New word thanks.

@Fernapple You are most welcome.

@KKGator

Twatwaffle? Damn, I love that.

I am going to do my best to try and use that before the day is over.

I think I know who I am going to use it on.

Let me practice first. "Colton, don't be such a god damn f***** twatwaffle."

Oh, this is perfect. Thanks.

@Heathenman Enjoy!

This is basically what I've seen elsewhere with Peterson also.

Sam Harris claimed, according to Peterson, that people could shift from a grounding in the transcendent to a belief in a purist rationality that attributed to other people equivalent value. Peterson is, of course, discussing Dostoevsky so the context is important. Dostoevsky is writing about a Russia where orthodox Christianity is the expression of transcendence. What isn’t said is the traditional Christian concept of the spark of divinity of man. In the new Russia, Rashkolnikov has lost that belief. So the money-lender he murdered did not have equivalent value. Harris believes (or maybe I should say did believe) that the new rationality would come pre-equipped with axioms that took millennia to develop. Just watch Peterson address that opinion in the closing minutes of the video.

@brentan Which axioms do you refer to, and why do you think it took millennia for them to develop?

@brenton I believe that Voltaire would have promoted atheism except he feared that common people could not function without moral teachings, and that the masses would degenerate into rioting thugs. So, Peterson's concern is far from original, and suffers from the same fallacy as Voltaire, the belief that common people need a concocted morality to corral their behavior.

I don't believe Harris ever believed that a new rationality would come pre-equipped with axioms comparable to those in the scriptures. With or without scriptures, people behave well enough. However, it is likely that as people leave the myths behind, ordinary reflection provides ethical direction.

Plus, the supposed axioms developed in ancient scriptures are far from a moral high ground; our society has take impressive steps that best divine morality, and now, it is the divine morality from scripture that impedes that progress. Does Peterson ever admit that? (To be sure, Eastern Orthodoxy is every bit as idiotic as all the other forms of Christianity.)

@greyeyed123 I'm talking about the axioms that came through the Axial Age and were passed on to us through our Judeo-Christian heritage. In the context of the video, the axiom is the creditation of the spark of divinity in man which Dostoevsky saw us losing in Crime And Punishment.

@racocn8 I can’t help thinking you’re either confusing Voltaire with Hobbs or conflating the two. I understand you’re just expressing an interpretation of Voltaire but I suspect it wouldn’t hold up to inspection. Peterson’s lectures are all based on the teachings of the intellectual giants whose shoulders he stands on so there is no claim to be original in content. The talent lies in bringing all these ideas together and suggesting how to apply the best teachings in our lives.

Harris did believe we could begin a new era with pre-installed axioms. I’m not sure he still holds that view. In the video, Peterson is discussing Dostoevsky who is living on the very border of the new era. I really don’t know what to say about ‘With or without scriptures, people behave well enough’. Surely that’s just wishful thinking? My own opinion might be coloured by watching the change from the awful period of the iron rule of the Catholic Church in Ireland to watching an even more awful period as we lie between the loss of the old axioms and the virtual non-recognition of the humanitarian values, except among some intellectuals. For me, this experience suggests to me that Dostoevsky was right.

While our modern morals often best many old scriptural laws, those laws were always being modified over time. The New Testament itself is a testament to the progression of moral standards from the Old Testament. Peterson’s point is that we did not get to where we are now out of the blue.

Buy what standard and methodology do we measure which religions are most moral?

@Gwendolyn2018
OK, so how do we quantify that objectively, accurately, and thoroughly?

@skado I would prefer no religion but if we must choose then there are branches of Christianity and Islam but Jainsm and Buddhism because of their pacifist nature.

@Gwendolyn2018
Thank you for accepting.

How is what Peterson is saying different from what, say, Joseph Campbell said? I just don't see anything very insightful about what he is saying. You say it is not a simple idea, but it seems very simple to me and I think I understand everything he's saying--and none of it is new, and when he is pressed on points, it seems he is saying very little (ie, god may be metaphorical, we live by these metaphors, they help us understand our collective unconscious, etc; these are all very standard, old ideas). I've read the entire Western canon, so I'm not a slouch. I'm just at a loss as to how this is complex.

