Christianity and Metaphysics - Jordan Peterson interviews Jonathan Pageau

[Eugene I]

Right, but the fact is, each of those historical traditions, including the Judeo-Christian, are missing some crucial elements that were found and achieved in other traditions, and none of those historical traditions can claim to be the "latter tribe" meta-tradition. But if we now move towards the path of integrating the historic traditions into a new integrated philosophical, spiritual and practical paradigm and system under idealism, it can no longer be labeled as "Judeo-Christian" or "Buddhist" or "Advaitic" etc. Yet, there is still a problem with such integration, because, as I pointed in this post, they are still based on very different and incompatible ontological premises even though they all fall under general idealism. How can you possibly reconcile the BK's view that the Cosmic Consciousness is non-meta-cognitive, or the Buddhist view that it is even lacking a cosmic-level subjective perspective, with the Judeo-Christian position that the Cosmic Consciousness is highly spiritually and meta-cognitively developed global Subject/God? And those are not simply philosophical differences, they also lead to largely different practical ways and spiritual practices.

One possible approach is to take an agnostic position towards those variants ("I don't know which one is true but I'm open to accept all of them as possibilities") and just remain on the position of a common-ground idealism. But such position could no longer be called "Judeo-Christian" or "Buddhist", it would be just an "agnostic idealism" for a lack of a better term.

[AshvinP]

Right, but the fact is, each of those historical traditions, including the Judeo-Christian, are missing some crucial elements that were found and achieved in other traditions, and none of those historical traditions can claim to be the "latter tribe" meta-tradition. But if we now move towards the path of integrating the historic traditions into a new integrated philosophical, spiritual and practical paradigm and system under idealism, it can no longer be labeled as "Judeo-Christian" or "Buddhist" or "Advaitic" etc. Yet, there is still a problem with such integration, because, as I pointed in this post, they are still based on very different and incompatible ontological premises even though they all fall under general idealism. How can you possibly reconcile the BK's view that the Cosmic Consciousness is non-meta-cognitive, or the Buddhist view that it is even lacking a cosmic-level subjective perspective, with the Judeo-Christian position that the Cosmic Consciousness is highly spiritually and meta-cognitively developed global Subject/God? And those are not simply philosophical differences, they also lead to largely different practical ways and spiritual practices.

That is our point of disagreement. From a Darwinian perspective, there must be a meta-tradition. The conscious evolutionary process could not have frozen still from 1000 BC or whenever to present day, with a bunch of different traditions running completely parallel. That's not how any evolutionary process works.

One possible approach is to take an agnostic position towards those variants ("I don't know which one is true but I'm open to accept all of them as possibilities") and just remain on the position of a common-ground idealism. But such position could no longer be called "Judeo-Christian" or "Buddhist", it would be just an "agnostic idealism" for a lack of a better term.

This is a more complicated issue - how does Cosmic Consciousness appear to us and what is it in its fundamental essence. Since at least the time of Plato, that has been the fundamental concern of Western philosophy. A Christian is someone who follows the example of Christ as revealed in scripture, so I agree a non-meta-cognitive Christian position would need to explain away a lot of aspects of scripture which point in the other direction. A meta-cognitive position which finds tremendous value in Eastern philosophy, however, would just need to take the evolutionary position that, for whatever reasons, the non-meta-cognitive Eastern traditions are not fully developed to their meta-cognitive spiritual conclusions.

Also, I have no problem with new terms for modern spiritual worldviews which continue to evolve from the meta-tradition of Christianity, such as Steiner's Anthroposophy, and I can see why they may become increasingly necessary.

[Eugene I]

That is our point of disagreement. From a Darwinian perspective, there must be a meta-tradition. The conscious evolutionary process could not have frozen still from 1000 BC or whenever to present day, with a bunch of different traditions running completely parallel. That's not how any evolutionary process works.

