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I participated in the last thread a bit and was going to follow up some more, but instead tried to get the pulse of the types of criticism Peterson was often getting around here. Some of t was, to say the least, disappointing. Much of the criticism I was seeing was about on par with that we saw in the 2016 election – a bunch of partisan hacks not thinking in what could be called an even remotely critical fashion and instead chanting “lock her up!” and fixating on individual things said “But, but… Basket of deplorables!” It was, frankly, stupid and reveals a lot about the petty and shallow people who feel the need to tear this guy down. What many of you came in and fixated on was bad, and you should feel bad for having done so, especially to the lengths you did it. Go get out and experience sunshine and come back when you have something meaningful to say you basement dwelling troglodytes.
I want to start this next thread up on a bit of a less superficial note and actually go after some of the guy’s ideas in a way that isn’t depressingly facile. Now, I can’t speak to much of what Peterson does – I’m no psychologist, and have only distant knowledge of pragmatism and Jung – but I can speak to some of his points with some authority. It’s on this note that I want to talk about his notion of Darwinian truth as to what truth is in general. I’ll say it bluntly – I think he starts from an incorrect reading (I stand to be corrected on this) of Nietzsche and his expansion upon it serves to obfuscate a discussion of truth more than add to it. This leads to two criticisms – one general one about obfuscation, and a second one about misreading Nietzsche.
Anyway, both stem from material in this podcast.
In this podcast Peterson did with Sam Harris he opens up drawing a distinction between what he sees as Sam’s conception of truth – a fairly common notion of there being an objective truth without any sort of consensus or perspectival involvement, which Peterson dubs as “Newtonian truth” (Sam rephrases this as scientific realism, I believe) – and Peterson’s own Darwinian truth. What is Darwinian truth? Well, it’s a notion which is driven by a model of natural selection and a model of truth influenced or inspired by the American pragmatists. The way he presents their conception (around 29:00) is “The truth of a statement or process can only be adjudicated with regards to its efficiency in attaining its aims”. What we should immediately take from this is that truth, on this type of model, isn’t something that simply exists in a vacuum, but a proposition to be judged based on a framework of ends. He goes on to say “Truths are always bounded because we’re ignorant” (don’t’ know precise timestamp but it’ll be around 29:00) and it gives a bit of an inkling as to his motivation behind this pragmatic model. I believe he’s pointing to a fairly robust tradition which argues the ultimate unknowability of the objective, and there is something to it – but that discussion is a bit beyond the scope of this conversation.
Peterson’s approach to this type of model, as far as I can tell, is to ask “What’s the most fundamental end of an organism like a human being?” and then locate truth within the framework of the most fundamental telos of the human. All other truth claims would be subordinate to the truth claims of this most teleologically relevant framework. This is where Darwin comes in, because he sees the human being as operating within a Darwinian landscape of natural selection. In his words, the great problem – the end – is for the animal “to keep up with a multidimensionally transforming landscape.” This is a fundamental impossibility, over a long enough time frame, so the solution – which is the organism which is put through the Darwinian ringer of natural selection – is a “very bad and partial” one. This leads to a phrase Peterson uses a lot – of something being “true enough” – meaning that things are true to an extent only insofar as the fundamental telos of the being can be temporarily met.
The advantage of this model, as far as I can tell, is that it allows for us to clearly say “Our end is X, and we have a clear framework to say what is true or not based on how successfully we attain X.” This is an advantage over “Newtonian truth” insofar as the truth the Newtonian variant reveals is, ultimately, always in question (Harris gets this – “We never come into contact with naked truth… All we have is our conversation” (somewhere between 30 and 45). That hasn’t lead Sam to throw the baby out with the bathwater and move to some merger of a subjectivist model with some biological realism thrown in like Peterson is adopting though – but that’s beside the point of the criticism.
The main criticism I have of Peterson here isn’t his model of truth – there is something to be said for teleologically oriented models of truth rather than objectivist models, since our access to the objective world is flawed and it leaves us in a credible position to nihilistically throw up our hands and declare truth an impossibility, until our relationship with objective truth is mediated by teleological ends. My criticism of Peterson is one related to the term he uses, and where he gets that term from.
My more general criticism of his approach to this is that he presents this truth as somehow exclusionary to Newtonian truth. It would be easy enough to say “Yep, Newtonian truth is great, but we can’t reliably access this truth – so while we can theorize about it and attempt to approximate it, here is this Darwinian model for making truth claims which actually provides us with a clear model for making truth claims, and its truth is based on the universalizability of the problem/corresponding teleological end it is contending with.” There – two models of truth, one which is absolute but can only be approximated, and one which provides clear and functional truth claims based on teleological ends derived from a fairly universal biological problem of survivability, and he and Sam go out for beers. Instead of doing that, Peterson insists on pursuing this as if the two models are exclusionary. He is aware of “Newtonian truth” and formulates Darwinian truth in relation to it, and I am critical of the way he approaches this discussion. If someone could perhaps explain why he doesn’t seem to frame his discussion in terms of the two being not mutually exclusive – IE, there are different types of truth, operating in different ways, which can lead to effective truth claims. Bret Weinstein even tries to bridge this gap with his explanations of metaphorical truths (ballpark of Peterson’s Darwinian truth) on multiple instances where he talks with Peterson, but Peterson just doesn’t seem to be able to take the leap and say “Yep, both are types of truth which can exist together.”
