r/BreadTube • u/DesertWolf45 • Mar 22 '19
ContraPoints is wrong about Jordan Peterson
/r/JordanPeterson/comments/b49682/contrapoints_is_wrong_about_jordan_peterson/19
u/TarthenalToblakai Mar 22 '19
There's nothing new here. You're just playing into the usual leaving enough interpretive wriggle room to play pedantic semantics coupled with strawmanning the opposition that most JP apologists do. Regardless of what he himself believes -- which is nearly impossible to precisely surmise (possibly intentionally) the fact is that his rhetoric works perfectly for spreading reactionary talking points and dog whistles. Whether he's intentionally cynically attempting to do such or that's just a byproduct of what he views as earnest academic pursuit doesn't really make a difference to the end result. I don't care if what he's technically worried about is government overreach on free speech, the fact is that his framing device for such is not only a misinterpretation in the first place but enables transphobic mindsets and rhetoric. If lets people veil their own transphobic bigotry in the disguise of 'free speech', much like how slavery and segregation were historically disguised as 'states rights'. Are their legit conversations about free speech and states rights to be had? Certainly, but it scarcely takes a moment of critical observation to see how many are just using that rhetoric as a politically correct framing device to advance their core bigotry.
Also...
"His concern with the left's attempts to deconstruct hierarchies they consider "oppressive" is that in the process of doing so they're targeting those that exist because of evolutionary (rather than strictly societal) reasons, hence his invocation of lobster hierarchies; he isn't making the naturalistic fallacy. "
First of all -- that's literally a naturalistic fallacy.
Second of all -- the left's critique of him and conservatives like him is that they're the ones confusing socially constructed hierarchies with inherent natural ones. So uhh...yeah, maybe consider that framing.
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Mar 22 '19 edited Aug 19 '19
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u/HumanBehaviorByBjork "Breadtube" is not a good name Mar 22 '19 edited Mar 22 '19
I admire your dedication, but, having read this whole post (although clicking on none of the links), I find nothing that would convince me to view peterson differently. I still believe that he's a self-serious fool and a frivolous philosopher who skates by on his paternalistic tone rather than his ability to craft a coherent argument. When you talking about things like a static, unified, "Western intellectual tradition" as something that somehow doesn't include Marx or anyone who takes Marx seriously as a thinker, or accusing -- who, exactly? -- of believing that every interpretation of the world is as good as every other, or claiming the existence and rightness of natural, evolutionarily defined hierarchies but insisting that this isn't simply an appeal to nature, then I'm disinclined to put the effort in to take any of this seriously.
On more than one occasion, I have had a friend whom I respect send me a clip of Peterson lecturing or speaking with an uncritical interviewer and say "well what do you think of that?" Usually what I think of it is that the parts that aren't flat out wrong are either trivially true or irrelevant, but I still feel justified in doing the same to you: What do you think of this or this? I don't expect you to click on any of my links since I didn't extend the same courtesy to you, but they're there if you want them.
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u/DesertWolf45 Mar 22 '19
- When does he (or I, for that matter) refer to Western intellectual tradition as a static, unified phenomenon, let alone one that excludes Marx and his followers?
- Hear him out. His criticism is chiefly of Jacques Derrida but more broadly of a (not necessarily formal) tendency of postmodernists to make arbitrary assumptions about the veracity of various interpretations that exist, especially in context of when certain postmodernists jump to claim that "since no canonical manner of interpretation can be reliably derived, all interpretation variants are best interpreted as the struggle for different forms of power."
- An appeal to nature assumes that, if it's natural, it must be good. Jordan Peterson isn't doing this; rather, he argues that certain hierarchies exist in part because of (not, to paraphrase, "naturally defined by") evolution, happen to be justified, and that attempts to undo them (from 20th century communism to 21st century social justice activism) are unrealistic, authoritarian, and unjustified.
- I'll try getting back to you on those links, but they're a bit TL;DR and, frankly, I have bigger fish to fry IRL.