No, it's exactly the Darwinian position that opens the possibility of a variety of parallel developmental paths, as we see in the examples of humans and dolphins that both achieved high levels of intelligence, but still possess very different qualities and values and are developing in different directions. Even if one of the "branches" becomes dominant in terms of technological powers or controls of resources, that does not mean at all that this branch is "superior" to others that are not so successful (based on its own criteria of success: wealth, power, domination, discursive knowledge etc).

And even tough we may agree that there must be only one meta-tradition, because there is only one ultimate truth to which that meta-path leads, which one of those idealism variants would represent it, if we do not know which one is true? It is only if we could know the ultimate truth about the fundamental nature of reality, then we could find out which developmental and spiritual path and which philosophical position is the meta-path leading to the existential development towards that state of the realization of truth. But we do not know it and may even never know. So, in the absence of the knowledge of the ultimate truth, how can we know which path and which position is the meta-path/position?

A meta-cognitive position which finds tremendous value in Eastern philosophy, however, would just need to take the evolutionary position that, for whatever reasons, the non-meta-cognitive Eastern traditions are not fully developed to their meta-cognitive spiritual conclusions.

But that would only be possible if we would all be able to agree and to come to a common conclusion and undoubtedly prove that the meta-cognitive position is the correct one and non-meta-cognitive Eastern traditions or or BK's views are false or at least "not fully developed". But that's not possible, all of those positions are non-provable and non-disprovable. If you show me that you can argue with BK and prove his position to be wrong and your position to be right in an open dispute, then I may agree with you, good luck with that , but until then you can not claim that non-meta-cognitive Eastern traditions or BK's view are "not fully developed" compared to the meta-cognitive spiritual position/conclusion.

Simply put: you can not prove that only one of those variants of idealism (meta-cognitive one for example) is true and others are wrong. And as a consequence, you can not label only one of them as "fully developed" and others as "not fully developed".

[AshvinP]

That is our point of disagreement. From a Darwinian perspective, there must be a meta-tradition. The conscious evolutionary process could not have frozen still from 1000 BC or whenever to present day, with a bunch of different traditions running completely parallel. That's not how any evolutionary process works.

No, it's exactly the Darwinian position that opens the possibility of a variety of parallel developmental paths, as we see in the examples of humans and dolphins that both achieved high levels of intelligence, but still possess very different qualities and values and are developing in different directions. Even if one of the "branches" becomes dominant in terms of technological powers or controls of resources, that does not mean at all that this branch is "superior" to others that are not so successful (based on its own criteria of success: wealth, power, domination, discursive knowledge etc).

And even tough we may agree that there must be only one meta-tradition, because there is only one ultimate truth to which that meta-path leads, which one of those idealism variants would represent it, if we do not know which one is true? It is only if we could know the ultimate truth about the fundamental nature of reality, then we could find out which developmental and spiritual path and which philosophical position is the meta-path leading to the existential development towards that state of the realization of truth. But we do not know it and may even never know. So, in the absence of the knowledge of the ultimate truth, how can we know which path and which position is the meta-path/position?

This is simply an appeal to relativism in the absence of complete understanding, which is a dangerous path to stay on in an era where spirituality has already morphed into numerous pathological forms and civilization is always teetering on the brink of nihilism. And it is a self-imposed relativism, because you do not believe any amount of evidence or argument towards one view or another will make a difference.

Even if we accept there are parallel evolutionary paths for spiritual traditions which do not converge and none of the paths can be judged superior to any others, there must be evolution and corresponding novelty occurring within those paths, right? What has evolved in the Eastern or indigenous spiritual traditions which was not there before?

A meta-cognitive position which finds tremendous value in Eastern philosophy, however, would just need to take the evolutionary position that, for whatever reasons, the non-meta-cognitive Eastern traditions are not fully developed to their meta-cognitive spiritual conclusions.

But that would only be possible if we would all be able to agree and to come to a common conclusion and undoubtedly prove that the meta-cognitive position is the correct one and non-meta-cognitive Eastern traditions or or BK's views are false or at least "not fully developed". But that's not possible, all of those positions are non-provable and non-disprovable. If you show me that you can argue with BK and prove his position to be wrong and your position to be right in an open dispute, then I may agree with you, good luck with that , but until then you can not claim that non-meta-cognitive Eastern traditions or BK's view are "not fully developed" compared to the meta-cognitive spiritual position/conclusion.

