Sam Harris vs. Jordan Peterson

[angrysoba]

This may be an interesting topic. These two begin a discussion in which they agree with the need for academic freedom, and then move on to an area where they disagree. It seems that Jordan Peterson has an argument that the *truth of religion resides in its evolutionarily derived power to prolong human survival.

Regardless of whether religion is an adaptation, Sam Harris refuses to allow this definition of truth, arguing that it makes a mockery of an important concept that is a precondition for any other fruitful discussion. As a result, almost the entire podcast here is of Harris cornering Peterson on this issue.

I agree with Harris, who puts philosophical thought experiments to good use here. Peterson appears to be using classic motivated reasoning.

You may want to listen. You may find it tedious. I enjoyed it.

https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/what-is-true

 

[Craig B]

Harris has ways of finding out the truth.

Might we not be tempted to call it a “truth pill” in the end?​

 

[A'isha]

I have a well-known disdain and dislike for Sam Harris, but I'm on his side in this one. The utility of religion and the truth of religion (in the sense of an objective description of reality) are two separate things, and one should not be conflated with the other (and this goes both ways).

I assume that was the point of contention, at least. I tried listening to the podcast, then skipped around to try and find the meat because I'm not listening to two hours of that ****, and then gave up when my eyes started glazing over even then.

It was like listening to the audiobook version of a tedious interminable internet forum argument.

 

[marplots]

Listened to the whole thing, then read the reddit comments.

The difficulty seems to stem from the ontological difference between a realist and a pragmatist. There's a foundational dispute here that probably isn't going to get resolved by discussing it.

Unfortunately, it's also going to pollute any further discussions on other topics. We see something similar here when morality questions devolve into basic differences between those who hold with an absolute morality and relativists. Not surprising really - how you cut up the cake depends a bit on what sort of cake you think you have.

 

[angrysoba]

Listened to the whole thing, then read the reddit comments.

The difficulty seems to stem from the ontological difference between a realist and a pragmatist. There's a foundational dispute here that probably isn't going to get resolved by discussing it.

Unfortunately, it's also going to pollute any further discussions on other topics. We see something similar here when morality questions devolve into basic differences between those who hold with an absolute morality and relativists. Not surprising really - how you cut up the cake depends a bit on what sort of cake you think you have.

I would have been happy with Peterson saying something along the lines of "while most philosophy and science is aimed at uncovering the truth, I think it is better to pursue wisdom". Harris even said at one point, "You had me at wisdom!"

But Peterson insists on the word "truth". Why? My guess is that he wants to make a sleight of hand argument that depends on people not noticing that his equivocation of truth moves from "Peterson-truth" to "true-truth".

Something like this:

Premise A: That which people find value and meaning in gives them a survival advantage.
Premise B: That which has a survival advantage, I will call "True" (Peterson True).
Premise C: People find value and meaning in the Bible.

Conclusion: The Bible is True (no scare quotes, no special meaning)

Anyway, here is Peterson trying to skip past the discussion on truth to some blathering on myths and evolution. It sounds like psuedointellectual babble to me:



And here is Sam Harris's response:

https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/speaking-of-truth-with-jordan-b.-peterson

 

[marplots]

I would have been happy with Peterson saying something along the lines of "while most philosophy and science is aimed at uncovering the truth, I think it is better to pursue wisdom". Harris even said at one point, "You had me at wisdom!"

But Peterson insists on the word "truth". Why? My guess is that he wants to make a sleight of hand argument that depends on people not noticing that his equivocation of truth moves from "Peterson-truth" to "true-truth".

Something like this:

Premise A: That which people find value and meaning in gives them a survival advantage.
Premise B: That which has a survival advantage, I will call "True" (Peterson True).
Premise C: People find value and meaning in the Bible.

Conclusion: The Bible is True (no scare quotes, no special meaning)

I am generally unfamiliar with Peterson, so I don't know what his usual schtick is. Maybe you are correct, but it wasn't obvious to me in the original conversation. I'd rather they traveled a bit down the road before declaring the destination obvious.

Anyway, here is Peterson trying to skip past the discussion on truth to some blathering on myths and evolution. It sounds like psuedointellectual babble to me:



And here is Sam Harris's response:

https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/speaking-of-truth-with-jordan-b.-peterson

I'll take a shot at explaining the disconnect. When Peterson talks about the Dawinian test for truth, I think he means the same kind of test we might employ when deciding when a theory is true: we make a prediction based on it and see if the prediction pans out. If it does, the truth value of the theory is increased. If it doesn't, the truth value is diminished. No surprises there.

