 |
| 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.
_______
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.”
_________________
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.”
