Tag: Jonathan Pageau

Jordan Peterson & Jonathan Pageau on The Problem of Perception

On By Christopher LansdownIn Interesting Finds, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I came across a very interesting video which is a conversation between Jonathan Pageau and Jordan Peterson where they discuss the problem of perception—how it is possible to perceive objects.

After listening to it for the second time, I realized that they are discussing from a different angle a problem that I’ve presented to atheists and they’ve never understood. Instead of the problem of perceiving objects I tended to refer to it as the problem of defining human beings within a materialist framework, and the consequent problem that this has for morality.

The basic problem I would present is: how do you define a human being in terms of subatomic particles in such a way that it’s distinct from a corpse? If you can’t—and you certainly can’t—you can’t define what murder is, and if you can’t define what murder is, you can’t say why murder is wrong. The same problem applies to all other moral aspects; good luck defining fraud or theft or arson or trespassing with the intent to commit a crime with a firearm in terms of sub-atomic particles. It’s not just that if God is dead all things are permitted. If God is dead, no things are definable and consequently nothing can be forbidden.

What Jonathan and Jordan are discussing is the same thing, but from a more epistemological perspective. They actually started, more-or-less, with why there is no such thing as a general-purpose robot. There is no such thing as a general-purpose robot because in order to interact with things you need to be able to perceive things and distinguish them from their environment, and though it comes naturally to us when you look at what we’re doing in order to be able to build a robot to do it, it turns out that the perception of objects is inextricably linked with purpose. (E.g. whether it matters that the right hand side of the table is separable from the left-hand side depends on whether you want to put something on it or use it for firewood.) People tended to be so used to their purposes that they couldn’t imagine not having the same purposes, and thus assumed these purposes were fundamental and therefore universal, but when examined it turns out that this is just a failure of imagination. (In part, this is why it takes so many years to produce an adult human being, behaviorally speaking.)

It’s a very interesting conversation (despite being called a lecture for some reason), and I recommend watching it in full, more than once. They really get into some of the interesting consequences of how perception and purpose are inextricably linked from each other.

Why Christianity is Not a Cuckold Religion

On By Christopher LansdownIn Christianity, Missing the Mark, Uncategorized, YouTube ChannelLeave a comment

This video is a response to Jonathan Pageau’s very interesting video in which he looked at the question of whether Christianity is a Cuckold religion. If you want to watch it first, that video is here:

His video is very interesting, but somewhat surprisingly he doesn’t look at the symbolism of what cuckolding is. So in my video I look at the cuckoo, then at human cuckolding, and then show how these are unlike Christianity.

Art & Architecture: Jonathan Pageau & Andrew Gould

On By Christopher LansdownIn Interesting Finds1 Comment

A really interesting interview of Andrew Gould by Jonathan Pageau

The whole thing is interesting but the last ten minutes when they discuss a beer shop which Andrew designed are especially interesting.

The part which really caught my attention was when Andrew explained how it was he came to design the building the way he did—the owner gave him carte blanche to design something beautiful because, owning a number of other properties in the area, he wanted to try to raise the standard in the neighborhood.

This touches a really interesting point, both about architecture but about the wider social phenomenon of imitation. People like excellence and will try to imitate it. But the phenomenon requires someone who is willing to be better than he needs to be. People who merely get along don’t inspire anyone. There’s a curious problem embedded in that—once the person who was better than he has to be inspires others, the standard will be raised and he will not be only as good as he needs to be to keep up with the people he inspired. There is, however, also a countervailing force of people wanting to be more lax than they are; these two forces form a cyclical pattern of improvement and degradation which is readily observable in history. (How the strict Victorian period followed the lax Georgian period, only to be followed by the lax roaring twenties, for example.)