As a Christian apologist, Jordan Peterson has done much to show the literary and psychological value of Biblical stories and the Judeo-Christian tradition. However, while he avoids metaphysical speculation, he smuggles in the concept of God through a wrongheaded theory of belief: that what one believes is how one acts. This allows Peterson to think he can have it both ways: be empirically grounded and yet retain some important concept of God. His argument is based on a fairly obscure philosophical contention—that belief is really just action. It is perhaps the most recent popular argument for the existence of God, and it offers a way to reconcile belief in God with science. Its philosophical obscurity, as well as the religious orientation of much Peterson’s audience, likely explain the paucity of attention this argument has received. However, this theory of belief—and therefore any belief in God based upon this theory—is fundamentally flawed.
Intuitively, we think of beliefs as mental states. That is, when a person believes x, his mind is in a particular condition. What exactly this state is—whether it is an experience accessed purely phenomenologically, or equivalent to a particular state of the brain—is unclear. Such a belief may well have actionable consequences, but the belief itself is a distinct kind of thing from action.
But Peterson, self-consciously building on some existentialists, defines belief as action (Ironically, Jean-Paul Sartre puts forth a similar argument in Existentialism is a Humanism. Peterson does not acknowledge this, mentioning Sartre only to castigate his Marxist sympathies). A belief, according to Peterson, is itself a certain kind of action. As he has said before, in a recently published interview, Peterson states (at around an hour in) that “I act as if God exists, which is actually my definition of belief.” According to this account, if I believe that there is a cup in front of me, then I won’t try to put my hand through the cup. Rather, I will use it to drink, put it on the table, and so forth. I will act as if I believe in the cup.
The problem is not that Peterson has an unconventional idea of belief, but that his theory leads to an absurd consequence: it does not allow us to actually determine what a person believes. Peterson assumes that there are certain actions by which we can read off, so to speak, beliefs. But the reality is that any given action is compatible with an infinite number of beliefs.
Take the example of the cup: when I reach out my hand as if the cup were not there, this could indeed mean that I do not believe the cup is there. But it could also mean that I do believe the cup is there but I am pretending not to believe the cup is there; or that I believe the cup is made of rubber or somehow porous and therefore won’t be affected by my hand; or that I believe there is indeed a cup but I don’t care etc. There is therefore no reason to say that I believe the cup is not there, rather than holding another, alternative belief.
Perhaps, a Petersonian might object, this question could be settled by simply asking the person what she believes. But this would be to misunderstand Peterson’s fundamental argument. Peterson puts forth an ontological argument about belief—not an epistemological argument. That is, he is suggesting what beliefs are, not how we know them. For him, beliefs do not simply evidence action—which is common sense—beliefs are action. Therefore, recourse to self-reporting as a means of discerning belief is diametrically opposed to the theory. Verbal testimony is not epistemically relevant if beliefs are action, and if it is required then the theory must be wrong.
Let’s now turn to belief in God. Peterson has said that actions like not killing, and otherwise being a good person mean belief in God, i.e. that the person who does or refrains from these actions believes in God. The weird consequence of this theory is that Peterson can justifiably tell someone who says he does not believe in God that in fact he does.
This is no different than if I were to tell you, when you turn on the television, that what you really believe is that there is a monster commanding you to turn on the television. Your actions are indeed compatible with that belief. Similarly, an atheist may well act in accordance with Judeo-Christian principles, just as a theist would. But the conclusion that such actions show a belief in a television monster (or God) is arbitrary. Perhaps the atheist is pretending to believe; perhaps he thinks he must act a certain way to avoid jail time; perhaps he thinks he is in a movie and he is playing a Christian believer; perhaps he thinks such actions are somehow going to get him a reward which has nothing to do with God. Every action is compatible with an infinite number of beliefs, and there is no way, based upon action alone, to decide which is the true belief underlying it.
Peterson could say that he is merely defining certain actions—such as not killing—as belief in God. But if it comes down to mere stipulation then the argument is worthless. If I merely wanted to come up with idiosyncratic definitions, I could say that God means acting in a moral way, but this would be no more interesting or worthy of debate than any other arbitrary definition of “God.” However, Peterson makes a more substantial point: that belief itself is action, which requires philosophical, and not merely definitional, analysis.
When interpreting an atheist’s actions, we can only discern that he does in fact, generally, act in accordance with a belief in God—just as the person who turns on the television acts in accordance with a belief in the television monster. The fact that Peterson chooses to interpret ethical action as a belief in God is arbitrary.
