I may, justifiably, be accused of this post having a clickbait title. What it refers to, though, is a youtube debate between Philip Moriarty (a Physics Professor at the University of Nottingham) and Fred McVittie (whose credentials I, unfortunately, do not know). It was done as a series of shortish youtube clips, each presenting an opening statement, a first rebuttal, a second rebuttal, and closing remarks. The series can be found here.
I watched the whole series, and I found it very interesting. I don’t want to give away too much, but Tom McVittie was essentially arguing that Jorden Peterson is discussing some kind of greater truth (moral/societal) that encompases the universal truths that emerge from the scientific process. Philip Moriarty – on the other hand – argued that it’s quite hard to know what Jordan Peterson is saying, because it doesn’t make much sense and seems highly inconsistent; critisicing post-modernism, while essentially engaging in it himself.
I did, however, want to highlight something specific. Philip Moriarty stressed the epistimology of empiricism, which just means that truth emerges through collecting data, making observations, and testing hypotheses – the scientific method, essentially. Fred McVittie argued, in his closing statement, that some scholarship in the humanities doesn’t conform to this epistimology of empiricism. This – according to Fred McVittie – does not mean that this is not scholarship and that it can’t generate knowledge, or discover truths.
This suggestion really did make me stop and think; maybe I really have misunderstood some forms of scholarship within the humanities, and that what seems obscure and meaningless, might simply be an alternative epsitimology that I simply do not understand. In fact, it even seemed somewhat appealing. I think we can sometimes overplay the scientific method, in the sense that even within the physical sciences, not every step is a perfect representation of empiricism. We can make mistakes, we can over-interpret/mis-interpret data, we can use methods that are inapproriate, and we can draw conclusions that turn out to be wrong.
However, we only start to trust results when we’re confident the data is suitable, that the analysis methods are sound, and that the conclusions are justified. Even though every step may not be a good representation of empiricism, we still apply the epistimology of empiricism when determing the value of emergent truths. So, if there are areas in the humanities that can uncover knowledge and reveal truths without following something akin to empiricism, how do they do this? How can they be confident in the value of the knowledge/truths that they’ve uncovered, if they don’t go out and collect some data, or make some observations, or test their hypotheses?
So, I can see how there might be aspect of scholarship in the humanities that doesn’t conform to the epistimology of empiricism, but I can’t see how one can be claim to have uncovered new truths if one doesn’t do something that is essentially a form of empiricism.
On the other hand, if the kind of knowledge/truths that emerge from this non-empirical form of scholarship is not universal, but some kind of societal/moral knowledge/truth, then maybe it can emerge without undertaking any kind of empirical research. However, if this is the case, then is this knowledge/truth emerging, or being generated? In other words, if this non-empirical scholarship is revealing societal/moral knowledge/truths, or is it actually influencing what society regards as knowledge/truth. If the former, I still don’t see how this can not involve any form of empiricism. If the latter, how does this differ from someone successfully imposing some kind of ideology onto society? There’s nothing wrong with people promoting their views about knowledge/truth, but why does this qualify as scholarship?
To be clear, I’ve worked with people in the humanities, and published a number of social science papers, so this is certainly not a criticism of the humanities in general. If anything, I think social science research is very difficult, because you don’t have fundamental laws that underpin your discipline, and that constrain what can be “true”. However, I have found some of what I’ve come across to be quite bizarre (and have written about it on a number of occasions). I still don’t see how it is possible to reveal knowledge/truth without engaging in a form of empiricism, but I am willing to be convinced otherwise if someone is willing to spend some time explaining how this non-empirical process is actually able to uncover knowledge/truth.
...and Then There's Physics 
(Did not watch the videos yet.)
I prefer to acknowledge that there are other kinds of thinking about the world that are useful that are not science over calling every useful thought science.
“I still don’t see how it is possible to reveal knowledge/truth without engaging in a form of empiricism, but I am willing to be convinced otherwise if someone is willing to spend some time explaining how this non-empirical process is actually able to uncover knowledge/truth.”
The philosophy of science is quite useful, but not science, not empirical, not falsifiable.
Math?
Victor,
I agree, and I wasn’t suggesting that this isn’t the case. The question was more about whether or not this other form of thinking (that might be useful) can reveal truths/knowledge without applying some kind of empirical approach. I can see how this other form of thinking may lead to observations that will reveal a truth, I’m just not sure how it can do so by itself. Willard will probably chip in at some point 🙂
“Truths” is a bit a high bar, isn’t it. Also science does not provide that.
Mathematics is useful, Popper’s falsification criterion is useful.
The idea of mixing Peterson’s views and a concept of “moral truth” is more than a bit disturbing for me.
Yes, I realise this (it was also something discussed in the debate). I realise that science does not provide absolute truths (I should probably have been clearer about this in the post) but it does provide a mechanism for determining what some might call emergent truths, or scientific truths (or some other term that means that we’re pretty confident that some result is a good representation of reality). We can’t claim that it’s absolutely true, but we might still regard it as being as close to the truth as we can get at that time.
All I’m really getting at is that it would seem to need some form of empiricism to test the the ideas that some form of scholarship might be developing. It’s not clear to me that it’s possible to claim that some results is “true” (in the sense of correctly representing what it is that is being considered) if you don’t make observations, collect data, and test some kind of hypothesis.
As you say, this doesn’t mean that other forms of thinking isn’t useful. Of course, I may also be wrong and there is some way to be confident about knowledge that has emerged from some kind of non-emirical process, but I don’t – at this stage – see how this would work.
Joshua,
Maybe we should endeavour to not make this a discussion about Peterson, but – if people are interested – a discussion about whether or not knowledge can emerge from a process that is inherently non-empirical.
What you are after is not epistimology but consilience. The more science you know, the more everything fits together and the parts that don’t stand out jarringly. Scientists react by thinking about those bits and it often turns out that they were false. If not looking at them uncovers deeper consilience.
This is a point that the thrashers (those thrashing about in denial about various scientific issues) do not comprehend, that their harping on single issues does not impress anybody who understands any science, indeed it labels them as cranks. Science is a structure, but a house built with rebar not cards.
Sorry to have left this out, in the humanities, consilience is of little value, each thought stands on its own and the deciding factor is beauty broadly defined.
Eli,
Yes, I agree. We may take wrong turns, and follow dead ends, but we start to trust results when most (all?) of the evidence points in the same direction and is largely consistent.
Anders –
Point taken. Then I will rephrase.
The idea of mixing anyone’s views and a concept of “moral truth” is more than a bit disturbing for me.
I have just started listening, but the very concept of “moral truth” seems to me like an oxymoron. As to whether there is such a thing as a “scientific truth,” I am somewhat more agnostic, but I think it should be noted that in Moriarty’s first clip he disparages the notion of scientific truth as compared to relative states of probability of understanding.
I would like someone to describe for me a” moral truth,” and explain, ala Moriarty, how that “truth” might be “justified.”
Joshua,
I meant to put a smiley on my comment 🙂
Indeed, and I was maybe slightly lax in my post. However, I somewhat agree with Fred McVittie’s point that some things we might regard as essentially true, even if we can’t demonstrate that they are absolutely true.
This is what I would like too. I can understand that there are things that we (society) might regard as morally true and I can understand how people might want to study how we develop our moral framework. I’m still unclear, though, how some form of non-empirical scholarship can do so.
However, I somewhat agree with Fred McVittie’s point that some things we might regard as essentially true,..
I notice that McVittie caveats his criterion of “true enough” with an aside that he’s “not quite sure what [he] means by that.”. The problem for me thee is that I’m not sure how anyone might explain that as some absolute distinction.
It seems to me that a determination of “essentially true” is contingent on, or relative to, context – and hard to speak of in some general framework.
But accepting that there is a process by which various levels of “essentially true” might be “justified” for assertions of “scientific truth,” I am still puzzled by how various levels of “moral truth” might be justified. I heard Moriarty’s description of some sort of “evolutionary” framework used by Peterson, but I am left puzzled as to how that framework might be explained in more detail in some non*abstract sense. Thus far, from what I’ve seen, McVittie hasn’t really addressed that question. I look forward to further watching on that.
> The philosophy of science is quite useful, but not … empirical
I’m not sure that’s true. Most of the “useful” philosophy is grounded in experience.
WMC,
Yes, my impression is that it (the “useful” stuff, at least) ends up being relying on something empirical, even if it doesn’t necessarily start that way.
OP:
You may be overlooking that equally important foundation of Science, intersubjective verification, or ‘peer review’ in the broadest sense. As a method of explaining and predicting reality, i.e. the Universe that’s accessible to sensory perception, science is more successful than haruspicy only because it’s a way for its practitioners to try not to fool themselves. “The first principle is you must not fool yourself”, so individual scientists are rigorously trained in empiricism, i.e. how to record observations while paying attention to all possible ways they can be fooled. “You are the easiest person to fool”, however, and even the most disciplined empiricist can still fool herself. That’s why she relies on other equally well trained and disciplined specialists in her topic, whose collective expertise exceeds that of any one of them, to verify her results. Whether by attempting to replicate her findings empirically or by exposing flaws in her methods or assumptions, her peers can find errors she’s missed. Because scientists are inculcated with competitive skepticism as a cultural norm, peers don’t let their peers fool themselves.
Humanities deal with mental or emotional phenomena, that are inherently subjective. That is, their value and salience depend on the observer. If observations can’t be recorded empirically, one scholar’s finding can’t be rigorously verified by other scholars. They may offer truth under some kind of epistemology nevertheless.
“I think it should be noted that in Moriarty’s first clip he disparages the notion of scientific truth as compared to relative states of probability of understanding.”
I do not see giving understanding a probability an improvement over calling stuff true. How much percent was classical mechanics true before relativity? How much percent afterwards?
> What you are after is not epistimology but consilience.
Consilience can only be an epistemological concept. It is used to refer to the internal validity of a discipline, or to the external validity of a bunch of disciplines. The absolutist version of it goes back to Descartes’ project, where metaphysics rules everything. There’s another version in Bacon. Another version in Whewell. Et cetera. That there are many versions of consilience shows that Eli’s criteria excludes Eli’s standpoint on what should be considered an empirical science.
The long and short of it is that evidence is seldom decisive, and that the empirical sciences need that indecision to be distinct from the formal ones. Interpretations due to incompleteness are thus here to say. Our web of beliefs contains knowledge of variable faithfulness. Ultimately, we should not be able to segregate every kinds. I don’t see why we should. To paraphrase my avatar, I pity the fool who gets no cognitive experience out of poetry or music.
Epistemology (or even logic) cannot provide any safeguard against cranks such as Jordan. Neither does it justify Philip’s overall attitude.
NB. Edited the “segregate” part.
There are reasons to first kill the philosophers and Willard supplies them at an low epistomological cost. Consilience does not mean decisive nor complete, it means consistent across many areas of observation, not thumb sucking which, Eli agrees is can be an enjoyable cognitive experience for some. Indeed what science seeks to do is to extend consilient understanding across seemingly disjoint areas of experience. While until now this has not worked well, or at all, with mental gymnastics, tools are being gathered as we blather and we are making progress in biology at the molecular level.
Mal,
I can see this, but I don’t see why this has to be fundamentally non-empirical. It seems quite likely that there are areas of the humanities in which you wouldn’t necessarily expect to converge towards some kind of consistent picture, but that still doesn’t imply that this kind of scholarship would be non-empirical. The issue I’m trying to understand is if there is some kind of non-empirical scholarship from which knowledge can emerge without any form of empiricism.
Willard,
But isn’t this kind of the point? There are other “truths” (I really like a particular piece of music, poetry, art, etc). However, these aren’t truths that one can demonstrate in some empirical way. So, I think the issue (for me, at least) is to be clearer about what sort of knowledge/truth emerges from different forms of scholarship. Or, maybe, to be clearer about the goals of different forms of scholarship. For example, I would regard empirical work as having the goal of uncovering some kind of understanding of whatever it is that is being observed. Maybe, non-empirical scholarship is more about challenging us to think about whatever it is that is being considerered, rather than trying to directly uncover knowledge (I don’t know if the latter has merit, but it would at least make some kind of sense to me).
When a whole cadre of psychologists think that MTurk is the greatest thing since sliced bread (relative to say 18-20-year-old somethings college surveys) and that it takes five effin’ years to get a psychology PhD from the UoT (my shrink replied that this was “remedial” (I kid you not)) …
Long story short?
Since Willard last visited Jordan B Peterson here …
I’ve very much done the requisite math. Peterson can’t even get logos right (as in formal logic, not hero myths, particularly WRT Jesus and Christianity which is Peterson’s current YouTube guru series).
When all you have is statistics and a continual never ending bad string of sampling surveys anything is possible with that group of idiotarians.
To understand the individual you must truly study their roots. Go hard or go home.
Eli,
Willard is not a philospher – he is a romantic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_(Blake)
Willard:
If the formal sciences were decisive, they’d be all done by now.
While evidence is not always decisive, it is decisive just often enough to be damn useful for inquiring into the “what you know ain’t true” variability of our articles of faithfulness. It’s always better than the alternative. Or at least it is nineteen times out of twenty.
And while kinds may not segregate perfectly now, segregate perfectly tomorrow, segregate perfectly forever, because evidence, they nevertheless tend to segregate in a more consilient ways over time.
The latest and hip-hoppiest House Music of the Spheres is the Standard Model of quarks, leptons, and bosons dancing in relativistic space and time, longing for the harmonies.
Hell – Even formalists do interpretive dance:
> Consilience does not mean decisive nor complete, it means consistent across many areas of observation
As long as scientific commentators will rely on quasi circular definitions, there may be a market for philosophers. This kind of definition doesn’t even suffice to dodge the point that the unity of science is an old idea (emphasis not mine):
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-unity/
Killing philosophers has been tried before, but to appropriate their ideas may never have been offered as an argument to do so.
I’m more a new romantic than a neo-romantic, Rev:
I would prefer that we segregate theories using scientific tools, e.g.:
Meanwhile, metascientific commentaries remain metascientific.
aTTP:
The answer may hinge on the precise definitions of ’empirical’ and ‘knowledge’. In science, ’empiricism’ applies to careful observation of ‘real world’ (i.e. existing independently of any observer) phenomena, controlling for all possible sources of error; empirical observations become ‘knowledge’ only when they’re justified by ‘objective’, i.e. intersubjective, verification. Are you talking about some other kind of knowledge?
“So, if there are areas in the humanities that can uncover knowledge and reveal truths without following something akin to empiricism, how do they do this?”
It’s called sex, politics and religion. The three taboo subjects one learns to never discuss in “so called” normal social situations.
Political science? Now there’s an oxymoron if there ever was one.
“How can they be confident in the value of the knowledge/truths that they’ve uncovered, if they don’t go out and collect some data, or make some observations, or test their hypotheses?”
They are confident AND they can’t make the necessary observations because it is a system of belief, first and foremost,
For example, take tax cuts for the wealthy, also known as tinkle-on-me-and-you economics. It flat out doesn’t work, never has, but over here, across the pond, we will repeat this fundamental error for a third time in my adult life.
Societies are made to believe in stuff, damn the facts, damn the theories, damn the data, damn the logic, don’t you know.
Art teacher debates physicist. There’s a joke in there somewhere, I just know it.
Mal,
Indeed, I sometimes do wonder if the confusion is mostly to do with not clearly defining what we mean.
What I mean is some kind of understanding of whatever it is that is being considered. Can you gain understanding of something without trying to make observations (collect data) and somehow testing your ideas?
Fred “Teleprompter” McVittie tried but ultimately fails (meh, music teacher or art teacher is there really any difference), because he cheated, in that he used a written script in his final rebuttal.
Clarity of language is very important and overrides all other means of communication.
McVittie also fails to show any explicit examples (you know, their called citations) of whatever it was he is on about. I’m not too sure that saying that you can read-write-speak gibberish means much of anything if someone else doesn’t read-write-speak gibberish. All it really means is that you are hiding behind (or using) that gibberish as a tool to cover up your own incompetent and meaningless existence.
If anything, McVittie pushed me further from his post-modernist POV.
Ahh epistemology of science and absolute moral beliefs…
How nostalgic it is to be revisiting those ‘big’ questions one worried about as an idealistic youth when they were fashionable. there is some embarrassment at the memory of ideas you took seriously at the time. Given the apparent revival perhaps I should see if I have any flared jeans left in the back of the wardrobe !
You can justify empirical science from its utility, (it works, b*tches). Denying that on the internet is as ludicrous as denying Archimedes principle in a boat.
But the classic epistemological justification of science is that the A Priori assumption is that we exist in a material universe that is computable. It is discoverable by mathematical modelling from empirical (intra-subjective) observation of that material world with no need to invoke arbitrary, supernatural or non-material influences.
The justification for making that A priori assumption is that if we do NOT exist in a rationally discoverable material universe, using that as the NUll Hypothesis is the most effective way to find out where the universe deviates from that Naturalism and requires Supernatural intervention as an explanation.
As ATTP would like to avoid direct reference to the Jordan nonsense, here is another arguement against the concept of ‘Truth’ emerging only from empirical materialism. That deeper moral Truths are only accesable from perspective outside science which is blinded to their reality by its assumption that the universe is computable.
http://www.windowview.org/sci/pgs/38mat.naturl.a.html
“The topic of material naturalism is hardly insignificant. Much of the ”thought-scape” of today’s thinking is shaped by this point of view. Much of the working assumptions of western culture rest on this as reality.
Take away the assumption that absolutely all explanations are material, as expressed by some thinkers, and the field is wide open to again explore our existence in an objective way.”
(I gave up the technicolour tank-tops for utility work clothes some decades ago. -grin-)
“This suggestion really did make me stop and think; maybe I really have misunderstood some forms of scholarship within the humanities, and that what seems obscure and meaningless, might simply be an alternative epsitimology that I simply do not understand. ”
ya pretty much.
Okay, but what is it and how does it work? That’s what I’m trying to understand (to be clear, I’m not suggesting that non-empirical scholarship isn’t useful, I’m trying to understand how it can actually reveal knowledge).
@-“I’m not suggesting that non-empirical scholarship isn’t useful, I’m trying to understand how it can actually reveal knowledge).”
It may claim to reveal knowledge, but non-empirical belief systems provide meaning, or at least the dellusion of it.
Not reliable knowledge of a material universe.
Or even of the conceptual systems we use to understand it.
“Sorry to have left this out, in the humanities, consilience is of little value, each thought stands on its own and the deciding factor is beauty broadly defined.”
wrong. on all counts. Wrong about consilience, wrong about each thought standing on its own. wrong about beauty.
I think most folks here have little idea of what is actually done as scholarship in the humanities.
Maybe you read a joke paper or two.
It some areas its all about consilience.
I will say, having done both the humanities and the science thing, that the style of thinking, is dramatically different. It takes years to unlearn and re learn. I read papers I wrote years ago and dont even recognize the person who wrote them, although they do make sense.
But lets just give you an example of how consilience would work. Take a typical study, Hmm, I’ll use Frost. I’ll put it in ‘scientfic” terminology.
First what do we want to explain. We want to explain the words he wrote. That is we want to come up with a theory, a set of rules, an underlying logic, a generating structure, that produces those works. Our data is the works, the poems. And we work from those data back to a generating structure an idea, the “thing” he was trying to say. Sometimes we will do this by talking about themes
I always liked to start with this one
Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.
So you can take the “themes’ here and start to trace them through other works. Where else do these epistemic themes show up. If this is his philsophy does this help us make sense of this or that different work of his. Where does this place him in intellectual history? Where did he get these ideas? Through the course of his work, does he change these ideas?
And then we might consider Other lines of evidence. Not his poetry, but his articles. How does he talk about the truth and coming to know and understand?
“What I am pointing out is that unless you are at home in the metaphor, unless you have had your proper poetical education in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere . Because you are not at ease with figurative values: you don’t know the metaphor in its strength and its weakness. You don’t know how far you may expect to ride it and when it may break down with you. …
It is a very living thing. It is as life itself.”
And as we begin to piece together the way he thinks, the way he sees the world, as we reconstruct what we “think” is underneath all his writing, we start to read his work differently. One could quite literally take every work and ‘explain’ it or “understand” it using some basic themes, ideas, and problems or questions. You prove you understand him when you can ‘explain’ how every piece fits together.
As for other lines of evidence maybe we look to his letters, maybe we look to his biography, the history around him, what he read, who he liked.
Now the problem is that its very hard to test these kinds of understandings. In the end you are tested by what other people think about your ‘reconstruction” of what generating priciples of his work was. They may ask you about this poem or that poem.. “how does this fit, how does that fit?”
or they can reject your account totally and propose their own explantion of what made him tick. They may reject your appeals to biography as being “outside” the art, or outside the text. Then the fights go “meta” into critical theory. What sorts of evidence can we appeal to?
In all of this we rarely talk about the “beauty” of the stuff. That’s a given. Now we may explain a technique he used ( irony, metaphor, etc etc ) and then tie that style back to the general philosophy he had. We rarely say “you should like this its beautiful” we explain why it works
What a style is, how it compares to others. We generally dont play rate an artist. ( except for bard lovers, who are hella annoying , almost as annoying as bethoven lovers) We generally work to not be in love with the art, but to explain how and why it works. where it came from, who it borrows from, who it inspired? who rejected it. how it differed from other work at the same time.
And this is just one tradition in the humanities.
“Okay, but what is it and how does it work? That’s what I’m trying to understand (to be clear, I’m not suggesting that non-empirical scholarship isn’t useful, I’m trying to understand how it can actually reveal knowledge).”
Hmm. I am not sure we ever aimed at knowledge. As I noted above some of us aimed at understanding, making sense of, or in some cases merely questioning.
Sometimes it looks like puzzle solving
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
Most people will look at this and go “huh?” If I explained it to you, I would not call what I said
“knowledge” I would not call it “subjective” I would explain to you how this can come to have meaning, what it could mean, how important it was in our intellectual history. There are probably thrirteen of ways of looking at it. (hint google thirteen ways of looking) .
So much depends on what I put next to the poem to explain to you. If I put one thing next to it, it may have one meaning and if I put another thing next to it, it will change. Positioning is everything.
But whats The “use” of this understanding, what’s the point? Ah this too becomes a question for scholarship. whats the point? does it need a point?
@-SM
“Our data is the works, the poems. And we work from those data back to a generating structure an idea, the “thing” he was trying to say.”
Frost, poetry, and the Humanities that work on it, are trying to find the meaning of a thing, not facts, explanations or ‘Truths’.
That they may ape the procedures of science does not mean the goal, or outcome, is the same.
Steven,
Yes, but Fred McVittie did (or implied it). If people want to argue that there is value to non-empirical scholarship, then I wouldn’t disagree. There’s clearly value in art, music, literature, etc. However, if people want to argue that non-empirical scholarship can – by itself – actually reveal knowledge, then I’d quite like to know how.
Another way to look at it ATTP, is this.
Knowledge versus understanding
wont help you fix a helicopter, but some folks try to understand stories cause they can be important
Steven,
This seems a bit like semantics. There is difference – in my view – between saying something that makes us think, or gives us some kind of possible understanding of a topic. However, it would still seem that demonstrating that this understanding is correct (or, maybe, reasonable) would still seem to require something that might reasonably described as empirical.
Yes, of course, stories can be important. I’m not disputing the importance of activities that are not necessarily empirical, just question a suggestion that something that is completely non-empirical can actually – by itself – reveal some kind of truth (and I don’t mean absolutely true, but a reasonable representation of what is being considered).
Huh
I didnt even watch it and I knew he would have had to focus on the terms understanding to make the case
“Yes, but Fred McVittie did (or implied it). If people want to argue that there is value to non-empirical scholarship, then I wouldn’t disagree. There’s clearly value in art, music, literature, etc. However, if people want to argue that non-empirical scholarship can – by itself – actually reveal knowledge, then I’d quite like to know how.”
Ah listening to him now, some of the examples he uses are “intutionist” type examples.
In other words, you just recogonize it as being “true”
If willard comes back we can discus foundationalism and intutionism
“Frost, poetry, and the Humanities that work on it, are trying to find the meaning of a thing, not facts, explanations or ‘Truths’.
That they may ape the procedures of science does not mean the goal, or outcome, is the same.”
Who said it was the same?
the point is your brain is wired to find explanations and understandings, to make sense of things.
Its not a matter of “aping” science. Worms do science.
izen:
This is my understanding also.
I’m having a little trouble parsing that, but are you claiming it might be possible to rule out a lawful explanation for an empirical observation? I maintain it’s impossible for science to prove that an intersubjectively verifiable phenomenon has no lawful explanation, and to claim there is none is to argue from ignorance.