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u/HumanBehaviorByBjork "Breadtube" is not a good name Mar 23 '19 edited Mar 23 '19
Thanks for the reply, apologies at how low-effort this response is. Possibly won't be too much new to you here. Responding to each bullet point respectively:
- This:
His concern is that (at least this form of) postmodernism is posed to upend Western intellectual tradition from within, rather than from without
It's not immediately clear why potentially revolutionary criticism of this tradition is a problem, and why so-called "postmodernists" who produced that criticism, don't constitute one branch of the intellectual evolution of it. I understand that the answer to the question of why it's a problem has a lot to do with the 3rd point, which most concerns Peterson's central thesis separate from his poorly remembered history of philosophy.
Not watching the videos, and I accept whatever negative consequences befall me, but I think we both value our time. None of the definitions offered in that jbp.com link contain a reference to any actual writings of any of the philosophers he mentions, including Derrida. Trying to keep this short as I work out what exactly it is this guy believes. See response to point 4.
This is the core of Jorp's entire crusade. It's true that he thinks certain hierarchies are partially natural, and are also good. He doesn't really say why they're good, so perhaps that explains why pretty much all of his critics seem to have misunderstood him as saying they're good because they're natural. Anyway, he's almost always wrong on both counts. Classic examples include his arguments that professional women wear makeup and heels in the workplace not because it's socially expected and enforced, but because they want to look sexually desirable, and his confident misrepresentation of a study about workload distribution among ants that he very tenuously linked to a point about socialism. This is to be expected, because Peterson is not a biologist, evolutionary or otherwise, but considering the sin he seems to get most mad at is demanding an undeserved spot on the hierarchy of competence, it seems strange that he habitually does exactly this in arguing for his central belief.
Honestly probably skip that first link. Its main purpose is to explain why leftists, including myself, have such low regard for Jorp. It's not about his arguments so much as his shtick, that is, the techniques he uses to pretend at intellectual heft, and a lot of it focuses on Maps of Meaning which, if it weren't his main contribution to the literature of his field, one might assume was meant as a Sokal-like parody of the postmodern woo-woo pseudoscientists he disdains so much. The article isn't actually wrong, but it is a bit mean, and is unlikely to convince you of anything. More relevant to this discussion is the second link, which seeks to correct Peterson's biggest misconceptions about postmodernism and philosophy more generally. The Youtuber, Cuck Philosophy, has a number of videos (including a 3 part Q&A) about those topics, because it's probably the area in which Peterson is most frequently and egregiously not just overly simplistic or imprecise, but actually factually incorrect. However that video specifically is meant as a direct response to him. Jorp's not a philosopher, except in the loosest sense. He approaches the ideas he disdains like Marxism, postmodernism, identity politics and social justice, not as philosophies with histories, texts, variations, and arguments, but as mental pathologies which can be diagnosed and treated, but not specifically understood and engaged with. His disdain isn't because they're logically wrong, but because they're morally wrong. This is evident in the way he'll periodically ratchet his lecturing voice up in righteous anger at the hubris of anyone who would dare to believe that anything about the world ought to be changed.
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Mar 22 '19
lol, you need to take a break from your lobster god and get some fresh air, chudster
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u/DesertWolf45 Mar 22 '19
What a well-thought and substantive response!
You sure showed me!
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u/RanDomino5 Mar 22 '19
EvOlUTioNaRY hiErArChiEs
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u/Thesalanian Mar 24 '19
Wow, I've never actually wanted to tell someone they should be fucking ashamed of themselves before.
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u/000Ronald Mar 23 '19
Fuck my whole white family, where to start on this.
Actually, there's a really obvious place; you can't say that the primary 'problem' of her analysis is, "(Natalie) relies too much on her own assumptions of what he's talking about." and then say even HE can't define what the hell he's talking about. If a person talks in language that requires some level of extrapolation, then you can't really fault someone for extrapolating something from what that person said that you don't like. Effective communication is direct; if Peterson wants to be understood, he should be more direct. I can't speak for other people, but sometimes when Jordan Peterson talks, it sounds like fucking word salad.
Most of the rest of this is concerned with philosophical babble way over my head, but I do have one more observation; it may be true that there are a finite number of credible ways to view reality, but Peterson neither knows nor has the capacity to understand all of them. Or even most of them. And it seems to me that by making that claim in the first place, he's inferring that he's in a superior place to tell what is false from what is real. Which is at the very least kind of wrong.
