Friday, January 11, 2019


Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris versus David Hume
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jey_CzIOfYE


This is an interesting discussion and a great example of the scripture- Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.- 1 Cor.1:20-21 Now it must be acknowledged that both men are exemplar in their respective fields and highly intelligent. This qualifies them to serve as examples that “the world by wisdom knew not God”. The audience has high hopes that these sorts of free flow discussions will unlock wisdom wherewith economic, social, ethical and political problems will dissolve and the next stage of evolutionary enlightenment will sweep over the world overrunning the ignorant (bible believers included) freeing the world from superstition (like traditional Christianity) to the next great stride toward societal salvation. The disagreement between the two men are in regards to how to perceive ancient religious texts.


 Jordan Peterson's point is that religious stories encode wisdom acquired through millennia of evolutionary changes and should be reverenced by the individual trying to orient himself in life and ignoring them could imperil us. We don't know what all is necessary in the stories to discard them recklessly. The individual needs an a priori structure to interpret reality which we have built into us neurologically by evolution as well as by socialization. This value structure was developed over the evolutionary period and cannot be assimilated in the individuals own lifetime. Jordan says there is overwhelming evidence for this evolutionary a priori value structure in the scientific literature and this needs to be further explored. He criticizes Sam for being too quick to dismiss this orienting compass in the religious traditions on one hand and yet needing to replace it with his own stories and values on the other. He presses Sam on his abandoning ancient tradition for his 'transcendent rationality' asking what that is exactly and pointing out the a priori framework which we must apply to the innumerable objective facts and variables in the world to produce in our minds a manageable subset within which we can operate. (Not Jordan’s example, but something along the lines of seeing a field of grass and stating that the grass is green. There are a million blades of grass and other weeds mingled in with perhaps hundreds of shades of green and other colors throughout the field. You communicate the idea of grass and the predicate green and eliminate the innumerable variables such as the sizes of each individual blades, the angle of the sunlight, position of the sun, the shadows, the wind, smells, time of year, the number of clouds etc. to be able to communicate efficiently. We use the universal ‘grass’ to apply to the millions of blades of grass, otherwise we could not communicate about millions of things at once. This is the ancient ‘one and many’ or ‘universals and particulars’ problem of philosophy.)


Jordan's conception of God is a "complicated" group of different things. A transcendent conscious reality only observable over the longest of time frames (3.5 billion years from our evolutionary standpoint). God is that which creates habitable order out of chaos of being. God is the conceptions of reality metaphysically and biologically built into us over vast expanses of time. God is that which eternally dies and is reborn in the pursuit the higher being and truth, the highest value in the hierarchy of values, that reason for which we sacrifice now for a better future. The voice of conscience and eternal call to adventure; the source of judgment, mercy and guilt, the expression of truthful speech. That principal which selects among men the better qualities giving them a rise to power guaranteeing their posterity. It sounds like Jordan's idea of God- is logic, science and morality. (Jordan says he lives as if God exists, I’m sure God is flattered- Rom.1:19-22.)


 Sam Harris' issue is that there are two extremes that society can fall into- religious fundamentalism and totalitarianism on one side and nihilism on the other. We must escape these 2 with a value system based upon empirical facts not arbitrary or from revelation (e.g. the bible). A good life and bad life is distinguished with reference to undue (who decides that?) pain, suffering, early death, anxiety, etc. and these can be measured empirically. This is the basis of ethics and the direction we should move towards is a good life. Sam believes Jordan pays excessive homage to these religious stories and they are too subject to bias interpretations and abuse being used to manipulate people as well as destructive to science and enlightenment, our saviors as evidenced by our societal and technological development over the last couple hundred years. Sam believes the religious texts are more dangerous than helpful and we should dispossess ourselves of superstitious thinking while we (presumably scientists like himself) distill empirical generalizations from experience to guide society. Religions, he cavils, decide certain truths for all times that cannot be amended anytime in the future. This is unscientific since new ideas and things arise continually and we must outgrow this childishness and not dignify these religious stories. 


