Sam Harris (Left) and Jordan Peterson (Right)

Recently I was listening to the Waking Up Podcast, and stumbled upon Sam Harris’s interview with Jordan Peterson entitled “What is True?”

As would be expected from these educated, intelligent thinkers, this was a rather nuanced and deep-dive into some fundamental questions regarding not only the nature of reality, but also, how we define it. It should thus be comforting to an extent that no conclusions were reached by the pair, indeed the final agreement between them was that it might be best to “crowdsource” some areas for both of them to consider, as the headway towards agreement on how to define truth could only be measured by them by points so fine that perhaps neither fo them could see the forest from the trees.

Which, in my view, demonstrates the best way to adjudicate these types of scenarios. The closer you get to them, the more difficult it can be to take a step back and see what might be happening that is just outside of your awareness. And it’s also at the core of their disagreement. After all, the common difference they were operating under was not an epistemological one, as both of them seemed to think, and not merely a semantic one, though certainly that played a part. No, the difference was in their concept of existence, and how defining existence is in itself necessarily axiomatic for how you reference epistemological concepts rhetorically.

Existence, as I define it, is all that is, as it is. Reality is just that which exists materially, versus that which exists conceptually (thank you Reddit user for pointing out I had swapped these!). Truth is thus that which is true within existence. How I arrived at these distinctions is a result of an axiom that I share with Sam Harris and Peterson both — that if a language is to be useful as a form of expression, it must be anchored in mutual agreement between those that use it with each other.

And when you get right down to it, there are two main ways to approach how you define existence — holistically (as observable from within), or as something which can be observed independently as it’s own object. This subtle distinction is a conceptual point of reference, and the conclusions that can be derived from it aren’t easily seen up-close, but can certainly be seen when examining how both Sam and Jordan approach the concept of truth.

The “Observable Existence” axiom approaches the truth, and thus existence, as an object which can be observed independently from an observer. Implicit in this view is the possibility that something can exist outside of existence. After all, in order for it to be possible to observe existence as a whole, it must be possible to be independent from existence itself. Which means, from this approach, that existence itself is necessarily finite when compared to any possible observer, but does not necessitate that the observer themselves is also infinite.

Unfortunately, it is also reliant on an unknowable trait of existence itself that contradicts the notion that a being that exists outside of existence exists. After all, if existence is finite, and a being exists outside of existence who is either infinite or finite in comparison to something else which may or may not exist outside of the infinite being’s existence… well, then the concept of existence loses utility.

If something can exist outside of existence, then the distinction between that which exists and that which does not exist in itself does not exist. And if everything exists, then there is no such thing as non-existence, which means that there are no actual limitations (and conceivably nothing is false and everything is true)… which is objectively not true by the mere existence of the inherently reductive nature of language itself. Even illusory limitations, are in fact, limitations, and cannot be explained without the possibility of non-existence which is required for any sort of finality. This same internal inconsistency does not exist when defining existence holistically.

If existence is defined as all that is, as it is, then there is nothing, by definition, which exists outside of existence itself. This restriction, counter-intuitively, allows for maximal flexibility and utility when approaching existence via our own biological and arguably necessary limitations by virtue of allowing for a distinction between existence and that which exists.

Whether or not existence itself is infinite or finite, that which exists is inherently finite, as that which exists is a PART of existence, but not the whole of existence itself. Whatever is true within existence is therefore possibly true for anything which exists, but not necessarily true by virtue of existence being the sum of its parts (that which exists). That which exists will thus necessarily have some traits which are true of existence but will also necessarily be absent some of those traits which are true of existence. Thus non-existence is also possible within the concept of existence, just as infinity includes the necessity of finite possibility as well.

To be clear, none of this is an argument against “God”. It certainly allows for the existence of a being that encapsulates all of existence, or even enough of existence to be effectively omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent… especially when compared to our own limitations. It doesn’t even require existence itself to be finite, save only in comparison to the infinite nature of non-existence, which is without limitation by virtue of the same limitless nature of how many nothings you can pack into a pill case.

The only restrictions imposed on what exists are that nothing is, in fact, bigger than existence itself, because non-existence exists WITHIN existence and thus existence is as infinite as that which both does and does not exist. It is ALL that is, as it is. Whatever you can imagine, and quite a bit that you can’t, is what is being referenced by existence. That which exists is just a part of the whole. So, by this axiom, to say that “god exists” is to say that god is a part of all that is, as it is. Indeed, reasonably, God being all that is as it is certainly could pass the smell test, or any of the other traits which also exist within existence. There are no limitations per se on what a maximal being may or may not be, save for existence itself, which is primarily a function of the necessity of internal consistency of language in order to be effective.

This also does not require that other metaphysical notions about reality are false, either, which seems to be Jordan Peterson’s primary concern. As I explained earlier, truth is a large piece of existence, and reality is a large piece of truth, but these concepts, organized hierarchically as they are, do not necessitate that metaphysical truths aren’t true, but merely that they are simply unknown or poorly understood. The comparisons to advanced technology and magic exist precisely because our necessary limitations as pieces of an infinite existence require that there are both known truths and unknown truths about existence as a whole.

