Ethics and the Hunter

Long time readers will know that I’ve been a long time advocate of objective morality, via Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape. Those who have joined more recently may have instead noticed that I have relied on different moral frameworks when talking about morality - the appeal to a conceptual set of rules and values that…

The necessity of secular morality – even for religious people

There is a contradiction at the heart of some escatological religions - or, at least, their interpretations - that I think can only be solved by recognising that it is necessary to have a secular ethical system. The contradiction is this: an escatological religion is one that has in it the claim that judgement and…

Pascal’s Wager is a lie

Pascal’s Wager is a lie. Here’s the issue: the wager is essentially a gambling matrix, with two options in reality and two options that you can believe in. The two possible realities are Christianity or Atheism (if you’re a Muslim, the options are Islam and Atheism ― continue to substitute your own God in as…

Ontological Arguments

Ontological Arguments for the existence of God are an odd grouping. Not much holds them together except for their most common rebuttal: that they attempt to define a God into existence. This is not my favourite rebuttal to the arguments, although it is true: ontological arguments for God try to sneak the idea of existing…

Epistemocracy

Epistocracy and Epistemocracy don’t appear to have set meanings. In The Black Swan, Nassim Nicolas Taleb uses the latter ― epistemocracy ― to define a trait of leadership where the leader has epistemic humility (i.e. is comfortable with saying I don’t know). That’s not necessarily a system of government, as it’s compatible with democracy and…

The Progressive House

This is my second draft of this post, and that’s not how I normally operate. I normally write one draft with very few revisions (or even spell checking ― you may have noticed). Initially, I wrote a point by point rebuttal to Caroline Smith’s The House Progressives Built. But, in writing that, I noticed there…

Maps of Meaning, discussion – Part 7a, Concluding Thoughts

Alright, let’s wrap this up. At least one friend and one commenter has pointed out that Maps of Meaning is an academic tome that is quite separate from the content that has made Peterson famous. It’s difficult to articulate whether I fully believe this: I haven’t actually figured out precisely what the remit of the…

Jordan Peterson Does Not Understand Mythology

My response to Maps of Meaning may be too light... In case you’ve had the extraordinary good fortune of having never heard of him, Jordan B. Peterson is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. He largely rose to fame in 2016 over his vocal opposition to an act passed by the Parliament…

Maps of Meaning, discussion – Part 6b, Dream Analysis

Peterson gives us an account of his daughter’s dream. The real-life context is that she is the older sister of one-and-a-half-year-old brother, and still sees him as a baby, even though he can now walk around and use broken language. I can’t remember either of their names, and so I shall call them Matt and…

Maps of Meaning, discussion – Part 6a, The Emergence of Anomaly

Even if the book has more than 10 hours left, I can feel my mind starting to wrap it up. Maybe it’s because Peterson has already said “and this will be the focus of the rest of this audiobook”, or words to that effect, or perhaps it’s because it just feels like it’s on repeat.…