I think we're on the same page here. Interlocutors must conceive of each other - to some degree - as rational animals who genuinely at least feel that their beliefs are justified. It's a challenge because so much of our media, and now our politics, tells stories that are Manichean or Gnostic. Even when conversion happens it's through some emotional event, rather than through rational argumentation (or that seed of Goodness was inside the villain all along).
The story we tell about the world, along with. the story we tell about ourselves, is then picked from the story telling mechanisms we've saved up. This is where I fear Peterson falters to an extent - he seems to recognize the problem but also seems inclined to exacerbate it.
Well, I think we actually go wrong right at the point at which we attempt to ascribe rationality to others. Because there-in, we make the value-judgement that rational explanation is preferable. Maybe it often is preferable, but that is still bias. We don't really arrive at transcendent values through rationality. Again, that is the Harris pit-fall. Rather than assume (and irrationally expect) rationality from everyone else, we can realize that we, ourselves, are not rational and so dispense with the idea that we can bludgeon the other side with facts (because we never chose anything based on facts anyway).
Peterson, as you point out, doesn't defuse this. And I think you are very right on that. But I think it's mainly because, one, he doesn't know how, I don't think anyone does. And two, because I think his line of thinking is akin to: the story of the world is the story of our psychological development, writ large; if we tell ourselves better stories, we can act out better stories; if we act out better stories, the story of the world will be better.
He might be wrong, but I don't think his premise is all that fundamentally flawed. That isn't to say he couldn't do a better job at things, because he, like anyone and everyone else, is flawed and makes mistakes. At least though, from what I've seen, he is often willing to admit when he does.
Harris seems to think we can gain rights when someone has "no reason" to discriminate. This seems rather naive, but then the entire New Atheist project - along with its predecessor in academia - seems entirely faith based to me. Trying to cross the Is-Ought chasm leads to the kind of political "me first" tribalism that threatens us in at least the short-term time window.
So I'd say Peterson is flawed in the way we all are, but Harris is just twiddling around in some New Atheist fantasy land completely adrift from the way we interact with the world through our Myth-built interfaces (or to borrow from Robert Anton Wilson, our Reality Tunnels).
Yeah, Harris is basically in the intellectual wish-fulfilment bussiness. Like, wouldn't it be great if we were supremely rational beings who could ponder something and then come up with the best possible course of action for everyone? Yeah, but none of us are God and aren't likely to think ourselves to become Him.
I see what you mean - I'd use Manicheanism as a short hand descriptor, a "what" but your stuff about psychological projection is the "why" & "how" of the problem.
The problem with hearing the other side is to risk becoming un-woke or a cuck...Hundred Heavens forbid...Admittedly this "danger" of blasphemy is something from the religious-based Ground we probably should've dropped...seems like we ditched the baby and kept the dirty bathwater. <<insert appropriate emoji>>
Well, there is good reason to consider blasphemy, though. If we state too long at the Devil, perhaps we consider his view too much and then become devils ourselves! There is something to be said about what I coin (in my own deluded mind) as "dread knowledge." That is, something that once known, actually makes your life worse. I got this idea mainly from Bakker's use of The Inverse Fire. But really, anything the pushes you toward the trap of nihilism fits the bill. It isn't that it isn't true, because blasphemy isn't just untruth, it's something that strikes at The Ground. If you do that too often, you'll have no where to stand.