Transcript of Jordan Peterson Confirming His Belief That If an Atheist Doesn’t Commit Random Violence, It’s Because, Deep Down, That Atheist Is a Theist

And: Dr. Peterson’s Assertion That “It’s Not an Obvious Fact” That a Man’s Head Being Chopped Off Would Be Detrimental to That Same Man’s Well-Being

Screen shot of Dr. Peterson’s conversation with Matthew Dillahunty.

A public assertion of Dr. Jordan B. Peterson’s is that it is only a belief in God that will stop someone from choosing to commit random acts of violence. That raises the question of how Dr. Peterson accounts for atheists who refrain from random acts of violence. Dr. Peterson’s answer is that if an atheist does not choose to commit random acts of violence, it is primarily because, deep down, that atheist must actually believe in God.

That is circular reasoning. The conclusion is that if an atheist does not commit random acts of violence, it is only because he or she, deep down, must actually believe in God. And how can we verify that? That is verified, according to Dr. Peterson, by the truth that only a belief in God can stop someone from choosing to commit random acts of violence.

Is what I wrote above an attempt to put words in Dr. Peterson’s mouth, à la Cathy Newman’s infamous interview with Dr. Peterson on Channel Four?

Below is a transcript of an exchange that Dr. Peterson had with stage mentalist Matthew Dillahunty. Dillahunty asks Dr. Peterson for clarification—asking him to confirm whether he means that if an atheist refrains from committing acts of violence, it must be because that atheist, on some level, is really a theist, a believer in God. Dr. Peterson confirms that.

The exchange begins at the 0:41:29 mark of the video of the conversation. The embedded version below should be cued so that if you click on it, it should begin at the 0:41:29 mark. (Thank you to Mark Sulkowski for informing me on May 12, 2018, about this particular video.)




On the bottom of the transcript is an exchange from the 0:47:38 mark that I found interesting as well; the assertion that Dr. Peterson makes there may sound outlandish to many people, but it is not considered outlandish among philosophy graduate students. There, Dr. Peterson’s position is that if a man’s head is chopped off, it is “not an obvious fact” that the decapitation is detrimental toward the man’s well-being. According to Dr. Peterson, such an assessment is no more than a subjective opinion.

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Dillahunty: “For years I had this thing going where people would say, ‘Oh,’—and this is kind of from where we’re getting from a different angle—I would say, ‘They [religious people] would be afraid of what we lose if we did without religion.’ And I basically said, ‘Demonstrate to me any benefit—’”

Peterson (interrupts): “—You’d lose art and poetry and drama and narrative and story . . .”

Dillahunty: “Why? Are there no godless artists and poets?”

Peterson: “There are artists and poets who [only] think they’re godless . . .”

Dillahunty: “So we’ve might’ve crossed over into a problem area—”

Peterson (over Dillahunty): “Yeah . . . No doubt.”

Dillahunty: “I can’t draw for crap, although I do draw during the show. But one of the individuals who came to the show the other night handed me something she had spent a great deal of time drawing. She’s a wonderful artist and I was grateful to get it. And while I pretend to read minds on stage, I constantly acknowledge that I can’t actually read minds, so I can’t tell you whether or not she actually believes in a god, but I can tell you that I actually don’t believe in a God, and I can write poetry.”

Peterson (before Dillahunty finishes with “—and I can write poetry”): “But you act like you do [believe in God].”

Dillahunty: “Huh?”

Peterson: “But you act like you do [believe in God]. That’s why you didn’t throw Sam [Harris] off the stage.”

Dillahunty: “No, now you’re making a claim— . . . OK, I’m telling you I don’t believe there’s a God—”

Peterson (before Dillahunty finishes): “Yeah . . .”

Dillahunty (continuing): “—and your response is to that is: I [Dillahunty] really do, because I have a moral sense. But my moral sense is utterly without any appeal to a God.”

Peterson: “[You mean only] explicitly . . .”

Dillahunty (corrects Peterson): “Or implicitly.”

Peterson (rhetorical, sarcastic): “Uh, maybe . . .”

Dillahunty (starts to talk but is interrupted).

