So let me begin by saying that I entirely appreciate why so many venerate and idolize
Jordan Peterson, as he’s obviously an intelligent and insightful man, whose defence of free
speech and biological facts has been truly admirable.
In fact, it’s precisely for these reasons that he has my respect.
However, unlike many of his critics, who caveat their criticisms by first making clear that
they’re very fond of the man, I won’t… because I’m not.
To be blunt, while I recognize Peterson’s intellect and charisma, I’m convinced that
he’s one of the most overrated public intellectuals of our time, and that this is especially the
case when it comes to his views on religion.
In fact, I will go so far as to say that Jordan Peterson is the Deepak Chopra of Christianity,
and within the following few videos I intend to explain precisely why.
Of course, I’d prefer to address all of his religious views in just one session, but
given my current situation I unfortunately can’t justify doing this, but, as just indicted,
what I can justify is creating a series of videos which each address a pillar of his
beliefs, and then later compile them all together.
And so, with that said, where better to begin than with epistemology 101?
This, is Jordan Peterson’s Truth – Debunked.
On the 9th of November, 2015, in an interview with Transliminal, Peterson had the following
to say on the topic of truth: "So, now, then you have to ask yourself, well, how do you
determine whether or not a theory is true?
Then you ask yourself, well, what do you mean by true?
Well then you're in trouble!
Okay, because, I think you can take a Newtonian perspective on that, or a Darwinian perspective,
but you can't do both at the same time…”
Okay, so I’m going to interject quite a lot within this video, but it’s only to
simplify and adequately address what’s being said.
So far, Peterson has claimed that there’s two perspectives on truth, the first is what
he calls Newtonian, which he later defines as strictly materialistic “Truth as defined
by the axioms of materi… of the materialist philosophy”, and the second is what he calls
Darwinian, which he later defines as that which permits survival “sufficient truth
is the truth that allows you to survive and reproduce, and from a Darwinian perspective,
there isn’t any truth past that”.
But there’s immediately several problems here… and not the least of which is that
he’s committing a Black and White fallacy.
He’s falsely asserting that there’s only two perspectives of truth, when in fact there’s
many more, including the most-subscribed to, which is realism.
Realists, like me, and probably you, hold that reality exists with or without our viewing
it – that is, that a falling tree makes a sound with or without our being there to
hear it, but we don’t assert that reality is strictly materialist.
And a second problem that’s worth emphasizing at this point is that while Peterson’s definition
of truth can be seen as Darwinian, it does not represent Darwin’s view, and so when
Peterson says or implies that it does “And that’s basically Darwin’s claim”, know
that he’s putting words never spoken into Darwin’s mouth.
Anyhow, here’s Peterson fleshing out his perspective of truth (which, courtesy of Bret
Weinstein, is now known as ‘metaphorical truth’).
"So Nietzsche said ‘truth serves life’, okay, in some sense that’s a Darwinian idea
– okay?
If it’s true enough so that you act it out or hold it, that increases your chances of
survival and reproduction over long spans of time.
That’s true.”
And here’s him putting it more clearly to Sam Harris while on Harris’ podcast: “The
fundamental axiom that I’m playing with is something that was basically explained
by Nietzsche, and it’s a definition of truth – and so I would say, if it doesn’t serve
life it’s not true.”
Now while this definition is needlessly confusing, it’s not inherently flawed – if Peterson
and his ilk want to call that which serves life (or that which increases human flourishing)
‘true’ then that’s fine… again, it’s confusing, because it means, for example,
that if the fact that atoms store potential energy should one day prove fatal to us, then
while this fact will remain true in the colloquial / realist sense of the word, it will all of
a sudden become false in the Peterson sense of the word…
But what’s not fine, is to insist, as Peterson does, that should a fact become false according
to the Peterson definition of truth then it will also become false according to the realist
definition of truth.
Or in other words, that metaphorical truth supersedes literal truth; “It sounds like
what you're saying is that truth is as much about action as it is about some sort of material,
measurable, objective reality.
No I’m saying it’s more about action!
Oh yes, yes, the fundamentals of truth are those that guide action, and then the objective
science is nested inside that, it has to be!
There’s no way around that!”
There's only one way you can define truth in relationship to finite beings - it's true
enough.
True enough for what?
True enough so that you survive and reproduce.
That's it.
You don't get to go any further than that.
What's more true than that?
Sorry, can't ask that question.
That's it.
You’ve hit the limit – and that’s basically Darwin’s claim.”