My second criticism is specific to his sources and an attribution. At one point he says he’s drawing this notion of truth from a Nietzschean position. Specifically, he says he’s dealing with “Something that was basically expressed by Nietzsche, and it’s a definition of truth. If it doesn’t serve life, it’s not true.” (timestamp pending – I forgot to record it). I think he is misreading his source, though I’d be open to consider citations other than what I’m about to provide since Nietzsche does tend to bounce around a lot. Nietzsche, to my knowledge, doesn’t put forth a notion of truth where “truth serves life” unless you adopt the idea of “Truth serves life – and it’s not truth.” To quote Nietzsche,
“Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.” (WTP, 493)
He goes on to say:
“The most strongly believed a prior ‘truths’ are for me – provisional assumptions; e.g., the law of causality, a very well acquired habit of belief, so much a part of us that not to believe in it would destroy the race. But are they for that reason truths? What a conclusion! As if the preservation of man were a proof of truth.”
This whole section, “Biology of the Drive to Knowledge, Perspectivism” from The Will to Power is worth a read and its message is quite clear – that truth isn’t true because it preserves life, but rather that truth is in fact an error and the real value behind what we think of as truth isn’t that it is true, but that it preserves life. Let me restate – for Nietzsche, truth is a special, life preserving, type of error and not necessarily true at all. He’s attacking the relationship of what we categorize as truth to what is actually true – and arguably the concept of truth, period.
Peterson’s take on this – and again, I’d love to see where he’s getting this from in Nietzschean philosophy, as I don’t study it that closely any more – I that truth is true in virtue of its life preserving ability. He attributes this to a Nietzschean axiom but I think Nietzsche is arguing something quite different – that what we think of as “true” preserving life in no way proves it true, and rather shows that truth is a type of error. So, I consider this a fundamental misreading of Nietzsche, even after he directly attributes the basis of his position to Nietzsche.
To be generous, he does say it’s an idea he’s playing around on, and maybe his position is based on a partial denial of Nietzsche’s position, paired with a partial acceptance – but where he says “If it doesn’t serve life, it’s not true.” I think he’s just getting it wrong.
That’s enough time spent for now.
@Lead
New
Counting this as the v3 of Jordan Peterson threads. Please make a v4
v1 http://forums.sherdog.com/threads/u...-and-the-black-liberation-collective.3358077/
v2 http://forums.sherdog.com/threads/the-jordan-peterson-thread-v2.3497273/
v3 http://forums.sherdog.com/threads/criticism-of-jordan-peterson-thread-v3.3765781/page-31
I want to start this next thread up on a bit of a less superficial note and actually go after some of the guy’s ideas in a way that isn’t depressingly facile. Now, I can’t speak to much of what Peterson does – I’m no psychologist, and have only distant knowledge of pragmatism and Jung – but I can speak to some of his points with some authority. It’s on this note that I want to talk about his notion of Darwinian truth as to what truth is in general. I’ll say it bluntly – I think he starts from an incorrect reading (I stand to be corrected on this) of Nietzsche and his expansion upon it serves to obfuscate a discussion of truth more than add to it. This leads to two criticisms – one general one about obfuscation, and a second one about misreading Nietzsche.
Anyway, both stem from material in this podcast.
In this podcast Peterson did with Sam Harris he opens up drawing a distinction between what he sees as Sam’s conception of truth – a fairly common notion of there being an objective truth without any sort of consensus or perspectival involvement, which Peterson dubs as “Newtonian truth” (Sam rephrases this as scientific realism, I believe) – and Peterson’s own Darwinian truth. What is Darwinian truth? Well, it’s a notion which is driven by a model of natural selection and a model of truth influenced or inspired by the American pragmatists. The way he presents their conception (around 29:00) is “The truth of a statement or process can only be adjudicated with regards to its efficiency in attaining its aims”. What we should immediately take from this is that truth, on this type of model, isn’t something that simply exists in a vacuum, but a proposition to be judged based on a framework of ends. He goes on to say “Truths are always bounded because we’re ignorant” (don’t’ know precise timestamp but it’ll be around 29:00) and it gives a bit of an inkling as to his motivation behind this pragmatic model. I believe he’s pointing to a fairly robust tradition which argues the ultimate unknowability of the objective, and there is something to it – but that discussion is a bit beyond the scope of this conversation.
Peterson’s approach to this type of model, as far as I can tell, is to ask “What’s the most fundamental end of an organism like a human being?” and then locate truth within the framework of the most fundamental telos of the human. All other truth claims would be subordinate to the truth claims of this most teleologically relevant framework. This is where Darwin comes in, because he sees the human being as operating within a Darwinian landscape of natural selection. In his words, the great problem – the end – is for the animal “to keep up with a multidimensionally transforming landscape.” This is a fundamental impossibility, over a long enough time frame, so the solution – which is the organism which is put through the Darwinian ringer of natural selection – is a “very bad and partial” one. This leads to a phrase Peterson uses a lot – of something being “true enough” – meaning that things are true to an extent only insofar as the fundamental telos of the being can be temporarily met.