Peterson: “That’s not so obvious.”

Dillahunty: “OK—” interrupted.

Peterson: “You regard Sam Harris as an implicitly valuable entity because, otherwise, you would just throw him off the stage. And then the question is, ‘Just exactly why is an implicitly valuable entity?’ What’s your metaphysics of that?”

Dillahunty: “I don’t think he’s implicitly valuable in the sense that . . .” stops as audience laughs.

The 0:43:21 mark.

Dillahunty: “I don’t think he’s implicitly valuable in that the Universe [being some teleological force itself] has implied that there is something explicit about it. For me, morality is far simpler—”

Peterson (interrupts): “But wait, you sounded doubtful about that.”

Dillahunty (sarcastic): “Maybe you’re the mind reader . . .”

Peterson (sarcastic back): “Well, maybe.”

Dillahunty: “—because you’ve already suggested that despite me sitting here and having talked about this for decades that I don’t believe in God, I actually do because I have a moral code. But my moral code, which I’ve—”

Peterson (interrupts): “Be more specific. I said it was because you didn’t want to throw Sam [Harris] off the stage.”

Dillahunty: “You didn’t even attempt to ask me why I didn’t throw Sam off the stage. Instead you went to ‘why do you think Sam has implicit value?’ because, according to your narrative, that’s the only [possible] justification.”

Peterson: “Well, you’re afraid of being punished.”

Dillahunty: “No.”

Peterson: “Oh.”

Dillahunty: “I think I can have a perfectly acceptable foundation for secular morality even if it fundamentally centers around selfishness. I’d rather not be thrown off the stage. It’s in my best interest to encourage that sort of understanding in others, and therefore I will not throw him off the stage. I would rather not have my stuff stolen, and thus it’s in my best interest to encourage others not to do that, so I will not steal stuff, and I will work with others to ensure that people who steal stuff are punished. It is in a virtually pragmatic moral system—”

Peterson (interrupts): “Why do you think it’s not in your best interest to have stuff stolen from you or to be thrown off the stage?”

Dillahunty: “Why is it not in my best interest . . .?”

Peterson: “Yeah, yeah . . . You don’t get to think, ‘Oh, that’s self-evident.’ It’s like, ‘Nothing is self-evident to the skeptic’ [throwing that idea back at him]. Let’s keep that in mind.”

Dillahunty (humorous): “Oh, well . . . so, uh . . .”

Peterson: “ ‘cause if we’re going to get skeptical here, we might as well go all the way.”

Dillahunty: “For Sam [Harris] and I, the foundation—and we’re not the only ones, but I tend to reference Sam because someone will say, ‘Well, that’s exactly what Sam Harris says’, except, you know, I’ve been giving this lecture before he wrote his book [*The End of Faith*], but his book is better than my lecture, so read his book—when I talk about this, I talk about well-being as the language that Sam uses. . .”

Peterson (interrupts, shaking his head): “SAD!”

Dillahunty: “I don’t care whether or not someone else considers that morality. I would think that, at a minimum, would you and agree that—?”

Peterson (interrupts): “That whole ‘well-being’ thing, man, as a basis for metaphysics, that’s just a non-starter.”

Dillahunty: “We’re not basing metaphysics on it.”

Peterson: “Sam is.”

Dillahunty: “No, he’s not.”

Peterson: “Yes, he is, ‘cause he’s out back to well-being.”

Dillahunty: “Well, you take it up with Sam.”

Peterson: “Well, OK, sorry. Do you think I’m wrong about that claim? That’s what I understood reading him.”

Dillahunty: “I don’t think Sam said anything metaphysical about it. So here’s the thing. We are physical beings—”

Peterson (interrupts): “Well, it’s his fundamental claim. So it’s sort of at the basis of his ethic. So he says we should work to maximize people’s well-being, or, at least . . . he does a bit more than that . . . He says we should minimize suffering.”

Dillahunty: “He’s not ‘maximize-minimize’ in this simple consequentialism. Let me do this. We’re physical beings in a physical universe, and laws [of Nature] dictate how things work in the universe. They [the laws of nature] are the ultimate arbiters of what is or isn’t in our best interest, whether we know it or not. So, for example, as far as I can tell—”

Peterson (interrupts): “Then why do you need free will?”

