From Page 261 to 265, Jordan Peterson describes how a human, a subject/agent and biological consciousness operating in the world, perceives objects, people, and stimuli from that world, but do so epistemologically and ontologically in a way that seems almost like they are spiritual beings operating in and making sense of the living world around them. I think this is some of his finest writing. I am not even quite sure what he is saying, but, with words, he somehow captured how humans interact with the world, and the exchange is spiritual, objective, intellectual, intuitive, subjective and biological--all of these epistemologies are real, and all of them are operating in the living consciousness of each human interfacing with the world out there.
On Page 261, Jordan describes modestly of what he is about to depict in for fantastic pages of description: "We assume that we see objects or things when we look at the world, but that's not how it really is. Our evolved perceptual systems the interconnected, complex multi-level world not so much into things per se as into useful things (or their nemeses, things that get in the way). This is the necessary, practical reduction of the world. This is the transformation of the near-infinite complexity of things through the narrow specification of our purpose. This is how the world makes precision sensibly manifest. This is not at all the same as perceiving objects.
This is epistemology of a higher order, and yet it is everyday perceiving the world any anyone, anywhere. It seems we are able t see patterns among the billions of incoming units of stimuli, and that is a remarkable cognitive gift of nature, but it is epistemologically tricky and unfathomable, almost a miracle, and it could be that the world that we live in is not the only one that we know even while living and experiencing here on earth--a most remarkable explanation of what has happened, and I only 1/3 understand wat Peterson is driving at.
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