arcane philosophies that baffle and bore those listening in for the most part - unless you want to discuss philosophy, which we didn't tune in for - however interesting I find the topics on occasion. I.e. do it on your own time boys, there are people listening. And please shugo104, don't try and make yourself out to be smarter than me - it just won't end well and besides, I'll tell my Mum and my Dad will beat up your Dad
''Too big my eye. Peterson was deliberately obfuscating because he knows that having the discussion on Harris' ground would see his position torn to shreds.''
I think your right there.
Exactly.
bestsnowboarderuknow why he deliberately try to be difficult. lol. he's Not a troll
"Truth" and "Good" have nothing to do with one another...
I'm with Sam on this one! We ALL use the word TRUTH... in a morally vacuous sense...
Peterson needs to comeup with a new word! For his definition of Truth
knowing truth isn't good?
Good and Truth (and Beautiful) are twins (+ sister) and what sadly nobody realizes is that those do cover different aspects of reality. Truth is objective (in strict meaning of the word) and Good is inter-subjective (while Beauty is individually subjective). Since nobody really differentiates between subjective and objective realities and between individual and collective perspectives, no wonder that people sometimes uses Beauty instead of Good or Truth (unless they are informed and conscious).
Best description that I've read on this topic is by Ken Wilber, he really is like 10x more insightful (not just on this topic) than Sam, Jordan and Paul combined. You can read free excerpt "Four Faces Of Truth" written 20 years ago that is still more informative on this topic than both of those podcasts). integrallife.com/four-faces-truth/
gooseman...........................god is truth!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ironically, you need that to be the truth to support your argument. It isn't about the literal definition, it is about what it means.
Gooseman2k2 truth and fact are two different things. Sam was referring to scientific facts, but that doesn't necessarily mean truth. Peterson was pining the argument that fact plus wisdom equals truth.
Fantastic! Congratulations for such a useful video. It really helps understanding the Harris/Peterson podcast.
Thanks Paul. For a layman like myself, your explaining of the differences between a correspondence and a pragmatist's view of truth certainly helped illuminate their disagreement. Even if Harris understood these distinctions, I imagine he would still be reticent to accept that Peterson [I assume] was trying to escalate the conversation in order to get to scenario's that were not 'toy' or trivial.
Sam murdered Jordan in every corner.
They both ran into the wall of imparting teleology into existence without grasping the truth of Aristotelian proofs for the existence of MIND at the core of reality. Arguing for unintelligence.. materialism.. is unintelligent.
The problem is this: Sam Harris' version of truth is pointless, because it is independent of human experience. It doesn't matter if something is true in Harris' sense of the word, it's banal and materialist at its very best. But he is an atheist, so this is not surprising.
Sure. What does it matter if our theories about physics are true when we build planes. Who cares right?
But planes are not independent of human experience. What you're saying is that it's true because it's useful and the usefulness of something is not independent of the human experience. Planes are important because they're a tool used by us, if they were used to destroy us, then it wouldn't be useful.
Sam clearly stated he didn't disagree that there aren't destructive truths. Jordan should have used a better word, like 'useful'. It would cut the conversation in half if he had done that. Jordan's at fault for changing the meaning of truth to suit his argument.
+spankstar
You could be using a crystal ball and Tarrot cards to guess the laws of physics, but you are using the scientific method instead. Why? Because it works better!
The reason Jordan doesn't explicitly state "usefulness" is because he made it clear that he sees science as a tool.
Science itself is useful! It's an incredibly powerful tool for learning and understanding.
Can anyone give a single example of how a conversation between 2 people would benefit from Peterson's definition of the word "true" MORE than the current definition?.
True /tro͞o/ adjective
1. In accordance with fact or reality.
Take a look at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. "Truth is one of the central subjects in philosophy. It is also one of the largest. Truth has been a topic of discussion in its own right for thousands of years." (plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/#PraThe) You're free to claim there is a simple, well-understood definition of "truth" but the evidence is that this isn't the case among thinkers.
I believe that this debate is, I think is, a finite example of what Ludwig Wittgenstein was saying about human communication. Both know the words that each other is using, however one person understands the word with one meaning or context, while the other person understands the word in an entirely different meaning and they both fail to understand each other. This is how, what one person understands is a complement the recipient may take as an insult.
Very well done and clear analysis. Yes, there are different theories of truth and they never touched upon the underlying epistemological assumptions in a direct way.
A few comments. My reading of Hume does have him implying that "we must not assert that reality is this way or that". As for "one cannot know anything about what causes those experiences" and all talk beyond that is "meaningless gibberish" is not my understanding. We can hypothesize about these things, but we can never be absolutely certain. It is obviously very important to hypothesize about these things in order to do practical science and engineering. We can also find what appear to be regularities in nature and incorporate them into useful formulas used as means to selected ends.