 Jordan presses Sam when he dismisses as an "interpretive game" the distilling of wisdom from the bible as himself being committed to the same game trying to derive value judgments from brute facts in the world of experience. Noting that the excessive amount of facts in the world with the extensive number of interpretations cannot be connected without a Kantian type of a priori structure which Sam is mirroring while at the same time is criticizing. Sam thinks that he is not mirroring Jordan's "reading into any story some apparently meaningful set of psychological insights" when he is reading into empirical facts some apparently meaningful set of psychological insights. Jordan caught his inconsistency as moderator Bret Weinstein seemed to point out as well mentioning that its “working across purposes with your other argument”.


 The most important part of the discussion is when Jordan asks Sam to elucidate his idea of an a priori structure, or perceptive apparatus. Sam says our intuition of truth and common reality is deeper than religion; it's a fundamental anchor of our sanity and knowing the difference between knowledge and hallucination. These intuitions are either impossible to analyze or must be compared to other more rudimentary intuitions like mathematics; which apparently is like a generalized counting (worked out by people over generations) of 4 apples into an abstract idea of the number 4. Or as 2 dimensional geometry was the standard until someone realized intuitively you could bend a triangle along a 3 dimensional curve and its angles would exceed 180 degrees. Jordan incorporates into the a priori framework the use of religious stories as a reduction of innumerable experiences to a manageable framework to help us live our life using wisdom that is impossible to acquire in our lifetime; we don't get interpretation from raw facts, we supply it. The raw facts don't tell us as Sam does that we should "act in a way, which means to embody a mode of being, which means to be a personality, which moves us from hell to something approximating heaven. That's not a fact!" This is a result of Sam applying an a priori framework to objective facts.


 It is evident during this discourse that Jordan Peterson pays closer attention to philosophy than does Sam Harris, but not close enough. This is the issue; epistemology. And this is exactly what both men must presume and take for granted to be able to scale their philosophies to a grand system. They both fail to appreciate in this discussion their own concept of an a priori structure or perceptive apparatus and the basis for which it produces accurate information and truth. The question is not do they perceive truth but can their philosophies account for how perception is at all possible? Is this rationally consistent with their grand system? Not, are they able to count, but can they account for their counting? The answer is NO!


 Both men assume there is an external world, although as philosophers have pointed out we are only acquainted with our sense data and not the actual world; we infer its existence as the cause of the sense data. You can never experience the external world you can only experience your sense data, thus the material world is unknowable along with any "apparently meaningful set of psychological insights" they might be verbalizing. Both men assume cause and effect, i.e. my sense data is the effect of the external world. Causation is another problematic assumption in their philosophical system as David Hume consistently demonstrated. Jordan referenced Immanuel Kant regarding this perceptive apparatus that we all use to make sense of the world of experience. Kant believed he solved the rationalists and empiricists dilemma over against each other after Hume properly pointed out that given their worldview cause and effect was not logically necessary rather it was psychological (more precisely that causation was not analytic as previously believed, rather it was synthetic- not known by logical deduction alone). Hume concluded causality was just a habit of association, provoking Kant to find an answer to this. Causality in Hume’s case would be like Pavlov’s dogs deducing that food is produced by certain chimes- cause and effect would actually be nothing more than conditioning, leading to the conclusion that we have no logical basis to expect any one thing over any other in the next 5 minutes. You couldn’t even say that causation, or the inductive principle is probably true because probability assumes the uniformity of cause and effect in nature.
 Bertrand Russell writes "Before Hume, rationalists at least had supposed that the effect could be logically deduced from the cause, if only we had sufficient knowledge. Hume argued- correctly, as would now be generally admitted- that this could not be done. Hence he inferred the far more doubtful proposition that nothing could be known a priori about the connexion of cause and effect." (The Problems of Philosophy, Ch.VIII paragraph 3)


