Pragmatism vs Objective Facts: Jordan Peterson, Greg Salmieri, Yaron Brook
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- Опубликовано: 5 окт 2024
- Jordan Peterson debates the ideas of the American Pragmatists with Objectivist philosophers Greg Salmieri and Yaron Brook, discussing specifically whether one relies on facts to discover truth or whether one relies on utility and results.
Find the whole discussion at • LIVE from OCON: Jordan...
Video credit to The Rubin Report
I like the point that our psychological experience is very relevant to the degree to which we can process facts. Not that I believe this changes "reality" but it reinforces in my mind the question of just how objective a mind can be.
Sophistication vs. Certainty
Except neopragmatism isn't about what is true but what can be sufficiently justified aka hold up to scrutiny. It's not a relativism of truth but a relativism of justification
Richard Rorty would of been great in this dialogue, everyone on this stage would benefit from reading his works again.
"Truth is whatever your contemporaries let you get away with" - Rorty
ELlo-Gee Philosopraptoa Rick and Morty?
I'm not so familiar with Rorty. Did he indeed believe that or was he making a social criticism?
Yes. Rorty expressed the pragmatist claim that "Truth is the compliment we pay to things that work"... Such a stance does not at all imply knowledge of "the thing in itself" ... just that finding consistent patterns in Nature help the human enterprise, but my be revealed in time as a special case, limited and continengent (sort of like Newtonian physics is "true" within limits of a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, but fails at the speed of light or the very large or very small, where relativistic effects are manifest)
Yes. Rorty was famous for quoting the progmaticsts claim that "Truth is the compliment we pay to things that work"
I would have loved it if Rorty was still with us to debate Peterson. Rorty took Pragmatism in the opposition direction from Peterson. Peterson takes it in the direction of "truths more true than truth." Rorty took it in the direction of "Can we just get rid of this concept of truth already?"
Body language tells you everything about how confident they are in their own theory. It's like they already know who people will believe.
Science proceeds by objections to "stupid theories" and often creates newer and better realities, but of course only in accord with the universe of values, possibilities and opportunities.
Not everyone sees science in this way though. A lot of people are members of scientism
Peterson and Yaron are both is wrong to separate subjective evaluation from "facts". Peterson is right that facts are not mind-independant. Yaron is right that they transcend mind - but only in their objective component. The proposition "my wife is betraying me" is indeed true or false, but its meaning is deeply rooted in its impact upon me.
Yes, I was thinking the same. I feel like he inadvertently took only the most basic non-contextual aspect of "is my wife cheating on me" and left out the confusion of "who was/is this person, what did our past mean, what is our future, what is the future of our families, friends, children" etc etc. The pragmatic model doesn't get replaced with new facts, instead a new pragmatic model emerges which attempts to answer all of those questions and provide a path forward.
@@MysteriousSlip indeed .. nicely put. And, something like that is true of all experience .. allowing for the determinism of the physical.
Jordan Peterson makes things more complicated than they have to be (through his way of speaking). For example, he says that the Pragmatists thought that "knowledge was a tool to advance being in the world" (and the succeeding words), when he could have just said that the Pragmatists believed (mostly, or only, William James I believe) that whatever is the most practical, or useful, is true. It's as simple as that.
@@villerantalainen5283 I was just reading "Pragmatism's Conception of Truth" (I have the book 'Pragmatism'), and both of us are essentially correct. The word 'practical' (which is what I defined Pragmatism as in my first comment) has two meanings, both of which fit with Pragmatism. The first definition is, "of or concerned with the actual doing or use of something rather than with theory and ideas." This first definition is what you said, that we have to put the facts (James differentiates between 'facts' and 'truth') into practice to see which ones work. And whichever ones work are 'true'. The second definition is, "(of an idea, plan, or method) likely to succeed or be effective in real circumstances; feasible." This definition is what I said (whatever is useful and effective is true). James says in the lecture:
"Pragmatism, on the other hand, asks its usual question. 'Grant
an idea or belief to be true,' it says, 'what concrete difference
will its being true make in any one's actual life? How will the
truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those
which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the
truth's cash value in experiential terms?'