@greyeyed123
It may be that you are just way ahead of the pack. Most people are still back at the struggle over whether God exists or not. That’s a simple formulation. The idea that God is an abstraction of something that is very real is a level of complexity that escapes the average mind, even though it may not seem all that complex to you or me. And yes, he’s saying much the same as Campbell said, but even though Campbell was very popular after the Moyers series, very few people actually read his books and fewer still grasped the deeper implications. Today he is all but forgotten publicly, as far as I can tell.

So yes, it’s an old idea, a lot older than Joseph Campbell, but still in relative obscurity as far as the general public is concerned. Mostly what we hear is from people who passionately believe in a literal god and from people who passionately disbelieve in that same literal god, but very few voices extolling the virtues of living a religious discipline while not believing literally. I’m sure there are ideas much more complex than this, but this is more complex than “god exists or doesn’t.”

@skado I don't think Peterson has ever copped to not believing literally in a god. He always dances around that issue.

What would be the difference between the virtues of living a disciplined life versus the virtues of living a religiously disciplined life? I understand the role of mythology, ritual, etc., in a religiously disciplined life. But I would be much more in the Hitchens camp (even before Hitchens said such things) that literature, art, and philosophy in the widest possible scope--even including personal histories and myths, and personal philosophies, and various religious stories and myths AS literature--are the prisms through which we can live functional, disciplined lives. We can even invent our own rituals as we go, in small or large groups, or even by ourselves alone. In fact, all of these is what I've done, with quite a lot of success.

@greyeyed123
I think you’re right about that. I’ve never heard him say “I don’t believe in a literal god.” I’ve also never heard him say he does. He has, though, almost every time he speaks about the subject, acknowledged the option of god-as-metaphor, even sometimes saying it doesn’t even matter which way one envisions it, so it’s clear he recognizes the view as a viable alternative. This of course is not an attitude to be found among fundamentalist theologians or religion popularizers like Ken Ham.

Peterson does indeed dance around this subject, maybe more than any other subject. I don’t claim to know what his reason for dancing is. I could imagine several. Maybe he’s a lying snake-oil salesman, trying not to offend any potential customer. Maybe he’s not sure what he thinks about it, himself, yet. I’ve heard him say the question makes him uncomfortable. Maybe he knows exactly what he thinks about it but wrestles with the best way to express what he feels. Maybe it’s something I haven’t guessed.

I’m not sure there is necessarily a difference between “the virtues of living a disciplined life versus the virtues of living a religiously disciplined life?” other than what we choose to call it, or maybe how we think about it. The devil is in the details here. Maybe it’s a continuum instead of a dichotomy. Maintaining health by doing regular exercise would qualify as discipline, but probably not as religion. Adding yoga to the regimen might be considered a baby step in the direction of religion but not exclusively religious. Adding meditation to those starts to blur the lines. Add a regular attendance to a meeting of like-minded people who also volunteer for charitable activities and you have a religion for most practical purposes.

Any personal mental/emotional/attitudinal discipline, with or without co-practitioners (monastic means alone) which liberates the individual from existential angst, and turns their experience of life toward one of heartfelt gratitude, humility, and service is, by my definition, a religious discipline, regardless of presence or absence of institutional support or tradition. Becoming a great golfer, on the other hand, is not.

I can agree with Hitchens on his point enthusiastically. The main difference being that my definition of religion does not require the inclusion of a literal belief in the supernatural, whereas his, oddly, appears to.

In his book "12 rules for life". he uses the mythology of Adam and Eve and "the fall" and the story of Cain and Abel to explain our current state several times.. . He gives very complex explanations of what the stories mean when probably a much simpler one would suffice.

Life must have been really hard for the people after they gave up the hunter gatherer lifestyle to be agriculturalists and somewhere in the distant memory was this much easier lifestyle. Couldn't this be the garden of Eden they were evicted from.

The best explanation of the Cain and Abel story was fromauthor Daniel Quinn. Cain depicted the farmers who grew crops and Abel depicts the nomadic herdsmen and the story is about the conflict between them.

True. But you'll go to hell

@freeofgod Using one's own intellect and reasoning process will rule out the existence of god(s) and therefor heaven and hell but I understand your comment.

@jlynn37 , but it's the fear of hell that keeps the money, and fools, rolling in.

Not sure where you get the idea Peterson is offering something "simple". Most of the complaints I hear about him are that he is too complex, which I think he is. I've never heard anything simple come out of his mouth. If anything, he has a great talent for making everything unnecessarily complex.

