have a hard time understanding the basic premise. The idea that there was once some kind of "golden era" or "an enchanted time" when people took religion seriously (including actually believing in God) seems alien to me. — baker
I also think with Peterson many people are terribly jealous and resentful that someone like him has come along and become huge when they think they are so much smarter and better informed than Peterson. — Tom Storm
I take the view that consciousness , affect, empathy, language , sociality, take care of themselves and can be measured and understood. The hard problem of consciousness... I suspect science will resolve this one day and may already have come close, but people seem to absolutely hate and revile physicalist understandings of subjects they prefer to remain mysterious and connected to, shall we call it, God? — Tom Storm
There is only a ‘hard problem’ if one begins from a science which ignores the subject’s perspective — Joshs
But if I cringe at Peterson’s treatment of certain philosophers — Joshs
I guess if I agreed with his political
philosophy I would notice his passive-aggressive style of argumentation less. — Joshs
Perhaps , like me, you notice their personal idiosyncrasies because you dislike their ideas. — Joshs
I’m assuming youre a fan of Chomsky’s political thinking? — Joshs
It really speaks to your character that you'll invite secondary sources for the determination of your stances on primary ones, before acting facetiously so as to evade it. — Aryamoy Mitra
Give me one example of what you consider passive-aggressive. He's had thousands of interviews, so it shouldn't be hard to point to one. — Xtrix
Peterson’s reading of writers like Nietzsche isnt wildly outside the mainstream , it’s simply on the conservative end of that spectrum, which I think explains a lot of the hostility he gets from the left. To readers like me, Nietzsche is offering an exciting and profound worldview that is still ahead of its time 140 years later, so its a bit depressing to say the least when he is reduced to a mouthpiece for 19th century liberalism. — Joshs
Phenomenology doesn t force us to choose between these two but instead puts them together in a much more radical way than the mere cobbling of ‘inner feeling’ and ‘outer things’.
There is only a ‘hard problem’ if one begins from a science which ignores the subject’s perspective ( relativity and qm only take the subject into account as another physical object , which is not what I’m talking about )
and a subject whose ‘values’ are irrelevant to the understanding of ‘external’ reality. — Joshs
It almost sounds to me like you are saying if you label things differently the hard problem goes away. Which is not quite the same thing as solving it. Or is it? — Tom Storm
If as an atheist you re-label the relation between the divine plan and the actual world as an internal relationality inherent within nature itself would you say you solved the problem or dissolved it? — Joshs
I readily admit that I may be projecting here. When I began a sincere attempt to investigate the foundations of Chomsky’s political philosophy, I had a heck of a time figuring how to integrate his ideas with other political thinkers I had some familiarity with. Was he a fan of Marx? No. he stated explicitly that he was not a Marxist. Well, what about the neo-Marxists of the Frankfurt school? No luck there. Postmodernists like Foucault? His discussion with Foucault , available on youtube , clearly puts that out of play. I finally came to the conclusion that Chomsky goes back to the very early era of socialist theorization, when Marx was just one among a variety of responses to capitalism, which was at that time still relatively young. — Joshs
This suspicion was strengthens considerably by a long video I watched of a debate between Chomsky and Dershowitz on Israeli politics. I began the video fully prepared to be on Chomsky’s side. After all , he is on the left and Dershowitz is a conservative. I really wanted him to nail Dershowitz to the wall. But to my surprise I became more and more exasperated with Chomsky’s performance. Dershowitz, as you would expect , presented straightforward lawyerly arguments that I expected to see Chomsky directly refute. — Joshs
If you re-label a serial killer as a person who is chasing their own bliss and working to reach their full potential does that mean the crimes go away? — Tom Storm
What is an internal relationality inherent within nature itself? On the whole re-labeling always makes me nervous — Tom Storm
If you're referring to JP, I really doubt you can, or are of the temperament to have read Maps of Meaning. Either way, feel free to drown yourself in pretense. — Aryamoy Mitra
If you find him obfuscating, that's a personal misgiving - unless you can substantiate it with more than a derisive piece of journalism. — Aryamoy Mitra
As an atheist ( I assume you are one?), how would you describe the paradigm shift in thinking that takes us from a divine plan to a world which operates via its own mechanisms? — Joshs
Maybe you don’t think in terms of worldviews , gestalts, paradigms and their transformations when you think about knowledge and the way it changes over the course of cultural history. — Joshs
I am well aware of the various narratives held by individuals, sub-cultures and society. — Tom Storm
these words by MacFarquhar are more ad hom than a robust analysis of his work. — Tom Storm
Depends on the theory but I guess so - I generally think of them as the best model we have for now based on the available evidence. — Tom Storm
Is he right that the complex motivations of individual actors and groups in society can be reduced to the villainous caricatures that he often turns them into? — Joshs
But keep in mind that the evidence will itself be a product of the narrative. New evidence only becomes evidence when the narrative changes. So in a way the shift in paradigm precedes the evidence. — Joshs
It's a personal misgiving to think this fraud is "profound." What is claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. A rather thorough, accurate article is all you deserve -- and you're lucky you got that. Please go read more Maps of Meaning and be happy with it, I don't care. — Xtrix
With the benefit of almost 200 years of scientific progress, specifically in biology, genetics, anthropology and so on, its obvious that morality (of sorts) is evident in animal behaviours — counterpunch
Yes, Hitchens' razor. Classic. — Aryamoy Mitra
What's rather sad is that you haven't placed forth any constructive criticisms; many of which I might concur with. — Aryamoy Mitra
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