 Kant tried to stanch the hemorrhaging inflicted by Hume by positing that knowledge is a combination of things provided by us (our perceptive apparatus) and the object. Kant had the objective external 'thing in itself' as the cause of our sensation and essentially unknowable (we are only acquainted with our sense data and not the object). According to Kant part of what we supply to the phenomenon of experience is time and space- they are subjectively provided by us not by the thing in itself. This rather humorously creates the possibility as Russell points out that we might see someone’s eyes below their mouths were Kant to be correct. (History of Western Philosophy- pg.687) And to Sam Harris' silly assertion that part of our perceptive apparatus which we supply to the phenomenon is mathematics (to which Kant also apportions logic and arithmetic) which he claims is generalized or abstracted from experience, is demonstrably wrong. Sam fails to appreciate the difference between empirical generalizations (all men are mortal) which gain more assurance as you have more supporting examples increasing probability (induction), and the certainty that follows from a priori judgments (2+2=4) which are deductively incontestable and self evident and do not gain increased probability the more examples you have. Also with inductive arguments (Sam's basis for math) you have terms as weak or strong qualifying of the strength of the reasoning. Whereas deductive arguments (the actual basis for math) are either valid or invalid, terms not applicable to inductive arguments. In other words Sam thinks you can gain deductive certainty from something that is probably true. Russell disposes of his assertion as well stating "The thing to be accounted for is our certainty that the facts must always conform to logic and arithmetic. To say that logic and arithmetic are contributed by us does not account for this. Our nature is as much a fact of the existing world as anything, and there can be no certainty that it will remain constant. It might happen if Kant is right, that to-morrow our nature would so change as to make two and two become five." Russell continues that this possibility "utterly destroys the certainty and universality" Kant desires to vindicate. (The Problems of Philosophy, Ch.VIII  pg.87)



 In summary of Hume’s doctrine Russell points out the objective and subjective parts. “The objective part says: When we judge that A causes B, what has in fact happened, so far as A and B are concerned, is that they have been frequently observed to be conjoined, i.e. A has been immediately, or very quickly, followed by B; we have no right to say that A must be followed by B, or will be followed by B on future occasions. Nor have we any ground for supposing that, however often A is followed by B, any relation beyond sequence is involved.” “The subjective part of the doctrine says: the frequently observed conjunction of A and B causes the impression of A to cause the idea of B. But if we are to define ‘cause’ as is suggested in the objective part of the doctrine, we must reword the above… ‘It has been frequently observed that the frequently observed conjunction of two objects A and B has been frequently followed by occasions on which the impression of A was followed by the idea of B.” (History of Western Philosophy- pg.640) Hume reduces objective scientific laws and uniformities to psychological habit that offers no guarantee of the same effects any time in the future. Even our perceptions which are caused by external things (well... ok, there is no causation so I guess our thoughts are random episodes) can’t be expected to be the same- so that we should abandon all expectations of any uniformity if we are going to be rationally consistent. Perhaps Russell’s apple will taste like roast beef the next time (pg.641). This would render sanity and insanity as equally logical alternatives in the expectation of any future events. Kant thinks he solved Hume’s challenge by making causation a necessary part of our perceptive apparatus; he psychologizes science. Science is now subjective. Sort of anticlimactic, right? Ultimately acquiescence to metaphysics is the only solution (Maybe the bible has something to offer us after all!). Sam by his own admission can’t know any of this to be true unless chemical reactions governed by physical laws in his brain randomly cause this thought to lodge into his head- in which case he wouldn’t ‘change’ his mind, his mind would just change on its own. Who needs the Marx brothers when we have this material!?! (Sam denies any free will as a naturalistic determinist; he decrees that it is an illusion.)


Another subjective dilemma with science is also the result of starting with man as the basis of knowledge and not God (Job 12:1,2, 13, Prv.2:6). Einstein referred to “naïve realism” as an illusion where things ‘are’ as they are perceived by us through our senses. He further states this “illusion dominates the daily life of men and animals”. Einstein went on by quoting Russell working away from naïve realism- “The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself. Thus science seems to be at war with itself: when it most means to be objective, it finds itself plunged into subjectivity against its will.” (Ideas and Opinions pg. 20) His conclusion leads to the rejection of naïve realism based upon physics, indicating that our initial perceptions need logic and theory applied to them. Perceptions with conceptions. Kant said concepts without percepts are empty and percepts without concepts are blind. So these conceptions in our perceptive apparatus are transcendentally necessary to make our experience intelligible, as Jordan acknowledged. But we don’t just accept our perception alone, we look to some number of others to validate it with the same percepts. The understanding is the lawgiver to nature, but whose understanding, God’s or mans? It’s assumed your abstract thoughts are accurately related to material things; the ancient ‘one and many’ or ‘deduction vs induction’ or ‘universals and particulars’ dilemmas again. The problem further is that conceptions and perceptions are from different worlds, contradictory worlds.