@skado The whole "make your bed" thing. The "complex" language is mostly just bs used to dress everything else up. (Also, he literally wrote a book that is a list of "12 Rules for Life". The first one is stand up straight, lol. Doesn't get much more simple than that. Dr. Laura literally wrote several books about "10 Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives", etc. There were many of the "10 Stupid Things" books.)

@skado This is what I mean by simple:

Rule 1 Stand up straight with your shoulders back

Rule 2 Treat yourself like you would someone you are responsible for helping

Rule 3 Make friends with people who want the best for you

Rule 4 Compare yourself with who you were yesterday, not with who someone else is today

Rule 5 Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them

Rule 6 Set your house in perfect order before you criticise the world

Rule 7 Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)

Rule 8 Tell the truth – or, at least, don’t lie

Rule 9 Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t

Rule 10 Be precise in your speech

Rule 11 Do not bother children when they are skate-boarding

Rule 12 Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street

@greyeyed123
I read every page of the book. Did you?

@greyeyed123 Nobody who read the book could say something so incorrect about it. He brings all his knowledge of psychology and related expertise, together with personal experience to bear on every topic in the book.

@skado, @brentan I have not read the book. I have watched and listened to many hours of him, and didn't hear anything terribly profound. What is it that you think he has insight about? Specifically?

@greyeyed123 I think it boils down to meaning. As the world changes and people are trying to keep up with it and make sense of it, he educates us about where we have come from – using mythology, religion, psychology and then helping people to find a place, their own meaningful place to give their lives value. I love the way he brings the works of Jung, Piaget, Frankl and a host of other experts to elucidate his points.

@greyeyed123
Peterson is both overrated and underrated. People seem to think he’s a god or a devil. I think he gives new voice to an old idea that is worth reiterating. He’s a central figure, along with the guys and gals of the IDW, and others, who represent a transitional movement in our culture. I think it’s an important movement in a good direction.

@brentan I guess I'm just not seeing anything new. I understand all the names he drops, but I've read all of those people (I'm unfamiliar with Frankl). My criticism was just that he floats simple ideas and then supports them with names and ideas that are all very common among educated people. It is meant to appear profound or insightful, when really it isn't.

How is what Peterson says different than what, say, Joseph Campbell said? It seems pretty much the same to me, except with a bit of a conservative flair and a lot of name dropping. And as I said, I've read the entire Western canon, and am very well read beyond that, so within that context I am not getting much out of anything Peterson is saying. It just falls flat to me.

@skado That's fine. I just don't see it.

@greyeyed123 Does it not seem reasonable then, with your broad reading, that Peterson will mean less to you than to the many of us who were introduced to these things through him? For me, he has opened up a world of thinking that has enhanced my life and lead me to an appreciation for what it is to be a human being.

@brentan The only problem is that he often makes leaps that are unwarranted, or obfuscates the meanings of things, which will not be obvious to those not familiar with the things he alludes to.

It just seems really grandiose to me to say Jordan Peterson helped anyone appreciate what it means to be a human being. I would actually read Jung and Freud and Dostoevsky. I would actually pick up Aristotle and Plato, etc. I think even Peterson himself would encourage that.

@greyeyed123 I would have to hear what leaps or obfuscations he makes. The accusations usually don't stand up to investigation. Whatever the appearance of being grandiose, many people have had their lives enhanced through his lectures.I'm very familiar with Dostoevsky and have some knowledge of the philosophers, initiated by Peterson and these days developed by the likes of Robert Pirsig and John Vervaeke's lectures on YT. I have even come to enjoy the wonders of the philosophy of William Blake so I have a lot to thank Peterson for.

@brentan There are so many. But one might be that Jung's ideas were not empirical (or Freud's, for that matter). They might be an interesting metaphorical way to think about myth, the psyche, etc., but taking them as fact and running with them in an extended manner is just woo that feels profound and interesting if you don't know any better. (Peterson does these kind of things all the time.)

There are so many others you can research. But let me just say that no single person could ever be credited with teaching me what it means to be human. And if a particular person is credited with that for someone else, and that particular person is drawing from all kinds of other places but adding little to nothing of his own (and when that little extra is misleading), I get nervous.

From my perspective, you are giving far too much credit to Peterson on multiple levels.

@greyeyed123
Why is being empirical a requirement here but not in the embrace of “literature, art, and philosophy in the widest possible scope”?