Even devoutly religious scientists adopt methodological (if not deontological) naturalism, i.e. the a priori assumption that all observations can be explained by unvarying natural laws. Science’s task is to find out what the explanation is. That’s why “it’s a miracle” is not an acceptable answer to any scientific question, as it implies that natural laws have been violated, and renders further investigation pointless. If an apparent ‘miracle’ cannot be explained by previously verified laws, it’s both more parsimonious and more fruitful to assume that additional natural laws await discovery than that “God did it.”
A modern example is the recent finding that the expansion of the Universe slowed for a few billion years following the presumed Big Bang, but then accelerated. Cosmologists were surprised that an unknown force sufficient to counteract gravity apparently existed, but didn’t conclude therefore that it’s supernatural. Naming it ‘dark energy’ was merely the first step toward accommodating it in an updated Standard Model.
Ah he also took on the conecpt of “clarity”, of the sense that language is best when it is a transparent medium. good stuff.
The only issue I would have with him is is constant use of the word “knowledge” I think that’s unfortunate for the ‘space’ between “taste” and “empirical truth” that he is gesturing toward.
lets do an example. He talks for example about liking “living color” versus the atomic weight of carbon. at one end we have the realm of pure taste. I like chocolate.
I like this song.
At the other end, he talks about an emprical truth. And In between these two is the realm he is talking about. Not a taste. Not an emprical testable fact, but in between.
So what kind of truth is it that falls in between:
Take the song I linked to. Anyone know korean? prolly not. But you dont have to know Korean to know the song is sad. How do you know that? is it purely subjective, like “liking chocolate”
if you told me the song was horrible, well thats a matter a of taste. If you told me it was a happy song , I’d
wonder what was wrong with you. Do we know it is sad? do we have to test that? is there a method or proceedure, or do you just know it?. How do we talk about these kinds of things? Its hard to avoid the typical words of knowledge,and truth, maybe we need a different vocabulary so that STEM types wont get upset if we use the terms “truth” and “knowledge” when we say I know that song is sad.
I watched the brief Jordan Peterson video that Steven included a few comments ago. I think it’s largely illustrating what I’m trying to get at. He discusses life, and how complex societies are, and how to behave better, etc. Nothing necessarily wrong with what he said, but it was mostly his opinion. Again, nothing wrong with someone expressing their views. However, it’s not really scholarly, in the sense of it being the result of someone spending years studying a topic; it’s just someone expressing their views and – in some sense – appearing to want to influence the views of others. He’s not really revealing knowledge/truth, but trying to impress on others his own sense of what is knowledge/truth.
Steven,
I think the only way you could upset STEM people would be if you claimed that it was universally/objectively true that the song was sad. I don’t thing STEM people are so disconnected from reality that they don’t appreciate that some things make people feel sad, happy, etc.
… or do you just know it?.
Seems to me that we form a conjecture about the tone of the song based on long experience of evaluating evidence about associations.
It seems to me that little babies are dedicated empiricists.
aTTP:
Speaking as a STEM person, I’ll affirm that.
Thank you, mine host. I, for one, appreciate that some things make people feel sad, happy etc., even though I don’t consider consciousness to be empirically solved yet 8^)!
Anders –
I think the only way you could upset STEM people would be if you claimed that it was universally/objectively true that the song was sad.
Yes, that. It seems to me to be the crux of the biscuit.
I found a similar issue with what I’ve seen from McVittie so far. For example, he seemed to me to conflate “justifying” belief on the basis of outcomes with “justifying” truth in the basis of outcomes. Religious people living longer, happier lives might “justify” a belief in God, but he seems to argue that it is a equally valid form of empiricism (to scientific empiricism) to say that it “justifies” the “truth” of God.
He spoke of “justification” transforming a truth into a belief. Seems to me that it works the other way around.
Joshua,
Yes, I think this is a subtlety. It may be true that many people find particular songs sad and that this is not necessarily some kind of empirical truth. An artist’s understanding of how to write a song that people will find sad is, however, probably based on observations of what kind of songs people claim to find sad, which is a form of empiricism.
Yes, this did seem to be something that he was arguing. There was also – I think – a section (which I won’t go back and listen to again) about our judgement of the truth of something depending on the survival of us as a species. Again, this seems odd. I think the examples related to smallpox vaccines and nuclear weapons. However, scientific truths associated with these topics don’t necessarily depend on how we choose to use them.
Somewhat tangentially, there’s an interesting Comment in the penultimate issue of Nature (might be paywalled): History: Science and the Reformation. “The scientific and religious revolutions that began 500 years ago were not causally related, but were both stimulated by printing, argues David Wootton.”
aTTP:
If we’re defining ’empiricism’ as simply the experience of our senses, then OK. In Science, though, ’empiricism’ is explicitly about not letting ourselves be fooled by mere casual observation.
Mal,
I agree. It’s easy to make an observation and then draw some kind of conclusion that is wrong. So, yes, in science we develop techniques that try to ensure that the conclusions we draw are reasonable, given the information available. All I was really meaning, though, is that an artist’s understanding of how someone might respond to their work is probably based on an understanding that came from observing how people have typically responded to various works of art (be that music, or poetry, or art, etc) – it’s not entirely non-empirical, is all I was getting at.
> Art teacher debates physicist. There’s a joke in there somewhere, I just know it.
About something neither have really studied. Fancy that. All this because in an exchange with Sam, Jordan used “wrong” that went above and beyond an opposite of what is usually held as “true.”
Neither Jordan has studied truth. Truth as what-increases-survival-chances (or something along those lines) has little currency. It’s the first time I’ve seen someone being called a POMO because of that. It’s one of the most empirical version of truth one may find, and it’s far from being relativistic in the ordinary sense.
I like your “I just know it,” Everett. Where’s your justified true belief about “it”?
@-Mal
“I’m having a little trouble parsing that, but are you claiming it might be possible to rule out a lawful explanation for an empirical observation?”
The usual example of that would be Haldane’s rabbit fossil in the Cambrian.
But the argument that science is the best way of detecting the supernatural is used a ‘rational’ justification for the A Prior assumption of science. That it is methodologically superior to other methods. Not because any scientists expects to find something supernatural.
In fact as the example you quote shows, science will develop any number of post-hoc explanations for difficult observations to avoid any hint of supernatural influence.
Some of then may even be correct.
@-SM
” If you told me it was a happy song , I’d wonder what was wrong with you. Do we know it is sad? do we have to test that? is there a method or proceedure, or do you just know it?.”
Without knowing the language or seeing the singer I do not think there is ANY way to determine whether the song is sad. It uses a very conventional harmonic progression common to both happy and sad songs. The singing style is also found in romantic ballads and ‘torch’ songs where the singer is declaring strength.
I look forward to the citation of worms doing science.
Mal –
If we’re defining ’empiricism’ as simply the experience of our senses, then OK. In Science, though, ’empiricism’ is explicitly about not letting ourselves be fooled by mere casual observation.
Seems to me that what Anders described is not “simply the experience of our senses,” but a continual process of evaluating observed evidence. Of course, the scientific process makes testing for bias an explicit step, but I don’t understand why evaluating the relationships between a song’s characteristics and the emotions it evokes would not be an empirical process – even if it isn’t an explicit process.
Just came across this article:
Joshua,
Yes, but I’m also almost doing the inverse. I’m trying to understand if there is a form of scholarship that is entirely non-empirical (i.e., makes no observations, collects no data, does not attempt to test hypotheses, etc) from which knowledge/truth can emerge (and, again, I don’t mean absolute truths, but an understanding of whatever is being considered that is actually a reasonable representation of that system).
My sense is that a lot of things rely on a form of empiricism, even if people don’t realise/recognise this. If so, then there seems no obvious reason why such disciplines shouldn’t become more familiar with the various methods that have been developed to avoid drawing unsuitable conclusions from our observations.
izen –
Without knowing the language or seeing the singer I do not think there is ANY way to determine whether the song is sad.
There is much conveyed through spoken (or sung) language that is not contained in the meanings of the words themselves, but such attributes as emphasis, pitch, rhythm, etc., are certainly not universal across all languages
willard –
It’s the first time I’ve seen someone being called a POMO because of that.
Moriarty’s argument that Peterson’s argument – that outcomes determines “truth” is post-modern to its core – seemed to me to make a lot of sense. If I understand you correctly, you are arguing that it isn’t? Could you elaborate (you’re going to need to dumb it down for me to understand)?
Anders –
My sense is that a lot of things rely on a form of empiricism, even if people don’t realise/recognise this. If so, then there seems no obvious reason why such disciplines shouldn’t become more familiar with the various methods that have been developed to avoid drawing unsuitable conclusions from our observations.
I’m on the same page – and don’t yet understand what the counter-argument would be to that statement (or actually, whether this is, indeed, a counter-argument to McVittie’s arguments – which I had a hart time making heads or tails out of).
> I’m not disputing the importance of activities that are not necessarily empirical, just question a suggestion that something that is completely non-empirical can actually – by itself – reveal some kind of truth (and I don’t mean absolutely true, but a reasonable representation of what is being considered).
Most results of the formal sciences aren’t empirical, AT. Mathematics and logic clearly don’t apply to a reality out there, unless one is a platonist and considers that the formal realms has its own reality in the same sense that physical objects have one. However, there’s no divide between the formal and the empirical sciences, since statistics and computer sciences can have a foot in both the formal and the empirical.
One could argue that a mathematician is a closet empiricist, and that the objects of mathematics have empirical content in a similar way physical concepts have. Putnam, if memory serves, held a version of that. Even then there seems to be a need to distinguish conceptual analysis from experiment.
But we also need to recall that conceptual analysis can be more or less formal, and more or less empirical. Empirical in the sense that it relates to our experiences, not in the sense that it proceeds with hypothesis testing. The poetry examples we’ve seen so far aren’t that formal. Frost can’t convey much to someone who has no pastoral background.
Conceptual analysis could refer to a process where a family of concepts is organized to build a framework or a worldview. It could also refer to the criticism of such conceptual analysis. Here would be an example of the latter:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-philosophers-anger
Notice how the author uses mundane examples to make a moral point.
Notice how the themes of payback and respect relates to #ClimateBall too.
One more comment, then I’ll let the smart people continue without my interruption for a while.
I do think that the artistic process can often be an “alternative” form of empiricism. IMO, an artist often observes the patterns of association between artistic expression and reactions to that expression (in themselves or in other observers). Sometimes that process is more explicitly empirical:
and sometimes perhaps less so:
BTW, in order, Kandinsky, Albers, de Kooning.
“I think the only way you could upset STEM people would be if you claimed that it was universally/objectively true that the song was sad. I don’t thing STEM people are so disconnected from reality that they don’t appreciate that some things make people feel sad, happy, etc.”
I would always try to avoid using the term objectively and universally true, even when talking about science, math and logic.
I’d probably avoid using the term true as it adds little clarification. but folks appear to like that word.
“Without knowing the language or seeing the singer I do not think there is ANY way to determine whether the song is sad. ”
you mean you didnt involuntarily cry when you heard it?
Hmm. I think you have some missing human parts.
maybe your like color blind,
Joshua:
Oh. That’s easy, heh. Your puzzlement probably ensues from my non-standard restriction of the definition of ’empiricism’ to include explicit controls on observational error. I’ll pause to research the philosophical consensus on that word for a while.
@-joshua
“There is much conveyed through spoken (or sung) language that is not contained in the meanings of the words themselves, but such attributes as emphasis, pitch, rhythm, etc., are certainly not universal across all languages.”
Some aspects of speach or song are universal, and recognized by our mirror neuron systems, (if I sounded like that it would be anger).
But cultural modifications can make more subtle attributes difficult to identify.
Here is another bit of Korean music, I would suggest that it is difficult to characterise to Western ears. The best comparison by similarity we can make is probably ‘Amazing Grace’. But I am far from confident that captures a common meaning, or ‘Truth’ about either.
Willard,
Okay, that’s an interesting point. However, within the mathematical framework, mathematics can produce actual truths. One might also argue that mathematics and logic provides tools for those who want to then carry out empirical work.
Anders I think you are missing something. When he talks about “empirical” he seems to be specifically talking about empiricism, and controlled experimentation.
His example of listening to a lyric is empirical… but the Judgement “that is true” is not subject to testability .. on his account it is ‘just true’ that is whay I call it intuitionist.
Its just seen. in other approaches it would be a “basic belief” or properly basic belief.
Like I just see that there is an external world. I dont experiment to know this is true. its intutitively obvious.
Other examples would be examples from phenomenology
I dont experiment to know that every object facing me also has a back side. Its rather built into the perceptual system I am born with.
> Moriarty’s argument that Peterson’s argument – that outcomes determines “truth” is post-modern to its core – seemed to me to make a lot of sense.
I don’t think it does, at least if Philip’s quotes of Jordan’s exchange with Sam are representative. Because “relative” never means “relative to human evolution,” but “relative to one’s very own standpoint.” As soon as you universalize truth to mankind, you’re stuck with the usual scientific hegemony.
It should be obvious that truth is “relative” to the world we have. If snow wasn’t white, “snow is white” would not be true. Were I to tease Philip, I’d say that the worst POMO is Albert himself, for he holds that everything’s relative except for the speed of light.
I suppose he’d reply that Albert can’t be POMO because he held objectivism, i.e. that reality was mind-independent. But then he just has a muddled conception of POMO. One could do POMO even by holding objectivism (Bruno Latour, for example) and one could reject objectivism without being POMO, like Hilary Putnam.
I haven’t watched Sam debating Jordan. As I already said, Jordan’s voice makes me screetch. I’m definitely not a fan of Sam either. So that’ll have to wait. Nevertheless, here’s what I anticipate to hear: Sam saying that God doesn’t exist, Jordan replying that humans survived with a concept of Him.
That debate could be settled in favor of Sam if he could show that the belief in the existence of God is essential to the practice of religion. He can’t, because it’s false. Buddhists (and most religious people I know) provide the checkmate.
That debate could be settled in Jordan’s favor if he could show that our biological fitness functions amount to truth. He can’t, because such reductionnism is not realistic, and because it’d be silly to say that our coccyx is some kind of truth bearer.
If that’s correct, then here’s my prognosis. Sam is throwing atheist crap, Philip overplays his hand, and Jordan’s just trying to hide his reactionary programme behind of façade of socio-biology.
Were I a judge, I’d say Philip wins, because he’s the only one to have cited the Stanford entry, he quoted what he criticized, and he ends with a challenge.
> However, within the mathematical framework, mathematics can produce actual truths.
Yes, if we think logico-mathematical proofs as ways to preserve the truths of its basic materials when transforming them into more powerful, elegant, and meaningful constructions.
If that’s our model of truth, then the empirical sciences don’t produce that kind of truths. One way to preserve truthlikeness in empirical sciences is to focus on knowledge as justified true belief, like Philip did. Scientific knowledge rests on the best justifications humans have ever produced.
Science just works best. That doesn’t mean other things don’t work too. There are places where science can’t even go, and other places where there’s competition between science fields and non science fields, like ClimateBall.
To focus on truth is less clear, because our formal tools preserve truth. Sure, there’s induction in mathematics, but it’s clearly not the same kind of induction as the one of hypothesis testing. So even the most rigorous empirical apparatus isn’t powered by the same kind of inference as the formal sciences they emulate.
Statistics changed everything. Our minds are barely ready. Our languages are not.
“Some aspects of speach or song are universal, and recognized by our mirror neuron systems, (if I sounded like that it would be anger).”
funny westerners often think chinese people are always speaking angrily
“Here is another bit of Korean music, I would suggest that it is difficult to characterise to Western ears. The best comparison by similarity we can make is probably ‘Amazing Grace’.”
HUH?
did someone beat you as a child? You are definately missing some key human parts if you thought that was like amazing grace. If you dont get what the song is about watch the dance. How can you not see?
“Science just works best. That doesn’t mean other things don’t work too. There are places where science can’t even go, ”
As always, willard puts it best.
That piece on Anger Willard was quite nice.
Also
My sense is that you could do a great service by walking people through two dogmas.
I know there are some great paragraphs that we just quote, but to gronk the whole argument and its importance takes more that just citing it. Im too rusty to do it
Thanks, but I only take responsibility for the second sentence. The first is XKCD‘s, and the third is adapted from Star Trek.
Here’s a silly idea. Suppose scientists were forbidden to use the word “true.” What would they do?
We should suspect they’d be able to do science nonetheless.
More on that later.
SM sez …
“He talks for example about liking “living color” versus the atomic weight of carbon. at one end we have the realm of pure taste.”
It, the band, is actually called Living Colour
http://www.livingcolour.com/
(I checked, because either speaker, their “so called” English accents, oh boy don’t go there, anyways, Living Colour just completed a UK tour (had to also look that one up, to be sure, so that 1+1=2 and not 3 as someone like Peterson would claim in their own gibberish language equations of intellectual thought)) …
And, believe it or not, I posted their “Cult of Personality” video BEFORE watching any of the videos that ATTP mentioned.
Peterson is just another Cult of Personality (or bump or pimple) on the road that is called humanity.
Do non-STEMers have an intellectual place anymore? I take great pride in my STEM intellectual status.
izen:
Huh. It still sounds like you’re saying that science is a method for detecting the supernatural, even if scientists don’t expect to find something supernatural. Whereas IIUC, methodological naturalism rules out the supernatural at the outset. Confronted with a seemingly inexplicable observation, a methodological naturalist simply assumes that a lawful explanation has yet to be found, and keeps looking for it. IOW, “it’s a miracle” is never anything but an argument from personal incredulity.
I’ve always avoided claiming that science can detect the supernatural. As a ‘dictionary’ atheist, i.e. “a person who does not believe in the existence of a god or any gods”, I never tell theists that the non-existence of their God can be proven. My epistemological model is Russell’s Teapot: that is, I reject “the idea that the burden of proof lies upon the skeptic to disprove a claim, whether in general or of any religion.”
izen:
If you’re describing the normal consequence, within the culture of science, of
Then OK ;^)!
Living Color
not bad,
but cult of personality was their best
Willard,
Yes, of course.
Willard:
Flip off whomever tells them that?
I, for one, sometimes find it useful in Internet
slapfightsdiscussions to distinguish ‘truth’ from ‘Truth’.“Do non-STEMers have an intellectual place anymore? I take great pride in my STEM intellectual status.”
weirdly I see no STEMers suggesting a controlled experiment to determine the answer to the question. In short, the style of thinking ( call it conceptual analysis as Willard does) that we use to establish the superiority of STEM ( who would doubt it?) is decidedly NOT what any one of us would call “scientific”.
So the point isnt so much about STEMers versus non STEMers, but rather that we argue for the superiotrity of STEM type thinking, using decideldy non STEM methods.
> Flip off whomever tells them that?
Like this
(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
?
More seriously, Mal – find a scientific paper that uses the word “true.” I bet we could replace it with something like “relevant.”
More generally, I don’t think to say that our established scientific theories are true clarifies anything.
Think about it – if a theory T is held true at some point P but we end up revising it later on, does it mean that what was once true is now false? If that’s the case, you must accept that truth is relative to the current state of knowledge under consideration.
Either you bypass the paradoxes of truth or you embrace them. Which horn do you choose?
McVittie is a Senior Lecturer in Music Theatre at Falmouth University.
[I know ATTP has requested that the focus be on ideas, not people, but I’d have to overcome significant personal bias to objectively assess anything from Peterson, since from what I have seen elsewhere he appears to be a self-promoting academic grifter who recently realized he can cash in on bigotry. Instead, I think I’ll browse through the recently released Climate Science Special Report to see what’s new.]
@-SM
“did someone beat you as a child? You are definately missing some key human parts if you thought that was like amazing grace. If you dont get what the song is about watch the dance. How can you not see?”
Okay I have watched the dance, and I still think Amazing Grace is as close as I can get.
I guess I am missing some key human parts, the melodic cadences, while modal, follow the same pattern as Amazing Grace. Its melodic phrases, (up-down) are common to much folk music as it is easy to learn and sing with others in a group.
This is the problem with intuitionism, it is rarely universal, but the excuse for that is to blame the individual.
@-“funny westerners often think chinese people are always speaking angrily”
English speakers often think the Italians and Spanish are having an argument until they learn the language. But that may have more to do with cultural traditions of how much hand-waving talking requires.
RE: grifter
Cult of Personality (lyrics) by Living Colour
“Look in my eyes, what do you see?
The cult of personality
I know your anger, I know your dreams
I’ve been everything you want to be
I’m the cult of personality
Like Mussolini and Kennedy
I’m the cult of personality
The cult of personality
The cult of personality
Neon lights, a Nobel Prize
Then a mirror speaks, the reflection lies
You don’t have to follow me
Only you can set me free
I sell the things you need to be
I’m the smiling face on your T.V.
I’m the cult of personality
I exploit you still you love me
I tell you one and one makes three
I’m the cult of personality
Like Joseph Stalin and Gandhi
I’m the cult of personality
The cult of personality
The cult of personality
Neon lights a Nobel Prize
A leader speaks, that leader dies
You don’t have to follow me
Only you can set you free
You gave me fortune
You gave me fame
You gave me power in your own god’s name
I’m every person you need to be
Oh, I’m the cult of personality
I’m the cult of, I’m the cult of, I’m the cult of, I’m the cult of
I’m the cult of, I’m the cult of, I’m the cult of, I’m the cult of personality”
The two most important lines IMHO?
“Only you can set me free”
(lead singer at that point is playing the part of a grifter seeking fame)
… and …
“Only you can set you free”
(lead singer at that point is playing the part of what should be every free thinking human being)
At the end of that video, the child turns off the TV. Why? I think its because she sees what social media really is.
Willard:
Uh. Maybe, if I knew what that was.
@ Mal: ‘flipping the table’ emoticon
@-SM
What do you get from the dance in this?
> flipping the table
More precisely, its angry version. Because, oriental symbols are angrier.
One way to counter it by putting the tables back:
┬──┬ ¯\_(ツ)
or
┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ)
Emoticons are interesting because they communicate emotions through code.
***
Here could a counter-example to my thought experiment:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010Sci…327.1214S
Source: MT.
Are neural net results independent of their programming language?
SM: ‘but cult of personality was their best’
Nope.
Vinny –
Nope. And completely in topic to boot.
Everything is possible but nothing is real.
” I’d have to overcome significant personal bias to objectively assess anything from Peterson, since from what I have seen elsewhere he appears to be a self-promoting academic grifter who recently realized he can cash in on bigotry. ”
I have to make that caveat too.
I wanted to add that Peterson’s MO could be instructive. I think he’s said that his early academic years were focussed on Apologetics, and it seems that’s really what he’s trading on today: offering rationales to people who haven’t got one, unless you count shouty slogans. He’s a dramatic example because he’s raised serious money, but how is he fundamentally different from a Judith Curry or Matt Ridley, whose stock in trade is also about providing wise-sounding talking points for a group of political followers? It all looks like grift to me.
@ Mal: ‘flipping the table’ emoticon
Ah. I was using ‘flip off’ in the sense of ‘make an obscene gesture toward’.
I’m really pleased that the exchange with Fred has generated this much discussion. It’s worth watching the hangout right at the end of the debate — if by that point you’re not heartily sick of listening to me waffle on interminably — to get a true (*ahem) representation of Fred’s position re. Peterson. I don’t think Fred will mind me saying that he’s certainly not a particular fan of Peterson’s Chopra-esque babblings.
I am also over the moon that the relevance of Living Colour’s “Cult of Personality” was twigged by @Everett F Sargent (November 5, 2017 at 6:49 pm). It wasn’t entirely coincidental that I mentioned Living Colour during a debate about Peterson…
Are neural net results independent of their programming language?
Six conditionals …
(1) Are neural net results independent of their hardware platform? Assume yes.
(2) Are neural net codes binary identical at the lowest level (machine code of 1’s and 0’s) using different programming languages? Assume yes (this, of course. locks you into a specific hardware platform).
(3) Any PRNG usage is deterministic and identical between codes (same seeds used at and throughout execution)? Assume yes.
(4) Any inputs are identical and transcribed into identical machine code)? Assume yes.
(5) Are there any ‘so called’ coding errors? Assume yes.
(6) Are their any other conditionals? Assume no.
(7) Go to (5). By the time your code is ‘so called’ error free either the hardware or programming language software had been updated or ‘so called’ fixed, go to (1).
Build only the hardware for a robot (i. e. birth a dead body). Turn it on (i. e. animate it). Wait 18 years or so, because there’s a time and a place for everything, and it’s called college (in the meantime, don’t warp its fragile little mind).