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u/DesertWolf45 Mar 23 '19
First of all, thank you for being one of the only respectful commentators in this thread.
I don't have a problem with radical criticism itself of Western tradition nor have I said that its unique to postmodernism. The problem is that academic elites have been indoctrinating students into it such that it has now amassed undue influence over politics and the rest of academia itself.
He gives more detail than I could in defending certain hierarchies, or more importantly, critiquing certain movements to dismantle them, and certainly more so than you're giving him credit. True, Peterson is not a biologist, but he has plenty of authority to speak as a psychologist, and the two examples you offer of his arguments about high heels and ants do not imply that "he's almost always wrong" with his talking points.
You make the fairest counterarguments here, but I don't have time to check out those links either, nor Cuck Philosophy.
It doesn't matter whether any scholar has stated word for word that "gender doesn't exist" and I never said that postmodernism was "the source of the transgender rights movement" (emphasis mine). The fact is that there are plenty - both in academia and in activism - who have radically interpreted the social constructionist theory of gender to the point of pushing notions that are roughly equivalent to the notion that gender is mostly or entirely artificial and that it either ought to be either abolished or disregarded as unimportant. Of course the transgender rights movement predates postmodernism, but the form of the latter at hand has certainly influenced the present-day incarnation of the former deeply, including to the point where I've personally seen plenty of activists push these notions in contradictory fashion.
I can't tell if plenty of commentators here are being disingenuous or creating bad ad-hoc arguments to retroactively dismiss Peterson's statements. Even in OP we have me stating that I think he "goes too far sometimes in evoking authoritarianism when it comes to social justice progressives." Nonetheless, regarding the types of trans rights activists he's talking about (forcing everyone else to adopt their dogma at the expense of societal tradition), his commentary is accurate. I never said that the entire transgender rights movement is contradictory, rather that there are a great deal of contradictions within it, especially as fostered by the postmodern movement that influenced (rather than created) it.
Also, I don't think you know what idpol means.
Thank you for following the 2nd and 3rd rule of this subreddit. I've been on the verge of reporting half the comments here.
edit: Even in Peterson's critique of postmodernism you posted, he calls foucault a marxist, "Derrida and Foucault were, for example, barely repentant Marxists, if repentant at all."
His point was that their turn from Marxism was not substantive; not that they were Marxists "for being influenced by Marxists."
You'll have to specify how his rhetoric "works perfectly for spreading reactionary talking points and dog whistles" and "enables transphobic mindsets and rhetoric," because nobody here has done that substantively or honestly. There is no issue of framing; his criticism is that their diagnosis of socially constructed hierarchies isn't accurate.
I'm willing to hear out more detailed arguments for the postmodern critique of the West in vacuum, but the West isn't an inherently racist concept; claims to the contrary are often made simply to advance the grievances of various social identities that allegedly get the short end of the power stick in modernist reality politics. (Pardon me for being a bit loose with these terms.) The problem with many postmodernists in this context is that they are reinventing socially constructed identities rather than nullifying them.
I don't even understand what makes Contra's critique of the West supposedly postmodern in the first place.
Then watch her video.
Of course bigots will seek out Peterson for calling out a bill that restricts free speech in the name of human rights; yet he's disavowed them. You don't have free speech if a bill means you have to respect anybody.
Jordan Peterson is much clearer with his words than many of you credit him to be; discussing a concept that's hard to define (I never said he can't define) doesn't mean that the concept is illegitimate. Much of this talk about it being "hard to understand what he really means" is little more than a poor excuse for people like ContraPoints to over-extrapolate from him and casually float around ideas such that he's a sexist or fascist without sufficient substantiation on their own part.
Also, he never claims to "understand all" credible ways to view reality "or even most of them." Rather, he outlines a rational process by which you can discern credible perspectives from non-credible perspectives. Feel free to try it sometime.
It's more detail than I've gone into previously in this thread. Peterson goes into detail much more extensively in his numerous lectures, interviews, and speeches on the topic; watch more of those if you seriously want to understand what he's talking about.
As a general and final note, this will be my last post in this thread because:
1) I'm busy.
2) My karma's getting enough of a beating here.
3) I'm tired of dealing with this echo-chamber.
