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The Greatest God Debate In History | Jordan Peterson vs Matt Dillahunty — Transcript

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0:00I thought it would be nice if we started
0:01with something
0:02quick and easy and simple like God.
0:07Uh
0:08in particular, I don't believe there is
0:11one,
0:12and I have no idea what your thoughts
0:14are on it.
0:15You mean on the fact that you don't
0:17believe there is one? No.
0:19I mean just about the subject in
0:21general, but I'm happy to hear your
0:22thoughts on them about what I don't
0:24think is well, maybe.
0:35Well, it's a complicated problem,
0:38and I don't think that we take it with
0:40due seriousness.
0:42I specifically don't think that the
0:45celebrity atheist types, who I actually
0:48have a fair bit of respect for, by the
0:49way, take it with due seriousness.
0:53So, I don't think that they take it with
0:55due seriousness from a biological
0:57perspective or a phenomenological
0:59perspective, or a literary perspective,
1:03or a metaphoric perspective.
1:05That'll do for starters.
1:08Um I've become convinced that
1:12the fundamental presuppositions of our
1:14very functional cultures, or Western
1:17cultures, say, are nested immovably in a
1:22metaphorical substrate,
1:25and that when you enter that
1:26metaphorical substrate, you're in the
1:28domain of religious phenomenology.
1:31And I think that not only can you derive
1:34that conclusion as a consequence of deep
1:36philosophical thought and literary
1:39analysis, but it but that if you know
1:41enough about brain function, you'll also
1:43come to the same conclusion.
1:46I think you come to the same conclusion
1:47as well if you look at the evolution of
1:50religious cognition from the perspective
1:53of an evolutionary biologist and not
1:54from the position of a evolutionary
1:58biologist whose head is addled by the
2:00belief that most of human morality was
2:02established in the 500 years since the
2:04Enlightenment.
2:05So, that's a start, I guess. Except
2:09and uh
2:11So, you have to bear with me Yeah. cuz
2:13I'm from Texas.
2:15That's okay.
2:17I'm from Alberta, you know. It's bigger
2:19than Texas, just as bad.
2:23Yeah.
2:26So, the curi- the curious thing for me
2:27is um all of that applies, seemingly, if
2:30I'm understanding it, to
2:32uh religious thought,
2:34uh religious tradition, the value of
2:37religious identity to individuals.
2:40And I don't see that any of it relates
2:43to whether or not there is a god or
2:46whether or not there's sufficient reason
2:47to believe there's a god,
2:49which is my sticking point. I I'm fully
2:51fine with the idea Oh, yeah yeah.
2:54We'll we'll try and get through this
2:55without like raucous applause, but you
2:58know, hey, at least I got one.
3:00Yeah, you know what? Never complain
3:02about raucous applause.
3:04Uh
3:05because it's that's a sticking point for
3:07me. I have no problem acknowledging that
3:10people derive value
3:12from their beliefs, whether or not they
3:14map to anything in reality. Um that they
3:16can be inspired and motivated, educated,
3:20uh and enlightened by poetry, po- prose,
3:23metaphor, uh allegory. But my concern
3:28is, having grown up a
3:30fundamentalist Southern Baptist,
3:33the people who I know and some of the
3:35people who are working to enact
3:37legislation on behalf of their beliefs
3:39are convinced that they have good reason
3:41to believe that there actually is a god,
3:43not just that it's useful to them.
3:47Well,
3:48it's not that easy to distinguish
3:50between what's useful and what's real.
3:54So,
3:55I think that that distinction can be
3:56made, but it's a lot more difficult than
3:58people generally think.
3:59And I also think that there's no doubt
4:01that there are
4:02different levels of sophistication of
4:05religious belief. You know, what I see
4:07happening in this sort of discussion,
4:08say, frequently,
4:10um
4:11you know, and again, like I said, I have
4:12a fair bit of respect for the atheist
4:14types because they spend a lot of time
4:16thinking, and that's generally a good
4:17thing. Now,
4:19I see most of the
4:21of their thinking, however, directed at
4:22the fundamentalist types, the
4:24fundamentalist Christian types, mostly
4:25of the American persuasion, who suffer
4:28from the
4:30somewhat understandable illusion that
4:32the biblical corpus has the same
4:35epistemological and ontological status
4:37as a scientific theory, when it clearly
4:40doesn't, right? I mean, if you're
4:41Okay, now we're closer to the same page.
4:43Okay. If you're a religious thinker,
4:45let's say,
4:47if you're a serious student of religious
4:49thought and a serious philosopher,
4:52the one thing one of the things you
4:53can't claim is that whatever story the
4:57Bible is telling is a scientific theory.
5:00And that's just self-evident. First of
5:02all,
5:03like, when was the first scientist?
5:06Descartes, Bacon, Newton? Maybe you
5:08could chase it back to the Greeks, but
5:10no farther than that. And so, the idea
5:12that whatever the people who conjured up
5:14the Old Testament creation account were
5:16doing was something akin to scientific
5:18theorizing is a mistake that would only
5:20be made by people who don't know how to
5:22distinguish between different kinds of
5:24truth.
5:25And so, the fundamentalists, like, I
5:27also I feel for the fundamentalists, you
5:29know, because
5:31what they're trying to do, to give them
5:33credit,
5:35is to maintain a corpus of stories in
5:38which an ethos is based, that would be
5:40the Western ethos, for in in in this
5:43case of Christianity, because they
5:45believe that the ethos is of extreme
5:47value. And I also believe that the ethos
5:49is of of extreme value and that it is
5:51nested in those stories. And so, they
5:54don't like to be confronted by the
5:56rationalist atheist evolutionary types
5:58because it blows the foundation of their
6:01ethos apart and they feel that it's
6:03worth preserving. And I think, well,
6:05yeah, it is worth preserving. Now,
6:08that doesn't mean that there aren't
6:10philosophical problems associated with
6:12the manner in which they construct their
6:13arguments. But,
6:16well,
6:17well, I'd like they're still worthy
6:19but it doesn't address the issue.
6:21There's a deep issue here that that that
6:24we're not contending with. You know,
6:25here's an example. This is maybe I'm
6:27wrong about this, but I don't think so.
6:30Um I just finished
6:31Well, I I thought about it a lot, you
6:33know, and I do try to think about where
6:35I'm wrong because I would like to figure
6:37out where I'm wrong because then I
6:38wouldn't have to be wrong anymore,
6:39right? And being wrong is actually not a
6:41good thing. You fall into a pit if
6:43you're wrong. And this is what I point
6:45out in the lecture on skepticism since
6:47you didn't get to see the show is that
6:48being wrong feels exactly like being
6:51right.
6:52You don't you don't nobody runs around
6:53and going, "Oh, I'm wrong, but I'm going
6:55to keep believing this." We all assume
6:56that we are correct about a great many
6:58things and it is it's not so much that
7:00being wrong is the thing we're afraid
7:02of. It's I think that being exposed as
7:05wrong is the thing we're afraid of.
7:07we're we're also sometimes afraid of
7:09being wrong because if you're wrong at a
7:10deep level, it can really hurt you. Oh,
7:12I agree. It can.
7:13really take you apart. And so, people
7:15don't like to be taken apart. Like if
7:16you're wrong about your wife, for
7:17example, that tends to be a very painful
7:20thing. And
7:22that's that's something that's worth
7:23pursuing to to try to figure out why
7:24that is.
7:25pan.
7:28That should make you popular. Um
7:32Okay, so so, one of the issues that that
7:34I have and and you can respond to this
7:36is that the the let's say the celebrity
7:39atheist types cuz I actually like that
7:41phrase.
7:43They don't seem to me to be contending
7:44with the real issues. They seem to be
7:46going at
7:48Dostoyevsky
7:49He's a real issue. Tolstoy, he's a real
7:51issue. Carl Jung, 20 books and maybe 15
7:54seminars, he's a real issue. Mircea
7:56Eliade, like there are some serious
7:59heavy hitters in the religious
8:00phenomenology domain. And my sense so
8:03far, I just finished reading all of
8:04Harris's books for example, he doesn't
8:06contend with them at all. And it's like
8:09for me that's like being an evolutionary
8:11biologist and not being aware of Darwin.
8:13It's actually a big problem. It's not
8:16something you can hand wave away. Jung
8:18was a mystic. It's like, sorry. He was
8:20about as smart as Friedrich Nietzsche. I
8:23think this gets to to basically the same
8:24point I was saying before. The thing
8:25that you're objecting to it seems is
8:28that
8:30many of us don't want to to address
8:33the aspects of religion where that you
8:35find value in because we're only focused
8:38on
8:39perhaps as I'm talking in the show from
8:41a scientific skepticism perspective of
8:43do we are there are there valid and
8:46sound arguments that would lead one to
8:48conclude that a god exists?
8:51My answer to this so far seems to be no.
8:53And the the apologists, the theologians,
8:56they keep presenting the arguments. The
8:57teleological arguments, moral arguments,
8:59and all these things. They have nothing
9:00to do with the phenomenology of
9:02religion. They have nothing to do with
9:04how this impacts people's lives. This is
9:06a question of is it in fact the case? Is
9:09it consistent with reality that there is
9:11a god and is it consistent with reality
9:13that there is good reason to believe
9:15there's a god. That is where the focus
9:16is primarily.
9:18Yeah, and it's usually construed as a
9:19scientific issue.
9:21Well, it's not so I would never construe
9:23it as a scientific issue because science
9:25can't confirm the supernatural. I mean,
9:26we are blocked until somebody
9:28demonstrates a mechanism by which we can
9:30explore
9:31and confirm the existence of the
9:33supernatural and then confirm that it
9:35actually can impact the natural world.
9:36we're stuck, which is why science relies
9:39on methodological naturalism.
9:40to be able to do it with psychedelic
9:42drugs.
9:44You seem to be able to do what with
9:45psychedelic drugs? Well, everybody that
9:47takes them in and under under reliable
9:49settings generally comes back and and
9:51claims the presence of a mystical
9:53experience. Yeah.
9:54And that seems to be duplicatable and
9:56replicable across cultures, in labs,
9:59with multiple different substances, the
10:00chemical constituents of which are known
10:02very well. Like it's part of this
10:04religious phenomenology, and to me
10:06that's just a set of facts. And we know
10:08that people have been using those
10:10substances to evoke mystical and
10:12religious experiences for who knows,
10:15150,000 years maybe. We can at least
10:17infer that. And we have no no idea
10:20whatsoever how much of an effect the use
10:22of those substances has had on the
10:24metaphysical substrate of our culture.
10:27Like so, what constitutes scientific
10:29data here is by no means clear. Here's
10:31an example of this, for example. So,
10:33Well, before example.
10:35As someone who's been high as a kite,
10:40I I fully agree that people take drugs
10:43and report experiences that they
10:45describe as mystical or supernatural.
10:48Just like people record report other
10:50experiences as if they were religious or
10:53ghosts or whatever. We have no way of
10:54confirming that this something mystical
10:57or supernatural actually can happened.
10:59What this is this is about the language
11:02from smoking.
11:03Well, you can stop smoking without any
11:05sort of supernatural intervention.
11:07No, not really.
11:08You can't stop smoking without
11:09supernatural
11:10any any reliable chemical means for
11:13inducing smoking cessation. You can use
11:15a drug called bupropion. I think that's
11:17the one. Whatever Wellbutrin is.
11:20Um is that supernatural?
11:22No, you don't need a supernatural
11:23effect, but it doesn't work very well.
11:25But if you give people magic mushrooms,
11:27psilocybin, and they have a mystical
11:29experience, they have about an 85%
11:31chance of smoking cessation with one
11:33treatment. Yeah, but that's kind of like
11:35evidence, you know. It's kind of like
11:37evidence.
11:38It's evidence that you can take
11:40mushrooms and increase your chance of
11:42quitting smoking, but
11:43No, it's not. It's It's indication that
11:44if you take mushrooms and you have a
11:47mystical experience, you'll you'll stop
11:49smoking because it doesn't work if you
11:51don't have the experience.
11:51take mushrooms and you have an
11:52experience that you describe as
11:54mystical,
11:56um then you'll increase your chance of
11:57smoking, but that doesn't tell me
11:58whether or not there was something
12:01uh to this notion that they had an
12:02experience that was supernatural in any
12:04sense.
12:05Well, it's not definitive evidence, It's
12:08not evidence at all.
12:09it is. Oh, sure it is.
12:11Wait a
12:12second. Wait a second. This is That's
12:14wrong. Okay.
12:15It is evidence.
12:17So, because look,
12:19you want to speak You want to think
12:20through this skeptically.
12:23Okay, you have a pharmacological
12:25substance. It's psilocybin. You give it
12:27to people who are trying to commit to
12:28quit smoking. But, psilocybin doesn't
12:31directly have an impact on the smoking
12:33behavior. It has to elicit what's
12:35described subjectively as a mystical
12:37experience. And you can get
12:38physiological indicators of that
12:40mystical experience. And you might say,
12:41"Well, that's not enough to prove that
12:43it's a mystical experience." But, you
12:45know, you're conscious and I accept
12:47that. It's like you accept all sorts of
12:49things without being able to demonstrate
12:51their their validity on every possible
12:54objective
12:55with every possible objective criteria.
12:58So, don't get in too much of a hurry.