Hmmm. May need to revise what I wrote earlier about “just knowing” about emotions evoked by music:
https://www.cbsnews.com/videos/i-just-had-these-melodies-and-ideas-in-my-head/
Wow! Quite the thread. I tend to agree with Philip Moriarty; I find it hard to know what Jordan Peterson is saying. But I do like Jordan Peterson’s stand on free speech as a better alternative to physical conflict.
Was it Sir Karl Popper who said just because ideas might be considered “unscientific”, does not necessarily mean that they are not useful? I cannot find the reference to be sure.
HT sez …
“But I do like Jordan Peterson’s stand on free speech as a better alternative to physical conflict.”
I call shenanigans, hmm err, straw person (must be PC-Egalitarian, don’t you know). A lot of things are a “better alternative to physical conflict.” D’oh!
Peterson only sees ‘reds under his bed’ which is s-o-o-o-o-o-o-o 1950’s type of thinking.
He lost his 5-year public grant funding (Ontario) for one very stupid reason.
… and I quote …
“We will produce and perfect measures of liberalism, conservatism and radical left-wing political thought, and examine them in relationship to personality, general cognitive ability, creativity and fundamental demographic factors.”
… that’s just the 1st whiff … his strikeout, or coup de grâce if you prefer, was this one though …
“The production of these measures should have a substantive effect on scientific work in a variety of errors, judging by the results of our previous work.”
The word “errors” should be “areas” but just read that sentence as is. Knowing what I know of Peterson (which, trust me, is immense) I chose to read that sentence, as is, literally and not figuratively.
Call the whambulance because Peterson just sunk his own battleship.
Abraham Lincoln is a commie.
Susan B Anthony is a commie.
FDR is a commie.
Rosa Parks is a commie
LBJ is a commie.
MLK is a commie.
So now Peterson gets all his funding from the white trash private sector. Fancy that.
I have much more to dish with respect to one of his current PhD students who is currently engaged in some rather very strange scholarship (or should I say lack thereof in the peer reviewed published academic literature).
For some reason Peterson very much reminds me of Trump.
here everet. watch the whole thing. latest and greatest.
Hmm
This is such a horrible misreading of peterson I dont know where to begin.
“Wow! Quite the thread. I tend to agree with Philip Moriarty; I find it hard to know what Jordan Peterson is saying. ”
Not really hard to understand if you have the right training
Vinnie, close, but I dont think that has the same edge.
@Stephen Mosher. “Not really hard to understand if you have the right training”
Hmmm. That sounds suspiciously similar to what Sokal was told about the postmodernists after he submitted his “Social Text” hoax. “You’re just not working on a high enough intellectual plane”.
Instead of just bluntly making an assertion (a la Peterson), could you explain just where I “misread” Peterson, in clear, unambiguous language that even an “untrained” lowly physicist like myself can understand?
By the way, did you listen to the exchange between Harris and Peterson? Or the Joe Rogan interview linked above. For the latter, I particularly liked the following Chopra-esque witterings from Peterson:
——-
“It’s an harmonious balancing of multiple layers of being…”
“Religious writings are guidelines to that mode of being…they’re hyper-true or meta-true”
“Your brain is attuned to telling you this … when you have an intimation of meaning then you know you’re there”
“The music is modelling the manner of being that’s harmonious”
——-
It’s like they were delivered straight from wisdomofchopra.com ….
Izen,
That dance is a mess. Dont confuse the proposition That some expressions can speak the truth clearly for the proposition that they all must.
@-SM
” Dont confuse the proposition That some expressions can speak the truth clearly for the proposition that they all must.”
Not universal or absolute that can be applied to all people then.
izen hag sy then ghd
get it?
SM sez …
“Not really hard to understand if you have the right training”
Thank the doG almighty then, because if one were to have the ‘so called’ right training, then humanity has figured out how to reverse time. Please get of at the next stop circa 1850’s.
@-SM
If you want a ‘universal’, as used in your Korean ‘sad’ song here is a possible element.
” Again, this seems odd. I think the examples related to smallpox vaccines and nuclear weapons. However, scientific truths associated with these topics don’t necessarily depend on how we choose to use them.”
ATTP, let me see if I can give you a more clear exposition of his position.
he says the proposition that the universe is BEST conceptualized as sub atomic particles was true enough ( all science is true enough, not certain) to generate the bomb, But not true enough ( incomplete) to prevent us from using it. And from a darwinian perspective, as a PRAGMATIC matter it was lacking something and therefore wrong in some sort of fundamental way.
Now, This is an old argument, not a post modern argument at all, I will give you the historical source
@Phillip can listen in as well. Its not a matter of being on a higher intellectual plane. Its just reading more of our intellectual history.
Let me start of by saying I think he pushes it a bit far, but lets see if we can in simple language unpack it.
1. There is a psoition that holds that the best way to conceptualize the universe is as a collection of particles. basically materialism, naive materialism.
2. As well there is a belief that this approach to the world gives us understanding and power over the world.
3. As a part of this world view knowledge, the pursuit of knowledge is good. All knowledge is good and all knowledge is knowledge of this physical world obtained by the methods of science.
So ya the enlightenment
What peterson points out is NOT taht this physical knowledge is wrong, not that we cannot look at the world as particle, but rather he points out how this misses something, and thus is fundamentally wrong in some way.
the darwian point is as follows. if we think, as some do, that our intellegence is the result of natural selection and has adaptive value BECAUSE it is isomorphic with or reprsents “reality”, then we have the following problem. What can we say about the adaptive value of human scientific understanding IF it results in the destruction of the species. In the end if we destroy the earth and leave only the lowly cockroach, what is the adaptive value of gray matter. The cockroach looks like the genius at least from a evolutionary stand point.
What Peterson is challenging is the ultimate and fundamental usefullness of scientific knowledge. he is questioning in some sense the morality of knowing. he looks post modern to you all because of the way he is attacking enlightenment values, but he is not attacking them from a moral relativist position or POMO perspective, but rather from a medievalist position or pre englightenment perspective.
So what is the old story that questions the morality of knowledge? Basically the Faust story, especially the Chapbook version ( pre englightenment version is basically a morality play). For a good historical account of the theme See Erich Heller’s work on Fausts damnation and the morality of knowledge.
Now, what to make of this argument? That is a whole different matter, but the first job is to try to place it historically. he is questioning that man is is fundamentally a Knowing thing ( in the sciency meaning of the term) . Questioning that when we know the world in a scientific way that we have understood all there is to understand, or understood the world in a fundamentally human way, a meaningful way.
From his perspective the “stories” tell us more important truths than the scientific approach.
there isnt anything special or unique or new or post modern about his perspective. It’s an old argument. One side ( the epistemology is first types) tend to ask the question ‘what can I know”
The other side ( the metaphysical types) ask the question ‘what is this knowing thing”,
that was too long
Izen, Universal is your word. Like I said, I would definately avoid it. Its not every useful. primarily because there are some folks ( ahem) who are missing certain bits.
@StephenMosher
Thanks for the long response, which provided absolutely no more insight into Peterson’s position, I’m afraid.
“there isnt anything special or unique or new or post modern about his perspective. It’s an old argument”
Indeed. And I make this point time and again throughout the exchange with Fred.
” he looks post modern to you all because of the way he is attacking enlightenment values, but he is not attacking them from a moral relativist position or POMO perspective, but rather from a medievalist position or pre englightenment perspective.”
I’ll ask again — have you listened to Peterson’s exchange with Harris? Peterson himself doesn’t know what he’s saying most of the time. It’s obscurantism and obfuscation at its finest — he really gives Chopra a run for his money throughout.
Peterson claims that empirical truths are “nested within” moral truths. My question throughout the exchange with Fred was why I should place “moral truths” (no matter how they might be defined) on a higher footing than empirical “truths”. Exactly like Peterson in that debate with Harris, and despite the snarkiness about “our intellectual history”, you’ve failed to address that point.
I’ll ask again: on what basis should I place moral truths (by which Peterson means religions mythology) on a higher footing than empirical measurement? ATTP asks the same question. And it’s yet to be addressed.
I look forward to your historically informed and clear explanation. Thanks.
Steven,
I agree with Philip. I don’t see how what you’ve said clarifies anything. In my view, the reality of a nuclear weapon, or a vaccine, does not depend on how we might choose to use it. Of course, that reality also doesn’t necessarily define how we might use it, but that’s essentially the point. How we use something is largely independent of what that thing might be capable of doing. Of course, we would – ideally – take into account what that thing can do when deciding whether or not to use it, but that decision doesn’t then influence the reality of whatever it is that we’re considering using.
Ah, now I get it. The ‘right training’ means you’ve studied all the past works of now dead philosophers (religious or mythical or otherwise).
Could be a straw person, but until someone here, they know who they are, provides a unambiguous definition of ‘right training’, I’ll just go with the above Dead Philosophers Society shtick.
Good morning. It’s so great to see such an informed discussion taking place around the debate between Philip and myself. Thanks to all for adding so helpfully to that conversation, and indeed to my own understanding.
As one or two folk have mentioned, Peterson isn’t the easiest person to ‘unpack’ and I would agree that a lot of what he says seems pretty vacuous. In the spirit of generosity I tried in this debate to give my best reading of what I thought his ideas were as they pertained to ‘truth’, specifically within the context of his conversation with Sam Harris, but would fully acknowledge that I’ve not done him justice. In his defence though, I don’t think his language is always as opaque or ‘Chopraesque’ as it’s being painted. As I mentioned in my Closing Statement, a lot of the language in the humanities is tricky, and just because it might come off as needlessly obscure that doesn’t mean it is. Also, a lot of humanities writing is closer to literature than to science, so we shouldn’t really expect it to work in the same way or to foster knowledge and understanding through the same processes.
In some ways I feel that placing ‘truth’ at the centre of the discussion was a bit of a red herring; it caused problems in the Peterson/Harris conversation and did something similar in the debate between Philip and I. This is why, in the latter sections, I opened it out a little to a discussion of ‘scholarship’, which I think is a more inclusive frame to place around it. I suspect that a lot of discussions which try to incorporate research in the sciences and in the humanities would get similarly bogged down if something like ‘truth’ was the only metric.
Fred,
Thanks for the comment. This I can understand
I can see that some is just meant to be writing that maybe evokes some kind of response; makes us think, for example. However, the problem is when some seems to be trying to uncover some knowledge/truth (my terminology may not be ideal, but hopefully you know what I mean) but that is still obscure and unclear. When I have encountered this, I also find any attempt to clarify things futile; it’s as if you’re expected to understand it and if you don’t then that’s your problem. I find this odd because I think that an important part of scholarship is making your ideas accessible; you can find many places where people try to explain physics concepts. Not all of it is good, but there are plenty of examples of people explaining complex topics in ways that are accessible.
So the issue – in my view – is not that some of the humanities is not always trying to uncover knowledge, it’s the bits that appear to be attempting to do so, but that make no real sense.
“Its not every useful. primarily because there are some folks (ahem) who are missing certain bits.”
Wow! Just WOW!!!
Another ambiguous wordplay. Your ambiguous attempts to “talk down” to this audience are NOT working.
I’m not the grammar police or even a cryptographer, but seriously, someone here needs to explain their behavior in this thread in somewhat of a short order.
Otherwise, they are starting to waste other people’s time and effort.
As I stated earlier in this thread …
“Clarity of language is very important and overrides all other means of communication.”
It is not an option, it is a requirement.
Everett,
Unfortunately, in my experience, a key aspect of discussions about why physicists (for example) don’t understand the humanities is claims that the physicists simply just don’t get it, or aren’t trying hard enough. I’ve got somewhat used to being told that (probably because it is almost certainly partly true 😉 )
“Hmmm. That sounds suspiciously similar to what Sokal was told about the postmodernists after he submitted his “Social Text” hoax. “You’re just not working on a high enough intellectual plane”.
Instead of just bluntly making an assertion (a la Peterson), could you explain just where I “misread” Peterson, in clear, unambiguous language that even an “untrained” lowly physicist like myself can understand?
i’m not a fan of clear and unambiguous language. It hides too much. But I will try to make it more accessible..
Peterson is not POMO. It’s not a matter of me working on a “higher plane”, just a matter of familarization with the long history of positions like his and an inkling of how folks with a metaphysical bent ( as opposed to epistemological bent) approach things.
I cued up the video to the relevant text. And for ATTP I went through the text. What he is challenging, it seems, is the belief that the purely physical understanding of the universe is the BEST representation or the most fundamental one, or the most meaningful one. he is not questioning that ‘physics” is wrong as you seem to suggest ; but rather argues that it misses something that is perhaps more fundamental.
When he mentions the bomb and darwin, he is arguing that since the knowledge may lead to our destruction that from a PRAGMATIC ( his word) perspective and darwinian perspective maybe the approach that focuses on the physical understanding of the world misses something fundamental and important. As I pointed out this is an old argument ( a pre englightenment argument), basically the argument of the earliest faust story. The quest for knowledge leads to Fausts damnation. he trades his soul for knowledge ( After the englightenment in the marlow version, the story has to change )
The other piece you are missing is the difference between the metaphysical approach to philosophy and the epistemological approach. The best way to explain this is to ask which question comes first? Questions of Being ( what is there ) or questions of knowledge ( what do we know )
For the most part your education has happened in the cartesian branch of thought, in the epsistemological branch where questions of knowledge come first. First we look at what we can know, how we know it, and then we look at what is. Man is just another object in the world.
Peterson works out of the metaphysical line. basically “what is this thing that is trying to know?”
For him the metaphysical questions come first. the questions of what it means to be human come first. For the most part when it comes to articulating how things are known in this line of thought, the appeals tend to be ” you just see it” ‘ you are built to see it ( his evolutionary twist ), or when you see these truths it is like you are ‘remembering’ them. The appeals tend to be “intuitionistic”
It’s not post modern. to be sure it shares certain qualities with POMO. primarily it shares an animus toward englightenment notions about the program of scientific knowledge. But its nothing like POMO. POMO would look at the uncertainty in science and argue that there is no objective truth, OR that there are multiple equally valid “truths” or that it is all a social construct. Peterson wants to argue ( like a mediavalist) that there is a deeper truth, and meta truth, about us as humans that is revealled in “religion”. So same target as POMO –englightenment and scientism– but different tactics and different endgames.
So when you misread him I’d suggest its because of a lack of familiarity with the core texts on all three sides of this discussion and a lack of familiarity with the conceptual frameworks . FWIW its not worth the time to learn it.
last.. Translations:
Now having a small taste of what peterson things is Prior ( questions of being, questions of what is man ) do the sentences seem a bit more Accessible? The ideas cannot be made ‘clear’ by langauge, rather they tend to reside “outside” language.
“It’s an harmonious balancing of multiple layers of being…”
“Religious writings are guidelines to that mode of being…they’re hyper-true or meta-true”
“Your brain is attuned to telling you this … when you have an intimation of meaning then you know you’re there”
“The music is modelling the manner of being that’s harmonious”
Multiple layers of “being”. Typically these types of locations refer to the many various ways you ‘face’ your experience. ways of being in the world. As a knowing thing, as a thing in time and space, as a social thing, as a thing that will die, as a thing that has feelings, as a thing that wants meaning and purpose. As a thing that suffers, as a thing that recognizes its finitude. As a thing that wants to know its origin. These are ways of being, layers of “being”. there are multiple layers of being. A layer of “being” is just a mode of facing your experience.
The religious ‘experience’ is just that experience where everything just comes together. Where one senses ‘this’ is the way it all fits and works. He calls it “hyper true”. Note that he cannot use the language of epistemology. There cant be reasons for holding this true ( that would be your style of epistemology ) . there cant be arguments for hold it true. Its just foundational. Recognized to be true. This way of seeing the truth is just immediate. Like when you know the song is sad, or when you know the sky is beautiful. Think of the famous line in Keats Ode on a grecian urn.
The difficulty of course with this kind of knowledge is that it is extra-linguistic. Try to put it in words and it just doesnt make sense. So you will find that they tend to point to things like music to make their points or use musical metaphors.
““Clarity of language is very important and overrides all other means of communication.”
You tend to take a very utilitarian view of language. Comunication is just one thing we do with language. It’s the least interesting means of communication.
Steven,
Except this seems like a strawperson. I think physicists would argue that there can be a fundamental description of something like nuclear reactions AND a fundamental description of how we – as a society – might respond to such knowledge. I don’t really see how one is more, or less, fundamental than the other; they’re describing different things.
This sounds like a technicality. Maybe there is some very clear definition of POMO that means that what Peterson is doing doesn’t qualify. However, from my perspective, it seems close enough that such a distinction is rather irrelevant.
Steven,
I agree. On the other hand, if your goal is to actually communicate some kind of information and many don’t understand what you’re trying to say, maybe you should try to be clearer. As I’ve said already, if your goal is to evoke a response, but not necessarily to provide information, maybe being obscure is a good thing. It’s hard to see value, though, in claiming to do the former, while actually doing the latter.
@StevenMosher
I’ll get back to your other points later but just for now, this is important:
>>”he is not questioning that ‘physics” is wrong as you seem to suggest ”
He most definitely is. The problem with Peterson is that, just like the best/worst (depending on your perspective) of the postmodernists, his arguments are dressed up in willfully obscure language. (I’d love to know what Feynman would make of Peterson’s needless verbiage).
Here’s what Peterson had to say to Harris:
—————
Time-stamp:: 1:28:40
Harris: “The rightness or wrongness of the claim is not going to be adjudicated by whether we survive as a species…[snip]
Yes, this whole effort can be wisely guided or not but whether it’s widely guided or not does not change the factual legitimacy of any of those claims.”
Peterson: “Yes, it might…”
—————-
“Yes, it might”. In other words, the moral framework has the potential to modify the factual legitimacy of the science.
I’ll ask again (for the third time), have you listened to the entirety of the exchange with Harris? If not, I thoroughly recommend you do so.
Here’s more nonsense from Peterson. (Again, ask yourself “What would Feynman say?”…)
—————-
Harris: “Our concept of the truth value of any given statement can’t be held hostage to its ultimate result for the survival of the species in the end.”
Peterson: “Yes, yes. I think it can. That’s where we disagree. I could be sitting in a room in my house and say “Well, there’s no fire in this room. And the rest of the house could be on fire. And it’s factually true that there’s no fire in this room. But as a theory it’s a pretty stupid one.”
Harris (increasingly exasperated): “But that’s just an incomplete, and an inconsequentially incomplete, description of your situation.”
Peterson: “That’s exactly my point”.
Harris: “But it was still true to say that there was no fire in your room. The fire was outside your room.”
Peterson: “Well, yeah, it was true. Nested in a larger truth of falsehood”.
——-
“Nested in a larger truth of falsehood”.
Sheesh.
“Unfortunately, in my experience, a key aspect of discussions about why physicists (for example) don’t understand the humanities is claims that the physicists simply just don’t get it, or aren’t trying hard enough. I’ve got somewhat used to being told that (probably because it is almost certainly partly true 😉 )”
How many times have we told pat Frank that he just doesnt get it, or told him to read harder, or read the science, or do his own science.
Now I personaly consider the stuff to be pretty useless to me now as a left that world back in 1985. But, I do know that if you want to understand it ( just like differential equations lets say ) that you dont just pick it up in an afternoon. It does take work. I’m not suggesting you waste your time doing it as I did. But just suggesting that you wont understand it by reading google or by reaidng the stanford diction of philosophy or by reading secondary texts, or by listening to feynman.
Ya gotta read the primary texts, and generally speaking, it will be a waste of time for you.
Steven,
I agree, with caveats. If I want to understand some aspect of the humanities that has no relevance (or little relevance) to my own work, then I should put some effort in to understanding what it is all about. On the other hand, if someone in the humanities starts saying things about an area that is close to the area in which I work, I shouldn’t have to do this; I should already be able to understand what they’re saying, given that the context is already familiar to me. If I have to put a lot of effort into understanding what they’ve said; then they’re probably not being clear enough. Also, if what they’ve said (as Philip highlights) appears fundamentally wrong, I shouldn’t need to dig into it to work out if maybe there was some subtlety that I’ve missed; they should be able to say it in a way that doesn’t appear to be fundamentally wrong.
“Philip Moriarty stressed the epistimology of empiricism, which just means that truth emerges through collecting data, making observations, and testing hypotheses – the scientific method, essentially. Fred McVittie argued, in his closing statement, that some scholarship in the humanities doesn’t conform to this epistimology of empiricism. “
It seems to me there are branches of science that try to make progress in other ways, for instance a lot of work in cosmology (e.g. eternal inflation, multiverse and perhaps string theory are not that amenable to observation and hypothesis testing, but I would regard them as being science nevertheless, so it seems reasonable to me that people working in the humanities should be able to pursue “pure thought” type research as well, where appropriate.
[caveat, may contain uninformed opinion]
For example, for me the justification for the Golden rule isn’t so much that it is a good idea in practice, but that it is a logical conclusion of assuming that none of us has a privileged ethical position (in the sense that the Earth has no privileged position in the universe). This seems to be the sort of thing Decartes was aiming for with his “Je pense, donc je suis” thing (and not getting very far) and Spinoza’s Ethics (which I don’t understand – I am more of a Bertie Wooster than a Jeeves ;o).
[/caveat]
Dikran,
Yes, there are some areas of cosmology that may not make testable predictions, which some would argue is not science (I don’t agree with that either). However, they are still trying to find ways to explain actual observations.
“I’ll get back to your other points later but just for now, this is important:
>>”he is not questioning that ‘physics” is wrong as you seem to suggest ”
He most definitely is. The problem with Peterson is that, just like the best/worst (depending on your perspective) of the postmodernists, his arguments are dressed up in willfully obscure language. (I’d love to know what Feynman would make of Peterson’s needless verbiage).”
Read harder. He is nothing like a Post modernist. This resembles so many debates that I have with climate science deniers who simply dont know the literature they are refering to. His approach to the limits of science are diametrical opposed to POMO in every way possible.
yes, they share a style of explication that confuses you. But that is the most trivial form of similarity.
Thats like saying fluid dynamics is like particle physics because they both use variables.
the language isnt willfully obscure. I dont know what kind of lab experiment you would do to test for willfullness, or how you read his mind. What he says makes perfect sense to me. I disagree, but I get what he is gesturing at with language.
Hold on, I wasn’t referring to Peterson when I said obscure. I can understand what Peterson is saying, it just doesn’t make much sense and seems inconsistent. Maybe it’s not actually PoMo, but it seems to be some variant of that.
“It seems to me there are branches of science that try to make progress in other ways, for instance a lot of work in cosmology (e.g. eternal inflation, multiverse and perhaps string theory are not that amenable to observation and hypothesis testing, but I would regard them as being science nevertheless, so it seems reasonable to me that people working in the humanities should be able to pursue “pure thought” type research as well, where appropriate.”
I was oing to mention the string theory thing. Muller and I have this debate every so often. he is just admament in his opinion that string theory is not science. I view it as interesting storytelling.
The other way to put it is that we have different ways of making sense of things. If you want to make sense of how things move around the universe, well then physics beats everything. if you want to make sense of your life, equations and lab experiments might not be the only approach.
“You tend to take a very utilitarian view of language. Comunication is just one thing we do with language. It’s the least interesting means of communication.”
Well that’s just so much BS.
The only purpose to communication is to understand. Do you understand that basic fact?
Something wants to communicate something to something else. That something else desperately wants to understand what that something else is trying to communicate. The utility function of communication goes way up as an inverse function of time. Do you even get that? I think not.
I’m here to understand. Do you understand? No, of course you don’t.
“Unfortunately, in my experience, a key aspect of discussions about why physicists (for example) don’t understand the humanities is claims that the physicists simply just don’t get it, or aren’t trying hard enough”
The other reason why people fail to understand something seems to be that they don’t think they can understand it. Perhaps a lot of this two-cultures thing stems from people protecting themselves from potential intellectual failure. We all understand humanities to some extent, just as we all understand physics to some extent, unfortunately it isn’t clear how you can calibrate the difficulty of some branch of humanities against that of some branch of science, and hence have reasonable expectations of eachother. For example, I know I will never be a good musician (I just don’t get it, rather than lack of effort), although I can play some recognizable Bach (on a good day). What would a similar level of achievement in maths be? Human nature makes us great at being partisan snobs but I doubt much of it has any real basis!
“Maybe it’s not actually PoMo, but it seems to be some variant of that.”
Nope. Not a variant. I know the soft squishy, obscure, language looks like clue, but its not.
POMOs would never be caught dead saying there was a “meta truth”
They share a target. They target the notion that science is this exclusive, superior, unquestionable
approach to the true.