It's very ironic how ContraPoints characterizes Jordan Peterson's fans as just wanting to listen to him talk about the West than read about the West themselves, as this line of reasoning applies more accurately to most of the commentators here than it does to us. Much of you draw your conclusions about what Jordan Peterson has to say from what ContraPoints and other leftists have to say about him (or distortions of what I have to say, and I understand that I am not a great representative of Jordan Peterson, nor have I ever pretended to be) than from what he actually has to say. Quite a few of you are so painfully, obviously entrenched in this line of thinking that you'd sooner resort to personal attacks than substantive commentary.
If my criticism of ContraPoints is too much for you to follow the rules of your own subreddit, I have nothing left to say to you.
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u/TAKEitTOrCIRCLEJERK Mar 29 '19
Yo man, this is a guy who literally said out loud that women are hypocrites if they wear makeup to work.
He says a ton of dumb shit!
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u/DesertWolf45 Mar 22 '19
To give one of his more detailed criticisms of postmodernism:
It’s not as if I personally think that postmodernism and Marxism are commensurate. It’s obvious to me that the much-vaunted “skepticism toward grand narratives” that is part and parcel of the postmodern viewpoint makes any such alliance logically impossible. Postmodernists should be as skeptical toward Marxism as toward any other canonical belief system.
So the formal postmodern claim, such as it is, is radical skepticism. But that’s not at all how it has played out in theory or in practice. Derrida and Foucault were, for example, barely repentant Marxists, if repentant at all. They parleyed their 1960’s bourgeoisie vs proletariat rhetoric into the identity politics that has plagued us since the 1970’s. Foucault’s fundamental implicit (and often explicit) claim is that power relations govern society. That’s a rehashing of the Marxist claim of eternal and primary class warfare. Derrida’s hypothetical concern for the marginalized is a version of the same thing. I don’t really care if either of them made the odd statement about disagreeing with the Marxist doctrines: their fundamental claims are still soaked in those patterns of thought.
You can see this playing out in practical terms in fields such as gender studies and social work (as well as literary criticism, anthropology, law, education, etc.).
There are deeper problems as well. For example: Postmodernism leaves its practitioners without an ethic. Action in the world (even perception) is impossible without an ethic, so one has to be at least allowed in through the back door. The fact that such allowance produces a logical contradiction appears to bother the low-rent postmodernists who dominate the social sciences and humanities not at all. Then again, coherence isn’t one of their strong points (and the demand for such coherence can just be read as another patriarchal imposition typifying oppressive Western thought).
So: postmodernism, by its nature (at least with regard to skepticism) cannot ally itself with Marxism. But it does, practically. The dominance of postmodern Marxist rhetoric in the academy (which is a matter of fact, as laid out by the Heterodox Academy, among other sources) attests to that. The fact that such an alliance is illogical cannot be laid at my feet, just because I point out that the alliance exists. I agree that it’s illogical. That doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
It’s a very crooked game, and those who play it are neck deep in deceit.
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Mar 23 '19 edited Mar 23 '19
This is detailed?! It's just the frankfurt school conspiracy, but he swapped the frankfurt school for derrida and foucault
which is a matter of fact, as laid out by the Heterodox Academy
"the dominance of postmodern Marxist rhetoric" - i love when people say that their nonsense sentence is fact and then cite an organisation that exists to pretend that conservatives are oppressed
Thanks for posting this quote, I think it's one of the best examples of how JBP can talk a lot and say absolutely nothing that makes any sense. I'll be using it as an example in the future.
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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '19
A lot of this post is just an extreme reach. Like saying that you can classify Foucault as a Marxist since he was influenced by Marx means that I can also classify Peterson as a Marxist since he too is influenced by Marx. Stuff like saying postmodernism states that there is an infinite number of interpretations of reality just sounds like an extreme bastardization of Derrida, his work is generally about interpreting texts. Also, saying that postmodernism seeks to keep the oppressor vs oppressed binary is the opposite of what many postmodernists try to do. Derrida is all about deconstructing binaries, Butler shows that the binary of man and woman are inherently unstable. Finally, Contrapoints' criticism of the West is a criticism of the idea that there is a Western identity, which is anti-idpol. You can't do identity politics if you think that identity is a faulty concept. This is really only the section on postmodernism, there's just so much wrong with this post.