Sam Harris reports that Jordan Peterson was the
person his current audience most wanted him to podcast just because the latter
was the only person who spoke of religion in a way that they (largely atheists)
could make sense of. The
pair started their discussion by agreeing their common ground on the issue of
freedom of speech, the Canadian human rights commissions being kangaroo courts
and the perniciousness of embedding social constructivist theories of human
identity in the law. Sam Harris then
turned to identifying what he thinks is their important disagreement: a disagreement over the nature of truth.
Jordan Peterson distinguishes religious/spiritual/moral truth from scientific
truth, claiming that this distinction is licensed by pragmatism, and Sam Harris
rejects that distinction. The conversation went on a very long time without
resolution and raised two possibilities: either one or the other was confused about truth or that there was a
deeper disagreement about truth than they had managed to bring to light. Quite
well known philosophical theory throws a light on this question.