1. peterson is going to say there is something that is More true, or more deeply true,
or more fundamental ( His kinda wacky “religous'” views)
2. POMOs are going to be relativists, “multiple” “truths”
Same opponent. Different attacks, Similar verbal style which is Tired to the world view. basically language is not a simple pointer to the world
“i’m not a fan of clear and unambiguous language. It hides too much.”
Well now, that does explain quite a lot about your general communication skills (or should I say lack thereof). You purposefully don’t want others to understand whatever it is that your trying to communicate. The hallmark of teaching is to have excellent communication skills. You are quite abjectly not a teacher.
“However, they are still trying to find ways to explain actual observations.”
I think it is a meta-thing, I don’t think Descartes was trying to explain what we observe, but the extent of the certainty we could gain from things, it is still tied to understanding ourselves, but indirectly. It is a bit like maths, a lot of pure maths doesn’t seem very empirical to me, but is nevertheless a productive academic pursuit. As I understand it, we can’t know anything by purely empirical means, it needs to be supplemented by theory, and there is a spectrum of work in the sciences from purely experimental to purely theoretical (e.g. cosmologist and maths?), so it seems reasonable that humanities should also have a spectrum. (in both sciences and humanities, I suspect there is relatively little to be gained from concentrating only on the extremes, but for some subjects that is all there is to work with).
I’ll have to watch the videos.
I think one of the disparities we’re encountering comes from the fact that the sciences and the humanities address different aspects of existence. Science focusses, quite rightly, on the physical world whilst the humanities (and the arts) centre on questions of meaning and value. These latter questions are inevitably of the subject (which doesn’t necessarily mean ‘purely subjective’) but are rarely amenable to the kinds of empirical study that rests on the notion of universal objectivity.
A trivial example might be something like a critical analysis of 1950’s American Sci-fi films such as ‘Invaders from Mars’ or ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’. These films are widely regarded as reflecting US anxiety over the ‘Red Menace’ of Soviet power but would it be correct to say this analysis is ‘true’? Scholarship which produces that kind of analysis is certainly a contribution to knowledge; once a person has been given that interpretation they see those films differently than they did before, but a formulation in which knowledge is only ever ‘justified true belief’ (with truth being that which can be empirically evidenced) doesn’t really pertain.
SM “he is just admament in his opinion that string theory is not science. I view it as interesting storytelling.”
For me it is clearly science, a rational attempt to understand the universe as it objectively is, although it is only in a position to try and work out the more plausible candidates for how it may be (at the current time). You could argue it as extended hypothesis generation.
“The other way to put it is that we have different ways of making sense of things. If you want to make sense of how things move around the universe, well then physics beats everything. if you want to make sense of your life, equations and lab experiments might not be the only approach.”
I certainly agree there, although I’m not sure that lives necessarily have any sense to be found.
“..Similar verbal style which is Tired…”
Yes, exactly 🙂
I know it was a typo, but it amounts to my opinion, that it is a language game. A bunch of rhetorical flourishes that amount to very little. And frequently make no sense.
“NC: Well, here I’d be really cautious. For one thing, human language is not particularly or specifically a communication system. There are many communication systems. In fact, every animal we know, down to ants, has a communication system. And all sorts of different devices are used for communication among animals – chemical exchange, gesture, all sorts of things. And humans do have communications systems of the animal variety – human gestures, for example, are similar in many respects to the gestural communication systems of other animals. Human language is used for communication, of course, but it would be very hard to say that that’s its ‘function’.
If human language has a function at all it’s for expression of thought. So if you just think about your own use of language, a rather small part is used for communication. Much of human language is just used to establish social relations. Suppose you go to a bar in Kyoto and you spend an evening talking to your friends. You’re not ‘communicating’. You’re rarely communicating. You’re not presenting them with any information that changes their belief systems. You’re simply engaged in a kind of social play. You’re establishing social relations and creating warm interactions or determining your relationship to someone or whatever. Or you can use language simply for play, or for its aesthetic function.”
Language can of course be used for communication, but it’s more than that.
The key is to understand some of the reasons why the langauge is so obscure at first. Its related to the world view is your first hint, and related to the view about ‘truth’
.
“Thats like saying fluid dynamics is like particle physics because they both use variables.”
I must say you do provide a target rich environment. You say things that you clearly don’t have an effin’ clue about, that has always been quite clear to me, I do understand at least that much.
Fluid dynamics? Don’t even try to go there, because you can’t go there, because you don’t have the right training. 😦
“For me it is clearly science, a rational attempt to understand the universe as it objectively is, although it is only in a position to try and work out the more plausible candidates for how it may be (at the current time). You could argue it as extended hypothesis generation.”
I think we agree. I think one of the reasons we have disagreed in the past is I have a looser sense of what it means to be “rational” basicaly a “story” that givens reasons is “rational”
As for making sense of ones life, it’s interesting that there seem to be people who make this a higher priority than others. I refer back to the other peterson video where he talks about life being suffering. he speaks to people who need a purpose or meaning. I get that. This relates to the tombstone exercise I played with the other day. Some folks want to know what they lived for. Seems
that if they want to struggle with that question and develop a vocabulary for expressing themselves about the question, that one can just nod politely and listen and look for the first chance to exit the conversation.
Fred,
I agree. But what we’re discussing (I think) are situations in which the humanities appears to be claiming that our understanding of the physical world is somehow influenced by societal factors (or, maybe, that the reality of the physical world depends on societal factors). In my view, suggesting that societal values will influence whether or not we utilise a vaccine is clearly true. Suggesting that the efficacy of that vaccine depends on our societal values, however, is not. There do appear to be some who suggest the latter, rather than the former.
“Fluid dynamics? Don’t even try to go there, because you can’t go there, because you don’t have the right training.”
weirdly. For about 3 years I worked at a small company who’s claim to fame was forbody vortex control for aircarft. I spent a fair amount of time in the water tunnels. Company name was Eidetics
here is a sample of our work
Click to access ICAS-94-3.4.3.pdf
And ya, i worked there.
Got my first patent there in flight simulation
http://www.google.ch/patents/US5272652
They tried to teach me fluid dynamics but I was too dumb. Flight mechanics was a different question. It’s just math. in the end I liked marketing better..
But the point i was making remains. The styles are superficially similar. You really havent addressed that. Maybe you dont understand style. Maybe you can explain the key features of POMO style and petersons style?
“I know it was a typo, but it amounts to my opinion, that it is a language game. A bunch of rhetorical flourishes that amount to very little. And frequently make no sense.”
We should measure how little these fourishes amount to. That’s the only way we can know something
“what we’re discussing (I think) are situations in which the humanities appears to be claiming that our understanding of the physical world is somehow influenced by societal factors”
This is one of the points that Philip and I disagreed on in our interpretation of what Peterson was saying. As Philip says above, he believes that Peterson really is making a claim that the physical facts of e.g. the smallpox virus are constructed differently according to the framework of moral ‘truths’ in which they are formulated/discovered. I admit that Peterson is woolly on that point but don’t believe he’s going full-on social constructivist. He might say that empirical facts of that kind are ‘trivially true’ (his words) compared to a larger truth which includes both the physical facts and their moral implications. He’s shooting for a metaphysics of truth which, as Steven Mosher mentioned, hasn’t had much currency since the Enlightenment.
“You purposefully don’t want others to understand whatever it is that your trying to communicate.”
this understanding is not something I can merely give to you through langauge.
there is a reason for that. Think.
The job of some teachers may be to give you understanding.
There are other views on teaching.
can you suggest some?
Fred,
I really do appreciate your contributions to this thread. Much clearer and much easier to understand then some folks (ahem) who are missing certain bits. I like teachers. Thank you. 🙂
Thank you Fred.
“On the other hand, if someone in the humanities starts saying things about an area that is close to the area in which I work, I shouldn’t have to do this; I should already be able to understand what they’re saying, given that the context is already familiar to me. ”
That seems fair. So let me ask you. Do you understand the point peterson was making about nuclear bombs. Its a crazy extereme example, but Did I explain it to you in a way that you could understand– not agree with , but understand.
SM sez …
“Maybe you can explain the key features of POMO style and petersons style?”
Oh, you will just have to believe me, mkay.
But dare I say it? OK, I will …
Peterson, is nothing more, or nothing less, than just another holy roller. There I said it. Peterson is just too easy to understand coming from that religious perspective.
I started leaving the church at about the age of six (because my 2nd grade catechism described Hell rather vividly and I wanted to go to Hell myself to see it in person). I could go on, but I see no real reason to do so.
Steven,
I believe so. However, none of it changes my view that societal decisions about whether or not to build, or use, a nuclear weapon has no relevance when it comes to the existence of nuclear reactions, the ability to build a nuclear weapon, and what that weapon could do. They are – in my view – two separate issues.
Fred,
Okay, so I don’t even understand what this really means. Rather than me commenting further, maybe you could elabarate on what a “metaphysics of truth” is.
@StevenMosher
I note you still haven’t answered my question: have you listened, in full, to the ‘debate’ between Peterson and Harris? (It’s not fair to call it a debate — hence the scare quotes — given the lack of self-consistency in any of Peterson’s arguments. All Harris needs to do is point out those glaring inconsistencies and sit back and listen to Peterson flail around).
That’s four times and counting.
You also not-so-neatly side-stepped the central point I made. Peterson quite specifically states that the “factual legitimacy” of a claim can potentially depend on the moral framework surrounding that claim, in quite clear contradiction to your original argument that Peterson suggested no such thing?
Would you care to comment? Or should I assume that “factual legitimacy” can mean whatever we want it to mean?
How conveniently post-modern…
As I state in the blog post linked below, the Cult of Peterson is sociologically fascinating.
https://telescoper.wordpress.com/2017/08/24/conservatism-is-the-new-punk-rock-discuss/
@StevenMosher
The attempt at a distinction between the relativism of the post-modernists and Peterson is groundless because you credulously take Peterson at his word. I will suggest again (for the fifth and final time) that you take the time to listen to the exchange with Harris in full to hear for yourself the local, trivial, naive relativism that Peterson trots out time and again.
There are so many aspects of Peterson that are fascinating. Not least among these is his championing of Sokal while propagating precisely the type of obscure, postmodern, cultural/moral relativistic nonsense that Sokal so neatly lampooned.
” The ideas cannot be made ‘clear’ by langauge, rather they tend to reside “outside” language.”
Ah, that’s precious. What a wonderfully nebulous turn of phrase/get-out clause — straight from the Peterson playbook. So how am I meant to understand you if you fail to adequately communicate? Telepathy?
“this understanding is not something I can merely give to you through langauge.
there is a reason for that. Think.
The job of some teachers may be to give you understanding.
There are other views on teaching.
can you suggest some?”
If not language, then telepathy?
You could do it through art or interpretive dance I suppose…
@StephenMosher
Apologies for my persistence on the Harris-Peterson debate question. That was uncalled for. I raise it simply because it’s such a very good insight into the “Emperor’s New Clothes” aspects of Peterson’s arguments (such as they are).
Philip
@StevenMosher
Tsk. I apologise and at the same time misspell your name. Arrgh. Sorry again.
@-Fred
“He’s shooting for a metaphysics of truth .”
Then he should go back to preaching to the g-d botherers who think that sort of thing is important instead of trying to apply it to the field of science where is neither needed or wanted.
A general comment. If someone sees value in talking obscurly and arguing for some kind of higher truth (assuming that this is what’s being done) then – as far as I’m concerned – they are free to do so. However, I find it hard to see the value in this and would tend, mostly, to simply regard it as something worth ignoring. My own view about scholarship/research is that it should be accessible. I don’t do, and present, research so as to appeal to some specific group, I do it, and present it, to be accessible (ideally) to everyone. Of course, in specific instances, I may target some audience (colleagues who understand the terminology, for example) but that doesn’t mean that if asked to engage with some other audience that I wouldn’t then think about how to present it in a way that was accessible to that audience.
This brings me back to what I was suggesting in the post; the idea that some of this is more about convincing others of your own ideology, than revealing some kind of underlying knowledge/truth. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with this, but it doesn’t really seem to be something that I would regard as scholarship (by which I really mean presenting the – ideally – objective results of your research).
@StevenMosher
Sorry, Steven, but what i dislike about this comment is the heavily implied “You’re just not getting it” tone. This is why I keep raising the “Emperor’s New Clothes”. It’s not that we’re missing some deep message that we’re just not equipped to grasp, it’s that there really is no substance to Peterson’s arguments. The exchange with Harris makes this exceptionally clear. (Again, the parallels with criticism of Sokal’s “Social Text” hoax are striking).
if you want to make sense of your life, equations and lab experiments might not be the only approach.
Well, even though I might not be able to “make sense of [my] life,” I can take comfort that Peterson (and presumably Steven) can do so, because metaphysics.
> what i dislike about this comment is the heavily implied “You’re just not getting it” tone. This is why I keep raising the “Emperor’s New Clothes”.
One does not simply whine about tone and then keep raising stuff that are meant to be offensive, Philip. You might as well replace your last paragraph with “that’s just BS.” The parallels you find with Sokal text are thiner than you presume, and one actually led you astray, because Peterson may not even presume he’s against objectivism, and because (as I said earlier in a comment you ignored) POMO isn’t even characterized by the rejection of objectivism.
Two questions:
Fred starts his intro by saying that Jordan doesn’t deny there’s a reality out there, and you base your first video on addressing that very question. Have you made your videos in parallel?
What do you mean by “substance” of an argument? I don’t find that clear. Is it something “out there”?
It’s not that we’re missing some deep message that we’re just not equipped to grasp, it’s that there really is no substance to Peterson’s arguments.
It also assumes that there is logical or argumentative consistency in what Peterson says, i.e., that one part being entirely post modern is ruled out because another part of what he says isn’t. (As if everything that post modernist X says is entirely consistent). You see, if you only understood what Peterson says, you would see that it is entirely consistent, and thus nothing he says is post modernist.
Fred:
After you’ve addressed Anders’ 11:39 re explaining “metaphysics of truth, ” I’m hoping you might explain what a “moral truth” is?
> some of this is more about convincing others of your own ideology, than revealing some kind of underlying knowledge/truth.
If that were the case, then I’d go with the clear and simple, not the obscure stuff. Which means that clear and simple stuff can also be used for ideology. Witness teh Donald.
There are very simple problems about the notion of knowledge as justified true belief – they’re called Gettier problems:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/gettier/
Gettier’s cases are simple enough. They’re variations on the stopped clock that is correct twice a day. However, they revealed that the connection between truth and knowledge is problematic, more problematic than Philip (and Alan too) may presume.
That’s no POMO but pure, unalduterated analytical philosophy.
@-Joshua
At the start of this thread I posted an alternative, and more lucidly expressed version of Peterson’s position of doubting the methods of scientific discovery from Creationists.
They also dismiss materialism as incapable of discovering moral truth, therefore the Biblical text is superior.
It does not surprise me to find that Peterson also claims there are more, deeper, TRUTHS to be found in Genesis than in climate science.
> if you only understood what Peterson says, you would see that it is entirely consistent
Not everything that is inconsistent is POMO, you know.
Sometimes, snark can be revealing.
> It does not surprise me to find that Peterson also claims there are more, deeper, TRUTHS to be found in Genesis than in climate science.
Supper’s Ready was 27 minutes long. It has to be deep.
Analyzing the expression “to speak the truth” should be enough to see that truth goes beyond the descriptive. Truth amounts to very little without truthfulness, as my Supper’s Ready remark illustrates. And from truthfulness it should be easy to underline the moral dimension of truth.
There’s no dichotomy between facts and values. The facts we carve out of reality are the very ones we value. After all, reality has a well-known liberal bias.
Of course. One can try to reveal knowledge/truth clearly or obscurely, and one can try to influence other people’s views clearly, or obscurely. I was mainly just suggesting that I’m unconvinced that Peterson is really trying to reveal some knowledge/truth, rather than simply promoting some kind of agenda.
> So how am I meant to understand you if you fail to adequately communicate?
Try that with your spouse, Philip.
Report.
Izen –
They also dismiss materialism as incapable of discovering moral truth, therefore the Biblical text is superior.
Yes. I don’t always want to discover moral truth, but when I do, I always consult the Bible. (It’s the world of God, doncha know). If no Bibles are handy, I look for a horoscope or throw the I Ching. Clearly they also reveal moral truth, because they’ve been around a long time (the proof of evolution). Oh, and metaphysics.
Willard,
Not really equivalent, as far as I can see.
> Not really equivalent, as far as I can see.
The two situations may not be the same, AT, the reasons why such remark can’t be felicitous are in both cases quite similar.
Once you get from “could you pray tell what the hell do you mean” to “why the hell do you never make any sense,” there’s little room left to exchange anything.
Re. Metaphysics of truth. Peterson mostly CLAIMS to be relying on an understanding of truth that draws on the pragmatists, in which truth is that which lies at the end of enquiry. In other words, an answer to a question is true if it satisfies whatever function the question was intended to address. Peterson complicates this a bit by tying it Nietzsche and Darwin, so truth also becomes associated with what is good for the survival of the organism/species and with dominance heirarchies (it’s a bit of a mess in my opinion).
However, Although he doesn’t say so I think he’s also leaning on older, theologically-informed ideas which link truth to the notion of ‘the good’.
Willard,
True, once we get to the latter then there is little room for further discussion. Of course, if it becomes clear that there is no more room for further discussion, then maybe the latter is all that’s left to say (which may be your point).
Fred,
Thanks. I think I now get that, I simply don’t really identify with it. I certainly don’t agree that survival of the species somehow influences the reality of something like nuclear reactions. It may well tell us something about how we end up using our knowledge, but it doesn’t – in my view – influence the underlying reality of that knowledge.
I may regret this foray into philosophy, but my simplistic view is that if a given species on a given planet orbiting a given star evolves sufficient intelligence to make nuclear weapons but insufficient to refrain from using them on itself, that hardly invalidates the extended physics that made it all (stars, planets, geochemistry, biochemistry, evolution, nuclear weapons) possible.
‘extended’ physics because we’ve been through this before…
https://xkcd.com/793/
https://xkcd.com/435/
> I’m unconvinced that Peterson is really trying to reveal some knowledge/truth, rather than simply promoting some kind of agenda.
Jordan’s communication objectives are clear enough so that he can attract a patronage of Freedom Fighters that surpasses the salary of a top Canadian U professorship. His personnage is the main thing he reveals to me. Ironically, this befits his somewhat Jungian point that to this day humans understand the world through stories.
Some stories are better than others at producing reliable knowledge. By “reliable knowledge” I’m not only referring to scientific theories, but to everything that helped shape our moral compass since the dawn of times. That comprises religulous texts but also tales, myths, and novels. There must be something in the texts we preserved for millenia that explains their success, besides agenda promotion, unless by agenda you include moral truisms like “love saves time” or prescriptions like “always carry a towel with you.”
From an ontological perspective, the matters are even clearer:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/quine.htm
I might be biased.
> Although he doesn’t say so I think he’s also leaning on older, theologically-informed ideas which link truth to the notion of ‘the good’.
I’ll just throw in two citations related to this idea before I start my day.
First is Iris Murdoch’s essay on the sovereignty of Good:
Click to access murdoch-sgooc.pdf
The second is my own Portable POMO, based on a few paragraphs of a lecture on Parrhesia:
If morality is possible without assuming God’s existence, then it should be possible to read religulous texts as metaphors for something deeper than beliefs about old, white, heterosexual (?), bearded (Movember), males in the skies.
@-W
“If morality is possible without assuming God’s existence, “
If ??
@-“then it should be possible to read religulous texts as metaphors for something deeper than beliefs about old, white, …..”
Possible, but you risked burning at the stake with the Biblical literalists.
Worse now if you try it with the Koran.
”
If morality is possible without assuming God’s existence, then it should be possible to read religulous texts as metaphors for something deeper than beliefs about old, white, heterosexual (?), bearded (Movember), males in the skies.
”
This may beg the question of whether morality is possible with assuming God’s existence. Or Gods. Homeric or otherwise.
Physical objects, who art not in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
”
It is not that there is no “watchmaker”; there is no “watch.” Looking for one frames the problem the wrong way. Maybe that kind of frame is needed at the big bang with the anthropic principle; it is the right frame for genesis and the genes. In the earthen genesis, there are species well adapted for problem-solving, ever more informed in their self-actualizing. The watchmaker metaphor seems blind to the problem that here needs to be solved: that information-less matter-energy is a splendid information-maker. Biologists cannot deny this creativity; indeed, better than anyone else biologists know that Earth has brought forth the natural kinds, prolifically, exuberantly over the millennia, and that enormous amounts of information are required to do this.
The achievements of evolution do not have to be optimal to be valuable, and if a reason that they are not optimal is that they had to be reached historically along story lines, then we rejoice in this richer creativity. History plus value as storied achievement in creatures with their own integrity is better than to have optimum value without history, autonomy, or adventure in superbly-designed marionettes. That is beauty and elegance of a more sophisticated form, as in the fauna and flora of an ancient forest.
”
http://www.metanexus.net/essay/skyhooks-and-cranes
> If ??
Yes. Either as in “since we accept that even religulous people don’t even need to assume God’s existence” as I said earlier, or as in “depending upon what the hell we may mean by the claim that God exists.” How is it related to faith? Sometimes I wish atheists spent as much time reading about religiosity than bashing online.
As Iris says, the various metaphysical substitutes for God -Reason, Science, History- are false deities. If you deny the existence of God, will you do the same with Reason and Science? That’s what ought to follow from the idea that reality doesn’t depend upon our cognitions.
Speaking of which, what is Reality?
***
> you risked burning at the stake with the Biblical literalists.
Risked??? I don’t, and I know more religious folks than you can imagine.
I don’t get the constant need to build strawmen out of the weakest position one can find. Few here like Jordan. I certainly don’t. Why not try to take a constructive stance toward the whole ordeal instead of realizing sterile or negative transactions?
> This may beg the question of whether morality is possible with assuming God’s existence.
Of course it is, assuming we can derive a Could from a Was:
(0) Albert was a man.
(1) Albert was a Spinozian pan-psychist.
(2) Albert raised concerns about the atom bomb.
(3) Raising concerns about the atom bomb shows morality.
(4) Showing morality is enough to warrant its existence.
(5) Albert was a moral man.
Do you deny that it’s rather trivial to find people around you that shows a similar morality to Albert’s, Rev?
@-W
“Speaking of which, what is Reality?”
Is this a rhetorical question ? (grin)
I gave my answer in the first post I made on this thread.
A material universe that is computable. It is discoverable by mathematical modelling from empirical (intra-subjective) observation of that material world with no need to invoke arbitrary, supernatural or non-material influences.
I do not claim this answer is ‘TRUE’.
Just the most utile A prior assumption we can make to cope with whatever it ‘really’ is.
[Mod: sorted, I hope.]
> I gave my answer in the first post I made on this thread.
Thanks. Here’s what you said:
There was no mention of reality. There is “material universe,” “material world,” and “computable.”
Some dispute the computable part, e.g. Roger Penrose. David Deutsch holds that the universe is a quantum-flavored Turing machine. There are other kinds of computable machines around, like oracle machines. Otters argue that we live in a simulation of such machine. I’m sure there are many other viable positions on the computational nature of reality. I think the question is ill-posed (the Church-Turing thesis has a non-formal component), albeit I would not go as far as Wolfram and say that it’s too complex for us and is unsolvable.
The point of my rhetorical question is two-fold. First, to make explicit the fact that this kind of theorical exploration rests on metaphysical assumptions. You yourself admit that, and it is a good thing. Second, to suggest that while metaphysical assumptions are needed, they are more or less irrelevant to where we’re going from there.
In other words, whether you assume the universe is computable or not, or whether the universe truly is computable or only describable as a computing system, it’s possible to do research with other people that hold a different starting point.
I think the same goes with our religious metaphysics which, to repeat again because I think it’s a point that renders the horsemen of atheism utterly irrelevant, is not something I have ever seen discussed by the religious people I know.
That metaphysical freedom does not imply there could not be points of conflict between religious and non-religious worldviews. It implies, however, that tolerance goes a long way in dispelling illusory ones. What I’m saying right now is not far from Rudolf Carnap’s principle of tolerance:
Click to access carnap.pdf
I’m not sure I would so far as to say we could choose any logic we like, but I’m not sure I wouldn’t. It’s been a while I thought about all this. I’d need to think a bit more.
@-W
“In other words, whether you assume the universe is computable or not, or whether the universe truly is computable or only describable as a computing system, it’s possible to do research with other people that hold a different starting point.”