The Darwinian version simply promotes survival as the test. Things that are true (in Peterson's conception) will reveal themselves as true because there is a direct connection between an external reality (the world as it is but not directly experienced by us) as a causative factor driving evolution. The accuracy with which an organism "measures" the world is reflected in their survival.

That's fine, as far as it goes. But then he's careful not to allow for the kind of "brute facts" we generally accept because they are so strongly represented in our experiences. He claims these too may be mistaken and the only way to reveal the mistake is through evolutionary means. But it's an awkward idea to put into practice. It's as if he has a nice formula that gives him reasonable results, but wants to apply his formula across a too-broad range of applications. It requires too much effort to map.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

actually, no.
When Peterson talks about the Dawinian test for truth, he means whether an action or discovery will help the survival of the human specie. In his few, the knowledge about how an atom bomb works is not "true" because it threatens our existence.

 

[angrysoba]

I am generally unfamiliar with Peterson, so I don't know what his usual schtick is. Maybe you are correct, but it wasn't obvious to me in the original conversation. I'd rather they traveled a bit down the road before declaring the destination obvious.

Fine. That was more of a takeaway message I got from his appearance on a Joe Rogan podcast. Rogan was more accommodating than Harris and let him talk about his beliefs. I think he was too blindsided to give much of a coherent response.

I'll take a shot at explaining the disconnect. When Peterson talks about the Dawinian test for truth, I think he means the same kind of test we might employ when deciding when a theory is true: we make a prediction based on it and see if the prediction pans out. If it does, the truth value of the theory is increased. If it doesn't, the truth value is diminished. No surprises there.

The Darwinian version simply promotes survival as the test. Things that are true (in Peterson's conception) will reveal themselves as true because there is a direct connection between an external reality (the world as it is but not directly experienced by us) as a causative factor driving evolution. The accuracy with which an organism "measures" the world is reflected in their survival.

That's fine, as far as it goes. But then he's careful not to allow for the kind of "brute facts" we generally accept because they are so strongly represented in our experiences. He claims these too may be mistaken and the only way to reveal the mistake is through evolutionary means. But it's an awkward idea to put into practice. It's as if he has a nice formula that gives him reasonable results, but wants to apply his formula across a too-broad range of applications. It requires too much effort to map.

To be honest, I do not really understand what that means. I heard him give an example of an Irish Elk, but I did not really get what he meant.

 

[angrysoba]

actually, no.
When Peterson talks about the Dawinian test for truth, he means whether an action or discovery will help the survival of the human specie. In his few, the knowledge about how an atom bomb works is not "true" because it threatens our existence.

Yes, which is why Sam Harris came up with the thought experiment of two teams in different possible worlds coming up with a small pox vaccine, in which Team A is successful and Team B accidentally leaks it and kills everyone. Is the relevant knowledge of smallpox that each found "true" in World A, and false in World B even though the knowledge is identical?

Peterson started saying that someone must have been stupid, and what about the Challenger disaster? Someone should have checked the O-ring! And what about the man whose wife has an affair, he obviously wasn't taking care of his marriage!

 

[marplots]

actually, no.
When Peterson talks about the Dawinian test for truth, he means whether an action or discovery will help the survival of the human specie. In his few, the knowledge about how an atom bomb works is not "true" because it threatens our existence.

OK, so the task is to give that result coherence. As far as I can tell, the collision comes from using "true" in the realist sense of the word - root facts about the world - and in a more pragmatic way: the result of what we claim those facts to be. He's coming at it from the other direction. You don't first find truth and then use it to build up other things, you first find those other things and then label their causes true or false.

I know it's weird, but Peterson kept repeating this inverted structure. Harris just didn't accept it, even provisionally.

In realism, we think that, even if we do not always have direct access and experience of the world around us, we can build up a coherent picture of that world independent of our own beliefs and desires. Furthermore, facts retain their truth value when decomposed, so reductionism is available to us as a tool. Further-furthermore, all this is separate from ethical and moral judgements - the facts of the world do not care and do not come pre-bound to a value system.

In contrast, Peterson seems to hold that, while we may have some connection to facts as they are, these are meaningless atomistic things that do not sum in a coherent fashion. That would be similar to: "Wet" doesn't come from any fact about Hydrogen and Oxygen. Anthing deserving the label "truth" has certain consequences because it is embedded in a fabric of reality, and we do not have meaningful access to other than the consequences. Further, these consequences, and truth itself, have an intrinsic ethical dimension - in Peterson's view, a defining ethical dimension.

