Bret Weinstein Debates Jordan Peterson & Jonathan Pageau on Religion

So Dr. Weinstein you came here looking for a fight. Mr. Pageau made a response video to yeah to something you said in the Joe Rogan Experience. Do you have anything to say. I'm glad you're asking that. I was hoping it would come up so I don't know how many people have seen the video and what it's responding to. But the short version is that I said something on the Joe Rogan podcast about their being different kinds of truth that I argued for something I called metaphorical truth that something could be literally false but it can contain wisdom in the way you know is that if you act as if it were true you come out ahead of where you would if you act according to the fact that it's false and I then said that scientific truth is the top truth in the hierarchy and the response was that it was arrogance of me to say that there was a top truth that you know effectively from what position do I do that. And yeah I can. You want to go ahead. I just want to say that's not the argument. The argument is that there was a performative contradiction in your in your statement because you thought you said that factual truth is higher than metaphorical truth. But then to say that there is a top level truth or that there is an overarching truth is to use a metaphorical structure to to demonstrate where you're placing your truth. And so within the statement there was a there was a performative contradiction in terms of you have to resort to metaphorical truth to speak of hierarchy because all the language of hierarchy is metaphorical and therefore to place factual truth at the top of that hierarchy is a performative contradiction. So that's my argument. So I will I will plead guilty to using metaphor to defend my position because of course language is composed of metaphors both living and dead. And it's really hard to communicate anything without running afoul of that standard. But I will defend in spite of that guilt. I will defend the idea that scientific truth is the top truth in the hierarchy and the reason is really simple it's because there is no mechanism for sorting between metaphorical truths that belong to different traditions and are in conflict with each other. So in other words if we take to like. Behave well when you die you go to heaven. That's cool. You should do that. On the other hand if you behave well in Brahman system you may be reincarnated as something better than you are now. That's also cool but it's not the same truth right. So you can't sort out these are both kinds of wisdom and I think we know exactly what kind of wisdom they are at least we should which is if you behave so as to be reincarnate as something better or to go to heaven what it will do is in all probability it will leave your descendants really well positioned in their in their culture and that means that your genes which you might not have been in a position to say anything about will be well-positioned to persist and spread because your descendants will be well placed so in effect going to heaven or being reincarnated as something better than you were were are stand ins for a genetic truth that we can't say. And so 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 you would have to say well reincarnation is therefore false or you would have to have them all simultaneously be true in some unreconcilable way. So the only one that has the special characteristic of accounting for all the others is the scientific truth. Okay. So I'm I'm going to get into this now. So I think that what you just did was nested your claim for the validity of scientific truth within a pragmatic framework which is what I claimed when I was talking to Sam Harris was necessary because you said I believe that the justification for. For assuming the truth of the of the of the mythological representation was its effect on on something that's associated with a Darwinian process right. And that's how you used. That's what you use to justify your claim that it was in fact true so in the discussion that you're referencing my point. 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 is 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 in a series of beliefs. So what if it's a scientific truth that's metaphorically wrong? Oh and there I can give you an example. OK. So I read this The Memoirs of a KGB scientist KGB agent who worked with the Russians in this biochemical lab. And their job was to meld Ebola with smallpox because smallpox is Ebola is not that contagious. And so that's kind of annoying if you're trying to kill people whereas smallpox. But it's really fatal. Where smallpox is really contagious. So if you could 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 and 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 me to indicate that the ethical pursuit supersedes the scientific pursuit with regards to truth claim. So I'm going to disagree with you. I would say it doesn't supersede with respect to the truth claim it supersedes with respect to considerations of behavior and policy. So I absolutely agree with you there are plenty of scientific truths that are deeply unfortunate. And I want to take what you said the first thing that you said OK if you're good you die and you go to heaven if you're good you die and you're reincarnated as a higher being. Those two things are the same in terms of their effect. There are restating of the hierarchy the hierarchy religion is all about the hierarchy. That's what religion is about. The restating of the hierarchy in those two terms have the