I disagree with both Jordan and Sam as far as they went regarding "truth", I am a basic postpositivist, but that they never got to the underlying issues, I agree with you about.
In any case, very well done upload.
Thank you for this Paul, I was frustrated before listening to this.
I love listening to JP, and ive never tried harder to understand the theist mindset than i did with this debate. Only sam made sense to me.
Thanks for doing this video!
My analysis of the conversation is this: They are wanting to use two different sets of rules. Sam is technically right, you get two points when you put the ball through the hoop. Jordan wants to say no, you actually get 2 points when you get an assist. I think Sam would acknowledge that yes you could do this and play that way, but then it makes other aspects of the game much more difficult and needlessly confusing, and is basically pointless. We already have a way of talking about assists, and that's recording assists. Sam considers assists a separate thing, something important that should be recorded and striven for but nested inside the stat of scoring points. Terrible analogy but it actually kinda fits this convo if you squint
I like the concept that the scientific truth is not necessarily true because in reality it cannot be taken out of context. Because whatever it is, it IS a part of this world. Yet science treats it as if it isnt. The findings of the double slit experiment is a good metaphor for their argument lol.
Very well done, thank you. This was exactly how I envisioned the difference.
Hello Paul. Thank you for this excellent analysis and appraisal of the Harris/Peterson discussion about truth. I had wondered why Peterson had not just conceded to Harris' notion of truth, which, trivially, as you say, he does believe so that the discussion could move on to other things. However, I can see now how important it was for Peterson not to go down that track. Because his sensualist / phenomenological / pragmatic notion of truth was always going to be the fruitful route to those other things. If Harris could have conceded that notion as valid then the discussion could have moved forward. As you rightly pointed out what Peterson had said, they were working from different ontological views about truth. Although, that said, I think they are actually both commensurate with one another once one starts to build in the ethical implications that can be associated with them. Taking the grizzly example. If there is a grizzly in front of me then it is true that there is a grizzly in front of me, Harris' trivial world of fact. It is also true that I should run away from it if running away from it will save my life, Peterson's world of ethical action.
Anyway, I hope Harris reads and acts positively to your appraisal.
Excellent video my friend!
I think that thinking about how we commonly use the term "true" and "truth" is helpful for seeing that Sam's definition of truth is myopic and technical. Ordinary language has greater depth to it than more specialized technical language, and precedes it as its foundation/origin. There are many common idioms where a latent theory of existential truth is invoked. Is the negation of that realm of language as implying a theory dangerous for us? That's my sense of it.
I found this analysis profound, Peterson has unconventional wisdom that I also struggled to entertain till now.
I remember arguing the same point with a friend, telling him how there must be an independent reality while his intuition was different.
Nice to see such a good demonstration of the"other" view point in an objective manner.
Great analysis of the conversation.
Without coming to a consistence understanding on truth there was no way forward. I found Petersons position difficult to adopt in the original conversation. I have always described truth as a measure of how much something comports to reality. I guess this is the more common place understanding of it, which Harris was putting forward.
Anyway thanks for the analysis.
I don´t get the proposition that there is a correlation between goodness and truth. It is very clear to me, that there are truths that aren´t good and human survival isn´t essential to creating knowlege. There could be a possible world inwich we build a process that discovers new truths and kills humanity along the way. (It might not feel anything) and only saves all the collected data without a higher purpose.
My brain slowly shrinks and humbly crawls back into the allegorical cave. I wonder if either of the 2 responded to you, Paul.
I Feel like we can try to understand JP’s view of the truth by referring to the movie “The Matrix”. The movie depicts very well the idea of a “context dependent” truth, where everything you knew before waking up becomes false because the context changed and the mind is no longer prisoner to the limitations of the Matrix.
The idea is that saying something is true comes from the mind of a being, or several beings, and those minds are limited by what we know (or believe we know) so far, and therefore subject to change.
What I’m still trying to figure out is why it has to be in relationship with the good and evil, and my best try at it is the following: There is only one truth, and it’s the one that allows us to survive. So, as far as we are surviving, it is still true enough.
That certainly clarified things for me. Thanks.
Thanks for the clear summery. I keep going back to this subject, because I go away from most these conversation either disagreeing or agreeing, but rarely not understanding what someone was saying. I've since taken a step back and find myself questioning why Peterson's so hung up on the word _'truth'_. I assume it has something to do with his stance on religion - as we already have a widely understood and accepted definition of truth. Why not just use another term or phrase?
In short, why is the word _'truth'_ so important to him?
How about, confusion about domains. Two things that aren't the same thing will have characteristics that differ. There may be contingencies but the concepts aren't totally absorbed by the other.