And to provide just one more example, here’s him putting it another way, but this time
as a response to an excellent criticism from Weinstein: “So my point was, essentially,
that there is something called metaphorical truth and that it’s a real thing, so I was…
I’m in agreement with you on that, where we might be in disagreement is that there’s
simultaneously a thing that I would call literal truth, or scientific truth (and by the way
I’m not saying that what scientists say is in this category inherently – scientists
can be wrong).
But the point is truth that is scientifically verifiable, that makes predictions, has a
special priority in this hierarchy because it is the one objective version.
It is not contingent on being nested in another… series, of, of beliefs, so—” “What if
it’s a scientific truth that’s metaphorically wrong?”
“Oh, and there are—” “Like, I can give you an example.
Okay, so, I read this… the memoirs of a KGB scientist, KGB agent, who worked with
the Russians in this erh… biochemical lab and their job was to meld, erh, Ebola was
smallpox, cause smallpox is…
Ebola’s not that contagious, so that’s kind of annoying if you’re trying to kill
people, whereas smallpox – but it’s really fatal!
Whereas smallpox is really contagious, so if you can get the two together and then develop
an aerosol spray you could kill a lot of people, and in fact they did kill about 500 Russians
by mistake when some of what they were doing escaped.
But it isn’t obvious to me that that’s an invalid scientific pursuit… but I do
think that it’s an invalid ethical pursuit, and so that seems to indicate that the ethical
pursuit supersedes the scientific pursuit with regards to truth claim.”
Now just before I crackdown on Peterson’s assertion, and in the anticipation of being
accused of not understanding his position, I want to make something extremely clear.
I entirely understand and accept that our perception of facts and reality (that is,
our perception of realist truth) is subject to natural selection (or metaphorical truth),
and so if Peterson’s assertion was merely that this fact prevents us from having access
to raw realist truth, then I’d have no objection, but he’s not merely asserting this – he’s
asserting that scientific, objective, realist, literal truth is outright the product of metaphorical,
Peterson truth: “The fundamentals of truth are those that guide action, and then the
objective science is nested inside that […] The ethical pursuit supersedes the scientific
pursuit with regards to truth claim.”
So, what exactly is wrong with Peterson’s assertion?
Why doesn’t metaphorical truth supersede literal truth?
Well, first and foremost: “It doesn’t supersede with respect to the truth claim,
it supersedes with respect to considerations of behaviour and policy.”
Secondly, though more importantly, it violates the law of non-contradiction…
To borrow an example from Weinstein, the concepts of heaven and reincarnation can both be considered
metaphorically true, because they both increase our chances of survival due them encouraging
us to cooperate and behave… but the problem is that they can’t both be true – they’re
mutually exclusive.
One claims that when we die we’ll rise up to cloudsville to be reunited with our loved
ones, while the other claims we’ll manifest a new body and start anew… or as Weinstein
puts it: What I’m arguing is that what makes the scientific truth hierarchically superior
is that it explains all the subordinate truths in a way that is logically consistent, whereas
if you were to prioritize heaven as a truth then would have to say that well reincarnation
is false, or you would have to have them all simultaneously be true in some irreconcilable
way, and so the only one that has the special characteristic of accounting for all the others
is the scientific truth.
And thirdly, though perhaps even more importantly, Peterson is conflating our perception of reality
with reality itself – the map with the place, as it were.
Peterson is asserting that because our ability to perceive facts and reality is nested in
Peterson truth, therefore facts and reality is nested in Peterson truth… which is akin
to me asserting that because you're currently perceiving me in two dimensions, I am two
dimensions…
Or to put it another way, Peterson is asserting that because we can only perceive objective
facts subjectively, therefore there are no objective facts… but that’s not how it
works, and it’s not what all of the evidence indicates.
To quote Harris, “You clearly have to have a conception of facts and truth that is possible
to know, that exceeds what anyone currently knows, and exceeds any concern about whether
it is useful or compatible with your own survival even, to know these truths.”
Anyhow, after explaining this to Peterson over seven times, Harris, in fair frustration,
delivered the following elegant bombshell: “Now, the claim, about whether or not she’s
cheating on you, is an intelligible claim […].That's a claim that has absolutely nothing
to do with whether or not you wind up killing yourself based on your reaction to this unhappy
truth.
If you then end up killing yourself we could say at the end of the day it would’ve been
better if he hadn’t known that; it certainly would’ve been better if she hadn't done
that; it would’ve been better if he had married a different woman – surely we would
want to say that--” “It might have been better if he would’ve paid attention to
his damn marriage, and to attribute the—” “Sure!”