The conceptual world of logic and math is perfect, unchanging, universal, abstract- the opposite of our perceptions which are imperfect, fluctuating, particular and physical. The empirical method of reasoning from perceptions involves a formal fallacy in logic of affirming the consequent instead of the antecedent. If you deny a law of logic or math you end in contradiction (A is not A; 2 +2=5). But to deny an empirical fact involves no self-contradiction (All birds do not fly; the earth does not revolve around the sun). If logic and math are generalized from experience then they are only probably true, and might change tomorrow. To apply infinite mathematics to the physical world involves infinite regress errors (You couldn’t have infinite points of division between two measurable points in space- Zeno’s arrow paradox; were there an infinite number of past causal events we could never arrive at the present). Or also Russell’s class paradox (class of all classes that is not a member of itself- is a member of itself and therefore not a member itself at the same time). Numbers appear to be abstract objects, not in a location and no causal interaction with other objects. Or the law of identity (in logic) would prohibit us from expecting any change in nature- for if A is A it will not also be something else.

  Mind and matter, as the competing schools of the rationalists and the empiricists through philosophical history demonstrate, are separate realities and cannot be explained in terms of each other since they are contradictory to each other. Zeno in defense of Parmenides conceived the arrow paradox (the arrow could never hit the target because before it travels half way, it has to travel half that distance, ad infinitum) supposedly proving that the material world is illusion. Really it proves that math is infinite and abstract and the world of matter is finite. We see differences in mind and matter also in that I can fail to think logically (my thoughts might not consistently adhere to standards of rationality- like when I fail a test) or I might have a moral failing (my actions might contradict standards of right and wrong), but I can't remain suspended in air and not fall off a cliff if I misunderstand the law of gravity; or not get run down by a bus if I don’t know about Newton’s 3rd law of motion while playing in traffic. The external world and the uniformities it exhibits are completely indifferent to my thoughts. The stars are seen in their seasons every year and I can’t change that by thought (Job 38:31-6), neither can Kant. My thoughts are free to be irrational or immoral but have no apparent effect on the external world of matter. So, scientific laws (which are known inductively by consistent and continual recurrence and are physically known by experiments and measurements- they are distilled generalizations from the many instances; one from the many) are not like rational laws (which are known deductively and are self-evidential or axiomatic and are known non-physically by just thinking). Logical laws are how physical laws are identified and evaluated, also how men exercise dominion over matter (Gen.1:26-8). Logical laws involve methods of thought used to analyze sentences or propositions for truth value; which truths cannot be determined independently but only in the whole theory of which they are a part. And neither are like moral laws which are subjective inclinations that are revelations of God and therefore are binding to our consciences. Moral laws do not follow logically from scientific laws which simply declare what is and not what ought to be. Jordan attempted to point this out to Sam; it remains to be seen if his mind sporadically changes in some anomalous moment. And moral laws are not deduced from logical laws which are used to analyze the validity of an argument, regardless of whether the premises are true. (e.g. The law of excluded middle-‘everything either must be or must not be’ or the law of contradiction- ‘nothing can both be and not be’ – these do not infer morality. Also, the statement ‘Moses either did or did not give the ten commandments’ does not directly infer that ‘thou shalt not steal’ is morally binding.) A metaphysical world view is necessary to make these things fit together. Moral law is revelatory, not strictly logically axiomatic, and not empirically proven to be binding. They are self-evident because God places them in the hearts of men all over the world by nature (Rom.2:14-15). The bible actually offers the only consistently rational worldview which saves science and morality.


 You can’t under estimate what Hume has done to Jordan and Sam’s evolutionary philosophies, but he utterly destroyed their basis for science at all. They have nothing left in the aftermath of Hume. Russell affirms concerning induction "that without this principle science is impossible."(pg.647) They are ignorant of this fact or choose to ignore it so they can continue thinking! But as it stands they cannot explain how thought or knowledge or science is possible apart from the Creator  whom they do not like to retain in their knowledge. If they cannot justify thinking they must relinquish the use of it.



Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools… Rom.1:21-22