This conversation is a carry over from the comments section of this ( https://youtu.be/VW2bxDOAx3Q ) video on youtube. I was referred by "spacedoohicky" to the forum so that we could discuss our opinions in a less combative, more careful manner. Also, youtube screwed up the notifications for both of us so heck to the platform.
I'd like to request that the thread be isolated, ideally. Or, minimally, that anyone wishing to join the conversation would not add too much complexity to the back and forth dialogue.
So, I'm going to dispense with any carry over from the previous argument, if that's alright, and instead make a general opening into my positions. No 'you were saying this or that', and so on.
I. Jordan Peterson is the reason for this conversation in three parts, corresponding to the Video Series referenced. His epistemology, his Archetypes, and whether or not he is a 'Christian', is all up for debate, though I'm less interested in the last point, and I wouldn't bother to defend a number of semantic oddities regarding Peterson. His recent prominence has made mainstream a philosophy that I have been thinking on for a long time. This makes me a decently direct surrogate.
What the topic comes down to is Darwinian Pragmatism. Doohicky expressed that he was unsure of the validity of Archetypes, so we can go over those. As well, I'm going to need you, @Doohicky, to give me a general idea of what you'd like to know or felt was off base.
I've been dissecting religion in a functional context for a long time. As someone who is personally spiritual but persuaded by the idea of natural selection, my hermenuetic needed jazzing up. There's a lot that's wrong with Christianity, so I'll repeat what I said in the comments, that it is critical no one is arguing for literalism, here. As long as a Christian is defined as 'one who believes [belief being ratify knowledge claim of] Christ's literal ressurection' then it is an epistemologically dismissable idea. For our purposes I am an Agnostic on the supernatural, yet still a kind of Gnostic Theist.
II. My positions are perennialist, I believe in eternal truths (such as cultural constants, archetypes, and virtues) which are nested in the conditions of our existence. These truths are Darwinian Forms*. Goodwill is to us as the gear is to the inner workings of a grasshopper's biological machinery ( https://laughingsquid.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/gear-jumping.gif ), both innate perfectional forms in the universe, one geometrically, the other memetically. Habitually, I've argued for an objective Evolutionary ethic of fitness and an innate ontological 'valuation' of being. I am completely opposed to moral relativity on a technical basis alone. We are norm following primates and our moral behaviors are rationally teleological (teleonomical). This is almost Kantian, in that norms must meet universifiable criterion through memetic fitness. As Natural Selection, these ethics are nonrandom, that fact is important.
Not only that, but an evolutionary ethic is an optimistic and enlightened thing. Obviously, it allows for brutality and selfishness in the more degraded conditions. What else could you expect, though? I can't condemn carnivores, because they are a condition of my existence. If I were being theological, I would say that life without suffering is like a square circle. Even God could not make it. In a kind of Amor Fati fashion, I would never condemn the existence of suffering, nor try to deny that strength obviously prevails. Might may make right, but a lot of lovely and uplifting things make might. See this paper ( https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/fc6d/93966c24f1ac8b6ded84d53de5d04cdc746f.pdf ).
Humans are ultrasocial and our value of altruism is justified. This means I am a cosmic optimist. Synergy wins out in any iterative nonzerosum game, which our universe ultimately is, being functionally infinite in resources. Eventually we will eliminate the inefficiency of deadly competition altogether, as has been the trend, evident all the way back to wolves in their submission gestures. With the advent of the second replicators we are fighting constantly in an incredibly dynamic meta-system which encapsultes even this conversation, at a breakneck speed of development.
Politically, this would leave me pretty conservative. Those are my positions in brief.
I'd like to request that the thread be isolated, ideally. Or, minimally, that anyone wishing to join the conversation would not add too much complexity to the back and forth dialogue.
So, I'm going to dispense with any carry over from the previous argument, if that's alright, and instead make a general opening into my positions. No 'you were saying this or that', and so on.
I. Jordan Peterson is the reason for this conversation in three parts, corresponding to the Video Series referenced. His epistemology, his Archetypes, and whether or not he is a 'Christian', is all up for debate, though I'm less interested in the last point, and I wouldn't bother to defend a number of semantic oddities regarding Peterson. His recent prominence has made mainstream a philosophy that I have been thinking on for a long time. This makes me a decently direct surrogate.
What the topic comes down to is Darwinian Pragmatism. Doohicky expressed that he was unsure of the validity of Archetypes, so we can go over those. As well, I'm going to need you, @Doohicky, to give me a general idea of what you'd like to know or felt was off base.
I've been dissecting religion in a functional context for a long time. As someone who is personally spiritual but persuaded by the idea of natural selection, my hermenuetic needed jazzing up. There's a lot that's wrong with Christianity, so I'll repeat what I said in the comments, that it is critical no one is arguing for literalism, here. As long as a Christian is defined as 'one who believes [belief being ratify knowledge claim of] Christ's literal ressurection' then it is an epistemologically dismissable idea. For our purposes I am an Agnostic on the supernatural, yet still a kind of Gnostic Theist.
II. My positions are perennialist, I believe in eternal truths (such as cultural constants, archetypes, and virtues) which are nested in the conditions of our existence. These truths are Darwinian Forms*. Goodwill is to us as the gear is to the inner workings of a grasshopper's biological machinery ( https://laughingsquid.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/gear-jumping.gif ), both innate perfectional forms in the universe, one geometrically, the other memetically. Habitually, I've argued for an objective Evolutionary ethic of fitness and an innate ontological 'valuation' of being. I am completely opposed to moral relativity on a technical basis alone. We are norm following primates and our moral behaviors are rationally teleological (teleonomical). This is almost Kantian, in that norms must meet universifiable criterion through memetic fitness. As Natural Selection, these ethics are nonrandom, that fact is important.
Not only that, but an evolutionary ethic is an optimistic and enlightened thing. Obviously, it allows for brutality and selfishness in the more degraded conditions. What else could you expect, though? I can't condemn carnivores, because they are a condition of my existence. If I were being theological, I would say that life without suffering is like a square circle. Even God could not make it. In a kind of Amor Fati fashion, I would never condemn the existence of suffering, nor try to deny that strength obviously prevails. Might may make right, but a lot of lovely and uplifting things make might. See this paper ( https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/fc6d/93966c24f1ac8b6ded84d53de5d04cdc746f.pdf ).
Humans are ultrasocial and our value of altruism is justified. This means I am a cosmic optimist. Synergy wins out in any iterative nonzerosum game, which our universe ultimately is, being functionally infinite in resources. Eventually we will eliminate the inefficiency of deadly competition altogether, as has been the trend, evident all the way back to wolves in their submission gestures. With the advent of the second replicators we are fighting constantly in an incredibly dynamic meta-system which encapsultes even this conversation, at a breakneck speed of development.
Politically, this would leave me pretty conservative. Those are my positions in brief.