“To attribute the cause of his demise to the existence of the photographs... this is
why I brought up Josh Greene, is that investigations into this kind of morality always frame it
in such a way--" “Jordan... Jordan, you have to grant one thing here – there's one
piece that doesn't get moved here.
You cannot move the piece that because you killed yourself it's not true that she was
having an affair – that move is not open to you, and yet you're acting like it is!”
Now, in my opinion, this application of the Reductio Ad Absurdum technique annihilates
Peterson’s assertion.
It’s simple.
If one was to commit suicide because their partner was cheating on them, the act of suicide
wouldn’t make their partner’s cheating on them untrue in the realist sense.
Sure, it would make it untrue in a Peterson sense, but it wouldn’t in the realist – period.
If a tree falls and nobody hears it, it still makes a sound… it still omits vibrations…
Now with Peterson’s definition of truth thoroughly addressed, I want to ask a potent
question…
why does Peterson want to nest not only our perception of realist truth, but realist truth
itself within Peterson truth?
Is it perhaps possible that he has a motive?
Well, I’m convinced that he does…
You see, this slight of hand comes in extremely useful to apologists such as Peterson, because
when he’s asked a question to which he has a justifiable answer, such as ‘Is it true
that there are only two sexes?’, he can, and does, answer according to the realist
definition of truth, but when he’s asked a question to which he doesn’t have a justifiable
answer, such as ‘Is it true that a literal historical man called Jesus resurrected?’,
he answers according to the Peterson definition of truth (which, considering his animosity
for postmodernism, is ironically postmodern).
To borrow a phrase from Harris, this is how you play tennis without the net, and it’s
so disingenuous that I can’t help but conclude that Peterson is doing it on purpose.
That he’s being deliberately obtuse in order to preserve beliefs that he knows damn well
are false.
Now if you’re not already convinced of this then perhaps the follow clip will change your
mind: “Quick question – are you a Christian?”
“I suppose the most straight-forward answer to that is yes, although…
I think it’s, it’s… let’s leave it at yes.”
“Well...
I'm a bit dissatisfied by that because there are so many kinds of Christians and I-- I
would never imagine that you were a very literal minded Christian."
“Well, there are truths other than the literal, that are perhaps more truthful than the literal
truths.
There are many kinds of truth, and I don't mean that in a...
I don't mean that in a post-modern way, actually.
But the truths that govern behavior and the truths that emerge from facts are not the
same truths.”
“Do you believe Jesus rose again from the dead…
literally?”
“I find it...
I cannot answer that question... and the reason is because... okay, let me think about it...
and see if I can come up with a reasonable answer to that.
Well, the first answer would be that it depends on what
you mean by Jesus.”
“A historical human being that existed--” “In a body?
In a body?”
“Yes.”
“And it was a physical body and it was on earth?”
“Yes.”
“It was on earth and was literally, um, was literally, um, er, came back to life…
after death.”
“I would say that at the moment I'm agnostic about that issue - which is a lot different
to saying I don't believe that it happened.”
You see, once someone corners Peterson by forcing him to answer religious questions
according to the realist definition of truth (that is, the definition that he uses in every
other domain of discourse), his religious views are exposed for what they are… unjustified
nonsense.
It seems to me that the reason Peterson insists on his definition of truth is because it renders
everything we confidently know – all facts, all knowledge, as ultimately unknown, because
at any moment, however unlikely, they may lead to our demise and thus become untrue
in the Peterson sense, and therefore, as he insists, also untrue in the realist sense…
To put it bluntly, redefining ‘truth’ in order to avoid an inconvenient truth is
as dishonest as it gets.
Intelligent and sceptical people don’t accept such utter nonsense from New Age Spirituality,
and so neither should they accept it from New Age Christianity.
Peterson is no doubt a very smart, knowledgeable and insightful person, but when it comes to
religion he’s no better than any other apologist.
He manipulates language, misrepresents philosophy and science, and is fallacious in his reasoning.
This video alone doesn’t prove this outright, of course, but it does make a good start,
and I’ll be sure to follow it up.
As always, thank you kindly for the view, and an extra special thank you to my wonderful
patrons and those who’ve donated via PayPal.
Your support is what allows me to create videos such as this.
Anyhow, I’m going to leave you another lucid bombshell from Mr. Rationality himself: It
seems to me that a realistic conception of what’s going on there, and really the only
sane one, if you look long enough at it, is that our language didn’t put the energy
in the atom – it’s not because we spoke a certain way about it, that that determined
the character of physical reality, no, physical reality has a character whether or not there
are apes around to talk about it.