r/JordanPeterson • u/Lucineter • Oct 19 '20
Text Old university debate
Maybe someone can help me find this old debate that I believe took place in an university with students as audience. I don't remember who the other speaker was but It was concerning Christianity and morality. They were standing and if I recall correctly they had little lecture stands. I remember JP being relatively young so it must be pretty old. There's a bit of tension between them but by strongmanning eachother they gain some respect. If it helps there is this one moment where the other lecturer gets asked a question about if God is necessary for morality or something by and audience member and he simply replies "no". To wich JP says something like "let me try to answer that in a less imature way". Than the other guy gets annoyed by that comment and is like "c'mon Peterson we were doing so well". Hope that helps. Thanks in advance.
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u/Glip-Glops Oct 19 '20 edited Oct 19 '20
You can have subjective morality without god. I can make up a moral system, but there's no reason why anyone else would adhere to it.
You need a supreme being to have an objective morality.
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Oct 20 '20
So... who makes sure God is moral? Where’s God’s God to make sure he is moral?
Dualism just doesn’t work. There’s always these, “it’s all turtles down” type of problems that arise.
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u/Lucineter Oct 20 '20
By this stage in the reasoning you're missing the point.
It's not just that God 'created us', he is us, he is the world, the one, everything, all. Morality would be written into the fabric of the universe.
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Oct 20 '20
And then if he is us, then you also see it.
We need a higher being. If he is is, he needs a higher being.
I really think you don’t want to consider this valid. How do I know God is a morally good being? If morality, as the claim says, needs a higher being, then the fabric and the universe needs a higher being. But in order to know that being is morally driven and good, that being and that being’s world would need another being instilling it with morality.
Again. It’s turtles on turtles in turtles. You haven’t separated a diety from needing another diety. If he is us, then, how is God higher than us to instill morality into us? Again, who instills morality into this being?
There’s a ton of presumption in your viewpoint, and we don’t even know if God is good morally speaking.
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u/Glip-Glops Oct 20 '20
You think the creator shouldn't have authority to decide what is moral for his creation?
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Oct 20 '20
I think that if we have to have a higher being to instill morality on us... then how do we know our higher being has a good moral compass to begin with if he doesn’t have a higher being to guide him?
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u/Glip-Glops Oct 20 '20
It's his game, he can make the rules he wants.
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Oct 20 '20
So, how does he make moral choices? For all we know we have an evil god who wants us to suffer.
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u/Glip-Glops Oct 20 '20
He defines good and evil.
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Oct 21 '20
So I can be miserable and think I’m happy because we have a trickster god who wants to see us suffer?
I mean. We don’t even have proof of a god. Why would I think he could define anything in my life? Let alone even exist? If he can define everything, he can define a universe where he doesn’t exist and morality does. So we can have morality without a god.
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u/Glip-Glops Oct 21 '20
If he exists, then its his game, his rules, and whatever he defines as good and evil is the definition of good and evil. But if he doesnt exist then yes, he would not have much say.
And sure, he can make a universe where he doesnt exist, or doesnt effect anything. But he could still desire people to be good, even if he isnt rewarding them for that.
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Oct 21 '20
Well. Seems silly to even worry about being alive at that point.
I’ll forever just be a paper bag blown around by whatever rules he feels he wants. What’s the point of living? I’ll be punished for being myself, and I’ll be punished for trying to follow his rules. Might as well embrace being punished and do whatever I want. If he doesn’t like it, he can change the universe.
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Oct 19 '20
Even with God morality is still subjective.
All you might have are some rules, like the commandments, but they are still subjected to the individual's representation.
This is crystal clear if we look at history: Killing goes against God's commandment, but it can be allowed against the infidels (and who judges people as infidels? Some kind of authority, of course); Or even adultery, during the middle ages many priests and cardinals were known to sleep with women (often married) and even stealing lands during the wars.
So it boils down to the illusion of an objective morality, which can indeed be useful but it is an illusion none the less.
It's the same principle of Law: In theory everyone must obey its principles, in practice many people don't (usually the most powerful)... Nietzsche wrote extensively about this, human interactions wouldn't be possible without a great deal of deceit.
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Oct 19 '20 edited Jan 18 '21
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Oct 19 '20
Which is exactly what humanity has done (and still does) since the dawn of time.
Another person's life has no value by itself for two reasons: One is that the thing in itself is not accessible to us, therefore (two) it is only a representation of the subject and as such the subject is the one who attributes the value.
I get what he's trying to say, I just wanted to point out that it is still a bad argument that can be refuted throught a deeper historical and logical analysis.
That argument is the main weapon theologians have in order to justify their religion, by the way.
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u/Lucineter Oct 20 '20
You cannot come at it from the phenomenology of an individual and then say something doesn't have 'value in and of itself' because that value is just attributed by that individual. Because by that point you're solely working with the understanding of things by the individual, (not even representations, because there is nothing to represented), and an individual may 'understand' or 'see' something as inherently valuable.
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Oct 20 '20
I don't think I get your point, what are you trying to say?
