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Customer Review
December 20, 2013
This book was a huge disappointment. It abounds with dense, often impenetrable, verbiage. Basic points are made repeatedly, but subtle ones occasionally appear in the middle of an argument and are never referenced again. Even worse, this text makes at least one statement that is factually wrong. This mistake is not a small oversight, either. It is one that demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the topic being discussed at that part in the text, and throws into question the validity of other points made throughout the rest of the book.
I first encountered Maps of Meaning on TV Ontario as a lecture series with the same name. I found the lectures by Dr. Peterson fascinating, but, unfortunately, confusing in parts. There were details I wasn't able to fully grasp, and I wanted to know more. That led me to this book, in hopes of filling in the gaps and developing a better understanding of the topics that were covered.
One of the blurbs on the back cover says the book is "... exciting not just for the general reader ... ", suggesting that it should be accessible to the layman. Although I'm a layman in the area of psychology, I do have a graduate degree in computer science and took a handful of psychology and philosophy courses as an undergraduate. Dr Peterson teaches a course based on this text that only has a couple of second year psych courses as prerequisites, so I figured I should be well-prepared to study, and understand, the book's contents.
Things were slow-going from the start. There were repeated instances where the text could have said something simply, or at least with more clarity, but instead chose to obfuscate. Try this passage on for size (from page 13): "Active apprehension of the goal of behavior, conceptualized in relationship to the interpreted present, serves to constrain or provide determinate framework for the evaluation of ongoing events, which emerge as a consequence of current behavior." Now imagine 400+ pages in this style.
But I soldiered on. I took my time and tried to understand the details Dr. Peterson was presenting. In fact, there were parts of the book that I found genuinely fascinating and well-written. Unfortunately, these parts were overshadowed by a slowly growing feeling that I was having the wool pulled over my eyes.
It was when I reached the middle of the book that this feeling fully crystallized. On page 235, Dr Peterson writes: "A moral system -- a system of culture -- necessarily shares features in common with other systems. The most fundamental of the shared features of systems was identified by Kurt Godel. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem demonstrated that any internally consistent and logical system of propositions must necessarily be predicated upon assumptions that cannot be proved from within the confines of that system."
Whoa. First of all, Kurt Godel was a logician, and his work on his Incompleteness Theorem was related to axiomatic (formal mathematical) systems. Simply extrapolating results on axiomatic systems to "moral systems" or "systems of culture" as a self-evident fact has the whiff of charlatanry. Even worse, the statement of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem given above is completely wrong! I'd like to say that Dr Peterson merely provided a naive oversimplification of the theorem, but that's not even the case. What Dr. Peterson stated is a total misrepresentation of Godel's work. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem has nothing to do with proving the "assumptions" (axioms) of the system from "within the confines of the system."
Dr. Peterson hammers on this mistake a page later when he describes the five postulates of Euclidean geometry. He writes: "What constitutes truth, from within the perspective of this structure, can be established by reference to these initial postulates. However, the postulates themselves must be accepted. Their validity cannot be demonstrated, within the confines of the system."
I can't give a proper exposition of Godel's Incompleteness theorem in one or two paragraphs, so if you're interested in details I direct you to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (available online and totally free), which has a fairly readable description of what Godel actually proved.
This is where the book broke down for me. If the text so egregiously misrepresented Godel's Incompleteness theorem, what else had it oversimplified, misrepresented, or gotten plain wrong? And how much of its dense rhetoric was simply fancy word play to hide vacuous arguments?
To quote David Hume, "If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." This is perhaps too harsh a verdict for Maps of Meaning. As I mentioned, there were parts that I found well-written and interesting. But taken as a whole, it's not worth the time investment required.
I first encountered Maps of Meaning on TV Ontario as a lecture series with the same name. I found the lectures by Dr. Peterson fascinating, but, unfortunately, confusing in parts. There were details I wasn't able to fully grasp, and I wanted to know more. That led me to this book, in hopes of filling in the gaps and developing a better understanding of the topics that were covered.
One of the blurbs on the back cover says the book is "... exciting not just for the general reader ... ", suggesting that it should be accessible to the layman. Although I'm a layman in the area of psychology, I do have a graduate degree in computer science and took a handful of psychology and philosophy courses as an undergraduate. Dr Peterson teaches a course based on this text that only has a couple of second year psych courses as prerequisites, so I figured I should be well-prepared to study, and understand, the book's contents.
Things were slow-going from the start. There were repeated instances where the text could have said something simply, or at least with more clarity, but instead chose to obfuscate. Try this passage on for size (from page 13): "Active apprehension of the goal of behavior, conceptualized in relationship to the interpreted present, serves to constrain or provide determinate framework for the evaluation of ongoing events, which emerge as a consequence of current behavior." Now imagine 400+ pages in this style.
But I soldiered on. I took my time and tried to understand the details Dr. Peterson was presenting. In fact, there were parts of the book that I found genuinely fascinating and well-written. Unfortunately, these parts were overshadowed by a slowly growing feeling that I was having the wool pulled over my eyes.
It was when I reached the middle of the book that this feeling fully crystallized. On page 235, Dr Peterson writes: "A moral system -- a system of culture -- necessarily shares features in common with other systems. The most fundamental of the shared features of systems was identified by Kurt Godel. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem demonstrated that any internally consistent and logical system of propositions must necessarily be predicated upon assumptions that cannot be proved from within the confines of that system."
Whoa. First of all, Kurt Godel was a logician, and his work on his Incompleteness Theorem was related to axiomatic (formal mathematical) systems. Simply extrapolating results on axiomatic systems to "moral systems" or "systems of culture" as a self-evident fact has the whiff of charlatanry. Even worse, the statement of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem given above is completely wrong! I'd like to say that Dr Peterson merely provided a naive oversimplification of the theorem, but that's not even the case. What Dr. Peterson stated is a total misrepresentation of Godel's work. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem has nothing to do with proving the "assumptions" (axioms) of the system from "within the confines of the system."
Dr. Peterson hammers on this mistake a page later when he describes the five postulates of Euclidean geometry. He writes: "What constitutes truth, from within the perspective of this structure, can be established by reference to these initial postulates. However, the postulates themselves must be accepted. Their validity cannot be demonstrated, within the confines of the system."
I can't give a proper exposition of Godel's Incompleteness theorem in one or two paragraphs, so if you're interested in details I direct you to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (available online and totally free), which has a fairly readable description of what Godel actually proved.
This is where the book broke down for me. If the text so egregiously misrepresented Godel's Incompleteness theorem, what else had it oversimplified, misrepresented, or gotten plain wrong? And how much of its dense rhetoric was simply fancy word play to hide vacuous arguments?
To quote David Hume, "If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." This is perhaps too harsh a verdict for Maps of Meaning. As I mentioned, there were parts that I found well-written and interesting. But taken as a whole, it's not worth the time investment required.
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