Possible, but not easy. I contrasted my position in that post with otters that hold a different starting point,-
“The topic of material naturalism is hardly insignificant. Much of the ”thought-scape” of today’s thinking is shaped by this point of view. Much of the working assumptions of western culture rest on this as reality.”
Spend any time in discussion with YECs or Design Institute people and you soon find that tolerance takes two to tango.
> Spend any time in discussion with YECs or Design Institute people and you soon find that tolerance takes two to tango.
That saying is untrue:
http://www.centralhome.com/ballroomcountry/tango.htm
ClimateBall ™ provides daily episodes of failures to get anywhere, even if we adopt Postel’s law to human communication and try to keep to a conservative output and to accept input liberally.
What I’m saying is that, in principle, metaphysics should not be blamed for miscommunication. Something else is at work, and I believe what Aristotle said about payback and honor looks more like it.
This exchange, like the one featured in the post, is simply not a scientific exchange.
”
Do you deny that it’s rather trivial to find people around you that shows a similar morality to Albert’s, Rev?
”
No.
However, if you will kindly excuse the Godwin, I can also find people around me that show a similar morality to Adolf’s, who by a very similar syllogistic chain, was also a ‘moral man’.
Gott mit uns.
Albert also raised concerns about the God that gambles.
And then Albert placed his bets on the existence of hidden variables.
Another case-study in morality is Edward, who also had concerns about bombs:
”
I do not feel that there is any chance to outlaw any one weapon. If we have a slim chance of survival, it lies in the possibility to get rid of wars. The more decisive a weapon is the more surely it will be used in any real conflict and no agreements will help.
Our only hope is in getting the facts of our results before the people. This might help to convince everybody that the next war would be fatal. For this purpose actual combat-use might even be the best thing.
”
and, like Albert, concerns about a hidden deity:
”
The idea of God that I absorbed was that it would be wonderful if He existed: We needed Him desperately but had not seen Him in many thousands of years.
”
Even for the religiously inclined, God seems always to be far too aloof to get directly involved in either science or morality.
Perhaps it is just as well. That leaves Him more time for politics.
But even there, He has stiff competition:
During a forum for social conservatives in Ames, Iowa, in July, Trump conceded that he has never sought forgiveness from God. “I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right,” he said. “I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.”
That experiment in morality, like the trolley ‘problem’, is a hypothetical: Donald would never actually do something wrong.
> I can also find people around me that show a similar morality to Adolf’s, who by a very similar syllogistic chain, was also a ‘moral man’.
Go right ahead. Don’t forget to replace the third step:
(3) Raising concerns about the atom bomb shows morality.
with something similar and to adapt (4). Then we could negotiate the claim that showing morality is enough to warrant its existence. After that, we would have to discuss if it’s possible to do any wrongdoing while remaining moral.
Thanks in advance for playing!
ATTP,
“A general comment. … ”
IMHO very well said.
However, last night (or this morning) was a rather target rich environment.
Obfuscating stuff like “read the primary texts” is rather vacuous (in the empty or null sense), such that, those that are really minor, might best be ignored.
“This brings me back to what I was suggesting in the post; the idea that some of this is more about convincing others of your own ideology, than revealing some kind of underlying knowledge/truth.”
Of course, that remains the central issue, unfortunately I do see an impasse. One side is stuck in a rather subjectivism realm, while the other side is stuck in a rather objectivism (and no, not in an Ayn Rand Objectivism way) realm. One side predates the written word (e. g. story telling and death rituals), while the other side has, in a relatively short period of time, virtually exploded onto the shores of humanity. The time scale ratio of these two sides contains a great deal of humanistic (subjective) inertia, While on the other hand, the sheer volume of knowledge and information (objective) has exceeded an exponential rate of growth.
So do we look to the past with its massive subjectivism inertia, or do we look to the future with its greater than exponential growth of objectivism knowledge? I would vote for the latter as I am a progressive. Whence once the balance scale was heavily tilted towards the subjectivism vector we now find it extremely tilted towards the objectivism vector.
I now consider Peterson to be the most recent form of reflective reactionary Rejectionism. Old lamps for new, as it were. I also see no point in arguing which is nested in the other as Peterson does, the Venn diagram is not one circle within the other, but two separate overlapping circles which has a temporal component. What was once a very small circle overlapping a very large circle, has changed to such a degree that standing on the now much larger circle, one can’t tell that that circle has curvature. 🙂
Wow, this is getting to be fun.
To complete the circle as it were. You are a static 1D point (no height-width-depth) and you are on a line (2D) or surface (3D), you believe that there is an inside and that there is an outside to this line or surface. The line or surface has finite curvature everywhere. You are free to exist on only one (concave or convex) side of this line or surface, which do you choose? And explain in as few words or equations as possible (this really isn’t much of a thought experiment to be honest with you, technically there is no wrong answer because you get a choice, metaphorically speaking)?
BTW, this forms a perfect metaphor for humanity and knowledge (or lack thereof). Hint: 1D humanity was not given a choice, it has mostly existed on the convex side of said line or surface.
“I may regret this foray into philosophy, but my simplistic view is that if a given species on a given planet orbiting a given star evolves sufficient intelligence to make nuclear weapons but insufficient to refrain from using them on itself, that hardly invalidates the extended physics that made it all (stars, planets, geochemistry, biochemistry, evolution, nuclear weapons) possible.”
In the passage Peterson DOES NOT invalidate the physics. he notes that it may not be PRAGMATICALLY the best conception. In other words, its a knowledge void of morality
I am not saying I agree with him, but you owe it to yourselves to understand the strongest versions of his positions
“Re. Metaphysics of truth. Peterson mostly CLAIMS to be relying on an understanding of truth that draws on the pragmatists, in which truth is that which lies at the end of enquiry. In other words, an answer to a question is true if it satisfies whatever function the question was intended to address. Peterson complicates this a bit by tying it Nietzsche and Darwin, so truth also becomes associated with what is good for the survival of the organism/species and with dominance heirarchies (it’s a bit of a mess in my opinion).”
yes he has a mish mash of metaphysics. I sense someone really struggling with the ideas
“Sorry, Steven, but what i dislike about this comment is the heavily implied “You’re just not getting it” tone. This is why I keep raising the “Emperor’s New Clothes”. It’s not that we’re missing some deep message that we’re just not equipped to grasp, it’s that there really is no substance to Peterson’s arguments. The exchange with Harris makes this exceptionally clear. (Again, the parallels with criticism of Sokal’s “Social Text” hoax are striking).”
tone? let me be clear. You dont get it. YOU, DONT GET IT. clear enough? dont sweat the tone.
Its not about a deep message at all. I just confine myself to the One complete bit of text you quoted in your video. your reading of that was horrible. Just plain wrong. peterson is silly, but not for the reasons you think. Its now where near to Sokal. Again, this discussion reminds me of the discussions I have with climate skeptics when they try to stumble around and criticize science without reading the fundamental texts.
My suggestion is that you should not put in the time to try to undrestand it. Instead listen to Willard.
ask smart questions. he will give you good links.
“Okay I have watched the dance, and I still think Amazing Grace is as close as I can get.”
hmm I think you maybe listening too mechanically or literally. Its an Ode to youth
> One side is stuck in a rather subjectivism realm, while the other side is stuck in a rather objectivism (and no, not in an Ayn Rand Objectivism way) realm.
Objectivism is only the metaphysical commitment of scientific realism:
Important antirealist conceptions are constructive empiricism, instrumentalism, and fictionalism:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism
The “subjectivist” strawman won’t cut it.
“Neither Jordan has studied truth. Truth as what-increases-survival-chances (or something along those lines) has little currency. It’s the first time I’ve seen someone being called a POMO because of that. It’s one of the most empirical version of truth one may find, and it’s far from being relativistic in the ordinary sense.”
Yes as a former POMO the closest variant you will find of this would be in a neitzschian POMO
who had read the will to power.
I will say this, that as a POMO who wrote a bunch about the Will to Power, that if you brought that text up, they would call you the N word or the F word.
“I believe so. However, none of it changes my view that societal decisions about whether or not to build, or use, a nuclear weapon has no relevance when it comes to the existence of nuclear reactions, the ability to build a nuclear weapon, and what that weapon could do. They are – in my view – two separate issues.”
Ok, so lets press on this a little. You see you want to divide the two. There is the ATTP as a being who is a ‘scientist” who values knowing about the world as a end in an of itself. And then there is ATTP the moral man as a part of society. two separate beings. One of the old arguments against “science” was the notion that knowledge wasnt good in an of itself. That we cant separate our knowing being from our moral being. That there is SOME KNOWLEDGE you should not have.
but hey we ate that apple..
petersons argument comes from this strain of thought. he might not say it exactly as I have, but I recognize the strain of thought.. the strain of thought that resists separating our moral being from our knowing being.
Some folks call this activism.. so it also has a sister on the left
Everett F Sargent.
Accusing me of straw-manning? At least I think you might be, your comment is a tad rambling.
Jordan Peterson’s position on free speech (if I understand it correctly) is suppressing free speech can lead to physical violence, and that is the point I was making. I agree with this position.
To return to Jordan’s stance on truth, here’s something longer than a sentence:
I challenge anyone to explain how this is POMO.
EDIT. Toned down.
At last I found a transcript of when Sam met Jordan:
So Jordan’s rambling boils down to this:
(1) The truth of a statement or process can only be adjudicated with regards to its efficiency in attaining its aim.
(2) Any goal directed action has an internal ethic embedded in it.
(3) If what you do works, then it’s true enough.
(4) The proposition that the universe is best conceptualized as subatomic particles maybe true enough to generate a hydrogen bomb but could lack pragmatism (and thus be wrong in some Darwinian sense) if it led to the demise or our specie.
I suppose I could clarify this a bit more, but I think I’ve given enough for now.
Your turns.
Willard –
I challenge anyone to explain how this is POMO.
Not everything he says is post modernist.
Do you think that nothing he says is post modernist, or consistent with postmodern principles?
Willard –
I know that you tend to not like questions, but…
(4) The proposition that the universe is best conceptualized as subatomic particles maybe true enough to generate a hydrogen bomb but could lack pragmatism (and thus be wrong in some Darwinian sense) if it led to the demise or our specie.
I find that VERY confusing.
You obviously have no obligation for my understanding… and might be difficult or even impossible to dumb it down sufficiently that I could understand. But here are some of my questions.
What does “wrong” in a Darwinian sense mean? How does Darwinian theory adjudicate rightness or wrongness? What does “true enough” mean? At what point does not true enough become true enough? How is that measured? Can I measure that? How would the rightness or wrongness – of conceptualizing the universe as (comprising?} subatomic particles – in any sense (Darwinian or otherwise) be contingent on the demise of our species? Would we not be able to make any such determination of rightness or wrongness before the end of time (or at least until such time as atomic bombs are no longer a possibility)?
Willard –
I know that you tend to not like questions, but…
Perhaps it would be better for me say that it seems to me that in these discussions, you sometimes find asking questions to be passive aggressive, or maybe aggressive, and particularly when they come as lists of questions.
As such, I don’t mean to suggest that you have some kind of argumentative obligation to answer my questions. It would make total sense for you to focus your responses on people who understand what you wrote.
> Do you think that nothing he says is post modernist, or consistent with postmodern principles?
I do, Joshua, insofar as by POMO principles you’re referring to recurring themes and techniques. I suppose one could think that a full-blown pragmatist conception of truth is POMO, but he doesn’t buy that flavor. Here he is, gloating with Sam:
I suppose we could find some affinity between Jordan’s return to the Original Logos with Martin Heidegger’s project of reclaiming what was lost with Plato, but I think this is more pre modern than post anything.
Really, Jordan’s just another reactionary half-baked thinker rediscovering conservativism.
Have you read the Closing of the American Mind?
> here are some of my questions.
Try to read the exchange between Sam and Jordan first. It’s all about these questions. Since Sam has a more rigorous background on this, it might be more profitable to pay attention to what he says when he reflects what Jordan says. I don’t think they succeeded in bringing forth something quite coherent. At least they tried.
Live debates sometimes fall flat.
Oh oh, another day another target rich environment.
“The “subjectivist” strawman won’t cut it.”
(3) If what you do works, then it’s true enough.
As in I really don’t care what you think of my position. Rambling? Yes. Saying you’ve made a rebuttal by quoting others isn’t a rebuttal. We have not even been talking about the science, as you said yourself, this thread isn’t about the science or even science in general. Why go there? Because Peterson does. The joke is Peterson, he just doesn’t realize it.
“Jordan Peterson’s position on free speech (if I understand it correctly) is suppressing free speech can lead to physical violence, and that is the point I was making. I agree with this position.”
As far as I’m concerned Peterson can have his bigoted and sexist free speech, if it leads
to yelling fire in a crowded movie house, then I don’t see much difference between violent speech and violence, one begat the other. There are millions of real world cases where violent bigoted speech has lead to real physical violence. I believe in the rule of law? Do you? Because, if you do, and I’m sure you do, then Canada passed a law. Peterson doesn’t like the rule of law, so eff’ him. See how simple that was.
“but you owe it to yourselves to understand the strongest versions of his (sic Peterson’s) positions”
Said who? I prefer not to listen to a rebellious religious crank. Always have. So I don’t.
“I will say this, that as a POMO who wrote a bunch about the Will to Power, that if you brought that text up, they would call you the N word or the F word.”
Nice and Fine works fo me. 🙂
“but hey we ate that apple..”
Said who? The Bible also known as the book of evil violent and sexist speech.
“the strain of thought that resists separating our moral being from our knowing being.”
Strawperson.
“let me be clear. You dont get it. YOU, DONT GET IT. clear enough?”
rotflmfao you dont need too shout looser (not firmly or tightly fixed in place) sad
“I challenge anyone to explain how this is POMO.”
It isn’t pomo. it is still crap though. 😦
I would really like to keep this thread on topic though, if you all don’t mind.
> (3) If what you do works, then it’s true enough.
What makes you think that what works is subjective, Everett?
You keep using that word. It may not mean what you make it mean.
Well its nice to see them discuss Rorty.
EV,
You still dont get it.
““but hey we ate that apple..”
Said who? The Bible also known as the book of evil violent and sexist speech.”
The point is that Jordan’s perspective is not POMO, but rather metaphysical, or quasi religious.
His complaint about our knowledge of spliting the atom isnt so much an argument for relativism or social construction ( ala POMO) but rather his argument against it is Moral/ Darwinian.
Yes its wrong. However, it’s important to understand what exactly his argument is. That’s why I relate it back to the original faust story ( the original faust is a scientist of sorts who loses his soul for wanting too much knowledge) and thats why I relate it back to the Ur story of the garden. Like it or not Jordan doesnt escape this western christian tradition. Its not POMO, its a confused sort of half darwinian, half pragmatic, half Jungian ( oops 3 halves) reconstitution of basic christian tropes.
“we ate that apple’ also refers to the notion that we cannot uninvent or unknow how to destroy the planet. And yes, the Bible has that sort of stuff in it. I’m not defending it. I’m pointing out that Jordan is adopting some of the basic Christian lines of thought. Not POMO,
Of course you could adopt the position that any sort of confusing thought and language is POMO.
you’d be wrong, but you could do that.
Willard,
It means whatever I think it means, that thing between my ears understands it. In the end, that’s all that matters. Right?
If people choose not to communicate properly, as would appear to be the case, you can fight it like I did yesterday, or you can go with the flow as i am doing today. My INS (inertial navigation system) has made the necessary course correction.
I would not suggest, for example, that this thread is stupid. I would not suggest, for example, that the people posting in this thread (me, myself and I plus the rest) are stupid.
I would never do such things.
I would suggest, that me, myself and I are having a jolly good time, though. I am feeling very superior though, that I got to admit or submit.
Carry on.
“I suppose one could think that a full-blown pragmatist conception of truth is POMO, but he doesn’t buy that flavor. ”
The only people I know who escaped from POMO did so by becoming full blown pragmatist.
Its way easier to write
“You still dont get it.”
I am quite fine with that, that you donnnnnt think that I donnnnnt get it.
Really, I am just really fine with it, it is even a complement. So thank you.
SM,
Oh. and if I made the POMO argument (Did I? I really don’t remember, quote me please, if you don’t mind), then I’m sorry, I was wrong.
Crap, by any other name, still kind of stinks though.
Where is the quantifiable knowledge that the humanities are adding to the sea of humanity today? In the analytical sense if you all don’t mind.
Is that on topic, I think it is, that is, I thought, one point in this thread. But maybe I misunderstood ATTP?
“(4) The proposition that the universe is best conceptualized as subatomic particles maybe true enough to generate a hydrogen bomb but could lack pragmatism (and thus be wrong in some Darwinian sense) if it led to the demise or our specie.
I find that VERY confusing.”
Lets see. We have a model of the world. Like all models its wrong but perhaps useful. When we look at the world as a collection of particles, science doesnt tell us this is certain beyond all doubt.
Its a good model of things. It works. Its useful. It leads to great predictions. Perhaps that model
will change, and instead of particles we will use a different concept. And if it works better, we will
dump the old model and go with the new. Like we say all scientific knowledge is contingent. Its never settled. its true enough ( fits our needs) its not like math (1+1=2) we understand that truths of science could be otherwise. They could change. they are provisionally true. Not absolutely true for all time.
So in some way we judge the truths of science by the results. Does it work?
What Peterson then points out is that if we are judging science by its outcome ( how did it work), then we cant really avoid the observation that our knowledge may destroy our species. That is one use of the knowledge is non adaptive and not beneficial to our survivial. In one sentence its an attempt to use the science of evolution against scientific understanding. We killed ourselves with science. In the end, taking the long view of things, science doesnt have adaptive value.
Its not that confusing. Not sure if I would call it clever or stupid, but not confusing.
.”Where is the quantifiable knowledge that the humanities are adding to the sea of humanity today? In the analytical sense if you all don’t mind.”
adding to the sea? like melting ice? A most excellent metaphor EV. You know that they obscure things. Please avoid the unclear metaphorical language especially when asking for quantifiable stuff
Is there an alternative epsitimology in the humanities? I really don’t think so, but what would I know. I do sense a looseness though relative to the hard sciences, there can be little doubt on that front (the inability to reproduce even half (or approximately half) of the studies as reported in the scientific media, while not a formal proof, is rather troubling).
@-SM
“hmm I think you maybe listening too mechanically or literally. Its an Ode to youth”
“Mechanically or literally” is an improvement of ‘missing part of being Human’ for which I thank you.
As I have no knowledge of the language, or the obvious historical-cultural weight it carries given the audience reaction, listening literally is the only option if I am to avoid bringing my own preconceptions into it.
I would conclude from the musical form that as an ode to youth, it is a look-back from age at youth, not a celebration of youth by youth.
SM,
The request for data seems rather benign to me, Quantifiable in the sense of an objective number (lives saved for example).
I need to expand my quantifiable knowledge in the humanities. Numbers please, if you don’t mind, thank you.
@-W
“I do, Joshua, insofar as by POMO principles you’re referring to recurring themes and techniques. I suppose one could think that a full-blown pragmatist conception of truth is POMO, but he doesn’t buy that flavor. ”
I think I agree.
Jordan is replaying the Aristotle versus Epicurus discourse more than indulging in POMO.
Not that POMO avoids the same road.
@Steven Mosher
Tsk, Steven. Full-on “caps lock mode” is never the most compelling of strategies. Might I suggest italics for emphasis instead? You definitely need to sweat the tone. It’s all about effective communication, after all. (Insert smiley/winky emoticon to taste…) Simply shouting at me that “I don’t get it” is not a convincing argument.
Let me repeat — because you’ve dodged this time and time again — precisely what Peterson says to Harris:
Peterson states, very clearly, that the factual legitimacy of a claim can potentially be affected by the overlying moral framework.
Now, you can repeatedly tell me and others that we don’t get it, but, again, that’s not a counter-argument. You have yet to address what Peterson is saying here. It’s the worst form of cultural/moral relativism; it’s post-modern to its core.
There is nothing “to get”. Just as Sokal highlighted the lack of substance behind the florid language of many postmodernists, what we have with Peterson is exactly the same Emperor’s New Clothes scenario, but rebooted for the 21st century.
And if you’re going to convince me otherwise, you need to address what Peterson has actually said, not your reading of it.
OK, so to see where I’m coming from. People post stuff, many of these posts are (or seem or appear to be) tangential to the main point(s) of the thread topic as laid out at the top of this thread by ATTP. We, of course, can go wherever it is, it would seem. Correct?
So what do I think I should do? I think that I should go back to the top of this thread and reread it. I do this because I think I’m trying to maintain the overriding theme, or to try to stay on topic, if you prefer. Maybe internet discourse and social media have a very high S/N ratio, that’s been my own POV from what all I’ve seen on these internetwebs, but YMMV.
So that is what I am doing, people post nonsense, so I go back to the top and reread what ATTP said.
I’ve seen the videos and understand them, whatever be my POV, the same goes for the Peterson dogmas, been there, done that, not interesting at all, very trivial in fact, YouTube guru, boring, queue up the next one hit wonder, p-a-a-a-a-a-l-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-s-s-s-s-s-e-e-e-e-e.
So I want to quantify the humanities, we do have the academic literature, so we do have some data points, the main ones being the inability for reproducing study outcomes to varying degrees in different areas of the humanities. This I do find very troubling and, I think, central to ATTP’s main theme.
I’ll stop right there, thank you.
Phillip
rather than skip on to the next quote. I want to see if you can explicate the quote you showed in your video. That is the quote I refered to. That is the quote I said you read horribly.
Gish galloping away to another exchange wont help us, unless you can start with the quote you originally commented on. That is the quote you dont get.
the other hint is you dont understand moral relativism or POMO. but we will get to that.
1. I played your video where you discussed a quote.
2. I say you read that horribly.
3. You ask me how.
4. I tell you how.
5. you then bounce around and present a litany of other quotes and passages.
6. I’m still on the first one which you dont understand.
So if you can stay on the precise topic I raised, you might get something right
probably the best section to listen to where the agree on the “big problem.”
Philip,
Don’t mind me, but there are those of us whom have had over a decade of SM. At one time he was a full tilt boogie climate science denier. I’m trying to fast forward this videotape for you.
So, not to beat a dead horse, but with SM, what you see is what you get. The MO you see here with SM is truly timeless, most others would call his form a driveby.
He never takes the time to at least post in complete sentences with punctuation and capitalization even, Because that takes to long to form a truly complete thought.
Talk to ATTP offline to get perhaps very different POV. Just trying to save you some valuable time. Thanks you for the Peterson debate videos.
@Steven Mosher
Oh, Steven, that’s a disappointingly and blindingly obvious side-step again. There’s no Gish gallop here. That quote is entirely representative of Peterson’s position throughout the entire two hour podcast. See also, for example, his ludicrous — quote literally ludicrous — position with regard to the smallpox example that Harris brings us on more than one occasion.
You have accused me of misreading Peterson’s clear postmodernism. Then I give you a clear counter-argument and you side-step it? (Or perhaps this is just some type of meta-communication or meta-rhetorical device that I’m simply not sufficiently “trained” to grasp? (Again, insert smiley/winky emoticon to taste)).
Peterson specifically states, on more than one occasion, that the moral (and thus cultural) framework in which science is carried out can affect the factual legitimacy of science. How is this not postmodernistic at its very core?
You have not addressed this question. Again.
@Everett F Sanger
Thanks for that very pertinent and helpful piece of advice. I’ve stupidly not been following my own “rules of engagement”: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2017/05/02/rules-of-engagement-seven-lessons-from-communicating-above-and-below-the-line/
I’ve enjoyed your contributions to this thread (and, once again, thanks for highlighting the (rather veiled!) reference to Peterson via Living Colour in the video exchange with Fred. I was really over the moon when I saw that!)
My arguments and counter-arguments with regard to Mosher’s points are clear from the thread above. I’ll let the readers of ATTP’s blog make up their own minds as to the respective strenghts of our positions.
All the best and thanks again for the advice. Thoroughly appreciated.
Philip
Here is an example of a good “reader”
its 29 minutes long, but if you listen to it, you will understand the key differences between the two
as well as why the conversation went off the rails.
or cut to the chase, a little weak on pragmatism
Phillip have a listen to a good reader.
It will show you what a small amount of background in the relevant topic will do to improve your understanding.
Also, on the you tube share button you can actually capture the times you want to draw attention to if you look closely.
there a useful bit of knowledge 4 U
“You have accused me of misreading Peterson’s clear postmodernism. Then I give you a clear counter-argument and you side-step it? (Or perhaps this is just some type of meta-communication or meta-rhetorical device that I’m simply not sufficiently “trained” to grasp? (Again, insert smiley/winky emoticon to taste)).”
well its not post modernism. Sorry. I wasted far too many years actually doing it, and yes sitting there and listening to Derrida when he was the shit. Listen to the you tube I cued up for you.