Dillahunty: “I don’t think we have free will.”

Peterson: “Then why do you attribute agency to things, if the laws of the universe— . . . There was a contradiction . . .”

Dillahunty: “Free will isn’t relevant to this.”


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The 0:47:38 mark.

This embedding should be cued to start at 0:47:38.


Dillahunty: “The reason we talk about this [ethics] in terms of well-being is because irrespective of whether or not I care about well-being, there are facts about well-being.”

Peterson (challenges): “Sure, let’s hear ‘em, man. And line those suckers up.”

Dillahunty: “If you chop off my head, it’s in contradiction to my well-being.”

Peterson: “No, I wasn’t willing to grant you that, actually [that chopping off someone’s head is bad for his well-being]. I’m saying that [the observation that chopping off someone’s head will hurt him] is [only] a metaphysical presupposition. You’re just saying I have to accept that [chopping off someone’s head will hurt him].”

Dillahunty: “No, I’m not telling you at all what to accept.”

Peterson: “Sure you are. You’re saying your death would be [normatively] wrong [as a value-judgment, as opposed to being a fact].”

Dillahunty: “I’m trying to explain what my position is.”

Peterson: “OK, but  you said that that wouldn’t be in accordance with your well-being. ’kay, that’s a  metaphysical statement, a philosophical statement. It’s not an obvious fact.”

Two Interpretations of Hume's Is-Ought Dictum, and a Reply to Each

Stuart K. Hayashi

In moral debate, participants frequently bring up David Hume’s Is-Ought Dictum. It can be summarized as follows:

Truths or facts cannot be where proper prescriptive rules of human conduct come from. That a truth or fact Is (meaning, is a truth or fact already validated) cannot tell you what you Ought or Ought Not to do. The simpler statement of this is: “You cannot get Ought-to-Do or Ought-Not-to-Do from that which Is.”

There are two possible interpretations for this:

1. The Contextualist Interpretation: Truths or facts, by themselves and out-of-context, are not sufficient to indicate what you ought or ought not to do. Yet, that an out-of-context datum, by itself, is not sufficient to tell you what you ought or ought not to do, does not properly preclude you from taking facts into consideration of what you ought to do upon already having chosen the proper standard of value.
2. The Nihilist Interpretation: Truths and facts do not properly tell you what you ought or ought not to do; period. It is indeed possible for you to take pertinent truths and facts into consideration for the purpose of accomplishing some goal, but there is still no objective reason why you ought or ought not to strive for that particular goal. Since truths and facts do not tell you what your goals ought or ought not to be, it follows that truths and facts have zero bearing on what you ought or ought not to do. In sum, truths and facts are ultimately irrelevant in judging, in the grand scheme of everything, whether your past actions were were objectively moral or not.

The first interpretation is partially true, and, even in conceding its partial truthfulness, it must be qualified. Insofar as the first interpretation is true, it is as much indubitably because it gives us some wiggle room whereby we can still get Ought from that which Is. By contrast, the second interpretation is wholly false and nihilistic. More than that, any time someone invokes Hume’s Is-Ought Dictum in an effort to get your to accept the second interpretation and thereby influence your thinking, it is implicitly self-refuting.

Interpretation 1 Meets Objectivist Metaethics

Again, Interpretation 1 (the Contextualist Interpretation) is correct inasmuch as it gives us room to get Ought from that which Is, provided that it is in the proper context. My standard of value is my life, meaning that my main goal -- and thus the source of every subsequent goal -- is to live life to the fullest. Note that this must be distinguished from mere physical survival. If I die at 121 years of age and was in consistent misery before then, that was physical survival but it was not living to the fullest. The to the fullest refers to quality of existing being the utmost within that duration, maximizing life not merely in terms of time span but also in terms of comfort and enjoyment.

 Truths and facts, by themselves -- outside of the context of how they affect my life -- are not enough to tell me what I ought or ought not to do. When the fact of gravity, the fact that [momentum] = [mass] x [velocity], and the fact that [final velocity] = [initial velocity] + [ (acceleration) x (time)], are isolated from any context pertaining to living my life to the fullest, such facts remain irrelevant.

