Reddit reply in r/AcademicQuran: what do you think about this one — June 8, 2024 · l7oxad3 | Ali Shukri Amin

I wouldn't describe Jordan Peterson as a radical skeptic, I think he engages in solipsism when he can't deal with certain arguments by playing with language. Peterson is mostly a philosophical relativist that borrows a lot from Western academia's anthropology of religion, believing that it's basically futile to test the truth claims of metaphysical arguments but worthwhile to derive moral principles from them. He's also an opportunist who has somehow fallen into the Conservative Christian alt-right manosphere. His books are definitely entertaining to say the least.

Efficacy or even utility =/= truth. Truth means establishing something indisputable about reality, it does not mean that something works or is effective in the short-term. There have been plenty of scientific theories that have worked or were useful that turned out not to be objectively true. Newtonian physics has been upended by quantum mechanics, but Newtonian physics is incredibly useful and effective. However, a lot of the assumptions or conclusions of Newtonian physics can't be considered strictly "true" at the quantum level.

I agree that science is useful and can be beneficial. I don't agree that the scientific method can lead to truths. I also don't agree that we as humans have the timelines to make proper utilitarian judgements. To determine how beneficial science is, we'd have to look at various sample histories (which we don't have access to) or at least have the entire historical record for our actual timeline.

A simple utilitarian and egalitarian argument against modern science could involve climate change and the global rise in depression. For all of the advances in science since the industrial revolution, is any of it worth it if the end result is climate disaster? Are all of the advances in science, medicine, and technology valuable for saving lives if the majority of people in the future end up hopelessly depressed in a way pre-modern people were not?

That being said, I think all of this is a tangent that doesn't really deal with the opening post-topic. There are a lot of philosophical and practical arguments to be made against the physical sciences. I think we can both agree that science "works", I've never doubted that. I started out as a chemistry undergraduate and did some novel research as part of a program in my university in some arcane sub-field (sonochemistry & nanoparticle synthesis). I ended up switching and specializing in computer science.

My thesis in this thread is that the Western secular academic history to humanities in general, Islamic studies in specific, has as many baked-in assumptions as the Madrassah. I think it prioritizes empiricism over the other important sources of knowledge, namely: metaphysics, natural instincts, formal logic, and skepticism.

What I was doing in these comments was testing HCM according to just one of those other branches of knowledge, which is rigorous skepticism. We can often find out more accurately and objectively what is not true than what is. When we just apply that, we see the system start to fold in on itself.

Muslim scholars and philosophers were dealing with empiricism, instinct/intuition, logic, and skepticism in a much more robust way when developing their approach over the course of 1,500 years. So, the idea that HCM or the Western approach is more "unbiased" or "objective" with less assumptions is something I aimed to disprove through multiple avenues. I also aimed to disprove that it is more effective at arriving at truth.