@skado Because no one who advocates for reading literature, art, and philosophy in the widest possible scope is claiming it is necessary to come to an understanding of morality, etc. Peterson DOES claim certain myths (god myths, for example) are necessary to understand morality, etc.

Peterson is not simply claiming it is a convenient metaphorical tool to use to understand complex human issues. He is saying the myth is necessary for, and integral to, those issues. He even makes claims that atheists aren't really atheists if they behave in moral ways because they live in a culture with a mythological construct at its base, and thus are not really atheists (which is not entirely clear, but he has said this many times).

@greyeyed123
“Because no one who advocates for reading literature, art, and philosophy in the widest possible scope is claiming it is necessary to come to an understanding of morality, etc.”

but they are

“the prisms through which we can live functional, disciplined lives.”

?

@skado But who are? WHO says those things are necessary the same way Peterson says god myths are necessary?

The fact that I said they are prisms through which we can live functional, disciplined lives uses the word can. I'm not (and no one else is) saying it is absolutely necessary.

Peterson is saying certain myths are absolutely necessary and integral to moral understanding, etc.

@greyeyed123
“Peterson is not simply claiming it is a convenient metaphorical tool to use to understand complex human issues. He is saying the myth is necessary for, and integral to, those issues. He even makes claims that atheists aren't really atheists if they behave in moral ways because they live in a culture with a mythological construct at its base, and thus are not really atheists (which is not entirely clear, but he has said this many times).”

That old-fashioned understanding of the word atheist resonates with me, because it was how people used the word when I was a child. Atheist just referred to an immoral person. In my very Christian environment, the phrase, “a good Christian” did not distinguish between a Christian and a Muslim or a Buddhist; it distinguished between a moral person and an immoral one.

I can understand how Peterson could simply mean that since morality and mythological stories about morality come from the same place (biology; which he talks about a lot) they are, at some level, indistinguishable.

@skado

"That old-fashioned understanding of the word atheist resonates with me, because it was how people used the word when I was a child. Atheist just referred to an immoral person. In my very Christian environment, the phrase, “a good Christian” did not distinguish between a Christian and a Muslim or a Buddhist; it distinguished between a moral person and an immoral one."

Except Peterson told Matt Dillahunty he wasn't an atheist because he had morals, and that the only reason you could value other people implicitly is directly from something very much like a god belief (even if it was just co-opted from the surrounding culture).

"I can understand how Peterson could simply mean that since morality and mythological stories about morality come from the same place (biology; which he talks about a lot) they are, at some level, indistinguishable."

Peterson says so much more than that mythological stories and morality come from biology. So much more. If that was all he was saying, no one would care.

What do you think about his ideas about the metaphorical substrate?

@skado I really feel like we are talking about two different people. I'm talking about the Jordan Peterson in this video:

There are so many things in this video that directly contradict the characterization of his positions in this thread.

@greyeyed123
Sorry for the unclear formatting. What I meant to say was:
“Because no one who advocates for reading literature, art, and philosophy in the widest possible scope is claiming it is necessary to come to an understanding of morality, etc.” but they are “the prisms through which we can live functional, disciplined lives.”? I didn’t mean “they are claiming.”

“Peterson is saying certain myths are absolutely necessary and integral to moral understanding, etc.”

I realize it’s impractical to ask for sources in a freewheeling discussion such as this, but I’ll admit I’d be surprised to see such an exact quote from him. I can easily see how people might interpret his words that way, but I’m doubting that was what he was trying to convey. I’ve never seen him say that.

@skado He says so several times in the Dillahunty debate. I've heard him say it elsewhere. He references his books. I've not read them, but I just assumed it was part of his overall schtick.

Minute 36:00+ in the above. That's when he goes on about the metaphoric substrate that we absolutely need and would be lost without. (He claims at 41:50 that we could not have poetry, drama, music, etc., without god, and that all self-described "atheist poets" only think they are godless. He is not simply using "atheist" to mean immoral. He's saying god belief, even if it is myth, is absolutely necessary for morality. This isn't the only place he says this.)

(Someone in the audience later in the vid tries to get at what he means by his own belief in god. They ask him if all conscious, human minds stopped existing, would god stop existing. He basically avoids the question entirely and doesn't answer it. If he was only thinking of god as a metaphor as the basis of human morality, etc., it would seem the natural answer to that question would be yes. If he was thinking of god as something more than metaphor--an actual agent in reality--then the natural answer would be no.)