Great review. Thank you. I wonder if Peterson could say the idea that we are talking about truth will lead to our survival thus making any discussion true. For instance, talking about an incident in the past, in which they were unaware of, could lead to survival even if the incident at that time was anti-survival.
What I'm getting out of this is that the purpose of philosophy is to redefine a word so that nobody but yourself can understand it, and then argue about that word in such a pretentious fashion that you sound like an intellectual when in fact you aren't even discussing anything meaningful at all.
Peterson is explicitly trying to side-step that problem by injecting subjectivity (value and purpose) into the definition of 'truth'.
Knowledge for knowledge's sake is a stupid goal if you go extinct while being too busy "doing science"
Humanity is much better off if science is aligned with the needs of humans.
This is a pretty good analysis (and to some extent resolution) of the problems with the discussion... except that it seemed a bit sadistic to put people through a 20 minute re-hashing of a conversation that was a somewhat excruciating 2 hrs and 15 minutes. The analysis itself would have been enough, but I appreciated that you touched on the pragmatist issue, since I think that is where the problem hinged.
"What is true?"
Answer: Existence
How do you know?
Answer: You are aware of _something_ , therefore something exists.
Anything else challenging that knowledge falls on the invalidity of the senses, and if they are invalid there is nothing left to communicate or say - so if you believe that the senses are invalid, shut up.
This is exactly the problem faced by the Catholic Church when faced by Galileo.
"Is it good to propose that the Heavens are not the scene of divine perfection? Is it good to argue that Earth is simply one planet among others, and no longer the center of the universe?"
How can pragmatism help us discover better ways of doing things? For example, spending a lot of time and effort trying to figure out what dark matter is doesn't seem like a very pragmatic thing to do unless you believe there is an underlying reality you can actually, at least to some degree, know. If we do discover more about dark matter, who knows what fantastic things we might do with that knowledge.
Nice job Paul. This was an exceptional explanation, in my opinion.
This video was excellent.
Very well discussed. I think the discussion was bogged down because Harris assumed he could lure Peterson into an arena of thought where he has flawed logic. He is steadfast on disproving anyone even remotely seen as a "believer". Peterson was a more than worthy combatant but Harris was too stubborn to call a truce and ran out of energy. I'm sure many disagree but I feel Harris is too impressed by his own intelligence to learn anything abstract.
Brilliant analysis. Scientific "truth" is the result of a very focused endeavor that is not required to consider the wider context of the ultimate effects of its "truth." That's fine as long as it knows its place and doesn't confuse itself with higher truths.
Epistemology debates, they will never agree ... Harris might seem right on this one because of our historical context which makes it easy to grasp for the normal person, but Peterson is not wrong either ... our logic is not unvulnerable, we just assumed it's right and worked with it.
Great work
I think Peterson failed in the conversation to make explicit that he doesn't view objective "facts" as fully obtainable. A factually claim is just a tool that may or may not be useful in the reaching of a goal. If a specific factual claim consistently aids in the reaching of a goal, we can call it "true enough" because it works. Science itself is a tool as well that has thus far been extremely effective in reaching goals, so science is so far true enough for us
Truth is inevitably related to action. What is the meaning of finding any facts which have no bearings on our choice of action?
I'm trying to understand the distinction between the two definitions of "Truth". Is it that Harris is defining Truth as in the category of a statement that is "true or false" whereas Jordan is using Truth as in the category of "correct or wrong"? My intuition is that Jordan Peterson is using the word "Truth" to describe religious Truth by which actions or attitudes are considered correct as to further the survival of the species, say "turn the other cheek", vs "an eye for an eye". Both "turn the other cheek" and "eye for an eye" are true actions, nothing false, if analyzed from Sam Harris' point of view of Truth but from Jordan Peterson point of view of Truth one is correct and the other is wrong but their degree of truth is determined by the circumstance that dictates Darwinian long term survivability even if the individual ends up sacrificing on the short term.
recap of the podcast ends at 17:13 where McKeevers solution begins
It's no solution, since Mr. McKeever misidentifies the issue. Competing theories of truth concern themselves with the problem of verification--i.e., the conditions (coherence, correspondence, degrees of utility... whatever) that need to be satisfied before we're justified in calling a proposition 'true.' Regardless of who one thinks has the upper hand in these disputes, the outcome won't change the meaning of truth. If that (the definition of the concept) were really the issue, no one would be able to tell what it was they were trying to verify.
This was essentially Mr. Harris's point, and it's no wonder he felt obliged to insist on it and had difficulty believing Mr. Peterson was taking his own incoherent evasions seriously (as opposed to simply being stubbornly polemical).