But perhaps more importantly, it also does not require that the numinous be discounted. Repeatedly throughout the podcast, Peterson seemed to be focused on how people orient around the concept of truth FIRST via their moral intuitions, which in his view necessitates that moral truths ENCAPSULATE scientific truths. While this is certainly an interesting idea, it is based on his axiom/assumption that truth is a top-down exercise whereas science is a bottom-up exercise, which is grounded in an understanding of the concept of existence as something which can be observed from the outside.

To him, this is absolutely critical because as humans are not outside of existence, this “top-down” framing is an omnipresent reminder that we are engaging in a bottom-up enterprise that can necessarily possibly result in the collapse of the whole edifice. The impression that I get — though cannot be certain of as they did not get into morality itself — is that his concerns largely stem from the “mistake” of how using reality as a foundational metric for truth causes people to overlook morality as a co-equal if not higher priority metric which, if not THE metric is certainly not one which should ever be excluded in the way that “Darwinist Philosophy” ultimately requires.

And to maintain the internal consistency of this view-point, it is important that truth ULTIMATELY be something which goes beyond reality and existence itself as truth is “INFINITE”. I think Sam certainly got it right when he pointed out that this viewpoint ultimately results in the same sort of problems that Peterson criticizes post-modernists of, but from a diametrically opposed place. Essentially and fundamentally, Peterson is using this framing of existence in a way that requires that ANYTHING can be ultimately true insomuch as it relates to moral agency and that anything which excludes moral agency confounds our ability to define something as true.

Which is why Harris’s attempts to provide discrete examples which illustrate the part-to-whole relationship between existence and that which exists, which does not require that ultimately unknowable truths become conflated with that which is contingently true (gravity always exists everywhere, but the experience of gravity is different from planet to planet) were met with silence and a reiteration of the importance of the circumstances. Because undoubtedly the circumstances certainly matter, however, because not all circumstances are equal, a reference is required to compare the impact of discrete circumstances so that we might understand their “weight” in the network of circumstances that contribute to that outcome. Truth is the metric that Sam proposes, arguing that ultimate truths about the universe are in fact made up of a chain of contingent truths, whereas Peterson is fixated on a notion of truth which could possibly ONLY exist outside of existence itself, and thus is ultimately unknowable by any being within existence.

An existence which in and of itself is inherently finite as it only encapsulates what I would define as our reality (a subset of existence) as opposed to literally everything which is, exactly as it is (e.g. material, conceptual, emotional, experiential, etc.). What is interesting is how similar conclusions can be reached from both of these points of view, as Peterson uses the fall-back of contingent truths, or as he terms it “micro-truths”, as a distinction between what might best be described as “ultimate truths”, though he never explicitly states this that I can recall. The reason that these contradictions in their viewpoint never arise in 2 hours of discussion is that axiomatically where they were at odds is the framing of existence, rather than truth. By focusing on truth, the only distinctions that can be seen are for Sam — from within Existence, and from Peterson — from outside of it. And these viewpoints/definitions of existence are fundamentally incompatible in ways that are incredibly subtle.

This gets to the core of what can be understood from their discussion. That our axioms are critical for understanding each other’s descriptions of existence, as they formulate the basis for how we define certain concepts, not the least of which is our axiom for the definition of existence itself. Existence, by any axiom, is far larger than our ability to perceive holistically, and so when folks use the word existence, depending on whether or not their framework for existence is necessarily observable from within or without guides how they orient around other fundamental concepts such as reductivism. If I would hazard a guess, this difference in framing existence as a rhetorical concept is the reason why people will tend to buy into metaphysical explanations or not. If they think of existence as simply that which it is possible for them to experience (similar to my definition of reality, but even more reductive ironically as they simply mean observable), then it makes sense that something beyond what can be observed would also exist. However, if your sense of existence is simply everything, including non-existence (at least as a concept), then by definition there is nothing beyond it.

This is not a problem of epistemology. This is a problem of language being inherently reductive and socially constructed, and how we are biologically inclined to be more aware of that which we have applied language to than that which we have not. The words existence or god or rhubarb can ultimately mean ANYTHING provided that we INTEND to use those words in that way, and we are prepared to live with the consequences of intending a definition that others have not agreed to. The nature of language is WHY dogma is ultimately a dangerous concept, because it is a byproduct of our own limitations within existence, and thus is even more limited than we ourselves are. It would have to be so, because if existence is only limited by its complexity, it is necessarily true that what exists is less complex than the complexity it arose out of. Which means if humanity is more complex than a single human, than the language of a single human is less complex than the common language used by groups within humanity, which is why human language, in general, is a more complex endeavor to understand than any specific form of expression you might point to.

This is why I side with Sam Harris on this debate, because existence itself seems to be organized according to the complexity of its parts, and by virtue of the influence each part has on the outcomes that ultimately EXIST versus the ones that do not, organizing our understanding and observations and predictions about existence according to its complexity is the most parsimonious way for having our language reflect reality, and existence as a whole. So much of framing existence as something that is finite to some other being that can observe it seems motivated primarily by a desire to justify traditions that may only exist because of superstition or speculation. And to my mind, this framing is both clumsy and unnecessary, as there are plenty of unknowns where the religious or superstitious could just as easily find foot-holds without requiring that we damage the utility of terms like “existence” or “truth”.