The advantage of this model, as far as I can tell, is that it allows for us to clearly say “Our end is X, and we have a clear framework to say what is true or not based on how successfully we attain X.” This is an advantage over “Newtonian truth” insofar as the truth the Newtonian variant reveals is, ultimately, always in question (Harris gets this – “We never come into contact with naked truth… All we have is our conversation” (somewhere between 30 and 45). That hasn’t lead Sam to throw the baby out with the bathwater and move to some merger of a subjectivist model with some biological realism thrown in like Peterson is adopting though – but that’s beside the point of the criticism.
The main criticism I have of Peterson here isn’t his model of truth – there is something to be said for teleologically oriented models of truth rather than objectivist models, since our access to the objective world is flawed and it leaves us in a credible position to nihilistically throw up our hands and declare truth an impossibility, until our relationship with objective truth is mediated by teleological ends. My criticism of Peterson is one related to the term he uses, and where he gets that term from.
My more general criticism of his approach to this is that he presents this truth as somehow exclusionary to Newtonian truth. It would be easy enough to say “Yep, Newtonian truth is great, but we can’t reliably access this truth – so while we can theorize about it and attempt to approximate it, here is this Darwinian model for making truth claims which actually provides us with a clear model for making truth claims, and its truth is based on the universalizability of the problem/corresponding teleological end it is contending with.” There – two models of truth, one which is absolute but can only be approximated, and one which provides clear and functional truth claims based on teleological ends derived from a fairly universal biological problem of survivability, and he and Sam go out for beers. Instead of doing that, Peterson insists on pursuing this as if the two models are exclusionary. He is aware of “Newtonian truth” and formulates Darwinian truth in relation to it, and I am critical of the way he approaches this discussion. If someone could perhaps explain why he doesn’t seem to frame his discussion in terms of the two being not mutually exclusive – IE, there are different types of truth, operating in different ways, which can lead to effective truth claims. Bret Weinstein even tries to bridge this gap with his explanations of metaphorical truths (ballpark of Peterson’s Darwinian truth) on multiple instances where he talks with Peterson, but Peterson just doesn’t seem to be able to take the leap and say “Yep, both are types of truth which can exist together.”
My second criticism is specific to his sources and an attribution. At one point he says he’s drawing this notion of truth from a Nietzschean position. Specifically, he says he’s dealing with “Something that was basically expressed by Nietzsche, and it’s a definition of truth. If it doesn’t serve life, it’s not true.” (timestamp pending – I forgot to record it). I think he is misreading his source, though I’d be open to consider citations other than what I’m about to provide since Nietzsche does tend to bounce around a lot. Nietzsche, to my knowledge, doesn’t put forth a notion of truth where “truth serves life” unless you adopt the idea of “Truth serves life – and it’s not truth.” To quote Nietzsche,
“Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.” (WTP, 493)
He goes on to say:
“The most strongly believed a prior ‘truths’ are for me – provisional assumptions; e.g., the law of causality, a very well acquired habit of belief, so much a part of us that not to believe in it would destroy the race. But are they for that reason truths? What a conclusion! As if the preservation of man were a proof of truth.”
This whole section, “Biology of the Drive to Knowledge, Perspectivism” from The Will to Power is worth a read and its message is quite clear – that truth isn’t true because it preserves life, but rather that truth is in fact an error and the real value behind what we think of as truth isn’t that it is true, but that it preserves life. Let me restate – for Nietzsche, truth is a special, life preserving, type of error and not necessarily true at all. He’s attacking the relationship of what we categorize as truth to what is actually true – and arguably the concept of truth, period.
Peterson’s take on this – and again, I’d love to see where he’s getting this from in Nietzschean philosophy, as I don’t study it that closely any more – I that truth is true in virtue of its life preserving ability. He attributes this to a Nietzschean axiom but I think Nietzsche is arguing something quite different – that what we think of as “true” preserving life in no way proves it true, and rather shows that truth is a type of error. So, I consider this a fundamental misreading of Nietzsche, even after he directly attributes the basis of his position to Nietzsche.
To be generous, he does say it’s an idea he’s playing around on, and maybe his position is based on a partial denial of Nietzsche’s position, paired with a partial acceptance – but where he says “If it doesn’t serve life, it’s not true.” I think he’s just getting it wrong.
That’s enough time spent for now.
@Lead
New
Counting this as the v3 of Jordan Peterson threads. Please make a v4
v1 http://forums.sherdog.com/threads/u...-and-the-black-liberation-collective.3358077/
v2 http://forums.sherdog.com/threads/the-jordan-peterson-thread-v2.3497273/
v3 http://forums.sherdog.com/threads/criticism-of-jordan-peterson-thread-v3.3765781/page-31