12:59It's a serious issue. If you give people
13:02psilocybin, for example, and they have a
13:04mystical experience, not only are they
13:06much more likely to quit smoking, which
13:08is really something, but they're also
13:10much less likely to suffer from death
13:12anxiety if they have cancer. Like that's
13:14quite the thing. And not only that, if
13:17you test them a year later and they've
13:18had a mystical experience, which the
13:20majority of them regard as the most
13:21significant one or two three one two or
13:24three experiences of their life,
13:25including such things as getting
13:27married, their personalities are
13:29permanently altered in the direction of
13:31more openness to experience and more
13:33creativity by a standard deviation.
13:36Like, that's walloping effects.
13:39So, we can't get too much in a hurry
13:41about dispensing with all that. All
13:43right. So, uh skepticism, as I
13:45repeatedly point out in the show, is not
13:46about cynicism. It's not about
13:48debunking. And I'm not saying that there
13:50is no supernatural and that there is no
13:53mystical experience. What I'm saying is
13:55the thing that people subjectively
13:57describe as I had an incredibly
13:59impactful mystical experience, whether
14:01it comes from taking a pharmaceutical,
14:03whether it comes from attending a
14:05revival church service, or hearing a
14:07particular preacher, whether it comes
14:08from uh having a particularly impressive
14:12sexual experience,
14:13all of those things, that is the
14:15subjective uh description of that, which
14:17may be, because of limitations in
14:20language, that they don't have any other
14:21This is the language that infuses
14:23culture, so that we have to use that to
14:25describe it. But, that doesn't in any
14:27way serve to confirm that there is any
14:31sort of supernatural realm or any sort
14:33of supernatural actor. Well, it depends
14:35on how you define supernatural. Like, uh
14:38look, I get your point.
14:39Okay.
14:39And I'm I'm not claiming that the
14:42the phenomena of psilocybin intoxication
14:45is direct proof for the existence of
14:46God. I'm not saying that.
14:49I am saying
14:49be awesome.
14:53Well, people people do report personal
14:55experiences of that sort of thing. So,
14:57it's not completely out of the realm of
14:59the experience, but it's also because of
15:01the the problem of the the border
15:03between the subjective and the
15:04objective. It's It's difficult to probe
15:07deeply enough to to to come up with
15:09anything definitive, you know? And I
15:10understand that that's a problem. But,
15:14the supernatural issue, that's that's a
15:16different issue. Like,
15:18people are capable of entering different
15:20experiential realms, where where things
15:23are qualitatively different to them.
15:24Their perceptions are different, their
15:26thoughts are different, their response
15:28to the world is different. They feel
15:30that they've died an ego death and and
15:33and and and transcended their normal
15:35mode of perception. Like, maybe that's
15:38not part of the supernatural, but then
15:40you're starting to define the
15:41supernatural pretty narrowly. Like, you
15:43require miracle like here and now?
15:46Something that defies the laws of
15:47physics? Or what's your definition of
15:49the supernatural? So, there is the
15:51natural world. Yeah.
15:53And then there are people who make
15:54claims that something is not part of the
15:57natural world, that it has some external
15:59supernatural origin. Mhm. Um
16:02those are the claims that I don't see
16:04how we can make any sort of
16:06epistemologically sound
16:09confirmation of. I'm fine with accepting
16:11that people have these experiences. I've
16:12been, you know, I was for many, many
16:15years
16:17fundamentalist Southern Baptist, and I
16:19remember standing in church and
16:21feeling what I would have described at
16:23the time as the Holy Ghost,
16:25you know, sweeping through me. Now, many
16:27years later I look back at that and I
16:28say, "Why did I describe this particular
16:32experience this way?" It is a it's a
16:34unique experience. It's of the same
16:36quality as
16:37something you might experience from a
16:38drug or I have experienced similar
16:40things from music and drugs and sex. But
16:43they're not all exactly the same, and
16:44this is this is kind of the caveat that
16:46that the believers for any one of them
16:48would use is, "Oh, the thing you're
16:49talking about, you know, when you had
16:50the awesome sex or you were on drugs,
16:52that's not the same as what I felt the
16:53Holy Spirit." I felt all of them.
16:56The reason I would have said at the time
16:58that I had been filled with the Holy
16:59Spirit
17:00is because everybody around me was
17:02saying that, too. It's not like I have
17:03any sort of uh
17:06any any way to demonstrate a causal
17:08connection between a Holy Spirit and my
17:11experience. It was I had an experience,
17:13and I, like everyone else around me,
17:15attributed it to the Holy Spirit.
17:17What what
17:17was the experience like?
17:19elation, euphoria,
17:21um
17:23I don't think I ever had visions, uh but
17:26certainly it is it was an overwhelming
17:29sensation. You know, you get the
17:31goosebumps or hair on your arm.
17:32of that. And it was and I remember
17:34fairly distinctly the first time I had a
17:36very similar experience outside of
17:38church because
17:40uh it was from listening to secular
17:41music that my church would not have
17:43allowed.
17:44And then I began to look into things,
17:46you know, from far more of a
17:48psychological perspective of what type
17:50of impact specific music has on people.
17:54Mhm. And you know, a friend of mine
17:56we've had conversations about the
17:58cadence of particular preachers. Mhm,
18:01right. Because a Southern Baptist
18:03minister will have a different cadence
18:05than a Pentecostal preacher and they'll
18:07have a different cadence than somebody
18:08else and I I won't put on a performance
18:10to do them, but
18:12we have this intense curiosity as to
18:16is are the successful preachers with
18:17those cadences in conjunction with the
18:19music?
18:20Are they just tapping into some sort of
18:22psychological impact in our brain in
18:25order to make us pliable in the same way
18:27that Oh, yeah, they
18:28the elevator experiment where you have
18:29everybody face the back of the elevator
18:31and somebody walks in and they face the
18:32doors and after a while that a lot of
18:34them become uncomfortable and turn
18:36around and face the back with everybody
18:37else for no reason. They're just
18:38compliance. Well, you don't want those
18:40backward facers to attack you, you know.
18:42It would be good. But if we're back to
18:44back, you know, I think anyway. Okay, so
18:46let let me ask you a question about
18:48that. Okay, because
18:49I think this gets to the heart of some
18:51of these issues. So let's say that we
18:53can agree that throughout history and
18:55before
18:56people were experiencing
18:59a set of transcendent emotions that can
19:02be evoked by music and dance and and
19:04other forms of ritual and in a variety
19:06of other ways.
19:07But there's also a
19:09profound proclivity on the part of
19:12people
19:13for one reason or another to attribute
19:15those to some sort of supernatural
19:17agency. Now, okay, so I want to separate
19:19that from another line of thinking.
19:21Okay, so let's just leave that aside.
19:22So, we can think of that as a a theory
19:24about the origin of of religious belief.
19:27The experience comes first. It comes
19:30along with a an implicit hypothesis
19:32about supernatural actors behind the
19:34scenes eliciting these experiences.
19:36Okay, that's in marked distinction to
19:39other theories of religious derivation
19:41like Freud's theory for example that
19:43religion is a is a a defense against
19:45death anxiety or that or Marx's theory
19:47that religion is the opiate of the
19:49masses, right? It's a much more
19:50biological theory the one we're putting
19:52forward. Sure. Okay, and it sounds it
19:54seems to me to be a much more credible
19:55theory even though
19:57religious movements can be harnessed for
19:59economic purposes and for purposes of
20:01manipulation and all of that, obviously.
20:03Yeah, I I I would think that
20:05there's any number of explanations I've
20:06heard for the origins of religion and I
20:08find almost all of them plausible in
20:10different forms except for the one that
20:11asserts that they come directly from a
20:13supernatural being. Well, okay, so
20:15that's that's the one we're going to
20:16that's the one we're going to pursue
20:17though because
20:19That was funnier than I thought it was.
20:20It was I was just being honest. Yeah,
20:22well, honesty is often funnier than
20:24people think it is. Boy, don't I know.
20:26So, okay, so people can have these
20:28experiences and they can be evoked in a
20:30variety of ways and people often find
20:32them very valuable at least in terms of
20:35their subjective report. I agree. And uh
20:38and the psilocybin experiments and also
20:40the large-scale analysis of psychedelic
20:42drug users by the way also indicate that
20:45the use of such substances is generally
20:47associated with an increment in health
20:50rather than a decrement, which is quite
20:51interesting.
20:52Right? It's not something you'd
20:53necessarily expect. So,
20:56here's a question.
20:57Why in the world do the people who have
21:00these experiences have the proclivity to
21:02attribute them to supernatural sources
21:05like to a divine source? Like what
21:07what's going on there?
21:08Why is that the case?
21:09So, best guess and and this is
21:12this is contrary So, this skepticism
21:14isn't about, "Hey, let's debunk this and
21:16come up with." But, if we were going to
21:17go through potential plausible
21:18explanations, to me this is very similar
21:21to
21:22in the '40s and '50s when people were
21:24supposedly abducted by aliens or ran
21:26into aliens, they had descriptions of
21:28aliens that pretty much were varied and
21:32often matched the various monsters that
21:34you saw in the movies then. After 2001
21:37or after Sorry, after Close Encounters
21:39of the of the Third Kind, almost all
21:41descriptions of aliens became the
21:43almond-headed, you know, this
21:45the the narrative in the culture about
21:48what an alien was converged
21:50converged. And people were Oh, this is
21:52what I experienced. In the same way that
21:54people will
21:57the sometimes at cameras will catch orbs
22:00or a particular lighting effect in a
22:02house that is supposedly haunted will be
22:04perceived as a ghost, as a spiritual,
22:06you know, humanoid form. When we in some
22:09cases can show that that's actually not
22:11the case. In other cases, we have no
22:13idea what they necessarily saw. But,
22:15because
22:17the what people understand about spirits
22:20and souls and ghosts
22:22is in like the zeitgeist of how we think
22:27it's it enters the consciousness as a
22:30plausible explanation even if ultimately
22:32there's no such thing as ghosts.
22:34that explains why they converge, but it
22:36doesn't explain why the initial impetus
22:38is the attribution of the experiences to
22:40something supernatural. Like, to
22:42something See, fair enough.
22:44I'm not I'm sure that the I'm not
22:45convinced that necessarily the the the
22:47natural instinct is is to apply it to
22:50something supernatural. I think it may
22:51be more the case that not only are we
22:53pattern recognition machines, but we're
22:55the descendants of of people who, you
22:58know, you how you see faces and
22:59everything? Yeah, that's a good
23:00hypothesis. That's the Yeah, yeah.
23:02And so you see faces or you anticipate
23:04that there's something in the bush out
23:05to get you and when you go and actually
23:07investigate and you find there's nothing
23:08in the bush out to get you,
23:10rather than assuming that you might have
23:12been mistaken,
23:13ha, maybe it's a spirit. Yeah, the
23:15social psychologist call that the
23:17hyperactive agency detector. And and the
23:19fact that we we can be, you know, before
23:21we had a good understanding, we still
23:22don't have a good understanding of of
23:24death and the mind and stuff. But if I'm
23:26standing here talking to you and I drop
23:29over dead,
23:31there's a clear
23:34undeniable difference in
23:36me sitting here as an animated being and
23:39me laying there as no longer there. And
23:42so it seems a natural inference that
23:44something that about me has left.
23:49That doesn't mean that there's actually
23:50something about me like a soul or
23:52whatever that's left, you know, we don't
23:54tend to think the same thing when the
23:56radio stops working or the or the
23:58television stops working. It's not like
23:59the man in the TV has left. It's just
24:03off.
24:04But it seems that those sorts of natural
24:07that analogy because it suggests that
24:09whatever's in the TV is coming from an
24:11external source and you're definitely
24:13not making that argument with regards to
24:15the soul. Well, the TV station isn't in
24:17my living room so there's at least some
24:19external source sending it to there.
24:20that's exactly my point. You
24:22you can make a case that consciousness
24:24isn't exactly in your head either even
24:26though it's localized there.
24:27I So why would I think consciousness is
24:29anywhere other than my head? Well, how
24:31do you account for consciousness? Well,
24:33I'm not sure that we can account for
24:34consciousness.
24:34This is definitely true. But
24:37Yes.
24:38See, and that's another reason Well,
24:39that's another beyond, you know, what
24:41the brain
24:43The fact that something's mysterious
24:44doesn't mean that Well, if if
24:46something's mysterious Consciousness
24:48isn't just mysterious. It's like really
24:51mysterious. It's as It's the most
24:53mysterious thing. It's It's It's not
24:55like ordinary mysterious.
24:57The fact that something is really
24:58mysterious to the point where I think
25:00you and I would agree that
25:02we don't have an explanation for it.
25:04Mhm. Okay? If if there was something
25:06like that we'll say that it's maybe
25:07consciousness. We agree we don't have an
25:08explanation or at least a complete one
25:10for consciousness.
25:10Or even a partial one, I would say.
25:12It seems vaguely associated with the
25:14brain.
25:15really mysterious and you and I have no
25:17explanation for it.
25:19As human beings we're uncomfortable with
25:20saying I don't know. This is something
25:22I'm trying to teach people to become
25:24more comfortable with is to say I don't
25:26know. And so when you ask me about
25:28consciousness my answer is I don't know.
