Petersonfags btfo

The whole "I act as if God exists" is such an intellectual cop-out. Especially considering that he doesn't have a full personal grasp on what God is or how he *should* behave assuming a deity does exist.

I can handle and even admire not knowing. But to pretend that "I act as if God exists" is a good answer is just unacceptable for someone who claims to be an intellectual. As an equivalent, it'd be like a "public intellectual" from the 1500s saying "I act as if ghosts exist" when the question of ghosts gets brought up.

Actually a lot of academics do take this route in the psychology of religion. They do behavioural experiments and manipulate thoughts about God and death etc and watch how people's behaviour changes predictably (e.g., fanaticism increases, morality increases etc.)

Google article camera in the sky by Gervais for a taster.

It's not a cop out, it's how the organism functions, we don't behave out of rational coherent belief systems and well defined concepts.

He's committed to an existentialist thesis that you determine what people believe by how they act and not by what they hold in their mind.

How so? Can you explain how acting if God exists, is any different from God actually existing? In terms of the affects on the broader society and the individual.

As far as I'm concerned, what defines another person is the sum of their actions (and to an extent their words), not their thoughts, not what the believe. I cannot verify, disprove, or in fact, know at all, what a person is thinking on the many levels of consciousness at any given time, so what difference is it to me, as an "outside observer", does a person "acting" like God exists, or genuinely knowing God exists? Without the intimate and infinite knowledge of another persons thoughts, who's identical actions are more real? The person who knows God is real or the person who acts like God is real?

I think there has been. . . an incorrect emphasis on what people tell you they think and believe as a gauge of what they hold to be real and important. "Actions speak louder than words" is not an adage, it is truth.

>tfw Peterson is a covert postmodernist who is trying to make a buck

When a soldier goes to war not to defend his home and family, but to shed blood and kill as much people as he can, but the result is still the same - the war is won, I can't admire his actions. The motive matters.

It reeks of dishonesty to act as if God exists, but not really believing in him.

Behaviour like that instantly reminds me of the Grand Inquisitor and general jesuitism

Peterson is a covert conservative who is smart enough to know that there are no good arguments to be one. So he is forced to bend over backwards and psychoanalyze this shit out of everything and never commit to any assertion, just so he can say shit like "I pretend AS IF god exists." or "ABORTION IS WRONG!...because nobody want to do it. But I won't give you a straight answer to this question, rather I'll throw out some references to the good ol' days, where marriage """solved""" this issue. really makes you think."

Only if he does it for Pascal's wager. But his reason for doing so makes more sense.
(Tho I disagree with him.)

Should a man love his father?
Well, maybe, it depends what kind of a father he was.
But should a man love his son?
Yes, a man should love his son.

So when we believed, that God had created us, we loved him, but now you cry: "But it's the other way around, we created him!" and see that as a reason to love him less?

lmao he sounds like Alex Jones when he was on Joe Rogan

Ironically, Peterson was even more of a spaz on Joe Rogan.
youtube.com/watch?v=mJGyt2Z82hM

Maybe watch this before you fart out more idiocy.
youtube.com/watch?v=Nyw4rTywyY0 jp starts around 18m

How can you not go on Joe Rogan and sound like Alex Jones?

But literally not a single word of this is incorrect

youtube.com/watch?v=sUIcCyPOA30

youtube.com/watch?v=Ne5VbOMsQJc

>conservative

You don't get it. You're talking about it like it's a choice. Petersons point is that even the lost hardcore atheist can't HELP but have his actions dictated by evolved concepts like God, at the unconscious level.

>calling a very obvious by-the-book perennialist any specific religion

You're probably right.

Why obsess over memerson when you could be reading?

Because memerson is probably reading and if I do anything similar to that guy then it means I have daddy issues so FUCK THAT, I don't have daddy issues dads are fucking stupid and father figurrs are lame as fuck. Stop talking about dads so much, faggot.

peterson? more like peturdson i am rite lmao
he is a cuckservative

i just actually watched a couple of his videos. the comments...

post an screenshot i am not clicking on that shit

>pseud
>not literature
>memerson
>completely wrong

As expected from this plebbit colony: all these ad-homs and not a single fucking argument

I like Peterson. He helped me quit smoking cigarettes.

those are fact sweetie
just your repressed hunger for cock

Here's the same question with better answer.
youtube.com/watch?v=RIB05YeMiW8
And at the end here also, similar.
youtube.com/watch?v=3Y6bCqT85Pc

About 2:15:00

>spirits are a pattern of being in the same way air vibrations, electric impulses...

