{"id":7096,"date":"2017-02-16T05:00:14","date_gmt":"2017-02-16T10:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.justrightmedia.org\/blog\/?p=7096"},"modified":"2025-03-31T18:34:43","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T21:34:43","slug":"492-guest-paul-mckeever-the-truth-behind-the-petersonharris-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/archives\/7096","title":{"rendered":"492 – The truth behind the Peterson\/Harris debate | Paul McKeever"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Truth\"

 <\/p>\n

THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH ABOUT PRAGMATISM – and why it matters:<\/p>\n

Following his ascent to notoriety when confronted by \u201cgender warriors<\/strong>\u201d at the University of Toronto late last year, Dr Jordan Peterson<\/strong> found himself entangled in a debate with Sam Harris<\/strong> (Waking Up with Sam Harris, January 21\/17) that offered a truly rare insight into a fundamental philosophical dilemma. What is the nature of truth?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Having begun their discussion in general agreement on the broader issues, their talk ground to a halt when it became clear that there was an incredible chasm between how each viewed \u201ctruth.\u201d For over an hour, their attempt to reconcile the two very different views of truth merely widened the chasm between them. The discussion was halted and a call was put out to their listeners for insight to their dilemma.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s Just Right guest Paul McKeever<\/strong> offered exactly that, and his assessment of \u201cwhat went wrong\u201d in the Peterson-Harris exchange drew the attention of Peterson himself. At the root of their dilemma, and indeed at the root of Professor Peterson\u2019s problems with \u201cgender warriors,\u201d suggests Paul, was a deep and long held misunderstanding about the nature of pragmatism.<\/strong>
\n <\/p>\n

As a philosophy, pragmatism is an \u201caction oriented\u201d way of thinking about reality and truth. Is \u201ctruth\u201d strictly a \u201cmoral\u201d concept, or is it possible to say that something can be true without any moral judgement attached? To the first proposition, pragmatism says yes; to the second, no.<\/p>\n

Jordan Peterson\u2019s very correct view of pragmatism, when that pragmatism was so clearly described by one who practices it, is shocking and difficult for most people to accept. Yet all pragmatists operate on the same unspoken premise, and therein lies the danger to those unaware. In the end, \u201cpragmatism\u201d doesn\u2019t really \u201cwork\u201d as a means of acquiring knowledge.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pragmatically speaking, today\u2019s discussion about pragmatism is an \u201cexperience\u201d that is not merely \u201csufficiently right,\u201d but Just Right.<\/p>\n

<\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH ABOUT PRAGMATISM – and why it matters: Following his ascent to notoriety when confronted by \u201cgender warriors\u201d at the University of Toronto late last year, Dr Jordan Peterson found himself entangled in a debate with Sam Harris (Waking Up with Sam Harris, January 21\/17) that offered a truly rare insight into [Continue Reading]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,596,28,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-audio","category-ethics","category-ideas","category-latest","category-reality","issues-epistemology-2","issues-metaphysics-2","issues-pragmatism","issues-truth","personalities-jordan-peterson","personalities-sam-harris","guests-paul-mckeever","category-12-id","category-5-id","category-596-id","category-28-id","category-3-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7096"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15320,"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7096\/revisions\/15320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justrightmedia.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}