I have a white pages here. It purportedly has the phone numbers for members of my community in it. Is it true? Well, the realist suggests we test it by calling a few people and matching the numbers with the names and addresses of those who answer. Peterson says that's a fool's game. The real truth of it rests in whether or not it provides a certain utility - perhaps the ability to connect us as a community and this isn't captured in individual numbers (which may get reassigned) but in how well the phone book supports "the good." First we must decide the ethical use of it and only then evaluate the truth of it.

I think if Harris were to ask him, "Is this true?" He'd get a lot of "I don't know's." And I think if Harris were to ask him for an example of a "true thing," he'd get back, not a concrete, specific, material object in the world, but a conceptual schema instead.

I'll check out the Joe Rogan thing and see if I agree with my own analysis, since I'm pretty sure I put words in Peterson's mouth above.

ETA: I forgot to mention - "truth" isn't that important to Peterson's worldview, and it's a bit unfair to beat him up for it.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

some of the problems with Petersen's view is that a) it is highly subjective b) it depends on the amount of data you use to describe a "truth" and c) it can change over time.
Considering "truth" as an emergent property of a system (such as "wetness") is the same as declaring that we won't know how things turn out until we do it.


b) clearly goes against Occam's razor
and c) makes it clear that we are never a priori in a position to tell whether an action will, ultimately, be good or bad

Harris is working hard to find a way to anchor morality in some objective reality. Petersen on the other hand seems to be happy with judging things in hindsight, based on what he knows now.

Which system, even in theory, would be more useful?

 

[marplots]

some of the problems with Petersen's view is that a) it is highly subjective b) it depends on the amount of data you use to describe a "truth" and c) it can change over time.
Considering "truth" as an emergent property of a system (such as "wetness") is the same as declaring that we won't know how things turn out until we do it.


b) clearly goes against Occam's razor
and c) makes it clear that we are never a priori in a position to tell whether an action will, ultimately, be good or bad

Harris is working hard to find a way to anchor morality in some objective reality. Petersen on the other hand seems to be happy with judging things in hindsight, based on what he knows now.

Which system, even in theory, would be more useful?

I agree with your post but want to set aside the final question until I have some time to think about it.

I did listen to some of the Joe Rogan interview and read Peterson's entry in Wiki. I see he's a psychologist by training. I no longer think he's advancing any sophisticated philosophical viewpoint, but rather ordering piecemeal from the menu when something seems to fit.

I hate to say it, but I got a distinct Ayn Rand vibe. That is, a populist with enough intellectual credentials to gain some trust from the masses, who is driven by a worldview that wasn't generated by struggling through the existing scholarship, but first created as a reaction to social trends and only then in search of some underlying theory.

He says what people want to hear. As a psychologist, he's comfortable with messy human cognition, who travels a landscape where beliefs outrank sterile reality. And this is where professional philosophers (even Sam Harris) can have a go, pealing back the "feels good" and exposing the shoddy workmanship beneath the veneer.

Maybe we'll get a movement out of it. There are still Objectivists around, aren't there?

(I think this was linked earlier, but here's the interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04wyGK6k6HE )

 

[Thor 2]

Listened to about a half of it and found it tedious. Jordon seemed somewhat obtuse to me.

 

[nelsondogg]

Considering his idiosyncratic definition of truth, his opposition to trans gender pronouns is ironic if not hypocritical.

I got the feeling he doesn't quite understand evolution or darwinism as he calls it with his focus on survival. Evolution is all about reproduction, so his ultimate truth should be anything that promotes that as opposed to mere survival. If he's talking about the survival of the species, that's not what evolution is about either as species change, evolve and go extinct. Seems to me he should read the Selfish Gene again. It's almost like he's committing a form of the naturalistic fallacy with his focus on Darwinian truth.

Plus when he says scientific truth must be subservient to DarwinIan truth he is begging the question. Darwinism itself is a scientific theory. So it should be subservient to itself I guess. He's got a real chicken and egg problem there.

Anyways, I'd say my favorite part of the podcast was Peterson's extended 30 second silences. Lol.

 

[David Mo]

This kind of utilitarianism is a mere word game. (There are more complex utilitarianisms).
Imagine that I am a demagogue in a presidential course. Imagine that I say that I will work for the people. Imagine that I am lying and I am working against the people. Imagine that the cheated people vote for me and I win the elections. (It is not difficult to imagine this). Then, my lies are the truth.

And what means “to lie”? The vulgar utilitarianist has to answer to this and I doubt he could do it with his concept of truth.