The moment pragmatism asks this question, it sees the answer:
True ideas are those that we can validate, corroborate and verify.
False ideas are those that we can not. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that, therefore, is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known as."
So, I think it is safe to say that both of us are correct in what we said, it's just that you (like Peterson) made it more complicated (next time I would just quote James, because his writings are easy to understand).
By your definition it would mean they could literally believe I'm holding up 5 fingers when I'm holding up 4 if it were useful for them to perceive it as such would it not?
@@gammypage When I wrote this comment I forgot to add the following section from the beginning of ‘Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth’:
“The popular notion is that a true idea must copy its reality. Like other popular views, this one follows the analogy of the most usual experience. Our true ideas of sensible things do indeed copy them. Shut your eyes and think of yonder clock on the wall, and you get just such a true picture or copy of its dial. But your idea of its works (unless you are a clock-maker) is much less of a copy, yet it passes muster, for it in no way clashes with the reality. Even though it should shrink to the mere word ‘works’, that word still serves you truly; and when you speak of the ‘time-keeping function’ of the clock, or of its spring’s ‘elasticity’, it is hard to see exactly what your ideas can copy.”
This section is essentially saying that ideas that copy sense experiences (like believing there are five fingers being held up) are true ideas because they copy sensible objects.
@@gammypage Jordan brought this up a lot, but that’s a micro example. I can give you micro examples where rationality is wrong. But really Jordan is talking about macro theories, or meta-narratives. That’s like critiquing postmodernists “incredulity towards meta-narratives” by saying, “Well, skepticism doesn’t work at the bus stop.” We are speaking about grand narratives, not your 4 shit stained fingers.
Couldn't you just say that he believes truth is just a subjective inquiry?
Contra Yaron Brook: The urge to discover more "facts" about 9/11 is based on present information/facts. Better facts are based upon current ones. The meaning of "Al Quaeda did this" is rooted in the prior experience of the Twin Towers falling, and other prior experiences. They are all subjective experiences of the objective, they are all, at root, value-laden invitations to act well. That's what facts are.
The problem I'm finding with Jordan Peterson's position is that his stance towards pragmatism as a disavowal of critical events that totally defy our preconceptions of reality is correct, yet he immediately undermines his own position by appealing to biological knowledge as an explanation for our response to these very events.
That's an inconsistent position to hold. If these events _truly_ defy our perception of reality, then we can't _describe_ them in such reductive terms.
Truth _itself_ defies the notion of Survival.
I don’t believe it’s inconsistent, the fact that we are biological beings who can reason only via the historical experience of our senses precisely steers us towards what we ought to consider truth. Once a tentative truth is infered from experience, it can be put to the test to confirm consistency. If you deny any knowledge we can gain on the biological front due to uncertainty upon which we deduce further truth, you fall in the recursive paradox of pure empiricism and denying that truth never exists. With this thinking, we could never advance knowledge and pass it down. We wouldn’t have the wonders of modern medecine if it weren’t for us to have a dose of rationalism. Life is exploration and exploitation, not mere exploration. Try to think of truth as that towards a group of inquirers aim at approaching given sufficient time. View it as something we approach but never reach. Just like infinitesimals in calculus, for actually reaching infinity breaks everything. We are only approaching truth, and since the world evolve, truth also moves. OUR truths evolve, so we’ll always be chasing and approaching it.
This is why rationalism and empiricism alone don’t work. It’s a play between hypotheses and testing, of deduction, inducation, and abduction. This is the essence of the scientific method, a reflection of how biological beings think fundamentally, and what intelligence is.
You might be interested in reading about CS Peirce, his semeiotics, and modern biosemiotics.
7:14 thats pure william james. according to james de biological cames firsts. Merleau Ponty says that inside the perception is always knowledge. According to Albert Ellis Emotion and Thought comes together.
Jordan P: the world of values VS the world of facts... really?! just co-existing? Honest introspection brings you to #objectivism in he end. We are observing a real world OUT there. Reasoning is work. But JP does give a powerful example!
there is like an infite amounts of facts that works in reality. Now there are just a finite amount of them that are viable, and they are mostly if not entirely based upon value.