@greyeyed123
I saw the Dillahunty interview and I felt I understood JP’s comment, in the sense that I have explained. How else could it be explained? I think he’s exactly right about metaphor. We are, biologically, that is to say genetically, evolutionarily, a story-telling species. Even our most prosaic language is based on metaphor. We can’t communicate without metaphor. We are also, genetically, a moral (and immoral, but that’s another discussion) species. Morality and mythology come from the same source. They are inseparable. The “New Atheists” think that atheism is nothing but a lack of belief in a literal god, but that is indeed a new fashion. The atheism, and godlessness that I grew up with was a rejection of moral constraints, in addition to a lack of interest in the accompanying stories.

@skado Ok. We're just not seeing the same things. Others can look at them and judge for themselves. That's ok. I'm going to sleep now.

@greyeyed123
I gotta get some sleep too. We can pick it up tomorrow.

@greyeyed123 I guess we had better just agree to disagree about how much credit Peterson deserves.

@OwlInASack
detractors mostly, say he’s making issues sound more complex than they really are.

@skado What I said was that he dresses up simple advice with complex language to make it sound more profound.

@OwlInASack
His detractors are often as monolithic as his admirers, seeing only the side of him they choose, while the man himself is like all other men, a mixture of success and failure. His fears are those of the reactionary, while mine are the type suffered by progressives. His paranoia makes me nauseous. But I think he’s as sincere and genuine as humans can be, and I think his analysis of religion, in particular, is very nearly the most insightful, and accurate I’ve ever heard from any camp.
Possibly without ever succeeding fully, he makes the most heroic effort toward non-partisanism I have seen in recent times. If ever there was a person who does not deserve to be seen through dichotomizing eyes, it is Jordan Peterson. He at least makes the effort. Almost every other human alive today is an unapologetic tribalist.

@OwlInASack Your point about him being impossible to understand is interesting. He sometimes implies he knows things that are not knowable or not communicable. But when pressed with a question that would reveal what that thing is he (implies he) thinks he knows, he cops out.

@OwlInASack
Better person? I wouldn’t begin to know how to measure that. But I know several people who appreciate his contributions to the public conversation, and I count myself among them.

@skado "I think his analysis of religion, in particular, is very nearly the most insightful, and accurate I’ve ever heard from any camp."

What is the insight? What is the accuracy?

"Almost every other human alive today is an unapologetic tribalist."

It's this kind of bizarre (and ironic) hyperbole that troubles me. The other statement from brentan about how Peterson taught him what it means to be a human being is also troubling.

@greyeyed123
Well, we’re talking about many hours of lectures and interviews and debates about a subject that has more written about it than any other in human history, so I’m not sure I could do it justice with a blurb on a dating site post (with only my limited skills) but it has to do with his apparent understanding that to inquire or pontificate about the existence of God is not really an interesting or even useful question. The more productive inquiry is into the nature of this thing we refer to by this name, god. And I think he gets it right when he expresses it in terms of an abstraction of our species’ highest ideals and a focal point of our collective aspirations toward meaning.

And, no, that’s not a new idea by any means, but in a time when most public debate sounds like “Yes it is! - No it isn’t!” I welcome a new iteration of this very old, and nuanced, and I believe historically accurate, idea.

@greyeyed123

“"Almost every other human alive today is an unapologetic tribalist."

It's this kind of bizarre (and ironic) hyperbole that troubles me. The other statement from brentan about how Peterson taught him what it means to be a human being is also troubling.”

Don’t be troubled. It’s just hyperbole - a harmless figure of speech. That’s the bane of literalism; its brittleness.

@skado I don't find that position accurate, and you already acknowledged it is not new (so to me it is not insightful).

@skado Figures of speech are meant to make things more clear, not less clear.

@greyeyed123
Different strokes.

@greyeyed123
I think figures of speech can also be used for economy, expressiveness, or ease of handling, etc. In certain situations clarity can be sacrificed for brevity. Clarity is what future discussions are for. It takes time.

@skado Figures of speech can also be used to equivocate, argue by false analogy, and obfuscate (all of which Peterson does routinely). Saying the clarity will come later is also obfuscation, especially when the salient questions have been asked point blank and left unanswered. That is not clarity. It's just stalling in the face of obvious criticisms to tenuous positions.