This guy is considered an intellectual? That was pure bullshit. You can tell he tries hard not to look stupid, at one point instead of saying "two sided" he says "binary" just to sound smarter. I can't believe I took him seriously before

He's gone full zany new age mystic. It was only a matter of time. I, for one, am pleased. Soon he will be taking acid and following in Learys footsteps like a fucking ex-harvard, idea-spurting, not-giving-a-fuck champion of radical off-the-wall philosophy. The way it should be done, orally and with more than a hint of contained insanity.

You can't prove god does or doesn't exist so you have to pick one. That doesn't mean you have to be certain. I think Peterson's whole thing is that he believes in God (or acts like he does) and he follows the general principles he has analysed and extracted from the Bible while not being a traditional Christian. I think he acts as though god exists because it gives him peace of mind, which is a completely valid reason.

Given how much and how positively he's talked about psychedelics it would be surprising if he hasn't tried them.

I'm pretty sure he did confirm having tried psychedelics.

>I think he acts as though god exists because it gives him peace of mind, which is a completely valid reason.
Funny how when anyone else seems to believe in god because it's a comforting thought they get mocked and laughed at but when the flavor of the month intellectual does the same it suddenly becomes reasonable.

When does this ever happen? The only people that do this are atheist Redditors who make some retarded post about muh logic and euphoria.

I'm not talking about a phase of experimentation, I'm talking about the key to meeting and taming the archetypes! The way into the real Christian worldview in the flesh, the holy sacrament! And so on and such and suchlike...

He flat out argues against this reasoning, saying the the Christian worldview and the personal responsibility to be good and just is hard work and not consoling at all. He argues that its the nihilistic worldview that offers an emotional crotch because if nothing matters objectively then you're off the hook.

The statement confesses that Peterson understands God as more than just some objective thing. It's actually a pretty good answer, more reasonable than most people on here could be expected to give.

Or comprehend.

>Two sided
>Simpler and easier to say than binary
Binary is both easier to understand and has more depth in its meaning.

I'm with you there, buddy. I have as much respect for Peterson as most of the people in this thread, he has been one of the greatest teachers I've ever had.
But a man who calls himself "deeply religious" and a Christian, when asked if he believes in God, says "I act as if God exists"? And this is the only time I've seen him struggle so much with a question, he seems very insecure about it.
I would have no problem with him simply answering "I don't know", had he never called himself a Christian. But he has called himself a Christian, and he's aware that this leads to a lot of eyebrow-raising. So he cannot stop at "I don't know", he has to try to give coherence to his answer. And he clearly struggles with it.

tl;dr Peterson shouldn't call himself a Christian when he cannot answer confidently regarding the central tenet of the Christian belief.

He clearly considers himself a man with Christian values, you don't have to be a purebred lapdog of God's to have those.

Being a man with Christian values is not the same as being a Christian.
And Peterson never called himself a man with Christian values, he called himself a Christian.

>Being a man with Christian values is not the same as being a Christian.
That depends entirely on... your values.

why the fuck isn't there a write what's on your mind thread this is bullshit i wanna complain about my life

Works for me. It seems unlikely, but maybe not impossible. Sure surprised me when he dropped a "fuck" in the last bible lecture.

He looks like RL Stine in this picture.

>ITT: reddit STILL doesn't understand the concept of Cultural Christianity
Fucks sake this is just getting sad

youtu.be/MPojltjv4M0

This lecture on "why you have to fight postmodernism" is also an absolute shitshow.

He completely misdefines a number or concepts he evidently has no understanding of ("logocentrism is a criticism of the ideas of logic and truth, these people don't believe in logic!") and just generally says a bunch of radical bullshit to pander to his obviously right leaning audience

He also keeps talking about postmodernism as if it were anything other than a vague underlying thread throughout a whole big artistic cultural philosophical era, as if it were some sort of unified theory, and randomly tries to tie it to "cultural marxism"

And his fans just eat the shit up and regurgitate it

It's just a damn mess, really not intellectually honest stuff.

Which sucks, because i used to really like peterson, at first. But he's turned an entire complex period of intellectual development into his bogeyman whilst making no actual attempt to understand why any of those ideas arose beyond just arguing that bad dumb people had bad dumb ideas.

Then he believes, and he should just say that with that explanation.

Thing is, he's not even wrong.

>these people don't believe in logic
Ever talked with a self proclaimed postodernist? They'll tell you up and down that axiomatic logic is impossible, thus literally denying the existence of logos in favor of extreme solipsism

When did they do this?