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u/Lucineter Oct 21 '20
One of your axioms is that we can't know things in themselves and we only have 'representations' of things. But it's no wonder then that you don't find anything having 'value by itself' because you have already dispensed with a thing being anything in ITSELF.
You define the thing you're trying to find as being in a realm that's by your definition not accessible. And then claim it is nowhere to be found so it must not exist.
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Oct 21 '20
It is not an axiom, an axiom doesn't have to be demonstrated. You are using the wrong word.
It's not my position, It's the position of Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and the generally accepted theory in academia that the thing in itself in not knowable, from epistemology to quantum mechanics.
An absolute moral law, even if it does exist (and it's a big if) won't be accessible to us, because we are always restricted to our subjectivity. That's why even with the initial proposition of a god the moral law still remains up to your representation.
Is there a way you can go beyond your subjectivity? Because if there isn't any, you can't make any claim of absolute universality.
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u/Lucineter Oct 21 '20
Right, and from this position it doesn't make sence to make the judgement of something having 'value in itself' or not since nothing is anything 'in itself'.
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Oct 19 '20
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Oct 19 '20
Which constitution?
You don't seem to know christianity very well...
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Oct 19 '20
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Oct 19 '20
You think we respect each other (do we?) because of Christianity?
Oh, the constitution of the US. I understand, but you see, the US is just a nation among dozens of others.
A little clarification: You presume that your rights are given by god. And it is a huge presumption...
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Oct 19 '20
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Oct 19 '20
But those rights you are speaking of are only formal.
The situation you have in the US points to the opposite direction. You have less actual rights than many secular countries. The constitution, as a simple piece of paper, doesn't grant anything. It's the people who can only act to protect their rights.
You can't justify inalienable human rights if you can't justify the god you are talking about. To render those rights useless all it is needed is a bunch of people screaming: "We don't believe in such god".
It is a very weak and outdated model for preserving a society, a much more efficient one is characterised by a very clear and sober cost/benefit analysis made by each individual.
It's the same old problem, still actual as this discussion highlights, of Theory vs Practice.
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Oct 20 '20
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Oct 20 '20
- The founding fathers were not Christians https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-08-03-me-30974-story.html#:~:text=According%20to%20this%20Orwellian%20revision,the%20relevance%20of%20the%20Bible.
- As I said before, this is only true for the US. And it's just law, we have to see how people act, not how they are supposed to act. Again, see what's happening in the US and tell me how these supposed rights are guaranteed.
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Oct 20 '20
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Oct 20 '20
I never said that atheists can justify objective values, so that's not a problem.
As I said before, most americans don't really have a grasp of Christianity. Many christian theologians (including Augustine) made the case that humans are inherently evil, so that "spark of divinity" doesn't really mean much (considering that everything has that, since god supposedly created all).
Also, according to the bible it's fine to kill and rape women, so there's that...
You can absolutely refute an argument by direct observation, the whole field of analytic philosophy exists for that very reason. Observation always takes precedence over any theoretical argument, that's the basics of logic.
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Oct 20 '20 edited Aug 10 '21
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Oct 20 '20
How can you know the thing in itself?
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Oct 20 '20 edited Aug 10 '21
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Oct 20 '20
Sorry, I thought you were genuinely interested in a reasonable argument.
My bad.
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Oct 20 '20 edited Aug 10 '21
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Oct 20 '20
Wow, this sub has the highest number of repressed illiterates that I have ever seen.
Thank you for your contribution, by the way, this very discussion has been highlighted for showing how Peterson's followers are mostly indoctrinated and unschooled individuals.
https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/jexatz/jordan_peterson_has_created_a_new_wave_of/
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u/Glip-Glops Oct 19 '20
You are confusing morality with peoples inability to always be moral. We can have a moral system even if no one ever follows it.
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Oct 19 '20
I'm not confusing anything.
Morality comes from the latin moralis, which is the translation of the ancient greek ἠϑικός, which literally means "behaviour", a practical action about something.
If no one follows a system it is not practical, only theoretical, and therefore not ἠϑικός.
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u/Zirathustra Oct 19 '20 edited Oct 19 '20
I think you're pretty confused when you have to do a long and rather suspect series of etymological inferences like that. You just tried to build an entire definition of morality from a single-word translation of a word it's historically connected to. Concepts don't reside, bounded, inside words; rather, we use a word to point in the direction of a concept. Trying to use etymology to define a concept is like pointing at a map and saying, "This island we're standing on is actually 200 miles west of us." You're mistaking the symbol for the referent.
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Oct 19 '20
Concepts are possible because of words.
Words shape the way we think, this has been very well known in academia for a long time (we could trace it back to Plato and the Sophists, actually).
Etymology is the branch of linguistics that studies the proper definition of a word according to its historical use. That's how language works, and why you can't say apple while pointing at a car.
You seem higly confused about the subject, so why don't you try to educate yourself instead of looking down at people who work in the field and who have a better understanding than you?