25:30But for other people
25:32they're so uncomfortable with I don't
25:33know that they posit an explanation that
25:36they cannot justify. Something is
25:37untestable and unfalsifiable and that is
25:39that there's a ghost in the machine.
25:41Mhm.
25:42I can't make that leap because there's
25:45It It is
25:47It is entirely
25:49speculation without support. It seems
25:52intuitively right because of how we view
25:54the world.
25:56And yet
25:58I would rather say I don't know
26:00and then continue to explore it because
26:02I I worry that by asserting what the
26:04explanation is you stop looking for the
26:06actual explanation. Okay, so you're you
26:09made the case that part of the reason
26:11that we assume beings is because there's
26:14a being that seems lacking in death.
26:16Mhm. And that was associated I had asked
26:19the question about why people attribute
26:21their mystical experiences to
26:22supernatural beings. So we kind of went
26:24off on a little bit of a tangent there
26:26but it was related so we could say well
26:28your idea is something like people
26:30personify the soul for obvious reasons
26:33and they also have a hyperactive agency
26:34detector and so it's the combination of
26:37whatever mechanisms that produce that
26:38that allow them to attribute
26:40supernatural personification to the
26:43source of mystical experiences. It's
26:44something like that. Yeah, okay. So let
26:47let me let me ask you something. We'll
26:49get back to that maybe.
26:51Um
26:52That's fine. Let ask you something about
26:54consciousness. You tell me what what you
26:56think about this, okay? All right, so
26:58this is how it looks to me. I mean,
27:00there's lots of ways of thinking about
27:01how people
27:03interact with the world.
27:05But I think this is how we treat
27:07ourselves and other people
27:09as we see them acting in the world. And
27:11so I would say it's indicative of our
27:12deepest belief because I think belief is
27:14associated with action.
27:16So, the way consciousness appears to me
27:20is that it's a faculty, let's say, that
27:23confronts possibility.
27:26We call that possibility, well,
27:28sometimes possibility, sometimes we call
27:29it potential, like your potential.
27:31Sometimes we call it the future.
27:34So, I don't see us as driven
27:36deterministically like clocks, which is
27:38apparently, I think, although I've been
27:40accused of misunderstanding Sam Harris
27:42before, but I think that's the that's
27:44the argument that he makes. I see us
27:46instead as
27:48agents confronting a landscape of
27:50possibility.
27:52And that what consciousness does is
27:53enable us to shape that possibility into
27:57actuality. And we do that with whatever
27:59it is that allows us to make decisions.
28:02I think that
28:03our legal system is basically predicated
28:06on the idea that that's true.
28:08I think that if you treat yourself that
28:10way, that works.
28:12I think if you treat other people as if
28:14that's their basic characteristic and
28:16perhaps their value that you get along
28:18with them. And I think that if you
28:20organize your society on that
28:21presupposition, it appears to be
28:23functional.
28:25So,
28:26so what do you think about the idea of
28:28consciousness as confronting a landscape
28:30of possibility or potential? Is that is
28:32is there something
28:34So, I I don't know that I have that much
28:36of an issue with anything in particular
28:39that you've said.
28:41There's a number of different ways to to
28:43frame these things so that people can
28:45have a better grasp on it. One of the
28:46things I know people struggle with is
28:49and we may have to get back to this in a
28:51minute. I don't necessarily want to dig
28:52in on it just a second, but I would love
28:53to talk about it. Um this idea that
28:56absent a God
28:58there's no moral authority. This is a
29:00fear that many people have.
29:02And when you're talking about viewing
29:04consciousness as
29:08the way the way you describe
29:09consciousness is what I would probably
29:10call our agency. Okay. And while I don't
29:15think that we have
29:16libertarian free will I'm on record as
29:19being a compatibilist along with Dan
29:21Dennett. Um
29:23but I also had a read another discussion
29:24recently, so I'm going to clarify it
29:26because of that discussion.
29:27I'm fine with the idea that we have a
29:29will, that we have desires, that we have
29:31that we are an agent uh that is also
29:34capable of self-reflection to see what
29:35are the consequences of my action moving
29:37forward.
29:39To me it does not matter if that is
29:40ultimately deterministic like clockwork.
29:44Um or if there was some something that
29:47could trump determinism. Oh, I shouldn't
29:49have said trump. I'm so sorry.
29:51Uh
29:52it if there was something that could
29:54actually overcome
29:56the deterministic view.
29:58That doesn't change to me the fact that
30:02you would be the agent responsible for
30:04your actions. Now when my when my uh
30:07lawn mower acts up
30:09um I will sometimes anthropomorphically,
30:13you know, cuss it out.
30:14Yeah, it's hard to get rid of those
30:15vestiges of religious behavior. But
30:18yeah, it is.
30:21Touché. I mean
30:22uh
30:24Although at least I got rid of them.
30:27Uh I haven't seen you interact with your
30:28lawn mower yet.
30:30But at the end I recognize that the lawn
30:33mower is not a thinking agent, that is
30:34not making decisions. And so that that
30:37difference between there
30:38um is where I would inject the sort of
30:41ideas about moral responsibility. The
30:43Sam and I had a Sam Harris and I had an
30:45argument in Chicago about free will and
30:48I was pointing out
30:50that
30:51he could walk over and step off the end
30:53of the stage
30:55or I could pick him up and carry him and
30:56drop him off the stage and at the end
30:57the the effect would essentially be the
30:59same but the conflict between those two
31:01is everything that I describe as will
31:03whether you want to call it free or not
31:05I think it that's what that's what we
31:07value that's what we care about that's I
31:09would be responsible for that action. I
31:11would be acting in opposition to what
31:14the other agent wanted. And I don't know
31:16that you have to And there would be
31:17something hypothetically wrong about
31:19that. Yes. Okay. Okay, good. So that's
31:22close We we we can we can get to the
31:24morality thing because I think the the
31:26next question I had unless you wanted to
31:28follow up on that
31:30is a lot of you know like I was saying
31:32earlier it seems that you're talking a
31:33lot about
31:35You
31:36you haven't addressed the issue and I'm
31:37not going to push back on it because I
31:39want to move on to some other things
31:40there. uh of whether or not there is
31:42good reason to believe there actually is
31:44a god as opposed to whether there are
31:45good reasons for people to believe that
31:49there actually is a god. Dan Dennett
31:50describes
31:51you know there are people who believe
31:52and then there are people who believe in
31:54belief that there's value and and from
31:56what you said here and in some other
31:58comments which I'm not going to saddle
31:59you with I'm curious
32:02irrespective of whether there's a god
32:04Mhm.
32:06what is it that you fear we would lose
32:09if people stopped believing that there
32:11was a god or believing there was value
32:13in belief
32:18We'd lose we'd lose the metaphoric
32:20substrate of our ethos and we'd be lost.
32:23And so I I'm
32:25an uneducated so
32:28I really want to know and I'm not I'm
32:29not Yeah. being a dick. I want to know
32:31what you mean by metaphoric substrate
32:33because saying we're going to lose it so
32:35that there's there's the idea when I
32:37when I ask what do you think we're going
32:38to lose? There's two things.
32:40One is there's something that you and I
32:41would both agree we should try to keep.
32:44Yeah. And there are other things that
32:46you and I might disagree on whether or
32:48not we should keep it because when
32:49people say to me, "Oh, you know, we if
32:51we get on the road with Dostoevsky that,
32:53you know,
32:54if there is no God everything's
32:55permissible." First of all, I don't
32:57think that's remotely true cuz I have
32:59a pretty vicious case for it in Beyond
33:00Good and Evil. And despite the fact that
33:03it sounds monumentally arrogant, I think
33:04I can demolish that case in about 2
33:06minutes with a secular morality lecture.
33:08Uh
33:09but Well, I think the first part of that
33:12statement is right, but not the second
33:13one.
33:16And we could find out. But but the thing
33:18is there would be two categories of
33:20things that you and others might be
33:21fearful we would lose, some of which I
33:23might agree we should definitely not
33:25lose these things. Yeah. Others I might
33:27be absolutely fine with losing.
33:28Like it that it's wrong to throw Sam
33:30Harris off a stage. Yeah. I I don't plan
33:34on doing that.
33:36But it did cross my mind at one point.
33:39And we both agreed that that was
33:40probably wrong.
33:42Yes. So, okay, so that's good.
33:43Probably.
33:44Yeah.
33:46See, I'm a situational
33:47ethicist and so there might be
33:49situations if the stage were on fire
33:51throwing Sam off would be the best thing
33:53I could do for him.
33:56So, what do you think what do you think
33:57we're likely to lose? What bothers you
33:58and when you say meta
34:00uh
34:00metaphorical substrate
34:02I'm
34:03I'm probably just monumentally ignorant,
34:05but I really don't think I have a good
34:07understanding of what you mean. Well,
34:08there's a levels of thought to I mean
34:10every thought structure, let's say every
34:12belief structure is multi-level like a
34:15piece of music. And and
34:18there's the there's the word in a phrase
34:21and then there's the phrase and then
34:22there's the sentence and then there's
34:24the paragraph
34:25and then there's the sequence of
34:27paragraphs within which the paragraphs
34:29are uttered and then there's a broader
34:31context of interpretation within which
34:33all of that is interpreted. And then
34:35there's our emotional and motivational
34:37similarity, and then there's our
34:40embodiment in the world. And all of
34:42those things are operative at all times
34:45when we're understanding one another.
34:47And as you move outside the realm of the
34:50linguistic, like the paragraph level,
34:51let's say, into the realm of the
34:53emotional and motivational and
34:55embodiment and embodied, you also move
34:57into the metaphorical.
34:59And the metaphorical is structured in a
35:00particular way. And this is quite well
35:03documented, by the way. I mean, if you
35:05look at how
35:06the hemispheres interact. So, the left
35:09hemisphere, broadly speaking, broadly
35:11speaking, and I'm not oversimplifying
35:13this, except that we don't have much
35:14time, is linguistic. But the linguistic
35:17utterances are understood in the context
35:19provided more by the right hemisphere,
35:21which is nonverbal, and which attends to
35:23things like the music of language. And
35:25so, at the bottom of a linguistic
35:27structure, there's something that's
35:29extra-linguistic, and it tends to take
35:31form in metaphor and narrative and
35:33drama, and that sort of thing. And the
35:36religious landscape is the narrative,
35:39metaphor, drama landscape. And if you
35:41disrupt it, then you blow apart the
35:44widest possible context within which the
35:46specific utterances are rendered
35:48comprehensible.
35:51Okay, so I followed all that,
35:53shockingly.
35:55Um
35:56anytime you were talking about signs and
35:58hemispheres and all this other stuff.
36:00So, when you're talking about the
36:01broader context, if we lose belief in a
36:04god,
36:05we lose that metaphorical substrate that
36:08is the broader context in which we
36:09evaluate these narratives. Yeah, that
36:11that really that really grinds them into
36:13our bodies. That that makes them things
36:16we believe rather than just think.
36:18Sure.
36:18But
36:20See, you didn't just think You didn't
36:21just think that it was wrong to throw
36:23Sam off the off the off the uh
36:26God, Sam's going to be pissed when he
36:28hears that.
36:28Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's
36:30okay.
36:31Well, so
36:34So
36:36See, there's a difference between
36:37thinking something and believing it.
36:39Because to believe it, it has to be
36:41thought incarnated in some sense. It has
36:43to be embodied.
36:44I talk about it, belief is this state of
36:46being convinced that a proposition is
36:48true or likely true. It's Every
36:49everything that I try to do I I I tend
36:52to view in the form of propositional
36:53reasoning.
36:54Um so, when we talk about the narrative
36:56Yeah, that's a problem, by the way.
36:59Okay.
37:00Yeah, well, it's You can't reduce the
37:01world to a set of propositions.
37:03Why not? Oh.
37:05Look,
37:06show me something that is true in the
37:09world that is not a proposition.
37:12Like an expressible statable
37:13proposition?
37:14Something that is demonstrably true that
37:15I could not put in a proposition.
37:17Oh, that's that's easy. You sure you
37:19want to go there?
37:21I'm not afraid of anything.
37:22Okay.
37:23Okay.
37:25If I'm wrong, I want to know I'm wrong,
37:27but I I I'm trying to For years I had
37:29this thing going where people would say,
37:30"Oh." And this is kind of what we're
37:32getting at from different angle. I would
37:33say
37:34they would be afraid of what we would
37:35lose if we lost religion. And I
37:38basically said, "Demonstrate
37:40to me any benefit
37:43Oh, you'd lose art and poetry and drama
37:45and narrative and story.
37:47are there are there no godless artists
37:49and poets?
37:50Well, there are artists and poets who
37:53think they're godless.
37:56So,
37:58we might have crossed over into a
37:59problem area because I I don't actually
38:02I can't draw for crap, although I do
38:04draw during the show. Um
38:07but one of the individuals who came to
38:10the show the other night handed me
38:12something that she had spent a great
38:13deal of time drawing. She's a wonderful
38:15artist. I'm very grateful to get it. And
38:18um
38:20you know, while I pretend to read minds
38:21on stage, I constantly acknowledge that
38:23I can't actually read minds. So, I can't
38:25tell you
38:27whether or not she actually believes in
38:28a god, but I can tell you that I
38:31actually don't believe in a god.