same effect in terms of what we're saying is that if you're good you will not meld those two things together. And that is the hierarchy the hierarchy itself is the capacity to be above quantitative purely quantitative considerations and to apply qualitative thinking and the whole language of hierarchy is all a language about a movement from from quantity up to quality like that it's movement. It's like going up a mountain. It's going up the base and then going up to unity. And when you stand in that top place then you can look down and you can judge what facts because there is there there is an an innumerable amounts of factors that an infinite quantity of facts you can decide which facts are worth pursuing. And so that's what religion is. And that's what the hierarchy is. And so if you take if you take qualitative if you take a quantitative tidbit of information and you say that is above let's say qualitative judgment how do you even why why are you even focusing on that quantitative data. Because there's there's an infinite amount of them. So you have to have a manner by which you focus on something and that is the hierarchy and that is the whole language of of the religious hierarchy. So so what do you do where religious traditions and what I'm calling metaphorical truths conflict. So let's say mating systems. I would argue that monogamy is a superior mating system because it does not sideline any significant population of males. If you sideline a significant population of males by having what biologists would call a polygamous system where people would generally call a polygamous system if you do that then you have sexually frustrated males who are left over and inevitably become something like a marauding horde or an army or something immoral like that. Wait wait. Now you're assuming that's bad. Yeah. And so you're falling into Jonathan's trap because you're saying you see you have this a priori framework that monogamy is better because you've already decided what constitutes bad. You can't help but lay a moral framework over your selection of facts. And so that I mean I'm not trying to trap you. I know this is a crazily complicated problem. Yeah but but the idea that you that that the fundamental idea is that you can't select the damn facts and order them which you have to do. You have to do it without applying and a priori moral framework. Right. So I would say I am applying in a priori moral framework. I am not treating this as. I mean you know we could also look at the behavior of people as a physical process it's equally a physical process as it is a moral behavioral process. I'm not doing that. I'm being a human being and I'm saying from the point of view of values that probably everybody in this room would share. It is not desirable to have sexually frustrated young men roaming around being violent because they can't find a mate because some other highly placed males in the society have many mates. That's not a good thing. That's not me speaking factually That's me speaking morally. But my point is my point is not that that's what should come out of this conversation. My point is different religions that contain metaphorical truths differ over what a viable reproductive strategy is. In other words Christianity prioritizes monogamy modern Judaism does too. But the Torah does not so OK so so. OK so your claim is that because it's very difficult to adjudicate between competing moral systems that science is preferable with regards to truth claims because there is a way of adjudicating between scientific truth. But I would say the mere fact that it's difficult to adjudicate between competing moral claims doesn't indicate therefore that science is a higher truth. It just indicates that science has an advantage when it comes to comparison. That ethical systems don't. It doesn't means that ethical systems are perfect. No not. So this is one of these places where I don't exactly know what I'm running afoul of and why I think my brain is built around some sort of model that makes it hard for me to understand why we could possibly be disagreeing over this. My point is you have a thousand different belief systems. They are all built out of metaphorical truths and a certain amount of real truth. Let's just stick science in with the rest of its its belief system a thousand and one. OK. Now let's say well which of these is best. How are you even going to do that. There's only one of them that has a distinct characteristic. It's number a thousand and one. What's its distinct characteristic. It explains why all the others work. So how is it not just by virtue of the fact that it does something that nothing else can. How is it not the top one in the hierarchy. We have run a little bit past eight would. We would you all want to we'd all be interested in getting together for an organized debate like little tag team Pearson Pageau vs. Weinstein Harris. Sure. OK. Well that's a good place to end. So.

Channel: The Free Speech Club

Views: 18,354

Keywords: jordan peterson, jonathan pageau, jordan peterson debate, ubc free speech club, free speech club, bret weinstein, dr jordan peterson, jordan peterson vancouver, religion debate, 12 rules for life, bret weinstein vancouver, bret weinstein debates religion, SFL 2017, jordan peterson bret weinstein debate, left wing, maps of meaning, debate, intellectual dark web, psychoanalysis, sam harris, jordan b peterson, bret weinstein debates, bret weinstein debates jordan peterson

Id: AahjIQ-wO9A

Length: 12min 55sec (775 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2019