I feel bad for the quiet guy on the left 😂
Peterson presents the pragmatist position OK for the most part (with the notable exception of, both chronologically and direct reference, the implications of human biological evolution influencing the pragmatic view of developing beliefs and standards of truth as useful, not the other way around), but the supposed resolution of this discussion is just silly. Giving the Objectivists the last word in this clip doesn't make them right or even reasonable.
The example is the implication of discovering your partner betrayed you.
Peterson says there arises incomprehensible confusion in your individual body and former theories/ assumed set of "facts" getting "objected" by the world (there some Heideggerian baloney underlying this which is neither necessary or demonstrable, an assertion without a method, the opposite of pragmatism) and so only answer, he says without saying, is to bow to the Other as the greater party in this unnecessary and non-demonstrable dichotomy.
Even worse, One objectivist argues "the facts are what they are, its our job to discover them". The other presents a straw man argument that the pragmatists want the simplest feel-good theory of the hour without regard for long term, where as objectivists are in a better position to see "the truth," "fix the problem", and form better theories in the future.
What a pragmatist would actually do, starting with James' old saw of reserving judgment on which way a squirrel and man running around a tree should be viewed, represents a method by which all possible available theories are held unless falsified, without becoming invested in them. In James' scenario, the man is running a circumferential path around the tree and squirrel, but in synch with the squirrel such that they are also running side by side. It is unreasonable to argue one view or the other on the relative motion is better, unless there is some meaningful difference to be had - some usefulness - in doing so. And you need some way to verify/falsify one over the other, or else your conclusion cannot be said to be "true".
Peterson's example of spousal betrayal is purposefully laden with extreme emotion to distract, but it still works, and as a therapist, he well knowns this. A patient feels his wife betrayed him, and therefore he thinks it. But what happened? Was the spouse raped? Was she so drunk she barely remembers sleeping with a stranger? Did she kiss the mailman when receiving a letter the daughter got into Stanford? Has she been regularly texting good night wishes with a kiss emoji to a college boyfriend she hasn't seen in twenty years? At the very least, there are identifiable objective "facts", there are issues of intent which are rarely simple enough to be considered objective or factual, and there are mostly unconscious tendencies and assumptions within the patient that must be addressed to make sense of his emotional landscape and to what extent progress can be made.
A pragmatist would never reduce this scenario to "objective facts", understanding this scenario requires a multi-layered analysis and that there may be no way to make progress towards better decisions. On the other hand, Peterson's extreme example serves the purpose of diverting the conversation from the position he is supposed to be representing - because he doesn't really believe it, just read his Maps of Meaning. His own thinking is a maelstrom of convolution, wheels within wheels, Adam and Eve living off the Ourobouros of the one and many or some sh*t. He is somewhat impressive in being able to present other positions fairly well for a moment before falling apart, and the first impression hides his sideways slide into something else.
Ummm pragmatism happened well after the origin of species was published. Peirce came up with pragmatic after reading darwin,, also read evolutionary love, and hie work on abduction. Peirce has an entire evolutionary cosmology that is well worth learning. Please stop name-dropping
I forget the full title of Darwin’s book, do you remember it?
@@garrythomas492 I'm not Google Gary
How did Jordan get any of this wrong? “Name dropping” is a bad critique.
@@mariog1490 I don't remember that comment was posted 2 years ago
@@hangingthief ok. And yes, this was posted 2 years ago
That was... somewhat "interesting". Well... "interesting" is almost certainly a giant exaggeration.
I did however appreciate seeing Jordan Peterson engage in a discourse that isn't explicitly in reference to "Policts and Society" and his "axiological values that he ascribes to the aforementioned.
There really wasn't anything " groundbreaking.
Indeed, when it comes the matter of "Truth", the proposition "is my wife cheating on me" is a "binary matter" (She is or she isn't).
But, we can (I'm only playing Devil's Advocate here) insist that claims Re/ "Truth" must require "Metaphysical Context". So... If the "wife is cheating", we qualify the "fact" according to various metrics (Axiomatic, Identity, Historical, Cultural, et. al).