38:33And I could write poetry.
38:35Huh? But you act like you do. That's why
38:37you didn't want to throw Sam off the
38:39stage.
38:40No, now you're making a claim Okay, so
38:43I'm telling you I don't believe there's
38:45a god and your your response to that is
38:48I really do because I have a moral
38:50sense. But my moral sense is utterly
38:54without any appeal to a god.
38:57Explicitly.
38:58Or implicitly. Or maybe. The That's not
39:01so obvious. Okay, it's really it's it's
39:03easy
39:04regard you regard Sam Harris as an
39:06implicitly valuable entity. Cuz
39:08otherwise, you'd just throw him off the
39:09stage. And then the question is, well,
39:11just exactly why is he an implicitly
39:14valuable entity?
39:15I don't think he's implicitly
39:18valuable in the sense
39:19In the
39:24I don't think he's I don't think he's
39:25implicitly valuable in the sense that
39:27the universe has in in
39:29implied that there's something explicit
39:31about it. For me, morality is is far
39:33simpler than some people
39:34you sounded doubtful about that.
39:37You know, that like
39:38Maybe you're the mind reader.
39:39Well, you Well, maybe.
39:41Because you've already you've already
39:42suggested that despite me sitting here
39:44and having talked about this for decades
39:47that I don't believe in god that I
39:48actually do because I have a moral code,
39:50but my moral code, which I've Well, I
39:51was more specific. I I said it was
39:53because you didn't want to throw Sam off
39:55the stage.
39:56Yes, but you didn't you didn't you
39:57didn't even attempt to ask me why I
39:59didn't throw Sam off the stage. Instead,
40:02you went to why do you think has Sam has
40:03implicit value because it seems that in
40:05your narrative that's the only
40:07justification.
40:08Well, maybe you were afraid of being
40:09punished.
40:10I think you No. Oh, okay.
40:12can have a
40:13perfectly acceptable foundation for
40:15secular morality even if it
40:17fundamentally centers around
40:19selfishness.
40:21I'd rather not be thrown off the stage.
40:23It's in my best interest to encourage
40:25that sort of understanding in others,
40:27and therefore I will not throw him off
40:29the stage. I would rather not have my
40:31stuff stolen, and it's in my best
40:33interest to encourage others not to do
40:34that, so I will not steal stuff, and I
40:36will work with others to ensure that the
40:38people who steal stuff are punished. It
40:40is in in in virtually pragmatic
40:44uh moral sense.
40:45you think it's not in your best interest
40:46to have stuff stolen from you or to be
40:49thrown off the stage?
40:51Why is it not in my best interest?
40:52Yeah. No, no, you know, you don't you
40:54don't get to think, "Oh, that's
40:55self-evident." It's like nothing's
40:57self-evident to the skeptic. Let's keep
40:59that in mind. Oh.
41:03Well,
41:04so uh
41:08Cuz if we're going to get skeptical
41:09here, we might as well go all the way to
41:10the bottom.
41:12for for Sam and I, the foundations, and
41:14we're not the only ones, but I I tend to
41:15reference Sam just because if I say
41:17this, then somebody will say, "Well,
41:18that's exactly what Sam Harris says,
41:19except that, you know, I was giving this
41:20lecture before he wrote his book." But
41:23uh
41:24But his book is better than my lecture,
41:26so read his book.
41:28When I talk about this, I'm talking
41:30about
41:31well-being is the language that Sam
41:33uses. I don't I don't
41:37I don't care whether or not somebody
41:38else considers that morality.
41:40At I would think at a minimum, would you
41:42and I agree that
41:43That whole well-being thing, man, as a
41:45basis for a metaphysics, that's just a
41:47non-starter.
41:48basing metaphysics on it.
41:49Sam is. No, he's not.
41:51Yes, he is, cuz he's out to maximize
41:53well-being.
41:53it up with Sam.
41:54Well, okay, sorry. Do you think Do you
41:56think I'm wrong about that claim? I
41:57That's what I understood from reading
41:58think Sam's saying anything metaphysical
42:00about it. I think So, here's the thing.
42:02We are physical beings.
42:03fundamental claim, so it's sort of at
42:05the basis of his ethic. And so, he says,
42:07"Well, we should work to maximize
42:09people's well-being, or at least to
42:10Well, he does a bit more than that,
42:12because he says we should minimize the
42:13suffering. He's not maximize minimize in
42:16this sense of sense simple
42:18consequentialism. Let me do this.
42:19Okay.
42:21We're physical beings in a physical
42:22universe, and the laws that dictate how
42:25things work in the universe,
42:26they are the ultimate arbiters of what
42:29is or isn't in our best interest,
42:31whether we know it or not. So, for
42:32example, so far as I can tell,
42:35Then why do you need free will? I don't
42:38I don't think we need free will.
42:40Why do you Why do you attribute agency
42:41to things if the laws of the universe
42:43can
42:44get to that one point? Well, yeah, but
42:46there was a contradiction. That was
42:47confusing me.
42:48free will isn't relevant to this.
42:51It is if the laws of the universe are
42:53what are dictating what's good for us.
42:54No, because if you chop off my head,
42:57that is clearly not good for me.
43:01And it doesn't matter whether it was an
43:03act of free will or if it was my
43:04lawnmower.
43:05clearly not good for you because you
43:07think you're valuable and worth
43:08preserving.
43:09Yes. Okay, that's the issue. Why do you
43:12think you're valuable and worth
43:14preserving?
43:14Because I am the descendants of people
43:16who thought they were valuable and worth
43:18worth preserving, and the ones who
43:20didn't think that have killed
43:21themselves. But this is not a statement
43:23about
43:27This is not a statement about intrinsic
43:28value.
43:29I don't know. Yes, yes, think it is.
43:31Okay, okay, but I think it is. Okay.
43:36It
43:38The reason that we talk about this in
43:39terms of well-being
43:41is because irrespective of whether or
43:43not I care about well-being, there are
43:45facts about well-being. Sure, let's hear
43:47a man line those suckers up. If you chop
43:49off my head, it's in contradiction to my
43:51well-being. I mean, that's But the the
43:54point I'm trying to
43:55to grant that, actually. Okay.
43:56I'm saying that's a metaphysical
43:57presupposition.
44:00You're just saying I have to accept
44:01that. No, I'm not I'm not telling you at
44:03all what to accept.
44:04are. You're saying that death would be
44:06wrong.
44:06to explain what my position is. Okay,
44:09but but you said that that wouldn't be
44:11in accordance with your well-being.
44:13Okay, that's a metaphysical statement or
44:14philosophical statement. It's not an
44:16obvious fact. That chopping off
44:18somebody's head is contrary to their
44:20well-being. It depends on how you define
44:22well-being.
44:23It sure.
44:25Yeah, but it matters.
44:26define well-being as this glass of
44:27water, we're no longer talking about the
44:29same thing.
44:29Well, you can define well-being. That's
44:30fine. That's what I'm waiting for. This
44:32is So, this is what I'm Well,
44:34You can't do it. You can't define
44:36well-being. It's very difficult.
44:37should I try? I certainly can't do it if
44:38you keep telling me I can't do it.
44:39Okay, sorry. Okay, I'll back off. I'll
44:41back off. There's a
44:43Go ahead. I'm I'm I'm all ears. So,
44:48the primary objection to minus sam's
44:50position that keeps coming back is why
44:52should anybody care about well-being?
44:55And we both will acknowledge that this
44:57is a and in fact a subjective
44:58preference. There are people who are
44:59going to care about well-being. There
45:00are people who aren't.
45:02The second objection is that well-being
45:03is not clearly defined. Both of us have
45:06acknowledged this. It's not as if we're
45:07saying we have all the answers to uh how
45:10to go about living a better life.
45:12We're just saying that however we're
45:14going to define well-being, which is
45:18I I say you can start with a couple of
45:20foundations. You can start with death is
45:22preferable to life, but you don't get
45:23very far that way.
45:25Stop suffering.
45:27Well, no, I'm saying you could start
45:28with death is preferable to life, but
45:31you don't get very far that way because
45:32there's
45:32Yeah, you do. You stop suffering. You
45:34just die.
45:35Yes. Mhm.
45:37Right, so you can start with the
45:39presupposition.
45:40Except that when you're dead, you are
45:41not being, so there's no well-being.
45:45No. Well, that's
45:51I- If it's
45:52That's not that's not necessarily
45:53If we're looking for the best things
45:55about our life, you can't say death is
45:57better.
45:59Yeah, you I Well, you I I I know that
46:01you can say it.
46:02all
46:03They do No, look. Look They can express
46:05their preference, but their preference
46:06can be wrong. How can it possibly be
46:08better for your life
46:11if you're dead?
46:14What if you, like, are a terminal burn
46:16victim with cancer?
46:18I am So, this is the point that I was
46:20getting to.
46:21I am perfectly fine with the idea that
46:23for certain instances, there may be
46:25occasions that death is preferable to an
46:28individual over life.
46:29But when we're speaking in broader
46:31terms, if we're talking about let's
46:32create the best society we can, let's
46:34create the best quality of life we can
46:36for people, death is not that across the
46:38board. It That doesn't mean that there
46:40aren't individual exceptions. So, the
46:41foundations that I that I started with,
46:43you can start with death is better than
46:44life, but blah blah blah. If you start
46:46with life is generally preferable to
46:48death, health is generally preferable to
46:50sickness, happiness is generally
46:52preferable to sadness, none of these are
46:53absolute locked-in-stone rules. From
46:56those things
46:57if you start with them Yes, if you start
46:59skeptical about those claims. Wow. Well,
47:02let me ask you a question.
47:03I came out and said that I wasn't going
47:04to be trying to straw man you left and
47:07right. And now every time I say
47:09something, you're like, "Oh, so you're
47:11not skeptical about that." Well, I'm
47:12trying to understand
47:13I haven't gotten
47:14sorry. I'm not trying to attack you. I'm
47:15trying to understand where your argument
47:17begins.
47:18Well, it seems odd that you would come
47:19out with, "So, you're not skeptical
47:21about that." Well, that's a question.
47:23my skepticism tour, while I'm in
47:24mid-sentence to describe that these are
47:26the general foundations that you start
47:28with. Okay, that's what I was asking.
47:30Those are Okay, so but what you're
47:31saying, if you're saying Correct me if
47:34I'm wrong. I'm not trying to be
47:35difficult.
47:37You're saying that those are your
47:38starting positions. Those are the things
47:40that you accept
47:41they can be.
47:42on faith.
47:43No. Oh, you have a rationale for them.
47:46Yes. Let's hear it. Uh you already have.
47:49Life is generally preferable to death
47:51because we're talking about our life,
47:53and death is generally not in the
47:55interest of the living.
47:57It can be on exception. This is the
47:58point that I was getting to. So, you
48:00could start with those found You could
48:01start with any three that you found.
48:03You could pick three arbitrary
48:06foundations. And the one aspect that
48:08makes a secular moral system distinct
48:11from religious pronouncements and divine
48:13command theory and those sorts of things
48:15is that the the secular moral system has
48:17as its goal
48:20the object of getting better at getting
48:21better, which means if you find out that
48:23one of your foundations is wrong or in
48:26conflict with something else, you can
48:28now change that. You could start with
48:29death is preferable to life, and then
48:30when you find out that it's not working
48:31that well, you change that foundation. I
48:34think that these foundations, based on
48:36the evidence of how people tend to live
48:38their lives and what they care about,
48:39are a good set of three.
48:42There could be better ones if somebody
48:43come up with. I'm open to revision on
48:44any of these at any time. But, to say
48:46that I'm not skeptical about them is
48:48exactly the opposite of what I am.
48:52Because skepticism is about I'm not
48:53going to accept something as true
48:56without good reason,
48:58and it's about being willing to being
48:59open to revision should there be
49:01evidence.
49:02If you and I agree that we care about a
49:04good life,
49:06good life isn't very well defined. And
49:08we may have different ideas about what
49:09good life is. But, if we could actually
49:11just sit here and take notes, you know,
49:13I think that we'd come across maybe a
49:15handful of things
49:16that we would agree would make for a
49:17good life.
49:19If we take those and compare them to
49:23the foundations of a secular moral
49:24system like what I'm describing, we can
49:26determine non-subjectively
49:29whether or not what we've the list we've
49:30come up with are consistently
49:33approachable by that from that
49:34foundation. And we can do that for
49:36religious moralities as well.
49:37The The The analogy that I've used in
49:39the past is is for example a game of
49:41chess.
49:42Um
49:43there's nothing about the universe that
49:44requires that we care about chess or
49:46care about the rules of chess. The rules
49:47of chess are arbitrary. Somebody made
49:48them up. We changed them. We We en
49:50passant. We added castling. We added
49:51things like that. We have the rules of
49:53chess. We don't always know what the
49:55best move is.
49:57But if the goal of the game is to win or
49:59at a minimum not lose,
50:01then we can analyze the moves with
50:03respect to the consequences
50:05and with respect to the goal of winning
50:07and determine which moves are better and
50:09which moves are worse. That is what a
50:11secular moral system does because it
50:12allows revision. Whereas religious
50:14systems don't allow for revision.