Since you cant get it from me, perhaps someone less triggering, can help.
The biggest issue is that the two actually mean something different when they use the word “true”
After you listen we can quiz you on correspondence theories of truth and coherence theories of truth. if you pass that test there is hope for you
Its weird that Sam didnt get it since he has read Rorty.
EFS’s comment here is about right. The post wasn’t intended to be about Peterson specifically, but about the possibility of there being a form of scholarship in the humanities that is entirely non-empirical, but that still reveals knowledge/truth. Peterson may be an example of such a scholar. Just to be clear, I’m well aware that there are areas in the humanities in which the goal might not be to specifically/directly reveal truth. Areas such as literature, the arts, music etc. These areas may do things that make us think, might make us aware of aspects of human nature, etc, but their direct goal isn’t to specifically reveal information about some system being studied.
If Peterson is an example of a humanities scholar who reveals knowledge/truth in some way that is not consistent with what a physicist might regard as the scientific method, then I’m still unconvinced as to the value of such activities, or that it does indeed qualify as some form of scholarship.
“So, not to beat a dead horse, but with SM, what you see is what you get. The MO you see here with SM is truly timeless, most others would call his form a driveby.”
drive by?
EV. I do drivebys at WUWT. basically thats one comment making fun of deniers and then leaving.
Try to use clearer language
SM sez …
Try to use clearer language
The message was sent and properly communicated to that one person it was meant for. That is all.
We’re drifting away from the general topic, so maybe we can bring things back again.
Steven,
I’ve just read Paul McKeever’s blog post and will try to watch the video. However, it appears that I do broadly understand Peterson’s views on truth. They just seem to be nonsense.
@ATTP
’nuff said.
ATTP wrote “but about the possibility of there being a form of scholarship in the humanities that it entirely non-empirical, but that still reveals knowledge/truth.”
I think Descartes “I think, therefore I am” fits into that category (it essentially tells us we can have no certain knowledge of reality, which I suspect wasn’t appreciated at the time, or even after), and can see how some philosophy, ethics or theology might (especially if working on what should/ought to be rather than what is), but it would be a rather small section of the humanities (just as cosmology is a small section of the sciences). If I were Peterson, I think I might have given some concrete examples to illustrate the point…
I still haven’t watched the videos, but the discussion seems to suggest that an element of pedantry is being used to avoid conceding the position (i.e. most scholarship will have an empirical element, but there is a [negligible?] possibility of largely non-empirical scholarship, just like there is in science, e.g. cosmology)?
ATTP,
“If Peterson is an example of a humanities scholar who reveals knowledge/truth in some way that is not consistent with what a physicist might regard as the scientific method, then I’m still unconvinced as to the value of such activities, or that it does indeed qualify as some form of scholarship.”
Well now, I have spent a great deal of time studying Peterson’s ‘so called’ scholarship (several hundred hours in fact, many emails, many blank expressions, a FIPPA sort of waiting for something to be published, meh, don’t really like playing The Auditor though). I’ve been rather coy about what I know for good reason. I am lying in wait from a certain PhD student of his to publish something in the peer reviewed academic literature (based on Peterson’s ‘reds under his bet’ wacko mother-infant PC-Authoritarian gibberish).
Long story short?
Peterson may use the tools of the hard sciences, mainly statistical methods, but in grad school I learned you no longer use the cookbook, you make the cookbook. That means that you have to come to grips with any underlying theories that those tools encompass.
Long story even shorter.
Psychology, in particular, they as a general rule, are STEM illiterate. They only know how to push those buttons. And finally, I also learned not to be an inbred, the psychology department of UoT should be world famous for their PhD inbreeding, from BS-MS-PhD all degrees from only one school, very easy to get through IMHO.
Having watched the first two videos, it seems odd to argue that empirical truths are a subset of moral truths (or vice versa), it seems to me that it would be better to think of them as orthogonal axes (McVittie appeared to me to be the old “two cultures” thing trying to belittle science by saying that their truths were lesser, trivial truths, which I think is a bit of a tiresomely arrogant approach). Scientific/empirical truths are what we normally mean by truths (statements that are to the best of our knowledge correct), whereas moral truths (such as the “hero” thing) are perhaps better described as “verities” (using a less usual word to indicate that the meaning was nuanced) that usefully reflect something without actually being in any real sense “correct”. Both things have value and I don’t see the point in arguing that one is more important than the other without considering the purposes for which they are used. Whether nuclear physics is correct does not depend on whether it is useful to society, science is about what is, not what ought to be, so the moral considerations are largely orthogonal AFAICS. Similarly it seems slightly bizarre to me to discuss what we ought to do from a moral/ethical perspective based on our evolutionary heritage. Surely the whole point in being sentient and rational is that we can choose to discard parts of our evolutionary heritage that we decide are no longer useful (e.g. the way society ought to treat women).
Regarding justified belief, personal revelation (e.g. being spoken to by God) would be a basis for justified belief for that person, but it wouldn’t be a justified belief in this sense for someone else to believe solely based on the testimony of the first person.
ATTP wrote “However, it appears that I do broadly understand Peterson’s views on truth. They just seem to be nonsense.”
I tend to agree, the “our truths are incontrovertible” suggests a very great lack of scholarship (unless it is willful misrepresentation) which is likely to result in nonsense.
@dikranmarsupia (Nov 7 2017 at 11:00 am)
This is exactly it. Removal of the orthogonality is a basic “category error” (or, if I wedge my tongue fimrly in cheek, what physicists might call a basic flaw in dimensional analysis.) Stripping away that orthogonality has the potential to produce all sorts of inconsistencies and nonsense. And, lo and behold, that’s exactly what it does, and Peterson’s gibberish about “empirical truths nested in moral/Darwinian/religious truths” results.
This is not a misrepresentation of Peterson. He specifically claims that scientists would call certain empirical evidence “incontrovertible”. As I discuss in one of the responses to Fred, Carlo Rovelli is extremely good on the key role of uncertainty in science. (As, of course, was Feynman before him).
Exactly. (Again!)
—–
@Everett F Sargent (November 7, 2017 at 10:05 am)
Have you read Dietrik Stapel’s autobiography/confession? Nick Brown translated it into English and it’s available here: http://nick.brown.free.fr/stapel/FakingScience-20161115.pdf
It’s a remarkable read not least because we watch Stapel’s demonisation (following his fraud coming to light) through his eyes, but because he provides lots of insights into some of the less rigorous aspects of some research/researchers in the field of psychology.
“This is not a misrepresentation of Peterson.” just to clarify, I meant that Peterson may be willingly misrepresenting science for rhetorical value, rather than that Peterson may have been misrepresented. Sadly that sort of thing is always a possibility in this sort of “debate” (which is why science tends not to be decided by debate any more, no matter how much politicians wish it were! ;o).
To clear your nasal passages assume that some argue for fun or profit or both.
Philip,
“Have you read Dietrik Stapel’s autobiography/confession?”
No, but thanks for the PDF link. I’m sort of an entropy engine, I create lots of work for myself, I am an ascetic agnostic. I only read academic publications now. My thirst for knowledge is rather insatiable.
In no way am I suggesting anything improper with Peterson’s works.
However, there are certain aspects of their PC-Authoritarian thesis, that I find lack proper rigor. This is somewhat related to their use of MTurk (much literature to be had) but the demographics are not fully representative of the US Census data, the MTurk data is very much skewed towards a college aged demographic (no field work mind you, all desktop stuff, if a college survey is badder then just a bad MTurk survey, IMHO I don’t really see any difference, they both are still bad), we Baby Boomers have literally flattened our age distro so much so that we don’t show up at all in MTurk demographic surveys, so that saying that you have attended a ‘so called’ workplace sexual harassment session, or some such, has a skewed distro towards those who are younger.
The same applies to their mother-infant thesis, it drops all males from the population by its very premise. Not a good starting point, dropping half of the population from your own thesis.
Finally, the MS thesis of that PhD candidate (yup BS-MS-PhD track all at UoT with Peterson as adviser throughout) is a virtual train wreck, no technical writing skills at all. The MS thesis is critically flawed in its central premise, a faux divide between PC-Egalitarians and ‘so called’ PC-Authoritarians (thus my previous mention of people (up thread) such as Abraham Lincoln and others, which predates Marxism, Peterson’s rather weak premise which he tries to deploy in all of his bigotry).
BTW, I live within a stone’s throw from one of the best technical libraries in the world, so no, they have not published anything to date. They have made several missteps is the MSM in their discussions of unpublished research (I can prove that one for sure). Somehow, since I’ve sent all my emails, they have now gone dark in the MSM, not a peep or a squeak (just unpublished conference talks, the last one showed up in a very strange place).
Too much information?
Philip,
Sorry, I missed this part of your post …
“but because he provides lots of insights into some of the less rigorous aspects of some research/researchers in the field of psychology.”
I will bump this one onto my reading list, a must read. And thanks again, you’ve enlightened me towards other avenues of research into psychology, skulduggery as it were.
> It means whatever I think it means, that thing between my ears understands it. In the end, that’s all that matters. Right?
Right on, Humpty Dumpty.
Next time you use a measuring tape, tell yourself it’s all subjective.
> Now, you can repeatedly tell me and others that we don’t get it, but, again, that’s not a counter-argument. You have yet to address what Peterson is saying here. It’s the worst form of cultural/moral relativism; it’s post-modern to its core.
Factual legitimacy may not be factual truth, Philip. Legitimacy is a normative word, BTW. Are you promoting a value-laden conception of truth? Tsk.
[Snip. -W]
So let’s see how it continues:
So, Jordan’s arguing for a transcendental (go entropy that word, Everett!) notion of truth. To call for a transcendental notion of truth and be called a POMO (as a slur, no less!) is quite a feat.
If the emphasized bit is POMO, only platonists ain’t POMO.
[Snip. Chill. -W]
> he post wasn’t intended to be about Peterson specifically, but about the possibility of there being a form of scholarship in the humanities that is entirely non-empirical, but that still reveals knowledge/truth.
The answer is yes, as logicians are usually affiliated to philosophical faculties.
The answer is probably no, if we accept that all disciplines contain empirical matters like historical facts.
The answer is immaterial to criticize Jordan’s position, as he accepts that our current scientific theories lead to knowledge that is objectively true.
***
The answer Philip is looking for is a bit later than the last excerpt I quoted:
Convergentist conceptions of truth are legions. They’re probly the main brand, nowadays. Even teleological convergentism of the kind that would reinforce reactionary discourses such as Jordan’s is not that rare.
But that ain’t POMO.
Seems to me that to speak of “moral truths” is inherently post modernist.
Well, I’m more than willing to stipulate that my understanding of the terminology is extremely limited. But I’m not sure that the specific taxonomy, or technical validity the taxonomy, are particularly useful topics of discussion. They might enlarge other peoples’ understanding, but at some point they don’t enlarge mine at all (because my knowledgw of what the terms mean is quite limited). At least I, at some point, begin to think it’s rather beside the point.
How are moral constructs not subjective? If they are necessarily subjective, then how is calling them “truths” justified and how are they distinguished from not truths?
Irrespective of whether Peterson is post modernist, the Wikipedia definition of post modernism seems interesting to me with reference to the concept of “moral truths. ” Of course, whatever caveats you would apply to the authority of Wikipedia are in play.
Postmodernism describes a broad movement that developed in the mid- to late 20th century across philosophy, the arts, architecture and criticism which marked a departure from modernism.[1][2][3] While encompassing a broad range of ideas, postmodernism is typically defined by an attitude of skepticism, irony or rejection toward grand narratives, ideologies and various tenets of universalism, including objective notions of reason, human nature, social progress, moral universalism, absolute truth, and objective reality.[4] Instead, it asserts to varying degrees that claims to knowledge and truth are products of social, historical or political discourses or interpretations, and are therefore contextual or socially constructed. Accordingly, postmodern thought is broadly characterized by tendencies to epistemological and moral relativism, pluralism, irreverence and self-referentiality.[4]
I see two basic chunks, with the “instead” marking the transition point.
Seems to me that the concept of “moral truths” may or may not be consistent with what comes before the “instead” (I couldn’t say) but definitely? is consistent with what comes after the “instead.”
Seems to me that the notion of a “moral truth” necessarily means that “truth” us a product of social, political, or historical discourse or interpretations.
So if I don’t care about whether “moral truths” are post-modernism, are they a product if social, political or historical discourse or interpretations?
> How are moral constructs not subjective?
Some, like Sam, hold that there are moral truths:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-realism/
Sam’s a full-blown realist (truth, knowledge, reality, morality, etc), I believe. Or at least we can read something like that in the transcript. He made a name for himself by holding in a TED talk that science can answer moral questions:
.https://www.ted.com/talks/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right/transcript
Moral realism is an underdog everywhere I go except among the Freedom Fighters we can find around debates featuring Sam and Jordan. From the perspective of a moral realist, just about everything else could be dismissed as POMO relativism.
Jordan’s fans will lulz at the claim that Jordan’s POMO, and they’ll be right.
Willard –
Thanks. I’ll try to read that closely, on the off-chance that I might understand some of it.
I guess this is where the post-modernist rubber hits the “moral truths” road for me – in this day and age: I hear Peterson go on anti-post-modernist-lefty doom and gloom alarmist rants, and I kinda go “he’s kinda got a point.” But then I hear him reverse engineer from evolution to perhaps more than coincidentally justify his own political agenda, and then I read of “moral truths,” and then I see stuff like this:
https://www.npr.org/2017/11/06/562246599/michael-lewis-many-trump-appointees-are-uninterested-in-the-agencies-they-head-u
Sam Clovis as the head of a major scientific function of our government seems to me to be decidedly in line with the notion of “moral truths” being placed on the same, or a superior footing, to “scientific truths.”
I don’t know enough about PoMo to be really have a good idea if what Peterson is doing is PoMo, or not. If people want to argue that, formally, it’s not, that’s fine. However, that doesn’t really change that a great deal of what I’ve heard him say sounds like nonsense.
If that can reassure you, J, Clovis stepped down:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/02/politics/sam-clovis-department-of-agriculture/index.html
Moral realism is simply the idea that (some) prescriptions could be true. It makes sense if we transpose the biblical “Thou shall not kill” into something more mundane but still value-laden, like “Allowing ordinary citizens to own 32 guns may not be a good idea.” We could argue that there is empirical evidence for that latter claim.
You can crank that idea a notch further if you also claim that you can derive from empirical claims moral prescriptions. That is, you refuse the is/ought dichotomy. Sam (like I) rejects that dichotomy. That’s why Jordan alludes to it at the very beginning of my first quote of the transcript. Jordan hasn’t clarified his position on that.
What’s clear, I think, is that Jordan holds that the most absolute moral imperative is something like survival, or survivability, or good survivability, which in Jordan’s historical revisions become the idea of the Good we inherited from the fathers (Logos meaning father too, presumably) of Western Cilization. This ain’t POMO relativism at all.
> However, that doesn’t really change that a great deal of what I’ve heard him say sounds like nonsense.
It does, but note that “barbarian,” or βάρβαρος , comes from Greeks who used that word to designate people who said things we could only hear as “bar-bar-bar.” The “bar-bar-bar” sometimes makes sense after dealing with those who say “bar-bar-bar” all the time. Just like Harry learned to speak gravitational-wave physics.
Our actual dilemma is this: how can you say that “bar-bar-bar” makes no sense if you don’t learn the idiom with which it’s being produced? I don’t think you can. Challenging people in online videos may very well become a revolutionary language learning technique, but I would not bet on it.
And more importantly: why waste time trying to criticize a “bar-bar-bar” speaker if all the evidence you gathered so far (body talks) is that nothing Good will come out of this?
The Good has been a robust concept for human dwellers. The Bad too, in a way. The Ugly may be a new thing, but I’d have to check.
@-“Instead, it asserts to varying degrees that claims to knowledge and truth are products of social, historical or political discourses or interpretations, and are therefore contextual or socially constructed.”
As a shorter description of POMO this seems reasonable.
As an insight into the development of the human knowledge base it was sometimes accurate, or at least useful.
But it was also eagerly appropriated by a much older tradition of resistance to the validity of scientific knowledge and deployed as a counter to science by those who found aspects of that knowledge threatening to their own socially constructed contextual beliefs. It became the tool of those wanting a return to a pre-enlightenment understanding of the source of moral truth. Despite the obvious application of the concept to their own position.
So the POMO critique of scientific epistemology would appear in theist arguments in the field of evolution conveniently ignoring that the same critique applied to their preferred source of absolute ‘Truth’. It allowed them to conveniently sidestep any scientific evidence, dismissing it as merely socially constructed on the historical/political ideology of material naturalism.
In fact the POMO hypothesis gets adopted sometimes by those that reject climate science. It at least enables some to dismiss scientific discovery as the product of a political ideology rather than a product of a proven methodology for establishing facts that are ‘true enough’ to prompt action.
While POMO may have occasionally disparaged scientific knowledge, (Bruno Latour?) I think it has more often been exploited by those with a different agenda. The attacks on science come less from the humanities adoption of POMO than those who want to dismiss scientific knowledge because it contradicts their preferred source of justified belief.
I get a strong impression Jordan is a member of that camp rather than a POMO theorist.
Willard sez …
“Right on, Humpty Dumpty.
Next time you use a measuring tape, tell yourself it’s all subjective.”
Have a nice day. 🙂
“go entropy that word, Everett!”
Somehow someone appears on to something in what would appear to be an unhealthy way. Don’t know why. I do fell sad for you though. Chipper up, it’s not like it is the end of the world.
Must go back to the top of this post and reread it again.
Willard,
Do you mean, how can I criticise someone if I don’t try to understand the underlying framework on which what they say is based? In some cases I would agree (I don’t think I can critique art, for example, without some understanding of art). However, I don’t think this is necessary if they make claims that appear incorrect in a framework which I do understand.
Maybe Peterson’s claims about vaccines, or nuclear reactions, are valid within the framework that he’s defined. However, since they’re not in the framework that I think I do understand, this seems irrelevant (other than it maybe being academically interesting to better understand what underpins what he says).
Regarding Bar-bar-bar, if Peterson is trying to communicate something to science, then the onus is on him to use terminology that is likely to be understood. If on the other hand, the intention is to prevent/obstruct criticism of your position, then bar-bar-bar is quite a good approach (a bit like a Gish gallop, the intent of which is to maximise the energy required of a response, or “proof by intimidating notation” in science ;o)
“bar-bar-bar”
> I don’t think this is necessary if they make claims that appear incorrect in a framework which I do understand.
If by “this” you’re referring to criticism, AT, I think it’s required, or rather that it’s the best pro-tip I could give to live a more fulfilling virtual life. Constructive criticism is key.
Think of criticism the same way you say empiricism works. You collect data: cites and quotes, related testimonies, mundane facts, Feynman anecdotes, whatever. You observe that it makes little sense to you. Therefore you posit that it makes no sense. How do you test your hypothesis? You can’t.
Your own criticism is constructive because it makes you think about constructiveness. For instance, you ask how factual claims can be generated from a non-empirical basis. So you’re basically reducing the position under consideration to absurdity. Destroying something by constructing a proof of it’s absurdity is constructive enough for me. (For pure constructivists, it isn’t.) But if you don’t make sure that what you’ve just destroyed refers to something that someone, somewhere holds for real, this construction may fail to be relevant for anything.
I wouldn’t say that countering an hot take with another hot take makes no sense. Hot takes are too common and too entertaining. We are, after all, social animals, and in-group/out-group relationships are here to stay. But you got to admit that dismissiveness has limitations.
It’s epistemology, BTW.
Two More Classic Psychology Studies Just Failed The Reproducibility Test
https://www.sciencealert.com/two-more-classic-psychology-studies-just-failed-the-reproducibility-test
“For years now, researchers have been warning about a reproducibility crisis in science – the realisation that a lot of seminal papers, particularly in psychology, don’t actually hold up when scientists take the time to try to reproduce the results.
Now, two more key papers in the psychology have failed the reproducibility test, serving as an important reminder that many of the scientific ‘facts’ we’ve come to believe aren’t necessarily as steadfast as we thought.”
Now to do an actual literature review and a visit to Retraction Watch (I could be posting these types of links literally forever (my rate of failure accusation < new psychology papers retracted or seriously questioned).
Touche as they say.
> the onus is on him to use terminology that is likely to be understood
And the onus is on those who submit critiques to at the very least read the relevant encyclopedic entries, e.g.:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/
Throwing ism words around without some technical know-how looks infelicitous to me. This doesn’t stop at ism words. For instance, Descartes “I think, therefore I am” does no appear in his Meditations. What he says there is that he thinks and is as long as he thinks: Ego sum, ego existo, quoties a me profertur, vel mente concipitur, necessario esse verum. To think is something that is hard not to do when meditating the Cartesian way. It is an empirical observation which only becomes necessary by some kind of inference, but not (only) one that comes after a “therefore.” If you add a “therefore” Descartes’ argument becomes invalid. A more pragmatic inference is required. The jury is still out as to what. Some say Descartes makes no sense. Few know why exactly.
I don’t think I can critique art, for example, without some understanding of art
You can say that you like, or don’t like a particular piece of art. You can say that it is ugly. You might be able to say that the technique is simplistic, or complex. You can say that it is abstract or realistic. Expressive or dull. Funny. Ironic.
But you would want to state them as opinions. You wouldn’t say that a piece of art is objectively bad. You wouldn’t state that your critique is a “true critique.” You can say that Peterson’s stuff seems like nonsense (to you). And you can articulate the reasons why it seems like nonsense (to you). Y
One irony here is that those who are Petersonsplaining have no real authority behind their statements of fact. Is it true or false that he is post-modern? True-enough or not true-enough? Their critique is offered as a true critique, whereas yours is in fact, not true.
Another irony is that for all the requests, there are some basic questions that you asked originally, and which you (and others) have asked subsequent,, about how his claims of objectivity (truth) can be “justified.” So, you are told that you can’t critique because you can’t understand, but you are done so merely in an argument by assertion form.
In other words, everything is possible but nothing is real.
Speaking of which: Now, two more key papers in the psychology have failed the reproducibility test,
So now, there is a “the” reproductivity test? Or is it that certain researchers attempted to reproduce the studies and failed to do so?
Which, actually, is acknowledged, in the second paragraph, no less:
To be fair, just because findings can’t be reproduced, it doesn’t automatically mean they’re wrong. Replication is an important part of the scientific method that helps us nut out what’s really going on – it could be that the new researchers did something differently, or that the trend is more subtle than originally thought.
This Is Why a Lot of Peer-Reviewed Research Is Wrong
Don’t believe everything you read. (or read on the internetwebs SOP nitwits)
“But as we’ve mentioned before, this is incredibly problematic, and not only produces a whole lot of false positives, it also makes data subject to p-hacking – which is when results are tweaked slightly until the researchers get a significant result.”
Wow! Just effin’ WOW!
Peterson’s PhD student used that very method in their MS thesis. Technically, this is similar to a factorial solution, try all possible combinations. Short of that technique you subjectively bin survey results under different main categories until you find significance factors, I also directly observed this technique used in that MS thesis. Finally there was category type reclassification (they used only two types which called scale and choice), but in their SciAm article, they mixed these two category types.
@-W
“Some say Descartes makes no sense. Few know why exactly.”
Because he bought into Platonic Dualism.
@-Everett F Sargent
P-hacking has been (is?) rife in Pharmaceutical research.
Attempts to get pre-registration of research so the same data is not used for hypothesis forming, and testing at a voluntary level does not seem to be catching on.
Usually on the grounds of ‘commercial confidentiality’.
https://cos.io/prereg/
“A state of mind which is about caring a lot about formalities, often more than necessary.”
I very much like quantitative discussions of science than I do qualitative discussions of science. Perhaps, it’s because it is much easier to pin people down and also much easier to offer real quantitative constructive criticism. However, word salad criticism, meh, IMHO is not inversely proportional to time.
“And the onus is on those who submit critiques to at the very least read the relevant encyclopedic entries”
Indeed, communication is a collaborative exercise, but if you want to communicate something to a particular group, you have to give them some indication that there is some value in what hey have to say to begin with. Most people have limited time and energy and if you want to communicate you need to consider the budget of your audience. ATTP is clearly making an effort, so perhaps more of a concession from the other side is required.
As for encyclopedia entries, the problem I find is that reading doesn’t always lead to understanding, especially as the encycopedias tend to use the terminology that I am not used to. Sometimes having a friend who understands these things better than you do explain them to you in language your already understand is very helpful.