The claim that whether or not a god exists is an unimportant, useless, or uninteresting question is just a ploy at sounding smart and a gimmick for becoming famous. This is why I do not find Peterson genuine or convincing. He's using this gimmick to make quite a good living via crowdfunding. Which is fine with me if people want to send him money. Live and let live. There just isn't any THERE there in terms of insight or accuracy.

@greyeyed123
The hyperbole I was defending was my own (which you commented on) not anything Peterson said. The idea that introductory commentary has more responsibility to get the ideas in the ballpark, and only further discussion can hope to clarify, is my comment; not Peterson’s. The claim that the question of god’s existence is less important than the question of god’s nature is all mine (though I suspect JP understands this) and I’m not expecting fame from my AgDotCom postings (though I wouldn’t turn down money if you want to send me some )
I am now thoroughly convinced that you do not “find Peterson genuine or convincing”. I am not here to defend JBP, or to convince you he’s convincing. I just like discussing ideas. Thanks for sharing your opinions.

@skado "The claim that the question of god’s existence is less important than the question of god’s nature is all mine (though I suspect JP understands this)"

The nature of his existence is part of his nature. It's this kind of equivocation that is baffling to me.

"I am not here to defend JBP, or to convince you he’s convincing. I just like discussing ideas. Thanks for sharing your opinions."

I love ideas and discussion as well. Cheers.

@greyeyed123
“The nature of his existence is part of his nature. It's this kind of equivocation that is baffling to me.”

I’m happy to try to clarify if you’re interested, or to drop it if not. The basic idea is that it’s pointless to try to support or deny the existence of a thing that is ill-defined (yer basic ignosticism). So coming to an agreement on the nature of the thing is really the determining factor in whether it exists. I’d not spend a minute trying to prove or disprove a literal, sentient, all-powerful creator-person exists, but it seems self-evident to me that personifications of ultimate ideals do exist in the minds of humans, and are as “real” as other powerful, non-material phenomena, such as mathematics, for example.

Peterson always talks about god in this latter way, and I don’t see any evidence that it is about equivocation, but I agree it’s the more accurate, even scientific, way to talk about god. Evolutionary Psychology exists.

@skado

"Peterson always talks about god in this latter way, and I don’t see any evidence that it is about equivocation, but I agree it’s the more accurate, even scientific, way to talk about god. Evolutionary Psychology exists."

So in the debate video above, when the audience member asks Peterson if god would stop existing if all human minds that believe in god stopped existing...

why did he not say yes?

He did not say no, either. He said he couldn't answer the question. The only explanation for that is equivocation. If he is ONLY using god as a metaphor, then that metaphor ceases to exist when it is no longer in any minds. He is saying much more than you seem to think he is saying.

"So coming to an agreement on the nature of the thing is really the determining factor in whether it exists."

No one has ever claimed that various "gods" as literary, philosophical, or abstract concepts don't exist AS literary, philosophical, or abstract concepts, so this is just more obfuscation and equivocation.

Peterson makes claims that the "metaphorical substrate" is necessary for humans to have an ethos at all, and we would be lost without it, and that a belief in god or a belief IN the belief in gods is necessary to have that metaphorical substrate. He says so right in the video debate above. This is why everything you say about Peterson baffles me.

@skado Also "evolutionary psychology" is controversial as an actual science, so saying "it exists" is the same kind of error Peterson makes when alluding to Jung as if Jungian principles are verified fact, etc. "Evolutionary psychology" exists as conjecture and speculation, but beyond that it seems to be only a set of random hypotheses that some assume are conclusions and run with them as if they were tested via falsifiable methodology, verified, reproduced, and made specific, confirmed predictions. Evolutionary psychology does not do any of these things. That is a major problem.

@greyeyed123
It's been a few months since I watched that video. I'll watch it again when I have time, and see if I can respond to your specific questions. Maybe later today.

@skado I'm signing off the net for the rest of the day before I spend all day here. I would be interested in your reaction to Peterson floating that magic mushrooms are evidence for mystical/supernatural experiences. There are other specific questions I would have about the vid, but I've forgotten them. I may come back late this evening.