50:17There's not a Bible 3.0. There's not a
50:19Quran 2.0. There's no new revelation
50:21from God to say, "Hey, uh you know, I
50:24said all this stuff about slavery, now
50:26I'm opposed to it." Or, "Hey, you know,
50:28I was really down on homosexuals, but
50:30now I'm okay with it." "Hey, uh you
50:32know, when I said that here's what
50:34caused diseases or that you were unclean
50:36and shouldn't enter the temple." Uh I'm
50:38at all those things are actually wrong.
50:39The germ theory of disease is right. And
50:41none of that's been come out. Well,
50:43there is kind of a Bible 2.0.
50:45That was the New Testament, right? Well,
50:47that's that's that's that is the update
50:50for for the Christians. Uh except that
50:53it's worse than the first one. Well,
50:56that that's not exactly the point. The
50:58point is there was an update. So
51:00Well, Okay, so in the update, it's not
51:02like Jesus came along and said, "Hey, in
51:04Exodus 21 where I was saying you could
51:06have slaves and beat them, we got that
51:07wrong or you got that wrong." That
51:09correction's never given. That that
51:11thing about, you know, in Leviticus
51:12where we point out that women are worth
51:142/3 of that of a man, we got that wrong.
51:15None of that's corrected. In fact, the
51:18reason I say it got worse, although I
51:20didn't know we were going to go down the
51:21the biblical route tonight, is that if
51:24you if you look at Jewish tradition,
51:26when you're dead, you sleep with your
51:26fathers. There's no real clear notion of
51:29an afterlife.
51:30And then with the introduction of the
51:31New Testament, what you get is infinite
51:32torture and punishment for finite
51:34crimes, which is immoral.
51:37All right, so
51:38I don't want to go down that rabbit hole
51:40at the moment, although I'd be perfectly
51:42happy to do it at you know, if we get if
51:43we get there. Well, if we get
51:45They us to go to questions here in a
51:46minute. Oh, okay. So, so
51:49I want to address the rule system that
51:52you're putting together.
51:52Okay. Okay. So, I was talking to a
51:55friend of mine who's an AI engineer.
51:57He's a very smart guy. And we've been
52:00talking about the foundations of
52:02cognition. Mhm. And you know that
52:04artificial intelligence systems
52:07don't run on rules.
52:10Right.
52:11Well, some of them do. Well, and
52:13certainly they run on an operating
52:14system that is full of rules. That that
52:16that's actually That's actually not
52:18relevant in this case. But that's the
52:20physical universe.
52:21operate on all sorts of different
52:22operating systems. Well, but okay. So,
52:24But there's a there's a foundation. That
52:26The foundation I'm pointing to is the
52:27physical facts of the universe. And that
52:28would be roughly consistent with the
52:29hardware and the operating system that
52:31they're running on. But I'm I'm sorry. I
52:33I have to cut you off.
52:33I mean, that's a reasonable objection,
52:35too. But
52:36look,
52:37one of the things that happened in the
52:38And I think this is the one of the
52:40problems with the with the we can
52:42generate a rational system of rules that
52:44can govern our behavior approach
52:46is that since the 1980s, people have
52:48been trying to build rule-based expert
52:51systems that can do relatively simple
52:54things. Relatively simple. They're not
52:57that simple. Like basic medical
52:59diagnosis.
53:01They don't work.
53:03Rule-based systems don't work. You can't
53:05get them to operate intelligently, which
53:07is why that why machine learning came
53:09about to begin with. Because whatever
53:12machine learn learning is doing and
53:14allowing for predictions, it doesn't
53:15seem easily decomposable to a set of
53:17listable rules and a map of their
53:19interactions. The world doesn't seem to
53:21work that way. And I would say, back to
53:24the metaphysical substrate argument, you
53:26know, you laid it forward a set of
53:28propositions. And the reason I was
53:29perhaps inappropriately torturing you
53:31about them is because there's a meta
53:33Well, there's a meta
53:34There's a metaphysic under them. There's
53:36something that's driving you to put
53:38those forward as a reasonable You say,
53:39"Well, they're are
53:40reasonable." See, my question is
53:42actually say that, but okay. Well, it's
53:44a it's a pre- it's something like that
53:46because you said, "Well, reasonable
53:47people could agree on these three or
53:49something similar." Like, you're It
53:51seems to me that what you're saying is
53:52that there's a set of finite axioms that
53:55reasonable people could conceivably
53:57agree on from which you could generate a
53:59rule-based moral system. Have I got that
54:02wrong? Like, I thought that's what you
54:03said. It's curious because I I didn't
54:05say that, but it's very close to
54:06something that I I have said in the
54:07past, which is
54:08for any given situation, there's a
54:10finite set of actions that a person
54:11could take.
54:13And some set of those actions
54:15uh
54:16are better than others.
54:18It with respect to whatever the goal is.
54:20If the goal is to continue, you know, a
54:22a a decent life or improve the quality
54:24of your life, some set of one or more
54:25actions that you could take in this
54:27instance
54:28um
54:29produces results that are better
54:33in ways that we would agree they're
54:34better. Like, like throwing Sam off the
54:36stage.
54:38If if we were in that situation There's
54:40got to be an unconscious fantasy going
54:42on here or something, eh? Cuz we keep
54:44returning to that.
54:45It and it's fun.
54:47But
54:48one one of the possible actions of of
54:50this set of actions would be for me to
54:51throw him off the stage. Another
54:52possible set of action would be for me
54:54to, you know, like shield him.
54:56It is clear
54:58um and you can say that I'm just saying
55:00it's self-evident.
55:02It is clear that one of those is going
55:03to be more in Sam's best interest and
55:05perhaps even more in mine than another.
55:08That's all we're saying. We're not
55:10pretending remotely that we have the
55:11answer to every possible uh scenario,
55:14just that we have the foundational tool
55:15set that allows us to come up with the
55:17right answers.
55:19And we do this in our position.
55:20that you can do that with a set of
55:21rules.
55:22Not Well, so first of all,
55:25actually don't think that's technically
55:26tenable. I I don't think there's any
55:29evidence for that.
55:29I I don't know why it wouldn't be. Well,
55:32you can't build
55:33expert systems, for example.
55:35Well, you can't say that you can't
55:36because
55:37tried for about 40 years with no
55:38success.
55:39Geez, 40 years out of 13.7 billion
55:43and we haven't cut we haven't cracked it
55:45yet, so it's impossible?
55:46but 40 years is a of exponentially
55:48increasing computational power with no
55:50solution on the horizon except for AI.
55:52So and and and the latest AI thing which
55:54I absolutely love cuz I'm a chess player
55:56is the DeepMind AlphaZero thing that
55:59learned the entirety of what humans know
56:01about playing chess in 4 hours or so and
56:04then beat the best previous chess
56:06computer.
56:08Uh so and people are saying, "Oh, it's
56:09the beginning of Skynet because now we
56:11have this sort of thinking." However, uh
56:14it that that method produced better
56:16results of letting it play itself with
56:18chess giving it no opening book giving
56:19it no history chess nothing. Well,
56:22that's it didn't give it no rules. It
56:24gave it the rules of chess and the goal
56:26of the game.
56:27Yes, but it didn't give it rules about
56:29how to play the game. Correct. Right,
56:31and that's because rules-based systems
56:34that's because rule-based systems about
56:36how to play a game aren't optimal. No,
56:38that's why. What happened is the AI took
56:42the rules of how to play the game and
56:44and what the winning goal is
56:47and it experimented and found the best
56:50ways to achieve that goal and I think
56:52that's what human beings have done
56:53throughout the entirety of history.
56:54We're the physical beings in a physical
56:56universe. We have the rules. The goal is
56:59to survive or and I would say the goal
57:01should be to thrive.
57:03And we are continually finding the best
57:06rules and the best methods.
57:08This exactly mirrors the moral system
57:11I'm talking about. There the idea that
57:13there is someone on high telling the
57:15computer, "Don't play H4 as your first
57:18move."
57:20We threw that out because that's not the
57:22best way to find out things. Instead, we
57:24plopped the computer down just as we
57:26were plopped down in a universe when we
57:28gained consciousness and began
57:29interacting and the computer in the span
57:31of a few hours discovered everything
57:33that humanity has discovered about
57:35chess. And now they are applying it to
57:37the sort of diagnostic things you were
57:38talking about. I think that that is
57:40directly analogous to what the best
57:42explanations of what human beings have
57:44done.
57:45And what happens from my perspective is
57:48that
57:49the thinking about morality is so
57:51difficult
57:53for some
57:54that it's just easier to say
57:57ah, this person told me or this God told
57:59me or this is the case. Because having
58:01to sit down and do the sort of life
58:03inventory to figure out, hey, what's
58:05what's best for us? I mean, even
58:06figuring out what the goal of the game
58:08is
58:09um is harder for some people and so they
58:11accept and fall into these traps of like
58:13authoritarian models of
58:17this is what your goal is. And the thing
58:19that's probably frustrated me the most,
58:20which I talked about on a college campus
58:22last year, is
58:24if the government was running around
58:26dictating to people what their job was
58:28going to be, what their future was going
58:29to be, as some regimes have done
58:33nobody would appreciate that. Nobody
58:35almost nobody. I'm sure somebody would
58:36be oh, very happy. Thank you. I couldn't
58:38figure out what to do. I'm glad I'm
58:39going to be, you know,
58:40a brain surgeon even though I don't know
58:41anything about it. Um but if the
58:44government was dictating things like
58:45that
58:46there would be revolts. There have been
58:47revolts. And yet curiously, when people
58:49think there is a God or a divine being
58:51or some cosmic consciousness or
58:53collective consciousness that has
58:55dictated a goal for them, they celebrate
58:57it.
58:58And that contradiction has uh
59:01bugged me for years.
59:03Yeah, well, there's no doubt that
59:05systems of belief, let's say, including
59:07religious systems of belief can devolve
59:09into a kind of totalitarian rigidity.
59:13Um I don't think you can necessarily lay
59:14that at the feet of religious belief. I
59:16mean, human systems
59:17No, I'm laying it all at humans. Yeah, I
59:20mean, right. It's Okay, so it's fine.
59:21I just do humans using religion in that
59:23way.
59:24Yeah.
59:25So, what do we do to close? Cuz I I
59:26heard you said that we have to take
59:28questions. Hey, we're going to take some
59:30questions.
59:33Cuz I I could actually
59:35mean to commandeer that. I was just
59:37curious about timing. You you could have
59:39just as easily said it, and I I'd be
59:40happy for another 5 hours talking, but
59:43then they'd charge us a fortune, and all
59:44these people who have questions that are
59:46better than the ones I'm going to come
59:46up with.
59:48So, there's microphones actually up like
59:51Yes, where that guy Oh my gosh, he's lit
59:53up where we can see him. A couple quick
59:56notes about
59:57questions. And by the way, thank you.
59:58This has been great, and we'll we'll
1:00:00talk some more.
1:00:01Um
1:00:08This is where I get I get to have a bit
1:00:10of fun.
1:00:11Um
1:00:13Couple notes about questions. For those
1:00:14of you know, I do a live TV show where I
1:00:15can hang up on people, and if you think
1:00:17I can't hang up on you here, you are
1:00:18much mistaken.
1:00:20Uh but I don't know I hope to I hope to
1:00:22never have to do that, and and almost
1:00:23everybody's
1:00:25gone along. Questions end in a question
1:00:27mark, and the kind of questions we're
1:00:29looking for don't start with a
1:00:30dissertation or life story. So, you can
1:00:34say your name if you'd like to. If you
1:00:36don't, that's fine, and then say who
1:00:37your question's for or both. And I will
1:00:40I will make a promise that I make every
1:00:42time and break, but I will try not to
1:00:44break tonight, which is I will do my
1:00:46best to give shorter answers so that we
1:00:48can get to the everybody who's asking
1:00:50questions. But they lit you up first,
1:00:51sir. Thank you, and uh
1:00:54the floor is yours for a moment. All
1:00:55right, thank you. Uh I guess this
1:00:57question's mostly for Jordan Peterson.
1:01:00Uh
1:01:01just to hopefully enlighten a bit more
1:01:03what you mean by God, do you think that
1:01:06if all humanity were to cease to exist,
1:01:09does God still exist?
1:01:20I I don't think I know how to answer
1:01:22that.
1:01:23I
1:01:24There it's just the situation is too
1:01:27hypothetical. I mean, I can take a crack
1:01:29at some of it,
1:01:30but
1:01:36So, human beings are characterized by
1:01:38consciousness and by self-consciousness.
1:01:40And And the latter in particular seems
1:01:42to be something
1:01:44relatively unique. There's some vague
1:01:47evidence for self-consciousness of of
1:01:49lower sorts in animals, but it's not
1:01:51very compelling. Some of them can
1:01:53recognize themselves in a mirror, but
1:01:55our self-consciousness is
1:01:57accompanied by elaborated imagistic and
1:02:00linguistic models of ourselves and that
1:02:02have been elaborated over large spans of
1:02:04time.
1:02:05There are lots of elements of being that
1:02:08would disappear if we disappeared.
1:02:11Now,
1:02:12and and I I it isn't even obvious to
1:02:14what extent that's true, right? Because
1:02:16I don't really understand
1:02:18to what degree being itself is dependent
1:02:21on consciousness. Like the classic
1:02:23materialist enlightenment view, which I
1:02:26would say is basically a 19th century
1:02:28view, something like that, is that if
1:02:30all consciousness was extinguished, the
1:02:33material substrate of the universe would
1:02:35continue unchanged.
