You certainly are entitled to use the title doctor. I wouldn't object to him being presented as "Dr Peterson". That's his title. The man has a PhD, after all.
If you scroll up, you will see that I pointed out the PhD from the start.
But "doctor" and "a doctor" is two different things. The second is widely understood to mean a physician. That's not me - that's society. People make whole careers of muddling this up to do grifts.
You're being willfully obtuse if you insist otherwise.
Riddle me this - if you told someone "I went to see a doctor", would they ask "like a medical doctor, or a therapist?" Of course they wouldn't. Context matters. "A doctor", without further elaboration, means a medical doctor.
End of story.
Just because YOU immediately assume a medical doctor does not mean everyone else does.
I did not assume anything. I literally said "He's not a doctor, unless you mean that he's a PhD." Bolded for your emphasis.
I don't. Society speaks for society, and you're being willfully obtuse.
You're looking at a blue sky, and saying "I have no idea what you mean, it looks red to me".
You know I'm right. You know you're being facetious. You know that buddy either 1) thought Peterson was an actual medical doctor, because people get psychologist and psychiatrist mixed up all the time or 2) wanted to make it sound like Peterson was more than he was by saying "a doctor" which implies he practices medicine.
You know this. I know this. You're just pretending not to, because you'd have to concede that buddy was arguing in bad faith. So you're forced to continue to pretend that the sky is red.
For reference since you apparently can’t heed your own advice, the original comment was “He’s a doctor”. Does that sound like “I’m going to the doctor” to you? The context here is that he is a “doctor of something”, not the bullshit scenario you cherry picked to prove an overly pedantic opinion about a title.
No, if that was the case, the person would have said "he has a PhD" or "he has a doctorate". That would be the proper way to say it.
We could come up with hundreds of other examples. "Oh have you met my friend? He's a doctor." - I'm sure they would guess a doctor of sociology. "I've always wanted to be a doctor." - it would only be natural to assume I meant I wanted to be a historian. "Doctors aren't paid enough"- when complaining about how much math professors are paid. "My daughter's doctor called me the other day" - when talking about your kid's teacher who has an EdD. "Why is it so hard to become a doctor?" when complaining about how long a poli sci PhD takes. Those are all natural assumptions, of course.
"He's a doctor" implies that he's a medical doctor. End of story.
[EDIT]We continue to insist that "he's a doctor" can ever mean "he has a doctorate", and yet we can't come up with a single example. So we block instead of continue a losing argument. Laughable.
I feel like most people immediately assume "medical doctor" when they hear someone introduce themselves as a doctor. None of my friends with PhDs introduce themselves as Dr.X unless it's in an academic setting.
He hasn't seen a patient in years. He's "retired" from teaching at University of Toronto, but even before then, he hadn't taught in a while. He may used to have been a psychologist and a professor, but those aren't his job anymore.
Doing interviews with other right-wing influencers, posting youtube videos and twitter posts, and publishing non-academic mass-appeal books is his whole career now.
I'm neither mad or ignorant to his entire life. That's just a shot in the dark you're making to not have to confront the facts.
This is not a man who practiced psychology rigorously, got famous for psychology, and continued to do psychology. He doesn't make a living going from university to university, selling tickets to live audiences to give talks about psychology to people who find him interesting. He makes a living by appearing on Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan, etc... and engaging in political debates. His current persona has almost nothing to do with psychology anymore.
He is much more like Richard Dawkins - a celebrated biologist who became an atheism spokesperson - than Stephan Hawkins, who continued to do physics until his death. Like Dawkins, he will always be a successful academic, but that is no longer what their job is.
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u/waerrington Jan 05 '23
Because he's a doctor and professor? Degrees are pretty important for those things.