Can we truly call it "Truth" if it's not contextualized according to "Metaphysical effect"?
Once again. I'm just playing "Devil's Advocate" for "fun". I wouldn't actually say this to a buddy who is "tearfully" divulging to me that his wife is cheating on him.
If I did that, I'd be a real douche.
And... strangely enough, I think THAT "fictitious anecdote" serves as a Testament as to why "Pragmatism" is important.
I don’t care what people say about Ayn Rand...she was a God send.
12:05 - He goes on to emphasize a DISEASE
How condemnation is perceived and used is the crux of valid consciousness.
Not chaos or crisis....both are manifestations of condemnation. Say the word J.P.
Could you elaborate on this? I do think it is important to think about how we condemn because there is the importance of being honest but at the same time, condemnation as such doesn't tend to have much of an impact on the condemned, speaking of questions regarding "pragmatic" rationales.
Existence is and isn’t.
I think therefore I am therfore I exist.
There were a few important psychological analyses missing from Peterson's Psychological Significance of the Bible Series- 1. Satan is known as "the accuser", the psychological significance of accusing 2. "Thou shalt not kill", how important it is for your prefrontal cortex perhaps?! 3. As cited via Sister Jean Prejean by Neurobiologist Prof. Robert Sapolsky " To err is human, to forgive, divine "- What our psychological evolution has to attenuate to with regard to forgiveness as a positive turnover of sorts, as a healthy psychological transition which can technically even reform a psychopath- see RUclips example of molested child turned psychopath (should have been described as " sociopath " in my opinion) who was retaught values technically via punishment/ reward system in her brain. Also amygdala retraining has a lot to say about that, via CBT too.
slambangwallop he held back on NUMEROUS occasions. ..lol
I think he realizes his own 'privilege' from being a rising star and didn't want to bully the other speakers by constantly interrupting them with facts and logic and truth. ..
Jordan hints at men being too emotional when a big part of his appeal was that he openly showed his emotions. one of the most emotional public figures I’ve ever seen
Greg salmeiri and yaron brook sound like hegelians, maybe this is what slavoj zizek talks about as going back to hegel
None of these speakers grasp that OBJECTIVITY means knowing the world independently of human minds and especially, language. And, of course, none address this at all. As to Darwin, his contribution at all this s to view "knowledge" as a tool for survival, not some metaphysical seance with the noumenal world of Platonic forms and the like. This was Rorty's polemic and is protected by an iron-clad logic.
In pragmatism u can have subjevtive facts
@Ruben O. subjective truths is what is being experienced and they are truthful in a sense that the person experiencing these truths can be certain of them
Objective truths, by contrast, are ones that are not always necessarily directly experienced, and I give an example of this from colour vision. Hence, we cannot be as certain of them as we can of subjective truths, at least not experientially.
The existence of god can be something that is experienced u can read about external epistemology, the works of alvin plantinga or ibn taymiyya
But the existence of a god can be objectevely scrutenised
When someone lays out the evidence
I thing from what i see from many clips of jordan
Is when he is saying "what ia real"
He means if there is no god no real meaning could come to this world
The problem with sam is that he believes in darwinism
The main purpose is survival and reproduction
Having good morals have zero meaning in survival and reproduction
David berlinski says it in a lovely way
He says it is hard to think that aristotle who is looking for truth (which is more embeded in morality) would have more girls than a layman who is not looking for truth
In reality it is the opposite
I hope i didn't straw man you
@Ruben O. "We can trust the scientific method (objective truth"
i am sorry to say but science has a lot of subjectivity in it
khun calls it theory ladenness
u can read the works of thomas kuhn or lakoff they are both philosophers of science
and they dismantle this idea
"If there is no "god" there would be no morals?