1:02:37But I don't really buy that as an
1:02:39argument because I think that the
1:02:41material substrate I think that reality
1:02:44is some weird
1:02:47I think that reality is an interaction
1:02:49between what we perceive of as the
1:02:50material substrate and consciousness
1:02:52itself. And so, then when you destroy
1:02:54consciousness, you destroy reality. And
1:02:57what that leaves, I don't really
1:02:58understand cuz it doesn't have any
1:03:00temporality in any obvious sense. It
1:03:02doesn't have any size in any obvious
1:03:04sense without the introduction of an
1:03:07invisible observer. So, lots vanishes
1:03:10without human consciousness and
1:03:11self-consciousness.
1:03:13I don't know how to answer the question
1:03:15does God vanish because that brings us
1:03:17back into the same problem that I was
1:03:19talking about earlier is that it's not
1:03:21exactly easy to understand what people
1:03:23are talking about when they say God. You
1:03:25know, cuz when you ask the question,
1:03:27would God disappear?
1:03:29There's an assumption there that
1:03:30whatever God is is understandable and
1:03:32boxable
1:03:34like a simple concept, like a chair, and
1:03:36that we both share the same conception.
1:03:38And you know, there's endless warnings
1:03:40in in deep religious literature against
1:03:43understanding
1:03:45against assuming that you understand
1:03:46what that term means, or sometimes even
1:03:49for using the term. So,
1:03:52that's the best I'm going to be be able
1:03:53to do with that question. Thank you.
1:04:02Hey there. Um so, my question is about
1:04:04something that Matt said, but I actually
1:04:06like to get Dr. Peterson to address it
1:04:08first, if that's okay. Um so, Matt, you
1:04:10said that some people are not willing to
1:04:13put in the work of developing sort of
1:04:15their own moral system, and they like
1:04:17turn to religion to free them from the
1:04:19burden of that thought. Mhm. But doesn't
1:04:22it make sense on some level to view
1:04:24religion as like like an archival system
1:04:27that holds truth? Like if if we abandon
1:04:30that, are we not then
1:04:31just in a place where everyone is forced
1:04:34to invent their own morality for
1:04:36themselves throughout their life, and
1:04:38then like a baby born has to try to
1:04:40achieve that again? Like that No.
1:04:42that seems like from an operative level
1:04:44just just an impossible system to set up
1:04:46that would ever get you anywhere. So,
1:04:49I'm just wondering how you would resolve
1:04:50that conflict.
1:04:52Nietzsche's critique essentially. Well,
1:04:54I'm not I'm not trying to set up the
1:04:55system. I think the system's already set
1:04:58up. So,
1:04:59my goal is not to rid the world of
1:05:01religion. That's just a fortunate side
1:05:04effect from my goals.
1:05:06Um
1:05:07my goal is to have the best
1:05:10understanding of reality that I can, and
1:05:13for other people to do so as well. Now,
1:05:15when I talk about
1:05:17religion, there are things within
1:05:21religious histories, within religious
1:05:23teachings that are passed down, which
1:05:25are true and good and useful. And
1:05:28there's no reason to think that any of
1:05:29those things would go away if we stopped
1:05:31believing in a God because
1:05:33they are true and good and useful
1:05:35whether there is a God or not. If if if
1:05:38the thing that we're worried about is
1:05:39And I have asked people before and I I
1:05:42apologize if if anybody's bothered by
1:05:44this, but there are people who are like,
1:05:45"Oh, if you don't believe in a God, what
1:05:47keeps you from running around raping and
1:05:48killing people?" And I was like, "So, if
1:05:50you became convinced today
1:05:53that your belief in God was unfounded
1:05:55and you were forced by reason to give it
1:05:57up, would you run around and start doing
1:05:59that?"
1:06:00And there are people who will say yes,
1:06:03and I
1:06:04I hopefully, optimistically, don't
1:06:06believe them.
1:06:07But, we know that there are people who
1:06:09do that.
1:06:10But, the truth about what is good and
1:06:13useful is true whether a particular
1:06:16religion survives or not, and we don't
1:06:17lose that because children
1:06:20aren't born with an understanding of
1:06:23morality. They learn that. They are
1:06:25educated by their parents. They are
1:06:26taught. They explore the world.
1:06:28Everybody does in fact go through the
1:06:31effort of creating and understanding
1:06:33their own morality.
1:06:35It's just that we adopt things from
1:06:37figures around us who show evidence that
1:06:39they are smarter and understand this
1:06:41better as a shorthand. We we ride on the
1:06:43shoulders of giants. The curious
1:06:45question is, and I I ask this for people
1:06:48ostensibly who are Christian who who
1:06:50believe in both a God and a devil,
1:06:53is how did you decide that God was the
1:06:56good one and the devil was the evil one?
1:06:58Because the model is that well, God
1:07:00wrote his moral code on
1:07:02on your heart and that's how you tell.
1:07:04But, if that's the case,
1:07:05then whether or not if if the devil had
1:07:08written his moral code on your heart,
1:07:09you would be saying he was the good one.
1:07:11The truth is you are using your
1:07:13internal, personal, subjective
1:07:16assessments to determine that God is the
1:07:18good one, or this religion is the right
1:07:21one, or the First Baptist Church got it
1:07:23right, or the Second Baptist Church got
1:07:24it right, or this is the preacher we
1:07:26should hire. This is what we do. And I
1:07:28don't see much value in in in worrying
1:07:31about, "Oh, is it all going to go away?"
1:07:32when it's clear it doesn't, because
1:07:35secular individuals are no more
1:07:37immoral or criminal-minded than anybody
1:07:40else. In fact, there may be some cases
1:07:42to show that we're less.
1:07:43But in this society, they are no more
1:07:45criminally-minded. Like we have a
1:07:46religious foundation, right? Like we
1:07:48don't go I wouldn't go out and around
1:07:49like raping and pillaging if I abandoned
1:07:52God, but there were societies that did
1:07:54when they didn't have that structure.
1:07:56So, how do you resolve that?
1:07:57not saying I'm not saying that religious
1:07:59authorities haven't been useful.
1:08:01It's just that what I hear from some
1:08:03people is that we should keep this
1:08:05because of that particular usefulness,
1:08:08because they fear what will happen
1:08:10otherwise, because what they've seen in
1:08:12the past.
1:08:13And I don't buy that, because that boils
1:08:16down to saying, "I may not really need
1:08:18religion, but you people do." And that
1:08:21is far too arrogant for me to to ever
1:08:23adopt as a position.
1:08:31Okay, I I don't want to take up too much
1:08:32time, but did you want to say
1:08:33have a quick comment on riding around on
1:08:36the shoulders of giants,
1:08:38which was the central theme in Matt's
1:08:41answer.
1:08:43We ride around on the shoulder of
1:08:44giants, and the meta giant is God.
1:08:48That's a very good way of thinking about
1:08:50it. Except that I can identify as
1:08:52think about that as I don't care about
1:08:53the the metaphysical I don't care about
1:08:55the the metaphysical implications of
1:08:57that. I I don't have to care about that
1:08:58at the moment. But if you look at the
1:09:01evolution of the idea of God, for
1:09:03example, and I think this is
1:09:05particularly true with the evolution of
1:09:06the idea of Christ, is that
1:09:09we do ride around on the shoulders of
1:09:11giants.
1:09:12And the figure of Christ,
1:09:14psychologically speaking, is the giant
1:09:16among giants. It's a meta-giant. And
1:09:19it's a ritual model for emulation. And
1:09:21the ritual model is something like pick
1:09:23up your damn suffering and bear it
1:09:25nobly. Which is a a met which is a
1:09:28metaphysical statement in some sense
1:09:30that lies at the bottom of the ethic
1:09:33even that Matt has presented. And so it
1:09:35is
1:09:36deeply embedded in a religious
1:09:38substructure. And that's the
1:09:39metaphorical substructure that I was
1:09:41talking about that necessarily underlies
1:09:43these self-evident axiomatic rules,
1:09:46which are not, by any means as you point
1:09:48out, self-evident in the least.
1:09:51There's plenty of cultures that train
1:09:52their young men to be absolutely
1:09:54barbaric monsters, right? Warriors,
1:09:58killers, rapists, right? Bloodthirsty
1:10:01right to the core.
1:10:03Perfectly viable mode of being,
1:10:05arguably speaking,
1:10:07from the perspective of generating a set
1:10:09of axiomatic rules. Why is it not better
1:10:12to have 10,000 women than one?
1:10:15There's an evolutionary question for
1:10:16you.
1:10:17Well, reasonable people wouldn't do
1:10:19that. Oh, yeah, right. Reasonable
1:10:21people.
1:10:23Yeah.
1:10:24Thank you.
1:10:30So, if it's if if it's not clear, I can
1:10:33I can point to the giants. I can't point
1:10:34to the mega-giant. And
1:10:36it's an abstraction. Sure. But, when you
1:10:38hold Christ up as a particular figure,
1:10:40the only information that I have about
1:10:42Jesus comes from the Bible. And rather
1:10:44than going through all of it again, cuz
1:10:45there's lots of people questions, if you
1:10:47go to ironchariots.org, you will find a
1:10:49verse-by-verse deconstruction of the
1:10:50Sermon on the Mount, where I point out
1:10:52that Jesus gave some good advice and
1:10:54some crappy advice and some questionable
1:10:56advice. And that's not enough. And
1:10:58there's not a secular humanist
1:11:00organization or country on the planet
1:11:01that has ever produced as a good thing,
1:11:04an intentional good thing, rapists and
1:11:06murderers. So
1:11:07Well, that's that's highly debatable.
1:11:10That's highly debatable.
1:11:11Actually, it's absolutely true because
1:11:13there's never been a secular humanist
1:11:15government on the planet.
1:11:17I don't know. I think the Soviets were
1:11:19pretty secular humanist in
1:11:21Then, with with all with all due
1:11:24apologies, you do not know the first
1:11:26thing about what secular humanism is.
1:11:29You should read the secular humanist
1:11:30manifestos because what happened in
1:11:33Russia, in communist countries, was an
1:11:36institution of a religious-like
1:11:37structure surrounded around centered
1:11:39around an individual and forced atheism,
1:11:43none of which is consistent with
1:11:44humanism. None of it. And and and we can
1:11:47talk about this this later, and I'll be
1:11:49happy to point you to this because you
1:11:50can say that it was an atheist thing
1:11:53um that went awry,
1:11:54but you can't call it secular humanism.
1:11:56It's just not there. There's no humanism
1:11:59in what was done there.
1:12:00But
1:12:08I'm one of those who believes that there
1:12:10there's no such thing as an atheistic
1:12:12thing or a non-religious thing. I was
1:12:14listening to your your talk at Life It
1:12:16Peter Sen last night there, and you were
1:12:18talking about how all action is
1:12:20religious.
1:12:21Um so this conversation today I I think
1:12:23it's hit the same problem you hit with
1:12:25Rebecca Goldstein, you're going to hit
1:12:27with Sam Harris in June, which is uh
1:12:30I've never found a way to convey to an
1:12:32atheist that we all have an ideal, you
1:12:35call it God, you can call it a
1:12:36transcendent ideal, you can call it an
1:12:37axiom, call it a presupposition. It's
1:12:39just very hard to communicate to them
1:12:41that implicitly or explicitly it's
1:12:44there. You're aiming for it. Maybe it
1:12:46changes, maybe it doesn't, but it it
1:12:48it's it's that fundamental thing that
1:12:50guides your action. And I my question
1:12:52would be uh you keep uh
1:12:56Delahanty did a very good job of saying
1:12:57pragmatically, okay, fair enough, the
1:12:59axioms could change, maybe we try these
1:13:01try try those, but there there's always
1:13:03going to be an axiom.
1:13:04Um it's a transcendent thing cuz it's
1:13:06always changing. So we all have that. So
1:13:09again, the definition of God is just
1:13:11kind of useless, but maybe you want to
1:13:13explore why there is a partial
1:13:17definition of God that makes all
1:13:18religious Sorry, all actions religious,
1:13:21makes all ideals you're approaching for
1:13:23a form of God worship, whether you want
1:13:25to call it that or not. I hope that's
1:13:26coherent to you.
1:13:27Well, Jung, Carl Jung had some very
1:13:29interesting comments about that. He said
1:13:31psychologically, for all intents and
1:13:33purposes, your God is the highest value
1:13:36that you have.
1:13:38Right? It it
1:13:39serves functionally as your deity. Now,
1:13:42you may not clothe it in personified in
1:13:44a personified manner, although you tend
1:13:46to because you tend to act it out and
1:13:48assume that other people should, too. So
1:13:50it it implicitly has a personified form,
1:13:52but it if it performs all the functions
1:13:55of a deity, let's say,
1:13:57then it's importantly related in some
1:13:59sense to a deity. And I think that
1:14:02that's actually technically true if you
1:14:04look at how
1:14:05human cognitive structure works.
1:14:08I don't think it's escapable.
