/lit/ - Literature

I'm actually a little sad. We're not going to be able to have trolltastic threads on /lit/ about free will anymore, and very soon.

Damn you Sam.

Time to be big boys and girls.

>>4905783
Solved. Your welcome, theists.

Sam Harris

He solved the problem of free will and he made morality amenable to scientific inquiry. By using science he solved two problems all the philosophers failed to solve before him.

>>4890564
His conjecture that all pain should be treated equal, but just for particular kinds of organisms is a very specific one. I'd have to see it empirically proven before accepting it.

There cannot be a greater philosopher than Sam Harris.

For thousands of years philosophers struggled with the problems of free will and morality. They discussed them, they contemplated them, but they failed to find an objective answer. Then Sam Harris applied the scientific method. First he proved the non-existence of free will. Then he proved objective morality. Two ancient philosophical mysteries solved by science. He's truly the greatest intellectual of our times.

>>4867450
This is just a reminder that while philosophy seems to care a great deal about Mr. Harris, this isn't a reciprocal relationship.

>>4760798
Tell you what, I'll care about qualia once philosophers agree on a precise definition because its been found in the real world.

Of course this is a clever trick to get them to do science, and god forbid profound insightful men are forced to check their work or actually give others a reason to agree with them.

>>4730294
Yes, it's satire shitlord.

What I don't get is why idealists can deny materialism all day long, but the second an atheist denies idealism or dualism, all of a sudden they've gone beyond the pale and must be hating philosophy.

You can only take this stance, consider atheists are not doing philosophy if you deny that their position is philosophical.

Oh, but its cool if you're like a Spinozan pantheist doing similar because we throw out our standards if you died hundreds of years ago and are white, European, and Xian. Xians are supposed to be dumb so we relax our standards.

Such le double standards.

>>4711386
I bet you deny objective moral values too.

>>4687528
>neoliberal

Where do you foaming at the mouth idiots get this stuff? Too fucking rich.

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/how-rich-is-too-rich/

In case anyone is confused, philosophical zombies are fucktarded. Here's what would have to be the case if brains just do simple cause and effect, and don't understand it:

Every nerve would have to be precisely placed for coordination of neurotransmitters. Sexual reproduction would be impossible, because you couldn't end up with mixed parts. If you lost an arm or it didn't develop well, you'd keep acting as if this never happened. And how to pick out which instructions. Unless of course, every possible minute change had instructions. This would grow rapidly exponential. But even then, organisms would also be unable to evolve. You can't have a flying bird that doesn't have a flying brain.

There must be a training cycle for high level functions to get used to the body, and even other parts of the brain. Otherwise message protocol that interprets anything correctly would be impossible. But then the brain would in fact be aware of its place in the world, not just what it does. That is free will, consciousness, agency. Whatever.