“Throwing ism words around without some technical know-how looks infelicitous to me. This doesn’t stop at ism words. ”
I don’t know what you mean by that.
As for Descartes, it was my understanding that the phrase was originally in French “je pense, donc je suis” and according to Wikipedia was from his Discourse on the Method. The ENglish translation given on Wikipedia:
seem to support the interpretation of a first step in a non-empirical (in the sens of something externally verifiable, you for instance can’t be sure I think – not always too clear on that myself ;o) theory on what is knowable. In this case the “therefore” (donc means so/then/consequently/therefore, my French isn’t good enough to be aware of a nuance) is a necessary part of his argument. However, as I mentioned earlier, while I am interested in this kind of thing, I am no expert.
I’ve been thinking about this, and I partly agree and partly don’t (or, rather, I think there are nuances)
If I’m going to critique something about which I have little understanding, then I should aim to develop some understanding before doing so (especially if my critique mostly attacks what is being presented).
On the other hand, if what is being suggested implies things about something that I think I do understand, then I could critique what is being suggested without necessarily developing a deep understanding of the fundamentals of the relevant discipline (maybe as long as I keep my critique to something like “what this suggests is not correct” rather than “this whole discipline is flawed”).
However, there is also another aspect to this. As a scholar, I do think I have some obligation to make what I do accessible. This doesn’t necessarily mean responding directly to every little thing that others might say, but does (in my view) mean that a response along the lines of “go and learn physics before I engage with your critique” is not acceptable.
ATTP did say “They just seem to be nonsense.” rather than “They are nonsense”, given that the “seem” gives the implicit caveat that he may be missing something, I don’t see this as being much of a problem. But perhaps I am missing something, but it would be helpful if someone could explain in an accessible manner why it is seems like nonsense but isn’t?
DK,
But if we go with your orthogonal proposition, which I like BTW, does that not suggest iid? I’m also thinking of this in the complex number sense, morality on one axis and knowledge on the other axis. However, I am not too sure if either morality or knowledge are quantifiable in an objective sense (knowledge is on a much better footing for quantification, for morality see my squeak of a morality damage function below).
But if we consider the two limiting cases, mostly morality or mostly knowledge, than as long as we preface our argument within either the morality construct or the knowledge construct, then from the mostly knowledge construct, we could conclude that moral constructs “are nonsense” from a knowledge perspective?
I’m also thinking of moral dogmas from a holistic sense (or a worldview that includes all religious and political/ideological dogmas) it the form of a quantifiable damage function (after all we do have at least the historical record for quantification purposes). This would be empiricism to the core. And it does get us past all of Peterson’s hand waving argumentation and fixation on his preferred dogma, Christianity. I’m also thinking that the damage function conceptualization has been floated elsewhere’s before?
RE: Damage Function (see Risk Analysis or downtime or structural modelling)
Risk
I think what I was trying to say is just that there isn’t just one thing we mean by “truth”, ‘moral’ truth is obviously not quite the same thing as ‘factual’ truth, so trying to force them onto the same axis is likely to loose something. It also seems a problem of different propositions. “The current understanding of nuclear physics is broadly correct” is one that suggests ‘factual’ truth is relevant, and where the societal value of nuclear physics seems clearly irrelevant. “Nuclear physics is bad” is a proposition that relates to “moral” truth, and science has little to say. It seems to me that some of this is due to forcing the two things into one concept, and hence perhaps not specifying the proposition accurately. Perhaps there is a better example than this one.
While I am objectivist Bayes by nature, I have no real problem with subjective knowledge, it has its place, and am also happy with the idea that we can have no certain knowledge about the real world (probabilities of 0 and 1 only relate to things like maths).
> perhaps I am missing something, but it would be helpful if someone could explain in an accessible manner why it is seems like nonsense but isn’t?
I think
PhilipFred made a good effort to provide an interpretation of Jordan’s take on truth that makes some kind of sense, Dikran. It might not represent what Jordan has in mind, but even reading the exchange between Sam and Jordan does not clarify things to a point we can be sure it’s coherent. What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.Sam insisted too much on his thought experiments for his own good. At some point he needs to “say yes” and follow on with Jordan. Ask any theater specialists – they should confirm that to “say no” all the time leads to bad improvisation performances.
Jordan also bears some responsibility. He either should have agreed with Sam, or put that disagreement aside and asked him to follow along. He goes from something that looks like a neutral and descriptive way to look at truth to an interpretation of truth that is more related to meaningfulness and wholeness. Both seem to have failed to acknowledge that “wrong” switches modes.
The expression Speaking the Truth can be read in both modes. If you insist in the speech act of truth telling, then
it’sthe relationship between the utterer and what is said is central. If you insist in truth produced, then what matters is the relationship between what is being said andisthe object of that “being said.” The question that Sam and Jordan’s miscommunication sidestepped is how to reconcile these two ways to look at truth.I say “being said” here because it’s unclear what we should take as what we usually call the truth bearer. One old candidate has been called a proposition, but do propositions really exist? One could say that it’s a statement: but then is truth language dependent? The basic elements of the formal theories of truth are far from being universally accepted, and I’m not talking about POMO stuff here, I’m talking about stuff like this:
Click to access Tarski.pdf
There are still [a] debate
as to what extend doesif Tarksi’sdefinition of truth supports or entails correspondentism. If there’s still room for debate there, then you can bet that where Jordan wants to go is muddy. I don’t know [if] readers realize how far Jordan’s willing to go down that road:http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/trinityorthodox/resurrecting_logos_part_3
I’m not sure where Jordan’s appeal to darwinism fits in that truth telling. In fact, I would hypothesize that it’s more a strategical choice from Jordan’s part than some kind of level that could connect the mundane truths to a Logos-related Truth. One could argue that humans wouldn’t be able to survive if
theirall their beliefs fizzled, but that doesn’t look like what Jordan is suggesting.To tell the truth, Jordan’s omission of the kind of Truth he’s really shooting for doesn’t look like truth telling at all.
EDIT. Fixed some typos. Mistook Philip for Fred.
Thanks Willard, I’ll watch the rest of the series of videos, and come back to this thread and see if I am any clearer.
> I think what I was trying to say is just that there isn’t just one thing we mean by “truth”, ‘moral’ truth is obviously not quite the same thing as ‘factual’ truth, so trying to force them onto the same axis is likely to loose something.
Splitting morality and factuality on a Cartesian plane may indeed help clarify the relationship between the two, Dikran. Some factual truths may be moral, as Sam holds. Some moral truths may be factual, as Jordan seems to hold. There’s even a point where they could “diagonalize” ad infinitum 😉
(Speaking of whom, I’ll return later on the Cogito. Need to go for a while.)
Before I go, I should correct myself: in my earlier comment, I was referring to Fred, not Philip.
Thanks Willard, I may be some time….
D minor is the saddest key.
(actually this was only true before ~1750 when the scale tuning system changed.)
“What’s clear, I think, is that Jordan holds that the most absolute moral imperative is something like survival, or survivability, or good survivability, which in Jordan’s historical revisions become the idea of the Good we inherited from the fathers (Logos meaning father too, presumably) of Western Cilization. This ain’t POMO relativism at all.”
Thank you.
Let’s chill with Chilly Gonzalez, guys:
D major can be one of the happiest key. It may help get lucky. Getting lucky should be very important for a Darwinian.
Jordan holds that the most absolute moral imperative is something like survival, or survivability, or good survivability, which in Jordan’s historical revisions become the idea of the Good we inherited from the fathers (Logos meaning father too, presumably) of Western Cilization.
See, here we go. The logic of that suggests to me the argument that because ancient western civilizations survived on the labor of slaves, slavery represents a “moral truth. ”
All I can say is that it’s a good thing that I can’t understand this stuff, because if I did understand this this stuff, I might be inclined to consider what Jordan says to be nonsense.
The apologetics like him because he is prompting young men to join churches.
http://anglicanmainstream.org/jordan-peterson-turning-young-western-men-into-christians-again/
Anyone have ideas about why his appeal is predominately to a male audience?
Joshua,
“See, here we go. The logic of that suggests to me the argument that because ancient western civilizations survived on the labor of slaves, slavery represents a “moral truth.”
Exactly. That would be counted as very much a very big negative in my “Damage Function” idea.
“All I can say is that it’s a good thing that I can’t understand this stuff, because if I did understand this this stuff, I might be inclined to consider what Jordan says to be nonsense.”
Exactly. Peterson has said on numerous occasions that he has no ideology. That makes the 0-10 irony meter become a virtual perpetual motion machine, it starts spinning and will not stop spinning until Peterson shuffles off this mortal coil.
The World According to Peterson in four easy steps …
(0) There is a ‘so called’ incontrovertible moral truth (to use his own words against him)
(1) Him who is I am, Jebus, is the Logos (effin’ hey, logos is (formal) logic in rhetoric, not the hero myths, logos (logic) existed before Christianity for Hell’s sake, from my POV)
(2) I (JBP) preach the Christian credo.
(4) Because of (0) above (e. g. eternal truth) JBP does not believe that he is engaging in, or has, an ideology (because truth, life, the universe and everything).
Could someone pass the dunce cap to JBP, because, circular logic, tautology, vacuous truth, begging the question, …
From the bad book of Peterson the Incompetent.
izen,
Your link goes to, and then through to, a rabid right wingnut site called “Today in Politics” which is definitely not to my taste. Just taking note.
Izen.
“Anyone have ideas about why his appeal is predominately to a male audience?”
My opinion is if you look at some of the pwnage videos on YouTube, Jordan’s anti-SJW, anti-neo feminism and free speech opinions have been “claimed” by the anti-SJW outrage crowd who seem to be mostly males. Think Sargon of Akkad…
But outspoken social commentators cannot control who “claims” them, of course.
@-Everett F Sargent
“Your link goes to, and then through to, a rabid right wingnut site called “Today in Politics” which is definitely not to my taste.”
My apologies.
I had not clicked-thru to the source site for the article, just picked the first link (of many) from an obviously religious source complimenting JP on his recruitment effect.
Now that I look at the ‘Anglican Mainstream’ site I see that most of its referenced articles are about the sexual degeneracy of western secularism, the remainder decrying the terrible persecution real true christian face…
I must admit to a failing, I find it extremely difficult to endure more than a few seconds, or a few paragraphs, of JP’s nonsense, so my exposure to him is shallow or second-hand. The thin membrane between JP and the dank neo-fascist depths of the interwebs comes as no surprise.
I find him almost as annoying as the parade of ‘experts’ on the MSM this past week with the message, “move along, nothing to see here, its all perfectly legitimate…” in response to the Paradise papers.
(sorry for the off-topic news reference!)
> Anyone have ideas about why his appeal is predominately to a male audience?
Many started their fight for freedom in reaction to gaming haslitudes, one episode surrounding the astroSH tag over the tweeter. The demographic is not exclusively male:
.https://twitter.com/nevaudit/lists/freedomfighters
If you look at the commenters to Jordan’s latest tweet, you’ll see some self-identified women:
As for why Jordan attracts a male-oriented coterie, could be many things. Could be the need for a manly self-absorbed role-model. Could be the thrill of a fight. Rising up to the challenge of our rival. And the last known Freedom Fighter stalks his prey on the Internet. And he watches us all with his eye of the tiger.
Everyone – I am receiving guests today. Please behave.
“See, here we go. The logic of that suggests to me the argument that because ancient western civilizations survived on the labor of slaves, slavery represents a “moral truth. ”
Not that meaning of the term survivial.
Survivial as a species. metaphorically slavery would be a vestigal moral organ
different perspective
Survivial as a species.
So everything, anyone has ever done, is a moral truth, since the species has survived?
Or anything, anyone has ever done, is a vestigial moral organ since the species has survived?
I still don’t see any tools or mechanisms for categorizing, measuring, or “justifying” how to distinguish a moral truth from a moral non-truth or a moral near truth or a moral true enough truth or an immoral truth, etc. Do we just take Peterson’s word for it? What do we do if he’s not around or in the bathroom or out of cell phone range?
What happens if the species dies out? Does everything switch over from a moral truth to a moral non-truth or an immoral truth?
So everything, anyone has ever done, is a moral truth, since the species has survived?
I imagine he would say no. There are things Im sure he would classify as non moral
Or anything, anyone has ever done, is a vestigial moral organ since the species has survived?
No, see above. Binary thinking …
“I still don’t see any tools or mechanisms for categorizing, measuring, or “justifying” how to distinguish a moral truth from a moral non-truth or a moral near truth or a moral true enough truth or an immoral truth, etc. Do we just take Peterson’s word for it? What do we do if he’s not around or in the bathroom or out of cell phone range?”
The only issue is that almost every moral system breaks down when you actually try to use it.
I went to walgreens today and looked for a scale of the “good” cause I wanted to maximize it,
but they had sold out. If you are not careful with the requirements for a moral theory that you
impose on his construction, you may find your own suffering from the same flaws.
What happens if the species dies out? Does everything switch over from a moral truth to a moral non-truth or an immoral truth?
Tree falls in the woods question. This question presupposes a metaphysical frame of reference.
No, see above. Binary thinking …
I don’t think I’m suggesting a binary construct at all. I think I’m asking for a system to distinguish graduations, to determine relative measures – which seems to me to be pretty much the the exact opposite if a binary construct.
you may find your own suffering from the same flaws.
Of course. That’s why I would never lay claim to a flawless moral theory. The very notion of a flawless moral theory strikes me as nonsensical. I’m not claiming a moral theory that determines “truths.” it seems to me that Peterson is. Seems to me that to asset a “truth,” you have to make a claim of flawlessness. That’s why a good scientist wouldn’t lay claim to a “truth.” I think that “truth” is incompatible with moral theories. That’s why I’ve been asking for someone to explain what a “moral truth” might look like, how the truthiness or morality can be measured. It seems to me that moral theories are subjective. Claiming a moral truth suggests to me a state of objectivity. I don’t understand how morals can be objective.
Tree falls in the woods question.
IMO, it’s a tree falls in the woods theory. It seems to me that it states that we can determine “truth” on the basis of outcome, by offering what seems to me a vague and subjective criterion for evaluating outcome, that has no form (except, maybe, in his mind), but that is dressed up as some kind of objective standard. How can we determine whether anything forms a “truth” of survivability until we have longer survived (when we can’t do it anyway)? For all we know, anything that appears to us now as having enabled us to survive will extinguish our species.
This question presupposes a metaphysical frame of reference.
Seems to me that the concept of “moral truth” presupposes a metaphysical frame of reference. But maybe not. So then maybe you can explain how it presupposes a non-metaphysical frame of reference? It seems to me that you’re explaining what it isn’t, but that doesn’t help me to understand what it is. How about you explain what it is?
How can we distinguish “moral truth” from non-moral truth, or moral non-truth, or immoral truth, or immoral non-truth? Keep in mind you’re going to have to dumb it down for me to understand. Maybe an impossible task, but give it a shot.
> What happens if the species dies out?
Other species may still exist. Conceptual frameworks built by humans wouldn’t be used by humans anymore. Eventually, all species die.
Sam presented Jordan with a similar problem, and Jordan did not really answer:
I doubt there’s much darwinism in Jordan’s take.
Conceptual frameworks built by humans wouldn’t be used by humans anymore.
Well yes. But then do all those “moral truths” that were “moral truths” because the species survived (as near as I can tell that is the only criterion for determining truth) become… non-moral truths, or moral non truths, or immoral truths, or…. unicorns?
“In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.”
“Other species may still exist. Conceptual frameworks built by humans wouldn’t be used by humans anymore. Eventually, all species die.”
I am betting on this guy
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2280286/Meet-toughest-animal-planet-The-water-bear-survive-frozen-boiled-float-space-live-200-years.html
Hmm a while back I posted two Poems by tennyson.
One, Ulysses, in which the character essentially says he only wants to live as long as he can be victorious. The length of a life ( of anything) doesnt have the value, the achievment has the value.
The Other, Tithonus, is about a character who wished for eternal life. Only to discover that life only has meaning because it will end.
which brings us back to that silly question about which do you value more truth or life.
@-“Maybe we should endeavour to not make this a discussion about Peterson, but – if people are interested – a discussion about whether or not knowledge can emerge from a process that is inherently non-empirical.”
Despite this early plee from ATTP, JP has become a focus, not least because his contribution to the debate about knowledge has become socially fashionable and provocative.
I did manage to watch several minutes of JP’s 2+hr exposition, or justification (apologia?) for the moral truth behind worshiping a deity that demands you burn to death your only son.
Took a bottle of wine to ameliorate the phsychic damage!
But JP and his decidedly non-empirical assertions of derivable knowledge are pretty much an irrelevence as any basis for critques of scientific knowledge.
At the risk of offending Willard, the difficulties of defining ‘TRUTH’ and the unhelpful contribution of POMO in this philisophical area are also a trivial aspect of any problems scientific knowledge has in gaining acceptence in a wider social context where it should/could drive action. Except as I mentioned earlier when it is coopted by those with a ideological or theological reason to reject the otherwise credible findings of empirical research.
It is NOT POMO or the errors of Descartian dualism that drives the refusal to embrace the best empirical understanding we have in the real-politic of communal action on something like climate change.
@-SM
While I have enjoyed your musical contributions to this argument I am going to use the response you have made up-thread to those you view as too uninformed about the subject to make a usefull contribution.
Especially in light of the banal and shallow corperate content-filler masquerading as ‘education’ you most recently posted.
“I think most folks here have little idea of what is actually done as scholarship in the humanities.
Maybe you read a joke paper or two.”
Try this non-joke paper.
http://www.pnas.org/content/110/Supplement_2/10430.full
And listen harder.
“which brings us back to that silly question about which do you value more truth or life.”
> But then do all those “moral truths” that were “moral truths” because the species survived (as near as I can tell that is the only criterion for determining truth) become… non-moral truths, or moral non truths, or immoral truths, or…. unicorns?
They become moral untruths for the other species who can have the cognitive means to evaluate such thing, or from the transcendantal perspective of unicorn-like entities.
In the end, the end matters:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/conseque/
Sam should have known better.
@-W
“In the end, the end matters:”
Moral Consequentialism gets it backwards.
The means justify the end.
> Because he bought into Platonic Dualism.
I’m not sure Descartes bought substance dualism that much, but then I’m no Descartes scholar. I suspect other socio-historical reasons are at stake. Popper, that contrarian hero, abides by an interactionism that resembles the most what we usually call Cartesian dualism. By contrast, predicate dualism is uncontroversial and property dualism is still quite dominant. David Chalmers made dualism great again with his zombie arguments:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism
Imaginability may be useful to get a hold of Jordan’s evasive Darwinist perspective. What he’s presenting as Darwinian looks more like what has been known in philosophical circles as natural teleology:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-biology/natural-teleology-ethics.html
Appealing to proper functions while putting them into a pragmatism box looks more like what I would expect from a confused undergraduate than from a rockstar professor.
”
What he’s presenting as Darwinian looks more like what has been known in philosophical circles as natural teleology:
”
Yup.
The tip-off was when he claimed that something could be “wrong in the Darwinian sense”.
Perhaps the ends justify the unicorns.
The means justify the end.
Thanks for that. That helps me (I think?) to get some kind of pattern in the discussion. Also, I would say that is a good way to describe my, apparently competing, understanding of a “moral system,” as yes, it seems to me that if one had to choose, the means justify the end, morally, rather than the other way around. Of course, such a system may well result in sub-optimal outcomes, but hey, that’s the way the cookie crumbles. And the cookie doesn’t always survive.
VTG –
What does “wrong in the Darwinian sense” mean? Or perhaps I should say, how does one measure or determine that?
Oops, I meant Rev, not VTG.
> The ENglish translation given on Wikipedia […] seem to support the interpretation of a first step in a non-empirical (in the sens of something externally verifiable, you for instance can’t be sure I think – not always too clear on that myself ;o) theory on what is knowable.
Indeed it does, Dikran, but note the part where René says, after rejecting the three modes by which we are connected to an external reality (the senses, the formal realm, and consciousness):
The very nature of that “observation” is dual. As the direct effect of a meditation, it could be something like an intuition; as the indirect result of a thought experiment, it looks more like an inference. Sometimes authors speak of induction and deduction, but it can be confusing if one does not distinguish the different kinds of induction and deduction that could be at work in the meditation.
”
What does “wrong in the Darwinian sense” mean?
”
Good question. I have no idea. And I suspect that JP hasn’t either.
As Willard has said up-thread, JP seems to hold that the most absolute moral imperative is survival.
He seems to want his deontology to be teleological.
He seems to want his Jesus and eat Him too.
But really, who knows? Some rock star professors seem to be theory-rich and data-poor.
@-Joshua
“… it seems to me that if one had to choose, the means justify the end, morally, rather than the other way around. Of course, such a system may well result in sub-optimal outcomes, but hey, that’s the way the cookie crumbles. And the cookie doesn’t always survive. ”
The cookie always crumbles, it can sometimes provide sustinence, at best pleasure.
There is even a metaphysic for it, or at least an 8-fold path.
But as the question in this song suggests the crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe.
@-W
“The rationale of the argument is a move from imaginability to real possibility”
Sounds like Anselms argument. Trying to prop that up didn’t work out to well for Godel…
Its a long time since I took this stuff seriously, and thinking about it these days makes my head hurt…(grin)
Used to be a hard-line anti-Dualist, (monist?). Then a few years back I read Neal stephenson Anatheum. Now I am a bit more equivocal.
Two is still a really stupid number though.
> it seems to me that if one had to choose, the means justify the end, morally, rather than the other way around
I don’t think one has to choose, as ends and means are both important. Philip Pettit argued quite convincingly that a minimal form of consequentialism was inescapable. The idea that all that matters are ends is not that popular, and may never be. The tension is important on a theorical level, but it’s mostly academic for the point I want to make.
That point is this: it’s easier to understand half-baked theories like Jordan’s when one has a good cartography of the field.
Willard –
Thanks for the 5:22.
The tension is important on a theorical level,
Well, going with your point that one doesn’t have to choose, I find on a non-theoretical level (i.e., in how I try to implement a moral system) that yes, the tension is extremely important.
That point is this: it’s easier to understand half-baked theories like Jordan’s when one has a good cartography of the field.
Acknowledged. And thanks for your help in seeing the cartography.
Reading back the exchange, I think this is where Jordan almost gives away his teleology:
Instead of chasing down Jordan’s hellish squirrel, let’s jump to the next bit where Jordan takes the example of the Irish elk:
To say “I have my reasons” may not be the best way to justify one’s beliefs in a rational discussion. These dogwhistled reasons do not seem to be required to support the idea that our scientific knowledge needs to be kept in check with some kind of wisdom. All we need is to accept that our knowledge is value-laden.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. may have been a shortstop to all of this.
Perhaps I should clarify that Jordan’s “I would say that the probability that that game would sustain itself for very long is low” echoes the idea that
One way to make sure we don’t devolve into a Hell pit is to posit a wisdom function that naturally orients mankind toward the best of the possible world it can build. That function could in part be inherited by our biology, but its crucial component would come, according to how I interpret Jordan, from our cultural heritage. What he refers to as “cultural marxism” would then be a threat to this natural teleology to operate.
So according to that story neutral pronouns are as threatening to mankind as the atom bomb.
”
That point is this: it’s easier to understand half-baked theories like Jordan’s when one has a good cartography of the field.
”
To continue that mixed metaphor: A good disciplinary cartography can show you THAT a theory is half-baked.
However – Ease of understanding is often not an attainable goal where half-baked theories are concerned. Half-baked theories are usually hard to understand, precisely because of the half-baking. If you’re going to that much trouble to get bread to bake, it maybe time to start from scratch with fresh ingredients.
Put another way:
Seeking global topographic coherence where there is only a crayon sketch of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood may lead weary travelers to a trap street or even a Sandy Island.
”
I guess we might say “well I guess there was something wrong with what the female elk decided to focus on”
”
There’s that “wrong in the Darwinian sense” again…
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. may have been a shortstop to all of this.
”
In a million years, I guess our ancestors might ‘have their reasons’ to say (if they can reason and speak at all) that there was something wrong with what those big brains decided to focus on.
If only that “wisdom function” were tractable and not recursive.
> If you’re going to that much trouble to get bread to bake, it maybe time to start from scratch with fresh ingredients.
Sometimes all it’s missing is a bit of salt:
https://twitter.com/nevaudit/status/925581372021968896
Once I understood that the guy wasn’t a Freedom Fighter but a religious communautarian, we could connect. Our main difficulty was that his intuitions weren’t articulated with a vocabulary that made much sense.