If his enemies would believe in logic, science etc. They could argue with him on the institutions they use. However they flat-out refuse or ignore it altogether. They like to focus on defamation, character assassination, censorship...

He is on a platform. Go and challenge him! Go and argue with him!

postmodernism isn't an ideology like marxism it's an epoch or episteme you can't get out of it or escape it the fact that you can choose to pick a different epoch like medieval or modern as your reference points means you are most definitely postmodern, this is one area where Veeky Forums is absolutely retarded, and it's probably because half of you never went to college and another half don't read, and there appears to be some overlap between these groups resulting in high idiocy

>PhilosophyInsights. This channel aims at extracting central points of presentations into short clips.
>It aims at showing the problems of leftist ideology (which does not include the whole left spectrum, it surely does not include classical liberals). What I mean with that is that the central topics are: craziness of today´s feminism, postmodernism, marxism and the influence of these ideologies on academia and society. Furthermore, anti-white and anti-male propaganda and restricting economic freedom.

Derrideans who spew forth about phallogocentrism are known to engage in such tomfoolery.

I somewhat agree that logic is a tool, rather than a description of the world. However, it has infinite applications and it doesn't exactly conflict with anything we have found in the world. It fits too well. Of course, I can't remember a time I have looked at the world without taking logic into account, even if I was in error.

However, logic lacks the complete ability to explain all phenomena as they are. It can explain the relationship they have or share with other phenomena. It has strict limits, like math or science.

Basically what this guy said.

You are postmodern, or postpostmodern if you don't "like" postmodernism, but you are operating from a viewpoint and within a world that has come after modernism and you can not escape this. Today's culture is postmodern, self-referentialism and irony have been absorbed into the thicket of our culture.

Again, derridean followers often spout nonsense, but logocentrism to derrida was just about the historical privileging of speech over writing or other forms of communication, or of the logical over the artistic or romantic, etc.

Derrida was prone to incomprehensibility but he is really fucking smart and has a lot of genuinely interesting ideas.

There's just no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Frankly, if I had a more comprehensive understanding of the relevant literature I would love to. Peterson seems like a fun guy to talk to, very engaging, and I'm sure with the right references I could hold my own against him in debate.

It's really disgusting to have such a blatantly and clearly politicized agenda operating under a name so general as "PhilosophyInsights", as if those things which you disagree with should not be considered philosophy.

I agree that post-modernism is often pretty ill-defined, and typically functions as more of a smear, or boogeyman/strawman stand-in for left-wing "ivory tower, elitist" academics in cultural-studies disciplines. Unlike, , I can't say I've ever come across anyone who explicitly identified themselves as a "post-modernist". Still, I think there's more to post-modernism than it being a literary epoch, or a Foucauldian episteme. It seems that when most academics or intellectuals are taking shots at "post-modernism" they're referring to a certain milieu or nexus of people associated with post-structuralism, post-colonial theory, cultural studies, queer theory, etc. Guys and girls like Derrida, Foucault, Spivek, Harraway, and Butler. I don't think it's unfair to say that there's often a shared ideological slant to much of the writing being being done in these areas, and that a lot of them, implicitly or explicitly, share a bunch of fundamental assumptions (anti-universalism with respect to standards of reason and morals, for instance). It may just be me being overly-charitable, but that's what I take to be the subject of much of the criticism people here lob at "post-modernism". Indeed, I think it deserves to be strongly criticized, especially given the significant influence it exerts on our culture, but obviously I want that criticism to be intellectually honest.

>Veeky Forums pretends as if you can answer correctly to that question

It's a bit ironic though that Memerson is a good example of a postmodernist.

It should be obvious to anyone who has been following Peterson for a while that the "I am a Christian"-thing is the big llie the guy has told, and that he's entangling himself in that lie more and more as time goes on.

I think he's trying to get conservatives and people who consider themselves to have traditional values to listen to what he has to say. He knows they won't give the thoughts he's trying to present so much as a second look if he doesn't pretend to believe in god, so he is continuously tiptoeing around the issue, when it's at least clear that to him the biblical god is a psychological/philosophical concept people develop over time, not something that precedes them. Which means what he believes in is not the biblical god, an objective entity that can tell us how to live our life, but peoples ability to form their own values. That's essentially Nietzsche.
Petersons position, when understood like this, makes sense for the most part, though it's nothing ground-breaking - but then he goes out of his way to say that he doesn't believe people can create their own valuesystems in a video on Nietzsche.