1:14:10Does that make sense to you, Phil, or
1:14:11does that like I don't I don't feel like
1:14:13I've ever made that
1:14:14No, you see, when you when you said you
1:14:15have difficulty explaining this to
1:14:16atheists, I don't know what atheists
1:14:17you've been talking about uh talking
1:14:19with, but I'm right on board, and I I
1:14:21functionally understand and and can
1:14:23agree uh with this. It's a secular
1:14:25humanism can easily be viewed as a
1:14:27religion.
1:14:28Uh the US Supreme Court has has defined
1:14:30it in the sense of uh pursuit for
1:14:32ultimate answers to ultimate questions
1:14:34or things like that, but
1:14:35if you want to say that my God is
1:14:42truth or goodness or whatever thing,
1:14:46I'm fine with that in a poetic even
1:14:49metaphorical sense.
1:14:51The problem is when you talk about if
1:14:53what you believe in fulfills all the
1:14:54roles of the deity,
1:14:56I think you're sidelining what a lot of
1:14:57the roles of a deity have played
1:14:59throughout the entirety of human history
1:15:02because
1:15:03they're advocating many of them, not
1:15:05all,
1:15:06are advocating most I would say are
1:15:08advocating for an actual
1:15:10thinking agent supernatural that is the
1:15:14creator and or sustainer of the universe
1:15:18and nothing about
1:15:20my pursuit of truth or goodness or
1:15:22secular humanism fills that particular
1:15:24role. So already we are cherry-picking
1:15:26the aspects of God
1:15:28traditionally and saying, "Ah, Matt has
1:15:31these particular aspects that I also
1:15:33attribute to God." And I agree. I just
1:15:35don't have the other ones and those are
1:15:37the ones that I want justification for.
1:15:41Thank you. Sure.
1:15:43Yes, sir.
1:15:51You have to move up to Mike uh I believe
1:15:53can't hear you.
1:15:53me? Thank you.
1:15:55So the question is for uh Matt.
1:15:58Um so why why is the language of secular
1:16:02humanism um a you know these values that
1:16:05you just espoused um
1:16:08or or or
1:16:09uh talked about, um why is that better
1:16:11than religious language? Um and then for
1:16:16uh best Peter Sun, why would religious
1:16:18language uh be better than those values?
1:16:23Yeah, and I don't want to be overly
1:16:24pedantic about you know, I don't know
1:16:26that the language is necessarily better.
1:16:28The ideals of secular humanism have the
1:16:31goal of getting better at getting
1:16:33better.
1:16:34The
1:16:35foundation if you read and there's
1:16:36various versions of the secular humanism
1:16:37manifesto and I have disagreements with
1:16:39all of them and you know, but the nice
1:16:41thing is is that there are revisions.
1:16:44Okay, this is this is one of the biggest
1:16:46benefits
1:16:47of a model.
1:16:48Is how do you convince somebody that
1:16:50Christianity is right? Well, there's
1:16:52coercion, conversion, conquest.
1:16:56Example. Sorry? Example.
1:16:59Okay. That's an important one.
1:17:02Okay.
1:17:04I'll have to think on that some more
1:17:05because a lot of the things that people
1:17:07do that they think are exempli-
1:17:10exemplary
1:17:11examples of Christianity,
1:17:13um I don't think that they're in any way
1:17:16not necessarily tied to Christianity.
1:17:18Like it's not
1:17:19You can There's nothing a Christian
1:17:20could do that is good that I couldn't
1:17:23also do.
1:17:24And so the example thing doesn't work.
1:17:26But with with secular humanism, it is
1:17:29through debate, discussion, data, and
1:17:32convincing people. It's not like we're
1:17:33running around saying, "Ah, we're going
1:17:35to conquer and install this here. We're
1:17:37not going to make a proclamation that we
1:17:39have the one true right answer." The
1:17:41position that secular humanism takes is,
1:17:44"As far as we can tell, we get one life.
1:17:47If there's more, hey, bonus. Show us,
1:17:49we'll be convinced."
1:17:51It seems that we are, as human beings,
1:17:53as agents, stuck here trying to figure
1:17:55out the best way to live this life. And
1:17:58so we must rely on ourselves and not
1:18:00make appeals to supernatural agents that
1:18:02we can't demonstrate or that don't seem
1:18:04to intervene on our our behalf. And if
1:18:06they exist, they're free to come in and
1:18:08step up and tell us where we're doing it
1:18:10wrong. But for now, we're just going to
1:18:12try to do the best we can with what we
1:18:14have to make the world a better place.
1:18:16That's that's the foundation of secular
1:18:18humanism, not any proclamation that
1:18:20we've got it right.
1:18:29So,
1:18:31I would say that
1:18:33the primary religious language, in in so
1:18:36far as there is such a thing. It's
1:18:37something I tried to detail in Maps of
1:18:40Meaning.
1:18:41First book I wrote. It's a very
1:18:42complicated book.
1:18:44But
1:18:46religious propositions are in some sense
1:18:49abstracted generalizations about what
1:18:52being consists of and how to act in it.
1:18:56It's not the same thing as a set of
1:18:57hypotheses about material reality.
1:19:00And it's partly because in the religious
1:19:01domain
1:19:03the the moral imperative is primary.
1:19:06Whereas in the empirical domain
1:19:09the factual
1:19:12the factual domain is primary or the
1:19:14sensory domain is primary, something
1:19:16like that. So the question from the
1:19:17religious perspective is something like
1:19:20how is it best how should we best
1:19:22construe the world if we wish to
1:19:24determine how to act properly within it.
1:19:29And
1:19:30the way that that language has developed
1:19:32it it's developed over
1:19:34it's developed as a consequence of an
1:19:36evolutionary process, both biological
1:19:38and cultural.
1:19:39And it's culminated in a set of
1:19:43of stories essentially that have
1:19:45characters.
1:19:47The characters basically represent
1:19:49something like the permanently
1:19:51unknowable.
1:19:52And so that's the mystery that surrounds
1:19:54us all. That would be associated say
1:19:56with the potential of the future and the
1:19:58potential in you. But the the part of
1:20:00being that's transcendent, right? That
1:20:02constantly escapes from your theorizing.
1:20:05That's the unknown. It's like unexplored
1:20:07territory for animals.
1:20:09And it's it's a permanent part of of
1:20:11being.
1:20:12So there's unexplored territory, the
1:20:14unknown, and there's explored territory,
1:20:16culture, the known, and that's this room
1:20:19and that's the cultural mores that unite
1:20:23us well enough so that we can all sit
1:20:24here and be peaceful while we're while
1:20:26we're discussing difficult things. So
1:20:28that's the landscape, the religious
1:20:29landscape. That's yin and yang. That's
1:20:31chaos and order.
1:20:33Interestingly enough, it looks like it's
1:20:35to that landscape that our brain has
1:20:37adapted.
1:20:38Because the right hemisphere looks like
1:20:40it's roughly responsible for processing
1:20:42chaos and the unknown, and the left
1:20:44hemisphere roughly responsible for
1:20:46processing the known and the familiar.
1:20:48And that's on good evidence. If you
1:20:50don't want to take my word for it, you
1:20:52can read Ian McGilchrist's book, The
1:20:54Master and His Emissary, which is quite
1:20:55masterful treatment of the
1:20:57neuropsychological literature.
1:20:59And so that's the religious domain, yin
1:21:01and yang, chaos and order.
1:21:03And it places human beings at the center
1:21:06of that.
1:21:07The idea is that we're always confronted
1:21:10by what we understand and how to adapt
1:21:12to that, even if it even in its
1:21:14tyrannical
1:21:15manifestation. And we're always faced
1:21:18with the
1:21:19with the permanent reality of the
1:21:20permanently incomprehensible that can
1:21:22burst into our life at any moment and
1:21:24disrupt it. That's reality.
1:21:28And then the religious question is, if
1:21:30that's reality, how do you orient
1:21:32yourself in relationship to those two
1:21:34permanent domains?
1:21:36And the answer to that is something
1:21:37like, pursue the instinct of meaning.
1:21:41Because it looks like meaning is the
1:21:44instinctive response,
1:21:46neuropsychologically grounded in in the
1:21:48orienting reflex, I would say, which is
1:21:50a very primordial reflex to the unknown.
1:21:52Meaning is the response that orient us
1:21:55in that world. And so when we're engaged
1:21:57in a meaningful enterprise, it's a
1:21:59signal from the deepest elements of our
1:22:01biological being that we have the
1:22:03balance between what we know and makes
1:22:06us secure and what we don't know and
1:22:08have yet to explore properly synced.
1:22:12And that makes us secure, but not
1:22:15totalitarian,
1:22:16and engaged, but not terrified.
1:22:20And by staying on that midpoint, that
1:22:22midpoint of balance, that's Tao, by the
1:22:24way, that's the way from the Taoist
1:22:26perspective. By staying on that
1:22:28midpoint, we do what's best for us,
1:22:31what's best for our families, what's
1:22:33best for our community, and God only
1:22:35knows beyond that. We do all of that
1:22:38simulta- simultaneously, and we can tell
1:22:41that we're doing that.
1:22:43It speaks to us when we're doing that.
1:22:45And that's the deepest of religious
1:22:47instincts.
1:22:48And it's that
1:22:49capability to orient on that border
1:22:52between chaos and order that's
1:22:55exemplified in great mythological heroes
1:22:57like St. George who goes out to slay the
1:22:59dragon,
1:23:01or or Christ who welcomes death, who
1:23:04embraces
1:23:06who embraces
1:23:08mortality and vulnerability and strives
1:23:11forward nonetheless.
1:23:13And there's nothing outside of the
1:23:15religious language that communicates
1:23:17that kind of grandeur. There's nothing
1:23:20that you can use to communicate to
1:23:21people who are in the direst of straits
1:23:24what's most important about life in in
1:23:26the manner that will help set them
1:23:28straight and put their soul at peace.
1:23:32So, that's the advantage of the
1:23:33religious language.
1:23:46Yes, sir.
1:23:48Well, thank you both for a very
1:23:50interesting and revealing exchange.
1:23:54Uh my question is for you, Dr. Peterson.
1:23:56Um
1:23:57you alluded to an important distinction
1:24:00between someone who would actually be an
1:24:02atheist and someone who merely professes
1:24:04to be an atheist. You implied that
1:24:07Matt and others are not genuinely
1:24:09atheists.
1:24:11I'm curious
1:24:13why you think that.
1:24:15Is it just because we have sacred
1:24:17values, that everyone has sacred values?
1:24:20What in your view would a genuine
1:24:22atheist be like? He'd be like
1:24:24Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment.
1:24:28And I can't really come up with a better
1:24:30answer than that because it's such a
1:24:31complicated question that that's the
1:24:33right answer. You know, I love that
1:24:36book. It's an amazing book and it's it's
1:24:38a great thriller by the way if if if
1:24:40there are some of you, perhaps many of
1:24:41you haven't read it. You you really
1:24:43should read it because it might be the
1:24:44greatest novel ever written. I think you
1:24:46can make a case for that. It's
1:24:47unbelievably exciting once you get into
1:24:49it. And Raskolnikov he plots the perfect
1:24:52murder. It's so interesting because
1:24:54Dostoevsky the last thing Dostoevsky
1:24:57ever did was make a straw man out of his
1:24:59opponents, let's say. What Dostoevsky
1:25:02did in all of his great novels was
1:25:04make his enemies, let's say, or or make
1:25:07each of the positions that he was trying
1:25:09to contend with as powerful and
1:25:11admirable as he possibly could. And
1:25:14since he was an absolutely spectacular
1:25:16genius, he could really do that. And so
1:25:19Raskolnikov plots a murder. And he
1:25:21murders this horrible woman who's
1:25:23horrible according to everyone who knows
1:25:25her, who also has enslaved her rather
1:25:29mentally feeble niece, and who does
1:25:31nothing but make people miserable
1:25:33consciously all the time.
1:25:36And he does that in order to save his
1:25:38sister from a rather sophisticated form
1:25:41of prostitution, to save himself from
1:25:43starvation so that he can become a great
1:25:45lawyer and and help people. Right? So
1:25:48Dostoevsky sets up the stage. Here is
1:25:51the perfect situation for a murder and
1:25:54all of the rational choices point in
1:25:56that direction. And Raskolnikov, who's
1:25:58also sort of torturing himself or sort
1:26:01of tortured cuz he's sort of hungry and
1:26:02not very well, not thinking very
1:26:04clearly,
1:26:06he he undertakes the murder.
1:26:08And he gets away with it.
1:26:11And he's before he does it, he berates
1:26:13himself in what I would describe as
1:26:17the negative atheistic style.
1:26:20And he basically says, "Look,
1:26:22there is every rational reason
1:26:25to split this woman's skull with an axe.
1:26:28Look at all the good I would do. Look at
1:26:30all the well-being I would enhance."
1:26:33And so he does it.
1:26:35And then all hell breaks loose.
1:26:37And
1:26:39what Dostoevsky was was See, Raskolnikov
1:26:42built himself up to the murder in part
1:26:44by laying out the rational case, but
1:26:46also by saying,
1:26:48"Well, there's no God.
1:26:49There's no metaphysical reason that's
1:26:52stopping me from committing this act.
1:26:54And there's all these reasons that
1:26:56appear perfectly rational pushing me in
1:26:58that direction. Perhaps I'm nothing but
1:27:00a moral coward for failing to undertake
1:27:03it."