Simply put: you can not prove that only one of those variants of idealism (meta-cognitive one for example) is true and others are wrong. And as a consequence, you can not label only one of them as "fully developed" and others as "not fully developed".

Why must we "undoubtedly prove" anything? Did Einstein undoubtedly prove his theory of general relativity before it became more accurate and useful than Newtonian mechanics? That is not how any field of knowledge develops and you are again self-imposing a burden which cannot be met in principle so as to maintain your conclusion that all spiritual traditions are equally meaningful, adaptive, etc.

[Eugene I]

This is simply an appeal to relativism in the absence of complete understanding, which is a dangerous path to stay on in an era where spirituality has already morphed into numerous pathological forms and civilization is always teetering on the brink of nihilism. And it is a self-imposed relativism, because you do not believe any amount of evidence or argument towards one view or another will make a difference.

I agree that having the whole humanity subscribed to only one path would be better, but how do you do that in the absence of complete understanding? Go and try to convince Moslems that Christianity is superior to Islam. We have to accept the reality of our lack of complete understanding, which inevitably entails a lack of a single universal meta-path that the majority would subscribe to.

Also, the popularity of Christianity has been rapidly declining over the last century and I don't see how it can become the common path that is going to be accepted as the meta-path by the majority of humanity in the future.

Even if we accept there are parallel evolutionary paths for spiritual traditions which do not converge and none of the paths can be judged superior to any others, there must be evolution and corresponding novelty occurring within those paths, right? What has evolved in the Eastern or indigenous spiritual traditions which was not there before?

The novelty of the Advaitic and Buddhist traditions was the experiential and philosophical discovery of the non-dual nature of reality which was unknown to the Judeo-Christian tradition, and which gained a lot of acceptance and spread in the world over the last few decades in various modern non-dual teachings (Tolle, Spira, Adya, Chopra, etc). In addition, the Eastern meditative practices were re-discovered and widely accepted and integrated into the modern psycho-therapeutical and meditative practices.

Why must we "undoubtedly prove" anything? Did Einstein undoubtedly prove his theory of general relativity before it became more accurate and useful than Newtonian mechanics? That is not how any field of knowledge develops and you are again self-imposing a burden which cannot be met in principle so as to maintain your conclusion that all spiritual traditions are equally meaningful, adaptive, etc.

In science there are criteria of fitness of scientific theories accepted by the majority of scientists (such as the numerical accuracy of models predictions when compared with numerical experimental data). Based on those criteria, until about the middle of the 20-th century it was possible to find one or a few "champion" theories among the competing ones, the ones that are the most consistent and describe the reality with most accuracy. But this is already gone, in the modern physics we now have a large number of competing theories, for example, a huge number of possible variants of string theories with no way of proving which variant is correct. Or we have a large variety of interpretations of quantum mechanics with no way of experimentally proving which one is correct. We do not know if this situation is going to change in the future and if we will ever return to the old path of the mainstream physical theory. In the area of metaphysics and spiritual practices the criteria are much less specific, less verifiable and agreeable and such criteria are not sufficiently specific and clear to assess, determine and compare the truthfulness of philosophies or spiritual paths. There is no way to prove or disprove idealism vs neutral monism, or Advaitic vs theistic vs Kastrup-kind of idealism. The choice remains a matter of personal taste and dispositions. No matter how much you try, you will never get the majority of humanity subscribed to you version of the philosophy of choice or your spiritual path of choice. And promoting your philosophy or religion by aggressive means or by claiming the unprovable superiority over the other ones will only make things worse for your path and repel people from your paths. Violence and superiority claims always prove to be counter-productive and do more harm then good to itself because they destroy the peoples trust in those very things that they try to promote.