I am not skeptical that we can ever know what someone else believes. But belief cannot be understood as equivalent to action without absurdity. Peterson’s theory does not allow us to say what in fact one believes, and cannot settle contradictory accounts of beliefs. It therefore ought to be abandoned. Concomitantly, Peterson must give up his action-oriented theory of God.
You don’t understand the distinction Peterson makes with the world. In his view there are two worlds: places of things and forums of action. He does not use the word “belief” to talk about the objective world. He uses it in the forum of action. Here we believes something when we act. You don’t believe in the existence of cups. You know their factual nature.
–According to this account, if I believe that there is a cup in front of me, then I won’t try to put my hand through the cup. Rather, I will use it to drink, put it on the table, and so forth. I will act as if I believe in the cup.– The important distinction here is that I don’t need to believe there’s a cup, or choose to behave accordingly; I can see it in front of me. Peterson’s assertion seems to be confined to the metaphysical, where his only option is to act as if it truly existed. How else can one demonstrate belief in the absence of proof etc? The canard here is that the supposed psychological value of Biblical stories and the Judeo-Christian tradition is based on a highly selective gathering of tales that have been filtered through a more modern moral lens. This more modern… Read more »
To tell one, who categorically rejects the idea of gods, that one does indeed believe in god, is the kind of unfathomable hubris that arises in the compelled ignorance of a gender studies class. Peterson should know better.
«A belief, according to Peterson, is itself a certain kind of action. As he has said before, in a recently published interview, Peterson states (at around an hour in) that “I act as if God exists, which is actually my definition of belief.” According to this account, if I believe that there is a cup in front of me, then I won’t try to put my hand through the cup. Rather, I will use it to drink, put it on the table, and so forth. I will act as if I believe in the cup.» – Arguments of a third-rate atheist, sorry…
But he’s not a Christian Apologist — he’s a Jungian Psychologist who draws archetypes from the Bible….
I think this article would be spot on if Peterson were a normal card-carrying Christian. But he is not. His vision of God is incredibly secular–not even close to the idea of a being who can act on any person. More or less, his idea of God is narrative, the idea that there is good and evil and that through the course of time people have been able to come up with more and more lucid ideas of what good and evil actually look like, and that they will continue to be able to do so, and will continue to discard the chaff, exactly because there are people who believe in rationality above dogmatism. In essence, his idea of God is belief–his “belief”–itself. I might even say that his idea of God is praxis, founded on the lessons of history and evolution. In the Harris-Peterson Discussions, Harris continually asked how… Read more »
Ask devout believers in God at this time about recent scientific discoveries e.g., CRISPR, and they either will not know or care—worse yet, will read up on the subject but attribute it to God instead of giving credit to educated, intelligent, hardworking humans. Like my effort, the author is trying to explain how a rigid belief in a god is simply absurd especially when people only give credit to a god, when in reality, a human being—say, a physician—helps to prolong life not a god. It is bizarre when a terminally ill patient whom a doctor has given a timeframe lives past the time and gives glory to their god and prayer. Physicians can only guess life expectancy and in no way should their prognoses be taken as absolute, as written in stone. It’s futile trying to explain a delusion learned at a young age which narrows and distorts reality,… Read more »
This seems to me like a load of gogglegoop. As I can see no logical reason to use the word belief at all. If you can have no reason to think something is true or false, then just say “I don’t know”.
Jesus made the same point as Peterson in the parable of the two sons. Matthew 21:28–32 . Jesus used this parable to illustrate that deeds are the true measure of what someone believes.
“Think bigly. Act biglier.”
-Donald J Trump
By way of disclaimer, I am should say that I’m not interested in defending Peterson’s philosophy of religion. I’m just here to criticise this particular argument against it. First of all, it’s unclear whether the objection to the ‘action theory of belief’ is that it leads to scepticism about belief (people have beliefs, we just can’t know what they are), or whether it leaves it indeterminate what a person believes (there are no facts to know about what a person believes). Sometimes the objection is framed in terms of ignorance, but the argument naturally lends itself to the stronger conclusion of indeterminacy of belief. This is rather by the by, since the argument is poor. Firstly, it refuses to consider the possibility that actions might cohere better with some beliefs rather than others. The claim is that ‘any given action is compatible with an infinite number of beliefs’. I grant… Read more »
Okay, this is weird. An entire column that doesn’t call Peterson a fascist? Are we in Bizarro World?
It does tell him what he should think, though. Still, that’s a far cry from the slander that consists of most Peterson articles. Why are people engaging with his ideas, even if it is to say he’s wrong? Needs more name-calling. Try calling him a pre-fascist, that seems to have caught on lately.
“I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.”
― John Locke