Transcript
Jordan Peterson (0:00)
One of the things I figured out recently, the significance of the fact that the root word of question is quest. You have a question which is your plea to the gods. Let's say you await a revelation and then the critical process is something like internalized dialogue.
Dr. Jacob Howland (0:16)
I got interested in the Talmud. It's a lot like the Platonic dialogues. And you have this fictional colloquy that's the only way to describe it. Rabbis who maybe lived centuries apart are brought into debate.
Jordan Peterson (0:28)
If we lose touch with those ancient stories, we lose our ability to actually understand what's going on. Elijah, you mentioned Elijah.
Dr. Jacob Howland (0:36)
Yes, yes.
Jordan Peterson (0:36)
Elijah's foes are the nature worshipers. That's kind of relevant in today's society. Given the rise of nature worship, something will attain the pinnacle point.
Dr. Jacob Howland (0:46)
What happens in a universe where finite beings try to find some meaning and encounter or are afflicted by infinity in some way?
Jordan Peterson (0:59)
This is a terrifying thought. I think you said you saw a similarity with the dialogues, so what else caught your attention?
Dr. Jacob Howland (1:06)
There is a question that I know to be absolutely fundamental because it shows up both in the Hebrew Bible and in Plato.
Jordan Peterson (1:13)
Okay.
Dr. Jacob Howland (1:14)
And the question is foreign.
Jordan Peterson (1:30)
So I had the opportunity today to speak with Dr. Jacob Howland, and I wanted to speak with him for a variety of reasons. He's a philosopher, longtime academic, integrally involved with the new University of Austin, which is one of a handful of institutions that are attempting to reorient, traditionally reorient, modern higher education. He's also interested in the interface between modern technology, AI, for example, and philosophy, partly in an attempt to solve what's started to become known as the alignment problem. How do we ensure that these autonomous intelligences, because that's what they're developing into, will have the well being of human beings, for example, as one of their priorities, or maybe their top priority, you might hope. But what we really ended up talking about was the relationship between Athens and Jerusalem, philosophically and at a deeper level, less geographically centered, the relationship between rationality as such, the Enlightenment project and science and the underlying metaphysical substrate. And it turned out that the conclusions that Dr. Howland had drawn seem to be very similar to the conclusions that I've been drawing along with people like John Verveki and Jonathan Pageau, for example, variety of the lectures that we have on Peterson Academy. It does appear that something really quite revolutionary on the intellectual side is beginning to emerge because the flaws in the Enlightenment have become so structural that it's clear that a new pathway forward not only has to be found, but is likely already upon us. And the Appearance of new institutions like the University of Austin, like Peterson Academy, like Ralston, are a. Are an indication of that. And so we delve deep into the philosophical relationship between Enlightenment rationality and the underlying narrative substructure. That's a good way of thinking about it. And we discussed that in terms of the relationship between Athens and Plato and the ancient religious texts of the Western world. So join us for that. So, Dr. Holland, I wanted to talk to you today. Primarily, there's a bunch of reasons. I think the main reason was that we have overlapping interests in new approaches to higher education and maybe education in general. And you're involved with the University of Austin, and I've been involved in Peterson Academy and also Ralston College. And so I thought we could talk about that more narrowly. But we share philosophical interests. And I'm also curious about your take on new developments in AI, especially with regards to the large language models. That'll be an interesting discussion because I've used them quite a bit now, and I have a colleague who's helped me program a number of them, customers, LLMs. And they're uncanny machines, and I have no idea where they're headed. Well, that doesn't make me special. No one knows where they're headed. And so that's the broad landscape that I hope to traverse with you today. But I think we should start with. Let's start with a little background about you so that people can situate you. You're a philosophy professor, you're an acclaimed educator. So fill us in on who you are.