[AshvinP]

This is simply an appeal to relativism in the absence of complete understanding, which is a dangerous path to stay on in an era where spirituality has already morphed into numerous pathological forms and civilization is always teetering on the brink of nihilism. And it is a self-imposed relativism, because you do not believe any amount of evidence or argument towards one view or another will make a difference.

I agree that having the whole humanity subscribed to only one path would be better, but how do you do that in the absence of complete understanding? Go and try to convince Moslems that Christianity is superior to Islam. We have to accept the reality of our lack of complete understanding, which inevitably entails a lack of a single universal meta-path that the majority would subscribe to.

I don't think all of humanity must be on the same spiritual path, especially if the paths are evolutionarily nested within each other. That sort of rationalist evangelical approach within Christianity is exactly what I am criticizing. We only need to avoid the abyss of relativism-nihilism on the one hand and totalitarianism on the other.

Even if we accept there are parallel evolutionary paths for spiritual traditions which do not converge and none of the paths can be judged superior to any others, there must be evolution and corresponding novelty occurring within those paths, right? What has evolved in the Eastern or indigenous spiritual traditions which was not there before?

The novelty of the Advaitic and Buddhist traditions was the experiential and philosophical discovery of the non-dual nature of reality which was unknown to the Judeo-Christian tradition, and which gained a lot of acceptance and spread in the world over the last few decades in various modern non-dual teachings (Tolle, Spira, Adya, Chopra, etc). In addition, the Eastern meditative practices were re-discovered and widely accepted and integrated into the modern psycho-therapeutical and meditative practices.

But that was discovered at least 2500-3000 years ago, prior to Christianity. What has evolved out of those traditions since then?

And what exactly in Judeo-Christian scripture do you believe necessitates a dualist ontology?

Why must we "undoubtedly prove" anything? Did Einstein undoubtedly prove his theory of general relativity before it became more accurate and useful than Newtonian mechanics? That is not how any field of knowledge develops and you are again self-imposing a burden which cannot be met in principle so as to maintain your conclusion that all spiritual traditions are equally meaningful, adaptive, etc.

In science there are criteria of fitness of scientific theories accepted by the majority of scientists (such as the numerical accuracy of models predictions when compared with numerical experimental data). Based on those criteria, until about the middle of the 20-th century it was possible to find one or a few "champion" theories among the competing ones, the ones that are the most consistent and describe the reality with most accuracy. But this is already gone, in the modern physics we now have a large number of competing theories, for example, a huge number of possible variants of string theories with no way of proving which variant is correct. Or we have a large variety of interpretations of quantum mechanics with no way of experimentally proving which one is correct. We do not know if this situation is going to change in the future and if we will ever return to the old path of the mainstream physical theory. In the area of metaphysics and spiritual practices the criteria are much less specific, less verifiable and agreeable and such criteria are not sufficiently specific and clear to assess, determine and compare the truthfulness of philosophies or spiritual paths. There is no way to prove or disprove idealism vs neutral monism, or Advaitic vs theistic vs Kastrup-kind of idealism. The choice remains a matter of personal taste and dispositions. No matter how much you try, you will never get the majority of humanity subscribed to you version of the philosophy of choice or your spiritual path of choice. And promoting your philosophy or religion by aggressive means or by claiming the unprovable superiority over the other ones will only make things worse for your path and repel people from your paths. Violence and superiority claims always prove to be counter-productive and do more harm then good to itself because they destroy the peoples trust in those very things that they try to promote.

Why is it already gone? People like Donald Hoffman and Nima Arkani-Hamed are building off of previous theories in novel directions. It would be a mistake to think the transition to idealist assumptions characterized by a scientist like Hoffman is discontinuous with previous science. Rather it was necessitated by the internal dynamics of various 20th century scientific fields such as QM, GR, psychology, AI, etc. String theories are promising as long as materialist assumptions are let go, which they will be without a doubt if any science continues.