Portrait of David Hume by Allan Ramsay, 1766.

Once we introduce the context of my goal to live my life to the fullest, though, such facts become pertinent. As my main goal is to live my life to the fullest, it follows that it would be contrary to this main goal for me, as a young man, to die painfully, violently, and quickly, based on some accident or misjudgment. In line with my goal, the facts about gravity and momentum and mass and human physiology do tell me that I ought not to jump out of a skyscraper’s fifth-story window; that would kill me.

Once I have chosen living life to the fullest as my primary goal, I can assess truths and facts to ascertain what my other goals ought or ought not to be, in direct contradiction to the nihilism of the second interpretation of Hume’s Is-Ought Dictum. With my primary goal of life maximization in mind, I assess facts to determine what priorities I select as my secondary goals -- the secondary goals being intended to serve the first goal.

1. Primary goal: Live life to the fullest, which requires that I not die in the next few weeks.
2. Truth or fact: I will die if I do not eat anything within the next few weeks.
3. Conclusion: I ought to eat within the next few weeks. As a corollary to that, my secondary goal is to find suitable food to eat.

Thus, we can form some agreement with Interpretation 1 of Hume’s Is-Ought Dictum though, as I shall explain in the section directly below, there is one primary Is that is sufficient to validate the subsequent Ought’s. Truths and facts, out of context, remain insufficient to guide me on what I ought or ought not to do. However, when we introduce the primary goal of maximizing life, truths and facts are precisely what we evaluate to instruct us on what we ought or ought not to do.

What the Most Important ‘IS’ Is
Yes, Interpretation 1 of Hume’s Is-Ought Dictum is true, insofar as truths and facts -- separated from the context of maximizing your life -- are not enough to convey to you what your secondary goals ought to be or ought not to be. In one important respect, though, there is one singular fact or truth -- one singular Is -- that provides the basis for every Ought-to-Do and Ought-not-to-Do in your life. That truth and fact -- that most important Is -- is the fact that you live, the fact of your very existence. Once you accept that fact and accordingly opt to push for life to the fullest, at least in practice if not in conscious and explicit philosophizing, you end up considering the truths and the facts -- everything that Is, pertinent to you -- in ascertaining what you Ought and Ought Not to do in reaching the secondary goals that maintain and improve your life. That one Is -- your life -- is the foundation for everything you Ought and Ought Not to do. In that respect, even Interpretation 1 is misleading. One grand truth and fact -- your existence -- ultimately justifies every ethical prescriptive. You are the Is that justifies Ought.

Here is another manner in which it can be phrased. Your life is the fact which gives meaning to value; your life is the "Is" that gives meaning to Ought and Ought Not.

Hence, it is facts and truths -- the Is -- that properly give rise to Ought-to-Do and Ought-Not-to-Do. On that understanding, Ought-to-Do and Ought-Not-to-Do NECESSARILY come from Is.

Interpretation 2: The Nihilistic Interpretation
In his arguments, the late Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick implicitly accepts Interpretation 2 of Hume’s Is-Ought Dictum. In direct rebuttal to Objectivism, Nozick proclaims that there is no reason why you ought to choose a full life as your primary goal. And, he adds, if there is no out-of-context Is -- no out-of-context truth or out-of-context fact -- that commands you to choose a full life as your primary goal, then it follows that is no objective reason, in the grand scheme of everything, why you Ought-to-Do or Ought-Not-to-Do anything.

Thus, what can be inferred from Nozick’s argument is that facts and truths can never provide any input in helping you consider what you ought or ought not to do. That is, Nozick’s argument is that it is not merely the case that out-of-context truths and out-of-context facts -- separated from the goal of a full life -- are unable to provide a guide for ethical prescription. Rather, Nozick goes as far as saying that in any and every context, truths and facts will never have any bearing on what you should or should not do.