Imo he should have just been honest about his views from the start. The kinds of audience this charade has gotten him only really cares about him as that token intellectual who talks about the significance of the biblical stories. All these new viewers get out of his lectures is the feeling that they were right all along. They're not going to risk losing that by thinking about what he has to say, he's just wasting his time.

But without dank SJW boogeyman content how is it supposed to be profitable?

Sure, I can absolutely agree with that, but this sort of synechdoche concerning postmodernism is frankly, kinda rude! As you inevitably end up corrupting the word in all of it's usages and reducing it to the worst parts of the worst ideas within itself. It ceases to be a concept of any nuance and begins to be a mere symbol for whatever people associate with it and also hold in contempt.

There's no reason that postmodern literature should have to share a reputation with post-structuralists. Those guys just wanna experiment with form and fracture some narratives. There's nothing innately political to their interests.

Of course you could argue that ideology is embedded within form but that's a whole other discussion.

Idk man. Often he comes off as pretty conservative to me.

In the postmodernism video, he says, to the jeering crowd, that they "have to stop apologizing for being conservatives" and that they have to "take back the student groups" or something to that effect. It's pretty gross, pushing already aggressive irritated people further towards forceful action. Could easily cross into inciting violence.

It seems like we're largely in agreement. It is too bad that that post-modernism has become a whipping-boy and stand-in for "evil, cultural-marxist, relativism", but that's the way things have gone, and I don't really see a chance of that changing anytime soon. In any case, trying to explain the differences between post-modern literature and "post-modern" philosophy to the general public will probably get you blank stares and yawns most of the time.

I agree there's no reason that the works and ideas of, for example, Borges or Umberto Eco should be conflated with those of Lyotard or Deleuze. There aren't too many relevant similarities, at least as far as I can see. Still, the influence of guys like Paul de Man on literary theory, and by extension a lot of writers, has been huge. Hell, you've got people like David Foster Wallace dropping references to Richard Rorty in his books. I do think it's pretty clear that there's significant influence exerted back and forth between the literary and philosophical spheres. Who knows exactly what impacts that has on the politics of either. As you said, the debate over whether ideology is embedded within form (something, at least in my experience, that a lot of "post-modern" intellectuals would agree with) is an entirely different discussion. I don't really buy into it too much myself, but I don't think political influence necessarily has to propagate through writing forms. Anyways, just my two-cents. Thanks for the well thought-out response.

I hate how he always has a pained look on his face like he's deep in thought as hes speaking

Well, from my own experience as a student I'd be willing to agree that student newspapers, political groups and parlaments are dominated by some pretty spooky leftist ideologies (by which I mean to say that some of the views commonly held by my more left leaning (which is to say Marxist and Anarchist) friends are absolutely batshit), and that there can be no real discourse until that echochamber is transformed into a more open forum.

Of course conservatives can be just as crazy as progressives, centrists or anyone else (though each of these groups is crazy in their own special way). The danger lies in letting one group dominate the discourse for an extended period of time.

The reality is that in recent years people weren't debated but simply shamed and pressured out of holding conservative opinions (now it's starting to shift the other way around which is really no better). That's the kind of thing that needs to stop, and given that Peterson is advocating for believing in the power of reason and discourse I think that's what he means by taking back student groups. He's telling conservative students to stop hiding their views out of fear of being excluded and go out there and get into a university newspaper, form a studentgroup and try to get into parliament. Doesn't sound like inciting violence to me.

As other anons have pointed out, the thing that's most worrying about his views is his willingness to use postmodernism as an ill-defined bogeyman instead of, say, actually giving a lecture on postmodernism and discussing individual aspects in more detail. There's value in postmodern thought that needs to be carried over into the present, so stop lumping it all together. Whatever happened to rescuing your father from the underworld?

Since when cheap ideologies should be considered philosophy?

good thread guys i love you lit

nice trips user

Funny because Derrida doesn't.

I've noticed before on a number of occasions that Peterson gets particularly uncomfortable on this subject and generally avoids it were possible and disregards it when raised in conversation.

I thought about it for a while and I think I can reconcile it.
Peterson purports to carry himself in a manner where he tries to not say anything he doesn't know to be true or to speak other's ideas as if they were his own (he does do this but he is never exhausted in praising and dispensing credit to their source)
Based on this, the reason he is very uncomfortable on this subject is because it's ill defined and not properly mapped out in his head. Therefore he's not comfortable in speaking on something he cannot articulate clearly *because* it is not clear within him. That much is evident in the video from how he spoke on it, and I mean, he basically says as much at the end: he has thoughts but they are limited to an array of scattered notions and feelings.