Says who?"
i am saying this is what he means i think
he quotes a lot dostoevsky "without god, everything is permitted"
"Sam defines morality as well-being and it has nothing to do with survival. "
well this is what jordan is referring to
if you believe in evolution then you should pick something that is compatible with it
and that is the whole point of pragmatism
which is consistency in your world view
and well being is different than survival and reproduction
so he has an inconsistency according to pragmatism and jordan
in pragmatism the main question is
what is the consequence of your ideas? is it consistent with your other beliefs?
for sam they are not consistent
well being has nothing to do with darwinism and that is what jordan is attacking
"If you have a different definition for mortality like "whatever god X, Y or Z says" or "To cause as much pain as possible" then let us talk and see which morality is best for humanity and what measurements can be defined as best."
and just one more thing science is not a tool that gives you value
samir okasha who is a philosopher of science says in his book philosophy of science
"science is essentially a value free activity, its jib is just to provide info about the wrold"
let us finish the first idea
@Ruben O. "Many thought killing some children was a way to protect their crops"
till now many do so
america killed a lot of kids in the iraq war
"We can now test claims to find objective truth"
this is what academics did refute
u can go and read the the names that i gave you
i ll give u a quote by a philosopher of science called paul feyerabend
"The separation of state and church must be complemented by the separation of state and science, that most recent, most aggressive, and most dogmatic religious institution."
"Science is essentially an anarchic enterprise: theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives"
science doesn't give you truth kuhn made that clear in his book the structure of scientific revolution
all it gives you is working models
lakoff in his book philosophy in the flesh made it clear that science is not objective
he describes the theories as arbitrary narratives
i can give you more references if you want
if we are not gonna agree on this point i don't think there any point of going any further in this discussion
"Without objective truth we suffered."
now we are suffering the most i ll give sme of the problems we are facing
existential crisis, existential vacuum, pollution, the spread of relativism, spread of nihilism, profits come first, nuclear weapons, high rates of suicides ... and many more
but u didn't respond to another point
"Sam defines morality as well-being and it has nothing to do with survival. "
well this is what jordan is referring to
if you believe in evolution then you should pick something that is compatible with it
and that is the whole point of pragmatism
which is consistency in your world view
and well being is different than survival and reproduction
so he has an inconsistency according to pragmatism and jordan
in pragmatism the main question is
what is the consequence of your ideas? is it consistent with your other beliefs?
@Ruben O. now u strawmaned my arguments
I gave u academics u still refuse to accept that science is no objective
I don't think we should continue
Have a nice day
see,THIS IS WHERE PETERSON IS VULNERABLE
THE PRAGMATIST EPISTEMOLOGY
It seems like Peterson has a social tinge on his comprehension of philosophy. I read Pragmatism by William James today. If you consider his intentions as a speaker I think you will understand the point he made a lot more clearly
The white haired guy totally messed the point
401st view. :3
These naive people don't even come close to having Jordan Peterson's IQ.
Is that really what you took away from this? Okay, you like Peterson thats fine, I enjoy his work too but why would you go into this with that mindset and completely dismiss everyone else? Seems pointless to even watch the video in the first place.
Newton>James
FACTS>fuzzy pragmatism
I'm no fan of Sam Harris but he destroyed Peterson on this quackery
Except pragmatism helps explain one of the greatest pitfalls of empiricism and that is that it is not objective. Objectivism implies a priori truth; that is, truth that exists outside of experience or observation. It is true by definition (I.e. 1+1=2). It is deductive and absolute. Empiricism will always have a pitfall in claiming its outcomes to be “true” in that it is a posteriori, or reliant on sensory experience and observation. The former is necessary and the latter is contingent. You can have no contingent objectives, at least without pragmatism. Pragmatism allows you to say “for all intents and purposes, this is true,” and thereby act in a way that’s useful in life. For that purpose we say that relativity is true because it gets us the correct answers, therefore it is true for all intents and purposes. However, a hundred a years from now a new theory will likely supersede it and a hundred years after that a new theory and so on. This is the nature of empiricism: new data necessitates new interpretation and thus new definitions of truth. Therefore you have to make the conclusion up for yourself, is science objective? Factually, no because it is empirical and bound to change as new data is collected. Hell, Newton was subject to this when Einstein came along and showed where he wasn’t absolutely factual, yet we still say newton is true because he gets us the correct answers and makes accurate predictions in most applicable scenarios.
By the way, I’m no fan of either Peterson or Harris but I still think pragmatism is useful.
Lmao @ FACTS
@@coolvids841 👏🏽