@greyeyed123
I shouldn't have capitalized evo psych, because I wasn't referring to the science per se, but the thing it studies. I think it's pretty well established that certain mental functions are products of evolution, like the capacity for language, culture, etc. And as a side note... I generally assume that anything that comes out of a person's mouth is just their opinion, no matter how authoritatively they deliver it, or what kind of credentials they hold. I don't think it's a crime to express an opinion confidently. It's just too cumbersome to remind an audience - in every sentence - that what you're saying is just your best understanding, given the facts you're aware of at the time. We should assume that in every case. Nothing is absolutely certain, even the best established science. I'm confident enough, for example, to state unequivocally that fear of spiders is a part of our evolved psychology, but if I learn later that it isn't, well... I'm fine with that too. I'm just stating what appears to be true to me at the moment. I try to base it on the best science I'm aware of. But that's the value of discussing it with other people - information is shared.

@OwlInASack
Define?

@greyeyed123
I enjoyed watching the video. It was better the second time around. A psychologist and a computer software designer talk about God. Popcorn please!

What are the contradictions? It only confirmed what I sensed about Peterson, in more precise language than I was using.

@OwlInASack
Are these people you have known personally, for years before they were influenced by JP, so you could make comparisons of their character before and after, or were they just jerks on the internet, where, as we know, pretty much everybody (present company excepted) acts like a jerk?

@OwlInASack
True. The right wing extremists have their own flavor, and many of them do follow Peterson. Peterson is, emotionally, conservative, so they are attracted to his anti-PC rants, etc., but JP does not promote right-wing extremism - in fact, regularly speaks against it and all extremism. I think he tries to help them come to their senses and become productive citizens, but I’ve seen no evidence that he knowingly fosters, or leads any kind of extremism.

@skado I'm not talking about the difference between absolute certainty and personal opinion. I'm talking about the difference between empirically verified, and woo dressed up to sound empirically verified. Evolutionary psychology has been beat up quite severely by scientific experts for very good reasons. (FYI, the capacity for language, etc, is not a part of evolutionary psychology.) Here is one example:
[freethoughtblogs.com]

@skado "What are the contradictions? It only confirmed what I sensed about Peterson, in more precise language than I was using."

We apparently have very different definitions of precise. Do you think the effects of magic mushrooms is evidence of mysticism? Do you still think Peterson only thinks of gods as metaphors when he refused to answer the question that if all human minds stopped existing, then would god stop existing also?

Do you agree that reality as such would stop existing if all human minds stopped existing?

Do you agree that belief in god (or the belief in the belief in god) is necessary for the metaphoric substrate underlying our ethos, and thus necessary for morality?

Do you agree that there are real things that cannot be put into propositions?

Do you believe atheist poets, artists, and musicians only think they are atheists?

Precise language? What are you talking about, sir?

@OwlInASack
Working out what he actually believes is definitely not simple. But where most of my fellow lefties attribute that to malevolence or even stupidity, I like to give the devil his due. I sense that he has his fair share of rightist demons he's grappling with, but he strives for, and preaches, centeredness, at least along the lines of chaos vs. order, and I think politically too really. I wish all conservatives could be as balanced. He is most definitely not a hard right ideologue. And if the actual hard right would adopt JP's stance overall (rather than just cherry-picking what they like) we'd all be a lot better off.

@greyeyed123
Well, PZ is a smart dude and he sure gets a lot of stuff right, but he's quite temperamental and tribalistic in his often vulgar and emotional pronouncements. He would love to have us believe that all those issues are "settled science" but they just aren't. Sociobiology, or what they now like to call Evolutionary Psychology is still in its infancy. Of course the newcomer is going to get beat up; that's how science works. Of course it's going to get a lot of stuff wrong before it gets it right, just like all new branches of science. But it's way too soon to write it off as bogus... or maybe too late, because it has, at minimum, already established itself as a contender.

To me, the word precise doesn't necessarily have anything to do with correctness or truth. It has to do with the degree of specificity, as opposed to generality. His language is more specific than my very general blatherings, but accuracy is another issue altogether. We may disagree on the truth value of his statements, but his descriptions are quite specific and detailed.

"Do you think the effects of magic mushrooms is evidence of mysticism?"

In true Petersonian style, I'll have to say, it depends on what you mean by mysticism. If you mean anything remotely supernatural, no, I don't. But if mysticism refers to as-yet-unscrutinized-by-science-but-otherwise-natural phenomena that gave rise to the field of human experience we arbitrarily named "mysticism", then quite possibly.