Attached is an paragraph from the preface of Maps of Meaning wherein he is describing a realisation he had in his college years where he began to notice he was becoming a mouthpiece for other people's philosophies.

I dare say his agnosticism and reluctance to answer is because of this manner of being he has chosen to adopt.

I had those thoughts the other day. I've since seen this lecture and I think it largely clarifies his position and vindicates my hypothesis.

See timestamp. Some guy presses him on the issue very specifically.

youtu.be/3Y6bCqT85Pc?t=8084

Since, well, they are. Philosophy doesn't mean "good philosophy" just as art doesn't mean "good art". Refusing to label it what it by definition is only serves to stifle discussion.

That's not really the point anyway. The channel openly admits to having the goal of opposing leftist ideology - that, by definition, is politics, not philosophy. If in doing so it occasionally touches on philosophical concepts, great, but that's an eminently political goal and it should present itself as such. Philosophy is not your conservative mouthpiece.

You're right, I was too quick with the "inciting violence" bit. I still hold that Peterson ought be more responsible and thoughtful with his newfound notoriety. He has lieges of angry young alt-right types worshipping him, whether he likes it or not, and no matter how much he might like to believe it being a JBP acolyte does not necessitate reason and a willingness to listen to and respect others - I am of the belief that this is not a group that you should be passionately instructing to "take" anything.

I'm actually really bothered by the postmodern thing. Postmodernism is something I have some strong interest in and have to some extent identified with (largely in an artistic sense) and it's. . . scary to see a fairly intellectual man who I consider to have many very useful inspiring ideas rail so violently against something I've loved for a long time, especially when he doesn't even seem to honestly be trying to understand it. He'll sort of just redefine it with blanket statements about what "the postmodernists do" or think or say etc. It's troubling. I really don't think he has bad intentions.

>In any case, trying to explain the differences between post-modern literature and "post-modern" philosophy to the general public will probably get you blank stares and yawns most of the time.

In my experience, yes, it does. :///

He actually spoke recently about his reflection on the hostility that was bleeding through in his speech regarding this and what he thought about that realisation.

This is timestamped
youtu.be/3Y6bCqT85Pc?t=7396

you seem upset

Yeah, well that's because all these manchildren keep flocking to Peturdson to get some kind of father figure kick when they don't NEED it. I grew up without a dad and I turned out fine. Jesus christ JP fags are pathetic.

My issue with Peterson is not so much his belief in God as is his insistence upon this "dominance hierarchy" reductionism of his.

Since Pseuderson has demonstrated that published and highly-cited academics can be pseuds, then what is the definition of an intellectual?

You don't want to know. Then you couldn't play fast and loose with "pseud" and use it to dismiss anyone based on irrational biases.

Yeah, I get what you mean. The irony is that it's an almost Marxian economic reductionism that he critiques so much. But hey, every philosopher has their core framework and I think that's one of Petersons for sure. It's pretty hard to argue against the presence of that as one of the largest factors of intrapersonal and interpersonal structuring.

Peterson is such a fucking imbecile. Conservatism simply doesn't belong on campuses. There's a good reason why there are no respectable conservative intellectuals, and it's not the SJW boogeyman.

Why doesn't conservatism belong in campuses?

>There's a good reason why there are no respectable conservative intellectuals

The thing with you people is, even if one were to name a list, you'd go "LOL I don't think these are respectable names!!! still win!"
You're really a bunch of children.
I'm not even right wing. I consider myself fairly to the left. But it's such an embarrassment to see most of you guys never even read the opposite side.
Like you guys don't have a single book by a non-leftist author in your book case, I bet.

There is NO perspective that doesn't belong on campus. In fact, campuses should basically offer the most intense and most rigorous, best argued, most comprehensive representations of EVERY perspective.

What a horrible shilling thread.
Why won't you people just move to /pol/ if you really have to push your political agenda? Or to r*ddit for that matter?

I thought this was a board about literature in the first place.

Found the ideologue.

See, A lot of people would be happy if we could have a conversation as a society about what our values are or should be and how we might justify them, but as long as people who share your opinion are the establishment that's not going to happen, which is why you're cancer.
If you just learned to discredit opinions that have no basis in fact instead of defaming groups you dislike, if you were willing to engage people in debate over issues that are still up in the air (a lot of things your echo chamber tells you are settled fall into that category) the only ones opposing you would be a few flatearthers and creationist nuts.

Peterson is an intelligent guy who has a insightful view of the world that's congruent with reality, but his fanboys are so damn cringy I swear to god

>tfw you can't tell if bait or not