This is not to say that Nozick explicitly denies there is any morality, though. Explicitly influenced by Immanuel Kant, Nozick puts forth what he proclaims to be absolute objective moral principles, and then adds that such allegedly absolute objective moral principles did not and cannot come from observation-based reasoning. (That is, though Kant and Nozick would not put it in such explicit terms, this really comes down to their allegedly absolute and objective principles being unsubstantiated and arbitrary.)

My answer to Nozick is the same one that Ronald E. Merrill gave him. I entirely concede that there is nothing I can say or cite to make you choose full living as your primary goal. But unlike Nozick, I do not see this as any sort of dilemma for Objectivism. Anyone who does not want to live fully is free to go somewhere and die. It is for those of us who choose maximal living -- at least, choose it in practice if not by conscious explication -- that secondary goals become pertinent. And to reach those secondary goals, we must consider the facts and act in accordance with them, and that is where Is becomes a guide for what we Ought and Ought Not to do.

Hume’s Is-Ought Dictum Is Truth, So You Ought Not...
Now I want to address the internal contradiction of anyone in an ethical debate, such as Nozick, invoking Interpretation 2 of Hume’s Is-Ought Dictum in order to influence the thinking and debate behavior of his debate interlocutor. Anytime someone in an ethical debate cites Interpretation 2 of Hume’s Is-Ought Dictum to you, there is an implicit imparting to you that there is something you Ought-to-Do or Ought-Not-to-Do in ethical debates, based on the premise that Hume’s Is-Ought Dictum is itself a truthful Is.

The reasoning is as follows.

• Explicit Statement 1: Hume’s Is-Ought Dictum is that you cannot properly learn what you Ought or Ought Not to do, based on truths or facts, based on what Is.
• Explicit Statement 2: Hume’s Is-Ought-Dictum is the truth. Hume’s Is-Ought Dictum is a truthful Is.
• Implicit Conclusion You Are Supposed to Draw From This: Based on the truthful Is that is Hume’s Is-Ought Dictum, you Ought Not to derive any Ought-Not from any truthful Is.

You see the internal contradiction there? Someone tells me that Hume’s Is-Ought Dictum is a fact or, at minimum, an objective truth. Based on acceptance of this objective truth -- this objective Is -- that is Hume’s Is-Ought Dictum, I Ought to stop making these ridiculous attempts to argue that Ought-to does come from Is.

“Cannot Do It” Vs. “Ought Not to Try It”?
In response to my pointing out this internal contradiction, one apologist for Interpretation 2 of Hume’s Is-Ought Dictum (who claims to be an Objectivist!), replied along these lines:

No, no, no, no, no! You Ought to [why should I Ought-to, silly?!! --S.H.] pay heed to the distinction between my saying you are forever unable to do something versus my saying you ought not to try to do it. When I cite Hume’s Is-Ought Dictum, I am not telling you that you Ought or Ought Not to pay heed to it; I am not telling you that you Ought Not to try to get your Ought -Not rules from that which Is. I am merely saying that if you do attempt such an effort, you will always fail, because it is logically impossible.

I do not buy into that rebuttal, because it slyly obfuscates the implicit purpose behind telling anyone that any proposition is impossible to accomplish.

Suppose I know someone named Bob. Bob seriously believes that if he keeps flapping his arms hard enough, there will come day in the years ahead when flapping his arms will enable him to fly. I tell him, “Bob, it is impossible for you to fly, ever, by flapping your arms.” What is the point in my telling Bob this? The implicit message behind telling anyone that a proposition is impossible to accomplish is that that person ought not to act on that proposition.

If it is logically impossible for me to acquire Ought-Not-to from that which Is, then -- because living a full life is my implicit primary goal -- it logically follows I Ought Not to try to acquire an Ought-Not-to from that which Is, does it not? The point in telling someone that he is forever unable to accomplish a specific task is to convey that he ought not to expend any more effort at that specific task. Therefore, the rebuttal from that nihilistic apologist for Hume’s Is-Ought Dictum does not hold up; any citation of Interpretation 2 of Hume’s Is-Ought Dictum in philosophic debate remains implicitly self-contradictory and hypocritical, because it conveys that, in consideration of the allegedly truthful Is that is Hume’s Is-Ought Dictum, I Ought Not to do something.