1:27:04So he does.
1:27:06But what he finds out is that he broke
1:27:07an inviolable moral rule,
1:27:10something that spoke to his own soul, so
1:27:12to speak. And the rest of the book
1:27:14basically involves his sequential
1:27:17post-traumatic unraveling.
1:27:20And the post-traumatic issue is very
1:27:21interesting because one of the things
1:27:23you do do see happening with
1:27:25post-traumatic stress disorder is that
1:27:27it's very often
1:27:29it very often occurs in people who watch
1:27:31themselves do something of great
1:27:33malevolence by their own admission. I'm
1:27:35I'm not projecting this onto them.
1:27:38They've watched themselves do They've
1:27:39stepped outside the ancient moral code
1:27:43unwittingly
1:27:44and pre- and conducted themselves in a
1:27:47manner they cannot reconcile themselves
1:27:49to, and they are permanently broken.
1:27:53So,
1:27:54there are works like that,
1:27:56Crime and Punishment first first and
1:27:58foremost, I would say, that do a lovely
1:28:00job of
1:28:01elucidating in narrative form
1:28:04how these self-evident moral
1:28:06presuppositions are necessarily nested
1:28:08inside this broader narrative
1:28:10metaphorical substrate, and that you use
1:28:13your rationality divorced from that
1:28:15metaphorical substrate at your peril.
1:28:18And I believe that to be case the case.
1:28:20I think that's an accurate psychological
1:28:22summation.
1:28:24Thank you. Um, I'm curious if Matt has
1:28:25any thoughts on the matter.
1:28:29You think?
1:28:33I have plenty.
1:28:36It's so it's
1:28:37it it's rather surprising and I promise
1:28:39you I
1:28:40don't mean this to be insulting because
1:28:42I definitely place you uh
1:28:45considerably higher than most of the
1:28:46apologists that I've engaged with.
1:28:48But there's a common theme from the
1:28:50apologists.
1:28:52And that is
1:28:53you're not really an atheist
1:28:56because
1:28:59Now, in Dr. Peterson's case, it's
1:29:02you're not really an atheist because in
1:29:04my mind an atheist is someone who would
1:29:05be a murderer. And so I'm just rather
1:29:08than saddle you with that, you just
1:29:09think you're an atheist, uh but really
1:29:11you're not.
1:29:16From other apologists, it's
1:29:19you think you're an atheist, but you're
1:29:21not because God's written his moral code
1:29:22on his on your heart. Is is what This is
1:29:25essentially
1:29:27as far as I can tell what was expressed
1:29:29in some way. That that there's a moral
1:29:31foundation, a moral center that God has
1:29:32imbued people with and that we all know
1:29:35this or we all recognize it or you're
1:29:36not really an atheist or this is what an
1:29:38atheist would do. Um
1:29:41An atheist is somebody who doesn't
1:29:43believe there's a God. I am not
1:29:45convinced there's a God. That doesn't
1:29:46necessarily mean I'm convinced there are
1:29:48no gods.
1:29:49Um although that is a subset of hey, I
1:29:53don't believe there's a God and then
1:29:54there's a subset that is I I believe
1:29:56there are no gods.
1:29:58This is as I've talked about previously
1:30:00independent of whether or not I can be a
1:30:02moral being or do good things.
1:30:04Independent from whether or not there's
1:30:05all and wonder or purpose and meaning in
1:30:07my life.
1:30:08Uh
1:30:09in much the same way that
1:30:11you know, previously wanted to kind of
1:30:13say, "Oh, this is this is uh a secular
1:30:15humanist, you know, regime that was just
1:30:17awful." Well, it wasn't secular
1:30:18humanism.
1:30:20There were atheist fans who wrote me
1:30:23that were like, "Oh man, I can't wait
1:30:24till you do this conversation with with
1:30:26Jordan." And I was like, "Cool."
1:30:28And still, I hope that we have many more
1:30:30conversations as well. I cuz just saying
1:30:33one thing that I find irritating is
1:30:35never going to be enough to get rid of
1:30:36me.
1:30:39But I asked them,
1:30:41"Great, I'm not that familiar with him.
1:30:42What is it about him that you like and
1:30:45and what are the concerns?" And they
1:30:46they came back with a bunch of things.
1:30:49Um
1:30:51None of them said anything about
1:30:54agreeing with views on religion. They
1:30:55seem very confused on those things.
1:30:58And so, the good news
1:30:59for them is that while he thinks
1:31:02atheists would be murderers,
1:31:04he doesn't actually think you're an
1:31:06atheist. And that is
1:31:08his way of getting around acknowledging
1:31:12things that conflict with his worldview.
1:31:14I don't get to decide who is or isn't a
1:31:16true Christian. I didn't even get to
1:31:17decide that when I was a believer. I
1:31:20definitely don't get to do it now. So,
1:31:21if somebody tells me they're a
1:31:22Christian, I'm going to have to accept
1:31:24that. I have a model in my head of what
1:31:26that means. I have a model in my head of
1:31:28what it means to be a Muslim, but I'm
1:31:30willing for them to explain to me what
1:31:32their model is. I know I know people who
1:31:33identify as Christian atheists. They
1:31:35really love the stuff that Jesus said,
1:31:38but they don't actually believe there's
1:31:39a God. You know, Thomas Jefferson
1:31:40famously cut out the Jefferson Bible and
1:31:43removed every reference to the
1:31:44supernatural
1:31:45and miracles and things like that
1:31:46because he really admired the teachings
1:31:48of it. And sure, you can I think you
1:31:50could be a cultural Christian in that
1:31:52uh if if you wanted to.
1:31:54It's
1:31:55strange to me
1:31:57that I'm not sitting here with somebody
1:32:00like Ray Comfort when I'm told
1:32:03you're not really an atheist because
1:32:05you're too good
1:32:07to be an atheist.
1:32:09And this is what atheists hear all the
1:32:11time when they come out they've been
1:32:13sidelined because of religious privilege
1:32:15around the world for years and then
1:32:16atheists come out to their family
1:32:17members or friends or people they've
1:32:18known for years and they're like,
1:32:20"You're an atheist? How can that be?
1:32:21You're such a good person. I've known
1:32:23you all this time." It's because the
1:32:25mindset of what people have about what
1:32:28an atheist is has been poisoned by
1:32:31religious proclamations. We have been
1:32:34denigrated from the pulpit and it has
1:32:36seeped into every aspect of culture
1:32:38right up to the height of intellectual
1:32:41pursuits. And it's time for that to end.
1:32:53And I hate to tell you, you get the last
1:32:56question for us. Oh, that's so much more
1:32:58pressure than I can handle.
1:33:02They're flagging me. Okay. Um you want
1:33:04to talk more about consciousness or more
1:33:07about morality?
1:33:09It's your question, man. Okay.
1:33:11Um
1:33:13morality? Yeah, all right, fine.
1:33:15So Yeah, cuz that'll be quick. Yeah.
1:33:18Not not like consciousness would have
1:33:19been any quicker. So Matt, I thanks so
1:33:22much for come back to Toronto. Always
1:33:24great to hear you talk. Dr. Peterson,
1:33:25thanks for coming.
1:33:27Um
1:33:28you seem Sorry.
1:33:30Mr. Peterson, you seem sort of very
1:33:32willing to talk about how evolution and
1:33:35biological underpinnings can influence
1:33:37the meta-narrative down the road that,
1:33:40you know, underpins our lives.
1:33:42But
1:33:44can't it also just be that evolution
1:33:45underpins morality without that extra
1:33:48step? Like isn't it enough that the only
1:33:51animals that evolved are the ones that
1:33:53didn't die and the only ones that
1:33:55evolved in a civilized the only ones
1:33:57that evolved into a society are the ones
1:33:58that could live in a civilized society.
1:34:01Like isn't it really clear that there
1:34:03are evolutionary underpinnings to
1:34:05morality and that there are animals that
1:34:08display morality and that it's not just
1:34:10humans. We're really good at it, but
1:34:11we're not the only ones.
1:34:14Well, I would say certainly the last
1:34:16part of your statements are true is that
1:34:18you can see
1:34:20what
1:34:22what what
1:34:23like morality in some senses an emergent
1:34:26property of of group interactions. It's
1:34:28it's more complicated than that cuz it's
1:34:30group interactions across time.
1:34:32It's more complicated than that. You see
1:34:34the clear underpinnings of morality in
1:34:36animals. Sure.
1:34:38You're asking
1:34:40does there have to be something
1:34:41metaphysical beyond that?
1:34:43No, I'm saying what seems metaphysical
1:34:45to us is just cuz we're like really
1:34:48faulty analyzers of the real world. Like
1:34:50the whole shadows in the grass type one
1:34:52and
1:34:53sorry like false positive false
1:34:54negative.
1:34:55But like
1:34:57why we wouldn't be a society if we were
1:35:00just naturally disposed to being
1:35:03immoral. Like morality's entirely
1:35:05selfish. It's really good for me to be
1:35:06moral cuz my life's really good that way
1:35:08and it makes me feel really good to be
1:35:10nice to other people. If it felt like
1:35:12to be nice to other people, I
1:35:13wouldn't do it. So we evolved to be
1:35:15moral. There's a reason it makes us feel
1:35:17good.
1:35:19Well,
1:35:20okay.
1:35:21Look, I'm going to refer to Jung again.
1:35:23Um
1:35:24Jung did
1:35:26hypothesize that the god He talked a lot
1:35:29about the god image in human beings,
1:35:32which was distinct from god.
1:35:34And you could say, let's say let's go
1:35:37back to the psychedelic issue.
1:35:40You could say that
1:35:41people can have intense mystical
1:35:43experiences, even intense mystical
1:35:46experiences of a deity
1:35:48directly, let's say, because that does
1:35:50happen, without that being construed as
1:35:53evidence for the existence of a deity.
1:35:56Right? We The The religious instinct
1:35:58could be built so deep into us that we
1:36:00can't get outside it, even if it's just
1:36:03a materialistic instinct. Well, some
1:36:05people can get outside it. Mhm.
1:36:08Let him finish cuz we're out of time.
1:36:09We're out of
1:36:11But and I don't I don't really know how
1:36:14to distinguish between those things. I'm
1:36:16not even sure that you can distinguish
1:36:18between them. Um
1:36:22Now, do I have anything else to say
1:36:23about that in closing?
1:36:27No, I guess I don't. I mean, I tried to
1:36:29lay out these views, the answer to your
1:36:32question, in detail in my first book.
1:36:34It's about 600 pages long and it's
1:36:38and it's really, really, really, really
1:36:40hard.
1:36:42But it does address what you're asking
1:36:44and I don't think there's a real simpler
1:36:46way of doing it.
1:36:47I couldn't I didn't find one.
1:36:50I don't have a couple things to add
1:36:51before we close this out. First of all,
1:36:53uh
1:36:54I've no idea how long my first book's
1:36:55going to be, but it won't be 600 pages.
1:36:57Uh
1:36:59Not that there's anything wrong with
1:37:00that.
1:37:02Uh also,
1:37:05I don't think I have anything specific
1:37:06to to tag on to to your question because
1:37:08I I get the impression that we're likely
1:37:10on the same similar pages
1:37:12because I think that this is the moral,
1:37:15cultural aspects of this are something
1:37:17that happened naturally. We We observe
1:37:19in other primates senses of fairness.
1:37:21And the key cornerstones for morality
1:37:23from my perspective, while I gave an
1:37:25outline for a secular moral system, the
1:37:27foundations of that are empathy
1:37:30and the desire to have a good life. And
1:37:33the last note
1:37:35is one time when I was on LSD,
1:37:40I was staring at the wood grain on the
1:37:41bathroom door.
1:37:43I don't know why I was in the bathroom,
1:37:46but I was there.
1:37:49And from the wood grain on the bathroom
1:37:50door, an image formed. This is not a
1:37:53joke.
1:37:54It was a strawberry
1:37:58with an S on its chest cuz and a face
1:38:02and a cape.
1:38:05And super strawberry
1:38:09flew off that bathroom door and did a
1:38:11lap around my head before it smacked
1:38:13right into the door and became wood
1:38:14grain again.
1:38:15Coolest trip ever.
1:38:20And despite that, I don't think it
1:38:22points to the reality of super
1:38:23strawberry or his abilities.
1:38:33And because
1:38:35because that was an incredibly unfair
1:38:37applause line to end the night with, I'd
1:38:39like to let Dr. Peterson give one last
1:38:42remark and then we will thank you all
1:38:43and say good night. So, if you have
1:38:45anything to to add or close with on
1:38:47anything we've discussed this evening.
1:38:51Well, I I I only have one thing to say.
1:38:53I mean, I'm very pleased, for what
1:38:56that's worth,
1:38:57that
1:38:58these sorts of discussions are taking
1:39:00place
1:39:01and that there's a an avid public
1:39:04audience for them. It's like, great, you
1:39:06know?
1:39:08Yeah.
1:39:10And on that note
1:39:12of complete agreement, thank you guys so
1:39:15much for coming out. We really
1:39:16appreciate it. I look forward to seeing
1:39:18you sometime when we come back through.
1:39:21Cheers.
1:39:22Good job. Thank you.
1:39:23Thanks.
1:39:51Oh.

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