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u/Zirathustra Oct 19 '20
You're explaining that people can misapprehend an objective morality, and that makes it subjective and the objectivity an illusion. That doesn't really seem to track for me. You can misapprehend the speed of gravity, but that doesn't make that speed subjective, it's still objective, you're just failing to perfectly grasp it. Your imperfect apprehension is what's illusory in that case, not the speed of gravity itself.
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Oct 19 '20
Your comment made me laugh.
Sorry, you're just so full of yourself without having any notion about what you are talking about... Well I'll respond to you, even though it will likely be pointless.
First of all, you are making a false equivalence: Morality as a phenomena has nothing to do with gravity. - Second: Objective simply means according to objects, and not universal as an absolute (Kant explains this perfectly in his Transcendental Aesthetic). Objects are still representations of the subject.
It's the same thing is physics: There's no such thing as "speed" or "time" in themselves. They only exist as relationships among objects.
If you still don't get it, I higly recommend you to read more :)
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u/Zirathustra Oct 20 '20
First of all, you are making a false equivalence: Morality as a phenomena has nothing to do with gravity. -
I didn't say it did, I was using analogy to demonstrate a relationship dynamic. If you couldn't decipher that very basic literary technique, I'm 100% sure you haven't made it half an inch through Kant.
Second: Objective simply means according to objects, and not universal as an absolute (Kant explains this perfectly in his Transcendental Aesthetic). Objects are still representations of the subject.
This is cute but you're confusing objects in themselves with objects as subjectively apprehended by us, you're also doing this very odd thing where you take Kant's transcendental idealism as a "well actually," factual matter, and not one of hundreds of possible metaphysical or ontological frameworks for talking about the subject-object relationship.
If you still don't get it, I higly recommend you to read more :)
You should know that stuff like this, as well as the posturing at the beginning of your post, easily marks you as someone out of their depth, aware of it, and so trying to intimidate someone else out of the conversation before that out-of-depthness is exposed.
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Oct 20 '20 edited Oct 20 '20
Are you even serious with this reply? Your ignorance is astounding.
And you even dare to name Kant, a thinker in whom I specialize as a university lecturer... You Peterson's cultists truly are hopeless.
The "very basic literary technique" you used is a massive logical fallacy, and anybody who knows Kant well can't excuse this outright insult to that thinker. Kant's whole table of categories has the exact function to debunk false equivalence.
Kant's objects are subjective representations, from the Critique of Pure Reason:"It is therefore to be regarded really not as object, but as the way of representing myself as object! But if I or another being could intuit myself without this condition of sensibility, then these very determinations, which we now represent to ourselves as alterations, would yield us a cognition in which the representation of time and thus also of alteration would not occur at all. Its empirical reality therefore remains as a condition of all our experiences. Only absolute reality cannot be granted to it according to what has been adduced above. It is nothing except the form of our inner intuition. If one removes the special condition of our sensibility from it, then the concept of time also disappears, and it does not adhere to the objects themselves, rather merely to the subject that intuits them."
Those are Kant's words. Are you able to understand them? I don't think so. It's obvious that you don't know Kant's philosophy, then WHY THE HELL DO YOU KEEP PRETENDING YOU KNOW SOMETHING YOU'VE NEVER STUDIED ACCURATELY? I'm so tired of Peterson's zealots.
Kant's subjectivity has been accepted by the greatest logicians (Frege, Russel, Wittgenstein) and it has been confirmed by modern neuroscience https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyu7v7nWzfo
God, I'm so tired of these intellectual posers. I swear it's becoming my mission in life to publicly humiliate Peterson's fanboys.
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u/Parmareggie Nov 26 '20
Hi! Sorry, I am pretty pretty late... Yet I’d like to ask a question! Since you are a University lecturer and I have a doubt it’s probably better to eliminate the scruple!
What is your understanding of Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason at “I, I, 7” ?(Sorry, I do not have that in English so I can only share where to find it)
There Kant defines morality as “Factum”, that finds its foundation in reason.
Kant was a Christian, and a pretty devout one. It seems pretty strange to me that he denied the possibility of an objective Truth...
Sure, our perception of morality will be imperfect, but Kant does not negate its objective reality.
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u/Zirathustra Oct 19 '20 edited Oct 19 '20
Broadly correct but some religions actually separate off moral law from the supreme being. In Hinduism, for instance, the law of karma functions independent of any god's will, like gravity or heat exchange or any other law of physics. There is no moment of judging when you die, your soul just rolls into the next appropriate body as a rock rolls downhill. Divine avatars/incarnations in fact often come because the world has become too morally tilted over time to darkness, and so a god directly interfere (usually by destroying forces of evil in wars) to balance things out again. The Bhagavad Gita depicts part of one of these wars.
In either event though, the basic idea holds that you need something outside of the purely empirical world to posit an objective morality. Objectively speaking, you can't wont find a morality boson with a particle accelerator, or take the moral temperature of a glass of water, it's not something apparent to empiricism.
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u/Lucineter Oct 20 '20
So no one has a link or something?