"Do you still think Peterson only thinks of gods as metaphors when he refused to answer the question that if all human minds stopped existing, then would god stop existing also?"

I'm not sure I ever did think Peterson only thinks of gods as metaphors. It's pretty clear to me that he makes room for that interpretation, which is a sign that he sees that side of things (unlike any fundamentalist ever) but he's agnostic enough to realize that there is bound to be more to reality than what modern science currently knows, so he's (obsessively, in my opinion) holding space for the yet to be discovered. He's never been shy about expressing his opinions and letting the chips fall where they may, even to the point of risking his job and career, so I'm not worried that he's a secret evangelical. If he was, he would say so boldly. He's not. He didn't "refuse to answer". He said "I don't think I know how to answer that." He then went on to speculate about the nature of consciousness and its relationship to reality, most of which I suspect will eventually be found to be barren territory, but I think he honestly felt he didn't know.

"Do you agree that reality as such would stop existing if all human minds stopped existing?"

No, I don't. And Peterson didn't claim it would. He just said he didn't know. Precisely speaking, none of us know.

"Do you agree that belief in god (or the belief in the belief in god) is necessary for the metaphoric substrate underlying our ethos, and thus necessary for morality?"

No, and that's not what he claimed... precisely.

"Do you agree that there are real things that cannot be put into propositions?"

I'm not sure I even understand that question. I think it's a semantic quagmire. What, exactly, do we mean by "real"? Are numbers real? Do ideas possess any reality? Do they exist? Are relationships real? Is an abstraction a real thing? Is attitude real? Are propositions real? I suspect that kind of talk may have esoteric philosophical or scientific meaning that I'm not familiar with.

"Do you believe atheist poets, artists, and musicians only think they are atheists?"

I don't feel I have to be rigid in my use of our shared language. If I see someone using the language differently (and I want to understand him or communicate with him) I try to see the pattern is his usage and in his thinking. Clearly, Peterson's understanding of the word, "atheist" is not limited to the pedestrian, twenty-first century usage of that word. So do we want to sever communications with him just so we can denounce him as deranged, or do we want to try to understand what he is getting at?

At 8:00 he says " ...and I also think that there's no doubt that there are different levels of sophistication of religious belief. You know, what I see happening, in this sort of discussion, say frequently, um, you know and again, like I said, I have a fair bit of respect for the atheist types, because they spend a lot of time thinking, and that's generally a good thing. I see most of their thinking directed at the fundamentalist types, the fundamentalist Christian types, mostly of the American persuasion, who suffer from the somewhat understandable illusion that the biblical corpus has the same epistemological and ontological status as a scientific theory, when it clearly doesn't."

Peterson says "it clearly doesn't." Well by the popular definition that would make Peterson an atheist wouldn't it. And we know he would not call himself an atheist, so we have to see that he is not using the word that way. I think we can safely assume he regards his own belief as being of the more sophisticated sort. He clearly doesn't think an atheist is just anyone who doesn't believe in a literal god, but more like... someone like Raskolnikov who has turned his back on his deepest, evolutionary substrate of morality, and who will most likely not be able to escape the psychological repercussions of such a betrayal of one's own nature. It has virtually nothing to do with the modern understandings found in organized religion today, or in popular culture.

So apparently, Peterson feels that someone who had turned his back on his own deepest moral nature wouldn't or couldn't then successfully pursue any authentic art form, regardless of his preferred identity relative to the existence or non-existence of a literal god.

I'm sure poets and artists are fully capable of discerning whether they believe in a literal god, but I may have to agree with our ol' buddy, JBP, that authentic art (not paintings of Elvis Presley on burgundy velvet) probably has to come from our metaphorical substrate.

@skado If most of what you say about Peterson is actually his positions, I'm unclear why he criticizes virtually everyone who holds those same positions. I've lost all interest in Jordan Peterson's ideas.

@greyeyed123
Who, for example, does he criticize? I'm not sure I know of anyone else who holds those positions.

@skado I've lost interest in this discussion. Cheers.

There certainly are a lot of justifiers of religion around, but Peterson is not at all typical of them. He is a decidedly atypical justifier of religion.

@Renickulous No he didn't. Jordan Peterson isn't necessary for learning and thinking.

@Renickulous Y’can’t read everything. A person has to be selective—look at reviews etc.