Vulgar utilitarianism can not evade a classical concept of truth (whatever it be). He only adds the equivalence success=truth adding ambiguity to the complex question of truth.

 

[Pacal]

Originally Posted by The Great Zaganza View Post

actually, no.
When Peterson talks about the Dawinian test for truth, he means whether an action or discovery will help the survival of the human specie. In his few, the knowledge about how an atom bomb works is not "true" because it threatens our existence.

Yes, which is why Sam Harris came up with the thought experiment of two teams in different possible worlds coming up with a small pox vaccine, in which Team A is successful and Team B accidentally leaks it and kills everyone. Is the relevant knowledge of smallpox that each found "true" in World A, and false in World B even though the knowledge is identical?

Peterson started saying that someone must have been stupid, and what about the Challenger disaster? Someone should have checked the O-ring! And what about the man whose wife has an affair, he obviously wasn't taking care of his marriage!

All this boils down to the notion that something is true if it is useful. That is pure balderdash.

 

[Pacal]

I have a white pages here. It purportedly has the phone numbers for members of my community in it. Is it true? Well, the realist suggests we test it by calling a few people and matching the numbers with the names and addresses of those who answer. Peterson says that's a fool's game. The real truth of it rests in whether or not it provides a certain utility - perhaps the ability to connect us as a community and this isn't captured in individual numbers (which may get reassigned) but in how well the phone book supports "the good." First we must decide the ethical use of it and only then evaluate the truth of it.

If that is what Peterson is in fact doing than what he is engaging in is semantic word game crap. He is redefining what "truth" is and trying to foist on people his quite peculiar definition of truth. The easy way to stymie Petersen is to say "I do not accept your definition of truth and further I regard it has crap!"

If something is true because it is useful, (aids the survival of the human race etc.), then a useful lie is true. That is simply perverse.

 

[marplots]

If that is what Peterson is in fact doing than what he is engaging in is semantic word game crap. He is redefining what "truth" is and trying to foist on people his quite peculiar definition of truth. The easy way to stymie Petersen is to say "I do not accept your definition of truth and further I regard it has crap!"

If something is true because it is useful, (aids the survival of the human race etc.), then a useful lie is true. That is simply perverse.

To be fair, Peterson isn't schooled in philosophy. I get the impression he's winging it a bit. His position seems to be the kind of "meta" you find in psychology, where beliefs have the status of truth. This is set against Harris, who does have training in philosophy and who is a physicist to boot - the "hardest" of the hard sciences.

Peterson may have some good things to say at his higher level of analysis, based on human interactions, while not being able to articulate those ideas in any rigorous philosophical way.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

If that is what Peterson is in fact doing than what he is engaging in is semantic word game crap. He is redefining what "truth" is and trying to foist on people his quite peculiar definition of truth. The easy way to stymie Petersen is to say "I do not accept your definition of truth and further I regard it has crap!"

If something is true because it is useful, (aids the survival of the human race etc.), then a useful lie is true. That is simply perverse.

Agreed. I decided not to pursue the podcast back in the day after reading Harris's description of the conversation. Not interested in sloppy definitions, and SH podcasts are usually so interminable and unstructured that it's listen to it all, or nothing. I usually choose the latter.

 

[Pacal]

To be fair, Peterson isn't schooled in philosophy. I get the impression he's winging it a bit. His position seems to be the kind of "meta" you find in psychology, where beliefs have the status of truth. This is set against Harris, who does have training in philosophy and who is a physicist to boot - the "hardest" of the hard sciences.

Peterson may have some good things to say at his higher level of analysis, based on human interactions, while not being able to articulate those ideas in any rigorous philosophical way.

I took several courses in psychology at University and I never heard of the notion that in psychology beliefs have the status of truth. In fact a great deal of time was spent about how do you determine whether or not a particular psychological hypothesis or theory was or was not true. Of course some attention was paid to finding out why people might believe that X or y was true. What sort of cognitive bias or thought process might make people believe x or y was true. In fact in the courses I took some effort was made to combat various beliefs about the psychology of humans that although widely held were deemed false.

So sorry in psychology "belief" does not have the status of truth although a psychologist would likely be interested in why a particular belief was held to be true.

I also would not say Peterson's analysis is at a higher level. Instead it is at a much lower level. It reduces "truth" to mere utilitarian usefulness. To me the "meta" level is such questions has how do we know if something is "true", exactly what is in fact "truth", can something be completely true and so forth. Petersen has nothing to say about those issues it seems.