And I still don't understand the fundamental difference you are positing between science and metaphysics, other than our own self-imposed lack of specificity and imagination. I am not advocating for promoting a metaphysical theory by "aggressive" tactics any more than I would advocate promoting Hoffman's conscious agent theory or any other scientific theory by such tactics. That should go without saying.

[SanteriSatama]

It's hard to say, but I feel like Peterson is still struggling to tell the Christian religious 'community', which makes up a sizeable chunk of his 'fan base', that he thinks their approach to the 'faith' is complete bullshit. There are nicer ways to put it, but that's the long and short of it. It doesn't help when Catholic theologians write a book about his Biblical lectures and why they believe he "just doesn't get it". It seems that sentiment is common within the Christian religious community - they feel like he has done a lot of good for the faith but he just needs to take a few more steps to figure out what they already know, i.e. Jesus is our Lord and Savior and he literally died to redeem our sins.

Archetypal and integrative Jungian approach to Christianity is at odds with Church authoritarian dogma for authoritarian followers. Immanence vs. transcendence, esoteric integration vs. exoteric worship, etc.

Sounds like you are suggesting that JP is or should be playing his version of Ivan's story...

[SanteriSatama]

The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross is largely about a purported connection between early Christianity and the pagan/shamanic practice of using of a psychedelic, likely involving mushrooms, to induce visionary/healing experiences. As we know, this theory, along with similar theories about the Eleusinian mystery schools, and speculation about other 'foods' of the Gods, like manna and soma, is currently coming back into vogue, with the so-called psychedelic renaissance. And given JP's knowledge of this, and his own daughter's experiential explorations in that regard, I'd be surprised if he hasn't given some consideration to the healing powers of these plant 'medicines' used in a therapeutic context of proper set and setting, to get at the core of some psychospiritual crisis manifesting as corporeal illness. However, whether or not he's actually open to that possibility in his own case, I've no idea, and besides wouldn't be possible if he's still using any prescribed anti-depressant/anxiety meds ~ alas one such prescribed drug, benzodiazepine, being culpable for making his condition far worse. But whatever is the cause of JP's struggles, it somehow doesn't seem solely corporeal in nature, and indeed, if Jung is correct, could not be without some spiritual correlate.

The most significant difference between Freudian and Jungian approaches is that for Freudians anxiety is a given without hope of liberation, but Jungian integration offers hope of liberation also from anxiety. It's another question whether you would want a total liberation from all anxiety, though. But in case of JP, he's having a very real and serious dance with anxiety and I guess we are all curious what might come out of his dance.

[SanteriSatama]

This is simply an appeal to relativism in the absence of complete understanding, which is a dangerous path to stay on in an era where spirituality has already morphed into numerous pathological forms and civilization is always teetering on the brink of nihilism. And it is a self-imposed relativism, because you do not believe any amount of evidence or argument towards one view or another will make a difference.

Even if we accept there are parallel evolutionary paths for spiritual traditions which do not converge and none of the paths can be judged superior to any others, there must be evolution and corresponding novelty occurring within those paths, right? What has evolved in the Eastern or indigenous spiritual traditions which was not there before?

For example in the words of an Ayahuasca vegetalista: "There's no end with Ayahuasca", the novelty continues ad infinitum.

You sound like basic epistemic humility of philosophical skepticism and various relativist ethics based on such humility is a bad thing. Could you be building a strawman of relativism to argue for some kind of dogmatic universalism?

New animism as explicated by by Viveiro de Castro et alii is ontologically relativistic as it's based on concepts of perspectivism and multinaturalism.

Recognizing the humanity of all sentient beings in their various costumes of fur, bark etc., is also a way of questioning the quality of our own humanity, a novel way of defining the task of gnothi seauton. Universalist humanism is not really a step of positive evolution in this sense. A new opportunity and question for our time is liberation from limits of humanism by relearning animism from the experience of humanism. It's a long path, not primarily theoretical, but practice of learning to communicate in new ways to us, learning to negotiate new and better coevolution relations.

[Soul_of_Shu]

FYI, Mark Vernon has chimed in on the dynamic duo of JPs in conversation ...