Most of the times it’s not the religiousness the problem, but the pretentiousness.
Willard,
So according to that story neutral pronouns are as threatening to mankind as the atom bomb.
I don’t know if you’ve seen this article …
The Pronoun Warrior
https://torontolife.com/city/u-t-professor-sparked-vicious-battle-gender-neutral-pronouns/
“Religious communautarian” – I like it.
Both FFs and RCs have discovered the End of the World as We Know It.
Something must be done.
Think of the children.
Teach the controversy.
@-“And the poor elk got a rack so big that it really wasn’t commensurate with their survival, although I guess we might say “well I guess there was something wrong with what the female elk decided to focus on” but we didn’t really know that so we went extinct, and I see that is precisely analogous to the point that I’m making right now. ”
No surprise that JP gets his Darwinism wrong.
And blames female choice.
The Irish Elk went extinct from climate change destroying the ‘tundra’ plant ecology and habitat it was adapted to. And possibly human predation.
Late examples show shrinking size, so it was not constrained by female choice to excessive or maladaptive antler size.
Like a large amount of the mammalian megafauna (with and without exaggerated sexual selective features) it survived through several glacial cycles and then went extinct at the start of the Holocene. If it could have reflected on its demise it might have said;
“well I guess we became too dependent on a specific climate and ecology to provide enough food. And our big antlers are no defence against these hairless apes who can throw sticks and stones at us.”
As for the advantages of cartography…
Mosher posted that bit of Borges above, but it is a rip-off of Lewis Carroll, who had a better punch line.
‘That’s another thing we’ve learned from your Nation,” said Mein Herr, “map-making. But we’ve carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?”
“About six inches to the mile.”
“Only six inches!” exclaimed Mein Herr. “We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!”
“Have you used it much?” I enquired.
“It has never been spread out, yet,” said Mein Herr: “the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.”
Nice ones, Everett, Rev, and Izen. Here’s my raise:
https://twitter.com/PhilosophyMttrs/status/929120898233372673
At some point we will circle back to what folks said about music on prior threads
“I don’t think I’m suggesting a binary construct at all. I think I’m asking for a system to distinguish graduations, to determine relative measures – which seems to me to be pretty much the the exact opposite if a binary construct.”
you realize that a system of gradiation is nothing more than a binary system with a hierarchy
“@-“Maybe we should endeavour to not make this a discussion about Peterson, but – if people are interested – a discussion about whether or not knowledge can emerge from a process that is inherently non-empirical.”
willard answered that. yes. math and logic
Hmm after trying to restart the discussion by rewinding the tape to descartes ( say Rorty’s jumping off point) perhaps it would help to rewind the tape to the Vienna Circle.
It appears that many folks are stuck there conceptually, without really knowing it.
( especially with the claims of thats nonsense)
Then after That, Willard could explain Quine. We dont even have to go back to the continent and the POMO that arises from the “crisis” in epistemology. We can stay in the “pro science” intelligent branchs of philsophy
“Mosher posted that bit of Borges above, but it is a rip-off of Lewis Carroll, who had a better punch line.”
Different punchline, different target.
Both favorite authors of mine, wonder why?
We would call it an allusion to Carroll and would explain the differences.
“Reading back the exchange, I think this is where Jordan almost gives away his teleology:”
“So careful of the type?” but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, “A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.
“That point is this: it’s easier to understand half-baked theories like Jordan’s when one has a good cartography of the field.”
yup.
@-SM
“We would call it an allusion to Carroll and would explain the differences.”
Fair enough.
Must admit I did not recognise the Borges quote so have no idea of its context, just guessed from style and source.
then you are not funes the memorius
a favorite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Menard,_Author_of_the_Quixote
Quine of course had a say
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel
“Must admit I did not recognise the Borges quote so have no idea of its context, just guessed from style and source.”
ironies
@-SM
“willard answered that. yes. math and logic”
Begs the question of whether they are empirical discoveries, or invented tools.
> Begs the question of whether they are empirical discoveries, or invented tools.
No need to beg. Assume they are. What does it tell you about the realm of the empirical?
“The very nature of that “observation” is dual. As the direct effect of a meditation, it could be something like an intuition; as the indirect result of a thought experiment, it looks more like an inference. Sometimes authors speak of induction and deduction, but it can be confusing if one does not distinguish the different kinds of induction and deduction that could be at work in the meditation.”
My point was that doesn’t fit in the normal usage of scientific empiricism any more than personal revelation does. You cannot verify that I think, you can only take my word for it, at best we can all only use it as evidence of our own existence (up to a point), but it isn’t “justifiable belief” for you to believe in my existence on that basis. It isn’t verifiable, repeatable or falsifiable AFAICS.
Descartes did however include the “therefore (donc)” and what he wrote does have meaning when that word is included.
@-W
“No need to beg. Assume they are. What does it tell you about the realm of the empirical?”
Aaargh! Hoist by my own petard!
I posed the question as a knotty problem for otters.
And went to bed worrying about the implications for the 4 options.
(either, neither or both)
Think I prefer ‘both’.
Semi-empirical inferences…
That it’s problematic might indicate it is ill defined.
Not convinced that has much impact on the practice of scientific discovery though…
Jordan Peterson has hit the news in Canada on CBC:
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-friday-edition-1.4396970/u-of-t-profs-alarmed-by-jordan-peterson-s-plan-to-target-classes-he-calls-indoctrination-cults-1.4396974
> You cannot verify that I think, you can only take my word for it, at best we can all only use it as evidence of our own existence (up to a point), but it isn’t “justifiable belief” for you to believe in my existence on that basis. It isn’t verifiable, repeatable or falsifiable AFAICS.
You can verify what you think, up to a point. I can do the same with my thoughts. We can share them. What we share becomes intersubjective. There may be difference with perceptual reports, but it’s more a matter of degree than a difference in kind.
Interestingly, verificationism is related to the idea that some metaphysics-free knowledge-base can help us distinguish what makes sense from nonsense:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logical-empiricism/#EmpVerAntMet
***
> Descartes did however include the “therefore (donc)” and what he wrote does have meaning when that word is included.
It doesn’t mean what you make it mean, but I won’t repeat what I said a third time.
“It doesn’t mean what you make it mean, but I won’t repeat what I said a third time.”
yawn. Yes it does and it is clear from the translation of the quote in its entirety that it was an attempt to see what could be learned starting from a state of complete empirical skepticism.
> Yes it does and it is clear from the translation of the quote in its entirety that it was an attempt to see what could be learned starting from a state of complete empirical skepticism.
“It” being a meditation, a thought experiment (in principle) anyone could do and share. Descartes does not argue that he exists, but that anyone who’d entertain systematic doubt cannot do so without thinking, and that with thinking comes being.
The inference between doubting, thinking, and being is nothing without meditating for realz. It doesn’t stand alone. There’s no closed deduction there, otherwise one could replace thinking with anything, e.g. I eat therefore I am. If you don’t put yourself in front of Descartes’ stove and entertain the whole gamut within yourself, his argument falls apart.
What’s more is that Descartes already parried that objection. He published both, along with his Meditations. The Meditations might very well be one of the first Western peer-reviewed pieces of lichurchur.
Yawn indeed.
this will be fun
Can anyone provide an example of someone claiming that science implies that there is no need for a value system? I’m not personally aware of any scientists would argue that scientific truths somehow override values. Most – I think – would argue that science attempts to describe/understand the system being observed, while values guide how our societies operate. Peterson seems to be arguing that there is this conflict, which may be true in some sense, but mainly seems to be more to do with inconvenient truths, than with a sense that scientific truths somehow define/override our values.
““It” being a meditation” The meditaion is not the publication in which the quote “je pense, donc je suis” (I think therefore I am actually appears, it appears in the Discourse on the Method, not the Meditations. I have already pointed that out.
“There’s no closed deduction there, otherwise one could replace thinking with anything, e.g. I eat therefore I am”
That wouldn’t be a valid analogy as the only way we know we eat is by sense perceptions, of which Descartes says we cannot be certain. That is the point, the fact that something is thinking is all we can be sure of.
If we go back to the English translation
The fact that we can dream that we eat means that we obviously can’t replace “je pense, donc je suis” with “je mange, donc je suis”.
Descartes marginal note from the Principles of Philosophy “That we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt, and that this is the first knowledge we acquire when we philosophize in order.” makes it completely explicit that Descartes view this as the first step we can take in a gaining knowledge without relying on observations of reality (which necessarily involve perceptions).
I should point out that I am not arguing that Descartes is necessarily correct, just that I can see how there would be scope for purely abstract, non-empirical scholarship in the humanities (and in science), and that was what Descartes was apparently trying to do.
ATTP perhaps Peterson is thinking of scientism (in sense 2) rather than science? You don’t need values to say what is, but you do to say what ought to be.
I think that atheist scientists and religious fundamentalists converge on at least one fundamental and moral truth…
… That is one God awful sweater.
weater.
“That is the point, the fact that something is thinking is all we can be sure of.”
and that the thinking is always thinking of.
and now you have the begining of phenomenology.
Because the thinking isnt just merely empty thinking.. it is thinking of.. thinking of something
No dk.
He was trying to build a foundation for all knowledge.
@SM yes, fair point (foundation for all knowledge).
The next step dk, is the cartesian ontological argument. That god exists and that he is no deciever, and
that he created us with faculties that, if used properly, will give of true knowledge of the world, both
conceptual and empricial. It’s all grounded in the cogito.
fast forward, remove god from the equation and then you will see people argue that “evolution” is the “creator” of our thinking aparatus and that we adapt and survive because our brains, when properly used, are representing the truth to us.
What does an improper use of the brain look like?
I mean outside of the obvious answer that I should just read one of my own comments.
I don’t think we need go further, as a Bayesian, I don’t think there is much point in looking for certain knowledge outside e.g. maths. All knowledge regarding the real world is uncertain to some degree, and the thing to do is work out when the uncertainty is negligible, at least for whatever question is being addressed at the time. I’m not sure that can be done by rigour, rather than common sense.
BTW – speaking of post-modernism:
> That wouldn’t be a valid analogy as the only way we know we eat is by sense perceptions, of which Descartes says we cannot be certain. That is the point, the fact that something is thinking is all we can be sure of.
First, it must be noted that Descartes also says we cannot be certain of our a priori knowledge:
Click to access DescartesMeditations.pdf
He then accepts that the benevolent God warranting his logical apparatus, the Logos that backs up his Reason, may be a fable. Only after that does he reach a point of hyperbolic doubt.
Now, how could Descartes infer that he is if he doubts everything produced by the inferential windmills of his mind? He Kant. The certainty of his ego sum, ego existo must come from an ergo that is not the same kind as the usual inference we present with a “therefore.” It must come from the realization that he can’t deny his existence while meditating.
That the thing that thinks (res cogitans) exists because it can’t be denied may not satisfy everyone. It did not satisfy Hobbes. It should not convince anti-realists. But as far as I can see, it’s not incoherent and it has a very big advantage: we still share a robust intuition that we exist.
***
Second, another reason why Descartes’ cogito can’t be inferential is because [thus considered] it could follow from any other activity than meditating:
http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/descartes1642_3.pdf
The objection is not that anything follows from meditating, but that anything could be equivalent to a meditation. Again, the only way to parry that objection is to recall why we’re meditating in the first place:
In other words, meditating makes sense only insofar as we seek a foundation to all our knowledge. Again, this might not convince empiricists such as Gassendi (!!), as it’s far from clear how what is revealed to the mind while meditating should have more certainty than what comes to the sense. Indubitability is a steep price to pay to bypass the reliability of our outer experiences. And this price must be paid by doing something that is very unnatural to many – bracketing all our knowledge. In general, college students just don’t get it.
Many passages in the set of objections and replies share attributes with ClimateBall.
***
I am making all these efforts to make an important point: when we’re speaking of Modernity in philosophy, we’re usually refer to what the Cogito has kickstarted. Embracing that project does not lead us far from scientism. The same could be said of empiricism, as understood as a knowledge foundation. We can still observe that scientist attitude among scientists.
THIS kind of foundationalism (yes, Philip, with caps lock this time) is what reject those who have been called the “POMO.” But one doesn’t need to be a POMO to reject foundationalism. Grandiose foundations seem to be on the wane. There are still neo-mechanicists and neo-logicists around, and foundational questions around maths are still asked, however. The jury is still out.
All that being said, I can understand that “pomo” can only be used a slur.
Back to meditations again, rather than the source of the actual quotation…
> Back to meditations again, rather than the source of the actual quotation…
… which is a commentary on the Meditations.
You just can’t make this up.
Here is Descartes marginal note again: “That we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt, and that this is the first knowledge we acquire when we philosophize in order.”. The only thing of which we cannot doubt are the things of which we are necessarily certain, whether they are sense perceptions or a-priori knowledge. I don’t think there is necessarily a great deal of inference here, the important part is that in order for there to be thought, there needs to be something to do the thinking. This is just an inspiration, a self-evident “truth” AFAICS, and you only need inference if you want to make claims about what he meant by “I”. If you just take it to be a label for the thing that is thinking, then it is just a label.
I think commentaries ought to be quite useful in understanding the author’s meaning, that is rather the point of a commentary.
I give up, Dikran.
You exemplify very well one of the reasons why I left academia, and you’re just trolling right now.
No, Willard, I am not trolling, we just don’t agree, which isn’t the same thing. Note I have continued to explain my position and have addressed the points you have raised (a-priori and inference).
Well Joshua proper use in Descartes follows clear and distinct ideas.
In science proper use would be the scientific method of course.
Neither of these is important to the point:
let see if I can get to it. What descartes is after is a foundation of Knowledge, the things that cannot be doubted. After the Cogito, he brings god in. So here you sit with
ideas and representations in your head, and reality, objective reality is out there. And the question is how do you know the representation in your head matches the outside world? How do you get that independent point of view outside of human cognition ( and language and culture) that guarantees its validity. That guarantees the mind is a mirro of nature? Well, Descartes brings in God as the guarrantee.
Now dont stop to argue with Descartes, Just observe the structure of the argument: When you are thinking, you can be sure there is a thinking thing. But what about beyond the cogito? Well he brings in God. got it? good.
Now Kill god.
1. Some folks looked at that and said, God is dead, anything goes. You know that guy, Neitzsche.
And so you can trace all manner of relativism back through that chain ( other paths as well
but for now we will just pretend that only Descartes exists.) get rid of the cartesian god, the
god that ensures ( as in the englightenment) that our reason and senses are designed to
‘get” the truth. get rid of the god that grounds morality, and well you have an intellectual
Crisis for folks in the cartesian tradition. Thats all you need to understand.. dont have to
agree, just understand.
2. Some folks got rid of the cartesian god in another way. They would look at the existence of
the external world, and Bracket that question!. DK, noted that we could say that there was
thinking of. Whenever we look at consciousness it is always consciousness of. This Bracketing is called the universal epoche. We put aside the question
of whether the mind is a mirror, and we just describe what is in the mirror. Instead of asking the question about the relationship between the mind and the world, we just explore the ideas asa they present themselves: This is Phenomenology, and after that comes structuralism, and the attack on structuralism is Deconstruction. And Derrida’s basic point is.. These guys are sneaking in God again!
3. Some folks got rid of the cartesian god another way. They noted that consciousness was always consciousness of, and then argued that if you really look closely at it, that Being is what it is not, while not being what it is. That would be Sartre. Well what the hell does that gibberish mean?
When you are conscious of something it fills your attention. The Subject( you thinking) becomes what it is not: the object it is conscious of. But at the same time, we know that you are not what you are thinking of. And further, he would reject the whole idea that we must start with knowledge.
In the cartesian scheme I am first and foremost a thinking thing. But In Sartre, your being (existence) preceeds your essence ( what you are) and your essence is really a matter of free choice.
4. Some folks transformed the cartesian notion of Subject ( the thinking thing that intends objects)
And here you would be going down a path of hegel, Heidegger,Sartre, some POMOs and anyone who starts to ask questions about what does it mean to be a subject.. in the world, in society..
Its important to know the map, and the journeys others have taken
” The certainty of his ego sum, ego existo must come from an ergo that is not the same kind as the usual inference we present with a “therefore.” It must come from the realization that he can’t deny his existence while meditating.”
yes as hegel noted it was an assertion of an immediate identity between thought and being.
Not inferential.
Willard,
in my 4 years of philosophy I dont actually recall ever being asked to write what I thought of Descartes, or anyone else for that matter. 90% of the work was explication. When you got to honors they might let you say X was wrong.
Edie never asked us what we thought of Husserl. He asked us to explicate the argument.
Same in every other class. Correct Russell was never really an option. Explain Russel, or explicate wittgenstein was all you were allowed or expected to do.
maybe someday I might have a worthwhile thought.
> Note I have continued to explain my position and have addressed the points you have raised (a-priori and inference).
So says every contrarian coming here while repeating the same refuted point over and over again. This is not continuing to explain a position. Even if it was, it means little when it doesn’t address what has been said in response.
That the Cogito ergo sum is not a syllogism is common knowledge in the French world. The Discourse formulation is a known bug. Misunderstanding of that point abounds in the anglosphere. Many are still not led astray. For instance, Jakko Hintikka has the right of it when he claims that it’s more a performative than inferential. Since I no longer wish to waste time on comments that get dismissed anyway, let me just quote him:
The debates regarding Descartes’ epistemology are not there.
So, they really have been putting Decartes before dehorse.
I’ll see myself out.
Why do whales and dolphins strand themselves on beaches?
What species wouldn’t after sensing this thread!
I’ve got a hammer, so I’m about to unthink myself, then I will be a vegetable, then you all can plant me in the ground, then you all can … wait for it … eat me.
John Oliver speaks the truth … about … Jordan B Peterson … well close enough …
“So says every contrarian coming here while repeating the same refuted point over and over again. This is not continuing to explain a position. Even if it was, it means little when it doesn’t address what has been said in response.”
Yes, I don’t think you have responded to my points, and you don’t think I have responded to yours. However I am not accusing you of trolling, nor am I making personal attacks on you:
“You exemplify very well one of the reasons why I left academia, and you’re just trolling right now.”
(although I do admit I got a bit techy by your refusal to address what was written in the original source of the quotation, for which I appologise).
Now Descartes wrote “I think therefore I am” (in French and in Latin) in two books, one written before the meditations and one written after. It seems a bit strange to suggests that he didn’t think it was true because of something written in the meditations, given that he wrote it twice in unambiguous terms. One way of resolving the paradox is to consider that maybe what was written in the meditations is a refinement or extension of “I think therefore I am” (Bertrand Russell suggests that we only have evidence of our existence while we think, which is also reasonable, but is not quite the same thing as (but compatible with) “I think, therefore I am”.
“For instance, Jakko Hintikka has the right of it when he claims that it’s more a performative than inferential.”
As usual, it would help me to understand your point if you would use terminology that I am likely to know and not misinterpret (it isn’t even clear here that it is a jargon term)
Which is essentially what I was arguing. It is self-evident, rather than inferential (and if you try and make it inferential then you run into problems about what the “I” refers to, if you take it as just a label for the think that thinks, then it is again self-evident, Descartes is just defining himself as the orginator of his own thoughts). It also isn’t clear to me how this agrees with your initial argument:
AFAICS, there is no inference required as it is an intuitively self-evident truth. The argument seems to have drifted somewhat, IIRC it was originally about whether this was “empirical”, I don’t think it is as I understand the term to mean things we know via sense-perceptions e.g. observations and experiments.
Dikran,
Yes, that may be the case, but does anyone (anyone of relevance) actually believe that form of scientism? I don’t think I know anyone who does.
I don’t think I know anyone that would explicitly endorse it, but I think the weaker version in the paragraph below is fairly common:
Essentially I think there is always an element of truth in most scholarly work, but often it gets spoiled by over-reaching (perhaps a lack of self-skepticism) and excessive certainty. We all have a natural tendency to get excited about our own research interests, but if we make no effort to reign it in, it can lead you to “going emeritus” quite easily.
I would agree that Peterson is using a bit of a straw man caricature of science and (atheist) scientists, the idea that scientists don’t recognize values (even if scientific statements may be value-free in a scientific context) is clearly a misrepresentation (not an empirical fact ;o)
Yes, that may be the case, but does anyone (anyone of relevance) actually believe that form of scientism? I don’t think I know anyone who does.
Richard Dawkins.
South Park did it …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_God_Go
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_God_Go_XII
Three factions of species (two are human one is otters) battle it out about which one bears out the true science as handed down from Richard Dawkins partner (Mr./Mrs./Mr. Garrison (Mrs. at that time)).
Moral of this hero myth? Any society will fractionalize because it is in our nature to be territorial. In other words, no single dogma can ever exist. That is the one lesson anyone should take from history.
Which kind of reminds me of the epistemology of philosophy.
> I don’t think you have responded to my points
Here’s my first comment in full:
Which part of “As the direct effect of a meditation, it could be something like an intuition; as the indirect result of a thought experiment, it looks more like an inference” you did not get?
Sorry, if you just want to continue to be abrasive, especially after my apology, I don’t think I will continue with this discussion.
> The argument seems to have drifted somewhat, IIRC it was originally about whether this was “empirical”, I don’t think it is as I understand the term to mean things we know via sense-perceptions e.g. observations and experiments.
The answer is that if you don’t entertain the meditation by yourself, nothing comes out of it. It’s a pragmatic thought experiment, unlike Galileo’s refutation of Aristotle’s hypothesis about falling objects. James Brown calls the latter platonic:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thought-experiment/
Even physics can go beyond what we usually call the empirical.
And that’s notwithstanding the nature of the inference involved in normal experiments (i.e. in what way are our scientific arguments and inferences empirical) and the theorical apparatus underpinning them (e.g. in what way are climate modulz empirical).
We’re far from driftng here.What passes as good ol’ empiricism is far from being clear, and generations of scientists never going back to where it comes from doesn’t help improve that predicament. Fighting POMOs over a battle lost more than fifty years ago may not be the best way to reinforce Science’s natural triumphalism.
Ironically, that triumphalism is how the Discourse ends:
Click to access descartes1637.pdf
If that’s not scientism, nothing is.
Y’all living Descartes’ dream and you don’t even know it.
> I don’t think I will continue with this discussion.
I washed my hands over any desire to continue that discussion a long time ago. Showing how the passive aggression works as gaslighting is enough for me. It substantiates my earlier point about academia.
A word from our sponsor:
Willard –
It substantiates my earlier point about academia.
I was hoping you might elaborate on that. What, more precisely (hopefully you can find a way to remove criticism of Dikran along the way) was the “one of the reasons” why you left academia?
Yes, this would be interesting but it would also be good if it could be done without making Dikran some kind of poster child for why you did so.
To try and calm the comments down a little, I’ve written another post about consensus messaging 😀
“It might add excessively to current polarization….”
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-monday-edition-1.4396981/toronto-university-professor-says-controversial-website-on-hiatus-1.4396986
re. leaving academia:
Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
“Relax, ” said the night man,
“We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave! “
Not a good time for that, Joshua. Sorry it got to me. Surprised, too. I need to know my limits, and work within my areas of responsibility.
Apologies to everyone.
I get it Willalrd. I wanted to ask the question when you first mentioned it, but didn’t because I didn’t see any way that it wouldn’t read as making Dikran a poster boy. When you mentioned it again, Iit was still uncomfortable, but I thought I’d ask. I was glad to see Anders’ follow-on.
Anyway, maybe you can sneak it is some time in the future, in a completely different context. 🙂
To try and calm the comments down a little, I’ve written another post about consensus messaging
Yah. That’ll be a good way to keep things calm. 🙂
“Y’all living Descartes’ dream and you don’t even know it.”
I didnt know you left. All I’ll note is the parallels are starting to freak me out.
Willard –
Don’t know if you’ve seen this:
Haidt goes full on Peterson. The love is palpable. I have to admit I found it a bit sad.
On the other hand –
This little piece by Tabitha Southey might just be the best thing ever yet written about Jordan Peterson and his selfless mission to save the West from itself…..
http://www.macleans.ca/opinion/is-jordan-peterson-the-stupid-mans-smart-person/
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I know this thread has been quiet for four months now, but my dismissive comment about Peterson (“he appears to be a self-promoting academic grifter who recently realized he can cash in on bigotry”) is backed up by a comment he himself made in January.
https://www.vox.com/world/2018/3/26/17144166/jordan-peterson-12-rules-for-life
Nails it:
Lawyers are digging up JordanP’s legal past performances as a profiler expert:
My favorite sentence:
Of course, the animal kingdom is also a place of mutual aid, and for a man to emulate a lobster is like a woman treating the existence of the praying mantis as a license to eat her husband.
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