What Peterson is advocating for is an entirely different concept and is not mutually exclusive to the current definition of truth. Get a new word. I don't understand the obsession with re-framing all truth with his new definition.
Great summary. Maybe someone would refer Rationality Rules to it.
I think your analysis does not go far enough. It is possible to state either position as based on irreducible, but mutually incompatible, first principles. Harris' view is based on strict reductionism down to first principles - a position that seems quite obviously true to most philosophically unschooled minds. Peterson's pragmatist argument, in this discussion, is based on the conditions of Darwinian survival (not necessarily of humans). He realizes hat the survival (and ascent) of the conscious subject is absolutely indispensable for there to be someone/something to confront an object in the first place - an object which then can be studied by reductionism. This study, defended quite eloquently, by Harris is nevertheless in Petersen's view a secondary effect, happening down the road from the survival of a conscious mind which is the primary process. Petersen makes his views about the subject that is needed prior to meeting the object quite explicit in some of his lectures.
I must confess that I consider these two "first principles" entirely incompatible and I do not know how to reconcile them. In contradiction to Peterson's claims otherwhere that you suffer from holding contradictory views in your mind at the same time (cognitive dissonance) I find doing so quite exhilarating and pleasurable - the dark mystery of a shining promise pointing to great unifications yet to be revealed.
As an aside, Petersen's view, by implication, leads directly to idealism - so does Sam Harris,' though further down the rabbit hole.
I can't wait for the next installment.
Birric Forcella - Proudly using both heads
birricforcella@gmail.com
I have read hundreds of comments on this debate and yours is the first that agrees with my own observation that both Harris and Peterson are of idealism. I believe that the only escape from such a trap is by means of dialectical materialism. Peterson bristles at materialism. Harris is trapped by scientism and shackled by cognitive dissonance.
+ Kevin Hornbuckle, yep. I don't know if dialectical materialism is a solution but it's true Peterson bristles at it and also true, though he would reject the label, that Harris is trapped by scientism.
Is this a statement on free choice? On determinism? The metaphor of "never cashing the check" is akin to not knowing if you are going to heaven or hell until you die, vs. stating something like "he is going to heaven" at some point in his life.
I think you've hit on the primary disagreement quite succinctly. Re-hearing the quote at the beginning of your video about truths being nested/subordinate made it much clearer to me as well.
Without being especially conscious of the distinction in perspectives (a scientific, assumption of external reality, correspondence theory vs a subjective, extreme rational skepticism, coherence theory) the conversation rapidly devolved into a competition of whose perspective on truth was nested within whose. Peterson ultimately comes out on top in this conversation by virtue of knowing much more about the various assumptions being from each perspective. However, it seems that he was unable to communicate effectively to Harris what those assumptions were. Perhaps this is due to Harris' claimed familiarity with pragmatic thought leading Peterson to make assumptions about what ground assumptions needed to be covered.
Personally, I think the most complete perspective is one that includes external reality, as many features of my own internal experience seem to be best explained by that assumption. But if I've been fooled by Descartes' demon, I wouldn't mind much. Peterson's view of truth seems incomplete in ways unaddressed in my recollection of the discussion. It's puzzling to me how truth (if limited to a subjective view, and discounting the existence of external reality) could "evolve" without reference to an external environment. In my understanding of evolution, it involves variable, distinct, differentially reproducing elements within an environment through time. If truth is limited to a truly subjective consciousness (If I'm understanding this correctly) then all that would exist would be that one mind, some kind of solipsistic monism. From that perspective, it's hard to see what sort of multilayered "harmonies" would be morally required if other minds, and indeed the very environment, aren't real.
Perhaps I've further misunderstood Petersons's views. They are characterized here as pragmatic (which disavows the assumption of an external world to my knowledge), but I got the sense during the discussion that Peterson doesn't disavow the existence of an external world, or if he did he never let on very obviously. I could be very mistaken, as this is my first exposure to Peterson's work.
I'm sure I'm out of my depth in this subject as someone who hasn't taken philosophy classes or read many philosophical texts. I'm sure I'll be schooled rather shortly after leaving this comment here.
Doesn't the fact that they had, and so many are currently having, this conversation prove what JP has been trying to say?
Well done! And I think that everything you said is true..by the way I am using Peterson’s definition of truth here!
A new subscriber :)
Has Sam Harris ever talked about P vs NP problems?
It seems to me that a theist or agnostic would choose coherence theory to justify their inability to accept death. When I die the relationship between myself and the universe will cease to exist, but the universe will continue on without me
Being that it's two definitions - true vs. True - why one earth was there misunderstanding? Truth(captial T) is older and an etymological ancestors of truth(lower case t), the later coming about from the Enlightenmen.
So ok, JP just wants to redefine truth. Thanks for saving me the hour of listening to this.